Exclusive: Gabriel Hardman Talks Bringing Kinski to Image Comics

Along with last week's Comic Con International: San Diego announcement that Gabriel Hardman and his spouse/frequent collaborator Corinna Bechko will launch their new series Invisible Republic through Image Comics, came a secondary announcement that the publisher would take on the collected edition of Kinski, Hardman's Monkeybrain Comics series.

The story follows a man who finds a seemingly-abandoned, possibly stray dog and quickly becomes obsessed with the idea of being the animal's salvation. Ultimately stealing it from its true owners, the story becomes a bit of a play on heist movies -- except with (at least on the face of it) comically low stakes.

Hardman joined ComicBook.com to discuss the transition from digitally-only to digital-first and what it means for the future of Kinski.

The last time we spoke, the first issue of Kinski had just come out, but it's been one of my favorites. What will the move from digital to print affect in terms of your approach to storytelling?

There won't be any impact on the content of Kinski. The print version will be a collection of the complete six -issue series and there won't be any real change in approach. The story had always been designed to work in multiple formats. You can read it full page on a tablet, but it still works panel by panel on a smartphone. The print format will be a slightly different presentation only in that it's all collected so it'll read at a different pace. It's still a quirky crime thriller about a guy who steals a dog and the myriad complications that brings but now it'll be a single novel. I couldn't be more excited for Kinski to be presented this way!

It feels like these two projects are flexing very different muscles and you said yourself that one of your strongest suits as an artist is drawing that grand action sequence. What do you think is the thing you do best in Kinski?

I think big action is a strength of mine, but so is small-scale suspense and intimate character interaction. Kinski is all about suspense. I love manipulating the reader, especially if I can pull it off with just the visuals. In Kinski especially I try to push the storytelling to be as stripped down as possible. I like to think of it as guerilla filmmaking in comics form.

Will Kinski remain digital-first through Monkeybrain, or is it going to be Image outright?

It'll still be available digital-first through Monkeybrain. I've had nothing but a positive experience with Chris Roberson and Allison Baker and I'm very supportive of the flexibility and creative freedom that comes with publishing comics digitally first. After Kinski, I'd love to do another project that way. In fact I don't know if a book like Kinski would exist without the digital option.