ADAM GALLARDO (100 Girls Scribe)

Adam Gallardo is thirty-four years old. He was born in California, but grew up in Idaho and for the last sixteen years has been living in Portland, Oregon with a few gaps for his education. He got my bachelor’s degree in English from The Evergreen State College (one of the gaps) where he focused on drama and short story writing. I worked at Dark Horse Comics for almost nine years where I learned what I know so far about writing comics.

 

Mr. A: First off I would like to thank you for doing this interview with your schedule and all.

1. For folks who haven't been lucky enough to grab up "100 Girls" yet can you give us a rundown on the plot?

AG: 100 Girls is the story of Sylvia Mark, a thirteen-year old girl who has been moved up two grades into high school. She feels out of place in the world, like she doesn’t belong. She chalks this up to being a teenager, to being in classes with kids older than her, and to the fact that she’s adopted. What she couldn’t know (and what the reader finds out pretty quickly) is that she’s actually one of one hundred clones who were altered genetically to be given powers. She was kidnapped from the program by some scientists who had moral qualms with their work. Now, the lab that created her is trying to get her, and the few other girls that were taken away, back. The story in the first arc is the race between Sylvia and the lab to get to these girls.

2. I grabbed up "100 Girls" after reading several other books from Arcana (Ant, Kade etc...). How did you come about being published by Arcana and are you surprised at all by the success you have garnered so far?
 

AG: Todd Demong, the artist and co-creator of 100 Girls lives up in Vancouver, B.C. which is where Arcana is headquartered. He knows Sean O’Reilly, Arcana’s publisher, and while we were shopping the book around to different publishers, it just worked out pretty naturally that Arcana would publish us. And as far as the success of the book goes: yeah, I am sort of surprised! I set out to write a book that I thought it would be fun to read, so the fact that there are a lot of other people out there who want to read it, too, is a bit breathtaking. Now, however, I want even more people to be reading it.

3. How did you and Todd Demong get together on the project? I thought I had read somewhere it was for a online comic for Dark Horse, is this true?

AG: You heard right. 100 Girls started as a comic on the Dark Horse Comics website. I had wanted to get into writing comics for a while and Phil Amara, an editor there at the time, suggested I use my position as "Internet Content Editor" to do it. He showed me submissions from several artists that he'd received. He liked their art, but there was just no books to put these people on. Todd was one of those artists and I immediately responded to his stuff. I contacted him via email and we started up a conversation. I sent a laundry list of ideas to Todd and he wrote back telling me his top three. 100 Girls, my favorite of all the ideas I sent him was in that top three.
                                                              
4. Is "100 Girls" planned through to the end already and how many issues if so?

AG: We’re planning to do a series of miniseries until the entire story is told. I would guess that we’re looking at forty or so issues (and this number just keeps growing -- if you'd asked me when we first started, I'd have said, "oh, it'll be eighteen issues tops."). Of course, that assumes that Sean and Arcana will continue to want to publish them.

5. Are you currently working on other projects outside of "100 Girls" and are any of them also involving collaboration with Todd?

AG: I am SO glad you asked that! One of the ideas that I sent to Todd along with 100 Girls was something I thought of as a little throw-away idea. Do you know those Saturday Night Live sketches where as soon as you hear the name you know what the sketch is going to be? Well, the idea I sent was exactly like that. It’s called Zombie Cop. Well, it turns out that Todd really liked that pitch and while we were at the Emerald City Comic Con this past weekend, he was trying to sell me on it. Trying to sell me on my own idea. The more he talked, the more excited I got and ideas for the series started flowing. So, it looks like in the hiatus between 100 Girls story arcs, Todd and I may be working on a Zombie Cop series.

Besides that series, I am working with a couple of other artists to develop new series that we can start shopping around to different publisher. It’s too early to talk about any of these, but they’ve got me really excited.

6. Did you collect comics as a kid and do any stick out in memory as the one that hooked you?

AG: I didn't follow the same path that most people who are comics fans followed. I didn't really start reading comics until I was eighteen. A guy I worked with was moving and he sold me his whole collection, three or four long boxes, for fifty bucks! After that, I was hooked. Prior to that, comics were things I got when I was sick or going on a road trip. But having said that, there is one comic that stands out -- an issue of The Uncanny X-Men where the X-Men were on a plane that was hi-jacked and they had to thwart the terrorists. I can't remember who wrote or drew that issue, it was long before I even realized that there were people out there actually producing these things, but I do remember being impressed with the energy of the thing, the power and movement of the art and the drive of the story. I've often thought that I should seek that comic out and re-read it, but I kind of like the space it takes up in my psyche as a memory and worry that I'd be disappointed by the real thing. Does that make sense?
                                                            
7. Who are your influences that make you write and show your creativity?

AG: That's hard to answer. I don't think I'm consciously writing like anyone, but on the other hand, I think that I'm borrowing from everything I read and hear and watch. I read a lot -- novels, comics, magazines. I watch a lot of films. Like most people today, I'm a big media-savvy sponge and it all gets filtered and blended in my head before it comes out on the page again. Some of the people who's writing or art I find admirable and that I'd like to emulate are Michael Moorcock, Corey Doctrow, Neal Stepenson, Martin Scorsese, Robert Town, Flannery O'Connor, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Alan Moore, Wes Anderson, among a long list of others.

8. Who are your favorite comics book writer/artists?

AG: Alan Moore tops the list. I think he's the best writer in comics, hands down. Giving him a run for his money are Grant Morisson and Warren Ellis. I really like the work of Greg Rucka. I'm not as up on artists. Currently, having John Cassaday on a book can get me to pick it up. And I have a soft spot in my heart for anything done by James Kolchacka and Craig Thompson. If any of your readers haven't checked out these two writer/artists, they really owe it to themselves to seek them out.

9. If you could write any character/title what would it be? What character/title would you hate to tackle?

AG: Hmm, Batman? I think I could write a pretty cool Batman story. My buddy Phil Amara has a character in his book, Sky Ape, named Francis Bird, and for a long time I've been trying to gather up the courage to ask if I could write a story for her. To be honest, though, I have lots of stories of my own I want to tell.

And as to a title or character I'd hate to tackle? I don't know. If I didn't want to write it, I just wouldn't, I guess.

10. Anything else you would like to make sure your fans know about you or your projects?

AG: I want all the fans or potential fans of 100 Girls out there to check out our pinup contest. If you draw a pinup for us featuring the characters from the book, you could get your piece published, some original art from Todd, and a whole slew of other things. They should go to www.arcanastudio.com and visit the forums for more details.

                                                             
Mr. A: To end yet another spectacular interview at The Comic Avalanche is there anything you want to say to up and coming writers to keep them up at nights typing away, Adam?

AG: Just keep at it. Show your stuff to other writers and really listen to their criticisms of your work. A lot can happen if they refuse to give up.

 

 

Thanks, Mr. Avalanche