Kickstarter Alert: Silver Vol 4 Interview With Series Creator Stephan Franck

Stephan Franck has worked on some of the most beloved animated films of all time, including The Iron Giant, How to Train Your Dragon and Despicable Me.Â Over the course of the last four years, Franck has been writing, illustrating and self publishing SILVER, a globe-trotting graphic novel series that mashes up the world of Bram Stoker“s classic novel Dracula with action, adventure, humour, pulp storytelling and modern sensibilities. Told over the course of 4 volumes (and a stand alone novella), Franck has created an unforgettable cast and a compelling caper that picks up 30 years after Professor Abraham Van Helsing visited Dracula“s castle. Now Van Helsing“s descendent, the mysterious vampire hunter Rosalyn, is teaming up with a ragtag group of con men for a high stakes heist to rob Europe“s richest vampires. Will they succeed, and live off their take from this one last job? All will be revealed in the fourth and final volume of SILVER, which Franck and his company Dark Planet Comics are funding via a Kickstarter campaign.

Here at Comic Crusaders, we love a good Kickstarter campaign, and having red the previous impressive volumes, we caught up with Stephan to chat about his animation work, his inspirations and of course Silver:

Comic Crusaders: Hi Stephan, great to meet you.Â Lets start from the beginning.Â Previously known as an animator, how hard was the transition to comic books?Â What was the hardest part?

Stephan Franck: I think the main difference between animation and comics art, is that in animation, we like to say that you don“t see the drawings (because they only stay on-screen for a fraction of a second). What your eye really tracks is the change between the drawings. In comics, there is a more permanent statement made with every drawing, so there needs to be an illustrative quality that was intimidating to me at first. I started very self-conscious about it, but started to relax once I hit the second issue. That said, there is a directness and economy to an animation drawing that I love, where every single line on the drawing is absolutely necessary. That has become second nature to me over the years, and it transferred over my approach to comic, only to get more pronounced the more comfortable I became.

CC: There are a couple of clear inspirations in book, what gave you the idea to mash them together?

SF: When I was growing up in France, we had a show on TV everyÂ FridayÂ night that was called “MidnightÂ Cinema”“, and that focused on black and white American movies from the 1930“s to 1950“s. It went from B movies like Fu Manchu or Zardov, to masterpieces from Fritz Lang, Orson Welles, etc”¦ And we would go from Cagney gangsters to classic monsters, to screwball comedies like The Thin Man. So in my mind, it all blended together into a meta world of pulp where you could be in New York with mobsters and con men, then catch a plane to England, where you would get lost on the moor, encountering vampires and werewolves, or take a ship to some remote island and discover a lost civilisation. So that is the world of Silver. Thematically also, I feel that vampires and conmen are related creatures””living by night, predatory in nature, not engaging in life productively the way regular folks do. So I thought colliding the figuratively soulless with the true living dead would produce interesting results.

CC: Your work has been noted as having a touch of the Mike Mignola (I would say more Guy Davis from Sandman Mystery Theatre).Â Who are your artist influences, both in animation and comic books?

SF: My parents had a comic book store when I was a kid, so I was super lucky to have access to pretty much any comic ever created, both American and European, and quite frankly, I loved it all. That said, if I was to draw a line of inspiration, I would start with Jack Kirby and Gene Colan. But I also have a deep love for adventure strips, from Falk and Moore“s The Phantom, to Milton Canniff. By the way, the fact that Dracula“s vault has two chambers””one with metric tons of random silver he doesn“t really care about, and one with the real treasure he does care about””is my homage to The Phantom. I also love Steranko, and especially his way of spotting heavy blacks. His adaptation of the movie Outland might be my favourite movie-to-comic adaptation. Then, there is the generation of the mid 80“s graphic novelists, who basically took the great American novel, and reinvented it in comic form. Meanwhile, on the BD side, my favourite artist is Moebius, whose economic style really captured my imagination””and that“s actually a good segue into animation. The father of feature animation as we know it was Milt Kahl. For those who don“t know, he was to Disney what Kirby was to Marvel. You can“t be a student of animation without having his sense of exaggeration, design and economy of line having been an influence. What“s more, his ability to control and direct the audience“s attention and to create sort of visual narrative bull“s-eyes in his composition is something I have been trying to import into my comic book pages. Lastly, one of my biggest personal influence may have been another master animator””Glen Keane””with whom I have had the good fortune to work closely. What I learned from Glen is what I would call drawing as performing. A state of mind to capture a moment“s specific vibe and energy in a drawing. It“s almost “method drawing”“, if you know what I mean.

CC: I have to say I am a huge fan of the Iron Giant movie.Â I cry every time and I know what“s going to happen. How does it feel going from something so collaboration heavy to being a practical one man band?

SF: Yes, the Iron Giant is incredibly affecting. We had the sense that we were making something a little bit special while we were making it. It“s really inspiring to see that, over the years, people have been feeling the same way about it. I still work in animation. For instance, I“m currently executive producer of the Playmobil Movie, which is coming out next spring, so I still work in greatly collaborative situation. It“s always incredible to work with other writers, and to follow them through doors I would never have thought to open myself. But to be honest, I don“t think you can really hold your own in a writing room unless you are able to write something self-sufficiently all on your own. I also always feel that we are in the business of telling the most universal stories in the weirdest way possible, and that group writing tends to lean more towards consensual common sense, and less towards weirdness. Which is a shame. Many times, in a writers“ room, you have to preface a though by “Bare with me guys”¦ this is going to sound weird for a bit, but just hang in there with me”¦”“ When you“re working alone, you just go there and never look back.

CC: With the success of the previous volumes, why Kickstarter?Â If not Kickstarter, which publisher would you love to see pick up Silver.

SF: One of the magical things with Silver, is that it has been a true grassroots success, born out of the passion of convention fans who support us from year to year, and the Kickstarter backers, who have been fully invested in helping bring the series into existence. KS brings this sense of community where readers can help shape their cultural reality, and that“s truly incredible. Beyond that, Dark Planet is a publishing company in its own right. Thanks to the relentless supports of our KS backers and con goers, not to mention Diamond who has been incredibly supportive, we have been able to make huge inroads with the comic shops, who ordered a massive amount of our FCBD issue, and are now seeing super great feedback. So I guess we“re the little engine that could, and as long as we can keep going, that“s what we“ll do.

CC: Pulp is seems never goes out of fashion, when done as well as Silver.Â How hard is it to get traction in an already crowded environment such as comics?

SF: First, thank you for the kind words. You know, it“s interesting that the industry always seems to decide that such or such genre is either gold or poison. For instance, for the longest time, common wisdom had itÂ Â that pirate movies were the kiss of death, and then Pirates of The Caribbean came along, or that dragons were the kiss of death, and then How To Train Your Dragon and The Mother of Dragons came along.Â That is exactly the reason why I decided to publish my comics through Dark Planet, so I didn“t have to conform to any conventional wisdom. If I feel in my guts that something is the way to go, I just go with it and let the readers decide. For instance making Silver a black and white comic. That“s also what I did with Rosalynd, which is a prequel to Silver and Rosalynd “Sledge”“ Van Helsing (One of Silver“s most popular characters)“s diary as a child. It is not only a pulp story, but it is a diary written in a child“s point of view, a small format hard cover in an impressionistic art style guard art evocative of the haze of childhood memories. None of that was an obvious sell, but it felt true artistically. I would be lying if I said I wasn“t apprehensive when we debuted it at comic con, but readers embraced it with passion.

CC: What are you currently reading/ watching?

SF: I am currently watching a lot of physics video, as I am developing a more sci-fi book that I am really excited about. Also, I feel very strongly that the TV show Gotham is the best rendition of the world of Batman ever put to film, and I“m loving it. I think it captures the dark fairy tales of Gotham City in a way we had never seen before. As far as comics, I feel that we are in a new Golden Age of comics, with too many great series to enumerate, but I would single out Black Hammer.

Â CC: Once this Kickstarter is complete, whats next for you?

SF: With this Silver Volume 4, Silver“s foundational story, in which master thief James Finnigan teams up with Rosalynd “Sledge”“ Van Helsing to steal the mythical treasure known as The Silver Dragon from Dracula“s castle will come to a close. However, the Silver universe will continue, but always with complete stories. You will see at the end of volume 4 that a new story opens up, which, while still following some of the characters, will not retread on Silver“s original narrative. Meanwhile, I also have been developing other series that I can“t wait to lean into.

CC: That all sounds great.Â I am really looking forward to seeing how this fantasticÂ book, or at least this part of the Silver universe, comes to an end.Â Thanks for you time Stephan and good luck with the Kickstarter.

Author Profile

Johnny "The Machine" Hughes

I am a long time comic book fan, being first introduced to Batman in the mid to late 70's. This led to a appreciation of classic artists like Neal Adams and Jim Aparo. Moving through the decades that followed, I have a working knowledge of a huge raft of characters with a fondness for old school characters like JSA and The Shadow

Currently reading a slew of Bat Books, enjoying a mini Marvel revival, and the host of The Definative Crusade and Outside the Panels whilst also appearing on No-Prize Podcast on the Undercover Capes Podcast Network