Creator Spotlight: Al Fukalek and Shawn Gustafson

This week’s Wednesday Spotlight interview is with Al Fukalek and Shawn Gustafson, creators of the awesome WW2 superheros story The Specialists.

D: Thanks for being willing to be interviewed, Al, Shawn.  How about you give us an intro to you two and how you started working together?

S: Sure thing.

We met in college — University of Colorado, Boulder — in 1990. We were on a shuttle bus that ran from our dorm to the main CU campus, and I saw that Al was wearing a tee shirt for the tabletop RPG, Rifts. I said, “Hey, you play Rifts?” Al said, “Yeah,” and I said, “Cool,” and five minutes of awkward silence ensued. Somehow, we got past that initial awkward phase and became good friends, bonding over our shared geeky interests, particularly comics and RPGs. We roomed together during our second semester and since Al liked to draw and I liked to write, we collaborated on our first project: The Raven. It was pretty awful.

Al moved on to art school, and I moved on to dropping out, but we remained friends. Eventually, Al moved back to his home town of Cleveland. He worked hard and became a graphic designer; I failed upward into a computer programming gig. We both got married, though, as expected, my first attempt was a bust (I got it right the second time). We kept in touch, and a few years back, Al and his wife came to visit my wife and me. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time, so we decided to indulge our old passions by playing a superhero RPG while he was here. We created our own characters for the game, and the next thing we knew, The Specialists was born. We liked the characters and the story so much that we felt they deserved more than just a single night of gaming. So we expanded the premise and ultimately ended up with a webcomic, which has been going strong ever since.

D: A lot of webcomic creators do it on their own, fulfilling each role. What is collaborating like? Pros and cons?

S: For me, collaboration is not just a benefit, but a requirement. I simply don’t have any artistic ability, so drawing a comic is not an option for me. It happens that Al is a good writer as well as a talented artist, so he needs me a lot less than I need him. In fact, most of the initial character concepts were his, and he has had plenty of input into the overall story of the comic. But aside from that, I think that if you collaborate with someone who is creatively compatible with you, the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. Our ideas build off of each other and we’ve managed to create something that may be better than what either of us would have been capable of individually.

But there are challenges sometimes as well. There have been several times when Al’s interpretation of something in my script is different than what I had had in mind. Not wrong, just different. And once the artwork is done, I’m very reluctant to request a change. Usually when this happens, it’s because the script wasn’t clear or specific enough. So I’ve had to learn to be very explicit about certain details.

A: Sometimes it seems like we share a brain. With The Specialists, I feel like we tapped into a story and settings that neither one of us could have come up with completely on our own. It’s a tough thing to adequately explain to someone who hasn’t experienced the process.

D: I totally understand since I also am part of a collaborative team where I write and Seba does all the art. Any advice for us or other webcomic teams?

A: My number one piece of advice is to trust your partner to do his/her best work, and try not to get in the way. If it’s a true collaboration–and not work-for-hire on one side or the other–you’ve got to allow the work to happen in such a way that everyone involved feels like an equal. In a creative endeavor, no one really likes to feel like he/she is being told what to do.

The method Shawn and I have worked out is this: each of us gets final say on his portion of the comic. We’re both free to offer suggestions and tweaks and alternatives, and this is essential–you’ve got to feel like you can share ideas and concerns freely and that your opinion carries weight. When it comes to a particular scene or piece of dialogue, I’ll raise concerns or let him know if something sounds off or could read better, but Shawn makes the final decision on what stays or goes. If a panel or layout is unclear, I’ve missed a detail, or something in the drawing just looks a little weird, Shawn will point things out and offer ideas, but the ultimate quality of the art is on me.

D: It’s very similar for us.  You can skip this q if you want, but do you mind sharing how you fund your project? Is it all a labor of love, or does one of you have to pay the other, etc.

S: Neither of us pays the other. This has been a joint creation from the beginning. We do it because we love the story and the characters and we like working together. As far as expenses go, we’ve been fairly loose about who pays for what, but now the site is making enough money (through ads and now Patreon) that it’s more or less self-sustaining. We also ran a successful Kickstarter campaign last year to raise money to print our first two chapter books.

D: What are your hopes for The Specialists?

A: My main hopes for The Specialists are that readers will enjoy it, find something in the story that they can relate to, and connect with the characters in such a way that they become invested in what happens to them, good or bad. I also hope that Shawn and I can continue to tell the story we want to tell in such a way that remains fun and fulfilling for us and satisfying for anyone that chooses to go along for the ride.

My unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky hopes are for a big-budget HBO series, as well as the accompanying licensing bonanza. It would be unbelievably cool to be able to sit at my desk and stare at a full set of Specialists action figures, or a 1/10th scale Golem statue.

S: Obviously, I’d love TV shows or action figures too! But my own, slightly less fanciful, dream is to have someone come to our table at a con dressed as one of our characters. I’m pretty sure I’d embarrass myself by crying.

D: What themes and ideas do you hope to get across to your readers?

A: Well, we’ve been fairly obviously touching on things like patriotism, propaganda, racism, how war and conflict affect people, growing up, and a lot more. I won’t say we are or are not trying to make any big statement(s) with The Specialists, but I tend to avoid explaining things too directly. In other words, the work should more or less speak for itself. My feeling is that discussing themes or meaning could potentially ruin the story for those readers who enjoy exploring those things for themselves. It’s our job to present the story, and everyone is free to interpret it as they see fit.

D: You went with a definite bit of nostalgic, Golden age, classic superhero-type story. Why is that? What strengths do you feel that brings? What aspects of that genre are you (if true) purposefully changing and adapting?

S: We had the concept for the story and the characters figured out before we ever decided to do a webcomic, so it wasn’t a really conscious choice. We both liked superheroes, and thought that WWII would be a cool setting, so we started creating characters and the whole thing took on a life of its own. Also, though the comic is set during WWII, I don’t know that I’d describe it as a “Golden Age” story. I think the tone we’ve adopted is grittier and less idealistic than those old comics. But even that wasn’t really intentional. We had originally agreed to do a Silver Age-like story, so that’s what I was aiming for, but I missed.

A: I think that even though the initial concept centered on super-soldier types battling it out in WWII, as the story developed and came together, it’s come to be not so much about super-heroes as it’s a drama about people and war and other things wherein super-heroism is just one of many defining characteristics; race, religion, nationality, and gender play as big (or bigger) a part as whatever superpowers are in play. Shawn has described it more than once as a “super-hero costume drama,” which is fairly true, depending on which part of the story you’re looking at. But it’s also a war story, an action-adventure, dieselpunk, and alternate history. I’m not terribly interested in putting it firmly in any one genre or another. We try to incorporate elements that we find interesting or worth exploring.

D: Obviously I have no knowledge of comic history, confusing all my Metal Ages. My bad. Mind sharing what some of your artistic and storytelling inspirations are?

S: No problem! The only reason I even clarified about not being “Golden Age” is because we had originally talked about a “Silver Age” tone, and it just didn’t turn out that way. My greatest influence has to be Alan Moore. I’m a huge fan of Watchmen and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

A: Jack Kirby, J.C. Leyendecker, Alan Davis, Bill Watterson, Edward Hopper, Arthur Adams, Mike Mignola, Bruce Timm, Rene Magritte, Stanley Kubrick.

D: Any advice/thoughts for comic creators or readers?

S: For readers — particularly readers of webcomics — my advice is to remember that the creators of your favorite comics put a ton of work into them, and most of them are making little to no money from their efforts. So if you can support them in any way, whether that’s monetarily or even just with an encouraging comment now and then, please do. An engaged and supportive readership means the world to a creator.

For creators, there’s way more than I can say in one article. So the best advice I can give is to seek out other creators from whom you can learn. There are large and active groups of webcomic creators on Facebook and Google+, as well as webcomics.com, which costs $30 a year, but is well worth the money. Any of those places is a great place to get advice and feedback.

A: I don’t mean to sound glib, but my best piece of advice for creators is: Don’t suck. The internet is full of crappy webcomics that nobody reads. Don’t add to the legions of lousy comics. Put your head down, do the work and get good at what you do, whether it’s writing or art. Be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses and don’t be afraid to take constructive criticism from other creators who you respect. Develop a thick skin, and be persistent. You don’t have to be great, just don’t suck. Work hard, find your style, figure out something only you can create, and create the hell out of it.

Thanks again to both of you for answering my questions and sharing your experiences!  Everyone, make sure you check out The Specialists.  It is really well done and one of my favorite webcomics to read 🙂