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Alright, let's get on with the show now. Waiting down upon the underworld to smash ganglin, come a friend of the unfortunate enemy of criminal. In mysterious, powerful character, a problem to the police, what a crusade of a law. Hey everybody, I'm Tiffany from Comic-Pop, and I'm in the Valiant offices right now.
I have the opportunity to talk with Mads Visaggio, writer of Dr. Mirage. Hey, you're next. I'm doing okay.
Oh, nice lovely day outside. I know. Also, we've already know the first question. You're doing well.
So this is a good start to an interview. I got this wonderful piece of art, so I'm just going to throw it over. I love that. We'll cut in a thing to show that.
It's uncanny. It's almost honestly. I'm familiar with Shan. I am familiar with the two blinds that came before it.
We haven't seen her for a while in her own story. But here she is. Why Dr. Mirage for you?
Oh, I'm a really morbid person. I'm kind of obsessed with death. Okay. And I'll be talking with Valiant a little bit.
I knew that Valiant was interested in working with me. And at C2E2 last year, I guess, I must have done. I just kind of went hard for it. I just wanted to, to Robert Myers, just like really want to run a Dr.
Mirage book. Does it just seem really exciting? She has such an interesting and weird relationship with death. And I've done a few books that deal with our relationship with death.
There is this like so different because it's not final for her. Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. What's interesting about that and that concept of having that passion?
I feel like that makes the best stories. Like you came to them because you were ready to tell stories, supposed to, like, so I'm being like, we need a Dr. Mirage story right now. Just come up with anything.
Well, it's less than I didn't come to them with like a story of mine. I just was interested in the character. Right. Like I wasn't all caught up in the character of Jim's first going but I had room the second.
I wasn't really sure what her status quo was. But it was just a playground when I was interested in playing with, you know, she gets to do the magic stuff. She gets to do the depth stuff. And I've been kind of really looking for more opportunities to delve into that part of my brain.
Right. Right. Absolutely. And honestly, like for me, the magic stuff, I'm just so all about that.
And honestly, in this first issue that I had a chance to peek through, I kind of love that she is, there it is. I love that she is trying to delve into like Quen's realm a little more so than we've really seen her play. And she has to because he's not around anymore. Exactly.
She's always had when on some level to protect her. Yeah. And that's no longer an option. Right.
Which is like, I kind of loved that. Like the last time we saw them, it was like, okay, so we can't like touch one another and it's totally fine. And now it's like, what's going on in the general status for Dr. Marad?
Because like, you've not only taken away Quen in a sense, but like, she's completely isolated. Yeah. Taken away all of the day. She can't see dead people.
Yeah. And that's like such a phenomenal concept. Because like, that's every day for us. Hopefully all of us.
We don't have that interaction with people. You had that ability to go away and have it alone moment constantly been surrounded by individuals. Like it's almost like when you go to a con, it's like, yeah, that's her experience all the time. She can turn that off, but that's something she had control over.
Mm hmm. You know, yeah. But now she like, now she's completely isolated with her thoughts constantly. There's no distraction.
I'm like, I have to go deal with a ghost. Can't point in that. At the start, she's still mourning the loss of Quen. Mm hmm.
And she's not just alone from the ghost. She's cut off herself from the world. Yeah. She's like shrouded her house under all these like in under all these magics to make it not invisible, but just no one will find it.
Exactly. Yeah. And I really do love that because it just, it's interesting delving into like those levels of grief, but like in a way with a person who's like, I also have magic on top of it. So not only am I going to go through my stages of grief, but I can also like do it in a bigger way than like anyone could possibly conceive of it.
Because everyone's experienced loss, like that's how much you want some time. You don't want to go away. And typically we can't do that. She found a way.
And then that's kind of taken away from her too, in a sense. Like that necessity for isolation. Yeah, because Grace just shows about her front door despite every obstacle in her way. Yeah.
There she is. And she's a really aggressively present person. Mm hmm. Like Shann's, it's at least in here.
She's pretty quiet. She's not exactly, she's not exactly withdrawn in terms of how she's related to Grace, but she's just, her personality is not like turned up to 11. And Grace is a very brash, loud person. Yeah, absolutely.
And like sometimes, that's what someone needs in order to get out of it. And so like honestly really interesting to see where their relationship is going to go. Like how much Grace ends up having an impact on Shann and possibly the other way around. You know, I mean like that kind of that symbiotic relationship.
Well first step to climb out of hell. Yeah. Little baby steps here, I guess. Baby steps.
You imagine you just lost everyone in this weird kid's house of her front door. And so actually you're the one who's dead. Yeah. And we've got to climb out of hell together.
Yeah, exactly. I mean that was enough to take all these drugs and do it. It's going to be a good sign. No, I was enjoying the book.
That happened. I was like, I'm in. I'm so in. I was in before I was even more in with that like script there.
Whereas it's like she has gone to the dead side. She's gone over there because she wanted to do it because she was forced into it. Yeah. I love that you've completely taken her out of her comfort zone in a way, which is like such a bizarre thing to say about the person.
She was in the middle of the recent. Yes. You know, like so when Mallory approached me about it, the first thing he said was when he was not going to be in the book. Right.
Because at the time they'd had plans that when was going to be like when's ghost was going to be destroyed during encouragement. I'm not happy. I don't really know everything behind that. But that was like a really fascinating thing.
It's like a hard reboot. Yeah. Like that when's presence is like a fundamental part of the idea of Dr. Maraj going all the way back to the late and original right.
There's always been the ghost. Yes. So no ghost means it's going to be a very, has to be a very, very different kind of book. So for me to get a matter of well, I need to do something that's very much very unlike what the first two volumes have been.
So I guess really that just seems like a time was my turn. It's just an opportunity to get her into a brand new status quo. Yeah. That never had to rip her life apart first.
Right. Right. And I love that because like it while you're saying that it's like these are kind of rebooting vibes. It's still like keeping in with if you've already been following Dr.
Maraj in her last two adventures, you even grab this and it makes it all the more like tantalizing to pick up because it's like what happened. What happened between these two books that maybe we'll find out. Maybe we won't. I again, I love a mystery and your magic and death in there.
I'm like, yeah, this is a thing that never would have said what had happened. I wanted to draw that. I wanted to draw it out for an extended freedom time. Yeah.
And not quite. I have to know sometimes I'm like, no, I'm excited to see what we are going to find out and what you are going to give us and show us the adventures of not only Dr. Maraj dealing with a real feeling that we can all relate to in some way, shape, or form in terms of loss and grief, but also the fact that she's literally in hell. But there's also like elements there, how real is what's happening to her.
And that's not going to be ready to be. This isn't a big spoiler. Shan basically has Grace's own hallucinogenic experience extended to her. Shan, pardon, Grace, not Shan because of her some of her mental health problems is on a sort of an anti-psychotic called databases, which has a side effect of causing intense hallucinations.
So right off the bat, Shan is being told, I'm going to show you how the world really is, but it's still a drug induced right. So she's going to be sort of trying to parse out what's really going on the whole time. Okay, okay, which is like right in my wheelhouse, there's a big fan of called Silent Hill, where there's always the girlfriend, the huge fan. There you go, we talk about it all the time.
Yes, like literally like what you're saying, I was like, I love the, is this really happening to this character? It's not really happening to this character. Yeah, me too. So actually speaking of Silent Hill a little bit.
So like that's definitely based on David Lynch. And my girlfriend got me into David Lynch very recently after reading Octurini Girl because it's not a lot of the same kind of what's really happening with it. I'm really fascinated by that. One of the things that me and my girlfriend talk about when watching TV is, have you ever seen the Home Drive?
Yes. So you know the, the, the Know I've on the scene. Yes. Like that's David Lynch pointing out none of this is real.
You're just, this is just an image. This is just images. It's all artifice. And more and more, that's an element that I'm really interested in before.
Like when me and my girlfriend watch TV will see a character looking on screen and someone will just be like, she's looking at nothing because there's nothing past the edge of the screen. Yeah, yeah. It just isn't. It's not even talking about an image of someone on a set.
We're talking about the character in this sequence. Only Exist in this one box. Right, right. And so that your reality is something I'm just thrilled to be bringing up more and more and more in my writing.
That, that's the reality of the form of the medium and not just the content of the medium, narrative versus diasesis. Okay. All right. What I love about that too is that like, there's something about experiencing that like, is it real?
Is it not real in the world of the video game in a film where it's like, there's something real listening about that in the video game. You have some controls to what you can see in a comic form. You guys are showing us what you want us to see. And I kind of love that.
Like the idea of like a character looking off the panel, like there's literally a dividing line there between the panel at the end of the page and panel. It's not a window. It's an image. Exactly.
Exactly. So I love that. I love that. Like, you know, examination of this book and I'm gonna have to go back and look again at that and like see where I might be able to find like, inside.
There's less of it in Dr. Mirage because it's less of an overtly experimental work. One of the things I really enjoyed about working with Sunny Lou and a Tomb Raider girl was his mastery of the comic page. And ability to compose the page in such a way to draw attention to the limitations of the medium and use them in creative ways.
We're not doing anything that sort of overtly kind of like interface, you know, no wire orchestra. But there's just definitely a lot of that. What's reliable? What's real?
I like the people who are in altered states of perception. And I just always want people to not really be sure. Right. Right.
Absolutely. Now in terms of working with another creative, you're working with Nick Robles. I know the same as they were so long. See, everybody who's on this channel knows I am the worst at pronouncing names.
Go from a place. Saggio? Okay. All right.
There you go. So Nick Robles, what's it like? What's the working relationship like? We don't talk a ton.
Okay. But Nick is brilliant. Okay. When we were trying to work together, I communicated to him and I'm like, all right, my jumping off point for the weird landscapes that I want to be featuring is Steve Ditko Dr.
Strange. And I was like, don't recreate Steve Ditko Dr. Strange. That's what I'm imagining is that I get in the mindset to write because he used to be.
But I want you to find your own well of weirdness. Yes. And he really delivered the book, features some incomprehensible spaces. Like I'd say they're like, like, extra spaces, but extra follows rules.
And Nick is it. He has angles, jutting off in impossible ways. He's breaking horizon lines with things that should be behind horizon lines. It's challenging and chaotic and demands attention and time.
He draws a kind of landscape in these books where you can't flip through it real quickly because you're going to be constantly faced by these impossible things that you need to digest. I'm always a really big believer in letting my artistic collaborators have as much free reign as they need to deliver the book. So I'm a very Spartan scripture. So in this, I would all just say things like unsettling landscapes, like there'd be some kind of impossible room, that kind of thing.
And he would take my vague idea that if I was writing a prose novel, I would be describing it in terms of mood and tone instead of descriptively. That's one of the things I was like, why don't I make different writers even gain how much he steps away from describing the appearance of something to just kind of go into the emotional experience of perceiving a place. And so I would give a lot of that information to Nick and then Nick would deliver something that was exactly that. Incredible.
Then you add Jordy's colors to it and the whole thing comes alive. This book's going to not look like anything on the shelf. I'm so looking forward to that. I love that trust that you guys have in that relationship because it's like it's very freeing, I think, to some creatives, some to have that sort of like just do whatever you want.
And then sometimes for something they break down and then maybe after that breaks down where it's like I don't have the rules, they're able to come out the other side of it and be like, okay, wait, wait, that rules, I can... I used to be that way. I used to be in a really detailed panel description. So I'd point out specifying camera angles and body positions because I thought that I needed to give everything.
And the more experience I get, the more I've been learning that you just don't really have to do that. So now I'll just be like, here's literally the bare minimum that artists are going to need in order to get it across the goal of the panel. And even then I'm also really excited about artists who will ignore my paneling and do their own page composition. Every page I write is this is my best attempt to solve this page.
But now that you know what the content of this page is, how do you think we should solve it and if you have a better way, zero in an emotions that I wasn't necessarily even in terms of the emotional reactions of the visuals of emotions. In ways that I wasn't doing it. He's really next level to me. That's what I always value is I want an artist who's going to elevate my script and they get something that the two of us created and not him following my direction.
Right, right. You just take an look at it in the Ashken edition of it. It's always incredible for me to have the experience of reading a story where the artist is paired up for really. Because too many times you'll read a story where it's like, this artist is good.
Technically they are good. It's not the right artist. It's not the right artist. It seems like you guys have a really good fit.
It's just the right feel for the story you seem to be telling right now. I knew there would be when I read the book You Can Be Howard, You Can Not. So when Lisa suggested Nick, I was like, that was like a dreamy guy. We've been talking about a couple of other artists and they just weren't.
I didn't really see how that was supposed to work. I'm like, yeah, I like the work. I really like what you're doing. But it's not this.
It's not what this needs to be. It's not probably a skill issue or a skill issue. It's just what's your obsessions. What are your obsessions?
What are your points of view? How are you cunning at that? Absolutely. I do kind of love the fact that you've gone into this realm of this trust.
You know this artist can take this vague idea and end up producing something that was almost exactly somehow what she wanted. And maybe you didn't even know you wanted it. It could be the best artist in the world. We could have had hair giantness and it wouldn't have been right.
Right. Exactly. Exactly. You know, exact.
Kirby isn't the person to draw this book. No. No. My kid Dotto isn't the person to draw this book.
No. And those are all artists that I have a men's admiration. Oh absolutely. But you've got, it's got to be what it's got to be.
Yeah. And I guess I can't wait to see the colors on it too. Jory's making some really bold choices. And I think that's another really good example of the power of giving them the freedom to do their own thing.
If you're doing things I wouldn't have even bought to ask for that really. She's doing weird chunky colors. There will be colors, like colors flash across the page. Gradient shifts.
Not gradient shifts. If they're hard lines, but it's not a huge dramatic color. That doesn't correspond to anything we're physically seeing. So it's almost like the dots in your eyes.
Oh I love that. You know, those weird little discolorations. If you look too close at the sun and look away. I love that.
And like the communication that a good colorist can get across the extra depth. Because I think a lot of times colorists don't get the do that they should get. Because like you see the art as a whole and you just attribute it to the artist. But it's like no.
A colorist can often make a break and artist honestly. So. One of my favorite artist colorist collaborations was Cliff Chang with Matt Wilson, I wonder woman. Okay.
There's this one issue in particular where Wonder Woman is fighting like a big like lava monster. And as he gets weaker, he gets dimmer. Yes. Yes.
That wasn't even scripted. That was something that Matt contributed. That really just added so much dimension to the scene. Yes.
Oh absolutely. And again, it takes a really skilled colorist to do that. Because a lot of artists can just put color on here. It takes some special feel to communicate extra depth.
Or just interpretation to a panel to a story overall. And like for me, I can't wait to see it put together fully. Because I love the black and white. I'm like the fact that I love the black.
I love a great ink story. I think they're beautiful but they're few and far between. And I was like this is a beautiful book as it is. It's what you get when you're working with two of the brightest lights in comics.
The book is just a visual feast. Yes. And are you guys doing some very good covers? I know we're going to take a look at one of them.
Which is like you guys are doing something completely different with a very good art. Well, you guys as a whole be the author of the Valiant office is doing this incredible. I see some of these covers in the previous. That's gorgeous.
But you guys have a beautiful art piece of a cover that on top of it being a beautiful art piece. So it has a UV black light effect to it. Which is like what? Well, considering how loose and energetic the book is.
Yes. Yeah, no absolutely. But it's like you guys thought to do that. You guys took the next step and was like this fits.
Because that's the key there. It fits with the book. As opposed to just doing random variants that you see other folks doing. Which is like here's a random variant.
Who cares? Who cares? And really all the covers have just been stunningly beautiful. No, they're really other eye-catching.
And again, like you get that whole like you're getting with color. The first cover that is sitting right here. The beautiful blue of when with that orange behind her. It's just it's just a lot of it.
My favorite number one cover is the Robertine Granada. Where it's got her sitting in a throne with ghastly hands while playing at her. Yes. Yes.
And it's all just blue, white and black. It's just so stunning. Because like the dark mirage feels like Valium seems to treat her the best when it comes to her covers. In my opinion, to be honest.
This is the personal opinion I'm a fan. Out of it. Here's the standard interview question we're going to plug out of the air. What should we apply about we're going to talk to Marache?
What's my favorite part about we're going to talk to Marache? Yeah. Man, Lisa Hawkins Landder has an amazing confidence in the story that I'm telling. And that means she gave me a very free hand to make us what it needed to be.
It's been a very just very constructive relationship with her in terms of she's not really she's not directing me at all. Which is always really nice. I was actually at the San Diego valium panel and the rest of it was the best thing about working with the universe. And I was like, well, it's not editorial driven.
It's creator driven. I came to them with a Dr. Marache idea. They didn't come to me saying, well, we have a Dr.
Marache book and it's got to do X, Y, and Z. Right. Yeah. You know, it's like, well, no Dr.
Marache has whole powers now. So it's going to be all, you know, like something else is happening over here. So, you know, we have to do the consequences of another writer came up with. Right.
There's just less of that because it's just a much more contained universe. That also means there's a lot more space to create. And we're doing a lot of that in Dr. Marache.
We're building out the architecture of the dead. I guess we're going to be meeting some critical figures in what the afterlife is. Okay. Okay.
I'm excited. And it's been great because I'm really obsessed with like mythology and these are the background in the history of the whole. Oh my God. So we like, I just kind of threw out there.
What if we did like something in New York City at one point? It's not in New York City. Right. But she was able to point me in some directions so I could do some like, a little bit of guided reading to get more ideas for it.
And I guess I just like, she pointed me in a direction and said, just take a look at some of the stuff and see what you can internalize. Right. And I think I really made the book richer for it. I love it.
I mean, like, it just sounds like an ideal scenario where it's like you have the support of a team behind you without the, like, you know, hand slapping, you can't touch that kind of vibe. Yeah, I had that a little bit like even an eternity girl, which despite being like an employee off the wall left field, doing animal book. Yeah. There were characters I wanted to feature in it and DC was like, nobody can use those right now for x, y, z reasons.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I know that Dr. Raj is like a mini series, which she seems to the last two books were also like their mini's correct. And so I went through five.
Yeah. How do you prefer to write something where it's like, I know it's the beginning, middle, and end or something that's like ongoing. Perfer would imply I'd done the other one. Okay.
That's fair. I've only written minis in one shot. I haven't done an ongoing thing. I'm very, actually very interested in having time to spend exploring a character in a room.
I haven't really had that yet. Okay. So I'm hoping that if this does well enough, we can get a six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Hey, that would be great.
I have more, but I want to do it this. I think we're setting up some interesting dominoes that I want to be the one who decides where they fall. Okay. That's great.
I'm going to leave that to someone else. That's fair. I mean, I think I made up greats. Yes.
No, it's true. It's true. I have plans for her. And I'm excited to see where honestly it goes.
I love Dr. Raj in the scope of the Valiant universe. I love that like it's, it's, it's so funny because it's like almost a quieter section of the Valiant universe, but at the same time has such a big impact on every day. This isn't a quiet book.
Okay. You know, like I said, I knew that this needed to be something different. Yes. I mean, I thought the bad, without when this is going to be a fundamentally different kind of experience.
And Jen's books were very quiet and they were, the colors were very subdued. There were lots of like pages that were dominated by a single color. Which is shades of blue. Yes.
Which was gorgeous. It was just an absolutely stunning book. I was like, this can't be that. I want this to, to really be a new beginning.
And I made a point during the script of mentioning that things would be like bright colors. I'd be like rainbow colors and there'd be neon colors. Right. I wanted it to just all be very brass and loud and aggressive.
And something that you sort of had to like deal with being hit with that all at once. Right. Right. Like a very different look at the afterlife.
I'll put in quotes. Yeah. Just you know, because again, like you said in the previous one, I was dominated a lot by a single color. Whether it be like Warmer color, whether it was on the Dead Side or depending on what era they were in there.
Which was really effective. It was. It was. Again, an example of right artists, right color is that story.
Totally different story adding in the second elements to it. And again, like I'm so glad you mentioned Dico because I'm going to keep that in my mind that that was an inspiration for the art that you're going for. Yeah. That's incredible.
One of the things that I figured out really quickly when I was, you know, thinking about what the story was going to be was well, that when she doesn't have any magic, that was Wednesday. Yes. So she needs to be in a process of like learning how to defend herself, learning how to take care of herself. Right.
And so I'm just thinking what are the what are the magical characters that I love, what are the magical stories that I really look. And I'm just so into celery, just that excellently. Right. It's just so great and adventurous and everyone's shouting.
Yes. And so I'm just like energy, enthusiasm and color. And it's not all just like grim and like moral quandaries and anti-heroes. It was just, it was over the top adventure.
And that's an area that I really, really used to be exploring. So that I immediately kind of went to Dr. Strange's. I thought, well, what if this is the first, the first part of a story that ends with her as the first person to bring it up.
And I don't know if that's what's going to end up, but that was my jumping out of the way and how I landed on this kind of general idea for the visuals. Yeah. Absolutely. Honestly, if that had been like your elevator pitch and I was in any way in charge of anything here, I would have been like, yeah, go green light and go take all the money.
I don't care. No. And it's not like a Dr. Strange book that we're definitely pulling a little bit from that kind of thing.
There's a couple of instances where she uses Dr. Strange kind of a liberative spell. It's like by the sibbles of Sumanex. Yep.
That kind of thing. That's, it's, it's, it's fun. It's, it doesn't have to be deep. It doesn't have to be complicated or philosophical.
It can just be fun. There's enough other heavy shit going on in that book that I wanted the comic book action to be comic book action. Yeah. Yeah.
It seems like it's going to strike a really good balance, which is, I'm, again, I was already in reading the book, seeing that ending was way more in. I have this conversation. I'm so sold. I'm so above and beyond sold.
You just, you speak in my language right now. You're really upsetting if you were like, no, I'm trying to be into it, but after all that. I don't know. We'll see.
No, I am, I am so on board for Dr. Maraju for the story you're going to be taking us on this journey that will be going on together. Right? Everybody?
Go get it. Go do it. No, seriously though. Um, next thing is for, thank you so much for coming here and chatting with us.
Dr. Maraju is going to be out on August 28th. You can go grab the first issue that comes out. I've already read it and I highly recommend it.
So I said go grab it, especially after hearing all of this and the plans I have for it. The love that is going into Dr. Maraju is going to be out on August 28th. Seriously, it's very, it's very there.
The love of the characters there. You have a really good printer through hell. That's a great sound. Sometimes you got to do that.
Sometimes you hurt the mind. You love the most. It's a little saying. You know, I don't know.
We'll see how it turns out. That's true or not. We can think of which we're talking about as a planet leader. Um, yeah, that's it guys.
And we'll see you soon. Bye.