Carljoe Javier On The Art And Design For His Book GEEK TRAGEDIES

When I started Geek Tragedies, many years ago in the early to mid-Noughties, there wasn't much sci-fi and fantasy being published in the mainstream literary publications locally. It's because of this that I believe this collection would never become a book. I thought I would eventually be selling it as an indie thing in some form or other, but I never thought a major publisher would pay it any mind. But on the urging of three writers and teachers that I admire, Jing Hidalgo, Butch Dalisay, and Jimmy Abad, I submitted the book to the UP Press.

When I got word of its approval, and my mind is a little hazy now which came first, but I remember that Adam and I either had worked on or were planning to work on Kobayashi Maru of Love together. My head's a bit messed up with the timelines, but I knew that Adam was the best guy to design the book. And when he told me that Josel Nicolas was onboard for it, I knew that it would be something. I had sort of worked with Josel before, in a project where Adam asked writers for text and he matched it up with artists' works, and he matched up Josel's komix and my writing. Also, Josel had done the art for the six-word stories I wrote, and I was fully confident that these guys would deliver something awesome.

What I wasn't expecting, and what I got, was the perfect design and art for Geek Tragedies. I didn't come up with the ideas here. Sure I threw some thoughts around, the idea of comics, of it really looking different from everything you see on bookstore racks, of a really comic book/pop sense to it. But when I saw the final designs I was just blown away.

My writing is largely homage-based. I take stuff I love, throw it in a blender in my brain, and come out with something that's kind of broken down and mixed all those things up, but I hope is still pretty yummy and satisfying. The art reflects that, taking my stories, my sensibilities, and mixing them with something that all three of us, Adam, Josel, and I, love.

I love Marvel comics. I love DC comics too. But when I was a kid, while all you smarty-artsy readers were reading Sandman and Watchmen and become enculturated by Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, dude I was hanging back admiring Jim Lee's X-Men (ok, granted now that we read it it's kind of, well, bleh, but as a kid it was massive fun) and learning about Spider-Man and the Avengers and all that. I wasn't too keen on the "smart" comic books, I wanted action and superheroes. And so when it was classic Marvel that Adam and Josel drew from, they had read my mind. But also, they took those classic covers, and they tried to add levels of realism and narrative by imposing a new kind of story and movement which did not exist there before. And that's the similar work I attempt to do in my stories.

All of this really is to say that Adam and Josel hit this one right out of the ballpark. There wasn't any question that they would come up with something outstanding, but they were not only outstanding in an aesthetic sense, but also a conceptual sense. And wow man, you can't ask for anything more than that when someone is interpreting your work.

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Here's me (Adam David) talking about it.