Interviews Editor, Andrew Irvin, is joined to discuss the launch of The Cryos by industry veteran illustrator, Amilcar Pinna and writer, Charles Spano, a veteran screenwriter and producer delivering a deftly crafted entry to the medium.
COMIC BOOK YETI: Charles and Amilcar, thanks for stopping by the Yeti Cave. We’re glad to have you here to chat about your latest title, The Cryos.
CHARLES SPANO: It’s great to be here!
AMILCAR PINNA: Hello there! Thanks for having us!
CHARLES SPANO: At last, Amilcar, we’ve discovered the legendary Yeti Cave!
CBY: We certainly try to make it accessible for new guests. You ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for The Cryos earlier this year, with physical copies of the comic about to ship. This is an odd technical crowdfunding question to lead with, but how did you arrange to accept late pledges on physical rewards? (Available through Dec. 23rd, in case anyone wants to get in some last minute holiday comics shopping!)
CS: We were just really lucky that Kickstarter added that feature earlier this year, the week before we launched our campaign. Any campaign can do that now – open things up for late backers after successfully funding.
I think it’s really useful for comics, because word is getting around about The Cryos being pretty cool now that some reviews are coming out, and comic book fans can be confident that this is something they shouldn’t miss. This is our way of doing an FOC for Issue 1 and hopefully getting more people paying attention for when we go into Issue 2.
And for some of the things you can order via the Kickstarter campaign, this truly is a last chance! Take Amilcar’s original art, or the variant covers, for example. Want Martín Morazzo’s Minor Threat variant cover to go with your Ice Cream Man collection? Or Rafael Albuquerque’s Ramones cover? These are 1/25 variants. After we close the campaign on December 23rd, they are going to be gone for good. I want to make sure people realize there will be, like, fewer than 50 of each cover in existence in the world.
CBY: Ah – I haven't launched a campaign since they added it – I'm glad to know that's now a standard option, and hopefully this interview clues people into the opportunity to snag these remaining items. Before we go any further, I’d like to ensure we acknowledge your creative team; Amilcar, can you tell us about when you came on as artist? Then, how did Tríona Farrell join as colorist and Becca Carey as letterer & designer? Also, you have supplemental art by Amanda Grazini, Shawn Parke, and Zach Burba. Can you share a bit about how you pulled the team together and how you went about assembling such a tidy first issue?
CS: We met a few years ago when Martín Morazzo introduced us, and it’s been an amazing time collaborating since then. We have a lot of projects we want to work on together!
AP: Probably Martin Morazzo remembered my work because we worked together on Generation X in 2017, and then he told me about The Cryos and told me he wouldn’t be able to do it because of his other project’s deadlines and that it would be something cool for me to draw! And he was right, I loved drawing this comic and Charles is awesome to work with! We definitely will cook up more creative stuff together!
CS: And then in terms of Tríona and Becca, I quite literally reached out to my favorite colorist and favorite letterer working in comics right now, pitched them this story, and was lucky enough to have both of them really “get it” and come onboard. In my mind, Tríona and Becca are in the top 5 in their respective fields of anyone in comics right now. I never cease to be blown away by their work. And like you said, Becca did the design for the book as well as the lettering, which captured the feeling of punk in the 80s.
Amanda is an awesome artist in her own right and did a piece of key pin-up art for telling the story of the Cryos in this first issue as well as one of the incredible variant covers – the Siouxsie & the Banshees tribute. And she colored Roger Cruz’s variants honoring Patti Smith and Blonde Redhead.
We did a lot of variants because they were turning out so cool! Dennis Menheere did an homage to Bjork’s album Post and Daniel Parker did one for one of my favorite first wave punk albums, the Dead Boys’ Young, Loud and Snotty.
Shawn Parke and Zach Burba are friends of mine. Shawn and I are co-directing a feature length documentary about Mark Lanegan of the Screaming Trees called Built On Broken Glass. Shawn made a video for the Cryos campaign and did a great piece of pin-up art and Zach wrote music meant to be penned by the Cryos.
CBY: I added a link to the documentary, because more people should definitely be aware of the legacy of Lanegan and Screaming Trees. On the note of tuning people in, you provide a mixtape tracklist for the comic on page one along with a music mag article clip, providing all the preliminary exposition needed to set the mood when reading the comic. Sharing a mix of punk (such as the X-Ray Spex song, “The Day the World turned Day-Glo” which lends Issue #1 its name) alongside new wave and no-wave tracks. Beyond the titular track, what was the rationale for those songs you selected? Without delving into spoilers, what do these songs add to the aesthetic landscape of The Cryos, and how might they enrich the narrative?
CS: Well, the Cryos are “the band that disappeared!” That’s the hook that launches us into their story – where did they go. Or in our case, when. And that’s the headline of that archive music magazine article that is the first thing you see after the cover.
That mixtape on the inside cover is meant to provide both a soundtrack for reading the issue and a way to immerse you into the feeling of the time this band is living in. There’s a little trick to it that the songs are either things that characters in the comic are listening to or referencing – like the Germs, Black Flag, the X-Ray Spex. I want readers to feel how edgy and dangerous this music felt! Without giving too much away, for the “future” scenes, the mixtape provides a soundtrack from the Cryos’ period that sets the right tone for these overtly sci-fi scenes. It’s a future born of 80s science fiction, so Brian Eno and Vangelis seemed like something that Ana Droid, the leader of the Cryos, would listen to but would also give the right atmosphere.
I think the references may help the reader understand the characters as well. Because they each have their own specialty when it comes to punk. I think Ana Droid is the most adventurous listener and has come of age in New York seeing no-wave bands like Teenage Jesus, DNA, and Theoretical Girls. She also reveres British bands like the Slits and the Raincoats. X-Ray Spex are her favorite band. Broken Rekkid, the drummer – who’s the character that is most similar to me – is fully into the DC punk scene and Straight Edge Hardcore. Issue 2 is going to give us much more of a view into his perspective. And Gabe Gristle, the bassist, though he probably discovered punk before Ana and Rekkid via the Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks and the Adverts, is already on to PiL, Joy Division, and the Cure.
CBY: Yeah, my dad got me into the Cure (I remember watching Galore - The Videos, 1987 - 1997 over and over as a pre-teen). I also have to point out the evocation of Debbie Harry with the stylistic choices you made in the depiction of Ana Droid, who fronts The Cryos. I’m curious about the visual inspirations that accompany the musical influences. We had Jimmy Palmiotti drop in to discuss the work he and his wife, Amanda Conner, did on Blondie: Against the Odds. While The Cryos are a fictitious band in an alternate version of Earth, you have inserted them amidst a landscape of very real musicians - you’ve worked with a number of musicians on videos over the years - if you were given the opportunity to undertake a graphic novelization of an actual band, whose story would you like to explore?
AP: Yes, Debbie Harry was definitely a reference for Ana’s looks, but also when I started to do the studies of the characters, I had already seen Martin Morazzo’s early takes on the characters and some photos of Pris from Blade Runner.
CBY: That makes more sense, given both her overall make-up design and the Blade Runner nod on the mixtape tracklist in lieu of Blondie.
CS: Pris in the film might have even been somewhat inspired by Debbie. But visually Pris was much more on our minds than Debbie. I think we had maybe one reference image of a Blondie show flyer. And Pris was not only an influence for us making the comic, but Blade Runner exists in the Cryos’ world and you can see that it influenced Ana’s aesthetic. She paints her “Pris” eyeshadow on her face onstage before they play the show in London. Which is really an homage to Pris and Poly Styrene. Ana Droid wears make-up inspired by Pris, but putting it on onstage before playing the first song was a Poly thing.
I personally love Blondie, but I think Ana Droid might be critical of their sound being too pop for her tastes. She’s going to CBGBs, but it’s the early 80s now. Brian Eno’s No New York no-wave compilation has come out. She’s hanging out at lofts and hearing people play experimental noise. She’s seeing Glenn Branca’s electric guitar ensembles play at Artists Space gallery in SoHo.
Also important here are the colors. I sent Tríona all the color photos I could find of the King’s Road punk scene in 1977. We imagine it very black and drab and militaristic because most of the photos of the time are black and white, but those original British punks were very day-glo. Vivienne Westwood was pairing Scotch plaids with neon yellow.
Now, in terms of the second part of your question – what real band’s story I’d like to write as a comic book or graphic novel? I’ll have to think about that.
Amilcar, are there any bands that would be your dream to draw?
AP: Hmmm, I think I’d LOVE to draw a Sonic Youth comic! From Brazil, I’d love to draw Os Mutantes.
CS: I want to write a comic about Os Mutantes!
CBY: You've got at least one reader who would pounce on that book, right here.
AP: And if we are talking about newer artists/bands I’d say Alex G, Title Fight or Glitterer.
Also would love to draw Kimbra as well!
CBY: Your motivation is inspiring, Amilcar.
CS: Fugazi is my favorite band, but I don’t think I would necessarily want to tell their story in any form. Sometimes it’s important with things that have had that tremendous of an impact on your life that Fugazi has had on mine to keep them out of your work. For Fugazi – listen to their music, watch Jem Cohen’s documentary Instrument, but I don’t think they should have any sort of “adaptation” from anyone. And I think the band members would probably agree with me.
I guess Poly Styrene’s story would be the other obvious choice, and an X-Ray Spex comic would be cool and would introduce their music to a new generation. For me, in terms of representing reality, I’d rather write a comic about a real scene and then explore it via a fictional character like Todd Haynes did with his movie Velvet Goldmine.
There’s this great book called Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall by Tim Mohr about punk bands in East Germany in the 80s. They were considered dangerous revolutionaries and were monitored by the Stasi. This wasn’t just a fashion pose, they really put themselves and their beliefs on the line, which to me is the most punk thing you can do. I’d like to adapt that book into a graphic novel.
The other type of thing I’d want to do in terms of real life punk is to write about a true historic moment but through the lens of punk. I’d love to tell the story of the 1871 Paris Commune but have the characters anachronistically be drawn as punk rockers. Or do the same thing with the 1886 Haymarket Riots. It would be like a Derek Jarman film, but as a comic.
CBY: Intentionality in anachronism is a freeing method, if deployed deftly enough to get away with it. To pick up on your favorite band, you mention in the campaign, “This is like Fugazi hauling their own gear and keeping ticket prices low, or the Dischord team packing and shipping record orders themselves” and we also recently had Steve Niles stop by to draw the link between his time in the Dischord ranks and a similar ethos that pervades the comic scene. Can you talk a bit more about your influences across different creative communities of practice, and how you distinguish the independent music and comics industries from working in film and television?
CS: That’s awesome! Steve Niles was in Gray Matter!
But your question is a good one, and that’s something I’ve really tried to solve and continually re-interrogate for myself. Aaron Rose who ran Alleged Gallery wrote a book called Collage Culture essentially about bringing a punk ethos to other art forms and it is a kind of talisman for me and I wrote to him to try and get his take on this very issue. It’s a question I’ve asked myself: how do you bring a punk ethos to something that is inherently populist and driven by corporate interests?
One way is to be subversive. To put anti-corporate ideas or aspects of anarchism into work distributed to the mainstream via mainstream outlets. I’m, personally, not totally satisfied with that. But I think, for example, Sam Esmail’s show, Mr. Robot, in my mind, succeeded in doing that.
Another conclusion I’ve come to is that some media, and even genres, are just inherently “outsider.” Comics is one of them. And that’s what I love about comics. Participating at all is punk. Reading Vertigo comics like The Invisibles when I was a kid in the 90s felt as dangerous as listening to punk music. There are corporate interests, but even those are sublimated by a lot of outsider culture history.
Horror, I think, mainstream or not, has an element to it that is inherently outsider because it is trying to engage directly with transgressive ideas and the tension between the will to live and the pull of the void.
Having pitched sci-fi shows to big TV networks, I can vouch for sci-fi also being inherently an outsider genre.
But there’s no simple answer. If you’re someone like me who is defined by a kind of punk integrity then you have to engage with this question constantly and try to push the boundaries however you can.
CBY: Yeah, I always find myself bringing "outsider" perspectives to institutional spaces, so I understand. I'd mentioned when we initially discussed this interview how The Cryos was right up my alley, as well. From my first film, Work it Out, onward, I have often found myself preoccupied with making up fictitious bands, albums, and the associated lore to populate my stories and entertain myself. Clearly, The Cryos shows you've got an inclination to engage in the same practice. What do you think goes into a good band name, and which fictitious bands will we see more of over the course of the story?
CS: Yes, I know what you mean. “Solar Bear” is probably the best indie rock band name ever!
I mean, I love band names. I still keep lists of hypothetical band names. I’ve been in fictitious bands like Wicked Harvest and Wizards of Yore. See – you can tell what the music sounds like from the names, right? I think when we are making up fake bands we aren’t just coming up with cool band names but trying to invoke the cultural affect of an entire historical moment, trying to make it sound real enough so that you can get lost in the mix of real and made-up things and believe that this could have been a real band that got misplaced in the shuffle of time.
For a while I wondered if we should try to pass the Cryos off as real, press some seven inch records and scuff up the sleeves and plant them in record stores so people could discover them and eventually find their way to the comic.
I don’t want to give too much away but we’ll hear more from the Riots, who are a kind of a nemesis band for the Cryos. Their lead singer Face Forward is not a big Ana Droid fan. Also, at some point Gabe Gristle, bassist of the Cryos, will be making Aphex Twin-style IDM tracks and will release an album called Machinehead Field Recordings and Marches. It makes sense. He goes from Joy Division to New Order. It’s not a big jump to Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. But we don’t know that yet!
CBY: I notice the production is credited to Chaotic Good and Big Rock Comics - what should our readers know about these two entities, and what else can we expect to see from both in terms of other releases? How many issues did you have in mind for The Cryos, and are there other comic projects on your production slate?
AP: Big Rock Comics is me and Amanda Grazini (artist and also my wife) creating comics together. We are planning some short stories, sometimes I write and she draws and vice versa. Basically we wanted a place to put every creative thing we do together in one place, so we are starting to build it on Substack. We are also currently in the early stages of creating an OGN with Charles (Chaotic Good) as well, the working title is Caminando.
CS: Chaotic Good Projects is the umbrella moniker for the projects that me and my partner do that are independent in nature. Movies, video games, comics, whatever we’re working on. Readers can check out our sci-fi movie Embers which we made via Chaotic Good and there will certainly be a lot more to come.
CBY: I like that they are both joint ventures with your partners - finding ways to collaborate productively while co-habitating successfully; it's not necessarily the easiest thing to do. Reading on your prior work, Amilcar, you’ve worked for the major comics publishers and various independents, and Charles, you’ve got extensive experience producing music videos from some of the most iconic artists of the 21st century thus far (Norah Jones, LCD Soundsystem, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, etc.) and you’ve written two unique feature sci-fi films (Io and Embers) which my wife and I have enjoyed. Can you share a bit about how you decided to venture into the medium together with this project? As I work on a similarly music-centered story in a comic – a visual medium required to contextualize and infer the accompanying audio – I wonder; is The Cryos intended for the screen, and how do you visually and narratively decide to interpret sound on the page?
CS: I had a lot of fun making a lot of music videos. Some really hold up and they are kind of a little time capsule of an intensely-lived day, as filmmaking is almost always intense. I have very fond memories, for example, of the shoot for Titus Andronicus’ “A More Perfect Union.” What a great day.
CBY: That's a rad track - looks like it was cold out in the video!
But is The Cryos intended for the screen? I’m not opposed to the idea, but that’s not my intention. Bands in movies are usually a disappointment, but in comics your mind fills in the gaps. I started writing The Cryos at night during the writers’ room for my partner and my AMC show Silent History, which sadly never made it to screen though a season of it exists on paper. But a lot of my inspiration came from the fact that TV shows are so constrained, and in a comic anything can happen. The comparative lack of budgetary constraints in comics extends from logistics into the creative realm, and I think comics on a whole do much more challenging storytelling than TV shows. TV shows excel at human drama – two people talking in a room. Comic books excel at ideas that you maybe never thought of before.
AP: For me, it’s thinking about music videos! I loved watching MTV in my youth, so I think it comes from that source. But in The Cryos, Becca’s lettering work was crucial to get to the right musical vibe on the pages.
CS: Totally. I wonder what people would think who have never heard the Germs and first read Becca’s lettering of Germs lyrics. I think when they finally hear the Germs it might turn out to be a lot like they expected.
CBY: Conveying a punk aesthetic through text alone is a challenge I think Becca handled admirably. Charles, pertaining to your film work, I notice you’re represented by United Talent Agency. Representation within the Hollywood system is portrayed as a largely impenetrable fortress, where support is only offered once an artist has already generated their own buzz. What did the process of getting agency representation look like for you, and what advice do you have for those creatives looking to catch the attention of agents with their work? Amilcar, how do you partition your creative work from its administrative requirements - do you also have representation or management you work with?
CS: I think it is a largely impenetrable fortress. I’ll first pass along the advice that was given to me by an agent before I had one. She told me, “when you are ready for an agent, we’ll find you.” This was a meeting at film forum, I had already written a film that was partially financed, had a producer, star attachments, and I had been in the Sundance Screenwriters Lab! I couldn’t believe it! How was that not enough?!? But I think she was basically right. They found me when my value as a creator was something they could do something with.
So much of the film and TV industry is about risk management. The more elements you have, the more you are vouched for, the lower the risk. An idea is definitely not enough. A great script is probably not enough. A great script that someone is offering you money for might not even be enough. No one is willing to fuel your train to success station. No one will give you a free ride up the mountain. Once you are there, then maybe they’ll talk. Because there’s been some proof that mitigates the risk. In my experience, you really have to do it yourself.
Good news is, I think there will be another wave of independent film rising up. My advice to creatives is keep making stuff and don’t worry too much about representation. That’s what you have to do even when you have it.
AP: At the moment I don’t have any representation but I did work with Chiaroscuro Studios before.
CS: See, we are operating DIY, and making stuff we believe in, and representation is probably the smallest part of that. I know it seems daunting to creatives out there, but you just have to keep making cool stuff.
CBY: Great advice; noting that a good idea usually isn't a great idea unless driven from within through the crucible of refinement. Since you’ve loaded The Cryos with so many references to its points of inspiration, the usual closing question opens things up a bit; what totally unrelated creative work (other comics, music, films, literature, etc.) has been catching your attention lately? What should our audience check out after ordering The Cryos?
AP: I love videogames a lot, so my recommendations would be this year’s Silent Hill 2 (remake), Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Elden Ring, Bloodborne, Kunitsu-Gami Path of the Goddess, Alan Wake 2, etc…
I watched some awesome anime this year as well. I re-watched Berserk and watched Nana for the first time and some new ones like Dungeon Meshi and Dandadan.
Just watched Alien: Romulus and loved it very much!
CS: Okay well, now I have to definitely say some video games! This is old now, but Disco Elysium still stands as my favorite video game. Citizen Sleeper is my favorite game from last year and Citizen Sleeper 2 is coming out soon, so there is time to play the first one right now and then you won’t have to wait long for the second!
For movies, I was really blown away by Arkasha Stevenson’s exceptional directing in The First Omen. What a beautifully made, dark, unsettling film.
Books – if you read anything this year, and you like horror, Keith Rosson’s Fever House and The Devil By Name should be it. He’s the punk rock Stephen King.
As for music, which is really my specialty as a fan, this past year Ceremony live-streamed a concert where they played their incredible Hardcore album Rohnert Park all the way through. There were fantastic records this year from Still House Plants, Ekko Astral, Melt Banana, Clikatat Ikatowi’s art punk hardcore demo from 1993 was finally released, and that’s one of my favorite things.
CBY: Charles and Amilcar, thank you the plethora of fantastic recommendations and more importantly, for sharing The Cryos today! Please let our readers know below where we can find links to your portfolio of work, publications, and social media, and we look forward to seeing how The Cryos concludes!
CS: Well, The Cryos has 3 issues to go, so it’s going to be a process!
As for me, you can find me on Bluesky. You can rent Embers from the usual suspects of streaming platforms. And hopefully see you soon at the movies. Oh, I do have another creator owned sci-fi comic coming out with a publisher in 2025. So keep an eye out for that as well!
As for me, you can find me on Bluesky. You can rent Embers from the usual suspects of streaming platforms. And hopefully see you soon at the movies. Oh, I do have another creator owned sci-fi comic coming out with a publisher in 2025. So keep an eye out for that as well!
AP: Thank you so much for the interview!
You can find more of my artwork on:
instagram at https://www.instagram.com/milkar79
online portfolio at www.amilcarpinna.com
and Big Rock Comics is on:
substack at https://bigrockcomics.substack.com
bluesky at
instagram at https://www.instagram.com/bigrockcomics
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