Talking The Last West With Evan Young and Lou Iovino

The Last West

is the next big project coming from Evan Young and co-creator Lou Iovino. Currently being funded on Kickstarter, the project is a 220-page neo-Western graphic novel that the creators described to ComicBook.com as a Vertigo-style "what-if" comic. The book, set in a world where technological advancement has been stopped cold and only one man knows why, evokes a primitive near future--a bit like NBC's Revolution, but in a world where people haven't just shrugged and accepted that the world as they knew it is gone. Young and Iovino joined us to talk a bit about the book, the Kickstarter campaign, and to briefly catch up on the status of the film adaptation of The Forgotten, Young's hit indie comic from a few years ago. ComicBook.com: What made you want to try an alternate history book? I feel like so often, the genre has been tainted by too many "What if Hitler won the war?" stories. EVAN: I'm not sure that Lou (Iovino, the co-creator) and I initially set out to write an alternate history "what if" tale initially. As we mentioned in the video introduction on our Kickstarter page, we were really inspired by what we'd read about in a Wired magazine article by Steven Levy that covered Jay Walker's "Library of the History of Human Imagination." But what we didn't say in that video is that we were inspired, but... We still had no story! We had some goals that were extremely important to us - that the story asked essential questions about whether we should or should not have dropped the bomb, asked questions about the price of progess. We also wanted it to be written based on these interesting little chunks of American history. But we still had to develop an actual storyline and characters.

So what happened from there is that the story started to form in our heads, trying to answer the question we found fascinating: what if there were no more progress in the world? No cultural progress, so no rock and roll. No space program, no computers, internet, cellphones, modern medicine, etc. Everything stuck in 1945. So we ended up gravitating toward that singular moment that, in our heads, one could point to that just so much history stood on: the first test of the atomic bomb... And things kind of grew from there. So that's a longish answer to your question. Basically, we didn't set out to write a "what if," it just kind of happened. LOU: Well we certainly agree on the Hitler books. Though, I will say that Stephen King's latest take on JFK and Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter were fun and interesting. So, you can do new things with the alternate history genre, for sure. As Evan said, with The Last West, our initial objective wasn't to tell an alternate history story, though that is certainly where we ended up. We really just wanted to play with the idea that progress often comes with a price -- and, in turn, ask the essential question of what price are we willing to pay for progress? For instance, the price of the internet is privacy and anonymity. The price of understanding the human genome is questions of morality and playing God. Are they worth it? That's what we want our readers to decide. So, to kick off that idea, we went for perhaps the most significant moment in our country's and the world's history: The first successful test of a nuclear bomb. From there, the alternate history angle unfolded very naturally. ComicBook.com: This is something that's been in development for a while, but it certainly taps into the cultural zeitgeist a bit with things like Revolution and, to a lesser extent The Walking Dead, playing with some of the same ideas. Do you ever see things like that as an opportunity to catch the eye of some of their fans, or do you kick yourself a little for not getting the book out two years ago or something? EVAN: I think you really can't write to the trends of the day, and I know neither Lou nor I saw (or could possibly have foreseen) the success of a story like The Walking Dead. I believe you just have to write what interests you and not pay attention to the current en vogue trends in the world, because they are so unpredictable you just never know what's going to hit. Chances are, your own project will take a while, too, so if you DO try to write another zombie movie or comic right now, the genre will be tapped out by the time your project gets out there. Just write what you want to, write it as best you can, and don't worry about what the rest of the world is watching. As for getting the book out earlier... Well, that's sort of what our Kickstarter project is all about. We got to a point when we were asking each other, okay we have two issues done and we think we really have something here, so what do we do next? It took us a while to eventually decide to put ourselves and the work out there and see if we could really get some interest and support for it. So I'm not sure we could have gone faster than we did. ComicBook.com: Now, when you approached me, you used very comics-friendly branding--saying that it's a "Vertigo-style 'What If?' comic." What are the biggest comics influences you'd cite on the work? LOU: Without question, the book is very influenced by the multilayered, literary and historic aspects of things like Sandman, Y: The Last Man and The Unwritten. But, and I hate to sound cliche here, the influence of Watchmen is also very evident in the book, both from the main theme but also, and maybe most importantly, in the 6-panel, standard page layout we've used throughout all 10 issues. EVAN: Honestly, my biggest influence as I was writing The Last West was Lost. I know for sure that this wasn't Lou's biggest influence, actually, because he hadn't even seen the show. But that was where I was coming from. And of course, Lost isn't a comic. Another comic influence was The Unwritten, as Lou noted. ComicBook.com: You also self-published The Forgotten, so this isn't really anything new--but what made Kickstarter seem like a good avenue for this one? Is it just the increased production cost of doing a color book or something more? EVAN: Well, for starters, when I self-published The Forgotten, Kickstarter didn't even exist. So the crowdsourcing model that seems to be causing a massive sea change for the independent comic creator was not even an option for me (and a lot of other creators) back then. Now, though, Kickstarter seems like a great fit. But it truly is a pressure test for your idea. Because unless you are lucky enough to have a large fan base behind your work, the reality is that you need to pitch perfect strangers your idea and hope that they find it interesting enough, and believe in you enough, to get behind you. And that's essentially what we're shooting for: the faith and belief and support of total strangers. ComicBook.com: Speaking of--has there been any movement on the Forgotten as a film property? I always lose track of that period of time between when it's optioned and when it starts shooting. EVAN: You wouldn't be the first, because there is usually a heck of a lot of time between those two points - if you're lucky enough for something to start shooting. But yes, there has been movement. Jareth [Grealish] and I are working on a second draft of the script, and the work on developing the property with AngryFilms and John Wells Productions continues. ComicBook.com: Do you think, even in light of the advice you got at NYCC, that it's fair to say that nothing as good as Watchmen or Sandman could come out of the modern comics scene? I think maybe it's a matter of the pitch, the publisher, the approach? I mean, it's certainly debatable that Mind MGMT or Strangers in Paradise or things like that are on that level. EVAN: I hope, at the center of my being, that something better than Sandman or Watchmen can come out of the modern comics scene. I would also hope that both Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore would say the same. We need great stories in our world of comics. We need more great work in this field that can show everyone what the art form can achieve when it is at its zenith, when the words meet the pictures and the result is a many-layered piece of absolute magic. I just happen to think that the next one of these great comics will be an independent comic. LOU: We get this question a lot and we certainly want to be very clear that we believe there is some amazing work happening in comics today that is certainly on par with, and maybe even exceeds in some respects, books like Sandman and Watchmen. And, when a very well respected, seasoned editor told us at NYCC that he believed Sandman would have been cancelled after 3 or 4 issues in today's market, we took that as a criticism of the pressures that publishers have to endure today versus a time when the industry may have more flexibility to take risks. That is essentially the story of Vertigo, right? And, look what has happened to Vertigo today. Many wonder if we'll still have Vertigo in the next few years. So, for us, its a question of balance. For every super hero title out there that can lead to a summer blockbuster, how many Miraclemen are there? How many Hellblazers? In our view, not enough.