The Start of the Return

L.E. Mullin

By Sheena McNeil
November 4, 2013

I received a copy of The Everlasting Return as a review copy (see link to review at the bottom of this interview), and absolutely loved it. This is one of those instances of "don't judge a book by its PR" because it's so much better than the PR blurb makes it sound and there was confusion as to whether it is really being marketed to Zetabella's older readers or Zeta Comics' younger readers (younger readers can still read and enjoy it but may not comprehend all aspects). The comic captured my interest on multiple levels with the art, coloring, story, and underlying philosophy. I am glad to be able to share some additional insights into the comic and its creator through this interview.

Sequential Tart: What got you into creating comics?

L.E. Mullin: Well, I've always enjoyed reading and drawing. I was 10 years old or so when I bought my first comic book (a Superman issue written and drawn by the great Jerry Ordway). Then, a few years later, I found Denny O'Neil and Dennis Cowan's The Question and fell in love with it. It was smart, creepy, mature, funny, beautiful, had an atmosphere that I haven't seen in any other comic, and absolutely blew my mind.

ST: What inspires you, both in art and storytelling?

LEM: Aside from comic books? I find inspiration in painters, writers, and musicians, mostly. The artists I admire the most are Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Carlos Gardel, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Bob Dylan, Juan Carlos Onetti, William Faulkner, Gabriel García Márquez, Leonard Cohen, Rembrandt, Renato Russo, G.K. Chesterton, Vladimir Nabokov, Charly García, Thomas Pynchon ... I'm sure I'm forgetting a few names. I read lots of "Latin American Boom" literature, too.

ST: What are your favorite comics?

LEM: This is a shorter list: Love and Rockets, V for Vendetta, Watchmen (actually almost everything Alan Moore has ever written), O'Neil and Cowan's The Question, The Sandman, Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, and Preacher. There are more comics I like, but those are pretty much my all-time favorites.

ST: Tell us about The Everlasting Return.

LEM: The Everlasting Return is my first graphic novel, and there's absolutely no way I could have done it without the people at Zeta Comics. I wrote and illustrated it, Jake Gosselin did a wonderful job editing it, correcting my grammatical nonsense, and Robert Simon and Gavin de Lint did all the hard work during the publication process.

It's the story of a kid, Jack, who's afraid of his neighbor, mR mILDEW, who should only be a spooky character in a children's book. It's the story of how Jack and his grandfather try to prevent mR mILDEW from getting away with his plans. And mR mILDEW's plans are to bring about the end of the world. One of the things I tried to do when I wrote it was to blur the line that separates life and death as much as I could. So you have characters that are technically dead, but you can't tell if they are really dead, and you have characters that are, in a way, a fiction, but you could say they are also alive. I also tried to blur the line that separates reality from fiction, and the line that separates good from evil.

ST: I noticed that this series is being marketed to younger readers, but it's pretty heavy on philosophy and religion. What do you consider to be the target audience and why?

LEM: This is a story for young adults and adults, definitely. There may be a misunderstanding on our part since the publisher, Zeta Comics, specializes in comics for kids, but they also have an adults label, Zetabella, and The Everlasting Return is coming under Zetabella.

ST: I love your art and coloring style! How did you get into art and what, if any, training have you had?

LEM: Thank you very much, Sheena, I'm glad you like it. I'm self-taught. I'd gone to several art workshops as a kid, but always dropped out after a few weeks. I've always had a feeling of freedom when I'm drawing, a feeling that I can do whatever I want, so taking classes, taking assignments, being told the way I should do things, that's not for me. I did read books on perspective, composition, anatomy, color, etc. I don't deny that if you want to be an artist you have to study as much as you can, but I prefer to learn on my own terms.

ST: I really like all the rust tones in The Everlasting Return, especially in contrast with the blues. Why did you go with such a limited color palette? What about those specific colors captured the look and feel you were going for?

LEM: Initially, I had decided that The Everlasting Return was going to be a black and white comic. Then, when I went for color, I was aware that I didn't know much about color theory, so I limited my palette deliberately, to try to hide the fact that I didn't know what I was doing.

When you look at a comic book, even if you don't know anything about color, you can feel if it's poorly colored, because it annoys you and distracts you from the story. So, studying my favorite painters (especially Van Gogh), and seeing how limited their palette was, I thought that sticking to one or two dominant colors per page would help me.

After finishing The Everlasting Return, I bought some books on color theory and read them, so now I have more of an idea of what I'm doing when I color a page (or at least I hope I do).

ST: If you could illustrate any work of literary work, which would it be and why?

LEM: I've decided a few years ago that someday I will do a comic book adaptation of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Gustave Flaubert's novel (I'm not sure if it's a novel, because it's written in the format of a play). It would be a very interesting thing to do, especially visually, because I'd have to draw all these demons and monsters.

ST: What's next on your horizon?

LEM: Well, right now I'm working on a webcomic called Silver Nights. It's very different from The Everlasting Return. The theme, the pacing, the line work, the coloring, everything's different. I want to publish it as a graphic novel when it's finished, but my guess is that it's going to be like four hundred pages long, or more, and I've only done eighty pages, and I do one page per week, so I'm not going to finish it anytime soon.

Also, I'm working on "mR mILDEW Ends The World," a short story that will be available for free on the net, maybe as a webcomic, hopefully before New Year. It's something like an introduction to The Everlasting Return, and it contains one of Vokoban West's mR mILDEW's creepy children's books. It's not a prequel (I'm not a big fan of prequels or sequels), it's the story of a bookstore owner and his little daughter during the flood mR mILDEW caused.

And when I find the time, maybe next year, I will start a comic that will be about physics, gods, astronomy, the African cultures that endure in the American continent, and the forms of life that inhabit the surface of the Sun. I haven't written any single line yet, but it's all in my mind already. It will be a space-opera, and I will call it "Prince Momo."

ST: What advice do you have for aspiring comic book creators?

LEM: Well, The Everlasting Return is my first comic book; I still feel like an aspiring creator. So I won't give any advice of my own, I'll rather refer to the advice that's been helpful to me. One is Neil Gaiman's "Finish Things." Gaiman says you'll learn more from something you finished, even if it's a failure, than from something you never finished. The other one, the most important, is from an Alan Moore interview that I've read: Treat it (your craft) like a god, and write just for the glory of writing. That should be enough good advice for any aspiring creator. In case it isn't, there's Stephen King's: read a lot and write a lot. If you don't have time to read, you can't be a writer. So, there you go. Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Stephen King. I leave you in good company.

Thank you so much, Sheena, this was my first interview and I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Review of The Everlasting Return