A Forbidden Interview

David Roman

by Jennifer M. Contino

At a time when T.A.G. girl books (big Tits, nice Ass, big Guns) dominated the market David Roman and Cryptic Press introduced the comic reading world to a normal looking teenage girl named Jax Epoc in the epic tale Quicken Forbidden. David is best known for the 'babysitting' chores he does on the Nickelodeon Comics Rugrats title and their other lines of comics. I never heard of Quicken Forbidden until David emailed me a few months ago and asked if he could send me a sample. I was hooked from the first issue I read and asked for the rest of the series. David was happy to send them to me and I highly recommend the series to anyone who likes comics that put 'normal' people into 'abnormal' situations. Quicken Forbidden is fantastic. A while ago, I managed to convince David to take a break from his Nick chores and answer a few questions about Quicken Forbidden!

Sequential Tart: What's the first story, poem, etc., that you can remember writing? How old were you?

David Roman: I don't remember the first things I wrote or drew but can't imagine a specific time in my life where I didn't. I know a lot of my early characters had silly names like RAD BRAD and SAMURAI JACK.

ST: What comics did you collect as a child?

DR: Even though I was drawing my own comic book characters since I was little, I didn't really collect any comics as a kid. In fact I really didn't even pay attention to them until I went over this other kids house who had the first issue of GI Joe Vs. Transformers, it grabbed my attention because it had one of the main characters from the show being blown up on the cover. As a fan of the cartoon series, I remember thinking "Wow, I guess they can do a lot more cooler stuff in comics than on TV", (maybe because no one paid attention to them). I started sporadically buying comics after that but more out of a "because my friends are doing it attitude" It wasn't until I picked up a copy of Groo The Wander and some Gladstone Disney comics that I really started to enjoy reading comics. Before that I'd rather just draw my own. Now of course, I buy about 4-8 comics or graphic novels a week and love everything I read and hardly ever get around to writing or drawing.

ST: Who or what's influenced your writing career the most?

DR: I think I'm mostly inspired by the music I listen to than anything else because the mood of the music is what usually effects the writing. I love a lot of bands like Information Society and Faith No More, that had like one or two hit songs and now nobody listens to them even though they keep putting out albums. I'm also a huge Tim Burton fan and seeing his movies usually reminds me why I love to create things. I grew up loving the Jim Henson film The Dark Crystal and Don Bluth's The Secret Of Nimh. I'm often motivated by jealousy. When I see something really amazing it makes me want to go out and make something just as cool. That's why I love going to things like Small Press Expo because being around so many creative people makes me want to get back to work.

ST: What exactly do you do for Nickelodeon? When did you get the job there?

DR: For Nickelodeon I mostly baby-sit the Rugrats. I co-edit the Rugrats Comic Adventures a subscription based magazine, as well as help out on the Rugrats newspaper comic strip. And, when I'm not grinding coffee beans and mixing flour for doughnuts, I help Chris Duffy edit the comic book section of Nickelodeon Magazine. The comic book section of Nick Mag is actually really cool and probably the best part of the job. We get to hire all these really alternative cartoonists like Sam Henderson (Magic Whistle), Andi Watson (Geisha), James Kolchalka (Tiny Bubbles), and Craig Thompson (Goodbye Chunky Rice) and have them do full color kids comics. I was recommended for the job there after interning at DC, where I was answering Scooby Doo's mail, around November 1998.

ST: What comics did you work on before Quicken Forbidden?

DR: Before Quicken Forbidden I did lots of comics just to make my friends laugh. A lot of them were intentionally corny with names like Melon Head about a kid who gets super powers from the "Melon Gods" and goes around blowing up politicians. Obviously they didn't sell very well.

ST: When did you decide to self publish and how did the series Quicken Forbidden come to be?

DR: Well I was always kind of self publishing, even when I was like 6. As long as I've had access to photo copiers and staplers I've been making my own comics and trying to force them on people. John Green (the co-creator of Quicken Forbidden) and I used to spend endless hours at Kinko's trying to make our stuff look as good as real comics...(and considering we were mostly looking at second rate Image books, it wasn't all that hard)

ST: What influenced you when you were creating Quicken Forbidden? I can see a little of magic, science, mystery, and adventure contained in this tale. Some call it a mix of Alice in Wonderland and Dr. Who. Are you a fan of either of those works?

DR: I don't think I 've ever much been a fan of Alice in Wonderland, although I always felt like it was sort of a requirement to be. The imagery is definitely cool, and there's some ideas that are really inspiring but I kind of feel like it goes on and on from one scene to another with out ever really building toward anything. I never seem to make it to the end with Alice (in fact I have no idea how she gets back). Dr. Who, I know absolutely nothing about, but assume it's very popular since it seems to have a big following at Science Fiction conventions. As corny as it sounds, I think more than anything suicide is what inspired Quicken Forbidden. The idea of desperately trying to escape the world we live in. The first images I had were of this girl throwing herself through a glass window and what that symbolized. It sounds pretentious but it's true. Then I just tried to adapt these ideas into some sort of surreal Fantasy/Science fiction story that would give me and John lots of fun stuff to evolve into all different sorts of interesting directions. I wanted to try and create the type of story to tapped into how It felt when I first saw Return to Oz or any Terry Gilliam movie, the type of thing where reality is turned upside down and you have no idea what will happen.

ST: Why base Jacqueline "Jax" Epoch on a mousy librarian type girl instead of a T.A.G. (Tits, Ass, and Guns) type girl--whom we all know would sell the comic? What prompted you to make Jax look *gasp* normal?

DR: If we were going to commit to doing an ongoing self published comic it had to be something we felt was different enough to stand out and even more importantly kept our interest. There were enough superheroes out there, and we kind of hoped the ridiculous looking "BAD GIRLS" were just a phase. I've always felt that magic is so much more compelling when it happens in contrast to believable reality. So we just tried to create a believable world with a realistic character so when we fucked it up it would have a real impact. I mean if a dragon flies over Metropolis and Superman is there to stop it, big deal, but if it's New York City and some teenage girl with glasses manages defeat it, then cool, that's a much more interesting event to me.

ST: Are there any plans to show us more of Jax's past?

DR: I'd rather not show any of Jax's past. I like to think that before Issue #1 of Quicken Forbidden, Jax's life was completely boring. In the TRIAL/SEPARATION story line we did show some flashbacks of Jax's parents and addressed their divorce because it was a perfect parallel to Jax's current split between two worlds after crossing through the interdimentional portal. But that will probably be it. It's probably better leave it up to the reader so they put more of their own identity into it.

ST: There are sketches in the back of some issues by David Roman. Are you just dabbling or do you have artistic training too?

DR: I actually have a diploma in comics (with a Garfield stamp on it and everything) for spending four years at the School of Visual Arts. It says Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree but I majored in Cartooning and fell asleep during the art history and writing classes.

ST: Tell us a little bit about the main characters of Quicken Forbidden?

DR: The main character of Quicken Forbidden is Jax Epoch who is a girl who spent most of her life dreaming of a world filled with magic and then eventually gets to see it happen. She's extremely forward and tends to jump first and make lots of mistakes. She usually swallows her problems and tries to tune out her fears so that she can keep on living life. She tends to borrow things without asking which is what gets her in the most trouble. The other main characters are Cal Howard and Ted Pierce who are part of a organization of scientists called the Data Analysis Keep, which is sort of like a secret society of scholars and scientists who study everything strange that happens in the world. Then there's Tourvel, Jax's robotic lawyer who is programmed to defend her in "Eternal Court". And Nosteiries, a dark mage who's job is to protect the boundaries between reality and fantasy and keep people from crossing them (which Jax is accused of). There's also a lot of side characters like the news intern Doug who helps Jax out and a group of masked thieves who want Jax to join them; that will have a major role in the last story line.

ST: OK so you've introduced your character for us, can you summarize the title so that a new reader can get the gist of the story?

DR: Summarizing Quicken Forbidden is my least favorite part of doing the book, so here's a contrived pitch: Basically Quicken Forbidden is a reverse Alice in Wonderland/ Wizard of Oz story about a girl who accidentally falls through a magic hole, but instead of all the adventures happening on the other side, Jax Epoch finds little more than an old book and some strange armor in the middle of a boring corn field and quickly decides to go home. When she returns, she finds that everything that was supposed to be magic in the other dimension has leaked into her world changing reality forever. So now there are dragons and giant robots all over the city, floods of rabbits, talking marshmallows, blood drinking teddy bears etc,

ST: What can we expect in the coming year from Quicken Forbidden?

DR: You can probably expect about 4 or 5 issues in the coming year. #10 will begin the final story line of Quicken Forbidden and New York City will definitely be leveled by the end of that issue. Jax will also learn to control her magic more as the world becomes more crazy with wizards and steel dragons all over the place. The series will be a lot more action/fantasy based and more closely resemble the spirit of comics like Akira.

ST: I'd like to see a 1 shot on Nosteries, are there any plans for some spotlights on particular characters?

DR: Yeah, I'd love to do some comics with just Nosteiries and since he's been around in my head for about 5 years longer than Jax Epoch, he also has a much more fleshed out back history that's open to lots of cool stuff. I was actually working on comic called Realmsend that focused on him before I decided to work on a book with John Green. We ended up incorporating all the mythology that I created for that book into Quicken Forbidden so that we could expand on it later. And we probably will eventually since there's a lot more market appeal for a comic starring a dark brooding elf than a teenage girl with glasses. Maybe we could actually make some money :)

ST: Since all time exists simultaneously in the world of Quicken Forbidden will we ever see Jax go into the future or the past?

DR: I think the book is confusing enough without any deliberate messing with time. I think its one of the things that scares some people away. As of issue #9 time will flow pretty linearly.

ST: Will we ever see Jax deliberately attempt to change a past event or try to manipulate a future event?

DR: Well, the ending of the series hinges on Jax trying to fake her own death, to stop events from getting any worse. Jax learns that she is sort of a host for this being called the Quicken that's destroying all reality and killing herself is the only way to stop it.

ST: Jax has to be one of the only 'reluctant' heroes that I know of who is also a hopeless kleptomaniac! Why did you make her out to be a 'borrower?"

DR: I think the kleptomaniac thing was one of those ideas that John came up with early on that just made a lot of sense for the overall direction of the series. I liked the idea that Jax couldn't help but follow her desires. That it was something out of her control but she would still be responsible for. I guess that's one of the themes of the series, "Wanting something for free but then having to pay for all the crap that comes along with it."

ST: I really liked TRIAL SEPARATION, but didn't feel like we had a lot of closure at the end of the story line - do you do this on purpose..to leave the reader constantly wondering what is going on?

DR: John and I definitely strive for the cliffhanger endings. And yeah the book is often abstract and intentionally vague at certain points but hopefully in a way that makes you keep reading and eventually fill in the blanks with your own interpretation. I think I was unintentionally inspired by The Maxx in how Sam Keith would often seemingly go off the deep end with these crazy visual metaphors that we're extremely cryptic but when you go back and re-read earlier issues you'd see that a lot of that stuff makes sense now as abstract foreshadowing. But you had to keep reading and actually use your imagination to put it all together. It's a nice contrast to the licensed comics I work on like Rugrats and Dexter's Lab and stuff for Platinum Studios, which have to be compact, tightly structured stories that are immediately clear.

ST: Is there any chance that this could become a monthly title?

DR: Not in it's current form. Once Quicken Forbidden ends with issue #15 we'd like to do a spin-off ongoing series (and possibly a color special) but I doubt it could ever go monthly. John and I would have to be making a whole lot of money from producing the comic to quit our "real" jobs to devote the time and energy needed. It's always a nice dream though.

ST: Will we see any Cryptic Press crossovers with some of the other mainstream companies?

DR: I'd love to do Jax Vs. Godzilla or Jax meets the Pokemon; and considering the dimension hoping aspect of Quicken Forbidden, crossovers make perfect sense. But I can't imagine most major companies like DC or Marvel wanting to have anything to do with Jax Epoch. But you never know.

Quicken Forbidden

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