This December, AHOY Comics releases a bold new series, Archaic. This modern-day action-adventure follows the newest residents of a sentient island populated by the gods and monsters of dead civilizations: a harried single mom and her three kids. From writer Melissa F. Olson, artist Sally Cantirino, and colorist Gab Contreras, the fast-paced mystery explores what happens to legends once the world no longer has use for them. Archaic #1 features a main cover by Cantirino, as well as variant covers from Liana Kangas and Emma Vieceli
Melissa F. Olson bounced from a small town to a big film school and wound up writing a successful series of urban fantasy novels. Now, after twenty-four books, her first comic book series, Archaic, is coming out December 4th. She spoke to AHOY publisher Hart Seely about her origin story, the inspiration for ARCHAIC, and being a mom, and we have the exclusive interview!
AHOY: Now that you’re in comics, let’s talk origin stories. How does one go from the University of Southern California film school to writing novels in Wisconsin?
OLSON: I actually started with a pretty typical post-film school trajectory: After graduation I was hired as an assistant at NBC-Universal, in TV development for the cable channels USA and SYFY. I’d been an unpaid intern in that department my last year of school, so it was great to finally collect a paycheck and be on the first rung of the studio ladder. Then, three weeks later, my entire department got laid off and my trajectory went off the rails.
AHOY: That must have been tough.
OLSON: At the time, it was so hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that sometimes a professional outcome will be completely separate from the time you put in, how hard you work, how talented you are. As a writer in my forties, I know that lesson well, but at 23-year-old me was pretty crushed. I think that’s part of why I ended up writing fiction. To write a novel, you don’t have to depend on anyone but yourself.
AHOY: But writing comics does require a team. How has that transition been?
OLSON: It’s still strange to have creative, brilliant, experienced people working on a thing from inside my brain. And of course, the result isn’t always a perfect match — sometimes Sally draws a character and I have to stop myself from going, “No, no, no, I imagined her hairdo differently.”
Sally and Sarah Litt, our editor, had a lot of patience with me — especially in the first couple of scripts, when I was figuring out how to write the script so I was adequately describing what needed to be there for character or story reasons, but still giving Sally the space to have fun with the visual language.
For example, there’s a birdwatching nine-year-old named Liam in ARCHAIC. Him being a birdwatcher matters to the story, because he applies some of his identification skills to the creatures on the island. In early drafts of the first script, I might write something like, “Liam (age 9) is a birdwatcher.” Sally would draw a little boy in a T-shirt and shorts, and I wouldn’t know what it was missing.
What I needed to do was write something like “Liam (age 9) has glasses and usually wears a khaki explorer-style vest. One pocket is just the right size for the birding guide that’s ALWAYS with him.” The first version describes the character, but the second version describes the image that communicates the character to readers.
AHOY: Which brings us to ARCHAIC. What’s this book about?
OLSON: ARCHAIC is the story of a sentient island that functions as a sort of game preserve for the gods and monsters of dead cultures. They don’t really know why they’re on the island, Demonde, but they all try to stay on her good side (Demonde uses she/her pronouns). She can change her landscape, her weather, her structures, so she’s very godlike herself. If you’re on the island, you’re definitely subject to her will.
Demonde communicates a lot, but she doesn’t use verbal language, so she needs a human caretaker to be the go-between with the human world and resolve disputes on the island. There’s one family that always inherits the role, and that family gets a lot of perks, like all the money they can dream of and safety as long as they’re on the island….okay, there’s definitely some single mom wish fulfillment stuff going on there.
This system has been in place for centuries, but in the opening pages of the first issue, the current caretaker, Phillip, is killed by something on the island—which should be literally impossible. The new caretaker is his adult daughter, Tess, a single mom who never met Phillip and doesn’t know about any of this. So Tess, our hero, is really walking into this complex magical situation and a murder mystery. I do not take it easy on Tess.
Where did you get the idea to write about an island of castoff gods and monsters?
OLSON: I started thinking about the idea back in 2021, during Covid lockdown. Everybody was kind of re-examining their roles in the world, as you probably remember, and I was not in a good place. My publisher had dropped my urban fantasy series, the novel my agent was shopping hadn’t found a publisher, and I was going through a divorce. For the first time, my children were away from me for periods to stay with their dad, and I was alone in the house with no one to take care of. I started thinking, “what is the point of me?” For so long, it was to be a mom and write books, and suddenly I’d lost my compass. That’s a scary feeling.
At the same time, I was reading about phantom islands — places that show up in stories and testimonies, but no one can ever find later. That seemed like the perfect place to stash things that are no longer valued — gods, monsters, legends, a single mom.
AHOY: And it’s a comic book. Were you always a big comics reader?
OLSON: To be honest…no. I didn’t grow up as a comics person, which I know is not a cool thing to admit. I was very into Kevin Smith movies as a teenager —I wrote about Clerks for my application to film school — but they always positioned comic books as exclusive to the sort of geek elite. I felt like I would have to read the entire sixty years’ worth of comics issues to be part of that insider club, and my hometown didn’t even have a comics store.
So I didn’t really read much in the genre until college, and even then I was introduced to them from an intellectual standpoint – their position in culture. I read a lot of the landmark works: BATMAN YEAR ONE, THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, KINGDOM COME, WATCHMEN. I went through the full Alan Moore phase. But I didn’t start reading regular issues until THE NEW 52 relaunch in 2011.
Suddenly everything had been reset, and comics, or at least some of them, felt like an even playing field. I got hooked. I remember going to the comic book store the day the first issues were released, and picking a bunch of different titles to follow. For months, I was in the store most Wednesdays getting my New 52 titles. I felt like I was part of it.
Then they introduced the first crossover event, the COURT OF OWLS, and suddenly, if you wanted to understand what was happening in Batman, you had to buy 17 other titles that you were already behind on. It felt commercial and exploitative to me, like the story was in service of the money. It took a long time for me to find independent comics, where the storytelling is just as good, and which don’t require 75 years of exposition and purchasing 17 issues.
AHOY: What comic made you want to write comics?
OLSON: Ooh, that’s a great question, but the answer isn’t even a book. It would have to be BATMAN, THE ANIMATED SERIES.
AHOY: Great series. Fantastic.
OLSON: As a kid I would rush home to watch it every day after school. I saw every episode so many times. I knew the Rogue’s Gallery; I knew the opening sequence by heart. There’s this moment somebody punches Batman, and he can’t duck like a normal person, so his head curves. I loved that image. That show was my real introduction to comic book storytelling, the aesthetics and homages and the sense of history. I only own one piece of “real” art in my house, and it’s an animation cel from that show.
AHOY: So, which did you love most, the heroes or the villains?
OLSON: At my core, I’m a heroes guy, and that version of Batman is probably my all-time favorite. But I have to say, that show had the best villains. In many ways they were surprisingly sympathetic and three-dimensional.
AHOY: A lot of writers hope their books get made into movies. Ever see yourself going back to LA someday?
OLSON: To visit, definitely. I love visiting LA. But I can’t see myself in permanent residence there again. There are people who can live in Los Angeles, work in Hollywood, and keep their core values without losing their minds. I am not one of those people. The permanent LA lifestyle is not good for my brain, although I’d love another try at developing my work into a show from a distance.
AHOY: What hopes do you have for ARCHAIC?
OLSON: I hope parents and older kids read it together. I grew up on PG-13 action-adventure movies like JURASSIC PARK and THE MUMMY; I’m very much a Spielberg kid. Those stories are designed to be really entertaining for adults and just tame enough for older kids to enjoy. I haven’t found a lot of that sweet spot in comic books. When I wrote this book, I was thinking of my 11-year-old nephew, and my dad, and other single moms. I wanted to write a book that would interest us all equally.
