Troy Hausbrouck (Creator/Writer of "Night" from Jester Press)

Troy Hasbrouck is 34 and  was born in Davenport Iowa. He began working in a comic book store in Charlotte NC called New Dimension Comics in 1992 and then opened his own Rebel Base Comics & Toys in September 1994 when his previous employer decided to close his store abruptly. Troy decided to write and delve into self-publishing his own book titled "Night" under his own label Jester Press.

 

Mr. A: First off I would like to thank you for taking time out to speak with us here at The Comic Avalanche.

1. For folks who haven’t had a chance to read "Night" from Jester Press yet can you tell us a bit about the plot and characters?

TH: Well, NIGHT is meant to a broad horror based comic book series and what I mean by that is that it will feature many different aspects of the horror genre. We are not pigeonholed into one thing. We plan on including werewolves (of course), vampires, zombies, a monster much like Frankenstein and monsters of a more human nature.

2. You write this but you also publish it under your own imprint Jester Press. What made you decide to jump into publishing for yourself?
 

TH: The only other option that I saw was to write a bunch of stories using other Publisher’s characters and send these sample stories off as submissions hoping to get my foot in the door. Ultimately I would probably end up with a stack of rejection letters to show for all my hard work. Self-publishing proved to be the only guaranteed way to get into print. My time is very limited so I don’t have the luxury of writing a bunch of throwaway stories that will get rejected. With Jester Press, hopefully no story will go wasted. Of course you, being small press, I assume all the risk on my own, or in my case I split all the risk with Buddy.

3. How did you and Buddy Prince get together on "Night" and how is the relationship?

TH: Buddy and I have been friends for quite some time now. He was a frequent customer at the store before Rebel Base so I’ve known him since 1992. Once I opened Rebel Base he saw that I was very stressed out from all the “joys” of small business ownership and he suggested that since he was working on his art ability that we try to do a comic. So, sometime in 1996, give or take, we started the process of comic creating based on a story script that I already had. That’s why the art style of Night #1 jumps around so much. There are 8 years invested in that book from page 1 to page 24. Obviously Buddy’s art style has changed and I hope people like it enough to stick with it. We know that #1 is rough but we also had a policy of not re-drawing any of the pages that were completed. We figured if we went over what we already had done then we would never finish. As far as a relationship we seem to always be on the same page, no pun intended but with every relationship there are compromises. The bottom line is the finished product. The best we can possibly produce. If we’ve done the best we possibly could, then I’ve got no complaints.
                                                              
4. Is Night a Mini series or ongoing and do you know the ending already or is it ever changing?

TH: This depends on Diamond. We are still waiting for approval from Diamond and if they choose not to pick us up then we will be forced to make it a mini series, right now. I have about 20 issues scripted that can easily be broken up into several different mini series but right now the main priority is to get distribution through Diamond. If they don’t pick NIGHT up, Buddy and I will be forced to come up with some other story idea that hopefully they will pick up. Then once we are in Diamond we can re-visit NIGHT.

5. Are you currently working on other projects outside of "Night"?

TH: I’ve been pretty single minded as a writer so as I stated before I have 20 issues scripted out ready to go. I’m also working on a prose NIGHT story but that will be a long time before I complete that. Clay Moore is another artist friend of mine that is also currently working on a NIGHT comic. Depending on Diamond again, we haven’t decided if it’s going to be a issue number in the NIGHT series or if it’s going to be a one shot or even a new number one of a separate series. So everything is NIGHT based right now but there are a few back burner stories that could be moved forward if they needed to be.

6. What do you attribute to your becoming a writer?

TH: When I was in college I took a writing fiction course and you had to read everyone’s stories and give a verbal review straight to their face. Besides being a little nerve racking, I was forced to read tons of horrible stories. So, I would purposefully push the envelope in this class and make people read stuff that was horrible to them. I had one story based in a slaughterhouse, one story where a town gave deposits on used condoms to keep the teen pregnancy rate down. So, writing weird stuff just took. And being creative makes you forget about all the “real” stuff in life that beats you down everyday so Buddy was right. It is stress relief too.
                                                            
7. Did you collect comics as a kid and what are your favorites?

TH: I don’t remember what my first comic was but I assume it must have been Spider-Man. I have found memories of Spider-Man fighting Hammerhead in the snow and then loosing his Spider-mobile in the river. So, Spider-Man was it for me. I never really read much DC until I got married. My wife was big into DC and before long I realized that I enjoyed the DC comics more but Spider-Man is still a favorite.

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

TH: Peter David on the Hulk, Azzarello on 100 Bullets. As far as artist goes I really dig Bruce Timm, Adam Warren, Jim Balent and Greg Land.

9. If you could write any character who would it be? What character would you loathe to write?


TH: I think writing Birds of Prey or Gotham Central would be cool. I don’t know if I LOATHE Thor but the Asgard-speak would drive me crazy.

10. What else would you like to make sure your fans know about you or your projects now and upcoming?

TH: We plan on sticking through this thing for a while. It’s something that we’ve all always wanted to do. Hopefully the stories get better and we get some people interested. Like us or hate us, we’re in it for the long haul. Everyone at Jester Press is going to work to make sure each issue published is as good as it possibly can be.

                                                             
Mr. A: To end yet another spectacular interview at The Comic Avalanche is there any advice you would give to fledgling writers?

TH: Just keep at it and remember each rejection is a badge of courage. Each bad review is a lesson to work harder. You’re not going to please everyone who reads your book but the most important person to please is yourself.

 

 

Thanks, Mr. Avalanche