It’s been a few years since I’ve really “closed out” Comic-Con, right to the point they’re ready to release the hounds. But writer/artist Tony Parker had the last slot for signing at the Dark Horse Comics booth, and I was glad to see it packed and thus running long. We’d run into each other a few times throughout the convention, setting up this formal conversation.
The announcement came that Comic-Con 2024 was over, we all exhaled, and then Tony and I went into the Dark Horse green room to talk about his upcoming graphic novel Medusa. Before I go any further, I had already considered Tony one of the nicest people in comics, and one of the most talented. That’s not hyperbole. We first met at the Dark Horse booth when he was working on This Damned Band with writer Paul Cornell. Tony has already had one Eisner nomination, for the Boom! Studios adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? But Medusa is going to open people’s eyes up to just how good Tony is — not just as an artist, but writing his own comic for the first time.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Derek McCaw: I heard you say the other night it’s the first thing you’ve written in a long time, like since college.
Tony Parker: College would be more, I had to write stuff for class. It wasn’t like I wrote fiction in college. It was in order to pass the class, you had to write stories. It was the first time since then I’ve actually written any fiction prose.
Derek McCaw: What made you decide, “this is it? I’m going to tell this story.”
Tony Parker: I was working on a great book with John Dolmayan, Ascensia, and had a lot of fun with it, but they had a little gap with the pacing for the scripts, which happens all the time. I realized, you know, I’ve got a little bit of time here. Maybe it might be fun to like, just do my own side thing. Little fun, little side artwork or side story.
I remember, this was about 2020, in 2019. I had drawn a picture of this Medusa for Emerald City Comic Con, Monsters and Dames charity book. You draw a monster, you draw a dame, in whatever combination you want. I mean, it’s got to be for full family approval. At the time it was for the Seattle Children’s Hospital.
I did that and it was fun and going back, I want to tell stories with this character. This looks like a really fun character. I want to tell stories. So I went through, and I did an 8-page story, the one that actually ran on your website.
Derek McCaw: And again, thank you for that.
Tony Parker: You’re welcome! And so I did that story and sent it in to Dark Horse. I’ve mentioned before, I was expecting a, “This looks great, but we’ve already got three Medusa stories down the pipe, one by Bendis, one by Becky Cloonan, and one by Mike Mignola. We love yours, but we already have three in the pipes, so good luck. We love you. But good luck.”
Then I got this back, like, “Dude, we actually really like this. Let me check with marketing, see what they say. They really like it. Let me check with Mike, who’s in charge of the company. He really likes it. Let me check with one or two other people. Yeah. We want to do this.”
Okay, yeah in that case. Let’s do a four-issue miniseries. “Well, no. we love it. Let’s do it as an 80-page original graphic novel.”
That way, well, they didn’t really explain it, but the way I look at it is that way you don’t have to worry about making enough sales for the single issues to do the collected version. But it’s also a great experiment, a little test bed to put original graphic novel content out there, not just to comic shops or bookstores. Therefore, you have many more options for people to try your stuff out. But with that, something I made sure to push was as many indie bookstores and comic shops as possible. Because it’s really easy for them to get lost in the shuffle. Because if it’s not for them, they don’t exist for me because. I mean, when the book was announced on February 29th, 2024, you couldn’t even order it from Diamond. It was not available from Diamond.
I actually held off doing a big push for the Diamond orders until it the comic shop orders were available. Comic shops – if it’s not for them, I don’t have my career.
The other side of it is some comic shops use Penguin Random House for Dark Horse, others may still use Diamond. I don’t know. I could be way wrong on that but I was trying to really make sure comics shops could get it.
Derek McCaw: For some comic shops, I’m sorry, but they may not be sure week to week, too. It is confusing.
Tony Parker: And they’ve got enough stuff out there, I don’t want to add to that confusion. So therefore I did that big push with that.
Derek McCaw: You came up with that eight-page story. You had drawn this character. And you have this, I mean the pitch that I just heard you give at the booth signing was, “everything you know about Medusa is a lie. She’s a hero and she’s cursed by the gods. It’s that simple but it’s not.
Tony Parker: Yep.
Derek McCaw: How much time did it take to develop that and how much world mythology are you planning to build in?
Tony Parker: With the world building, I’ve got a basic structure of there are some things that are locked in, like these things are the way that they kind of have to be. If the books are looking on further, they have to be there.
But for the most part, unless it’s needed for the story, I try to avoid world building. Because otherwise I trapped myself in with the world building. I’ve seen too many authors go through it. They’ll do all this world building, like name all the continents and all the cities and the bays and the oceans and the huge histories. And they don’t have a story.
Whereas my thing is the story comes first, so I’ll make sure the story is out there and then if I need to do any world building outside of that. Even then, I try to keep it as limited as possible. Like in the upcoming story I make references to other mythos. Some of them are very blatant, some are just little singular lines. That way it’s more of an acknowledgement that it’s there because with Medusa it’s not just Mediterranean, it’s the whole world’s mythos.
Derek McCaw: That’s what I was getting at – how much is known and how many books of mythology do you have on your shelf to do research? To get all this world stuff in? Because there will be more Medusa stories.
Tony Parker: I would love that, and even with that, a lot of it is also one, acknowledging that in 2000 years, all those characters would have changed as well, or adopted or modified. Some are around, some aren’t. And knowing that, the world out there is changing with them as well. It’s that classic PTSD Thor. Yeah, he’s Thor, but he’s got issues and he stops caring about his health. And stuff like that, how that shifts out,
Derek McCaw: I’ll veer over a little bit, if you don’t mind, to Lemmy. You also did a signing for Z2, so you’re part of the Lemmy Kilmister book.
Tony Parker: I worked on it. I’m still there. It’s there. Yep.
Derek McCaw: How was it working with Z2?
Tony Parker: They’re great. They’re great to work with. That’s actually the second book I’ve done with them. I also did The Doors book (Morrison Hotel). Both are great. It’s a lot of fun. With The Doors I was able to work with Leah Moore and she’s an absolute delight. I love working with her.
With this one they just sent me the story transcribed from the person who was there. It wasn’t a written out story. It was like, “here’s what happened. Turn it into 6 to 8 pages.” And so I went through and tried to figure out how to balance and pace it out. Trying to decide what is important, what isn’t, and they gave me a tremendous amount of freedom. I was able to color it as well. It looks beautiful. They did a great job printing it.
Derek McCaw: I know you work as a colorist, but then you’ve got Tamra Bonvillain on Medusa.
Tony Parker: I’m a functional colorist. My colors exist. They’re there, but they’re Midwestern cooking at best. Yeah, the meat is brown. There are noodles there and there is a tomato paste. Sure, you can call it spaghetti, but it’s got no flavor.
With this, this is my baby. I’m swinging for the fences with this, so I went and got the best people I could. I got Stephanie Cook, who’s an amazing editor, to edit it. I was lucky enough to get Tamra Bonvillain to color and she is just absolutely brilliant. So my stuff is functional. It’s there, it works, but nothing great.
With her stuff, with Tamra, I would get pages back and I would cry because it’s so beautiful. I also have an emotional connection to it. Don’t get me wrong. But it was. I would cry because of how beautiful she made the pages.
And then when Taylor Esposito – I mean, I could technically letter it myself, I’ve done it — but he’s much better at it than I am. I’d much rather pay for him to do it, pay him to do all the special effects or the effects noises and the lettering. I cried when he pulled the fonts out.
Like you know, “here are the fonts. What do you think? What’s it working like?” “You nailed it. These are perfect.” Because it’s not a thing about my ego. It’s not about, “look what I can do. I’m a golden god.” No. If other creators have to get collaborators, there’s no reason I can’t as well.
Where it’s like – Neil Gaiman didn’t draw Sandman. He got other people to do it. Other people like Bendis doesn’t draw his stuff himself. He can draw. He actually went to art school. His first stuff was actually drawn by him. But when he does books, so he’s a functional artist, but he’ll go out, he’ll get Oeming. He’ll get all these other terribly talented artists and get them to do it.
For me to say like, I could do it all, it’s accurate, but I could do it all well, isn’t. Therefore, it’s very important for me to make sure because this is not an ego project. This is not something that I want to go out and do to make myself feel bigger, better about myself, or look how fancy I am.
This is I want to put the best book out there. For me to put the best book out there, I’ve got to get the best team around me. I’ve got to punch up on that. And with each one of those people, with Stephanie, with Tamara, with Taylor, I punched up. I got people who are better, far better than I am to work with me, and the book is a better book for it.
It is. Medusa will be in comic shops and bookstores October 22, 2024. Order it by name! Once again, a shout to Tony Parker with gratitude for taking the time to do this interview.
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