Shannon Denton is one the hardest working creators I know. He does
it all, from comics to animation to television to film. He's always got
about 15 things going at once. After wanting to interview him for years,
I finally got a chance to sit down in the Komikwerks Booth at San Diego
and have a rather long chat with Shannon. Shannon's willingness to sit
and to let me monopolize his time on a busy day at ComicCon International,
says a lot about what a nice guy he is. I think this interview will show
you how creative, articulate and funny he is, too.
Sheryl:
Shannon, being from Texas, you *know* I have to ask this. My readers in Texas will be very interested in this: How the does someone become a Western Wear Model?
Shannon:
A Western Wear Model? It helps if one of your friends is head designer for the company, and he says "Hey, would you like to make more money today that you would make working at Kinkos?" And you say, "Yes," and you borrow a cowboy hat and you head over to the modeling expose and the fact that you are wearing the cowboy hat helps out a lot.
Sheryl:
How long did you do that?
Shannon:
One day.
Sheryl:
One day, does this make you a celebrity of sorts in certain C&W circles?
Shannon:
Oh *yeah." When I run into the other models that were on the shoot.
Sheryl:
Let's talk about your background. Not every Western Wear Model turns into a successful multi talented comics/animation/tv/movie guy.
Shannon:
That's probably true.
Sheryl:
Let's start with the basics. Where did you learn to draw?
Shannon:
I think it all started with The Electric Company. I'm not 100% sure that's where it started, but I'm pretty sure. The Electric Company got me hooked on Spiderman. Back when you had to buy your comics at a gas station, I tracked down a Spiderman comic book, picked that up, and then I didn't want to wait until next issue to see what Spiderman was doing, so I made my own stories.
Sheryl:
Who were your influences?
Shannon:
Early on, Jack Kirby, even though I didn't know it at the time. Then when I got older, John Byrne, George Perez were two of my biggies, and Bernie Wrightson.
Sheryl:
How did you break into comics?
Shannon:
Breaking into comics was a 2 year fun process of sending out samples and getting rejected a week later, and then taking into account their notes, if they gave you notes, usually you just got the form letter, and then you just hit them again. They'd say, "Please don't send anything for another 6 months," and then you'd send it again a week later. You just basically wore them down. I was stronger, my will was more powerful.
Sheryl:
(laughing) Than theirs was.
Shannon:
They were unable to resist!
Sheryl:
Tell me about your first job at Image. Who gave you your big break?
Shannon:
That would be Marat Micheals, who was the art director for Rob Liefeld at the time.
Sheryl:
He also gave Todd Nauck his start at the time, I believe.
Shannon:
Yeah yeah, Todd and I started right around the same time.
Sheryl:
How did you move from comics to animation?
Shannon:
That was sort of accidental, coincidence kind of a thing. A buddy of mine, who was working at Extreme with me lived down the street from Fox Kids. He decided to see what was in that building, he went in there, and basically got himself hired. He then immediately called me, cause we were really good friends, and said "Hey dude, this pays. Looks like good stuff, come over here." He overheard someone saying that they needed one more artist for the show, they needed a character for a show that was going on there. The way animation works is, sort of like comics, is that you never know when the production is going to go into effect, so what happens is that you have to be the best guy who shows up the week they needed somebody. That essentially worked out for me, I walked in, and they needed someone, and I got hired.
Sheryl:
From there did you move into storyboarding for movies, or was it going on at the same time?
Shannon:
It was kind of going on at the same time. A lot of people think that character designer is the top position in animation, when usually it's the starting position for a lot of people. There's a lot that goes into animation, there's a lot to learn. It's pretty easy to draw a person standing there, here's the back view and the side view, three quarter back and three quarter front. To really understand everything that goes into animation, if you haven't already worked in it, that's something you can learn on the job if you don't mind staying a little bit later and asking questions.
Sheryl:
How did you decide to tackle getting your properties made into tv/film?
Shannon:
I think it just took some of the experiences working for the bigger comics companies. There was so much effort into helping them out. There were some other artists who had gotten behind on a scheduled deadline. You have a full time job in animation, and you tell them that and they're like, "Oh, no problem! Yeah yeah, that's great." So when you get home at 8, you get 6 pages with the message, "Fed Ex it to us in the morning." They really don't understand the whole concept of how hard it is to draw 6 pages in a night. Yeah, you can draw 6 pages in a night, you can't draw it as well as you would like to, no probably not....and you never get to put a disclaimer on it when the book comes out. The editor never hooks you up and says, "Hey, by the way, Shannon really did us a favor cause he was up all night last night, drew us like 50 pages in one night." They don't ever go into that sort of thing.
Sheryl:
No, and it stands on it's own merit.
Sheryl:
You seem to have a gift for marketing. One look at your website shows that, and you seem to have determination and a work ethic. Not every comics creator has these skills. Where did you learn these?
Shannon:
Probably my parents. Actually, my grandfather. He was a really tough guy, he'd give me a lecture for 7 hours straight if I was bad. That was the worst punishment in the world. I decided that I would be a very hard worker, very good from that point on, so I'd never have to hear another lecture from him. Ha! I think a lot of artists get into it and...you have to balance the art and the business. Somebody has to make money off of this. You expect a paycheck doing the work. You should really give them the very best art possible up to the point when it's due. When it's due, it needs to be done. You're costing people money and you're being unprofessional if you don't get the work done. So, that's kind of been my work ethic.
Sheryl:
I met you online when you were promoting High Stakes Adventures. That was a nice all ages anthology comic. It's very tough to write an anthology comic, much less a smart one geared to all ages. How did you do that?
Shannon:
I'm just a juvenile, that's part of it. I like that sort of stuff and I have a nephew now that I love being able to give comics to. I want him to have that same experience that I had reading comics. I just feel that there's not as much of that out there now available to an 8 year old as there was when I was 8. So I'm trying to remember that these guys, these 8 year olds out there, they haven't ever read this stuff before. It's all new to them. I could be a lot more wordy with the writing, I could go in and make this stuff a lot harsher, but then I would be writing it for myself, and that would be for people my age. I'm trying to gear it towards that initial experience. I'm trying to amp up the art enough so that somebody my age can get behind it for that reason.
Sheryl:
You have done fill in work for both Marvel and DC, what do you like about working for the big 2? What didn't you like about working for the big 2?
Shannon:
Probably about the same thing as every other freelancer, you're wondering where your check is. That would be the one thing that you didn't like. A lot of it comes down to the editor and it's really hard to say if Marvel or DC is better. It's really the interpersonal relationship, it's just life. Some of the guys that you work with, you are not going to have as good a relationship with, as maybe your buddy is, maybe he thinks he's the greatest guy, and there's something about the person that drives you nuts. I just try to get my work done on time and at least get the reputation of being a professional. I'd have to say that both companies have their pros and cons, it just depends on who you are working with on that particular day, and what kind of mood they are in on that particular day.
Sheryl:
Why did you decide to go to a smaller company like Antarctic for High Stakes Adventure? Was it because you could tell the stories you wanted to tell, or was it for some other reason?
Shannon:
It was that, and they were very enthusiastic about the project. A lot of the other companies at the time, like when I first talked about it with the people over at Image, there was different management then, and they said, "Yeah, we'll put it out," but there was no, "Hey, that's *awesome!* If you are going to be working a full time job and coming home and putting in another 6 or 7 hours drawing comics, basically giving up sleep and pissing off your spouse (Sheryl laughs,) you should make damn sure that the people that you are working with are very excited to be working with you. Antarctic has been doing comics for 15 years, they love making comics, and if I can be making comics 15 years from now, even if there is or isn't a comics industry, despite what everyone is saying, these guys are still going to be making comics. They love making comics.
Sheryl:
You're also a very versatile guy, doing comics, designing action figures, working on animation projects and story boarding for various properties. Are the skills involved the same or different?
Shannon:
The skills involved are the same, the applications are different. Even with the writing I've been doing lately, the writing for tv is different than writing for a comic, but it's all writing. It's got to have a beginning, a middle and an end. You have to develop the character, so in that aspect it's all the same. How many pages do you have to get to the end? If you are doing a screen play, you have 120 or so, every page of script equals a minute, if it goes beyond that, how many people are going to sit in a movie for more than 2 hours? You have all that to deal with, and for a comic book, you can't turn in an 800 page script and try to fit it into one issue. So you can still have a beginning, a middle and an end, and it can all be very similar.
Sheryl:
What do you like best about doing comics?
Shannon:
I like the creative freedom. I like that when you do the work, it's all you, or at least a very strong team that you have some input with. As an individual, you get that response back and you're hearing about your work. When you are working in animation, you have to subjugate your personality, your drawing style, to fit somebody elses, because you can't have an individual in animation. You have all the overseas animators, if it's a tv show, you have 300+ people working on an episode, who are all drawing these same characters, everybody has to do their job 100%, or it looks really weird. You don't want that in animation. In comics, they expect every artist who takes a new title to get his take on it. Spiderman looks different when it's drawn by Humberto Ramos or by John Romita, Jr. They are both awesome artists, I picked up both books, but they are two totally different things and that's what I like about comics. In the Spiderman cartoon, the network usually decides on the style and there's all these revision processes. Work with the toy companies, they work with the network, and once those guys decide what they want, everyone else has to really match it up to that.
Sheryl:
The Suits kinda decide things.
Shannon:
Yeah, because they are writing the paychecks. I heard Frank Miller talking about that with his early movie experiences, it's the same sort of thing. You, as an artist, you go in there thinking, "It's the art" till you realize, "Hey, it's their movie, not mine." You have to do the best job you can getting what they want on screen.
Sheryl:
You have some properties in development with some movie/tv companies. How does a comics creator pitch their product to movie/tv companies?
Shannon:
An agent is the best thing. Usually you get an agent by, well, they track you down, or you know someone who has an agent and you get recommended to them. Getting an agent is the hard part. Once you've got one, they set up the meetings and get you in there. It's up to you at that point.
Sheryl:
What kind of work is involved there, and what are the steps actually leading to a project making it onto the television or to the big screen?
Shannon:
From a comic?
Sheryl:
Yeah.
Shannon:
There are a number different ways you can do it. You can be very hands on, or you basically put out your comic, you create an audience for it, and most of the time, it's attaching a writer. You hear about comic book guys wanting to write their own screenplays, but unless you've had a successful movie that's probably not a great idea, even if you are a really good writer. It's good to be involved in a story, but you have got to understand, these guys are putting in 40 million plus on these movies, and are you going to jeopardize the chance of your movie getting made because you are wanting to be the guy who wrote the movie? They have got to be willing to get behind a new guy with that 40 million dollars. More than likely they are going to want to get behind the guy who wrote Glory or that guy who wrote Gladiator and they are going to want to give him the writing chores. You are much better off if you can get an established, big name writer attached to one of your projects. Then what happens, they basically write a treatment or a pitch, and you and the screenplay writer take that to the studios and the producer says, "Hey, this looks cool." I used to think that was the end phase, but what happens then, the producer isn't paying you for the project. The producer then goes into the studio. All these different producers have all these different term deals with different companies, Paramount, Warner Brothers, that sort of thing. The producer walks your project in and he says, "Hey, I think this would make a great movie," and the studio, at that point, it's a political thing, and you are usually out of it. They'll either say "yes" to the guy because he's brought them a couple of hits or maybe they're pissed off at him about some other project, you know, something bombed the weekend before, and they'll say "no" and it may not have anything to do with your project.
Sheryl:
Now, you have a couple of things in development right now. Where are Danger Squad and The Big Game from High Stakes Adventure in the development process?
Shannon:
Well actually, The Big Game, we've been out pitching that. It was in development at Jon Peters Entertainment. Now we've attached another screenwriter, Ross LaManna, who wrote Rush Hour. We're out fishing that around town. We're still in the process...we've got a lot more meetings when we get back up to LA. Danger Squad has been in development with Jerry Bruckheimer Entertainment. I also did a show called Astro Aces, that I sold to Fox Kids.
Sheryl:
Astro Aces looks like a manga-SF-superhero cartoon, a little something for everyone! Tell me about the premise and where is going right now?
Shannon:
It's basically a school for junior superheroes. I wanted it to be something for Saturday morning, so it should be for kids. I wanted it to be something fun that they could watch. These kids' main problem is just going to school and dealing with each other, but at the same time, you've got the fantasy element where you get the role playing and you get to be a different superhero. All these different kids have different personalities. For the anime fan, I was hoping to do a homage to all the fun anime stuff that I grew up watching as a kid. Back before you realized it was from another country...you just knew it was a cartoon, it was all you cared about. We've got these cutesy kids, we'll be having giant robots, all the fun stuff, action packed, so hopefully it will fit the mold.
Sheryl:
You've also done some work for live action projects, like Ally McBeal. What kind of work is that?
Shannon:
A lot of the tv stuff I've done is through interpersonal contacts. You work with one set of people on a project, they go somewhere else, and hopefully you'll get to work on the next project. It was kind of random, starting off. For Ally McBeal, it was for the visual effects company that did Blade, and they had been hired to do an episode of Ally McBeal. They needed some design stuff on these 3 D characters that Ally was going to be interacting with and they called me up to actually design the characters. Then the characters were then built by the 3 D effects house.
Sheryl:
Yeah, I was wondering what that was about.
Sheryl:
Tell us about your new comics project Markus Fang. It looks like a James Bond Jr type story and once again, intelligent and suitable for all ages. Would you like to tell us more about it?
Shannon:
Well, first of all, the creators that are involved in the project: Russell Wong, martial artist and actor, he was in Romeo Must Die and Ross LaManna, who wrote Rush Hour. We all basically created this property together. We're putting it out through Top Cow. It will be our first project all together and we're hoping it won't be the last. We've done so much homework together on other projects, this will be a fun, easy way for all of us to work on something. Rather the usual movie system, where you write a treatment, you get to pitch it to 8 people in suits...they hear it, but nobody else does. This way, we'll be able to walk out and say, "At least we made this comic book. We created something tangible, that hopefully everyone will get to enjoy." Yeah, James Bond with a jet pack. It's a little James Bond, a little GI Joe all rolled into one. We wanted to take advantage of the fact that we were working with Russell and create an Asian American role model. We don't deal too much with the fact that he's an Asian American, because he's really just an American. He grew up in the same way as everyone else here and there really isn't anybody out there like that right now.
Sheryl:
You also have screenwriter Ross LaManna and actor Russell Wong co-creating. Does this make it easier to translate a comic into a movie property?
Shannon:
Yeah, I think it does make it easier. I think part of the problem, too, that we've been having with the comics industry, with the film industry kind of interjecting in the last couple of years... so many of my friends, that used to have stories that were completely original, would have made great comics, but not necessarily good movies. But now everyone is trying to come up with a movie idea and trying to make it into a comic book. What unfortunately is happening, they think "I think the movie people are going to like this," so that's what they are creating. Movie people are trying to come to comics because comics stuff is so different. We are losing a bit on either side at the moment. If you've got a story about a little girl who likes to go shopping at the mall for her mom, because her mom has the flu or something, and that's your story, then you should tell it. Any time something is personal from a creative point of view, success is going to follow that. You start trying to create something specifically for a multi media platform, you can just look at any of the trades and see how many comics deals get done, and how many actually get made. It's very, very, very few. Selling something is hard, its infinitesimally more difficult to get something made. The average time, once your thing gets optioned, is 3 to 8 years, you get your project made into a movie. And lot of times, after 8 years, it doesn't get made into a movie.
Sheryl:
Wow, that is a long time.
Shannon:
You can make a lot of comics in that amount of time.
Sheryl:
I mean, lots of deserving small press comics or independent comics don't make a lot of money. Is this multimedia creator approach a survival tactic for folks who actually love the comics medium and who create quality properties to survive financially doing what they love to do?
Shannon:
See, I have trouble with that one, because it makes sense from a business point of view, but there's no guarantee that it's going to go somewhere past the comics stage. At the end of the day you go, "Oh, that didn't do anything. I wish I had done *my* story." Then you should have done your story. You can make something incredibly commercial and it may not happen. You should really focus on the kinds of stories that you want to do. The multimedia stuff and all that, it's always been around, and it will probably always be around, but whether it's hot to have comics or not, in Hollywood it always comes in stages...such a fad oriented way of running a business. You are really better off just focusing on your own stuff and telling your story.
Sheryl:
All of your comics/animation properties are action oriented, do you like the action-adventure type of genre?
Shannon:
I love it. That's what I loved when I was a kid. I love all the other stuff, too. I mean, Dr. Zhivago is a great movie, but if I'm going to make a movie, it's going to be a Rush Hour type movie. That's just what comes naturally to me, that's the type of stories I should be telling. That goes back to my, "I'm a juvenile." I really appreciate, I really encourage anyone out there to create a different type of style, to get it out there, to tell your story. That's what's great about this industry. You can do a history comic, a western, you can do whatever you want and very few people are. I'm trying to tell action stories, whether it's a guy with a type of superpowers, I still enjoy the X-Men and stuff like that, but I've been trying to go to the good old 1950's sort of feel.
Sheryl:
Do you think that other genres, like action-adventure, westerns are neglected by the big 2 or 3, if we are counting Image?
Shannon:
Yeah, and I can't really blame them for neglecting them, cause they do try. You can't force something down people. You know, there's very few movies made as Westerns anymore. But when they make them right, like Unforgiven, everyone goes to see it, it comes out that they are telling a really good story. The problem, a lot of times, is that it's a financial risk for these people so if they put out a book, and it's a Western comic, and people aren't used to seeing a Western comic in the store, and they don't pick it up, they just lost money. It won't encourage them to do a second one. So, I think it's more of a business deal. I would like to see them try. I would like to see more of it. I know when I went to Europe, I saw very few superhero comics, you see thousands of everything else. Maybe for folks who want that stuff, we should make it easier to get a hold of the European stuff.
Sheryl:
You had a wonderful 3 D animation promo for your comic Markus Fang at the panel presentation. Can we expect to see it on your website?
Shannon:
Yes, we're first premiering it on Komikwerks.
Editor's Note: You can see it at:
Sheryl:
You seem to have your plate full at the moment, do you have anything else coming up you'd like to share with us?
Shannon:
Well, we have Markus Fang coming out in September. Go over to . Go see Jimmy Neutron when it comes out.
I have 2 back up stories in issue #85 and #86 of Ninja High School that just came out. There should be two more in #87. Actionopolis is next month!!!
Sheryl:
Anything else you'd like to add?
Shannon:
Keep reading comics!
Editors Note: If you are interested, Shannon also has a trailer for Astro Aces over on Komikwerks:
