Talking Wander: Olive Hopkins and the Ninth Kingdom With Writer Kevin Church

Kevin Church and Grace Allison’s Wander: Olive Hopkins and the Ninth Kingdom is a terrifically entertaining book, if our review didn’t make that clear. A blend of genres with humor, heart, strong characterization and a simple, lovely art style, the book is bound to be a favorite with anyone who checks it out on ComiXology, and should have a nice life in the bookstore market when and if they decide to print some collected editions.Church talked to us a bit about how the book came to be and what made he and Allison decide on Monkeybrain.First off, I suppose: What drew you to Monkeybrain?Monkeybrain sought us out. I had brunch with Chris Roberson and Allison Baker at New York Comic-Con last year and I half-pitched the series to him while we were having some very nice mimosas. I had no idea that Monkeybrain Comics was going to be a thing, only that I had an idea and I wanted to know what they thought of it.Well, I guess they liked it.What’s your relationship with Grace Allison? Obviously it’s a creator-owned book and you’re the co-creators, but how much did she get into plotting and you get into character design, all that?I went into Wander with a pretty clear idea of how I wanted these characters to look — and I’d actually worked with a few other artists when were were thinking about making it a webcomic — but Grace really crystallized things immediately.. I’m very lucky to work with her because she manages to all of the art chores herself. In fact, she’d been coloring Chris’s Memorial series at IDW and Allison mentioned that she was a really terrific artist and that we should talk. Grace and I clicked very quickly and her sensibility is perfectly attuned to what I’m doing.As far as division of labor goes, it’s pretty much I write, she draws at the moment, but I’ve asked her “Well, what do you want to draw?” a few times and I’ll try to work that into the scripts. She’s also come up with little details that I’d never thought of that have influenced things.How frequently are you and Ms. Allison going to try and get Wander into readers’ hands?We’re aiming at monthly. I’m midway through #3, she’s drawing #2, but it may end up slipping more towards an every-six-weeks thing if she gets more paying coloring work. Creator owned means, unfortunately, that we don’t get paid until after the fact.I pointed this out in my review; Monkeybrain seemed to make a conscious effort not to have two books in the same genre in their initial launch. I think yours will almost inevitably lead to comparisons to Amelia Cole, even if the similarities are pretty shallow and surface-level. Did you know that there was another book with a similar premise being published by them before you finished the first issue?I had no idea until the books were out! Chris and Allison were so busy with the launch that none of us got to see each other’s work and I’ve got to say that I’m totally fine with how everything turned out. While yes, they’re both books with real world people and fantasy interacting, Amelia Cole (which I really, really enjoyed, by the way) is like Wander in as much as Scrubs is like M*A*S*H. Amelia’s much more in control of her situation and Olive is dependent on outside forces, or so we think. The real similarity is that we’re both going to be nominated for multiple Emmys.(That was kind of a hint.)