Going Graphic: Jon Evans on ‘The Executor’
The list of novelists jumping into the graphic novel game continues to grow, and Vertigo is leading the recruiting effort. Jonathan Ames’ comics debut, The Alcoholic, is due out this fall from DC’s imprint, and now comes word that Jon Evans is scripting a Vertigo book titled The Executor.
Evans (also a well known journalist) writes about the transition from prose to comics in a Guardian blog, explaining how he finally entered into comics, which were once considered "a squalid literary ghetto."
But the prospect of experimenting with a whole new kind of storytelling, immediate and visceral, was exciting … And an idea that had nagged at me for years, but never seemed quite right for a novel, was perfect for a graphic one: The Executor, a tale of dark secrets and racial tensions in a small town by a Native American reservation. …
Authors are accustomed to being dictators, but comics are a terrible medium for control freaks. Artists know more about visual storytelling than most authors ever will, and tend to interpret even detailed scripts as suggestions, not commands. I couldn’t be happier with The Executor’s artist, Andrea Mutti, but a lot of negotiation and letting go of ego was required on both sides for the book to work.