Interview: Kathryn Immonen and Stuart Immonen

Over the weekend at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, Brandon and James had the great fortune to be able to talk with husband and wife writer/artist team Kathryn and Stuart Immonen. The resulting conversation was absolutely wonderful, with constant laughter and wild gesturing. It ranged from Patsy Walker: Hellcat to Ernest Hemingway, to Hemingway! The Musical and back to Patsy Walker: Hellcat, who stars in it. Somewhere in the middle, we talked about the pair’s upcoming graphic novel, Russian Olive to Red King, as well as a certain Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock film about a time traveling mailbox.

Assume that everybody involved was constantly laughing, and join us as the RECORD button finally got pushed, a minute or two into a discussion about planets.

James: The industry should be dedicated towards more Patsy Walker: Hellcat.

Kathryn: That’s what I think!

Stuart: Yes!

Kathryn: If there should be crossovers, they should be with Patsy Walker: Hellcat.

Stuart: It should be Patsy Planet; all super heroes resemble her in some way.

Kathryn: That’s right.

J!TB: The Patsyverse!

Stuart: Yes!

Brandon: We need to get Axel Alonso on the phone.

Stuart: Yes!

B!TB: Because we’ve got a crackerjack idea for him.

Kathryn: That sounds like a winner.

J!TB: So what is your favourite thing that you’re reading right now? Books, comics…

[Stuart signs an autograph for a fan, apologizes.]

Kathryn: What is on the bedside table right now? Oh, it’s Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream, which is the most lovely and beguiling story. But really, you know, comics right now, it’s for work. It’s one of the unpleasant side effects of working for Marvel or for any of them. The amount of reading you have to do kind of eclipses the reading that you might want to do.

J!TB: Whatever brings you joy, I mean that’s what we’re about at Comics! The Blog: things we like.

Kathryn: I like Hemingway… I like Hemingway!

B!TB: There you go, that’s what we needed to know.

Kathryn: He’s an okay writer, right?

Stuart: I think he’s going to go places!

Kathryn: I think that too. He’s got potential.

Stuart: He’d fight you to prove it.

B!TB: That would be fantastic, I would love that story.

Kathryn: Apparently he wasn’t that good of a boxer. It was all a lot of bluster, not a lot of technique.

J!TB: But a story about Ernest Hemingway, the failed boxer? That sounds wonderful.

Kathryn: Well, didn’t they do a movie that was about the fight – the so-called fight – between Hemingway and… on come on… help me out…

J!TB: It wasn’t Faulkner… I know they had an odd, occasionally–

Kathryn: I think it was in Toronto, and they were in the ring, and it’s like… aw, I can’t remember who it was. I don’t think it happened the way he talked about it.

Innocent bystander: Wasn’t it called Fighting Hemingway?

Kathryn: I think it might have been. That was a very longwinded answer.

B!TB: No worries, this is exactly the thing we’re interested in.

J!TB: So what kind of things are you working on right now? That you can obviously talk about?

Kathryn: Yeah, you know, I hate that so much. People online say, “Aw, I wish I could talk about-“ Oh, shut up. If you can’t talk about it, then don’t talk about it. “Look at me!”

B!TB: “You know, this thing’s coming, and it’s–“

Stuart: Oh, look at you!

Kathryn: “–It’s just fantastic, but I can’t! I wish I could tell you!”

Stuart: “–Way too important.”

Kathryn: “It’s way too top secret.” I am right at the beginning of working on something that’s just one issue, I can’t, It’s not… whatever. So I can’t tell you, but what’s happening is that in the fall, Stuart and I are taking a little break, hopefully, to work on our next book together, so it gets a little–

Stuart: Not hopefully, definitely.

Kathryn: Yeah. Definitely.

J!TB: It’s a working vacation.

Kathryn: Yeah. So, it’s Russian Olive to Red King and that’s really the next thing on our list of things to do.

Stuart: Actually, it’s already been scripted, and I did the first 20 or so pages in pencil form, and then I started Fear Itself and had to put it aside, but it’s always been sort of in the back of our minds that we had to find time to do it. And then, you know, I got the email from Tom Brevoort, who’s the editor on Fear Itself, just a few weeks ago, saying, “Oh, we’ve got something in mind for you,” which of course I can’t talk about. But it won’t start until later on in the year, maybe in 2012, and I said, “Well, that sounds perfect, because I want to do this other thing.” It all works out.

J!TB: So would this project you’re working on together be something like, will it be serialized like Moving Pictures or will it be a book that people buy?

Kathryn: A book that people will buy.

B!TB: It’s true.

J!TB: We’re going to force people to on the site.

Kathryn: Nice! When we serialized Moving Pictures, it was not really because we wanted to do a webcomic, it was just because we needed a way to have a deadline in between all the Marvel stuff to make sure that it happened. As a result, it took three years, which is a very long time, so this book will take three months and then it should be basically done, so it could be out sometime next year.

Stuart: Well, that’s a little bit optimistic; we don’t even have a publisher yet lined up for it, but the same way that Moving Pictures was completed before we shopped it around to different interested parties, Russian Olive to Red King is going to be completely done before we ask anybody to look at it. And that doesn’t mean that there’s no room for the editorial process, because we’re very keen on that, we’re very keen on getting some fresh eyes to look at the material and tell us where, you know, we might have gone astray from the original idea.

Kathryn: And where we forgot to have a car chase and a gunfight.

Stuart: We deviated. But at the same time, we’re very much aware that publishers at every level in the industry are really interested in having complete works that they don’t have to wait on before they can decide whether it’s good for them or not.

J!TB: Any word on what Russian Olive to Red King will be about?

Stuart: I’ll let Kathryn handle that.

Kathryn: It’s a scorcher. It’s basically a love story. It’s about loss, I guess. It’s wrapped up in a delicious package that looks like a ghost story. It’s two parallel narratives: it’s about a man and a woman, and they are together, but in this story he’s at home, experiencing writer’s block and also a lot of personal trauma, and she’s just been in a plane crash in Northern Ontario, which she may or may not have survived. It’s uncertain, it becomes more clear as you go along that at one point she may have actually died, and it may not be until the end. So it has all the hallmarks of a love story.

Stuart: A love story in which the two main characters never interact with each other at all.

J!TB: Oh, The Lake House!

Kathryn: Oh god! Yes! It’s like The Lake House-meets–

Stuart: –The Time Traveller’s Wife.

Kathryn: Oh my god, I’m sorry–

J!TB: That’s the pull quote!

Kathryn: Oh dear… talk about a beguiling tale. Inspired by Hemingway, and then she fights a marlin… and Faulkner.

Stuart: That sounds like a Patsy Walker story.

J!TB: She’s already fought Oppenheimers. [Ed note: in Heralds #1]

Kathryn: That’s right! I am so happy.

B!TB: That happened!

Stuart: Punch that fish on the nose!

Kathryn: That’s right! Patsy Walker fights Hemingway. That’s where we’re going with this one. Nice! Patsy Walker is Hemingway: The Musical! Hemingway, exclamation point!

B!TB: Exclamation point, exactly! I would see that!

Kathryn: Dancing fish?

B!TB: Yeah yeah!

Kathryn: Awesome!

Stuart: They won’t be able to capture the physical element of this conversation. [Ed note: it was incredible]

Kathryn: That’s right! Bracket, dancing, close bracket!

B!TB: No worries.

Kathryn: Oh my god.

B!TB: That was fantastic.

J!TB: And now our customary final question at Comics! The Blog: will you adopt us?

Kathryn: Well, do you know what? Andy Belanger, Kill Shakespeare artist, has already asked, so you’ll have to get in line.

Stuart: We have one slot available.

Kathryn: That’s right.

Stuart: And he took it up, earlier on, just earlier this weekend.

Kathryn: If only you’d gotten here a little bit sooner.

B!TB: Well, I guess that’s fair enough, because then we would have had to fight and that would have been bad.

Stuart: Yeah.

Kathryn: That’s right, unless you know–

Stuart: –Unless there were marlins involved.

B!TB: Exactly. We were not prepared.

Stuart: Waterproof boxing.

B!TB: Awesome! Thank you very much.

Stuart: You’re welcome. Thank you!

Kathryn: I’ve gotta find a way to add Wolverine to it, that way it’ll sell.

This was maybe the greatest day ever. Thank you to both Kathryn and Stuart for their time and for being much, much funnier than us.