If you’ve watched TV with any regularity in the past decade, you
probably recognize Michael Easton from one show or another. The actor
is best known for playing dark, brooding characters on many cult SF and
fantasy shows, including VR5, Mutant X and Total Recall 2070 and guest spots on shows such as Ally McBeal, along with such daytime shows as Days of Our Lives and Port Charles. Since 2003, he’s played cop John McBain on ABC’s One Life to Live, which celebrated its 40th anniversary earlier this year.
But, as the saying goes, what he really wants to do is write comic books.
In addition to his work as an actor, Easton has written in many mediums, including the poetry collection Eighteen Straight Whiskeys and Monty,
a screenplay about actor Montgomery Clift. Now he’s about to hit the
comics scene in a big way with two major graphic novels.
Soul Stealer, Easton’s first graphic novel, was recently
released by DMF Entertainment. The four-years-in-the-making story
features art by Christopher Shy (Pathfinder), and some of the
most gothic prose and imagery ever found in a comic book. It tells the
story of Kalan, a warrior whose love, Oxania, is taken from him by his
rival Apis Bull, leading to his transformation into an immortal being
who can return souls from the dead…and a quest to find his love’s soul.
An online trailer for the book is available here.
The book also features an introduction from horror novelist Peter Straub (Ghost Story, Koko), who is Easton’s co-writer on his next project, The Green Woman, which will be released by Vertigo in 2009.
We called up Easton for a talk about Soul Stealer, Green Woman,
and his thoughts on comics. Our conversation took many turns, including
the philosophy behind his work, the unusual way that his day job led to
his comics gig, and why he wouldn’t want to play his character in a film.
Newsarama: Michael, how did you get the idea for Soul Stealer, and what made you want to do it as a graphic novel?
Michael Easton: I think the idea came to me in a dream back in
1998 or 1999. It took me about two years to put it down on paper, and I
registered it as a one-page idea for a script, but there was no way I
could do the idea literally as a screenplay.
I felt like, “I’m going to get handcuffed if I try to write a feature
film or television screenplay. I’m going to write this with complete
freedom to what I want to do, and make it as dark or disturbing as I
want.” I don’t know if it ended up my way, but that was my intent, to
do it with absolutely no limits.
I respect comic and graphic novel writers more than anyone else. I’m
very respectful of all writers, but I especially love what they do. So
it was a very daunting challenge for myself, but I said, “I’m going to
set out and see what I can do, and try and join this fraternity of
writers for whom I have so much regard.”
NRAMA: It did look like you did a lot of research in mythology and history for doing this story.
ME: Somewhere early on, we got the idea that it would be a
really interesting world (in the book) if all gods existed and
everyone’s beliefs were true – if the gods drew their power and
strength from how many people believe in them, almost like an
incredible popularity contest. So nobody’s wrong (in their beliefs).
The Greek gods are still up there and can still fuck with you, but they
don’t have the power of the new gods.
NRAMA: With regard to mythology, the book reminded me of some
works from the last decade that have taken mythological elements from
different eras and cultures and mixed them together, like Dark City or Tarsem’s The Fall.
ME: Yeah, absolutely. Visually, Chris does a lot of beautiful stuff with color and atmosphere and blending of different mediums. Dark City is one of our favorites. And we both love the (Andrei) Tarkovsky films like Stalker and Solaris there’s a lot of that stuff going on (in the book), and of course Blade Runner.
I give Chris the credit for the overall look of the book because he
deserves it. We definitely talked through color schemes and how we
wanted to do it with the absence of thought balloons and word balloons
to help the visuals stand out even more. I was in favor of doing the
words in such a way that they almost blended in with the art. We were
thinking of science fiction films like Gattaca,
where the dialogue is very subtle, but the images have a lot of depth
and weight and meaning to them, and they’re not hitting you over the
head with things.
NRAMA: And Chris did most of this through Photoshop?
ME: Yeah. To be honest, we started on this book and worked on it
for more than a year before we met in person. We went back and forth
with emails and I really got to know him that way, but I have never had
the chance to see him at work.
After about a year I said, “Why don’t you come up to New York, man?”
And he and his wife came up and stayed with my wife and me for four
days, and we got to know each other better. But I’ve never actually
seen Chris at work! I’m very curious about how he does what he does,
but I believe it is with Photoshop, yes.
NRAMA: What’s been the process in designing the pages? Did you
do it in a style where he interpreted your prose, or was it as a full
comic script, or something in between?
ME:We started off a few years ago doing a 26-page comic book,
something small…and everything grew out of that. We started going, “oh,
here’s where there could be a story, and here’s where there could be
another story…” That’s how that sort of evolved into a full book. I
recently worked on a graphic novel for DC/Vertigo, and it was a very
different process. We’re working with an artist named John Bolton on
that one…
NRAMA: Yeah, he’s great.
ME: Incredible. With Chris on Soul Stealer, it was more
of a constant collaboration. I would write specific pages like, “It’s
four panels, and in the first panel, Kalan is sitting in the
foreground, Oxania is standing in the background…” and he might come
back with a four-panel page or a five-panel page with all these
variations, and they were usually better! (laughs)
And other times I would go back and change things that we needed to
change, story-wise. But Chris really gave me the freedom to work, and I
had such respect for him as an artist that I trusted his instincts.
NRAMA: Can you talk about your upcoming project at this time?
ME: I think Peter and I were actually contacted separately by
Vertigo about doing something for them, maybe the Constantine series,
but neither of us felt comfortable working on something that was so
well-established and so well-done.
So they asked if we had something else we could pitch them, and we
didn’t, but we spent a few nights scribbling in bars and came up with
this idea that incorporates a character from Peter’s book The Throat named Franklin Bachelor. In the book he supposedly ends up being killed.
We open on Bachelor in a bar, talking about how a writer wrote about
him once and thought it would be really convenient if he was dead, and
how that’s what a writer is, a fuckin’ liar. Franklin Bachelor is the
most horrific serial killer in the history of this country, and he
lives in an abandoned bar in Wisconsin called the Green Woman Tap Room.
This is sort of a mecca for serial killers, where they connect with
their inner selves, their victims talk to them from the pipes, it’s a
very haunting place. We simultaneously cut to a cop in New York whose
name is Bob Steele, who’s path is going to cross with Franklin
Bachelor, he’s sort of destined to stop this serial killer.
It’s very dark. John Bolton’s doing the art, and I’ve only seen the
first 40 or 50 pages of it, and it’s amazing. We were extremely lucky
to get him. It’s a case where we were told, “Well, John is a really
great artist, and he takes his time, and he doesn’t work on just any
project, but let’s try anyway,” and they took it to him and he really
responded to it. We’ve just been getting page after page of this
beautiful artwork, and we’ve been blown away. It’s been a privilege.
And working with Peter Straub has been like…there’s a Coleridge quote
where he says something about the difference between writers and poets
to the effect of, “writers put words in the right order; poets put the
right words in the right order.” That’s how Peter is, writer and poet.
Like going to school. I’d write something and he put the right words in
the right order.
NRAMA: How’d you get involved with Peter?
ME: I work on a show sometimes as an actor called One Life to Live.
Peter and his daughter came by the studio for a tour one day, because
Peter’s a fan of the show and has been watching for years, and so is
his daughter. And I wasn’t in, but he left me a book in my mailbox,
which was Koko.
And that was a book that was very meaningful to me. In 1994, my mom
went through a long battle with cancer, and ultimately, she passed
away. But I would sit with her as she went through the chemotherapy
sessions and read books to her, and one of the books I read was Koko. So it was a strange coincidence, him leaving that book for me.
So I sent him an email and told him the story, and he called me up and
said, “We should get together and talk sometime.” And Peter appeared on
the show once, and it was fun for him and fun for me, and suddenly we
started talking about doing something together. We went, “We’ll do
something, and if it doesn’t pan out, no problem, we’ll have had some
fun and we’ll still be good friends.” And the book just came from that
NRAMA: One of the themes in your writing – both in Soul Stealer
and your other work, such as the Montgomery Clift screenplay – is
alienation. Why do you feel that’s a theme you keep coming back to?
ME:I’m fascinated by damaged people. Montgomery Clift was
disfigured, in a sense, partway through his career in a car accident
but in a deeper sense, he was disfigured internally for most of his
life. I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of Frankenstein, this guy
that was made of these different parts, who’s trying to do a good
thing, who’s trying to be better than what he is.
Love and hate. Mortality. Death is something we all have to deal with.
It can be something that affects us for the rest of our lives; I lost
my mom quite young, and it affected me from that day on, in some ways
that were positive, but also in ways that were very negative.
You feel helpless when you lose someone you love, and I wanted to write
about that feeling of being unable to protect the one you love. I think
that’s what Kalan has to deal with, certainly; he’s always tormented by
the fact that he couldn’t protect the one person that he loved. He has
to deal with that the rest of his life, and he has these things, these
different pieces inside of him, which affects the way he responds to
things.
NRAMA: I noticed that you dedicated the book to your wife,
Ginerva – does Kalan’s relationship with Oxania reflect the
relationship you have with your wife?
ME: I’d like to think, at the end of the day, this is a love story – it’s a dark and twisted love story, but it’s a love story.
Love is one of the things worth fighting for in this world, and I
believe I have that kind of love for my wife. I was a long time in
finding her, and she has…she has inspired me to explore the better
sides of myself, because I have a tendency to be a little dark myself.
I can be a little detached, a little unemotional myself but she’s
Italian and she’s more genuine about her emotions, and vocal about
them, and hopefully that’s helped me to be more open. Because…(laughs),
one of the reasons I love Tarkovsky movies so much is that there’s this
incredible, moving, detachment that I respond to.
NRAMA: There’s been some talk about doing Soul Stealer as a film – if they made it as a movie, would you want to play the lead?
ME: I would have no interest in playing the part, though I’m
sure they’ll find someone who’ll be great in it. The only thing I would
want is to write the script, so I could maintain some control on some
level as it was translated to film. I’d be more interested in finding
the right director who would treat it with the same care I did while I
was writing it.
NRAMA: We were talking about Dark City earlier, and I could really see Alex Proyas doing a good job with this.
ME: He would be a dream guy to do it. Obviously, there are a lot
of people who could do something like this. Ridley Scott…there are so
many good directors.
I’m excited about seeing what Zack Snyder does with Watchmen,
because there is someone who really understands the genres, who does
great things with pictures and story, that’s the kind of guy you want
to get. You want someone who’s a fan, who understands the history, who
isn’t going to just do something silly with it.
A movie like Gladiator, that’s the tone that we’d want for Soul Stealer – sprawling and epic and emotional. People fighting for what they believe in. There’s also a part in the modern world of Soul Stealer that’s very dark and cynical, and I think it becomes a great blend of all those elements.
NRAMA: You know the Dark City director’s cut just came out on DVD?
ME: Oh man, that’s awesome! I’m ordering that today. Chris and I also talked a lot about Gattaca.
I remember watching that, seeing these old cars driving around and
thinking there was something strange about watching these old Corvettes
go driving by, and then I realized – they had an electric car sound
effect! That’s genius! They took these old cars, and then in
post-production, they just added in this electric car sound effect –
it’s so simple, but it adds so much to the sense of place.
And I love that about Proyas as well – those great wide shots where you
move over the city, going through these vast spaces. It’s one of the
things that lured me, as an actor, into a series called Total Recall 2070, which ran on Showtime for a season.
We were on a budget, but the production in Toronto was able to do some
amazing things, particularly with the sets, because we shot everything
inside. And I think Dark City
really carried over into the visual style of that series in the way we
pushed through shots of the city to get to reveal a smaller part of the
city.
NRAMA: Now, you’re doing another volume of Soul Stealer?
ME: We're hoping to release the book in March 2009. Where as
with the first book we really seemed to labor creating the world and
getting it just right, this story came on like a hurricane and just
wrote itself.
NRAMA: What will be the focus of this volume?
ME: The second book," Blood and Rain" tells the story of
(Kalan’s nemesis) Apis Bull. We learn his journey was even more tragic
and breathtaking than Kalans and when he was killed on the battlefield
by Kalan he also lost his wife and child. Apis Bull’s existence now is
fueled by vengeance and the promise of one day being reunited with his
family.
We had a lot more for (the first) book and we had to cut ourselves off.
We’ve talked about Kalan and Apis Bull and how they are more alike than
it appears, that there exists an almost fraternal bond uniting them and
their destinies. The notion that the line between something beautiful
and something hideous is a thin one and it’s running through all of us.
NRAMA: It sounds like a story that could go off in a lot of different directions.
ME: That’s what excites me about it. Then again, writing in a
way, is the easy part – the artist is the one who has to spend six
months to a year putting it down on paper! And Chris is a busy guy. He
does storyboards and production design for films. He’s got movie people
calling him all the time. He’s got his own series called Silent Leaves, which is wonderful.
So it’s a matter of clearing the slate so he can draw it. Artists are
gods in this world, in the world of graphic novels, and you’ve got to
respect them, and you’ve got to let them have their time. You can’t
rush people like Chris or John.
NRAMA: Given the number of writing projects you have going on, have you ever thought about giving up acting to write full-time?
ME: Sure. But it’s nice to have a day job, because it allows me
to have some freedom to make choices. Sometimes I’ll take jobs as an
actor that I would never take as a writer – if someone gave me a call
to write something like Porky’s 6 or something, I wouldn’t even know
what to do, I wouldn’t know how to write it but I could probably show
up and say someone else’s words in front of the camera.
There are guys who can take any job and make a script out of it and
make it terrific. I need to do something I love, and when you do that,
you’re probably not going to make a lot of money off it, certainly not
enough to live on. So this is where I keep it at. And I like to think
that maybe if I keep at it and stay true to myself, one day I’ll be
able to do it full time. And maybe Soul Stealer and The Green Woman
will have some small success and allow me to go ahead and create some
new stuff. But I’m happy just getting by, making a living and doing
what I love.
NRAMA: What are some of your favorite comics right now?
ME: Preacher is my all time favorite. I probably read through the whole series once a year. All the Absolute editions; love Watchmen and The Dark Knight.
Vertigo’s been nice and sent me a lot of books, which is just one of
the benefits of writing for them (laughs). Brian Azzarello is a
terrific writer, 100 Bullets
really works for me. Anything Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith do. Ed
Brubaker I like. I just picked up this reprint of the adaptation Jon
Muth did of the Fritz Lang film M, that was just overwhelming,
the way he draws from the photographs, just amazing work. That kind of
imagination is very inspiring.
NRAMA: Anything else you’d like to talk about?
ME: Just want to say thanks to anyone who gives the book a read.
At this point that’s what Chris and I want – to get it out there and
get some feedback, and use what we learn to make the next book even
better. We were fortunate I think, working with a smaller publisher
that we got to do it the way we wanted to do it. So, thanks for giving
us a shot.
Soul Stealer is available for order now from DMF Entertainment.
