Although relatively new to the medium of comics, Ryan K. Lindsay has already made his mark with writing credits in series such as Oxymoron, Ghost Town and Headspace.  He joined us to talk about his new series called Negative Space which features a writer living in a future that has gone a little wrong.

Graphic Policy:  Getting writer’s block when trying to write a suicide note is one of the most inventive ideas that I have heard in a while.  Where did the idea come from?

Ryan K. Lindsay:  Everyone loves the high concept pitch and I’m just really glad it didn’t stem from a real life incident.

In reality, it was just this moment that flashed to me, no context, no real information, just this tragic gag. But I couldn’t let it go so I started peeling back the layers of it, why was he suicidal? How was he going to push through this? Whenever I break story I always just fill a page asking myself questions, y’know? Why does this matter? Who would benefit most from this? And while doing that, the larger story revealed itself and I fell in love with it.

GP:  One of the concepts which drives this story is that writers are thrown a bit to the whims of others, with an organization that modifies the experiences of writers so that they might write specific material.  Although this is futuristic, is it a reflection of anything in our own modern society?

RKL:  To me, the closest draw for this is social media. The way it affects us, the way it draws us in, the addictive nature of it. There’s something evil about the way we pour ourselves into the world and I know sometimes I look at Facebook or twitter and I just have nothing to say on that day. I’m tired, or I should be writing something else, or I’m just empty. And whenever that happens, I feel weird because I’m a writer, I should always have words, so that feeling is frustrating and weird and ultimately so very goddamn stupid. But our feelings are what they are and it isn’t about right or wrong, it’s about the severity of those feelings.

GP:  You are a writer writing about a a writer.  What do you have to do to make sure that the story doesn’t therefore become too meta- and aware of itself?

RKL:  Thankfully, the lead character is nothing like me. He’s depressed, and suicidal, and yet also strongly heroic. I’m none of those things. So I wasn’t writing myself into the tale. But I’m certain I’m no doubt funnelling some demons into Guy. All writers do that and I can only hope it’s subtle. I don’t usually dig overtly meta stuff, it’s too easy to be cutesy, or lazy, and I can only hope we are neither in this book.

GP:  The monster which is seen on the cover and later in the book is Lovecraftian in design, which makes for a strange mix of influences from different genres.  Do you think that futuristic books use too much inspiration from science-fiction and not enough from other sources?

RKL:  I think flicks like LOOPER and books like SAGA show us that anything can be done however the hell we like in science fiction. It’s kind of why I love writing sci fi, you can make your own rules. So long as they hold internal logic, and you don’t then break them, it’s all good. In our book here we have Guy living a very simple and modernly mundane lifestyle. Then we have Kindred which is all blues, and video screens, and they feel decades apart. For me, we have that disparity in modern culture right now. I facetime my family when I’m out of town, whereas a mate of mine only got a cell phone in the past year, and it’s one of those dirty burners you expect to see snapped in half and tossed in the gutter after one illicit phone call.

We see police in almost sci fi looking riot gear facing up to down trodden protesters who have clearly had enough. I’m sharing documents with my class via Google Drive [accessible from their laptops, portable devices, and even from home] whereas I started my teaching career flashing transparencies via an overhead projector. Technology especially, but also aesthetics change constantly, and it’s rarely rolled out in a uniform and equitable manner.