I met Bryan JL Glass when he and artist Mike Oeming were about to release Mice Templar. As I had just received a great amount of PR about the series Mouse Guard, I wondered the timing, but also, I had heard various people mix the titles and seem confused. So I interviewed the two about the series, and appreciated the depth in the approach. I'd interviewed Mike Oeming more than a couple times, so I was already familiar with his abilities, and getting to know Bryan was a very good thing.
When my son had a very bad burn and had to have surgery, I bought him a couple TPBs to occupy his rehab time, when his school work was finished. Mice Templar volume 1 became his favorite comic ever, and it was an excellent work in my view as well. My son is now 23, and he still has a great love for Mice Templar. And I've appreciated Bryan and Mike, for many qualities, and personal kindness and professional traits.
In this interview with Bryan Glass I ask mostly creativity questions, but pay attention, as he shares the direction of his creative work currently, and it is an exciting journey to go upon.
Thank you Bryan for your time and excellent answers.
How did you come upon your career path of writer? What factors allow a writer to birth, to flourish, and to be aware, even, of the need to write? Is any person able to become a writer? If so, what skills need to be polished especially to become one?
I certainly don’t consider my path to be typical. Following an assortment of childish declarations of wanting to be a Paramedic, then Architect, and even Chiropractor, I’d stated the career path of Film Director by the time I graduated Elementary School with 6th grade (having been allowed to direct my first school production in my fifth year).
My blue-collar working parents bought me a Super 8 camera but had no clue on how to guide me toward my desired career goal. My Arts-based high school had offered photography and video production when I applied to their visual arts curriculum, yet upon actually attending, there were no classes, which made my initial year quite challenging. When I transferred to drama for my second year, that’s where I discovered the video production equipment! I soon flourished in the environment and graduated with honors. Then, in an odd quirk of timing and logistical complexity, I received a university film education while only at a college. It was enough to pursue a film career by picking up odd production jobs and began building my resumé…
But I soon discovered I was unhappy. By my late twenties, I realized my obsession wasn’t film-making after all—I had simply chosen it as a medium, when what I really desired to be was a storyteller! Yet I’d taken no Literature or Creative Writing classes. I’d written some screenplays which embraced the various disciplines of film, but I didn’t believe I had any worthwhile prose in my skill-set for either a novel or even short stories—I’ve always preferred long form storytelling anyway. So, I opted to pursue comics where my bad timing continued to hound me when I chose the 1990s to break in as a B&W Indy self-publisher (this was the decade of the Distributor Wars and Marvel’s bankruptcy—both costing me thousands of dollars in unrecouped sales as most distributors went bankrupt themselves).
With over 50+ comics produced in five years, the latter 90s saw my transition into religious theater ministry, writing/producing/directing, which soon dominated my life nearly full time for the next 14 years. I sincerely believed I was never returning to comics, until my friend and frequent collaborator Michael Avon Oeming pulled me back in…
It was 2002, and Mike Oeming talked me into converting one of our unsuccessful 90s comics pitches into a novel he would illustrate. That is how Quixote: A Novel came to be, published by Image Comics. Mike had three basic concepts he wanted to see when he brought the idea of a modern-day Don Quixote to me in ’96, from which I then created characters and a narrative to fill a six-issue miniseries. By 2003, the first draft was a literal translation of the intended comic. As I’d dived into the deep end, I was teaching myself the craft of prose with each subsequent draft ushering in new characters and subplots, nuancing the main narrative in ways I never expected; and when the book came out in 2005, I was a novelist. Subsequent prose works were ultimately delayed by my formal return to comics, The Mice Templar, a pair of Harvey Awards, working at Marvel, Dark Horse & DC, as well as a seemingly never-ending merry-go-round of comic pitches to practically every substantive publisher.
It finally took the full corporate takeover of the comics industry and the multitude of media properties and licensed characters dominating the market to force me back into novel-length prose, which is where I’m at post-pandemic, finally returning to my life-long work: BJLG’s Dark Spaces!
As for conducive factors, and if anybody can write, I can only speak for myself. Long before I considered myself capable of “writing” anything anybody would have ever wanted to read, I was telling stories, conjuring them first from established inspirations (as all children do) but soon expanding upon those ideas until new concepts formed as if from the ether. Nothing was written as a narrative to follow, but I could verbally spin potential narratives out of the ideas in my head.
But even writing comes in many forms: creative, journalistic, technical. The craft of writing is not necessarily that same as the craft of storytelling. I know many excellent writers who simply have no stories to tell; as well as a plethora of idea-people who don’t know how to coalesce their incredible concepts into an entertaining narrative.
I truly don’t know how anyone not internally driven by the need to tell their tale can simply write both a grammatically correct and entertainingly compelling narrative. I had to teach myself the former, aided and abetted by every editor I’ve ever worked with whose wisdom and instruction I soaked up like a sponge. The latter has always been with me, only needing to be refined through both personal exercise and analyzing the works of others I’ve admired!
Foundational skills to master are primarily grammar & spelling, yet so many writing programs and apps today can practically teach one by default if you open yourself to the lessons conveyed. Storytelling always benefits from an understanding of personality types and basic psychological principles. Styles, genres, cultural settings and characters, all come down to personal interests; but at the heart of every great story is a kernel of truth buried in its core.
Is the creative path a fire burning inside, i.e. it is an organic,
natural flowing or spiritual thing, or is it purely about determination,
a training of a talents, and craft? Or is it both? Do you find
yourself struck by ideas, out of the blue, or do you find in doing
research that exposure of information plants a seed, and that from your
training and talents, you harvest as a result of the seed?
In
my own experience, creativity has always been a passion, a driving
force within that keeps piquing the mind. However, I also believe that
anything can be taught and learned. But for me it marks the difference
between an artist and an artisan. Artisans learn skills and create works
I could never replicate without also having put in the study and years
of labor to master the craft. But the artisan typically crafts an
existing form and can mass produce a functioning replica with astounding
results, often based upon the complexity and the patience required to
produce it. The artist masters the existing forms and then expounds from
them something new.
The term “journeyman” writer is typically
attributed to those professionals so adept at the varying forms, they
can plunge into any entertainment medium and fashion an adequate and
acceptable tale to suit any genre. Yet those journeymen who truly shine
are typically at their best when crafting an original work born of their
own creativity, and not merely following a client’s request.
Many
of my own creations have simmered within me, sometimes for years,
before coming to a boil. Or they’ve been aided by the long form approach
that allows for the passage of time: between when one starts the story
and when that tale reaches its end. I’m a firm believer in knowing the
goal before anything is first produced, yet always allow for new
inspirations which the telling of the tale itself inspires; the idea
should always be allowed to grow!
Only twice in my life has an
idea arrived fully formed, beginning to end, in the span of an hour or
less. The first was in my theater days, a production entitled Perfect
Justice, which coalesced in the span of a public transport commute; I
got home and immediately began typing. The production that was
ultimately performed before the public remained remarkably faithful to
its original inspiration.
The second was CarrierZ, a zombie tale
which manifested over the length of a shower. I got out and immediately
phoned my wife Judy, even before drying off, so I could cement the
thoughts in my head by relaying them verbally to another. The irony is
that I’d long told myself I’d never write a zombie story, as I had
nothing original to add to the genre… until something original hit my
consciousness like a runaway freight train in between the soap and the
lather. As a comic, it almost went into production three times, each
with an editor who clued into its unique take, only to be arbitrarily
overruled by publishers who remained adamant on their no new zombie
books stance.
I’m rarely inspired by research, as I liken it to a
handyman’s necessity; I research this or that because I need to, just
as when I need to screw in that fresh lightbulb or tighten that wobbly
leg on a chair. I like to jump into and out of formal research as
quickly as possible, instead of losing myself in it as I’ve seen many
others do; never getting to their own creation because they’re endlessly
researching, akin to Ash in Alien perpetually claiming he was “still
collating.”
Beyond whatever prompted the original spark of an
idea, I’ve always been far more open and fascinated by the evolution of
the tale itself as it works its way through multiple drafts. Those
moments when you realize you’ve crafted a character who is now making
their own decisions based upon the logic you bequeathed them with.
Suddenly, they don’t want to follow the path you initially set them on
because you’ve given them a rationale and drive that would take them
elsewhere if they had the freedom to do so. Taking the risk of pondering
their rabbit hole can inspire concept-shaking additions; as well as
when creatively plugging that hole in your character’s motivations that
led them to rebel in the first place, that stuffing or patch can itself
inspire evolution in the narrative. I have found these various scenarios
to be the most fulfilling in all of my work…
When I scripted the
first issue of The Mice Templar, where the young hero Karic is chosen
for a great destiny, he responds “Why me?” It’s either the most unspoken
or ignored question in nearly all heroic fiction. Why is the Chosen One
the Chosen One? In most fantasy, it often comes down to lineage, as
with Harry Potter’s letter arriving at the closet under the stairs or
Vader’s grand revelation to Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back. I
had no answer to Karic’s query when I scripted those words into his
mouth, his word balloon. It just seemed like a concern he would raise. I
already knew the finale, and what his destiny was already going to be.
But I still scripted it without an answer, and even instructed the
letterer to make his words small type within a large balloon. It was the
awkward question that needed to be raised. And because he’d raised it
once, it then evolved into a haunting doubt that followed him throughout
his 7-volume adventure: why was he the focal point? He had no special
skills, no extraordinary lineage. If anything, he inspires by his
choices across the series because he has nothing to back them up; he
simply commits himself to doing what he believes is the right thing to
do, and it’s nearly always selfless because he’s so small and the stakes
are always so much larger, beyond anything he believes he can muster to
counter them.
The answer came halfway through the larger
telling: a two-word question that evoked a four-word answer in the
epilogue with implications that sent shockwaves back through the rest of
the series that preceded it…
“Why me?”
“Because you said yes.”
I
can only wish I’d been insightful enough to have conceived that from
the beginning. Instead, it evolved through the telling, and while it
didn’t change the substance of the intended ending, it added a
meaningful Epilogue I hadn’t foreseen.
Karic wasn’t a hero
because he possessed skills you and I will never have; never stemmed
from a lineage our own mundane heritage could never aspire to. Karic
became the biggest hero of the series because he was asked to do the
impossible and he simply said yes, then committed himself to trying; and
that is something every one of us can do when the dark times come,
without or within.
Everyone who chooses a career or job, has
an ultimate goal. Some people assume writers or film directors, painters
or any other creative person are seeking fame and wealth. What do you
seek? Is that particularly ultimate goal wrapped up in success? That
is, could a creative person do great work that is unappreciated by an
audience, financially or otherwise, and still consider their life
successful, if nothing else for the fidelity to the cause, or quality of
work? Are you content with the response, whatever it is, because
your goal, isn't money, but that of creating something of worth?
I
have an acting friend who has long been fond of invoking the “shadow of
the knife and fork.” It’s what compelled him to take on some roles he’d
have rather avoided because, well, we all have to eat. There are
definitely financial concerns that prevent most of us from living lives
of artistic purity, so there’s something to be said for achieving fame
and fortune. For a writer, the biggest bucks come from successfully
transitioning one’s work into larger media, typically film or tv. While
nothing I’ve created has come to such media fruition as of yet, I have
certainly benefited from the numerous attempts that have been made to
bring my work to the screen.
But the shorter answer is no, I’ve
never been compelled to create for the allure of fame and/or fortune;
those are simply the benefits that can come from attaining particular
levels within the creative arts. I’ve had the occasional repugnant
family members who ask at infrequent gatherings if I’m “famous yet,”
which immediately tells me their only interest in my work is in how they
might exploit their relationship to me, while not giving a damn about
the substance of what I’ve done to generate the notoriety. I tend to
ignore them.
But most genuine creators that I know, I call them
“creatives,” simply want their work to be appreciated by those to whom
their work speaks. A writer typically just wants someone to read and
appreciate their tale; the painter wants someone to hang their work on a
wall for how it moves them. The performer wants an audience. We all
want our creation to engage something in another.
Having been in
and around the arts for most of my life, I came to realize how anybody
can get a degree in the arts, yet an artist isn’t determined by their
level of education. For certain, you want a doctor whose graduated
operating on you, and not someone who picked up surgery on the side and
has a gift for medicine. You don’t want to live or work in a building
erected by one with an uneducated hobby, however talented. One isn’t
going to fly to the moon or Mars by shooting guesstimates at the math.
But artists aren’t solely designated as such because of their
degree—although I’m all for getting as much education in one’s field as
possible. It’s just that I learned to recognize the highly educated
poseurs who then use their education to place a superior artist beneath
them…
The equivalent of, I’ve never painted anything outside of a
classroom, but I’m inherently a better painter than generic artist
because I have a doctorate in the finer arts. No disrespect for all
who’ve studied and worked so hard, often for years, who go onto the
achievement of a masters or doctorate, but the degree doesn’t tell me
you can paint anything aesthetically compelling; your own paintings will
showcase what you’re capable of, your portfolio. The formal degree may
qualify one to teach or professionally criticize, but it is insufficient
in itself to prove someone can create.
The same can be said for
all the arts. Thus, it could be extrapolated that if one chooses a
degree in the arts, in literature, then one is seeking a form of living
from either the art produced or the knowledge of art hovering around the
edges of the work in progress.
As for goals, I can easily choose
not to write, be distracted from writing, find myself too emotionally
overwhelmed to write (as I did for the six months following 9/11), but
what I can’t stop or prevent myself from doing is thinking creatively as
a storyteller. The physical act of drafting text is the follow through;
it’s the labor required to erect the house after all of the design work
has gone into the plans. Writing is the physical task that takes time,
falls prey to diversion, and is the most susceptible to our moods,
whims, foibles, and self-inflicted rituals, i.e. I can’t write unless
the room is precisely 70˚ with the keyboard inclined at a 15˚ angle, I’m
wearing my fuzzy slippers, a specific beverage of choice on my left
side, and absolute silence save for the thunderous crash of previously
recorded thunderstorms: such doom their efforts before they’ve barely
begun.
But creativity doesn’t stop. I can’t count how many times
I’ve paused movies or television so as to jot down the story or
character idea that just flashed into my head while another’s narrative
unfolded on the screen; or grabbed that pen & paper sitting next to
the toilet; or awoken from a dream to jot down the one element relevant
to a plot I’ve been tinkering with.
I’ve also discovered that
heeding creativity only begets more creativity, like a faucet leak one
cannot fix. The drip is both pervasive and relentless. I often feel
there aren’t enough hours in the day to keep pace with the perpetual
inspiration.
But while monetary checks are great to cash,
especially when they’ve sprung from one’s creative energies, nothing
beats the heartfelt tale from a reader for whom your story was the thing
they needed at the time they encountered it. If success could be
measured by such impact upon a responsive audience, then that’s the fame
I would embrace.
Are comics easier for people to understand
than prose, and if so, does that make prose a higher calling since it is
harder to make it work, or does the easier ground level entry in comics
make them limited by the expectations of people coming into them? Is
your approach to both media the same, ultimately you don't change due to
the format?
For me, comics and prose are simply two mediums
in which to tell a story, both equally valid, as one can do different
things within the constrictions or the liberation that each provide,
just as the stage play, film and audio drama are each separate and
distinct.
The exact same story could be told in every one of those mediums and a different experience would be had with each.
While
pondering if comics is a more accessible medium to embrace—easy to
understand, as an argument can be made for comics visuals being just a
step above a children’s picture book—I’ve encountered many adults for
whom the rhythm of a comics page’s flow, panel to panel, caption to
balloon—to balloon then back to caption then balloon again—is a
comprehension skill they never nurtured through a youth consumed by
reading comics; a practiced skill comics readers take for granted. Then
add in storytelling elements within the art itself, from static details
conveyed by an artist, to angles, the mood of coloring, framing, the
effect of diverse emotional lettering, as well as motifs of silence when
the sequential action takes over the art narrative with nary a word.
Such are all the elements available to the comics storyteller, and all
the nuances lost upon the otherwise uninitiated.
While I would
consider prose to be the most adept medium for winding its narrative way
through the maze of a character’s mind, leaping chasms of time and
space following the tangents of a thought without ever losing the reader
(particularly when scribed by one with the talent to perpetrate it
successfully).
I find those who rank the mediums of various arts
for which is the superior expression of any idea do so in ignorance,
while ironically for the purpose of elevating their own ego. The adage
The book is always better is not only tired and worn out but false as
well. Cinema is infamous for trashing its literary inspirations,
sometimes through the sheer act of condensing 4-600 pages into two
hours, but there are also many films for which the wildly divergent
movie adaptation is not only beloved by generations of film fans but
could even arguably be considered more famous than the source novel it
veered so askew of: The Wizard of Oz, The Shining; I’m even of the view
that the utterly faithful adaptation of Silence of the Lambs is a
superior storytelling experience than the Harris novel it is adapted
from, the story’s suspense benefiting from the taut pacing of the film.
My
own approach is only altered by the constraints of each medium; I love
the introspection of a novel, and yet the adage of a picture worth a
thousand words is never more accurate than when describing an
environment in a comics script or screenplay, wherein my audience for
those descriptors is literally only the artist or the director. They are
technical descriptions at best. Yet when placed within prose, they must
become nearly poetic in their language while avoiding the form. Nothing
brings a driving narrative to a halt more than overwrought descriptions
of environment or socio-political historic significance (I’m looking at
you, Victor Hugo!). To spend half a page describing the important
atmospheric nuances of an environment that the human eye and mind would
comprehend in an instant of screen time can be agony for the writer at
the keyboard. The prose audience is totally reliant upon what you tell
them, and the most critical if it isn’t told with efficiency.
The
only thing that should never change is the foundation of storytelling
itself, characters sufficient to shape the narrative (and never the
other way around—even a tale about those suffering from the varied
horrors of war or natural disaster should never be about what was done
to a people, but in how the characters who represent those peoples
respond; their choices become the story, guiding the narrative within
the setting or event being chronicled, or otherwise, you’re only
crafting a documentary and/or producing propaganda. Execution of the
story thereafter is often dictated by the form of the various mediums in
which it is being told!
What are your current projects, and
what social media and personal websites do you utilize to share your
work? Where do you hope the current project will take you and readers?
That is, what is your desired trajectory of the work?
I’ve
written Thor and Valkyrie for Marvel Comics, as well as adapted Raymond
E. Feist’s Magician & Riftwar Saga, Adventures of Superman at DC,
created Furious at Dark Horse, The Mice Templar, 86 Voltz and Quixote at
Image Comics, Ships of Fools first at Caliber Comics then Image, as
well as the consummately silly Spandex Tights in the 1990s…
Yet my latest project is also my oldest, having existed in one form or another since 1978: Bryan J.L. Glass's Dark Spaces.
My
name in the title is to distinguish my “Dark Spaces” from other usages
of the title, from a psychological anthology published in England, to
the space combat simulation game system called Dark Space, which, while
both are sci-fi, they couldn’t be farther apart in substance and
execution.
BJLG’s Dark Spaces is an intended multi-volume sci-fi
series set in a unique universe called the Strata: 7 replicated
frequencies of existence, three vibrating faster, three slower than the
Prime plane that anchors the other six.
The Strata has thousands
of years of history I’ve chronicled, quite a bit directly related to the
main narrative that unfolds with the start of book one. The current
governing body unifying the Strata is a bureaucratic tyranny called
ComFED (short for The Union of the Combined Federations).
The story
follows six diverse individuals who find their paths cross upon a frozen
mining world called Desolation: each has a secret to preserve (although
two of them don’t even realize their own as yet), and are soon drawn
together in a common cause…
The crash landing of a flight pod has
brought a genuine monster to Desolation, a flesh-eating abomination
seemingly born of a forgotten mythology whose physical existence also
serves as a metaphysical gateway to a darker realm for those with the
ability to discern it.
The tale begins with civil employee
Talitha, who discovers she’s inadvertently recorded something she
shouldn’t have. Marked for literal termination, her efforts to flee the
planet are hampered by a declaration of Martial Law, the monster, and
the imminent mobilization of the ComFED military.
She seeks the
aid of former freighter captain Veslyn Traasken, grounded by alcoholism
consumed to bury her bitter past. Only the flight pod that brought the
beast to Desolation was ejected from Veslyn’s own freighter The Lucky
Strike, reported lost with all hands aboard, including her lover Danté.
“Tif”
is the child prodigy engineer of The Lucky Strike, left behind from its
last run due to criminal cartel involvement in the salvage operation
Danté had accepted on their behalf. Those criminal elements are now
after Veslyn and Tif for whatever secrets Danté took to his death.
The
mysterious Merin has found his own purpose on Desolation equally
thwarted by the ravenous creature’s arrival, and the assassination of
the only man with knowledge of its mythological origins.
The elderly
Merin is soon joined in his new quest to understand the beast by a naïve
young technician named Dirk, whose been so profoundly impacted by the
old man’s extraordinary altruism, he seems ready to abandon his own
career and future.
The enigmatic Ráiszh completes the impromptu
sextet for curious reasons of his own. Never seen without his flight
suit and identity-shielding helmet, he promises to be both friend and
foe, coldly efficient and deadly, but to reveal anything further might
cost your life.
In their attempt to escape the Frozen Hell of
Desolation, these six characters launch an epic saga of
multi-dimensional space opera, clandestine politics, military
authoritarianism, corrupt religions, secret societies, and hidden
histories, before all humanity itself is to be brought face-to-face with
the metaphysical horrors of Dark Space!
BJLG’s Dark Spaces only
starts with the trilogy Stratan Dreams: Desolation’s Tears, By Hellspun
Entangled, and The Noct’fel of Pelstar. The series does not have a
publisher as yet, but the first third of Desolation’s Tears is available
as Audio Readings with music and limited sound effects on YouTube. I
intend to release the second act come September 2022.
It is my hope to see this saga, decades in development, finally secure its audience, and come to its intended epic conclusion!
I can be found online at my personal website:
BryanJLGlass.com (which
links to my online store, Facebook, Twitter & Instagram accounts, as
well as to
“Bryan J.L. Glass’s Dark Spaces™Audio” on YouTube)
