With Mother Panic kicking off a new story arc in Issue #4, a new villain named Pretty is making his debut in Gotham City.
We hopped on the phone with series writer Jody Houser and artist Shawn Crystal, who is taking over for initial artist Tommy Lee Edwards. We talked about Mother Panic's first arc as a Gotham City "hero," the design of her intimidating white costume, and who came up with a villain so pretty that he's horrifying to look at.
Mother Panic is one of several DC Comics under the Young Animal imprint resided over by former My Chemical Romance front man Gerard Way. They take place in the DC Universe but set themselves apart with strange ideas, new art styles, and the liberty to use foul language and adult subjects. Mother Panic #4 is out now.
Hear what Houser and Crystal had to say, then let us know your thoughts in the comments.
IGN Comics: The first three issues really set a much different tone than other comics based in Gotham City. Jody, could you talk about how you established Violet Paige and Mother Panic in the first arc and what sets her apart?
Houser: I think we wanted to really give readers an opportunity to get to know Violet a little bit before really delving super deep into her backstory and what shaped her to become who she is. I just wanted everyone to know who she is and where we're starting from, because that's sort of the baseline for what she's going to be moving away from throughout the series. So she's not necessarily a heroic character when we first meet her. She is not necessarily wanting to be one of the good vigilantes saving people from criminals on the street. She's very much focused on her own mission and her quest for revenge. I think we wanted to set that up, and also establish her supporting cast, particularly her mother, who is pretty much the most important person in her life.
IGN: The line that really stuck out and resonated with a lot of people was when she says, “F*** the Bat." It says a lot about her character and her attitude.
Houser: Yeah, I think one of the interesting things about being a non-villain character who still doesn't have any respect for Batman and his people and what they do, is they're a lot of fun to play with. I personally love Batman, but I love writing a character with all the reasons for her dislike of Batman, too. It's a sort of fun way to think that I don't necessarily agree with myself, but as a writer I'm like "f*** the Batman."
IGN: Shaun, can you tell me what brought you to Mother Panic and what it's like drawing the story?
Crystal: Tommy brought me on. Tommy Lee Edwards. I was on Facebook one day and I was finishing up a Marvel project pretty soon. He just asked me what I had going on, he wasn't telling me much. All I needed to know at that point was that Tommy was involved, and I think I knew at that point that Gerard was involved. But Tommy's always been an artist I'm a big fan of when I heard [John Paul] was involved and Tom was involved, that was all I really needed to get into it. Once I started learning about the book I got really really excited. I didn't know about Young Animal at that time, either. It all kind of happened quickly. It was pretty exciting.
It's great to be back in Gotham after doing Arkham Manor. That was a real treat for me, to get to work on that book, and getting to play with Gotham. To get into Gotham now with a new character, building this world from scratch -- Violet's world, not Gotham -- so there's a lot of design work to be done. There's a lot more room to play, a bit more freedom than you'd have in, say, a Batman comic.
IGN: Mother Panic’s costume is both in the same vein as Batman and also wildly different. There’s the cape and pointed ears, but it’s all white with gauntlets with spiked knuckles that look like they really, really hurt. Can you talk about the design and why you’d have someone in such a bright costume stalking around Gotham?
Crystal: When I came on, Tommy had designed her and I just thought this was the coolest design I had seen in a long time in a superhero comic. I don't know the why. Do you know the why, Jody?
Houser: Much of inspiration came from classic anime-type costumes. Even a little bit of Star Wars, that kind of stuff. Heavy on the sci-fi as compared to the noir superhero outfits you usually see in Gotham. I know that was a big point of inspiration for Tommy, but the designs were not entirely finished when I came on board, but they were definitely in progress. Gerard was showing me the art and I'm like "she looks super cool!" I had no part of the design.
In terms of Violet choosing what she looks like, it was revealed at the end of issue #3. The head of Gather House, the school she was at as a kid, was named Mother Patrick. It wasn't quite mentioned in that issue, but Mother Panic was a nickname that the students gave the head of the school. So definitely a bit of the white element is meant to be pulled from the mom-esque habit that Mother Patrick wore. That really is at the core of her mission for vengeance.
Crystal: Just drawing comics over the past decade or so, the old designs are great, they designed really great costumes that were meant to be drawn over and over, title after title, and not get crazy. I feel like in the modern world, comics where realism has become so important, some of the designs are... they work in the real world, but they take forever to draw and they take a lot of the fun out of what a comic can be when you put so much emphasis on "will it work?" or not and look believable. I think Tommy did something incredible where he balanced the two really well. It's a tech-y looking costume but it's not a technical thing to draw, if that makes any sense.
Houser: And Tommy did the helmet design in 3D to make sure that whatever angle you were drawing it from or the reader was seeing it from, it would still look really cool, which I think is a really fun way to do it, and I'm not sure if I've ever heard of that, an artist designing a costume in quite that way. So I thought that was just a really, really cool thing he did, and it showed how committed he was to creating a really cool and enduring character design.
IGN: Let’s talk about Issue #4, which starts a new story arc featuring an original villain named Pretty. He has disturbingly perfect features and has some connections to Violet. Can you talk about the process of creating this character and what he brings to the story?
Jody: Pretty was a concept that Gerard had for a villain who was someone who was so beautiful they were horrifying to look at. That awkward face from the uncanny valley. I just thought that was a really cool concept. He didn't really have any sort of backstory for the character, or even a name. So it was important to me that the villain in the first arc after the introduction was connected to her backstory and her overall mission.
Crystal: I designed Pretty. What Jody just said, to draw someone so pretty they were horrifying. That's intimidating. My art is kind of cartoony, so it was hard for me to try and draw someone who is attractive, but over the line attractive. Jody and I had some good emails back earlier on about some mild influence and stuff we could do. You continue figuring it out drawing the issues. But there are some general staples we've stayed to, and I think the big one you'll see is having one dark eye and one light eye. That gave me something. If I think about if my character is in silhouette, I need them to be recognizable. So just by showing the lights of Pretty's eyes, you can see one dark and one light and you know the character. So having that thing to grab onto gave me something to really focus on and hone in with the design. But yeah, I was figuring out Pretty as we were going. With Mother Panic, it happened immediately. Tommy just nailed it. Pretty took me a little bit.
IGN: We learn a lot about Gather House in this issue. Why is that place so important to Violet?
Houser: Gather House is the school she was sent to primarily by her brother, her older brother after her father died. We saw at the end of Issue #3 that it wasn't clear if her brother knew exactly what Gather House was, but he definitely hoped she would suffer there because he blamed her for their father's death. We see in Issue #4 a little bit of what actually happens to the students at Gather House, and it's not a school you want to send children you like to at all. [laughs] That's possibly a non-spoiler way of saying it. It messes up kids. It's not good. Not accredited. Does not have a good education plan as far as I can tell.
Crystal: My whole approach to the Gather House was, you'll probably see there's a different structure to the page than the rest of the story when I do the flashbacks, especially Gather House. I just try to create these surrealist, horrific glimpses into what was happening, what was going on. It may not be such a literal way of telling that backstory but I'm hoping it's a very emotional way that the reader will get a feeling of what it was.
Houser: I really like that approach because personally I think the fact that this is at the heart of what Violet wants to get revenge for, I think you really need to see how much it messed her up to even understand why she's still dead set on wreaking her terrible vengeance on the people responsible for what happened to her. You have to really understand how bad what happened to her was.
Crystal: One of the movies I think about is From Dusk Till Dawn. There's a scene where George Clooney comes back to the hotel room, where Quentin Tarantino has killed the woman that he'd captured. They never show what he did, but it's just these quick little glimpses, you pretty much just see red, and it looks like blood and stabbing had happened, but you don't know what. That's what I wanted these pages to feel like when we're thinking about Gather House.
Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.
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