INTERVIEW: Talking Black Stars Above with Lonnie Nadler and Jenna Cha
Black Stars Above is out in a collected trade paperback edition July 29, 2020.
By Harry Kassen — If you’ve been following the Comics Bookcase Extra Eisners Reading List, you saw me gush about my love for the coloring work of Brad Simpson, and you saw that I specifically cited Black Stars Above as a standout book, and one of my favorites of the past year. With the release of the trade paperback this week, I had the opportunity to talk to Lonnie Nadler and Jenna Cha, the writer and artist of Black Stars Above respectively, to revisit the series and talk about inspiration, process, and future plans.
Black Stars Above Interview
HARRY KASSEN: Let’s start at the beginning with a question for both of you. I’ve been thinking a lot about influence lately, and this is a pretty singular book in a lot of ways. What were some of your influences and inspirations for this project and how did they coalesce into Black Stars Above?
LONNIE NADLER: Oh, there were a lot of texts and films and artists that influenced Black Stars Above. I think part of the reason it feels singular is because it draws from so many different sources, which was part of the goal from the beginning. The most obvious influence is H.P. Lovecraft. I’m an avid fan, but also not one to make apologies for his xenophobia and racism, so this project was, in part, about addressing that aspect of his work through by serving as a counterpoint to his own. At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Over Innsmouth were major touchstones. However, I’m also aware that Lovecraft was not the only purveyor of cosmic horror or Weird fiction and there were many of his contemporaries or predecessors who contributed an equal amount to the genre and I wanted to pay tribute to them as well as I often find their work more interesting. Namely, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and Robert Chambers. And then there was more contemporary Weird lit like Anna Kavan and Jeff Vandermeer and Victor Lavalle who were also inspirations. But I wanted to challenge myself, and so I tried to mash these up with my love for the brutal realism of Cormac McCarthy, but told through a Canadian historical lens. And getting into that territory it was writers like Farley Mowatt and Margarett Atwood, and pushing even further it was just Canadian history itself that probably influenced this story the most. I did an intense amount of research, which I talked about at length elsewhere, and the realities of life during the fur trade were so captivating that it’s without a doubt the aspect that was most appealing to me in the end. Trying to capture some approximation of what it might be like to exist in the remote wilderness of 1887and then slowly infusing that with genre elements became my driving goal.
Other names I’ll throw out there because I’d feel remiss if I didn’t mention them as influences are Nick Cave, Emily Dickinson, Louis Riel, Alan Moore, Gustave Dore, Robert Eggers, Junji Ito, Hidetaka Miyazaki, David Lynch, and Ari Aster. And these are only my influences, and doesn’t include what the rest of the creative team brought with them. It’s a miracle this book makes sense at all given this hodgepodge of writers and artists.
JENNA CHA: I immediately thought of Ansel Adams when lighting, landscape, and portraiture came to mind during BSA’s initial concept production. His photography was a good model for me to start with because his photographs are so beautiful and cathartic, and I wanted those moods to toy with the dreariness, loneliness and creepiness of the book. I also thought of old spaghetti westerns when thinking about landscape, and how usage of vast emptiness coincides with a very heavy and loaded narrative. Lonnie and I also looked at a lot of Gustave Doré and Gou Tanabe for stylistic inspiration; generally my art is influenced by Junji Ito and Bernie Wrightson, which Lonnie also resonated with. Ari Aster’s Midsommer was also an fortuitous inspiration for Black Stars Above, having watched it together after the book went into production.
Page from Black Stars Above #1 showing both Michif and French dialogue, as well as English narration.
KASSEN: Let’s turn to the content of the book now. In the first issue, as you introduce characters, you also introduce languages. Eulalie is established as being trilingual very early on with English being, I guess, the “base” language. The one the most “removed” from that, I suppose, based on the number of brackets used to indicate it, is Michif. What went into this decision, seeing as Michif is the primary language of the book, if such a thing can be said to exist?
NADLER: It’s simply that Eulalie is Métis, a descendent of the Red River settlement in what is now Manitoba, and that was their language. It’s a complex language but one specific enough to their culture that not including it would have been misguided and irresponsible. I believe there are only a few hundred people in the world who are active Michif speakers, and as it’s such an important aspect of indigneous culture to preserve languages on the verge of extinction, it was the least I could do to bring awareness to the fact that this language was and is important and a defining marker of their peoples. On a storytelling level it also worked because Eulalie is someone who exists in a state of liminality, and so being trilingual very much helped to show how she’s being pulled in different directions, and the expectations placed on the young people by previous generations.
KASSEN: For a book set in such a bleak landscape and dealing with such bleak subject matter, Black Stars Above has a shockingly lush color palette in some places. Was this part of the plan for the book, or was it something Brad developed?
NADLER: It was the plan because color plays a vital role in visual storytelling so things like the vibrant reds are ingrained in the lore, but Brad also brought his own artistry and style. Jenna and I had conversations very early on about how we’d like to see this world colored and we knew we wanted it to be painterly, a bit muted, but not so much that it looks like a mess of gray and brown. There needed to be life, we needed to feel the warmth of the fire as much as we felt the cold of the snow. Additionally color plays an important role thematically in the book. These are all things we saw in Brad’s previous work, specifically on Bloodborne, and we knew he could nail it. Needless to say, he did. Brad comes from a fine art background and so he understands all these elements and his color theory is second to none. It can’t be understated how much he brought to this book, especially since he had to deal with my constant pedantic notes of, “Make it even more red,” or “Can this be darker?”
A page from Black Stars Above #2 featuring particularly vibrant coloring.
CHA: Brad and I communicated a good amount, I often left notes for him in comic page files for clarity or lighting direction. We were all on the same page right away, and Brad not only found a way to work with the madness and somewhat messiness of my drawings, but also elevated them to a degree I couldn’t imagine. He’s one of the best colorists out there.
KASSEN: By that same token, what decisions went into creating the look of the lettering, which is really unique? Was that a team effort or was that Hass running with the design?
NADLER: It was a similar thing to Brad. Jenna and I again had talks about lettering and asking to have Hass on the book was a no-brainer. He’s the best letterer in comics and he augments narrative through his carefully constructed aesthetic approach to his craft. I gave Hass the guidance of making the journal entries cursive and doing case sensitive lettering, and I offer a lot of lettering notes and suggestions in my scripts, but he really developed the look of the balloons and captions on his own. Hass understands that lettering is part of the page and so it’s part of the story, and he was able to make the balloons feel like part of the historical world we’d built. There was a moment on issue #1 when we had it colored, and we finally saw lettered pages from Hass and it was truly the finishing touch. Jenna and I looked at each other in a kind of Joycian epiphany moment both simultaneously feeling, “We made something special.”
The album cover for the Black Stars Above original score, composed by Nestor Estrada.
KASSEN: This book took a lot of really bold and risky steps in terms of its format. The thing I want to ask about first is the soundtrack. Some comics have had music that comes with them or is advertised with them, but rarely do they feel like a full soundtrack meant to accompany reading. I don’t think I’ve ever been as tense reading a comic as I was reading the second issue of Black Stars Above while listening to the soundtrack while a snow storm raged outside. What made you decide to pursue that and what did the creative process for that soundtrack look like?
NADLER: You’re the first person to ask about the soundtrack and I’m glad to have the opportunity to talk about it because Nestor Estrada, the composer, did such a wonderful job. In my opinion, and obviously I’m a bit biased, but I think his work on the Black Stars Above soundtrack is better than most modern horror movie composers. It gets under your skin and yet it doesn’t rely on cheap tricks, which was what we set out to do. I wanted to do a soundtrack because I’m always interested in playing with form and looking for ways to experiment with the medium. I listen to soundtracks while I write and they provide such a mood that directly or indirectly works its way onto the pages and I thought it would be interesting to try to capture some of that and then to bestow it onto the reader. I approached Nestor about this and he was very much into the idea. I provided him with the first issue to read along with a basic breakdown of what I was looking for as well as some musical references. This was stuff like Nick Cave & Warren Ellis soundtracks, the score for The Witch, some post rock bands, and then some drone ambience that I’m really into. Nestor immediately picked up what I was putting down. He’s such a gifted musician that he can go from creating happy-go-lucky Zelda tunes on his YouTube channel to this dark, atmospheric, haunting string piece. My only regret is that more people haven’t heard it because I really do think the experience of reading it while listening is quite unique.
KASSEN: Another really bold step was the decision to dedicate a full eight pages of the third issue to the journal that Eulalie finds. Lots of comics will dedicate some space to text pages, but it’s usually shorter sections, or put in as backmatter. I don’t think I’ve ever seen eight pages right in the middle of an issue like that. What led you to make that choice, how did you design and create that section, and how did you work to balance it with the rest of the issue and the series?
A page from the journal Eulalie finds, from Black Stars #3.
NADLER: Ha! That old chestnut. I’m still not sure why people think this was such a bold move. For me it wasn’t even a question, it’s just naturally where the story needed to go at that point. This was built in from the very first pitch I sent to Vault, and it’s seeded from the very first pages of the first chapter so it’s not something I just did on a whim. Going back to my influences, the literary device of having a text within a text, specifically when it’s epistolary in form, is a major tenet of cosmic horror and Weird fiction at large, and since I was playing in that genre space it was a key component that needed to be included for me. It also functions as a sort of palimpsest in that this journal Eulalie finds becomes the one in which she tells her own story. In that sense it’s history being re-written over top of history, the veracity of which is always in question, which obviously compliments the themes of the book.
As for how they were designed, I gave Hassan some minor instructions and he ran with them as he always does and turned it into something beautiful with some helpful guidance from our editor, Adrian. I actually considered hand-lettering those pages myself at some point, but thought might be a tad too indulgent. The illustrations, however, were done by my ill-trained hand and that was also planned from the start because I didn’t want it to look like the rest of the series.
The first appearance of the journal, from Black Stars Above #1.
The journal appears in chapter 3, which is a very dense issue even without those pages, and I just figured, well this is the middle of the book and while it might be too much of a slow-burn for some readers, it’s exactly the kind of thing I’d want to see then and there. Without those pages, I don’t think Eulalie’s journey makes much sense.
KASSEN: Black Stars Above launched as part of the Vault Comics Nightfall line, which is a seasonal horror imprint that they’re running every Fall. I alluded to this above, but I think the season in which it was released really added to the mood of this comic. I assume the idea for the book came before the knowledge that it would be part of the Nightfall lineup, but I still want to ask how, if at all, the knowledge of the seasonal specificity of the imprint impacted the creation of this comic.
NADLER: None whatsoever. I didn’t even know Black Stars Above would be part of Nightfall until I’d written a few issues. I think that was partly strategic on Vault’s part because they wanted me to just write the book as I’d write it, regardless of imprint or season or marketing. Even if I did know, however, I don’t think it would have changed the book. I try to just tell the story as it unfolds, rather than shape it to external factors. This doesn’t always lead to the most digestible books...
KASEEN: Those who’ve been following along will know that the two of you got married somewhat recently (congratulations on that, by the way). I’m assuming that part of the production of the book happened after that and that you were together or living together for even more of the time you spent on Black Stars Above. I’ve long had a theory that married couples, family members, or people who otherwise work or live in the same place have a higher level of creative cohesion, similar to what you might find if one person did both roles. Have you found that to be true in your experience? Is there a lot of real time collaboration and communication as you work on the book? How did it impact the initial creation of the book, if at all?
NADLER: Definitely. I mean part of the reason we got married is that through Black Stars Above we realized just how similar our tastes were, that we had a desire to tell the same kind of stories, and similar career aspirations. It’s rare to find someone who is on the same creative wavelength as you, and it was something Jenna and I recognized from our very first phone call. We were so on the same page at some points it was actually quite weird. We joke a lot about how we have the same brain. This isn’t to say we don’t have our own unique voices, because I approach things from a much more structured writerly standpoint and Jenna approaches things much more free-flowing, naturalistic standpoint. But even those two things compliment each other when they’re put together. On Black Stars Above there was a lot of real time communication. I’d write the script and Jenna would read it, ask questions, offer changes that I’d approve and re-write pages. Sometimes we’d even sit down together to layout the pages. It was a rewarding process that I think about often. By the end, however, we were both so ingrained in the world that those types of meetings became less necessary. There was just an intuitive understanding of Eualalie’s journey from both of us. I feel so fortunate to have had this experience and to have shared it with someone I love so deeply because I know it’s not common. I try not to take it for granted.
CHA: Our creative cohesion sparked immediately when we first started working on the book, way before living together/getting married. We were on the same page so strongly so early and communicated constantly (thank god we lived in the same time zone) that being apart or in the same space was almost incidental. We started living together when I began to draw issue #3, and by then I was pretty much in the groove of the book, and like Lonnie said, the incentive to work together side by side for things like layouts and questions diminished over time. The biggest impact of living together while working on the book was being able to yell questions about the script from the other room rather than through long distance texting.
But you are right, being in a relationship and living in the same space with your creative partner does really fuel that work gauge. We’re currently working on another project that we’re both writing, and I’ve found myself a lot more engaged about building a story when it’s with someone I admire creatively, love, and want to achieve personal fulfillment in their work. The downside to that is that I’ve been brimming over with ideas for this project, and Lonnie, having that same temperament, either enables that or has to play the difficult role of the one who says “No.”
KASSEN: Lonnie, you’ve mentioned wanting to revisit the world of Black Stars Above on Twitter. I’m not going to spoil the ending, but it feels like a full conclusion. Without giving too much away, what could readers expect, in terms of both theme and content, from a sequel or companion?
NADLER: You’re right. Black Stars Above does have a conclusive ending. What I have in mind would not be a sequel or prequel or anything like that. The story I’d like to tell next is, and I hate this term, a spiritual sequel. I mean this in the sense that it’s a natural extension of the themes, questions, and characters of Black Stars Above while also being a completely different world. Nothing’s been greenlit, but ideally this would eventually be a trilogy of sorts. Something in the vein of McCarthy’s Border Trilogy or Kieslowsky’s Three Colors Trilogy or Bergman’s Faith Trilogy. I really hope to make this happen, but who knows given the current state of the industry.
Harry Kassen is a college student and avid comic book reader. When he’s not doing schoolwork or reading comics, he’s probably sleeping. Catch his thoughts on comics, food, and other things on Twitter @leekassen. You can support his writing via Ko-fi.