By Zack Quaintance — I backed the new Kickstarter comic, The Dusk, as soon as I saw the design for the main character. It just looks so clean, so classic, and yet so different, with a clear Bronze Age-meets-animation aesthetic (Batman: The Animated Series, to be exact). On top of that, creators Alex Segura, Liz Little, David Hahn, Ellie Wright, and Taylor Esposito are all great.

In fact, not only did I back this book, but I immediately reached out to the creative team for an interview. Check out my chat with Segura, Little, and Hahn below…

INTERVIEW: Alex Segura, Liz Little, and David Hahn talk DUSK

ZACK QUAINTANCE: The first thing I want to ask about is the main character’s design. I absolutely love it, and I’m curious — how did you all as a team design this character?

ALEX SEGURA: That's mainly David's doing - we'd wanted to work together for a long time, so when I approached him about the book that would become THE DUSK, I was excited that he was into the idea of doing a story about a crimefighter that questioned the established tropes while still admiring the mythos. All I told David was we wanted something iconic - something that called back to classic heroes like Batman, Dr. Mid-Nite, Hourman, and that vibe - but not retro. We looked at things like JH Williams's reworking of International Batmen from his arc with Grant Morrison. But really all the credit goes to David - he hit it out of the park almost immediately, with the iconic emblem, the collar and visor, and the color scheme. It's perfect. It feels modern and timeless all at once, which is no easy feat.

DAVID HAHN: Thank you. Alex pointed me in the right direction with certain Batman and Gray Ghost references as a starting point. He definitely needed a cape and something that covered his eyes, but the trick was to make him like Batman, but not, so I opted to make his costume just notch or two up from a basic utilitarian design. I think the trim on the cape and collar helped with that. Basically I tried to keep his look simple and appealing and it all sort of easily fell into place. But I guarantee there will be a bit more tweaking on his costume as I draw him more.

ZACK: I also love the idea of flipping the script on the “might makes right” idea...how did subverting that ethos factor into the work for each of you?

ALEX: For me, it was about looking at the superhero genre - which we all love - and trying to modernize it a bit without deconstructing it. I think the easy route would've been to create a dark, nihilistic, violent take on the street-level hero, to make it feel "real," but I'm kind of bored with not celebrating the idea of costumed heroes, and it feels like that road's been tread on a lot. As my son, who's five now, gets older, his interest in superheroes has increased. He loves the colorful characters - especially the villains. He finds the action and gadgets and mythos really entertaining. But as we read a lot of these - even the "age-appropriate" stuff - I found myself interjecting a lot. Especially when it came to violence, the role of police and the criminal justice system, things like mental health - and I could tell it was taking a bit of the fun out of the journey. I talked to my wife about it and she just suggested I try to create a new hero - one that still celebrated these things and embraced the trope, but also raised some questions. I think, for me, the best fiction makes you think while giving you a piece of pie. You start to wonder about society while enjoying a page-turning adventure. And that's very much the goal here. To keep the food motif going - we don't want to slide a plate of broccoli in front of readers and make it feel like homework. But I think it's okay to have your characters consider their methods - and change them over time! - based on what they see. It's the benefit of using our own character, too. We're not beholden to any corporate mandates or goals or what-have-you. We can have Jaime evolve and change, and that's very much the arc of the first OGN - he comes into this identity thinking he's got it figured out, that he can just punch the bad guys and the rest will take care of itself. But he soon learns that's not possible, and he has to re-examine his own methods to figure out just how to do good in a world like ours.

LIZ LITTLE: I concur: broccoli is the worst. My past two novels are what I guess I'd call meta-mysteries—examinations of the way truth is created as opposed to discovered—and I've learned as an author that whenever you get a Big Idea lodged in your head, you have to be really mindful that you don't inadvertently turn your story into a tightly plotted, three-act lecture. You need to make it purely pleasurable as well. We definitely have a head start on that front with The Dusk simply because the art is so delicious to look at, but I'm also really conscious of the need to wring as much emotional and narrative satisfaction out of every arc, every issue, and every scene as we can. And for me this really boils down to character, Alex and I have spent a lot of time up front thinking carefully about the supporting cast (Jaime's ex-wife and daughter; his work nemesis; the rogues' gallery ) so that we can ensure every reader has at least one person to passionately root for—or against.

ZACK: From the preview pages, it feels like the setting of Blackstone is a big part of this story. How did you each give the setting shape, be it through the writing or through designing the aesthetic?

ALEX: I'll let Liz talk about this more, since I think she boiled it down best when we were brainstorming. But for me, setting is super-important. For The Black Ghost, we created Creighton, a Baltimore analogue, a fading Mid-Atlantic city. For Blackstone, we obviously wanted to evoke Gotham but not duplicate Gotham, so what was that? Liz had the fantastic idea of making the city feel like one of the original Colonial cities - steeped in history and lore, but also cracking at the edges, due to corruption and crime. It's a blend of Philly and Boston, but with a much harsher light on it. We really wanted to contrast Jaime, who's a fairly positive, light-hearted dude, with his adopted hometown. With Batman, Gotham feels almost parallel, or cut from the same cloth - they'e both dark, menacing, brooding. But we wanted to have Jaime literally come in and spread a bit of light in the darkness, which plays into the Dusk motif, too.

LIZ: There’s a fancy answer and an honest answer here: The fancy answer is that I wanted the setting to provide a solid allegorical framework for the book. The Dusk is a superhero who questions everything, up to and including the very foundation of what we consider to be justice. It made sense, then, that we would make sure our city had a long (but not always illustrious) history—as well as the implacable civic pride and Byzantine administrative structure that goes along with it. “New England Noir” is how I think of it. Ivy-covered gates, exquisite fall foliage, profound institutional rot.

But also, as a baseball fan who has lived in both New York and Boston, I have a tendency to think of the two cities as a study in contrasts, so when I was puzzling over how best to distinguish Blackstone from Gotham both thematically and aesthetically, Boston just naturally leapt to mind. Then I came up with all that other stuff to sell Alex on the idea.

ZACK: Alex and Liz, I wanted to ask how your co-writing process functioned? It feels to me like every team I’ve interviewed has had a different process…

ALEX: It feels pretty organic. You're absolutely right - each relationship is different, and I've co-written with a lot of people. With Matt Rosenberg, for example, on the Archies, we'd talk, then one of us would do a breakdown, and then we'd literally split the pages and swap for edits. With Monica Gallagher on The Black Ghost, one of us tends to take point on the plotting and the other handles the first pass on the script, and then we flip/give notes. Though we do talk throughout - just batting things back and forth. David and I had first talked about the Dusk a while back, and Liz is a dear friend - we're in a writers' group together! - and an acclaimed crime novelist. So we were just talking about comics and she expressed an interest in writing one someday. I'd had the Dusk on my mind and it just clicked to me that she would be really helpful - she's great with dialogue and character, and is a parent, like David and I, so she immediately got the big reason why we were doing the book. I think she added so much that would've never been there, which is what you want. In terms of process - I think there were many times we were both in the document concurrently, just revising and reworking stuff. The key to any good collaboration is the absence of ego - the ability to just let someone edit your work without taking it personally, in this quest for the Best Idea. And we all have that, I think. It's really been a blast to just brainstorm with her, and figure out ways to embrace the genres we love - superheroes and crime fiction - while still subverting them where it makes sense.

LIZ: I do not often co-write, and honestly there probably aren’t many people I’d feel comfortable working with. And I’m not exactly a walk in the park myself: I’m super persnickety about word choice and dialogue, and I’m perpetually on the verge of one nervous breakdown or another. But Alex is an ideal collaborator: I trust him unreservedly both as a friend and as a storyteller, and he is an absolute force of nature when it comes to getting things done. We turn out to be a super compatible match—I kind of stare into the middle distance and say, “Wouldn’t it be cool if....“, and by the time I come back to myself, Alex has already blocked out the entire scene and we can start throwing dialogue back and forth over text. It’s been great. I’m sure we’ll have a significant creative disagreement at some point, but neither of us are at a point in our careers where we still need to prove that we can write. We know we have the chops. So instead of individually posturing, we can really focus on making the project itself as fresh and complex and fun as it can be.

ZACK: David, I wanted to ask about the tone of the artwork. It sounds like this book really straddles the line between looking dark on its exterior and also subverting gritty comics in a humorous way. How did that relationship influence your work?

DAVID: I am definitely trying to use a lot more shadows and dramatic lighting for The Dusk, as that is fun stuff to play around and experiment with. But, I think that by default, my style of drawing tends to give human characters clean, open, and friendly faces, so that sort of naturally contrasts with the darker presentation of the rest of the artwork.

ZACK: Finally, can I ask you each for one of the highlights of working on this project?

LIZ: The collaborative aspect has so far exceeded my wildest expectations, and it has been a particularly bright spot in a particularly dark and lonely year. (Added bonus: My friends and family are hugely excited to read THE DUSK—because I think they know that for once I'm not going to stick them with a bummer of an ending.)

ALEX: I just feel blessed to be able to do this. To have a rough idea and see it come to life, and to get to work with people I admire not just as talents - but as friends. I've known Liz, David, Joe, Ellie, and Taylor a long time, and this group feels really strong and we help each other. I also love this world we've created - and to think that, if we're funded, we'll have actualized this very big picture idea into a story I can sit down and read with my son (if he's not sick of me by then!), is kind of mind-blowing. The Dusk is really about one man trying to figure out how to do some good, and what that means in today's flawed and complicated world - but it's also about having fun with stories, and embracing superheroes without being precious of self-destructive. You can tell thoughtful stories that are still entertaining, and that's the big mission for us, I think.

Back Dusk on Kickstarter now!

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.