Q&A with Headless Shakespeare’s Craig McKenney

By JK Parkin

Congratulations on being named a Xeric Grant recipient this year. What exactly is a Xeric Grant?

Thanks for that! For those who aren't familiar with the Xeric Foundation, four words will quickly catch you up: TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES. Peter Laird, co-creator of those guys, created a non-profit corporation to basically give money to people who are interested in publishing their own comics. They have other charitable endeavors as well, so it's great to see someone who has been really successful with his property turn that around and give back to many communities in many different ways.

What did it mean to the publication of your book?

It made a huge difference. I knew from the inception of my book that I wanted to work with Rick Geary on it. There was just no one else I had in mind, and thank goodness he agreed to do the project. However, when you're working with an artist like Rick, he has a standard page rate that he gets paid. I always pay all of the artists I work with, and so I knew going into this project that I'd need some help because the entirety of the story is 64 pages broken down over three issues. Receiving the Xeric allowed me to pay Rick out of my own pocket, and use the grant funds for printing and marketing the first issue. I couldn’t have done this project without the Xeric Grant.

Beyond the nuts & bolts of it, there is still brand recognition of the grant, so it does help with a boost in sales. I'm still a veritable unknown in the industry, so the names of Rick Geary and Xeric certainly didn't hurt.

What was it like working with Rick Geary? It sounds like you were a fan before this project.

Who isn’t a fan of Rick Geary? His work is amazing. I have followed
his work forever. It was his series of BLANCHE books originally published by Dark Horse that got us working together, as I published the third book of that series. Amazing, amazing stuff.

Working with Rick is easy and fun. I can play off his imagination and existing knowledge of the Victorian period, so I know that when I give him something in the script, he knows what I'm talking about and will make it look more amazing than I ever could have imagined. And Rick was great in terms of making suggestions and changes to things that a person who has never read a Bronte book wouldn't understand. Me, I'm a Bronte nerd, and it all is completely clear to me. But Rick was my reality check.

On top of that, both Rick and his wife Deborah are two of the nicest people you will ever meet, so it's not even really like work. It's just fun.

OK, getting into the book itself, THE BRONTES: INFERNAL ANGRIA #1, which shipped earlier this month. How did you come up with the title? What exactly does it mean?

The title refers to the fictional world that the Bronte children created. All of their pre-adult writing is set in this world, and the four siblings basically made little zines that could fit in the palm of your hand that contained hundreds and hundreds of stories about the Angrians. Sadly, not that many are still in existence, but there are a few still kicking around. I was lucky enough to see some of them at the Bronte Parsonage home/museum in Haworth (England) when I first started working on this book.

The other initiating element of the title is a nod to Daphne du Maurier's "The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte." It is a book about the Bronte family, but it focused on Branwell, the "unknown" brother of the family. And Branwell is sort of the focus of my series as well.

When you think of action heroes, the first name you probably don't think of is the Brontes. How did you decide to put them into a comic? I assume they won't be putting on masks to fight crime...

If you think the Brontes aren't action heroes, wait until you see the sequel, THE BRONTES AT WAR...it's all spandex and "baps” and "pows”!

Seriously, though, the idea came from my experiences of reading the
Brontes, reading about them...their lives were just really interesting to me.

As I learned more and more about them, and about their stories of Angria, I always wondered, "How do four kids who live fairly sheltered lives wind up writing some pretty adult stuff?" So I wanted to write an answer to my question.

THE BRONTES isn't your first comic work. Tell us a little bit about Headless Shakespeare's other titles.

I started self-publishing in 2000. When I moved to Seattle in 1999, one of my first "jobs" was at Fantagraphics. It was really inspiring to see all of the people and books that were coming through there. I decided that I wanted to do that, too, and when I returned to teaching, that's what I did in my spare time. The first book was the anthology, STALAGMITE #1. I had such a thrill putting it together, so much so that I did a second issue in 2004 … yeah, not very timely.

After that, I dug out some of my old ideas that I'd come up with but never gotten around to completing. THE BRONTES was one of them. I finished that script during the winter of 2001 as I suffered a fit of seasonal affective disorder. It's kind of a dark story, and what was happening to me really fueled me to get it done and out of my system.

And during that time, I went through a lot of stuff that worked its way into my next comic, THE MAGIC IF. It's a story about an obsessive magician who wants to be the best there is at what he does. Only it seems to be costing him everything, and everyone, around him. It's really a quest book -- "I'm looking for this thing, and I can't find it, and I don't know if I ever will, but I have to keep looking, even if I lose it all -- love, friendship, sanity -- in the process."

Is a "stalagmite" the one that points up, or grows down? I can never remember.

A stalagmite is the one that points up. I chose it as the title of the anthology because it is the greatest metaphor. It starts off small, reaching for the sky, or cavern ceiling, and continues to grow and grow and grow. For me, I always feel like that. I'm doing my best to become a better, stronger person. And part of that is to tune out the naysayers out there. When I was studying literature, and decided to pursue a post-grad degree, everyone said "Don't do that. There aren't any jobs." When I decided to pursue comics, everyone said "Don't do that. There isn't any money." But I did both things anyway, and I'm happy doing them.

This is a tangent to your question, but I love telling this story. I had asked a certain artist whose work I had really admired to participate in the first issue of Stalagmite. I told him who I had so far, sent samples of the art, and we were getting super, super close to going to press. He finally told me that he was really interested in contributing, but couldn't because he didn't like the title of the book.

How did you get involved in comics, both as a fan and a writer? What are some of your favorite titles?

As a fan, my first comic was an old issue of WORLD'S FINEST. It had
Batman and Superman against the Weapons Master, and it scared the crap out of me. Batman was going to die to save Superman! The next comic I got was on a vacation. It was a giant digest book, and it involved Ra's Al Ghul and the death of Robin! Again, it scared the crap out of me. The third comic that I distinctly remember is Uncanny X-Men #178, the one where Kitty "falls" off the Baxter Building. Again, it scared the crap out of me. See the pattern? So my love for comics stems from this tangible sense of dread and fear created by the storytelling, with a twist of the Victorian serialized story.

As a writer, the same things that got me interested as a reader are the things that hold my interest: character-driven stories that leave me wondering what's going to happen or that have really great cliffhangers. I want to feel like my money is going to something worthwhile, like I have a vested interest in the characters. Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol had this down to a science.

Thinking about what I like to read and looking at the current market, there's not really a lot out there that I'm digging right now. One thing my students have me hooked on is manga. I've been reading The Prince of Tennis, as well as One Piece which I really, really love.

For me, that idea of exploring different genres is something that DC is doing really well with right now. The Seven Soldiers books by Grant Morrision are not only shocking for their risk of exploration of all the genre stuff that DC sort of packed away during the 80s, but they also have some fantastic artwork as well by a lot of names that are not familiar to the comic world.

What can we expect from you in the future?

The next year or so will find me finishing up THE BRONTES: INFERNAL ANGRIA. Its sequel, THE BRONTES AT WAR, is just starting to percolate in my mind. I have some really great scenes envisioned for it.

I got a great e-mail from a reader shortly after THE MAGIC IF came out, asking all of these really great questions about it. And one of them was, "Do you plan on continuing with these characters?" And I thought, at the time, that I was done, but as time has gone on and I've experienced different things, I have found some ideas for ways to continue THE MAGIC IF.

I've got a series called KIRBY that is about a fictional farming community in Kansas, as well as a book about Walt Whitman in the Civil War.

There's no real publishing plan to it. I tried to do that when I first started, and I never stuck to it. So now I simply work on what my muse tells me to work on, and it makes for better books in the long run.


For more information on Headless Shakespeare Press or to buy books, visit: http://www.headshakepress.com