Every month, Dark Horse Comics gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a comic or book in the Horsepower column which appears in each of our printed comics issues for the month. These articles can include the inspiration behind a specific title, what it’s like to work in the comics industry, or some other special feature on the highlighted title of the month. In this month’s Horsepower, Dan Houser describes how he came up with the idea for his new crime fiction series, American Caper:
I’m not quite sure when it began. Was it studying for the citizenship test, or whatever it was called, when I became an American that made me fully realize America was a country founded by lawyers for lawyers? Was it spending time in the Rocky Mountain states that made me think about how much they were changing and how ripe that part of the world was for a story? Was it watching once peaceful and entirely apolitical families I knew become wildly politicized and tear themselves apart over nonsense? Or was it hearing discussions of politics become more about arguments than about policies?
I don’t really know, but I began to realize a few years ago that crime and political arguments and the law and social changes were all becoming the same thing and that I found all of it very confusing.
Who was a criminal? In this new world: anyone who disagreed with you.
What was politics? All-out war, over everything.
Why was America heading down the tubes? Because of them. It was all their fault, whoever they may be.
Everyone thought everyone else was to blame. Everyone felt they were being duped, lied to, and ripped off by a vast system that it was their moral duty to try to destroy. Everyone felt they alone had the right to a quick buck.
This is the world I wanted to depict in American Caper.
I had begun to see a new criminal comedy emerge. A story not just about criminals, but about all the people who aid and abet them. About a system that wants conflict—and about people who think they want a revolution, only they don’t quite know why. A story about people who make compromises, sell themselves out, commit one awful act, and are not paying the price of getting roped into darkness.
This would be a tale about a world of crippling college debt that forces people to sell out young and then regret it forever, about a world of real estate development in which pristine nature is bulldozed then sold as some place made authentic by the fakest people alive, in which market forces have endlessly distorted and corrupted your dreams until you no longer know what you want or what you think, and about a world in which evil comes calling for you wearing tasteless leisurewear.
I wanted a crime drama that was also a family comedy, or a family drama that was also a crime comedy—I was not quite sure which. I wanted a modern family story that was both ridiculous and somehow believable, about two suburban families gone utterly insane, and I wanted to write it in a new form for me—or at least a form I had only dabbled in before—comics. I have always loved the art form—I grew up reading anarchic English comics, and felt it was the perfect medium for describing a world gone insane.
The other reason I wanted to work on this comic was because I would get to work with legends. Along with my old friend Lazlow, I would work with masters of the craft like David Lapham, Shelly Bond, Nate Piekos, Chris Anderson, Tyler Boss, Lee Loughridge, Simon Bisley, and more. A multitude of talented artists who could help tell a long story about fake sugar, real estate developments, and what not to do with a shovel.
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Author Profile
- I'm Al Mega the CEO of Comic Crusaders, CEO of the Undercover Capes Podcast Network, CEO of Geekery Magazine & Owner of Splintered Press (coming soon). I'm a fan of comics, cartoons and old school video games. Make sure to check out our podcasts/vidcasts and more!
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