Anyone who knows me knows that when it comes to fiction, I’m kind of a technique freak. I love learning how it’s all put together. And for a guy interested in that, editing is a great seat to have. For example, I edit two completely different books, THE UNWRITTEN and UNKNOWN SOLDIER. THE UNWRITTEN is a fantasy book written by Mike Carey that involves a conspiracy so big it encompasses the entirety of world literature; on the other end of the room is UNKNOWN SOLDIER -- an action book written by Joshua Dysart that’s very much about revealing the conditions in war-town Uganda to a new audience. And one of the things I find so interesting is not only are Mike and Josh fans of each other’s work, but both have admitted to me that they’re kind of in awe at the amount of research the other one must do for their books.

So I thought I’d do a short group interview. Get the two of them together to talk craft and how they use research. Is it similar? Is it different? Some of their answers honestly surprised me…

MC: I guess one of the main differences between THE UNWRITTEN and UNKNOWN SOLDIER is that almost all my research is secondary - it's reading books and articles. I can do first-hand research on locations, but that's about it.

For an arc like “Jud Suss,” where the precise reference both to the text and its place in history is really central to what we're doing, I'll take the research very seriously and go out and read all the relevant texts I can find. In other cases, though, I'll sometimes just make a glancing reference to something I know very little about, and use the internet to shore up the reference. So I'm not consistent about research. Sometimes I'm meticulous, other times I bluff. I like to think I make the effort where it matters.

JD: How strong is your compulsion to get it all "right"?

In UNKNOWN SOLDIER, I couldn't justify hammering the worst aspects of these people's lives into a pulp action book unless I'd gotten as close to the real experience, and to them, as possible. There's a new kind of colonialism in the air these days. A well-meaning appropriation of the cultural landscape of the "developing world" by the "developed.”

The only failure, to my mind, this book ever faced was in becoming that very thing (I like to think the “Easy Kill” arc was about the complicated landscape of post-colonial good intentions to some degree).

But it's one thing to go on a vacation to an interesting place. It's another thing entirely to sit alone and pour over book after book. Do you feel that same way about the works of fiction you are invading and plundering?

MC: Well, I continue to be schizophrenic in my relationship with all our source texts. Where something is really germane then we let it emerge explicitly in our story: the rest of the time, we take the view that people will recognize the ribs of a story sticking through our structure. And while on the one hand, I'd really hate to have people who know and love the books have an "oh but that's not..." reaction. On the other, I firmly believe that these books are beyond our power to hurt or blemish. You know, they're mostly books that have stood the test of time and turmoil and cultural change. If we get it wrong, we don't hurt the great originals, but we do cheapen ourselves, sell ourselves short: and that’s the reason why research matters to us.

I think - I'm sure - that the moral imperative, and the sense of responsibility, is very different in your case.

JD: Yeah, but the danger of lecturing the audience is huge in UNKNOWN SOLDIER. A big part of our process is weeding through the massive amount of information attached to what I want to say about something and then trying to eliminate whatever isn't absolutely necessary to the understanding of the story.

The only thing I really refused to compromise on at the beginning was the complexity of the conflict and the fact that real human beings were involved on all sides. Once we established that I felt comfortable couching information in visuals, plot points, text pieces in the back and whatever other way I could get it to the reader.

MC: One of the things I really respect and admire about the book is that you’re never sermonising. Everything comes naturally out of story and character, and goes back there. That’s a tough trick to pull off with material this powerful and disturbing. The end of “Easy Kill”, in particular, was amazing.

JD: Mike, I think you're one of the smartest writers in comics, and THE UNWRITTEN, as I've said to you in private, is a masterstroke. You're one of the few people in comics that I try to learn from whenever I sit down to read your work.

Comic book editors come from all kinds of interesting origins. Some are writers, some are artists, others use incriminating photos. Me, before getting into comics, I had a writing and film background, so maybe that’s why I’m so fascinated by the ins and outs of comic book artists and the voodoo that they do.

Take what Alberto Ponticelli does on UNKNOWN SOLDIER, for example. First of all, in a time when it’s getting harder and harder to find an artist to do just a single storyline uninterrupted, he did a full year of art on that book before needing a break. This page from UNKNOWN SOLDIER # 12 is one of my favorites:

I love this, by the way -- watching art go from its initial chicken scratching layout phase to the final finished colors, while noticing the details that change along the way.

But starting with last month’s issue of UNKNOWN SOLDIER, Alberto decided to completely blow everything out of the water, and it’s so cool to have a behind-the-scenes perspective on, I thought I’d share it. Whereas usually, Alberto goes through the usual process of drawing the pages in pencil before inking them, (leaving the coloring and modeling to colorist Oscar Celestini), check out what he’s doing now:

The colors are still Oscar, but the modeling and tonal work are all Alberto, and it’s amazing how much atmosphere it’s added to the pages – completely appropriate considering that in the current arc, Dry Season, Joshua Dysart is writing a film noir story that takes place inside an IDP camp. But the most amazing thing of all? Alberto’s doing all the art in the exact same amount of time as before.

Where does he gain the time? Well, for one, there’s no ink on these pages anymore. Alberto manipulates the contrast of the pencils in Photoshop, and whereas in most digital inking jobs, this causes the line to be fuzzy, the “dirt” works out perfectly for the dusty atmosphere of an IDP camp. From there, he adds layers of watercolor textures and applies them for shape and tone.

UNKNOWN SOLDIER has received critical acclaim from some of the top outlets covering comics right now, from legit news places like The New York Times to TV shows like Attack of the Show to websites like IGN, but every time I look at the work Alberto puts in, I wonder if people realize the work he’s putting in to give this stuff atmosphere but still be accurate to DVDs full of reference Josh has on Uganda. It’s kind of the challenge every contemporary comics artist faces when they work on ambitious material. Because inevitably the story ends up outweighing the artwork, which is as it should be, and I know Alberto wouldn’t have it any other way, but it got me thinking.

Where are the best places to find discussions about comics art, especially in books where the artist didn’t write the material themselves? For that matter, who do people see as the Pauline Kael of comics criticism? The Roger Ebert? I’d be genuinely curious to hear what people have to say.

UNKNOWN SOLDIER #12 marks the first anniversary of this highly regarded series. And we’re going to a funeral—the Unknown Soldier’s funeral. It's nothing less than epic hotel room warfare as the Unknown Soldier plays a bloodthirsty game of cat and mouse with assassins in the back halls of an exquisite five-star establishment. The real challenge will be keeping it from the high-profile guests in the banquet room next door.

Here's a preview:

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If there’s one thing I’m proud of in UNKNOWN SOLDIER, it’s that Alberto and I work hard to capture East Africa. Not as it looks in films, not as it’s described in books, but as I experienced it. To that end I’d like to share with you some of the exhilarating, scary and dreamy realizations that shaped the tone of the book. Things that no amount of research, shy of visiting the region in 2007, could have possibly unearthed.

1. “AFRICAN’S LIVE AND DIE BY CHANCE.” – This was said to me by the Muslim woman who sat next to me on the Air Emirates flight from Dubai to Uganda. It has become one of the defining statements of the series.

2. GUNS, GUNS, GUNS - From my first destination (a wildlife preserve I spent the night in that was guarded by an AK-47 toting 17 year-old girl) to the moment I left, I saw guns everywhere. Every business seemed to have an armed guard at its doorstep. I saw people riding bicycles to work with shotguns strapped to them and a back barroom in Gulu that housed a wholesale armory. Soldiers and security are so used to their guns that they carry them with the lackadaisical indifference of a woman lugging a purse.

3. THE JOY OF THE BODA-BODA – Every guidebook warns you of the dangers of the motorcycle taxies of Uganda. But you just can’t resist. From the raging exhilaration of nighttime travel through the pitch-black bush to the crazed life or death dogfights through the free-for-all anarchy of Kampala traffic, the Boda Boda is pure freedom. Wave one down, pay the hiked muzungu price, still dirt-cheap, and you can go anywhere. Just make sure to get your traveler’s health insurance. It’s on the back of these bikes that I first fell in love with East Africa.

4. NATURE’S IN CHARGE HERE – sweltering equatorial days, two-inch long mosquitoes and terrorist baboons that ran my bus off the road were just some of the encounters that shaped my understanding of the East African’s respect, fear and wariness of nature. But I also had a vervet monkey look for bugs in my hair, got to pet a white Rhino that laid on his side like a 6,500 lb dog begging for a belly rub, went to sleep in a nature preserve to the lonely roar of an old lion who had long since lost her pride and felt the grace of the heat-breaking rains in the middle of an emerald forest.

5. THE EYES TELL ALL - It seems everyone has a war tragedy to share in Northern Uganda. Truth is, some are just making it up to grift you out of a shilling, but often enough you hear the real deal, and you know it’s the real deal because you can see it in their eyes. You can see real suffering, real fear, real confusion in the right, or wrong, set of eyes. But now and again you also come across deadened eyes. I looked into the eyes of one boy and I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was a killer… not one who was forced to kill, mind you, not one who was remorseful about the blurry, morally complicated life he had led in the bush, you see plenty of that too, but a shark-eyed boy who would kill again if it would get him something he wanted. The kind of boy who thrived during the war. I’ll never forget looking into those eyes.

- Joshua Dysart