DF Interview: Jordan Thomas tackles some ‘Weird Work’ as Kickstarter sci-fi noir comes to Image Comics

By Byron Brewer

Following months of gang shootings, Detective Ovra Sawce is paired with a new partner on a triple homicide. But what were a billionaire's assistant, a hood-turned-cult leader and Sawce's former partner doing in that warehouse?

Writer Jordan Thomas (Frank At Home On The Farm) and legendary British artist Shaky Kane (The Bulletproof Coffin) are your guides through the corrupt, seedy streets of Stellar City in their new miniseries, Weird Work! The hard-boiled noir of LA Confidential mixes with the bright, alien-filled worlds of Futurama in this crime epic. I heard Jordan was working on this and was down for a discussion with the scribe. Here it is.  

Byron Brewer: Jordan, before we started with Weird Work (love the title) proper, talk a little about doing this book with the legendary British artist called (among other monikers) Shaky Kane.

Jordan Thomas: So, I wrote the series for Shaky. We’d worked together on another book I put out where every artist contributed one page of a story I’d written and from there we got talking about doing something longer together. I think Shaky’s idea was for us to do like a 12-page thing, but once I had the idea for Weird Work it just grew and grew and the final story is over 100 pages. I think Shaky’s happy about it, though – I hope!

But working with Shaky is always a pleasure. We have a constant IM chat going where we can discuss things and he’ll send me what he’s done that day and we can make any tweaks. He’s incredibly reliable and brings such a unique perspective to our work and considering he has been doing this a long time now he is still so incredibly passionate about making comics, so it’s both thrilling and fun to work with him.

Byron: What can you tell readers about the genesis of Weird Work? What was its inspiration, its life through crowdfunding, and how does it finally come to fruition at Image Comics?

Jordan Thomas: The seed was me wanting to work with Shaky again. From there I needed a story and I had just finished reading the James Ellroy novel, L.A. Confidential. I loved how sprawling it was with these events and character relationships that spanned decades and so settled on doing something like that but with a sci-fi twist so Shaky could have fun drawing some wild characters.

I’d released all my previous comics through Kickstarter, so it was never a question I’d go this way with Weird Work as well, as it allows you a certain security – comics are not cheap to make! At that time we had no idea it would end up at Image and we just aimed to make the best comic we could make and crowdfunding allows a certain freedom in that – as long as you can raise the money! It was only later on that Shaky mentioned he had a pretty solid in at Image (the most solid really) and so once the book was all finished we decided to try our luck sending it to Eric Stephenson, and luckily for us he said, ‘yes’.

Byron: Anything Shaky Kane does always has a twist. I take it we have a noir detective story here as presented through a sci-fi lens?

Jordan Thomas: Yes, very much so. I wanted to do a real crime epic. I have documents where I’ve plotted out previous events in the world going back a few decades, most of which aren’t really mentioned, but helped me build out a lived-in environment for the characters to go about their business.

However, the reason I really wanted to work with Shaky again was that I felt the page [count] I’d given him in the previously mentioned story didn’t take advantage of his skills. So giving him a 100-page story full of guys in suits set in dark rooms would have been a bit self-defeating, which is where the sci-fi setting came in. It also made it fun to write for me as I have other much more traditional crime/noir comics I’m working on as well, so having this one be the ‘colorful anything can happen’ book keeps my life interesting. I think you really see the benefit of letting Shaky loose in a kind of combo 50s America sci-fi world in the panels where we pull out and show the city or the crowded street scenes, which are just full of Shaky’s weird and wild creations.

Byron: Can you introduce your protagonist, Detective Ovra Sawce? And what is this about a new partner?

Jordan Thomas: I mentioned before about having gone back and created an in-depth history for Stellar City – the main location of our story – and our characters. I’ve got notes on Ovra’s whole career as a cop where he goes from a detective marked out for greatness to one terrible event throwing him off track and essentially leaving him on the scrap heap. We touch on this throughout the story without ever giving all the details away but a theme of the book is Ovra getting over this tragedy and proving to himself that he is a great detective. He’s a fairly odd fish of a guy, quite dry and to the point and in that way the new partner he gets, Donut Trustah, is important in reconnecting him with the world a little. He’s also blue with silver hair, with a bit of a Bowie ‘Thin White Duke’ vibe.

Byron: Spinning out of that query, what about our detective’s OLD partner? Is there something afoot down at the warehouse?

Jordan Thomas: The story all revolves around three dead bodies found in a warehouse who on the surface have no reason to be together – and one of them is Ovra’s former partner. Those two have a lot of history and that all factors into the story, but I don’t want to give too much away.

Byron: Can you discuss your idea of how you see Stellar City? With its crime-filled streets and gang shootings, it looks more like it’s ripped out of today’s headlines rather than a wondrous alien society.

Jordan Thomas: It’s certainly 30s to 50s inspired. It has a lot in common with the LA of Chinatown and L.A Confidential and those classic New York set noir stories in terms of cities with a dark heart trying to cover it with a bright sheen of progress and money. You could imagine Humphrey Bogart, but with two-heads or something, wandering around the streets of Stellar City trying to solve a crime. The building designs lean more towards a classic Curt Swan Metropolis or Moebius’ The Long Tomorrow. There is certainly a few modern issues that creep in but the kind of shootings are much more mobsters with tommy guns than drive-bys with Uzis.

Byron: Jordan, what other projects, inside or outside comics, in which you are involved can you tell our readers about?

Jordan Thomas: Well, to drag up one more L.A. Confidential reference right now, it is all very hush hush. Shaky and I are hard at work on another mini-series right now with a very cool publisher that should be announced soon. We also have a short story in the soon to be released XINO anthology from Oni Press.

I’m also just in final negotiations with a publisher to sign up a crime series I co-created with the incredible Chris Matthews called Mugshots, so again hopefully that will be announced before too long. Finally, I have also written a short script for a comic in the latest edition of the RAID Studio sci-fi anthology (the Canadian art studio Ramon Perez runs) that should be hitting Kickstarter soon – so keeping busy!

Dynamic Forces would like to thank Jordan Thomas for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions. Weird Work #1 (of 4) from Image Comics is slated to be on sale July 5^th!

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