Episode 37 - An Interview with Rick Geary

In this week’s episode of The Comics Alternative, Andy and Derek interview acclaimed artist Rick Geary. His new book, A Treasury of Victorian Murder Compendium, Vol. 1, was recently released by NBM Publishing. In it, you’ll find some of Rick’s Victorian murder classics, such as The Crimes of Dr. E.W. Prithard, The Fatal Bullet, The Beast of Chicago, and of course Jack the Ripper. The Two Guys with PhDs talk with Rick about his line of murder story comics — Victorian era as well as 20th-century — his meticulous research when preparing for each project, his strategies for storytelling and how he frames his narratives, and his fascination with crimes and unsolved mysteries. They also ask Rick about his many adaptations, translating into comics form such classics as Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, O. Henry’s “The Marionettes,” Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Copper Beeches,” and Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger. Rick also talks about some of his work in other genres, including all-age comics such as Gumby and graphic biographies on the lives of Leon Trotsky and J. Edgar Hoover. All in all, Andy and Derek have a great time talking with Rick and are reminded, yet again, of why they keep gravitating back to his art again and again.