The Pedestrian, released through Magma Comix, provides a glimpse into small-town heroics. Sean Van Gorman and Joey Esposito visit the Yeti Cave to discuss this standout title!
COMIC BOOK YETI: Sean and Joey, thanks for joining us in the Yeti Cave today to chat about your ongoing series, The Pedestrian. How’s the holiday season shaped up on the East Coast for you guys?
SEAN VON GORMAN: We are bunkered down and expect to survive the season with ZERO casualties!
JOEY ESPOSITO: Whenever I’m home, I basically live in a suit of armor made out of dogs and cats and blankets and nothing can ever hurt me or make me feel sad.
CBY: Sounds especially cozy! I’ll start by declaring my conflict of interest - I usually field requests for interviews, but in this case, my long-standing professional involvement in land transport and traffic safety induced me to reach out to discuss this brilliant title. I’d like to lead off by asking; how did you two first meet, and what did it take for your first collaboration – Pawn Shop – to arise as a project? As The Pedestrian (which you mentioned started as a joke about a speedwalking hero with no powers) subsequently entered your conversations and started coming together over COVID, what did that collaborative process look like, and when you both know you had something solid to share with the world?
JE: Sean and I met circa 2011 or 2012 on Twitter. I was working on writing Pawn Shop, an intensely personal project for me at that time, and was looking for an artist to collaborate with and Sean sent me his stuff. It was perfect for that book and pretty soon we had a successful Kickstarter and all the stress and complications that come with it. By the time we started tinkering with The Pedestrian, we’d both gone through a lot of personal and professional growth, including some other projects together that didn’t get a greenlight, so we just decided to say fuck it and go all in on something we thought was really cool without worrying about if we could sell it to a publisher. It’s very collaborative between us, we talk about everything and make decisions together. It’s great. I think we knew we had something solid when we started showing people we admired and they had nice things to say.
CBY: Joey, in your August interview for Comicon with Rachel Bellwoar, you mentioned your small New England hometown being “(r)avaged by a corporation environmentally and economically, a place with no opportunities and no real future.” My grandpa worked in that General Electric plant in Pittsfield that made those polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) you were referencing, and he died of cancer back in the 90’s much the same as many people who lived in the Housatonic catchment. I also grew up in an area of Ohio where towns (without colleges) had a hard streak of Rust Belt hopelessness. I think you captured the details, both in the writing and art, vividly and realistically. What other reference points from your respective lived experiences fed into grounding this story in a familiar world?
JE: I’m very sorry to hear about your grandpa. I was growing up there during that time when there were constant news stories about people dying from that exposure, and when they were literally digging up one of the elementary schools in town because the playground was contaminated by it from GE dumping all of their shit there. It’s fucking infuriating to think about. For me, especially being so far removed from it all now, there’s this palpable hopelessness hanging over the whole town, even still, constant talk of how things “used to be.” And despite the hardship the town as a whole has suffered, there’s a shocking lack of empathy that permeates the place. And that is hard to recognize unless you are able to get out and experience other things, other places, other people. But there are also people there trying to make it better, even when it seems like the town is actively working against their efforts for positive change. It’s a really complicated relationship.
SVG: That is absolutely dreadful, and speaks to the sort of “REAL LIFE EVILS” we wish to address in the series.
CBY: Yeah, I remember my folks talking about the playground fill incident, too. On the earlier topic of small-town Massachusetts memories, I more happily remember some of my earliest gaming experiences on a Donkey Kong machine in a dimly lit Italian restaurant/bar in Pittsfield, which came to mind when I saw Pizza Sun; the dingy pizza place where Randy works, and a pervasive corporate/nutritional presence throughout The Pedestrian. The CEO, Uncle Joe, is a familiar archetype built from the distinctly American phenomenon of franchise restaurateur schemes. You pack in loaded depictions regarding the role of instant gratification in American eating habits and brand marketing. Can you both speak a bit to professional experience outside the comics industry in both marketing/advertising and the food and beverage industry that may have informed this layered, considered depiction?
SVG: Joey and I both grew up in the 80’s/90’s which is the Golden Age of Pizza Style Food Marketing. Going to a sit down Pizza Hut to suffer through a Personal Pan “Pizza” for the simple joy of ALSO getting an X-Men VHS and a comic book. Millions of dollars making this foodstuff pass for Pizza.
JE: If you’re talking about the Highland Restaurant, that is literally the reference I put into the script for Pizza Sun. I think I sent Sean the website or a photo on Google or something. Highland is a family-owned joint and a community staple, but that was the aesthetic I wanted Pizza Sun to have. It’s still there, by the way, they’ve been there 85 years! But for sure, we wanted to incorporate the corporate domination of how we consume everything, from food to media, and how to a certain degree, that’s all predetermined for us if we only stick to what we’re told we should enjoy. I spent a lot of years working at a giant corporation and the book got greenlit after I was unceremoniously laid off, which resulted in a lot of soul searching and blaming myself for turning into a fucking sellout (therapy taught me this wasn’t true), so that definitely seeped in here as we started putting the final issues together. But it’s also got the flip side, too, with Lazer Titans, which is just as important, I think — how the stories we ingest can impact our own sense of morality in the real world.
CBY: I followed up with my grandma, and it was Jimmy's (which is no longer in operation, sadly) but the vibe was very similar to Highland. There’s a line from Sophie Smith, the school crossing guard; “‘cuz the big stuff, we can’t do nuthin’ about.” This book, better than most comics I’ve encountered, captures the mundane, insidious evil of being marginalized, provincialized, and relegated to the societal fringe in a manner very real in many Americans’ lives. This book goes a long way towards personifying the principles of civic duty and disturbance. Sean, having mentioned to Chris Coplan at AIPT Comics the character of the Pedestrian is based upon an old work colleague steadfastly leading by example. Without spoiling how the story develops and the stakes escalate, can you tell our readers a bit more about what, precisely, our ensemble of everyday heroes are fighting against in The Pedestrian?
SVG: It speaks to our everyday struggles. The News is apocalyptic and most people are struggling in one way or the other, and there is very little in the way of hope. We could all use an empathetic hero who keeps trying to move forward and even if their good deeds seem meaningless. They are not.
JE: They’re fighting against despair. They’re fighting against this thing that wants to drag them down, suck them in, force them to drown in that hopelessness I was talking about. Make them feel like there’s no way out. They’re swimming upstream against a river of apathy.
CBY: We’ve talked about your respective real-world influences that have helped shape the world of The Pedestrian. What can you share with our audience regarding the creative work (comics or otherwise) you’ve drawn upon as inspiration for this story? Were there any specific visual or voicing references you kept in mind throughout the drafting process?
JE: Twin Peaks was a big one for me for sure. Its tonality, that meshing of the horrific with the mundane and the absolutely electric. The way it treats the everyday with as much curiosity as the supernatural. More broadly with Lynch as an artist, I like how he leaves a lot for the viewer to chew on and encourages them to engage with it rather explaining his intent. That’s something we certainly aim for in this book, despite my long answers to these questions. Also, music is very important to the way I generally work, and the band Wipers were enormously influential in shaping the story. Their 1983 record “Over the Edge,” specifically.
SVG: Mike Allred’s Madman is very much in the DNA of this work. Madman being a culmination of everything he loves, this is the same for us in comics. In many ways it’s the book we know no one would let us do, so we decided we would just make the best book we wanted to make and if a publisher didn't want to work with us to get it out there, then screw them - we’ll make it anyway. Thankfully, we have found the right partner in Magma Comix.
CBY: Yeah, Magma has clearly made a good decision picking this one up from you guys. You’ve mentioned there’s a multi-arc narrative planned - I’ve had the pleasure of reading the ~100 pages you shared with me, and I’m excited to see how things develop based upon how far they’ve come in the issues thus far. Do you have an idea of the total length of the story as you’ve currently envisioned it through to completion?
SVG: The response to the book has been incredible. We were confident it would find its audience but the growth of its popularity caught us by surprise. If people keep reading, we will keep making it.
JE: We’ve got an overall story in mind, as far as peeling back the layers and mythology of the world. But how we get there is always in flux, depending on the kind of space we’re able to lock down, you know? This is kind of in the weeds, but for example, we initially planned volume one as six issues, but we got four. So we did a lot of retooling and ultimately changed the trajectory of certain things. For the better, I would say. I think we discovered some of the book’s idiosyncrasies in the editing process. Part of the fun of comics, for me, is that practical side of figuring out how you’re gonna effectively tell a story within the allotted pages. All of this is to say, I hope we can get to triple digits but I’m prepared for anything!
CBY: So Sean, you handled the illustrations while Joey, you picked up the writing duties on this title. You also had Josh Jensen handling colors, Shawn Lee on letters, and additional art from David Bowie Rendon-Gorman and Micah Williams. I assume David’s of relation, Sean, but regarding everyone involved, can you tell us a bit about how they came into the picture for this title?
SVG: Yes, David is my oldest son and it’s a sketch he did for me early on in the project, maybe 5 years ago at this point? Micah is the son of Writer Stephanie Williams. We had met them while I was tabling next to them at HeroesCon a few years back. Micah had been set up and pushing sketches commission for $5 a pop and I was greatly impressed with his hustle (It was college-level hustling.) I had to get one of The Pedestrian. A couple of years later I thought it would be cool to include in this the series in what ultimately became his Comic Book debut. He been trying to get his mom to get him on an exclusive contract since.
Outside of the Nepo-kid hires, I’ve been curating covers for years from friends and artists we admire. Usually ones we’ll see at conventions so we can pay things forward if we make a sale with something they drew we can nudge them over to their booths and try to get others to discover/support them.
CBY: On the note of editorial and publishing support, we’d already mentioned Magma Comix as the home for The Pedestrian. Can you share with our readers how you ended up working with them on this series, and what sort of arrangement they offered to support you in delivering this creator-owned series to the market? You’ve both worked with a variety of publishers at all scales, so what did Magma do to stand out?
SVG: Bobby Curnow came out to chat with me at my booth at NYCC!
JE: It really was one of those things where the stars aligned because we’d pitched it to IDW when Bobby was there, but then he left to join Magma, remembered our pitch, and brought us in, and it worked out. What I like about Magma is that there’s no bullshit. They tell us what they can and can’t do. Some small publishers will promise you the world and then hang you out to dry or fuck you over, or string you along forever until they ghost you or make you wait a year just to give you a hard no. Thankfully, we’ve gone through all that stuff already and were able to avoid the bad actors. Magma was transparent through the whole process and that’s been refreshing.
CBY: It's good to know what you're getting into and having expectations appropriate tempered through proactive communication by business partners. I didn’t want to get into the weeds on transport policy, but I have to ask - what sort of internal story logic are you adhering to with regard to The Pedestrian’s powers and ability to access/derive them from traffic regulation guidance and signage? You’d joked with Rachel about a “duck crossing” sign character - I’m thinking about bike lane signs and a cyclist character showing up in case they need to proverbially “call in the cavalry” or the potential of “deer crossing” or “yield” signs serving as either throwaway gags or core character development opportunities. Who is the transport/traffic nerd between the two of you, and how closely does this idea of playing by the rules, regulation, and civic order factor into the future of The Pedestrian?
SVG: When I was coming up with the character design for what would become The Pedestrian, I was thinking it would be really funny to have a costumed hero fashion themselves out of the blinking man from the crossing sign. Then expanded that thinking into what if the symbols we know as traffic signs are actually lost totems forgotten by human kind but have perhaps crept back into the consciousness as Traffic signs. WHY do we stop for a Stop sign? Is it a trained response or is it something deeper?
JE: I think this book is entirely about breaking out of the path that has been set for you, or, alternatively, letting that path define you. We’re all told to live by a set of rules. You do A, B, and C, it’ll result in X, Y, Z. It’s why most of us have student loan debt and useless degrees. There was an agreement made, a social contract we trusted would be upheld, and got screwed in the process, while plenty of other people made bank. So for me, it’s less about the actual specifics of traffic laws and more about what those things represent. To some degree, those rules are in place to keep us safe, but what’s the line between things meant to keep us safe and things meant to make us comply with forces seeking to destroy us for their own benefit?
CBY: I really appreciate that this title takes that which is considered pedestrian and connects it to the greater forces at work amongst all of us. Of course, we come to a close with an opportunity for you to recommend whatever creative work you’ve been enjoying unrelated to The Pedestrian. What other comics, movies, music, literature, etc., have been catching your attention lately? Who is presenting a unique voice that our audience should check out after reading your comic?
SVG: I’ve been digging Spectrum from MadCave Studio, and whatever Ghost Machine has been putting out!
JE: There are so many incredible comics across the board right now. I’m loving Into the Unbeing by Zack Thompson and Hayden Sherman from Dark Horse. Armored by our friend Michael Schwartz and Ismael Hernandez from Clover Press has been a blast. S.I.R. by the incredible Fell Hound from BOOM! is stunningly unique. Jason Copland’s Full Tilt is a Frank Miller’s Ronin-level masterpiece. The recent Convert by John Arcudi and Savannah Finley was a trip. Musically, lately I’ve been obsessed with Babel Map’s “Teeth”, “Funeral Soundtrack #4” by Destroy Boys, and “Deep Sage” by Gouge Away.
CBY: That ought to keep our readers occupied for a bit! Sean and Joey, it’s a delight having you stop by the Yeti Cave. Please let us know where they can find you and your work online - portfolio, publication, and social media links are all welcome. Thanks for joining us!
SVG: I’m on pretty much all of Socials @Vongormanart on Insta and Twitter (Not calling it X) and SeanVonGorman on Blue Sky. You can also find me at seanvongormanart.com
JE: Thanks for having us! Sorry I swore so much. I’m @joeyesposito on Bluesky and @_joeyesposito (the underscore is not by choice) on Instagram. If you like comics, cats, and video games, come hang out.