Cut from the same cloth as something like Shaun of the Dead, Aliens vs. Parker is a genre homage that finds a group of hapless video game addicted Space-Ex delivery employees caught up in something much bigger than themselves and struggling to stay alive.
We caught up with Scheer and Giovannetti to see what they’ve got planned for the series, which hits comic shops this Wednesday, March 13.
IGN Comics: So tell me about the Space-Ex employees that we’re following in this series. Who are these characters?
Nicholas Giovannetti: They’re basically a bunch of guys that have a job that allows them to hang out all day and avoid responsibilities. In space, no less, but it’s also super boring.
Paul Scheer: Yeah, they don’t have adventures, they just deliver packages. They all want to be Han Solo but essentially they are just Fedex guys in space. In many ways, if you want to get really nerdy with it, it’s essentially like watching the crew of Deep Space Nine get brought into an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Now that I’ve turned off 2/3rds of your readers do you have any other questions I can answer with obscure Star Trek references.
IGN: More likely you’ve appealed to 2/3rds of our readers. So Aliens vs. Parker sounds like it’s got its roots in comedy. How did you find your comedy roots translated to comics? Was there anything you found challenging in terms of the comics medium as opposed to working in film or TV?
Scheer: The toughest thing working in this medium is conveying the attitude of the characters; in TV and film, the actors bring the words to life. Here we really have to rely on our illustrator, Manuel Bracchi, to bring character and emotion to the drawings. Hopefully it works. If not, Nick and I will come to your house and read it to you…
You take it for granted but most comics that you read have an established protagonist; here we are starting from scratch and we only have four short issues to introduce them and tell their story, which is shorter than most books get to lay out an arc. Imagine Scott Synder trying to do the entire arc of Court of Owls in four books instead of the 11 or 12 he did it in. It’s tough.
Giovannetti: Luckily for us, dick jokes take up less room then owl assassins.
Giovannetti: We are definitely more to the homage side than spoof, more like Shaun of the Dead. We were not trying to make fun of sci-fi at all, but when you look for comedic beats within a genre you do spoof it a little. What was appealing to us we was trying to do a big sci-fi comedy like all the movies we grew up on.
Scheer: I love those movies. If we are half as good as either of those two movies, I’d be happy. I love movies where normal guys get caught in extraordinary situations. Kinda answering that question, “What would I do if I was in Aliens?” That’s how we came up with this idea. Nick and I basically started with this as a movie and instead of sitting on a script that would be too expensive and probably linger in development hell forever we decided to take our idea to comics and have something real. The most frustrating part of working in TV and film is that you have to convince someone to let you make what you want; in comics you can do whatever you want and for 1% of the budget of TV and film.
IGN: The book deals with a fictional first person shooter called Warfighter. Are you guys big gamers? If so, any particularly amusing stories about the effects of a gaming obsession on your everyday lives?
Scheer: Not so much anymore. I’m married and my wife has set out very limited Xbox limits. But if I had my druthers, I’d be playing all the time and never see any of my friends or do any work. That being said, I play a bunch of Walking Dead on my iPad and I’m sadly addicted to Simpsons: Tapped Out. It’s awesome.
Giovannetti: Oh man, I love that Walking Dead game. I’m a big gamer in general, and I do love shooters. No effects on my life, but I have a friend who used to fight with his wife a lot while we were all playing Rainbow Six. She’d come home, see him on the couch, and just start yelling at him. We’d hear the whole fight on Xbox Live. Apparently some women aren’t freedom loving patriots who appreciate heroes that protect the virtual world from terrorists. Or maybe she didn’t like the sound of gunfire at 3 AM. It would be impossible to know for sure.
IGN: How do the characters’ obsession with this fake FPS help them out when they find themselves in over their heads?
Giovannetti: It gives them a short hand to understanding the world of Space Marines, as well as false confidence, which is what gets them into trouble in the first place.
Scheer: Yeah, in many ways they start treating real world situations like they are in the game and quickly realize that the consequences in the real world are much more severe. Essentially our main characters die in the first seven pages and the rest of the book are just static pages as we watch their bodies decompose. We really wanted to bring some verisimilitude to this genre. Oh, I should have said spoiler alert.
IGN: You mentioned the artist Manuel Bracchi earlier – how did he come on board, and what does he bring to the series?
Giovannetti: Manuel was suggested to us by our editor, Dafna [Pleban]. We were looking for someone who could do scary, funny, and cinematic. It’s a tall order, but Manuel has totally delivered.
Scheer: Plus, he lost a bet.
Scheer: I had a meeting with Ross Richie and he really sold me on the idea of having total creative freedom in the world of comics. I never really thought of that as a possibility. I told him about this idea and he immediately said yes. He then set up a structure that made it really easy for first timers like Nick and I to learn this process as we were doing it. We also looked to friends I have in the world, like Ed Brubaker and Gerry Duggan to give us advice along the way.
Giovannetti: Everybody’s help has been amazing!
IGN: Based on your experience so far, is comics a medium you’d like to return to beyond Aliens vs. Parker?
Scheer: For sure. It’s tough though because I’m used to being able to write something, edit it, cast it, shoot it and then edit that. Here you are forced to do everything simultaneously. There is a whole lot less room for trial and error, so it’s scary. But really fun.
IGN: Anything you guys want to add about the series?
Scheer: Contrary to what everyone says, reading this book won’t give you an STD. That is a dirty rumor started by the Dark Horse people.
Giovannetti: Nor is it about Mary-Louise Parker in space, although, I would probably read that book.
Joey is a Senior Editor at IGN and a comic book creator. Follow Joey on Twitter @JoeyEsposito, or find him on IGN at Joey-IGN. If he could, he'd run away to live amongst wild cats for the rest of his days.
Source : ign[dot]com
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