Jamie Rich Loves to Love

This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on April 18, 2006 Sign up now!

by Chris Arrant, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 4/18/2006

Imagine you're the lead singer of a rock band skyrocketing to success—then someone walks into your life and makes you realize that something was missing. There are some things you can't plan for or expect in life, and the new original graphic novel Love the Way You Love by Jamie S. Rich and artist Marc Ellerby shows how two peoples lives can intersect and transform their whole world.

Due from Oni Press at the end of June, Love the Way You Love follows a young musician named Tristan and an artist named Isobel during a whirlwind time in both of their lives. "It's really about love, about two people finding their purposes in life and exploring them together. I'm interested in the idea of how one person's belief in another can bolster that person," Rich explains. "Of course, that's a very high-minded slug for the book, when at the end of the day; it's me having fun with soap opera!"

Rich was a creative writing major who, quite unexpectedly, ended up working at Dark Horse Comics after dropping out of college. A former Dark Horse editor-in-chief who was looking for an assistant remembered Rich's name from the endless fan letters he wrote to the company and called him. "Eventually, I worked my way up," says Rich. "My first editing assignment solo was Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo when it came to the company."

Working at Dark Horse also included assisting then-editor Bob Shreck. When Shreck left Dark Horse to form Oni Press with Joe Nozemack in 1997, Rich followed. "But within nine months of my hiring, [Shreck] was on to DC Comics and suddenly I was one half of a publishing empire. But the writing bug was always gnawing at me," he explains. Rich published his first prose novel, Cut My Hair, in 2000 while he was an editor at Oni but that first taste wasn't to be his last. "I've written constantly since [Cut My Hair was published], but only after leaving Oni two years ago did I get the hustle in my bustle."

"When I left Oni, I had only pitched them one project and, ironically, it's the only thing I haven't written yet," says Rich, explaining how he came to publish Love the Way You Love at Oni. "I stayed on good terms with [Oni publisher] Joe Nozemack and [Oni editor] James Lucas Jones, so it was kind of a no-brainer when I started Love the Way You Love. Besides the fact that they published Cut My Hair and the books are connected, it just felt to me like an Oni book." And beyond all that history, says Rich, "they understand the music thing and the romance thing and I daresay we were doing this OEL manga thing before there was a crass marketing term to go with it." Two other books Rich is working on, 12 Reasons Why I Love Her and I Was Someone Dead were already in place at Oni, and so, he tells PWCW, "I just decided to set up my boutique in their shopping mall."

In Love the Way You Love the names of the two lead characters, Tristan and Isobel, bear more than a passing resemblance to the fabled lovers Tristan and Isolde. "I started off with it just being a kind of wink to the classic tale, but I also researched the older stories and found some parallels I could use," Rich says. "For instance, Marcus Lee is the president of Marking Records, and he is both Isobel's fiance and he wants to be Tristan's producer. He is our King Mark figure, and he will cause plenty of problems," Rich says.

"Isobel's friend Branden is named after Isolde's maid Brangain," he explains, "and she becomes the emissary of fate for our two lovebirds, helping to bring them together, though in far less mystical ways than in the legend. So far, the strongest influence is in the first volume, as kind of a set-up for the long story. I don't intend to be saddled by it, but I'm also keeping the possibility open to play more with the mythology."

"Tristan will be gaining confidence as he becomes more successful, and that always makes someone a better boyfriend or girlfriend," says the writer. "Yet, there will be a lot of problems with Marcus and his label, and given that Tristan will be stealing Isobel away from him, you can bet Marcus isn't going to go easy on anyone. Also, what's going to happen when Tristan suddenly has groupies? Or when old girlfriends crawl out of the woodwork to try to taste his newfound fame? The possibilities are endless."

Although the book is the first in a series of graphic novels, it does share some history with Cut My Hair. In fact, both the prose novel and the graphic novel feature the same concert by Tristan's band, Like a Dog, told from different perspectives. "It's the same day, same concert, but a different point of view, the events you don't see through the eyes of Cut My Hair's narrator," says Rich. "At the same time, it features characters who will be in my next novel, The Everlasting, and it's kind of like a bridge between the two prose books. That said, everything is designed to be its own animal, so that you can pick up any of the three titles individually and enjoy them."

Rich already has plans for appearances leading up to and after the book's release. On April 23, look for him at Wordstock in Portland, Ore., doing a graphic novel panel with Matt Wagner. He'll also be at the San Diego Comic-con in July and will be making local appearances in Portland over the summer.