In October of 2023, writer Matt Wagner and artist Kelley Jones brought their book ‘Dracula Book 1: The Impaler‘ to Kickstarter. They started with a modest goal which was soon outdistanced due to fan enthusiasm and the excellence of the product. Fast-forward a year and the creative duo are at it again with their 2nd book in the series: ‘Dracula Book 2: The Brides.’ Once again being brought to Kickstarter.
In advance of the campaign’s opening, we had the opportunity to sit down with both Matt and Kelley to discuss their beginnings, the first Dracula Book and what fans can expect from Book 2. We presented artist Kelley Jones thoughts yesterday and today, it’s writer Matt Wagner’s turn. So, let’s welcome the talented Matt Wagner to GVN Talking Comics.
GVN: Thank you for giving us a little of your time, Matt. Since we have not had the pleasure of chatting with you before, let us start with your creative beginnings. When did you take an interest in drawing and writing comics and whose work inspired you to consider that profession?
Creative Beginnings
MW: I was an only child and before I was born my mom had been an English teacher so, growing up, she’d always encouraged me to read, read, read, read, read. It was probably the greatest thing she ever taught me and to this day I’m a voracious reader. I also grew up fairly rurally in the days before there was much video entertainment so, from an early age, I drew to entertain myself. Comics were both reading and drawing melded together into this incredibly engaging synthesis.
My parents had a School Memories scrapbook when I was young…one of those albums where you paste in your school photo, record your height and such along with various other memories. On the back of each page for my primary school years, there was a space to fill in “What I want to be when I grow up”; every year, I logged in “Comic Book Writer”. At that point, I was too young to know much about the creative process and I just assumed whoever drew these wonderful tales naturally must’ve written them as well. Over the years, I became more and more aware of individual artists, and I remember, during a boring afternoon in some middle school class, making a list of all the comic artists that I could recognize from their visual styles alone; the list was well over fifty different artists long and I must’ve been about 12 years old.
I’ve drawn inspiration from a lot of those comic greats over the years, well into my adulthood and the early stages of my career. I loved Kirby’s kinetic dynamism and Steranko’s eloquent design sense, Neal Adams’s dramatic rendering, Alex Toth’s powerful use of blacks and C.C. Beck’s bold and simple clarity. But I’d have to say one of the biggest influences on me as a comic book storyteller was Joe Kubert’s run on TARZAN from DC Comics in the 70s. I learned so much about dramatic pacing, visual scope, expressive drawing and levels of rendering (when to include a lot of detail and when to keep it simple) from those pages…lessons I have never forgotten and still use to this very day.
The Challenges of Mainstream vs. Creator-Owned
GVN: As a comic artist, you have worked on both creator-owned projects and mainstream characters like Batman and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Is there more pressure working on such iconic characters than working on your own and which do you prefer?
MW: I think I probably felt a bit of that intimidation in my earlier days as a comics creator and working with established characters. In fact, my first introduction into working with mainstream comics was the huge step of pairing up my own character with probably the biggest comics icon of all in the first BATMAN/GRENDEL crossover event. That was like leaping right into the crucible of public scrutiny and its accompanying spotlight, so I did feel a bit overwhelmed at first. But it’s a bit like meeting a famous celebrity…after that first encounter, the blinding glare is gone, and it all becomes familiar.
These days, one story is the same as any other to me. I worked with famed filmmaker Quentin Tarantino in his only original foray into comics, co-writing the DJANGO/ZORRO crossover event. I spent two days at QT’s house as we cobbled together the storyline and it felt no different than working with any other creator I’ve collaborated with over the years. You have to realize that the story is always the most important thing and once you’ve got that objective firmly in sight, the rest just comes naturally. So far as which I prefer…I always enjoy getting to play with someone else’s concepts. I equate it to a band doing cover versions of songs that inspired them in their own creative journeys. But its hard to beat the experience of being master of your own domain, of controlling every aspect of the narrative in all its forms and having no one to answer to for that process but yourself.
Wearing Many Hats
GVN: During your career, you have plied your expertise on pretty much every phase of comic creation. Whether it be Writer, Penciller, Inker, Letterer, or Colourist. How do you feel that dipping your creative toes into each of those jobs helps you when working with your fellow artists?
MW: Well, I’ve gotta object just a bit by pointing out that I’m definitely not a Letterer. I have indeed worn all the hats of the various other creative roles you mentioned but I just don’t have the sense of acute and regular precision that comic-book lettering requires. I’m more of an organic creator and my process is a bit sloppier than a letterer’s. That said, I’m a firm advocate that each of these elements are a vital part of adding up to create the complete whole of a comic book.
I strongly feel that you shouldn’t be able to totally tell what’s going in a comic story just from looking at the visuals, and you shouldn’t be able to enjoy the full experience of that story by just reading the script and (unless the art is deliberately meant to be B&W) the whole thing isn’t fully rendered without the coloring. In comics, the whole truly is greater than the sum of its parts. And I enjoy every different aspect of those creative roles for different reasons.
Sometimes I’m taking on only one of those tasks—either writing or drawing, for example—and at other times I’m pretty much handling the whole creative process myself. That said, I’ve always felt that my skills as a writer and my ability to collaborate with others visually is really accentuated by the fact that I’m also an artist. A lot of comics writers can’t draw and most of them are really good at working with their various artists. But I’ve just always felt that my own artistic abilities have helped me to see what a particular artist’s strengths are and gear the story to best tap into those energies.
In the case of working with my longtime friend Kelley Jones on our DRACULA project, I constantly find myself writing a certain scene of sequence and thinking, “Oh, man…Kelley is gonna draw the fucking HELL outta this!” And, much to my utter delight and fascination, his pages come back to me and they’re always even waaaay better than I was imagining…and I was imagining a lot! That’s one of the utter joys of working on this project…it just feels like this was a pairing that was always meant to be. For many years, we’d both promised to but always seemed to put off working together on a major project. I now realize that we were, in fact, just waiting for the stars to perfectly align so that we could bring the world our version of DRACULA!
Following Up on Success
GVN: Great segue way into my next question. Your latest work is a follow-up to the aforementioned “Dracula Book I: The Impaler,” along with artist Kelley Jones, entitled “Dracula Book II: The Brides.” The first book was loved by both critics and fans alike, as proven by the $262,498 raised in its Kickstarter campaign. With that kind of success, did you feel any pressure for this follow-up book to measure up to your first one?
MW: Again…the story is always the most important part of any project like this. If we don’t have a great tale to tell and don’t deliver in terms of narrative power and stunning visuals, then the financial success isn’t a factor anyway. Sure, it’s great when the work of which you’re so very proud (and we are!) turns out to also be a huge commercial success…but that’s never really my focus going into any new endeavor. Comics, stories, myths, characters, drama, excitement and emotional resonance…that’s all I really care about in the long run. The rest is just what happens when everything really works.
Focusing on ‘The Brides’
GVN: What made you decide to focus on the Brides of Dracula for this book? It is a very intriguing subject since it is proven in Book 1 that Vlad didn’t hold much loyalty to anyone, especially the woman (or women) in his life. No doubt, it takes a special type of woman to capture and hold Dracula’s attention.
MW: Bram Stoker’s original 1897 novels not only introduced the world to what I maintain is the world’s most famous literary character, but it also presented a captivating portrayal of Dracula’s three vampire brides. But so much of what Stoker depicts about his enthralling antagonists is left deliberately vague and shadowy so as to amp up the sinister sense of menace. And those vagaries are why we’re able to do our version of Dracula’s history, filling in the untold tales that are only hinted at in the original narrative. The brides’ appearance in the novel is such a searing narrative scenario that these relatively undefined characters have regularly made appearances in so many of the book’s cinematic adaptations over the years. And yet…their appearance in the novel only lasts for several pages!
As I said, that provided us with a wide-open canvas for telling these women’s stories. Here again though, I’ve gotta disagree with a bit of your premise as stated above. Throughout DRACULA: BOOK I—THE IMPALER, we do indeed see our title character as merciless and wholly dedicated to his own pleasure and empowerment. But he does seem to have a bit of a soft spot for the ladies in his life. In the first scene, he admonishes his lieutenant for chastising his concubines from the previous evening, telling him to make sure they are rewarded for providing him the comfort he sought in their embrace. He speaks fondly of his first wife while still acknowledging she didn’t ultimately have the grit to be a warlord’s mate. And he bears tender affection for Nakeisha, his lover during his tenure at Satan’s dreaded seminary for the dark arts, the Scholomance, and he’s genuinely aghast after his new vampiric bloodlust claims her as his first victim. So Dracula will eventually claim all three of his undead brides out of a real longing for their companionship.
One of my challenges then was to make sure that each of these three women were distinct and different from each other…and that Dracula had a distinct and different reason for choosing each of them as his mates. There’s an incredibly intriguing bit in the novel where Dracula appears and drives the brides off, forbidding them from feeding on his guest. The brides all accuse him of never having loved any of them while Dracula claims that isn’t true. So, yes…while Dracula does bear a fondness for each of the members of his undead harem, there’s never any question that he considers them as yet another of his conquests. He even feels a certain responsibility towards them, as shown in the novel when he delivers a diabolically evil meal to them in place of their intended prey. But in no way does he consider them on equal footing or of the same class as their lord and master. He is, after all…Dracula!
Lessons Learned from the First Kickstarter
GVN: You are bringing ‘Dracula Book II: The Brides’ to Kickstarter just as you did Book I. What will fans find when they visit this campaign, and did you learn anything from that first one (as successful as it was) that you will apply for this go around?
MW: Indeed, the first campaign was quite a whirlwind and a real learning experience for both Kelley and me. We were total noobs to the process and absolutely couldn’t have pulled it off without the help of our incredible team, David Hyde and the fine folks at Superfan Promotions and our project manager, James Aquilone. And we definitely learned a lot from that first shindig.
As a result, we’ve got some new items to offer for our rewards levels this time around. We didn’t want to get too broad with our offered rewards with our first book because we were fresh out of the gate to this and, let’s face it, there are more than a few Kickstarter campaigns that don’t pan out very well in regard to both coming to fruition in a timely manner and the ultimate fulfillment of the backer’s orders. We knew we had to first establish Orlok Press as being reliable and our product had to live up to the hype.
As you said earlier, response to Book I—The Impaler had been universally great and so now, we’ve got a rep that we can justifiably rely upon. And so, this time around, we’re offering merch! We’ll have a nice array of t-shirts available and, hopefully, a few hats as well. So this is a great opportunity for our backers to not only rep some Orlok Press buzz, but they can, quite literally, get their DRACULA on. Next stop…Transylvania!
Dracula and Future Projects
GVN: I really want to thank you for sharing a part of your day. Before I let you go, I want to give you one last time to talk about “Dracula Book II – The Brides” and its Kickstarter Campaign and perhaps, any other projects you have upcoming.
MW: DRACULA: BOOK II—THE BRIDES is even bigger (30 pages longer than BOOK I), badder and bloodier than our first volume! One of the challenges about BOOK I was the fact that it involved Dracula’s origins and so didn’t feature a lot of prominent vampire scenes until near the end. But BOOK II—THE BRIDES is chock full of vampire lore and action. Fans of the first volume are absolutely going to love our second outing. But new readers will definitely be able to leap into the narrative, even without having read the first book. If you’ve ever wondered how Dracula attained his vampire brides…here’s your chance, the story is finally told!
I’m also currently working on a lengthy storyline for my long-running creator-owned title from Dark Horse Comics—GRENDEL. The overall storyline is titled DEVIL’S CRUCIBLE, and the first 4-issue section of that epic is sub-titled DEFIANCE and it’s in stores now. There will be a new 4-issue series every summer for the next three years that will complete the saga.
And I also recently drew a one-off story written by Marcus Parks from LAST PODCAST ON THE LEFT. It’s about the mysterious death of Nancy Spungen, the notorious girlfriend of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious. This should be published early next year in the fourth issue of LAST COMIC BOOK ON THE LEFT from Z2 Comics.
Both of those projects are colored by my son, Brennan Wagner.
Excellent! You can check out the Kickstarter campaign for Orlok Press Dracula Book Two: The Brides by Matt Wagner and Kelley Jones, here. You can also check out Kelley’s interview here.
Senior Writer at GeekVibesNation – I am a 60 something child of the 70’s who admits to being a Star Trek/Star Wars/Comic Book junkie who once dove headfirst over a cliff (Ok, it was a small hill) to try to rescue his Fantastic Four comic from a watery grave. I am married to a lovely woman who is as crazy as I am and the proud parent of a 21-year-old young man with autism. My wife and son are my real heroes.
