February
27 Mostow talks "The Megas"

“The great thing about the graphic novel medium is you can draw it. I can sit there and try to explain it to you, but when you see the image I think it has a kind of certain power to that image,” Mostow says. “I get to communicate what’s cool about the idea and compelling about the idea in a way that’s more compelling than writing about it or a phone call with me talking about it.”

That was especially key when the underlying concept is as abstract as it is in “The Megas.” “The idea is an intellectual idea and if you start to explain it people think it sounds like a thought experiment from some eighth-grade social studies class,” he says. “But if you draw it, if you see the White House re-envisioned as a palace, and you see these iconic architectural archetypes like the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument re-imagined as trappings and symbols of power of a monarchy, there’s some thing very compelling about those images that I think can create an emotional feeling the viewer or reader.”

For Mostow, there is one key image in the book that, for him, nails the idea and gets it across in an instant. “There’s a panel in there where one of the high-level royals comes into a club and everybody who’s there bows down,” he says. “I find that to be a very compelling image: modern people dressed in Armani suits and they drive nice cars and live in nice houses and are professionals and lawyers and doctors and bankers and all that stuff, but they have to bow down to somebody.”

Mostow created and co-plotted the series with scripter John Harrison, whose credits include the Sci Fi Channel adaptations of “Dune” and “Children of Dune.” The series is drawn by Peter Rubin, a former art director at ILM who has done conceptual art on Mostow’s movies. “One of the thing I like about Peter’s work and one of the ambitions I had for this comic was I was not out to create a overstylized look to the comic,” Mostow says. “I wanted it to look good and rich, but I wanted the story and the idea to be the star of it.”

He says the production of the comic was a real learning experience, both in its similarities to filmmaking and its differences.

“It’s kind of got no rules in a sense, which is really from a creative standpoint very exciting and dynamic,” he says. “It’s not like we did anything groundbreaking in the execution of this, but it’s the medium. It’s deciding how many panels are you going to have on a page and where are they going to be and what are you relying on text to explain and what are you just going to show in an image.”

Mostow says creating a comics script was an unusual experience because of the need for everything to be up front, whereas film scripts can rely on the talents of actors, directors, production designers and cinematographers to fill in the details. “It’d be like if I did a movie, but only if I did it by faxing and memoing and emailing everybody.”

Mostow and Virgin are shopping the project around as a feature. With no screenplay, the comic is the key to their pitch. In print, “The Megas” is set to run four issues and then Mostow says they’ll see what the reaction is. “From there, it will be sort of self-evident as to whether it becomes a movie or not,” says Mostow.