Repo Men of Tomorrow

by Wil Moss, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 6/26/2007

Rick Spears and Rob G. burst onto the scene in 2001 with Teenagers from Mars, a self-published miniseries about a comics-creating outcast that quickly established the writer-artist duo as a creative team to pay attention to.

The two Brooklyn friends have since done many other projects together, even forming their own publishing company, Gigantic Graphic Novels. Now they're back with Repo, a new miniseries out this month from Image Comics about two repo men in the future on the hunt for a cloned human's heart.

Still recovering from the 2006 bankruptcy of AMS and their book distributor, PGW, Spears and G. are continuing to do what they love: create and publish comics—maybe even that long awaited sequel to Teenagers from Mars...

PW Comics Week: Since breaking through with Teenagers from Mars, you've worked together off and on and also done your own stuff. What made you guys decide to reunite on a project like Repo?

Rick Spears: For me, I'm always working with Rob, really. I mean, we just roll from one project into the next, so we are always working on something together even if it takes a while to get them out. As for our partnership, we think alike about most things and then fight like hell about the other things. That's pretty much the perfect recipe for collaboration.

Rob G.: Yeah, Rick and I are always working together on something, but I can only draw at about one-third the speed that he can write, so he has to find other artists to do other projects. And sometimes the story he wants to do isn't really something I'm into, so he'll track down someone who is into it. Given the preference, we'd always choose to work together, though.

PWCW: What's the vibe of Repo? Buddy flick? Sci-fi? Action? All of the above and more?

RG: To use Hollywood terms to generalize things simply, it's Lethal Weapon meets Blade Runner meets The Dukes of Hazzard.

RS: Yeah, for me it's all of the above. Brian Wood called Repo, "21st century pulp comics," and that's exactly what I was going for.

PWCW: Tell me a little about the story—what's the hook?

RS: Repo is an all-out action comedy about KD and Emil, two smalltime repo men after an escaped human clone—or more specifically, its beating heart. But with a multimillion-dollar price on the clone's head attracting every hyperviolent repo team in the quad—not to mention the Clone Liberation Army—our boys will have to fight their way through an ever-growing body count just to stay one step ahead of the pack, snatch the clone and hopefully make it out with their lives.

Rob is just a natural at high-intensity action, and we wanted to work up something for him to cut loose on. For my part, I really wanted to do something funny and furious. Something that would be just as fun to work on as it was to read. Then, of course, the movie Repo Man was a big influence and also the actor Keith David. I love that guy, and KD is based on his characters from They Live and Men at Work.

PWCW: How do you two collaborate? I assume there's a good level of trust on both ends.

RS: We talk all the time on the phone or IM or over a drink, and we throw ideas at each other constantly. We always talk about the "third thing"—it's not just that you need a good script or good art, but you also need a good "third thing"—the third thing that happens when you stick the script and the art together. So we do these plots and make any changes that need to happen. Then Rob goes off and draws, then he feeds me the inked pages and I letter as he does the color. There is a lot of trust there, yeah, and also a lot of debate. We fight like crazy over points sometimes, but it's all toward the goal of getting the best book we can make.

PWCW: How is Gigantic Graphic Novels doing following the AMS bankruptcy? Have you signed with a different distributor or are you still working with Publishers Group West?

RS: The bankruptcy was a real nightmare. PGW was for the most part folded into Perseus, and we have signed with Perseus. It sucks, though—we put out two new books, Rotting in Dirtville and Hellcity Vol. 1, right there at the end of 2006, and we lost all of the money from those initial sales as well as the holiday sales for our other titles, Teenagers from Mars and Dead West. And now we are getting hit with returns on books we were never even paid for. So it's been hard going, and we've had to make a lot of adjustments that I wish we didn't have to do. Hellcity was to be a three-volume series, but now volumes two and three are being combined into one book, and all the new titles have been pushed back to the end of the year. So, yeah, it really sucks, but what can you do but keep on keepin' on...

PWCW: Bankruptcies aside, is it getting easier for smaller publishers such as Gigantic to make it or are the pieces of the pie becoming too small?

RS: It's a bit hard to set the bankruptcy aside now, but before it, we were moving at a pretty good clip. The books were selling, returns were low. We weren't making a killing, but we were getting by and laying the foundations for growth. I don't think it will ever really be easy for small publishers, but it's definitely doable. The margins are just very tight. It's a hard road and you damn well better be doing it for the love and not the money, but in the end the feeling of getting a new book out is worth the heart, head and back ache.

PWCW: Any plans to revisit Teenagers from Mars anytime soon?

RG: We are currently working on the sequel now—well, Rick is. When he gets to a good place with the script, I'll start working on it, but there's no real timetable for it. We're both very excited about Repo right now.

RS: Rob and I always wanted to do this sequel, but we want to do it right and not just to cash in on the success of the original series. So I'm taking my time and crafting a story that should totally complement the original while blowing the doors off. People are really gonna freak when they read it, I think. We might get kicked out of comics.

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