Being the loving and caring publisher that I am, I recently took the time to sit down with Jason and Manien to talk a little bit about the upcoming True Loves 2 release, libraries and Spiderman.
Ed Brisson: So…who are you guys?
Manien Bothma: Manien Bothma and Jason Turner. Happily married since 2006.
Jason Turner: But together for way longer than that.
EB: Can you give us a quick, spoiler free, synopsis of True Loves 2.
MB: Trouble in paradise! Is it possible to be happy ever after?
JT: The first book was about True and Zander getting together, and this one is about them moving in together.
MB: Life after all the romance dust settles.
JT: How you can be living in the same house but things like work schedules interfere and you hardly see each other.
EB: I’m sure that you’re sick of this question, but I’m asking it anyway — How much of True Loves is based on your own lives?
MB: This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
JT:Though the characters do live in neighbourhoods where we have lived, and go to the kinds of places we go to. And there have been say, periods where Manien has worked days and I have been working nights. Which sucks.
EB: Jason, you’ve talked in the past about your “fixation on ‘place’ in story”. How important was that for you when the two of you started scripting True Loves? Was Vancouver always to play such a major role in the story? It’s hard to imagine it set elsewhere.
JT: Well the original venue I had envisioned for the story was as a weekly strip in a local paper, like the West Ender. So I thought it would be good to do something extremely Vancouver oriented. That idea didn’t pan out, but by that point we had already worked out the basic story and characters.
MB: It ended up being perfect to use Vancouver because we had lived in quite a few different areas, and we enjoy Vancouver.
JT: Vancouver is almost like another character in the story.
MB: The main character, really.
EB: Can you explain the process from writing through to the complete page/book? How do you guys work together?
JT: I guess our process has changed since doing the first book.
MB: I think that we knew the characters better this time around. We were writing more often, so we stayed more in touch with the characters. And we’ve started writing at home.
JT: But we still have a drink or two while we’re writing. Basically we sit down and work out roughly what is going to happen in the next chunk of the story, and then write it page by page. Since I post a page each week on the internet, we think of them as “episodes”. It is a very chatty comic, and so our writing is mostly working out the dialogue for each page.
MB: Knowing that a page is working when we have completely cracked ourselves up.
JT: Then I go off and draw the pages, which takes a ridiculously longer amount of time.
MB: Are you complaining that I’m not doing enough? I’ve offered to ink. Or maybe I should pencil and you should ink.
EB: In 2007, True Loves was nominated for the One Book, One Vancouver award — the first time that a Graphic Novel has ever been nominated for the award. How did that feel for you guys?
MB: It was very exciting. I was even willing to do some public speaking if we won, and I’m terrified of public speaking.
JT: It was also nice that someone was appreciating the Vancouver-ness of the book. And that the award brought the book to the attention of library people. I have had quite a few people come up at conventions and tell me that they got the book out of the library.
MB: We enjoy the library so much… it seems so amazing to have our book there.
EB: So…are we going to have to wait another three years for the last book?
MB: I’ll let Jason answer that one.
JT: Well we have started writing the third book already.
MB: No drawing as of yet.
JT: A fella needs a little rest. But I’m not going to take a year to get around to the drawing this time. I’ve been doing some daily drawing projects to get myself in gear for it.
EB: What are you guys reading right now?
JT: Comic-wise, Scott Pilgrim is kind of the comic I wish I could do. I just read Yoshiro Tatsumi’s giant autobiographical A Drifting Life and it got me totally stoked to draw 30 pages a week, rather than you know, one. And i enjoy the odd Grant Morrison thing. I was very excited to read Big Numbers 3 online recently.
Novel-wise, I just finished reading Portnoy’s Complaint this morning, and now am moving on to Jane Smiley’s Ten Days in the Hills.
MB: Fixing Shadows by Susan Barrett. I feel like I have been reading so many amazing books lately.
JT: Since we got our new exciting North Vancouver Public Libary, it has felt so decadent.
MB: I love the new library so much. I just want to move in there.
EB: I’m always interested to know what the first comic people remember reading is. What is yours?
(Manien starts laughing, and blushes deeply.)
MB: I always feel vaguely guilty that I am not much of a comic reader. I can’t even remember the first comic I read. Jason’s comics were probably the first ones I read! Those little ones for each of the seasons you did… That’s why I fell in love with you!
JT: My answer is a little less romantic. Though I guess there was a Gwen Stacey thing going on in the first comic I ever had. Spiderman went to England for some reason, and there weren’t any cool villains or anything in it. I was jealous of the one my brother got at the same time, which had Stegron, this dinosaur guy in it. Though in the end, the comics I do are less dinosaur villain oriented, and more Spiderman Goes to England.
MB: It shaped your comic destiny!
