How did you come up with the concept behind The Red Star?

Well, how did I come up with the concept behind The Red Star? [laughs] It was April, 1994 and I was living alone up in Berkeley, California, working on Tales of the Jedi. It just kinda came to me. My pop had told me when I was a kid...I guess if there is any origin of the story. Even though in April 1994 that was the moment when I would do a story about two Russian brothers that were veterans of a metaphoric Afghanistan, and how they were trying to get back together after being separated. And then, of course, everything came from that. That initial stuff goes all the way back pretty deep...The Red Star actually is, as much as it is about Russia it's also very autobiographical. Because of the fact that I don't know much about Russia, having never been there, ya know, I read my ass off for the last six years trying to digest as much as I possibly could to authenticate my metaphors. Other than that, to even further authenticate them, I just made it personal. I took the love that my brother and I have for each other - because we're very close. I took my father's stories about Russia - my father was an amateur historian.

Is your father Russian?

Pop is...as far as my family can track itself is Hungary. So there's no direct Russian lineage in my blood, but what there is - my father had a fascination with these people who were able to overcome all these great obstacles. There was so much suffering in Russian history yet they just keep getting through it. An estimated 27-45 million dead during World War Two. The millions that died in Stalin's coming - his purges. And before that even - what it was like living beneath the Czars. All the way from the beginning - the Vikings, the Mongols, the Turks. It's actually quite phenomenal.

Has your father contributed anything to the story? What does he think of it?

Pop loves it. [laughs] What he contributed to the story mainly is my enthusiasm for the material. Was teaching me at a very young age that the anti-Russian. That there should be some differentiation between anti-Communism and anti-Russian. You shouldn't be anti-Russian automatically if you're anti-Communist. And that a lot of the Russians themselves have nothing to do with the Soviet thing, what the Soviets became. And so he taught me about the siege of Leningrad, and the loses of WW2, and how these people have been through. They've almost always have inept or downright vial leaders. They've had a few great ones but ya know, not that many comparatively. And the difficulties of living just 1000 miles south of the Arctic Circle. You know, we can go to Seattle and if they go 1000 miles they're in the Arctic Circle. You can't underestimate what that means.

That's been really, really interesting for me is how they see The Red Star and they think we're gonna be Top Gun. Like how they show the Russians like Darth Vader's henchmen. Ya know, when you see the American pilots they've got the cool nicknames and the individualized helmets and you can see their faces. And then when you get into the Russian MiGs, it's just like heaving breathing, and the visors and the red star. Coming to get Tom Cruise. So it was really funny to see how conditioned people were and that's exactly what The Red Star is about. It's exactly about that reaction - about how amazingly strong the propaganda of any state is. How when a state chooses an enemy we all willingly decide that we will also have that enemy, because the state tells us to. And that's not just Russia, that's everywhere.

In a lot of ways your own political philosophy is entering into the storylines.

Definitely, definitely. It's definitely a man-versus-the-state story. A man versus society. And even though I've chosen Russia as the police state, it could easily be a story that translates to...if it sells well then there will be - I'm talking long-term here. After perhaps maybe 2-4 years of successful releases of The Red Star I might go into the American story. If you tell the story about the Russian 20th century you can tell a story about the American 20th century. And I would do the same translation of the United States that I did for Russia. I would take all the truth I could that I know about American history and find metaphors in which to pour that into. I think I would start with the Gulf Conflict. There's a contrast between the last Russian war which took place in a very hard, kind of almost Middle-Eastern, really Central Asian, kind of desert, barren Islamic nation. And then show when you show the Americans in the Gulf it's completely the opposite.

At the same time the complete effectiveness, the amazing precision, the awesome power of the Western-TransNationalist Alliance. In contract to the The United Republics of the Red Star who are on their last legs. They seem awesome in what they can do but what we see is hopefully down the line - like I said long-term - when we see the American forces we're going to be in awe of their power. We're going to be just - it's going to be completely just a symphony of power. Interestedly enough, it kind of changes the imagery. As young Americans we've always thought that the Russians were bad. They're the ones who always won the Olympic Games, they had the great gold medallists all the time. They were the ones when we beat them in the hockey game in 1980 in the Olympics we thought it was just a miracle - this powerful red machine. And now the tables have turned where the rest of the world is completely under our heel pretty much. And to show that is just something I would really love to do.

It's also great showing The Red Star people as individuals instead of how we've always viewed the Russians as like a collective society - being able to break it down.

Yeah, we're going to get into more and more of that. Interestingly enough the same way, like you said, that we view them as a collective and only now are we even able to after "The Cold War" are we able to begin to acknowledge that they're people. Most Americans know the name Yeltsin, or Gorbachev, or Putin, they come to know these names. As you go up the ladder of cultural literacy you'll find people who know the names [Famous Russians] and you get these individuals. Well that's the way The Red Star is going to work out oddly enough. As a Westerner I have that same perceptive ladder that I'm climbing. So we saw them as a collective as "The Red Army", as "The Russians", as "The Soviets". And now in the story we saw them as "The United Republics of the Red Star" and we'll begin to know Maya more and more obviously. And a little bit more about Vanya, and so on and so on. The characters themselves will rise from this collective.

Would you ever have any stories that are featured from the other side? The Nistaani side?

I plan on doing a Kar Dathra story, sometime down the future. This would be some kind of special issue where we get to meet Kar Dathra, and see him not as... Hmm, let me think how I want to say this... I want to humanize the Mujahedeen just as I've humanized the Soviets. I don't want to do to the Mujahedeen what the Americans have always done to the Soviets. You know what I mean? Everyone has to be human. And it's really tough because that's a complex way of telling stories and most people just want to have their villain as a villain. But the Mujahedeen are not villains, nor are the Soviets. And that's one of those things about the Soviets - it gets back to that whole men-versus-society thing.

You'll notice that Kar Dathra is chained to that book. You know, that spell book, he's chained to it. The book of his power. We're all chained to our beliefs, and some of us choose that chain and really embrace it and say "Hey, you know what? By God, I have my convictions and I will willfully chained to them and I have no problem with that whatsoever." Some of us are working against our chains. Hey, you know I might be such or such and person but that doesn't mean I can't also be such and such a person, and so on. But where do we get those chains? When society place those boundaries upon us? How do we fool ourselves that we're breaking them? All these questions are the reasons why I need to do these bold strokes. We see Kar Dathra, especially in the second issue, he's just raging. His face lives powerful, elemental force, but we're gonna get to a point in a special issue where we see Kar Dathra, and we see the battle from his perspective. That's going to be a really fun story for me to do. It's gonna really be quite fascinating.

The entire premise of The Red Star is really on a higher level. Do you ever think maybe you'll have some problems with alienating readers? A lot of people just like simple good-guy-win, bad-guy-lose type stories. Do you think it'll be hard breaking the mold and getting a higher level type story out there?

That's an eternal challenge for what you do as an artist. You don't, the big crime is pretentious, you don't want to be pretentious. But at the same time you don't want to be condescending. When you want to tell a story that is complex those are all pitfalls you can fall into. You know, The Red Star is very much a reaction to everything that's out there. There are a lot of things I do just because nobody else is doing them. When I first told, it was at WonderCon in '94 in Oakland, I first told a couple of my Dark Horse editors, Pete James was there, you know, big 'ol Dark Horse type crowd. And I was sitting there and they were like "So Chris, what do you want to do with Star Wars?" "Well, I want to do this fantasy allegory about the fall of the Soviet Union." [laughs] And the look at the table was just like...and just silent. And everyone was just like "Dude, what the fuck could possibly be interesting about that?" [laughs]

Like "So how ya gonna fit Luke Skywalker into it?"

Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Was Dark Horse kind of scared off? Too out of the norm?

Well the cool thing was that - that was back in '94 - so this was just us talking at a dinner talking about what projects we were going for. And actually it was approved at Dark Horse, four years later in '98. It had taken that long to the point where my research was effective and...well, don't let me get into the Dark Horse story because I want to answer your question about do I think I'll lose audience.

I'll tell ya, I'm really so happy and surprised at the audience out there that's been on our message board. It is true, that is definitely a fear. That years and years of pretty simple stories how is something with any kind of complexity going to break in. But my favorite stories are like those. They're out there. There's Sandman. There's Preacher. Dark Knight Returns, which is in its own way, I won't say simplistic, I will say "bold". But there are some complexities to it that do make it wonderful. The Watchmen, come on, they are out there. And that is the vein that I humbly, humbly, am trying to follow. It's not like I am comparing myself, that's what I am pursuing. I could be falling flat on my face but that's what I'm gonna shoot for.

Do you think this is a new age for comics; where you're breaching the simplistic-type comics? Ones that make you think?

Yeah. I think that we are, the artist, the creators within comics, are responding to a threat. And the threat is the end of the medium. And the wonderful thing I'm seeing now is we've got our back to the wall and we're gonna pull out everything we possibly can to survive. It's almost as if, to get back to Kar Darthra's Gate, it's almost as if we were completely surrounded and we have no idea how the hell we got here. We don't know what the hell we did wrong but we gotta survive. Everyone's pulling out "well, I'm gonna tell this story about this" and "I'm gonna try this, I'm gonna do this," because we haven't tried it before and we need to bring them back. And everyone is really pulling out, not only their formulate stories that pay the bills, but they're pulling out their emotionally-invested, challenging gambles. The Red Star is definitely that for me and my close friends who are financing me. And I think with Dark Victory, and I'll definitely give credit to that. Even the Alex Ross giant books - those are challenging books and they're really [on a higher level].

We're creatively trying everything we possibly can to pull us all through this. We all love the medium. When it comes down to it we all really care about each other, we have to at this point. Cause there's just so much competition. And The Red Star is the banner I fly in that cause. I hope...ultimately the audience is going to decide, but this is the best I know how to do. And I think this is another good thing - a lot of times you will hear an artist say "well, I'm doing this job. I'm not too emotionally-invested in it. I love my job as a comic's artist but basically this is a job." And yeah, we've all done it cause that's what it is to be a professional. But I think we're seeing a lot of emotional stories now. I think we're seeing stories that the artists have a lot invested in. I think you only do that when you think there's something to lose. And ya gotta try it.

I was talking to a local comic store manager and he mentioned that he'd rather just have you guys keep going on issues instead of taking a month-long break after the second issue.

It's funny because, we're just a small clan ya know, we're not a big corporation or anything. So we thought that we would be...we did that for our own survival as well. We didn't know if the - since the industry trend is Issue 3 is your lowest sales point, and then Issue 4 supposedly stabilizes it. Well, you got to make sure that - industry wisdom is - Issue 1 is gonna be your good sales, Issue 2 will drop, and Issue 3 will drop, and then 4 is the time you find your audience. So our Issue 1 was where it was and Issue 2 of course did a little drop, but it's not really that much of a drop. And I think that after the success of Issue 1 that Issue 2 may actually pick up almost to the point where Issue 1 was, which is rare in the industry. And since we did take the skip for 3 and didn't ask the retailers to order blind - 3 issues instead of 2 - what our hope is is that we will achieve the Issue 4 stabilization effect by Issue 3. And we already made that decision before we knew that people would absolutely love it. We kinda had to go with it.

I first pitched it to Larry Marder about a week before he left Image and then I pitched it to Jim Valentino. Jim had been very cool and committed to the books that Larry had already approved and said "Hey, Larry approved it and your commitments are fine." Fortunately it wasn't a grudging commitment. Jim was very excited about us. We came in and did a meeting with him and that was the day he decided that we would be good candidates for the cover of Previews. And it came through. We were really happy about that, I definitely had never been on the cover of Previews before. And that was really a benchmark for me. It's just one of those great things where you think "Hey, this project might actually work. People might actually want to read about the fall of the Soviet Union." [laughs]

So the reaction was fantastic, I brought them the same portfolio I bring to conventions. Basically black and white sketches along with some photo montage I did with a friend. There was a time when I thought that I would be using some photo montage in The Red Star but it turned out to be too expensive. Also, I think we're already doing so much visually with the 3-D and with a huge layout style that is different. I think that photography might have taken us past the point of reader acceptance. I think that photographs do not have a very good history of succeeding with audiences, but of course, neither does 3-D and we were able to make that work.

Let's see...I pitched to Dark Horse in December of '98 and then they accepted it. And then when we got the contract we couldn't reach a satisfactory agreement so I turned down Dark Horse and was able to find a contact at Image. And that was two weeks before San Diego '99. So basically I went into Image in the summer of '99, got the deal, and they asked "Hey, do you want a booth in San Diego?" [laughs] "Welll, sure". And we to San Diego last year with basically nothing but a big poster and a flyer of the same image as the poster. And a portfolio and some other poster actually of the characters. We talked up a story and it was amazing the response. It was really something. We had one image really of some character images and it was just so awesome to have people react to the ideas. All we could do at that point was just tell them what we were thinking about doing. So it was just a complete oral passing on of the story. "It'll be like this. It'll be that..." [laughs]

That's a great question. In '94 obviously I didn't know a damn thing about computers. I was a straight comics guy. So I was pretty much back in the 17th century taking my pencil and my ink and putting it on paper, and then shipping it off the company. Wait no, I wasn't even inking at that point, just pencilling. [laughs]

I didn't know a damned thing about computers - I had never owned one at that point. But I came up with this story and it just poured out the information. Started reading, started writing. If I read you the first two I did of what The Red Star was going to be it would be quite funny at this point. What survived is cool but what didn't is really kind of hilarious. At any rate, I got a job at Activision. The Red Star was always really my dream project and I knew I would be doing it over a long period of time, I wasn't going to be rushing it. So in the meantime I got a job at Activision, Inc. doing Playstation games. Basically doing character design and conceptual design for videogames. And that was where I was introduced to 3-D. I hadn't been a big videogame player. I've always liked em, I've always dug em.

So there I was working at Activision working on videogames and that's where I saw, wow, I was introduced to this whole 3-D, CGI-imagery stuff. It wasn't long after that that I started wondering about what you could do with 3-D in a comic book. It had been done, it wasn't a new idea. I'd seen Digital Justice, the Batman book. I'd seen the Ironman book that was done in 3-D. That was a big mystery to me. It looked ok, but the limitations seemed just to be really, really harsh.

So I learned 3-D just by being around it. I'll tell you, the big breakthrough was a great book by Asamiya called Dark Angel [Recently released in the US this month by Image - Ed.]. There's an actual Japanese edition that took all the covers of Dark Angel, which are 2-D and 3-D, like Anime characters on a 3-D environment. That was one of the first experiments I'd seen. I had the notion, like I said before that, but that really showed me that, wow, we are moving towards that. And this was, I thought, the first successful experiment of that. The mistakes that Batman Digital Justice and the Ironman book made were that they tried to do the characters in 3-D as well, and it's just technologically and economically impossible. It's just not to that point.

But what Asamiya had done was put the 2-D characters on a 3-D environment and then worked towards making them now be flattened out in a 3-D environment. He gave great depth to his 2-D elements and this was something I couldn't had come up with had I not been working in videogames and not made friends with Joki Sita. He's just one of those really cool creators that you talk about ideas with. I had told him that I was pitching a Star Wars story that included 3-D, and this was before, since I had never written a story before I didn't think Dark Horse would accept it. And he's the one who said "Hey, have you seen Asamiya's Dark Angel book?" So I bought the book and actually Allen Coulter, my 3-D guy, now has it. I gave it to him as a gift cause I wanted him to be able to refer to it. And of course, he basically gave it one glance over and realized he was better than what was going on in the book. But it didn't take him long to digest information. But it was a great reference point for us.

They weren't really hesitant. They were incredibly enthusiastic. I think that if they really had any fears they wouldn't have given us the cover of Previews. Because they're in such a delicate position right now. They're kind of like the hot chick that dumped someone years ago. Everyone wants to love em, everyone wants to miss em, but we don't feel they'll ever come back to us. Image wants to reestablish itself. But at the same time they're very...one of their weaknesses is their greatest strength. The greatest strength of Image is that it was started by artists, and is still the best place for an artist to go if he/she has the intestinal fortitude to own his/her own rights and create his/her own characters and put themselves completely on the line and sink or swim with their ideas. For that Image is the best place to go. I thought it was Dark Horse - it's not, it's Image. And that's phenomenal.

And because of that they are - because of their convictions in giving artists a place where they can find a home for their properties and not have to give it up in order for it to be expressed in reality. Because of that, they are a victim to a lot of excesses of any artist. Any artist that is going to put himself/herself on the line in that way is probably an extreme individual that may or may not come through all the time and then Image's reputation gets hurt. So they're really in a tough position, having seen it from the inside now.

Cause ya know, back in the early days of Image, and I was working at Dark Horse, I was jealous of them, I was angry at them. I didn't like the stories but at the same time I loved the computer coloring. I couldn't see why everyone was buying millions upon millions of these copies but at the same time I wished I was there. [laughs] To be completely honest. Just because of the fact that, my God, they had the attention of the entire industry - they were the entire industry for that short window. And then how - I've always wondered how did they piss it all away? And it wasn't as black and white as I thought it was. Human beings are not perfect, we're not fully formed. And it's so easy now to look back on the Image days and say "Oh, of course they knew they were going to succeed." Hell no, they didn't know.

I'll tell ya, among the artists that are working at Image, they definitely get the props for giving us a place to be. We couldn't go DC and get this deal, we couldn't go to Marvel and get this deal, we couldn't even go to Dark Horse and get this deal. Unless you're a name, and then you could get this kind of deal at Dark Horse. But for a virtual unknown? With a completely new property? To get the cover of Previews? And to get the support we've gotten? It's simply something I couldn't get anywhere else and they've got, I think the artist they've got working for them definitely respect that. As far as they handled The Red Star I couldn't believe how they wanted to do it. I couldn't believe enthusiastic Jim was about setting a new standard. And when I sat there, and I was like "My god, these guys". I'll always have a special place in my heart for Dark Horse because they were the place I came to the industry with. But at the same time when I first mentioned the idea of doing a 3-D comic book to them, this was like back in '97. When I first mentioned it they thought I meant like a 3-D comic where like people were gonna have to have 3-D glasses to read the comic.

[Laughs] Yeah, exactly. So God bless em, it reminded me like oh yeah, this is what I used to be like before I worked at Activision. I knew nothing, I knew nothing. I mean, I come back to Dark Horse and I'm like this big computer snob, but I really wasn't. Because I remember what it was like when me, Mister Comics Geek, walked into Activision, this multimillion dollar videogame corporation, and I'm asking people what the hell word processing is. I mean, all I knew about computers at that point was word processing on a Macintosh. My nick-name at Activision was "low-tech", because I didn't know a damn thing. Then I come back to comic books with all this, "I have come from the mountain-top with 3-D!" and not everyone was ready for it. But Image was like "Hell yeah", we want that 3-D stuff. And it reminded me of well, hey, this is Image. They were the ones who brought Photoshop coloring into comic books. So I mean, say what you want about them but you know, they are definitely willing to take a chance on upping the ante as far as quality is concerned. So no, there was no hesitation really.

Do you think there's any coincidence to The Red Star and Dark Angel coming out at about the same time?

It's so phenomenal that when I saw Dark Angel I knew I had to get into gear because great ideas are in that collective unconscious. The same ideas are being had all over the world. I knew I wanted bust out as soon as possible. And when I saw Dark Angel I thought "My God, the Japanese are already going there." Of course they are. They're such bold innovators. My favorite Akira Korasawa, one of my favorite comic book artists is Shiro. I'm an anime freak. I'm really just tuned into the way they tell stories. So when I saw that Asamiya was doing Dark Angel, I though, "Man, I better get into gear. I gotta get this out before it's old hat to do 3-D/2-D." Sure enough, we go to San Diego a couple years later and there's Digital Broom with a 3-D book, there's Dan Frega with YourStation, people where having ideas all over the place on how to do it. I think Asamiya so far is one of the best attempts. I think that we've done pretty well and I think we'll continue to grow. I think that it is still a working process and our 2-D and 3-D messing and what we can do with that messing is really going to grow as time goes on. We're going to really be trying some lots of really cool experimental stuff as far as what kind of freedom we can get in 3-D.

Yeah, and I can't wait for, whoever it was that worked on Asamiya's team who put that together, I would love for them to see The Red Star and basically kind of thank them for giving me a point of reference. It's kind of trippy and ironic that that was such a jump-off point and a point of reference for my process and to have them both coming out is cool.

A lot of people have been saying that The Red Star is completely based on the Soviet Union and the Cold War, even some referring to them as Communist. Can you answer this once and for all exactly how closely related the societies are, and if they are suppose to be in the same time period.

Ok, here's how it goes. One alternate universe. Totally alternate parallel universe. Parallel with certain breaks along the way. Have you ever read Stephen King's The Talisman? It's this great book in which there's this fantasy dimension that is like and unlike our own, and the two planes are connected. That's basically The Red Star. It's a parallel universe, but two universes are connected. Our universe of Soviet history and the history of the U.R.R.S. are connected, but it's in a very supernatural, distant, multi-planear way that we'll be getting into as the story goes on. I'm never going to go too much into it. I'm going to focus on that dimension, the world of The Red Star.

Let me try to simplify this answer before I get even more complicated. It is a parallel universe, it is not our Earth, it is not our Soviet Union. It is a complete metaphor for it. They're not Communist, they're Internationalist, by the way, we haven't said that word yet.

No, it's like - the word for Communist in the land of The Red Star is Internationalist. The word for Capitalist in The Red Star is Trans-Nationalist. Capitalist/Communist in our world, Trans-Nationalist/Internationalist in the world of The Red Star. So once again, just showing you how close the parallels are. For every truth there is a metaphor. There are certain truths that are omitted because it's just too damn big a world to deal with them all. There are some metaphors that are my own just because the fact that I have that artistic license that I need certain conventions to tell the story effectively.

The reason I see these are connected are the obvious reason. Both the U.S.S.R. and the U.R.R.S. use the red star. The clue about the parallel universe and how close they are yet how distant is all throughout the book. You have U.S.S.R. - they have U.R.R.S. It's almost that mirror imaging. Like I said, we have Communist - they have Internationalist. We have Capitalist - they have Trans-Nationalist. Such and such and so forth. It all goes from there. It's a parallel universe, it's a mirror of our own.

The time periods are relatively similar, yes. For the sake of telling the story in an effective, historical context. In order to keep the historical aspirations of The Red Star intact the years are similar. For instance, Afghanistan/10-year war, Al'Istann/10-year war. Great Patriotic War, which we know as WWII. For the sake of being able to link the worlds and being able to have the historical aspirations of The Red Star. There's an aspect of The Red Star in which I really want to really introduce people to the history of the Soviet Union, and I want to do it through a fantasy context. In order to do that authentically in my mind, I wanted to keep it somewhat similar.

At the beginning of the story I had these notions where I would put more distance between the two. For example, I would have WWII, the Great Patriotic War, being like 100 years, long bloody war. But then I realized if I do that though I'm not going to be able to have connections between the revolutionaries and the generation that fought WWII, and the generation that fought Afghanistan. The more research I did the more I felt it was necessary for me to make those connections because it's very important. The soldiers that went to Afghanistan, they wanted, just like the Vietnam soldiers wanted the WWII experience, the same thing with the Afghan soldiers in the Soviet Union. They wanted their WWII experience. They wanted to come back to the parades and the victory and they wanted to strike a blow for their own beliefs. It didn't work out for the Vietnam vets, it didn't work out for the Afghan vets. But if you don't have that connection between WWII/Vietnam, WWII/Afghan, you lose the power of the historical meaning. So yes, in that response it's very much a mirror image, it's very much a parallel. I would say the passage of time is one of the things that's really, really close to our world.

On a scale of things that are close to our world, all the way to things that are very different from our world, obviously the sorcery is very different but the timeline would be one one of those things that are very the same.

Maya is a huge character, and she will...it's not her book in the spirit in the history of Russia. It's a team book. The main thrust of the story, which we haven't really gotten to yet - the Kar Dathra's Gate is really prologue, it really is. We're introducing Maya because Maya's journey throughout the story, as she goes other heroes will join her on this quest of hers to redeem the soul of the United Republics of the Red Star, let's say the Land of the Red Star because just like we have the Former-Soviet Union, Maya lives in the former U.R.R.S. So basically what her challenge, what her quest will be to find a way for her country to go on, to move past the more tragic aspects of the Internationalist legacy, let's say. And find a new world, a new meaning, a new way for the Land of the Red Star to exist.

No, no, no. See, once again here's a place where we're once again exactly like real history, or our history. The Nistaani drove back the United Republics of the Red Star. It was a defensive war, they didn't come in and conquer the U.R.R.S. In that way you can apply everything you know about the real Russia to the Land of the Red Star. See there's things like that that are just straight-out history. But still in the fantasy context, it's just those are parallels.

Yeah, definitely. I would, in fact, this is the reason I'm not really telling a lot in each issue. I'm rather simplify things into a few big bold images per issue. There's so much to tell. I could honestly be doing this comic happily for the next 10 years and get into the Great Patriotic War, and the arms race, get into the Gulf war, from the American side. Like I said, if there's going to be a spin-off, if would be the American side, so you'd actually have these two comics that were the Cold War. You'd actually have the Russian side of what they were going through and the American side. As translated into fantasy world.

That was me, don't forget for the four years of the project it was all just pretty much me researching Russia, and making the fantasy world. And yes, I would ask people about it. I would kind of just being an artist and having close friends, kick it around with them.

The Skyfurnace came as a direct metaphor for the Scorched-Earth policy. I wanted flying ships, just purely because of the Soviet propaganda posters. A lot of the visual aesthetics, weapons, ships, things like that, a lot of the visual aesthetics came directly from Soviet propaganda posters. I wanted The Red Star should be, as much as possible, a Soviet propaganda poster come to life. The world, and for anyone who's ever seen a Soviet propaganda poster, what's immediately powerful about them, is that you see the world they were trying to create in that poster. You look at the poster, it's a window into the industrial Utopia that they were trying to build. And that's what The Red Star is suppose to be - a window into that world. Which actually never happened really, but therefore is a fantasy world. The great Utopia of the Soviet ideal was, in the final analysis, a fantasy ideal. It never happened. And that's really The Red Star. This is the world that never happened. And even that one had trouble.

I'm sorry, back to weapons design. The Soviet posters, there's so many great flying elements. Even if they're trains, they're up there in the negative space, they look like big flying trains. And Zeppelins, and tanks. And there's a lot of negative space around vehicles so I thought I wanted to have these big flying ships. The reason why they're called Skyfurnaces is because of the Scorched-Earth policy - the ancient Russian military tactic of retreating eastward and burning everything so invading armies wouldn't have anything to sustain themselves on. So I decided to take, if you look at them in profile, they form an iron curtain.

Those are the little triggers that I use when I'm designing something. There's so many little triggers. When we look for triggers, when we look for inspiration, when we look for options, when we look for solutions as artists, we go to the Soviets. "Ok, what should this ship look like? It should be a big, flying iron curtain." So little triggers like that, it'll be difficult for people to ever get them but it's kind of for us to know that we're working from a place that's using the Soviets as inspiration. That's really what makes the book, I think that part of the reaction that people are having is they don't necessarily know that symbol is there, but the fact that it is there makes it all correct.

You can also say [the Skyfurnaces] are a nuclear symbol. The way that it works out - it really is a visual manifestation of what we thought of them during the anti-Communist days. This kind of big, imposing, metal-industrial nightmare that can just burn us at will.

The sorceresses, the fantasy, the ghosts, will always be in the service of the reality. The reality will always wear the mask of fantasy and sorcery in order to describe itself in a way that is symbolically powerful and not necessarily literally. For example, the Isolator sequence. The Isolator chamber is an actual word from Russian history. It's basically a torture chamber in the prison camps - the gulags. Whenever you were in solitary confinement, you were in what they called an Isolator. You were in there alone. You were tortured - and I mean countless people suffered in these Isolator chambers - and many of them died. For some people they were strong enough, and depending on where their prison camp was. If you were in a prison camp in Northern Siberia your Isolator is pretty much a death warrant. It could be argued - I'm saying some people argue this, I don't argue this - that that torture was one of the acts, an element of the Soviet state, and the Soviet state did accomplish things. So it's so logistic. So it is historic in that is nonetheless what happened.

My personal argument is that they would have a lot more without the torture, because a lot of the time the Bolsheviks tortured their most brilliant people. So I got this really complex historical truth, right? I've got Isolators, I've got KGB, I've got torture, I got Stalin, I've got the Bolsheviks. How do I take all these symbols and make them into something clear? Make them into something simple. Make them into something visually interesting.

Well I take Maya, a sorceress. I isolate her in an Isolator tunnel. I make it torturous for her. She's using a superpower which is very comic book but it's torturous which is not very comic book. When most superheroes use their power it's not causing them agony. But the torture element brings it back true to the source reference, right? So here's Maya, in this Isolator tunnel. Here's her torture - it's painful, it's horrible, it's agonizing. But through this agony, this pain, she is focused into the weapon of the state. She accomplishes a goal of the state. The state, by torturing her, just like the real Soviets, they chose to get the best out of their people not by really giving to them as much as stripping them of everything they could. Just ringing everything they could out of each citizen.

So that's the most simple example I can think of, of the way I take the reality of Soviet history and translate it into the fantasy of having this tortured woman serving the state in the only way she knows how. The only way she's been trained to do.

Don't forget, back when she's a soldier in the Isolator tunnel...well how can you forget, I've never told this part of the story. [laughs] When she's a soldier in the Isolator tunnel, she's a young girl. She's a soldier. She's been through the Academy. She doesn't know anything except for this really hurts but I gotta do it and thank God I lived again. That's all she knows. And now though, nine years after the death of her husband, she's had all these train-rides, and all this time, once again in isolation. But she's had this to think about what the state has done to her, and what the state has done to all of them. And these frustrations about Marcus' death, these frustrations at the state not living up to its promises are going to manifest themselves and that's what's going to drive her into the quest that she goes upon. Which will basically pit her against the Red Fleet.

Her and the group of heroes that she encounters are going to find a reason to go against the Red Fleet. They're going to mutiny, abandon their posts, and the Red Fleet is going to be their enemy. And so it's not so much that they want their former brothers and sisters and comrades to be their enemy, but what Maya and her comrades will discover is that in order to save their people they have to go against some of their own people.

Some people say that the book would accomplish more if it came out as a larger graphic novel-type, as they do in Europe. Is that something you'd ever consider doing?

We'd love to. I mean we'll of course do the collected editions as time goes on. But in order to do a big volume of work, what that would mean realistically is I would have to take a huge break from releasing anything. Which might happen. We are going to do that skip month with Issue 3 and we're also going to skip October. So we're going to have Issue 3 in September and Issue 4 in November. So we can add more pages to the story. So we can have a little more information about characters. So we can get a little bit more into the story in that way. So we're already kind of moving in that direction. Away from a simple monthly. Because a monthly really can't do justice to everything we're trying to do. By taking these next couple issues, which we will complete Kar Dathra's Gate with Issue 4. In order to take the time to do it right we're going to give ourselves a month in between Issue 2 and Issue 3.

Because that's one of the things we've heard a lot about. We've heard a lot of people talking about "Gee, I wish there was more information." Which is great, it's very flattering. It's great to have people want more info. So what we're going to do is take a little extra time and put a little bit extra into the book. So we are kind of moving into that direction. I think it does suit The Red Star to have a little more in it than the average comic. But that means it can't be...I mean you can crank out a Doctor Doom every month but if you're trying to do a story like The Red Star and really give the audience what they want as far as amount of material, for the first couple issues at least we're going to have to take a break between 3 and 4. And then coming next year, 2001, we're still planning. But we're probably going to try to put out maybe...like a month and then a month, and then a skip. Like book, book, skip, book, book, skip. So we'll basically have two books everything three months.

You know, with the 3-D also, if we want to keep throwing huge 3-D models at the audience and stuff, it's something that we want to do right. And we have such a challenge too...there's so much story to tell that I think the audience will really appreciate it. I'd love to be out every month but you know what? We're not Fantastic Four. We're not Formula. We're not penciled and inked.

[Laughs] Exactly. So coming out every month is something that maybe we can get to that point. We'll definitely be at least eight books a year. We most likely won't be bi-monthly. That's only six books a year and I need more story than that. Probably be eight books a year plus an annual.

In fact, if people are still buying this by December...December will be the first such issue. [Laughs] You know, from our perspective we don't how's our audience will be tomorrow. If there's really excitement out there, we can feel it. We love the message board but from our position we're just praying that we survive. Kind of like the Bolsheviks after the Revolution. It just seems that at any moment someone could stop down and just get rid of us.

If we're jammin', if the audience really does dig this, like they do already. If they stay with us, and I think they will, the next two stories are just...I'm really proud of them. Then in December we'll be doing a kind of short story - probably about Marcus and Maya when they first fell in love. And in the back, after the short story, will be some, you know, character sketches and wire-frames of models. Things like that. We're still deciding what exactly will go in there, but we would like to do a special issue. Talk a little bit about process, a little bit about Team Red Star, do some nice bios. Things like that.

We basically put out an issue in like three weeks. Beginning to end. Once the models are built it's not that difficult, of course my modelers are awesome. So that's an advantage of using 3-D, and it is a feature because you can put amazing stuff out very quickly. And you leave your artist basically doing figure-work. If you look at the figure-work it's like I can concentrate on doing really nice figures. I don't have to do quick, hacky figures. And use a lot of scratchy ink-lines to make up the fact that I can't do anatomy. I can just sit there and do really, I can get into the anatomy. I can make the anatomy correct and make the expressions very full of emotions. Because I got the time, because I don't have to draw tree Skyfurnaces blasting. I don't have to draw a train. And I get a better-looking train than I can draw anyway. You know, the perspective is always correct, the colors are always there.

I think that the entire industry is going to move towards 3-D for the fact that deadlines being the interesting thing that they are. And let's face it, it's just a modern imagery. It just looks, it can look great. I think we've proved once and for all that 3-D does have a place in the future of comics. And one of the reasons is economy. It is a bit on the expensive side right now but it is something that will become only cheaper, and only quicker, and only better-looking.

I'm really hoping it does because it would be so damn cool to see us being ready for...to see comics evolve a little bit. I mean it was great to see Photoshop become the standard for comics color. That was a great thing for comic books. And I think it would be a great thing also for 3-D to become a standard. And the great thing is that there's no law that has to be passed that says that no one can do black-and-white comic books with no 3-D. The purists will deal with the pure comics and etc., etc., etc. Yes, when Photoshop invaded comics color it was the end of the watercolor dye, basically. It was the end of color-proofs. And that's gone because the color looks so damn good. I'm not a Ledite, I don't believe that we don't use mortar and pencils, we don't use horse-drawn carriages, things are better when you move towards them. I think it's a simple matter of evolution.

I will say this - our philosophy at Team Red Star is establish ourselves as a comic. We've seen over the last three years comic book people who can't wait to ditch their audience and do a videogame or ya know. They really zip through issues on an erratic schedule. They have a great audience but they use the audience only so they can go to movie studios and say "Look how many people are buying my comic book. Why don't you give me a movie deal/why don't you give me a videogame deal?" And so the fans are left out in the cold because they no longer get the comic book. So we're not going to do it that way. Comic first. If we get to that point it'll be later on. It's gonna be after I'm satisfied the fans have proved that they want to see us month after month, after we're satisfied that we've given them a great amount of entertainment. Thanking them for coming along with us. And having a movie done well.

The movie would be a dream come true obviously but it's gotta be done right. It's gotta be done in time. And I don't want to rush it. There are some artists out there that are desperately clamoring for those deals, and I'm not one of them. We want to do a great comic. We want to establish ourselves.

First mainstream title was Tales of the Jedi. [names about 150 different Star Wars books, all for Dark Horse]. So I've done a lot of Star Wars books. I also did a Superman annual. The Superman annual was probably my...there was some good moments in it but it was probably my weakest work, if only because of the fact...[laughs] because it while I was touring with a movie company in Australia. It was really a fun time. I was kind of partying all night and drawing all day. It was quite fun. Needless to say it was difficult for me to get work at DC after that. [laughs]

So then I went to do videogames. "Ahh, so what. You can't take a joke, I'm gonna go work in videogames." [laughs]

No doubt, no doubt. So yeah, it worked out. Between Superman and Star Wars, those are my only comics work and everything else is videogames.

Whew, man. When I saw Dark Knight Returns. I was 19 years old. I saw Dark Knight Returns and realized that comics didn't have to be everything that I had...All my prejudices about comics were broken by Frank Miller. And then subsequently Alan Moore with Watchmen. And I know Alan Moore hates to hear that because he's just on another plane from when he did Watchmen but nonetheless, between Watchmen and Dark Knight I was hooked. And I decided that I could do something.

My friend Frank Gomez asked me if I wanted to do a Star Wars book. And I said "Sure, what the hell." Not quite 22 I think. Or I think I was 22. Frank said, "Listen, there's this Tom Beach guy who just done Dark Empire. We're sending out sample scripts and asking for submissions for sample pages. As an audition for who's gonna draw Tales of the Jedi. And I basically passed the audition - I was one of the three artists that got the job. I got the cool job cause I got Issues 1 and 2, and back then royalties on a Star Wars book were pretty damn cool.

I think online comics can rock. We have a great, great online plan for The Red Star. It's a very simple website now obviously, but we have some really ambitious ideas for web comics that we'll be unveiling soon.

You know, we're innovators, and experimenters. Just like we're innovating and experimenting with 3-D in a comic book we have some great, great ideas for what a comics website can be. That's coming down the line, we basically need more damn money and more damn time. We want to do it the want we want to do it, but it'll happen.

Hmm. Nah, not really, I'm not reading anything. I'm not reading a damn thing, it's really funny actually. Actually, you know what? There's one. Reinventing Comics by Scott McCloud. That's one that I'm dying to read.

[Laughs] Who the hell would I be? Gosh, if I could be..that'd be so rad dude. Ok, here we go. Um, you know what. Galactus. No, just kidding. [Laughs] Devouring planets. Hmm, he's not really a comic character, there's a lot of fictional characters I would like to be. But hmm, you know what? I'd have to say Buckaroo Banzai.

[Laughs] If I could date a comic book character who would it be? Big Barta. Barta's rad.

[Laughs] Definitely . At least has convictions. He knows where he stands. He doesn't have people telling him everything he's suppose to wear and think and feel.

[Laughs] Hell no. [Laughs] Hey, here I am. I have a chance to make the John Rocker mistake.

Yeah, exactly dude. Rocker taught us all to shut the hell up on that one. Anyway, that's a funny question dude. That's a funny question.

There is in fact a Maya maquette coming out and another maquette of a character. These are statuettes. If we are possible enough merchandising will be one of the things that happens. We would love to have little Maya action figures on our desktop. If it's something, once again that's something that's not really our choice. If the audience really wants a Maya action figure they'll buying The Red Star and justify our expenditure. But I'd love to see that.