PopSyndicate.com

Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir have written for television, comics and now are writers for Seven Seas publishing with their series Amazing Agent Luna and Destiny’s Hand.  DeFillippis and Weir recently took some time to talk with Pop Syndicate about their OEL manga work as well as what’s in the future for the writing couple.

Interview by: David Rasmussen

Rasmussen: Good day, for our new readers who missed our last interview together would you please introduce yourselves to our readers and tell us a little about yourselves?

DeFilippis: We’re a writing team who have worked on television shows like Arliss and Kim Possible, in American comics, both superhero (New X-Men, Adventures of Superman) and alternative press (Skinwalker, Maria’s Wedding), and in manga. We’ve been adapting several series for Del Rey for quite a while. And we’ve written two OEL Manga series for Seven Seas - Amazing Agent Luna and Destiny’s Hand.

Rasmussen: OK! I’m new to Seven Seas and I’m looking for the best of the best to sink my teeth into on my first shopping trip for titles from Seven Seas. What would you recommend to me, and why should I start out with these titles in my to read list when getting to know Seven Seas better?

Weir: Checking out Seven Seas? Want to know where to start? Amazing Agent Luna and Destiny’s Hand! Why? Because they’re written by us. Nunzio and I have always joked that we’re not good at the art of self-promoting, so I’m taking a stab at it here. But seriously, both our titles with Seven Seas are books we’re very proud of.

The stories are fun and easy to follow. But I’d also steer people towards our two books because with these two titles we’ve had the opportunity to work with two extremely talented artists. Shiei, who does art duties on Luna, has created the cutest, most adorable characters ever. We love her designs for everyone in the book and the emotions she gives them, both in the serious moments and the cute and funny moments, are really amazing.  And for that reason, you should also check out her other Seven Seas book, Aoi House.

Mel Calingo does the art on Destiny’s Hand. It’s a completely different style from Shiei and suits the book perfectly. His attention to detail on all the ships in the universe is beautiful and he, too, has created fabulous looks for all our characters giving them lots of little identifying features. (He designed specific tattoos for all the pirates.) But Seven Seas also has lots of other amazing titles. Hollow Fields is definitely worth checking out. So, yeah, our books, AOI House and Hollow Fields. Those feel like a good starting point for Seven Seas.

Rasmussen : Destiny’s Hand. Last time I reviewed it was Volume 1… So what’s up with the title now? It’s up to Volume 2 by now, right?

DeFilippis: Volume 2 came out late last year, and Volume 3 is mid-production. Volume 3 is the final volume in the series, though we hope there will be a second series about the ship and what’s left of the crew. The story is moving along nicely after 2 volumes, and is in a place where we can have a rousing finish with Volume 3.

Rasmussen : Destiny’s Hand Volume 3, without telling us too much, can you give us any hint as to how the series will conclude?

Weir: The race for the Devil’s Eye comes to a conclusion is not just Destiny’s Hand and the Kraken, but four ships in total descend upon Isle du Diablo. Plus, the traitor on the crew is exposed, the crew encounters an island full of traps and ghosts, two men vie for Olivia’s affections and someone uses the Devil’s Eye to kill a whole lot of people. How’s that for a tease?

Rasmussen: Amazing Agent Luna. Before we go into the upcoming Omnibus release let’s take a recap of the title. Tell our readers in short the synopsis of the first three Volumes (the content of the Omnibus) if you please? (And why readers should be buying this before going on and reading the latter volumes)?

DeFilippis: Amazing Agent Luna is the story of a genetically engineered super-agent who is only 16 years old. When the leader of a rogue nation starts a mysterious plan targeting the ultra-elite United Nations-run high school for the children of diplomats, Luna is sent in to the school undercover. While there, she has to navigate all the problems of being a teenage girl (which she was never trained to deal with) while still trying to figure out the villain’s scheme and foil it.

Weir: Volumes 1-3, now collected in the cool Omnibus, set up Luna in school and show the first few stages of Von Brucken’s plan - mysterious stuff involving cloned owls, kidnapped principals and brain swaps between people and owls. There’s also some fun exploration of Luna’s romantic and personal life (she develops a crush on Von Brucken’s son, makes her first friends, and makes a rival) and her “family” life - her Control agent, who is posing as her mother, gets a surprise visit from her own parents, which means Luna discovers she has “grandparents” of a sort. It all builds to a place where Luna has to take drastic action to maintain her cover and foil another Von Brucken scheme.

DeFilippis: Volume 4, the Volume that’s not collected in the omnibus, took the story to its next level and set everything in motion for the upcoming finale. Luna’s cover “parents” are starting to really differ in how to handle her, and Dr. Andy, the psychiatrist posing as her dad, wants to take her off active duty. But Von Brucken’s plan is continuing, and two troubled genius students find some of his old experiments and start some cloning of their own. Plus, Luna’s friends and romances all get twisted up pretty badly.

Rasmussen: Interesting (and note how people are reading it as every time I go out book shopping I can never find a copy of even the newly released Omnibus). Anyway does the rise of the Omnibus mean that work is underway on a Amazing Agent Luna relaunch, or is this just due to fan interest in the title?

Weir: Jason, Nunzio and I have discussed a relaunch quite frequently. There are many, many Luna stories left to tell. So we’re all trying to figure out the best way to do so. As for the Omnibus, I would assume it’s partly be cause of fan interest and it’s partly to keep fans interested. Plus Luna’s so cute, who wouldn’t want a collected edition of her?

Rasmussen: I’ll have to see that for myself then I suppose… if I can ever find a store that has it in stock that is. A day in your lives. What would a typical day of work be like for the both of you?

DeFilippis: We wake up around 8am - which is later than someone with an actual job would probably get up, but early enough to allow us to feel like we have full days. We spend about an hour doing our wake-up, enjoy the morning things. For Christina, that’s watching some TV, for me that’s browsing the internet (or sometimes playing a videogame). Then at 9 or so, we head off to the gym.

We spend about an hour and a half there. It’s a good way for us to put structure in our otherwise free-form lives. Plus, with a work-at-home lifestyle, it’s really easy to fall out of shape, and we’ve done that before and don’t want to do it again. Once back, we shower, get dressed and start our work day. We try to work together if we can, but all of our jobs pay very little, so we wind up having a half-dozen jobs at any given time. So these days, we often work seperately. Each of us opens a laptop and works on one project. Then, when we’ve gotten far enough (we set page goals for the day - and we often break for lunch), we’ll stop, and then switch projects, so each of us can see what the other has done, and get our own spin on those pages.

We don’t write for a set time - like I said, we write a set number of pages. We know how far we need to go to keep everything on time, so we try to go at least that far. If one or both of us gets swept up in the work, we’ll shoot past those goals sometimes - which is nice. We’re usually done with all work by late afternoon, allowing us to have evenings to ourselves. The last part of our working life is the talking - we talk story a lot. If we walk to the store, we talk story. In the car on the way to the gym - we talk story. So we’re ‘working’ those times too, just not on paper or on a computer.

Rasmussen: Did you end up going on partial “strike” during the Hollywood Screenwriters Strike earlier this year (since part of your work covers writing film scripts)? If so was that kind of… awkward? (Being on “strike” as a screenwriter but not being on strike as a AmeriManga/OEL Manga writer?) Also, as a writer of film scripts in your opinions was the strike actually worth it? Was more gained or lost by the strike in your opinion, when all is said and done?

Weir: We did go on strike this year. We are both members of the Writers Guild and we support them whole-heartedly. There wasn’t really any sense of awkwardness because the work we do in comics and manga is not covered by the Guild and therefore there is no conflict of interest. In fact, it helped keep the strike from being disastrous for us that there was work we could do while other things went on hold.

DeFilippis: If the Guild would want to cover those things, we’d support that, but there’s really been no move. And given the low pay-scale of comics and manga, I’m sure the publishers would freak if the guild tried. Anyway, the strike itself meant a TV movie idea we’d sold had to go on hold. The momentum the project had was lost during the strike, and now we’re waiting on the network to see if they want the project to go forward. But in the end, if it doesn’t, we won’t hold that against the strike.

It was needed, even if the timing of it could be debated. The issues of the internet, in particular, are industry-defining. In the near future, downloads and streaming videos will be the primary means of delivering film and TV to a home audience. And there needs to be a system in place to make sure that if the studios and networks make money, the writers make money. That was the heart of the strike, and we got that system in place, so I think it was worth it.

Rasmussen: The convention season is coming up on us once again. When we go out to our nearest Anime/Manga conventions, and we visit the Seven Seas booth, can you give us a hint (without revealing too much) about what we can expect when we come paying a visit from the both of you in terms of the newest stuff your putting out in terms of big releases and returning favorites?

Weir: We’re hard at work on the final volumes of both Destiny’s Hand and Amazing Agent Luna. So anything we can do to stir up interest in them is great. We’re always happy to discuss the stories, the characters and the process. So come on by and say hi.

DeFilippis: If you do, we’ll give you little spoilers about the final chapters! How’s that for enticement? Plus, if you come by the Seven Seas booth, it’ll be very likely you’ll see Shiei. And that’s worth the trip, right there.

Rasmussen: Seven Seas’ partnership with Tor Books. Are the two of you working on anything in regards to this partnership (either to release through Tor Books or Seven Seas that is connected to Tor Books?)

DeFilippis: We aren’t involved in anything Tor related at this time, but we would love to be involved somewhere down the line. It’s an exciting opportunity for Seven Seas, and opens the company up to a wider distribution (and hopefully a wider audience) and also to a lot of great source material.

Rasmussen: Convention 101-  surviving an Anime/Manga convention. From your past experiences at conventions, what has been, to date, the  most hectic experiences with fans/con staff and the general public you ever had at these conventions?

DeFilippis: No one horror story, really. But we have a dilemma that rises from time to time at cons and we’re never sure what’s the best way to handle it. We’ve had well-meaning (and generally very likable) fans stand in front of the booth we’re signing at (usually either Seven Seas or Oni Press) for the entire hour and a half that we’re supposed to be signing. They want to talk, and we love it when there are people who love our work, but it makes it hard for anyone else to come and talk to us. So that’s hard. You don’t want to chase anyone away, and real fans, who take that kind of time and give that kind of energy, are a rare treat. But you also want to make sure that you’re doing all you can to promote the book, by catching the eye of someone who’s glancing at the cover, and telling them about it and offering to sign it if they buy it - stuff like that. So what do you do? We tend to favor that one devoted fan, but maybe that’s why we’re bad self-promoters.

Rasmussen: Well then do you sometimes want to shut yourself away in your office never ever to leave the safety of home the next time convention season comes about from these experiences?

Weir: Yes! The San Diego Comic-Con in particular has that effect. We go for so long that by the time it’s over, we’d rather be at the San Diego Zoo than spend more time on the con floor.

Rasmussen: How has fan reaction to Destiny’s Hand and Amazing Agent Luna been of late? Also as for the launch of Destiny’s Hand was the sales what you expected them to be or better? (All I know is I can never find either Destiny’s Hand Volume 2 or the new Amazing Agent Luna Omnibus at the bookstores around here, they’re always sold out.)

DeFilippis: I don’t honestly know about sales. You’d have to ask Jason DeAngeles about that. We do know that both books were ordered by Scholastic to be sold at their Book Fairs. And of the two, Luna sold better at the book fairs. As for fan reaction, I think both fly beneath the radar of many manga fans, as do a lot of OEL. But those who have read it seem to like it quite a bit, which makes us very happy. We’ve seen some homemade music videos on YouTube, and some fanart on DeviantArt. That’s a good sign, to us.

Rasmussen: Destiny’s Hand or Amazing Agent Luna. In the present state of Hollywood and their “interests” in what movies they’re green lighting for production, which of these two titles do you think would get greenlit faster (and why would Hollywood be more interested in one of these than the other)?

Weir: Hollywood is such a guessing game that it’s almost impossible to tell. There was big interest in pirates after Pirates of the Caribbean so Destiny’s Hand might have been a natural fit. But it’s hard to tell whether or not Hollywood wants to take a break from that genre now. I think there’s also a lot of fun to be had with ninja. But if I were to guess, I think we’d be more likely to get Amazing Agent Luna set up in Hollywood before Destiny’s Hand. I also think Destiny’s Hand would be more likely to get set up as an animated film. That way you could avoid some of the big budget costs that would come with ships and naval battles and the high seas.

Rasmussen: But with the present CGI technology available now the movie could mostly be shot in a green room couldn’t it (thus lowering the cost to film), couldn’t it? Anyway if you were to dream cast the movie (from today’s Hollywood A-list) who would be in the movie version of the title, and why?

DeFilippis: I don’t know, really. By keeping the stars of both books so young, we’d require teen actors. And this latest batch of A-list teen actors has gotten too old. Maybe the High School Musical crowd is still young enough - after all, they keep doing HSM films, so the audience still buys them as high school age. The adult characters would be easier to cast, simply because the talent pool you draw from is bigger.

Rasmussen: Please don’t say High School Musical!! (I’ve already heard people, mainly X-Play, joke that one guy looks like he’s ready to be cast as Link in a Legend of Zelda movie! Horrors!) Anyway the recent trend towards cost effective mini-mangas ($5-$6 for 100 or so pages), do you see Seven Seas ever following suit (if Seven Seas haven’t already) and, if they were to do so, would either of you ever tackle doing a 100 or so page a pop manga series to accomidate the new theorized line?

Weir: We’ve told stories in so many different formats that I don’t think it’d be a problem to shift to 100 pages. However, I have no idea if Seven Seas is interested in that format.

Rasmussen: 2008’s upcoming line-up. Do you have any recommendations for the upcoming releases that you think people should check out?

DeFilippis: Other than our books? I’d say Hollow Fields is the big one. But you can’t go wrong with anything Seven Seas is putting out. Jason has a great eye for art talent, so you know the books will look great. And the company has a nice diverse story-base. They seem to put out books of so many different moods or genres, I’d think there’d be something for everyone.

Rasmussen: Recently TOKYOPOP joined forces with KAPLAN to create a series of Vocabulary study mangas (mangas from their line like Warcraft, Van Von Hunter and PST-Comm) which act as both a means of entertainment (the aforementioned manga) and a study guide (as the books are supposed to be good study for the vocabulary section of the SAT/ACT test). Also, to a lesser extent Japanime has their Manga University Japanese kanji guidebook mangas (like MOE USA Volume 1) out now (a lesser title in comparison to TOKYOPOP’s KAPLAN line but still of interest).

What do you think of these team-ups, and do you see this trend as a cash-in gimmick (as Adam Arnold’s opinion of it when I spoke to him about it) or as something that could be something more substantial?

DeFilippis: I think it probably started as a cash-in gimmick. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have some value, if done right. I think helping kids learn through reading is a great thing. I think the unnatural focus on standardized tests in modern society is bad. I’d rather books help build reading and vocabulary skills in general than have them target a specific test in a way designed by a specific company that makes money off those tests. But that’s just me being my usual over-opinionated self.

Rasmussen : Oh-kay… (cough—buy Relentless Traveller Issue One epublication from www.lulu.com for more info…) Have you heard about the not so recent controversy concerning the Archangel comic published by the Catholic Archdiocese that critics claim does not go far enough in it’s message to kids. From the viewpoint of both a comic creator and a personal viewpoint do you think the criticism of the comic’s efforts to educate is warranted, and if so what could have been done differently to address the concerns of critics?

Weir: We’re not familiar with the book or the controversy, actually.

Rasmussen: Really? Sorry to hear that (BUY MY EPUBLICATION!! YOU WILL BUY MY EPUB--) … sorry, I need to excuse myself for a bit. (Leaves room)…

(returns)… OK. That was terrible of me. Sorry. Ahem—s-so! What do we have to look forward to in terms of upcoming releases from the both of you this coming year?

Weir: The final volume of Amazing Agent Luna should be out at the end of 2008. Unfortunately, all the rest of our work is slated for the beginning of 2009. 2009 will see the last volume of Destiny’s Hand. And then in our other comics work, we have the sequel to Past Lies coming out. It’s called All Saint’s Day and is slated for a spring 2009 release. Also, we have a new monthly series coming from Oni Press called Bad Medicine. It’s a fun medical horror idea. That’s also set for 2009.

DeFilippis: We also wrote a short comic story to be included on the Jumper DVD exploring a little bit of the lead character’s backstory. That should be in stores now. We also did a graphic novel adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” That story is also the basis for a Brad Pitt movie. But ours isn’t a tie-in. It’s a faithful adaptation of Fitzgerald’s story. And at some point hopefully in the near future, we have a Batman Confidential three issue story that introduces King Tut to the Batman comics universe and also features the Riddler.

Rasmussen: Well, thank you for taking the time to be interviewed. Any final words for our readers?

DeFilippis: Just keep on enjoying our stuff, or check it out if you haven’t tried it. And come to gomanga.com and ask us questions about
the books - we’re happy to answer them.

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