Canadian SF writer and film-maker Jim Munroe has been active in the North American indie book and media scene for more than a decade. He is the author of four novels, numerous short videos, multimedia and games, zines, a recent lo-fi scifi feature film, and a new graphic novel, Therefore Repent! (No Media Kings/ IDW). After the publication of his first novel, Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask (1999), Munroe decided to leave behind media conglomerate HarperCollins, and to publish under his own indie press label, No media Kings. His subsequent novels, Angry Young Spaceman (2000), Everyone in Silico (2002), An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil (2004), have been critically praised for his original spin on SF ideas, his intelligent social commentary, and for his often funny, endearing, and very human characters. For his new graphic novel to be published in January, a collaboration with artist Salgood Sam, his readers will need to draw on their inner demons and to join the fight with those left behind on post-Rapture earth. Munroe half-seriously describes his graphic novel as his “re-imagining the Bible franchise, like Frank Miller did for Batman.” Munroe invited me into his home in December 2007, just a few weeks after the birth of his daughter, to talk about his latest projects.

INTRODUCTION AND QUESTIONS BY NANCY JOHNSTON

In Therefore, Repent!, you have written a story for the “rest of us” who would be left behind by the self-described moral minority – anyone who has gathered politically or marched peacefully in protest has probably faced that small group of picketers holding signs like “Repent, Sinner!" Your characters often struggle with a fear or resentment that they have been left out of mainstream culture, however exploitative or consumerist it may be.

I get into the idea of characterizing types of people or human situations that get left out a lot. I try to make sure I never make my characters into puppets for my opinions or to forward the plot. They're not always adorable, but I like to think they have integrity or genuineness.

Therefore Repent! is your first graphic novel. Can you describe how it relates to some of your other novels and work?

In the prose book that preceded it (An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil), the conceit was that it was a blog written by a woman who walked in on her roommate in the middle of demonic rituals. On my site I had a poll asking readers whether they thought the roommate was unholy or just unhinged, and pledged to do a spinoff story depending on the outcome. 55% voted that she was actually demonic, so I started thinking about a really wild fantasy story: Unspeakable Evil is comparatively ambiguous as to the “reality” of the magic in it, but this wouldn't be.

Your subtitle is “a post-Rapture graphic novel”. The subject matter might disturb some readers – maybe not your fans, what with the whole end-of-the-world thing and the rapturing up of the righteously holy. Why did you choose the Rapture?

As far as the actual story, I got the idea for it being a post-Rapture book when I was on tour with Unspeakable Evil with two depressed Americans in the days after Bush was re-elected. I was a bit obsessed with the idea that leader of the country purported to believe in the literal end of the world by Christians floating into the sky.

Did a religious upbringing inspire this story?

I grew up Catholic, went to an all-boys Catholic high school, and became agnostic when I was 18. I love fantastical literature like the bible, and sometimes it's even instructional and moving, but I don't actually believe it any more than Harry Potter fans believe in Harry. Not to slag on Potter fans, as they're obviously more devoted.

In general, my comparatively rational religious teachings glossed over the Book of Revelations, as it's one crazy-ass mess and best only brought up when you want to scare the shit out of someone.

What is SF’s fascination with post-apocalyptic worlds? Does your approach differ?

On one level, it's a way of knocking us back in time to a more primitive era without having to deal with all those paradoxes and whatnot that a time travel pretext brings up. A little more hardnosed than a knights/dragons fantasy novel, with cooler weaponry.

On another level, the idea that there is a post- to the apocalypse, whatever it is, is kinda idealistic. But how it is most often imagined, as a Madmaxian world where we need Mel Gibson to save us from the hordes of killers and rapists, is a deeply reactionary worldview. (Mel's showing his true colors these days.) So I feel like post-apocalypses neutralize themselves, politically.

As far as why I'm interested in them, it's a radical reorganization of society. I think faced with a disaster, the social and cultural fabric would hold: it's what holds laws up, not the other way around.

Is there a post-Rapture genre? I am scared to think that there is a niche market.

There's the Left Behind series, which is told from a Christian perspective and bias. But more influential than that on my story (though I have seen the Kurt Cameron movie and love that they repurposed the CBC as “GNN”, Global News Network) are the Jack Chick Christian tract comics. Black and white and lurid all over, they're intended to scare the devil out of the reader.

In SF, the move for authors seems typically to be away from graphic novels to prose novels and more mainstream forms. Neil Gaiman is one writer who has collaborated to create graphic novels, television and film scripts, and novels.

It seems to be more often well-known comics writers like Gaiman and Warren Ellis who crossover into prose novels, though editors at comics companies sometimes approach well known comics-friendly writers like Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem to write for them. (I was even approached once by a DC editor but it never went anywhere.)

Just because the literary novel is so entrenched I think it's seen as a step up, or as a way of gaining credibility for writers who'd previously only written in comics. That's not my perspective, but I think it's out there. Kind of like people going from TV writing to movie writing is seen as a step up, even though there's amazing TV and shitty movies out there.

I enjoy working in mediums that most people dismiss, whether it be comics or videogames -- I find it inspiring to challenge people's assumptions. I started theculturalgutter.com for that reason.

With Therefore, Repent!, you are experimenting with artistic collaboration with Salgood Sam . You aren’t a graphic artist yourself—maybe the stick figure logo of No Media Kings is a giveaway. What motivated you to collaborate on this project?

I really like comics, and this was a way to participate. It was also a story that worked well visually, and I knew Salgood Sam would do a great job with the art. But I found it weird that 80% of the actual labor was in his hands: it took me two months to write the script and him a year to draw it. So that makes it a much more complex process than just writing a prose novel.

And as far at the deceptively simple NMK logo goes, that's actually a creation of the incredibly talented Terry Lau of Beehive Design. Simple is hard!

How did your partnership with artist Salgood Sam come about? You said you met Salgood Sam through zine connections. What about his style or contribution made a good “fit”?

I met Salgood Sam about a decade ago, probably traded at Canzine or something. We did a one-pager for Lola but that had been our only previous collaboration.

I love that he's as at home drawing a urban hole-in-the-wall bar as he is in drawing a hole in the wall that leads to Hades. He liked the philosophical and religious themes and the characters.

The disturbing darkness of this novel – much darker in feel than your prose fiction – is suitably apocalyptic. Salgood Sam captures the fear, the madness, and the depression of some characters in the beginning of the novel. He brings a depth to each vignette to show realist detail in human (and demonic) expression that is poignant.

Jim: Salgood Sam definitely “got” that the emotional moments were just as (or more) important than the action shots, and paced them beautifully and cinematically.

Can you say something about the limitations and unexpected potential of visualizing your script in this form? Does this slow down or add depth to the reading process of scenes?

One thing I learned was that you've gotta pick a moment rather than an action, as the images are static. I had my characters nodding all the time: have you ever seen a picture of someone nodding? No! Because they're always in mid nod, and it doesn't read as anything. It's a testament to his talent that he pulled it off sometimes, but it's things like that that had a learning curve for me.

You often give workshops to young writers and artists on how to kick-start their projects. What would you share with other writers who want to collaborate on a graphic novel or comic?

Work on getting your work out there in a prose form, to the general public and to artists you like. Since they'll have to do most of the heavy lifting, they've got to love your stuff more than their own and it helps if you can bring a ton of energy and credibility to the project so they have something to tell themselves when their hand starts to ache.

Some of the questions that are raised in this graphic novel are central to your novels, especially Everyone in Silico, and your recent film project, Infest Wisely. One of the issues is social responsibility and resistance.

Jim: It often comes back to that for me. I'm excited by the idea of creative resistance, whether it be to current day problems or to tomorrow's problems. It's important that it gets beyond the individualist hero model: that's seductive (I often save the world in my dreams using nothing but a duct-taped shotgun) but I think is a recipe for failure, or at least intense loneliness.

Another concern of the novel arises when those left behind begin to redefine themselves, not in opposition, but as something else.

I guess the question I'm curious about is what happens when the people we don't like disappear when we've dedicated our lives to fighting them? Do we just fall over? How do we re-imagine a less reactionary worldview?

You have defined your work philosophy behind collaborative and community building projects. Your website excites and incites by offering hands-on information about how to build, create, publicize and distribute their work outside mainstream publishing. You also have talked about the need for equitable collaboration where writers, artists, and others learn skills.

I'm a big believer in DIY, do-it-yourself, because it means there's less barriers getting in the way of completing projects. Waiting for the perfect collaborator is a delaying tactic at best and can lead to bitterness and angst at worst. I'm all for people collaborating, but not until they've realized their own vision a couple of times on whatever they can see through on their own. At that point they can meet and work with other people as equals, and not feel like that person's involvement is integral to the project's completion. People have experiences and honed skills to share with each other at that point, and are less tied up in every aspect of the project being about them -- because they've had other projects where they've fully realized their vision.

So the projects I do tend to connect self-starting creators with their communities. The Roadshow put indie press people in a car and had them performing their stuff on a seven city tour, sharing audiences and rental costs; The Artsy Games Incubator puts artists together to show each other their games for feedback, kind of on the writing-circle model. Hugely different on the surface but under the hood, pretty similar.

Your recent film experiment, Infest Wisely (with a budget of $1000), made splash in Canada and is now freely downloadable from infestwisely.com Was your film project based on similar ideas?

It was made with seven different directors each doing a 12 minute segment of a feature film. It has a disjointed style therefore by definition, but the response to it has been pretty generous I think because people are excited about the approachability of it. And the writing, which I did, is consistent and not the result of several screenwriters knocking it back and forth.

There is much humor and a light, more hopeful tone in the film.

Jim: I think that might have been a reaction to the medium to some extent: I felt inclined to go more realistic in the comic, but felt OK with being more cartoony in the movie.

Your film-making was grassroots and made independent of mainstream investment. Your choice to self-publish your novels is well-known. Many readers might understand this as a move to control your create output. Can you talk about how this relates to your commitment to social responsibility?

Getting more control is a nice byproduct, but not the whole intent. I had a fair amount of control with my novel, as well as the cover, marketing, and promo, with HarperCollins Canada but I didn’t like the ownership or the overlarge structure through which I had to function.

Your previous novels have had good criticism and negative mostly focusing on the endings. Is this related to your resistance of literary models, in closure, focus on a single protagonist, or resistance to simple answers?

Sometimes people complain about my endings but they're that way for a reason. I feel like I owe the reader some sense of closure, but not a complete, all ends-tied-up kind of way. I like leaving the reader with a question. In Everyone in Silico, I particularly refused to “save the world”: I want the readers to want to change the current society so we never get to the hyper-consumerist world I depict. Having the super-activists in the book fix everything is kind of telling the reader, don't worry, everything will end up OK in the end.

You announced the birth of your first child recently as a "20 year collaborative project" -- are you finding time for anything else?

I'm working on another round of the Artsy Games Incubator. Both artists and people in the industry are excited about getting more creative games out there, and it's a good way to work on my own game ideas as well.