Writer Ed Brisson is best known for his work on Marvel series like New Mutants, X-Force or Iron Fist, which often features desperate characters forced to make tough choices in a fight for survival. He's familiar with those elements because they're a fundamental part of the genre that opened the comics industry door to him; crime.
The crime comic that helped launch Brisson's career as a writer was Murder Book; a creator-owned anthology of black and white, twisty, crime stories set in his native Canada that featured the work of a variety of artists. It was a series Brisson loved working on and always meant to get back to. And now, you can help him make that dream a reality
That's because Brisson is about to launch a Kickstarter to fund Catch and Release: A Murder Book Story; a full-length hardcover graphic novel featuring art by Lisandro Estherren, letters/designs from Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou and edits from Nate Cosby. CBR spoke with him about the story, returning to Murder Book, and why he chose to do this project as a Kickstarter.
CBR: Some of your fans who discovered you through your Marvel work may not be aware of Murder Book. What do you want them to know about the series?
I started working on Murder Book at a time where I was at a low. I had been trying to break into the comic industry for a while. Initially as an artist. I went to fine arts to learn to become a better artist and I spent from 1994-2010 trying to break into the industry with no luck.
So, in 2010 I decided to stop drawing because I found it frustrating and realized I preferred writing. I also stopped submitting to publishers completely and decided to take a year and focus on my writing to try and prove that I could do this. I also wanted to do stories that I wanted to tell; short, crime stories with twists and turns. I just wanted to write this stuff strictly for myself and the artists I was working with. I started writing scripts and teaming up with artists who I was friends with.
I did that for a couple of years, and it turned out that not giving a shit about what publishers wanted -- they were very specific about not wanting crime --and just focusing on the stories I wanted to tell ended up leading to my career in comics.
The Murder Book stories I was doing back then are very much the type of story I like to tell. It's stuff I like to read as well. I'm a huge fan of crime films; especially '70s neo-noir stuff. And I grew up watching Twilight Zone. So having those twisty endings where you pull the rug out from the reader in a way that causes them to reexamine the rest of the story through the lens of that twist is something I love doing.
I'd also been influenced by crime comics like Stray Bullets, Sin City, and I think Criminal was just starting around that time. Plus, I love crime novels from authors like Elmore Leonard, Jim Thompson and Charles Willeford.
What is it about crime stories that make them so appealing to you as a writer and a reader?
My father is a retired police officer and my mom was a nurse, but she was part of an on-call unit that worked specifically with victims of crime for a time. So, that was dinner-table talk growing up. My parents split when I was eight, but it was what they talked about all the time. I was always hearing these true-life stories So, for me, it was just there. Not just in dinner table talk either, there were plenty of the types of characters I write about who populated the area I grew up in and my day to day life. I’ve watched friends take some very dark paths.
Plus, I really was a bit of a juvenile delinquent when I was younger. I mellowed out when I was about 17, but I was still very fascinated with that side of life. This might sound terrible, [Laughs] but I think writing was a way I could still live it a little bit without actually having to live it.
I'm always more interested in grounded stories of people and personal stakes. I’m fascinated by morally complicated people doing things for survival that maybe work against others or their own best interests. There’s a real draw to writing about people in those complicated situations who are trying to make the best of it and not always succeeding.
You're about to return to crime fiction and Murder Book with Catch and Release: A Murder Book Story. What inspired this tale?
I've been working with the big two publishers now for about four years, and I always wanted to get back to doing creator-owned work. I hadn't really had an opportunity to do something like that in a while. My last two creator-owned books were written before starting on work for hire. So, it's something I always wanted to get back to, and then COVID-19 hit and work started to slow down. That's when I started Catch and Release. I just sat down one day with a very vague idea of what it was going to be and no idea how long it would be.
One of my favorite authors is Elmore Leonard and he often talked about how he’d usually just started writing with his characters and let them drag him and the readers along through the story. I love Leonard, but that approach didn't feel feasible to me. I thought I'd finally give it a try here though.
That's what I did with Catch and Release I had some characters and a germ of an idea; someone steals a car and his friend suggests they sell it, but they don't have the proper paperwork. So, they concoct this plan to list the car on Canada's version of Craigslist, Kojiiji, to lure buyers out, and they'll rob them in a remote area.
The story ended up being roughly 50 pages longer than the longest Murder Book story that I’d previously written. They tend to be shorter, but I felt like if I was going to come back and do Murder Book I wanted to do something a little bit different. I still wanted to do stand-alone stories, but I wanted them to be longer. So, this book is an entire story with new characters. You don't need to be familiar with Murder Book at all to hop on this one. All you need to do is love crime.
What else can you tell us about your story and characters?
Previous Murder Book stories were always set in Vancouver. I've since moved to the other coast. So, now every Murder Book story is set in and around Halifax. I'm working on others that are all set around here as well.
Andrew is a guy who used to steal cars. He used to be in and out of trouble with the law, but is now more or less on the straight and narrow. With COVID though, he's been laid off work. He's behind on rent. He's facing eviction and has a million other bills he needs to pay. So, he's drowning in debt, and initially just steals a car because he's at a low point and wants to see if he can still do it -- which, the irony of me doing the same with my return to Murder Book is not lost on me. He hides the car in his garage and shows it to his friend Chris. Andrew has a decent sense of right and wrong, but he’s broke and broke people do desperate things. It's his friend Chris who actually concocts this plan to list this car and rob prospective buyers. Their ad specifies, “Cash Only” -- the original title I wrote this under -- because that’s what they’re really after.
Chris and Andrew are two very different people. The morality of the situation weighs heavily on Andrew. He needs to pay his rent though. He needs a roof over his head and that’s why he’s doing this. Chris is more of a non-nonsense cutthroat dude. This is his plan and the way he wants to implement it versus the way Andrew wants to implement it is very much at odds, and the genesis for where this goes.
On the other side we have Samar; a student living in Halifax whose car is a piece of shit. [Laughs] When we meet him his car has broken down once again and he's going to be moving from Halifax to Vancouver. He'll be driving cross country and he's realized he can't take his car. So he scrounges up a bit of money to buy a car, which puts him and Andrew on a collision course.
Bringing to life your story is Lisandro Estherren who worked with you on the creator-owned Boom! crime series, The Last Contract. What was it like to reunite with him on this?
Working on The Last Contract with Lisandro was incredible. He's a great guy and an incredibly talented artist. His sense of shadow is so perfect for crime books. His work isn't a stark black-and-white. He's great with gradients and really selling a mood. I really like working with him. He's one of my favorite artists out there.
Lisandro and I had talked about working on something years ago, always with the intention of reteaming at some point. When I was writing this story, I had Lisandro in mind, but wanted to focus on getting the script done before reaching out.
Coincidentally around that time, a publisher in Argentina was releasing a translated edition of The Last Contract. So, Lisandro and I were doing an interview for them, and I was like, “Hey I'm working on this Murder Book thing would you be interested?” And he was.
Rounding out the Catch and Release team is letterer/designer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, and editor/packager Nate Cosby.
In terms of lettering, I'm fairly picky because I did it for 10 years and I know what's going on with it, but Has does so many things with his lettering that I would never do and the product is so much better for it. He takes some really interesting risks, which sounds weird when you're talking about lettering, you can see the amount of consideration that he’s putting into the work. Has loves comics and knows far more about them than I ever will.
Then, Nate was someone that I think Saladin Ahmed put me in touch with. He had helped run Saladin's Kickstarter. So he came on board, along with Laser Malena-Webber, to help put the project together. They walked me through the process, which I'm thankful for because it's nerve-wracking. It's one thing to hand over a book to a publisher and have it come out and it does what it does, but I feel like Kickstarter is standing on a stage where you can fail miserably. So, Nate and Laser have been an invaluable resource in getting this project off the ground.
Kickstarter has become a popular place for creator-owned comics. Why do you think that is?
It's been an interesting thing. Some publishers got hit really hard at the beginning of COVID, which caused them to tighten their purse strings due to the uncertainty of how COVID will impact the comics market long-term. That means there's not as much of a willingness to take a risk like there may have been last year. So, creators have been like, “We can cut out the middle man. We can forgo traditional publishing and distribution. We can go directly to the people.” The tough part is the comic shops. They’re invaluable partners and so we’ve made certain to offer something for them so that they can take part in this whole deal. We do not want to leave them out.
When I started Murder Book publishers didn't want crime because it's a hard sell. They're not wrong it is a tough sell, but it's got a niche audience that is there for it. So, I think this presents a unique opportunity to do things directly. And to be able to pull something like this off without having to worry about publishers making their margins on top of paying off distributors is a way to give pure product that hasn't been stepped on to readers.
Finally, what can you tell us about some of the individual rewards and stretch goals that you're offering backers of Catch and Release: A Murder Book Story?
We have some tiers where you can get commissions from industry pro artists who have worked on Murder Book in the past. For aspiring writers or people interested in pitching projects, you can get script reviews from a few comics pros. There's even an opportunity to appear in the book! We've got a character who hasn't been drawn yet and can be modified based on whoever picks that tier. There's also some original art.
This is me dipping my toe in and seeing what kind of demand there is for this type of book. We're putting it out in hardcover and trying to make it a real nice package that will look sexy on your shelf and have some awesome content between the covers.
We're also working hard to make sure your shipping costs are as low as possible. A bunch of books will go to the US and be shipped out there, and a bunch will come to me in Canada. We're doing everything we can to make it as easy as possible for folks to get into and support this project. Our Slogan is, “Support crime!” [Laughs] Plus, the hope is if this goes off it would become a regular thing and I'd take more Murder Book stories to Kickstarter.