February
4 Comics from Mars

The 1990s were full of talent such as Jeff Smith on Bone or David Lapham on Stray Bullets breaking into self-publishing and making a real go of it. Few who've tried it of late have met similar success, except for the Brooklyn-based team of Rick Spears and Rob G.

Their just-concluded, 8-issue, 254-page serial Teenagers from Mars has firmly established them in the comics world. Despite having lost his apartment in a fire, Rob G has done the art for Brian Wood's The Couriers and the duo have a backup strip running in DC's flagship title, Detective Comics. But Teenagers from Mars is so far their most distinctive work, telling the story of Macon, a teen-age comic fan who finds his small town less than receptive to his attempts to get more people to read them. Spurred on by a new girlfriend, he takes his mission to the next level, forming the Comic Book Liberation Army and ending up a rebel with a four-color cause.

The duo will be making a West Coast appearance at the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco on Feb. 21-22.

Variety: What inspired you to get into comics in general and to do Teenagers from Mars in particular?

Rick Spears: After film school I moved to NYC and started writing and TFM began as a film script. I shopped it around a bit and got a lot of "It's young and hip but ... we don't get it." After that it just sort of morphed into a comic and since the story was all about comics it was a pretty simple move. The story itself grew out of living in Richmond, Va., (my own personal Mars) and what I'd learned about the Mike Diana Boiled Angel obscenity case.

Rob G: For me, I'd always enjoyed comics as a kid and was drawn to the visuals of the stories. As I got older, I started to appreciate storytelling a lot more. Comics are one of the most direct medias for raw storytelling, because of their usage of ideals and generalizations.

Variety: Do you think comics are under siege in real life as much as they are in TFM?

RS: Yeah, just go to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund website and see for yourself. People (Americans) think comics are just for kids and they get all in a tizzy when they find out they aren't.

RG: And recently the climate in the U.S. seems to have shifted even more in the direction of limiting a person's rights on what he or she can or can't see/read/hear.

Variety: How did you two meet up and how did you go about creating the comic?

RS: The "real" Macon is friends with Rob's roommate, J.J., and they put us in touch. It's funny, we never met until then because Rob and I have led sort of parallel lives. Both from Virginia, we went to the same college and both moved to Brooklyn. Because of our shared histories, we were pretty much instant friends. For TFM, the script was done in advance but because Rob knows Richmond and a lot of the people and places I was playing with, he was able to add a ton of detail and context. For instance, the zombie party was a real Halloween party that we both were at before we knew each other.

RG: Uh, yeah, what he said.

Variety: Why did you decide to self publish and are you pleased with the results now that you've finished the series?

RS: We decided to self-publish after being rejected or ignored by all the publishers we submitted to. It was the same problem with the movie people: they just couldn't seem to get it so, we did it ourselves. Now that it's done, I am very happy with how it came out. Sure, there are some mistakes and stuff, but that just ads to the raw energy of it. I also found out I love self-publishing, which was very much a surprise.

RG: Of course, there are things that I would like to have done better, but overall I'm very pleased with the way it came out. It really shows the growth of Rick's and my abilities as creators of comics.

Variety: When did you realize the book was finding an audience and why do you think it seemed to connect with readers when so many indy comics don't?

RG: Rick and I knew it was a real gamble when we decided to do it and I think it took a long time for us to really believe that people were really and truly liking it. I think it's appeal is mainly in the writing.

RS: The way I break it down, it's the artist's job to catch the eye and get someone to pick up the book in the first place. With that done, it's the writer's job to keep 'em coming back for more. You gotta have both or you're in trouble. As to when did we know it was moving, for me it was when Diamond called to distribute the book and we hadn't even sent them our submission yet.

Variety: How did you find your way from this project to working on more mainstream work, like Detective Comics?

RS: Nachie Castro, an assistant editor at DC, saw us at the MoCCA in NYC. We only had issues 1 and 2 at the time, but he liked what he saw. Then with Jim Lee on Batman and the books selling huge numbers I think the Bat group was able to take some risks on new faces.

Variety: What's next? Do you plan to do more comics or are you looking to expand into other areas?

RS: Well, we're definitely doing more comics. We've got the TFM collected trade coming out this year and then the second series, Curses of the Teenagers From Mars. We're also expanding into new areas. For instance we're doing a work for hire project based on a film franchise and I'm working on a film script that's planned to start production in the fall.