Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/753405
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 20 NOVEMBER 2016 30 This Week A comic book bromance Ahead of their participation in this year's edition of the Malta Comic Con – taking place at MFCC, Ta' Qali on December 3 and 4 – long-term UK-based creative collaborators Dan Watters (writer) and Caspar Wijngaard (artist) speak to TEODOR RELJIC about their genre- hopping and voodoo-tinged creator-owned comic LIMBO (Image Comics) as well as their forays into the fan favourite worlds of Dark Souls and Assassin's Creed, whose comic book adaptations they've been spearheading in various titles from Titan Comics First things first: you guys seem to like working together, what with LIM- BO being your creator-owned project, which was followed by your work on Dark Souls for Titan Comics. What's the story behind your ongoing collabo- ration, and why do you think you click together as creators? Dan Watters: Caspar and I were friends before we ever worked together; we used to go to the pub after work and talk about dream projects and approach- es for narratives. We were lucky enough that from this we ended up working on an indie book for a small publisher, and from there decided to pitch our own project that'd be a real celebration of all our influences, but would also strive to put them together in a new way – or at least in a way we weren't seeing done much in comics at the time. I think that part of the reason we click well is be- cause we both take similar influences and approach them from different direc- tions, meaning that we hopefully end up with a multifaceted approach to things. Caspar Wijngaard: Our friendship prior to LIMBO definitely worked in our favour, there was a transparency in the collaboration or approach. We had a strong understanding of each other's influences and goals as creators and played to each other's strengths. It never felt like work, it was always a fun crea- tive process. LIMBO is certainly an interesting blend of both pop culture genres and 'real life' cultural and religious touch- stones. What led you to go for this par- ticular mix of supernatural neo-noir and voodoo? Watters: It was an organic growth, re- ally; elements that we had in place right from the get go would spiral off into un- expected places, and we let them take us there. The magical systems were always a part of the book I wanted to make; an earlier script about voodoo that I'd abandoned was part of the nucleus of LIMBO. We used the traditional noir story as a kind of base that allowed us to explore the weirder elements- the de- tective trope felt like a familiar enough narrative for the reader to latch onto, so there was a foundation for us to launch off from, and was also something that I think played into what we wanted to ex- plore philosophically. Wijngaard: From an artist's point of view, I really wanted to tap into my vis- ual influences. As creators of the world, I had the unlimited recourses at our dis- posal, pouring everything I loved into the aesthetic into the book. If I ever felt a page or panel was dry visually I would find a way to pump life into. It was ex- tremely important that LIMBO was vi- brant book visually and never tiring for the reader. What was your working process like when it came to putting LIMBO to- gether? And given the ambitious blend of styles, genres and (sometimes meta- physical) thematic concerns, was it a challenge to keep to the six-issue limit? Watters: We wanted to keep LIMBO to six issues, but we had as many pages as we needed to tell the story; I think is- sue 6 was 28 pages in the end. Without wanting to give away too much, if you've read the book I think the themes make it pretty apparent that it had to kind of end where it did in order to move for- ward. We've always planned to do more LIMBO down the line, but think of it like a series of detective novels; each book will be its own contained case exploring something different, with the overarching plot kinda secondary to that. I'd say our working process was pretty eclectic (since that's a nic- er way of saying 'all over the place') and varied from issue to issue. We did everything from Marvel meth- od to me drawing out roughs from Caspar, and honestly neither of us can really remember who did what where some of the time – which I quite like, as it makes the book all the more collaborative. Wijngaard: If we were to boil it down to the bare bones, it was definitely a labour of love. We had a chance to create or vey own book for a large publisher, we felt the best approach as unknown crea- tors was to create something that stood out narratively and visually. There was no playing it safe. We built the comic the best way we knew how, speaking almost every day on the phone trading scripts, plots ideas and sketches. I can only imagine if we built it on strict guidelines it would have become a chore to create and lost a large amount of its charm. Let's move on to Dark Souls. What attracted you to this project, and how did your collaborative approach adapt to a genre and format that's markedly different to Limbo? Watters: I think there actually is per- haps a slightly tangential similarity between Dark Souls and LIMBO from a writing standpoint, in that each in- volves striving to tell stories in a world of signifiers where the signified remains eternally murky. Obviously, there's a big difference in doing this in a world you're building yourself, and working on someone else's franchise... though it probably helps that we're both massive fans of FromSoftware's games. There is an enduring uncanniness to the worlds of both Dark Souls and Bloodborne, and that's what we really seek to tap into. It would be really easy to take the basic trappings of Dark Souls and just create a dark sword and sorcery comic that Dan Watters Caspar Wijngaard (self-portrait) Between life and death: Voodoo trappings and Mexican folklore are just some of the influences thrown into the mix of Watters and Wijngaard's Limbo – published by Image Comics Caspar Wijngaard has also illustrated several comic book adaptations of the Assassin's Creed game franchise