Creator Spotlight: Neil Kapit

Something new! I’m starting to get some guest interviewers doing interviews!

This interview was conducted by Stephen Leotti, creator of Stardust The Cat, and originally appeared here.

Hello everyone, I’m proud to present my first ever interview. This time, I sat down with Neil Kapit, the creator of the web comic series The Ruby Nation. What follows is the complete interview. Enjoy!

S: Ok, so this is going to be an experimental one because I don’t know quite what I’m doing.

N: That’s fine. I’m happy to be your guinea pig.

S: Great. So, let’s start with a little about you (where you live, job etc).

N: I live in Los Angeles with my wife and cat. I’ve worked mostly in the special education/disabled services sector, though I am currently between jobs and finishing up a teaching credential program. I have a Master’s in English, but I decided to switch fields after said degree proved virtually useless in this economy.

S: Okay. So comics are definitely a hobby then.

N: Yes… for now.

S: Any plans of doing it full time if it got really big?

N: I would love that, though honestly it’s most important that I do my own characters and stories. I wouldn’t want to work for Marvel or DC, because working on decades-old franchise characters wouldn’t allow room for the kind of character depth and development that draws me to comics and fiction in the first place. And I wouldn’t want to be one of those former indie creators whose ended up being almost entirely defined by their inferior-quality projects for other companies. If I could do it full time with control of my work, that would be a dream job.

S: Why don’t you go ahead and just give us a quick, spoiler free synopsis of your story. Your “Elevator pitch” as they say.

N: Ruby Nation is the story of Ruby Harrison, a young woman turned into a radioactive giant, and reluctantly thrust into the role of messiah for other disenfranchised, traumatized young post-humans.

S: Sounds cool. So it’s like a post-apocalyptic type thing? Or maybe cyber-punk is more accurate?

N: In the current arc, sort of….but at the beginning, it’s a secret war, fought without the rest of the world knowing. Ruby and her friends are only known by the CIA, who support them against the vast superhuman armies of Beagle Labs. America’s military spending was what gave this biotech company enough power and resources to launch a coup on the entire world, so Ruby’s pretty much cleaning up the mess the previous generation made.

S: Sounds like a pretty epic story. So you’re treating it more episodically, a la traditional comic books, rather than a ‘graphic novel’ type thing?

N: Yeah, I structure it in chapters about the same length as a comic. It does rely on its serial narrative structure, with each new chapter further raising the stakes and challenging the characters while building up a huge archive of material for readers to peruse.

S: It’s a great way to do character development and world building for sure. You can end up writing yourself into a corner though. Ever happened to you before?

N: Often, but that’s what makes it so compelling. If a page I do ends up contradicting something I previously wrote, that just means I have to think even harder for a way to resolve the situation. If the story sequence I’m working on is dragging on too long, that means I have to come up with a way to add some excitement while getting from point A to point B. If the series is becoming too convoluted and inhospitable to new readers, that means I have to think of a clear emotional hook to compel anyone to check it out. This constant source of creative problem-solving is what keeps me going.

S: Yeah, comics can get REALLY hard for new people to get into if the story has gone on for a while.

N: As a longtime fan of the X-Men, I can attest to this, being completely confused if I missed so much as an issue.

S: I guess that’s why the die hard fans get so into it, it’s like a “secret club.”

N: Perhaps also why those die hard fans become so hostile to “outsiders”, be they in Marvel or in the fandom itself…

S: Yeah. It’s like “they’re OUR characters, go away Hollywood!”

N: “HOW DARE YOU TRY TO ENTERTAIN MORE PEOPLE AND MAKE MORE MONEY”

S: Yeah, haha. So I guess I’ll segue into, if you could cast your characters with celebrities, who would you get?

N: Not sure, because I usually think in terms of voice actors for animated/video game projects, and most of my designs would require a lot of makeup and greenscreen. I guess I’d cast Ruby as Emma Stone, who I really liked in Zombieland and whose face I referenced for some preliminary designs, but as I write her I “hear” the voice of Debi Mae West (Meryl from Metal Gear Solid, Tsunade from Naruto)

S: Ah, cool. Emma Stone is pretty awesome. Good choice.

What would you say you enjoy more, creating characters, writing stories, or building worlds? I know all of those things are symbiotic, but do you go more the Tolkein route and think about all the history, or more the Lucas route, and just make it up as you go along?

I guess that’s really two questions.

N: Lucas route for plotting, Tolkien root for characters. I like to think of characters’ entire histories, where they were born, how they grew up, what happened to them at different ages to shape their outlook, what moral philosophies they subscribe to, what quirks of body and mind they bear, etc. However, all that thinking is kept fluid so I can make changes for the final product.

S: So you don’t have your own Simarilion or anything like that?

N: Not really. All the world-building in the world means little if the characters in that world aren’t compelling to the audience, and too many sci-fi writers focus on that kind of Simarillion-style world design over the connection to the readers.

S: Preach it my brothah! I have that problem with a lot of stuff these days. It really started with Tolkein I think (maybe not, I don’t know) and since so many people became fans of him, they started to imitate that style of world building. So I’ll segue into: what are some influences/things you grew up that you think inform your style and tastes?

N: Reading comics since as far back as I can remember (I think a Calvin and Hobbes strip at age four) definitely helped, as well as an extensive diet of media such as TV, animation, video games, and other webcomics. I think the most important thing was the general feeling of difference I had my entire life, the idea that there was something making me less than other people that I couldn’t fix no matter how hard I tried. I eventually got a diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome at age 20 which explained a lot, but even now I still find myself feeling like an imitation of a normal person, a walking Uncanny Valley. Ruby Nation is about all the people who feel that way, be it due to disability or mental illness or gender or race or personal trauma, and how that’s what makes us who we are and gives us the tools to do meaningful things.

S: I think there’s always been a strange connection between the outsiders and comics. Of course, we have the ‘comic book nerd’ cliche, but even outside of that. I don’t really know why it is. I guess it’s a more personal medium because you experience it by yourself rather than with an audience like a movie.

N: “Everyone comes in alone”, as Warren Ellis put it.

S: That’s a great quote. Comics often speak to those who are different as well. X-men is basically the premiere franchise for those who are different.

N: Ironically, most of the X-Men aren’t different in any ways that resemble real-world differences. Storm is usually the only non-white character, because I’m not counting blue fur, with the rest being shuffled off to the sidelines (including Storm).

S: Yeah, true. It’s more metaphorical I guess. Their powers are what people fear.

Well, we’ve covered a lot of great stuff, so let me end with two questions: Either professionally, artistically, or personally, what is the hardest you’ve ever faced, And how did you get through it? And, also what are you most proud of?

N: The hardest thing I ever faced was an illness I got in college due to side-effects from too much medication, a lot of problems with paresthesia (a pins and needles feeling that flares up and varies in intensity; for me it often felt like being on fire). Eventually I found a new doctor who prescribed a better regimen of meds, but even now I can feel those autonomic responses, ghosted into my physiology and causing pain in times of stress. I’m most proud of my work in a group home with emotionally disturbed teenagers, and how I could remember my own challenges to keep myself sympathetic to theirs. As I told one boy after he had a big meltdown, “Sometimes just getting through the day is an act of strength.”

Thank you for your time and interest

S: Yeah, thanks for doing this. It was a lot of fun.