Johnny Quest for Grown Ups

This is a feature excerpt from Unwinnable Monthly #182. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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“I think I’m home now.”

How do you end a story? It’s something almost no one wants to do, be it executives, audiences, or even the people creating the latest enthralling epic. An ending means having to tie things off with a bow, letting go, and surrendering that potential energy for more… well, everything. Whether it’s Star Wars or Saga, A Song of Ice and Fire or The Walking Dead, we are surrounded by universes that refuse to let the sun set. Which is why something like Shutter is so precious and rare. Shutter is, was, and always will be about how the story ends – and why that’s beautiful.

The tale of Kate Kristopher has everything from swashbuckling adventure to harrowing body horror, yet at its heart, is all about a woman coming to grips with the choices made by her parents. Choices that were meant to protect her, even if it costs whole other worlds to ensure it. Together, Joe Keatinge, Leila Del Duca, Owen Gieni, and later John Workman (stepping in as letterer after Ed Brisson) achieved a heart wrenching tale about growing old and embracing change that we need now more than ever.

The spark for Shutter came from a yearning for the more imaginative works of C.C. Beck and Jack Kirby, as Keatinge recalls: “Like – in Captain Marvel Adventures, a tiger would just find a book and learn to read and then was like ’Alright, well, I’m a tiger. I’ve educated myself. I’m going to wear a suit!’ and they get to do that! I don’t like talking negatively about work but I was getting pretty bored with comics at the time. Then I saw Leila’s stuff. She wasn’t just talented, but also hungry to prove herself. So I was like ‘Why would I restrain this person?’”

The whole team came from different walks of life and eras of the comics industry. Shutter would be Del Duca’s first major on-going series, connecting with Keatinge over her talents during a comic convention. Workman had already achieved a storied, decades-long career stretching all the way back to fanzines in the 1960s. Keatinge himself started in sales in PR at Image, only to swiftly dive into creative collaborations with the legends of his day. Gieni and Keatinge had already revived another old school comic archetype with Image’s GLORY reimagining, primed to work together again.

Between the four of them, each had an appreciation for every facet of how to assemble a comic, from the line work and script to the lettering, colors, and paneling. Collaboration was a hallmark, with everyone playing off of each other. “Leila’s artwork provided me with the impetus for all the lettering that I did on it,” Workman says, “That’s always been the way it is. I kind of bounce off of the artwork and use it as my inspiration.” As Keatinge puts it, comics are the “perfect marriage of visual and written word” woven into one. He continues, “Even before I could read, I could stare at a comic. I was just obsessed with them.” It shows on every page, with an array of daring creative choices:

• Huge, two-page large splash pages with ongoing battles and chaos.  “They’re really satisfying for me,” Del Duca explains with a grin, “and luckily Joe knows how to write a splash page very impactfully – so it’s either a really touching moment or something that’s ballistic and over the top imaginative!”
• Sudden cuts into completely different art styles, changes in lettering format, and framing devices, such an assassin’s fall from grace in the style of a Charles Schultz comic strip. “Shutter was the perfect project for those types of ideas,” Gieni recalls. “Using halftones for flashbacks or some bloom lighting on the future scenes. Black and white during a manga sequence. I definitely wanted it to be clear that things were taking place in different times or places.” Workman agrees, noting, “I loved working [Shutter] because it was a real challenge. I remember one issue where I had to sort of become different syndicated strip guys. There was a series of satirical things about then existing comic strips. I remember a variation on “Calvin and Hobbes” there. And I actually went back and looked at all the strips that were being satirized and tried to make the lettering look like what had actually been done there.”
• A massive world that hurtles along so fast you scarcely have time to ask how it all works. Instead, every pause in the pacing is about character growth and change. Amazingly, one of the fan favorite characters, Alarm Cat, was originally set to be killed off early in the series, only for Leila and readers’ love for him leading to him becoming a central fixture. “I don’t think anyone expected him to go the way he did,” Del Duca recalls. That’s putting it lightly – not many sentient robot alarm clocks turn into Alexander the Great-esque world conquerors. Workman was equally fond of Alarm Cat, “I loved the little guy, and I came up with an interesting sort of typeface font that I used just for his dialogue. Geez, it was so much fun.”

Keatinge adds, “Things evolve, right? I will say originally his story would have played out with Chris Jr. That was the original plan, essentially – but Alarm Cat took over that story, which was great. I was like ‘Okay we’ll figure out something for him to do’ and then Chris’s story took a different path, one that ends up in a much better place.” That isn’t to say the team were afraid of exploring tragedy, such as with Kate’s best friend, Alain.

Keatinge and Del Duca in particular emphasize a priority in a cast that was as varied and nuanced as possible, regardless of their background. At a time when better representation was still struggling in comics, Shutter managed to not only depict a queer heroine with tact, but a transwoman as well. Alain’s journey sees her endure heartache, a burn injury, and more, yet she defiantly keeps getting back up, refusing to settle for anything less than her truest self.

“We were just drawing/writing a badass optimist who’s really loving and supportive,” Del Duca explains, “Unfortunately she gets caught up in Kate’s dramas, but she’s so loyal, and they love each other so much. And then in the end, I think Joe wanted to have Alain’s death be non-fantastical. Because that’s what a lot of people go through.” Her ending isn’t the happiest, but it’s still on her own terms, something she and Kate share in common by the series’ end. Reflecting on Alain’s fate, Keatinge says, “Some people were really upset about her ending and I was like ‘Yeah, me too’, you know? I’m not here to write stories about labels or to take people’s lives and exploit them to make me look like the good guy – I’m here to write about real people and real people? There’s so much more to them, and they go through things in their life.”

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With over ten of writing years in the industry, Elijah’s your guy for all things strange, obscure, and spooky in gaming. When not writing articles here or elsewhere, he’s tinkering away at indie games and fiction of his own.