Brahm Revel is pretty new to the comic book scene, having previously dabbled primarily in illustration work for magazines and storyboarding for films, but it’s only a matter of time before he’s a household name.

This year he’s released his Image-produced series (which he created, wrote, and illustrates) Guerillas, which follows a “hapless new recruit who falls in with a troop of specially trained chimpanzees during the Vietnam War,” as well as a very cool adaptation of the indie film I Sell the Dead, starring Ron Perlman and Dominic Monaghan, about a pair of grave robbers in Victorian England who come across supernatural happenings in their line of work.

Jesse had a chance to talk to Mr. Revel about his up-coming projects, how he got his big break, and the future of digital comics.

SJ: Guerillas is your first published book. You drew the whole first issue and sent a submission to Image and it got picked up. Can you talk about that process?

BR: Actually, I had a few other things published, just not by any major companies. I worked for a director named Larry Fessenden at his production company, Glass Eye Pix. In the years that I worked for him we collaborated on a couple of different comics together, mostly adaptations of his films. My other duties there were things like storyboarding, production design, and pre-vis/concept type stuff.

So to get back to your question, I had the chance to hone my comic making skills at Glass Eye Pix, but I was really anxious to work on some of my own material. So I decided to save some money and take a year off to get GUERILLAS going. My original idea was to self publish and try to get a Xeric grant, but the more I worked on the first issue, the more self publishing an on going series seemed like a plan destined to fail. So when I finished the first issue I decided to shop it around to a few publishers before sending it in to the Xeric Foundation. The first on my list was Image, mainly because their policy is to let creators own their intellectual property flat-out, and that was very important to me. I wanted to own and control my own project.

As far as the process went, it was very simple. I had the first issue completely done, so I just wrote up a short synopsis of the rest of the series and sent them both in. About six weeks later they got back to me and we were in business.

SJ: You do everything on the book, how long does it take you to complete and issue?

BR: Yeah, I do everything on GUERILLAS, from writing and drawing, to coloring and pre-press. And every issue is around 50 pages long, so it’s a long process. If I didn’t have any other freelance work to do and I could devote all of my time to GUERILLAS, I could put one together in about 3 months. But what’s happened is that sales on GUERILLAS have been modest at best, and I haven’t been able to make a living just making GUERILLAS. So that means doing freelance work to make ends meet, and that means some delays. But don’t worry! GUERILLAS is still getting made, there’s just gonna be more time between issues.

SJ: Most comics are always 22 pages. Why did you want each issue of Guerillas to be longer than the average book?

BR: Honestly, that kind of worked it’s self out. I had the whole story roughly plotted out, and each chapter needed about 48 pages to be told. If I broke them in half it felt like either not enough happened per issue, or there wasn’t a good cliffhanger at the end of each chapter.

I also didn’t want to force too much story into a limited amount of space. I wanted the room to have both extended action sequences and quiet scenes that relied more on visual storytelling, and to do that you need more pages.

SJ: When you pitched Guerillas to Image, did you have the whole story mapped out? Was it always going to be 9 issues?

BR: As I mentioned above I did plot everything out before I started. Things did change a little as I made second and third drafts. It went back and forth a couple times between nine and ten issues. Some issues merged and others split, but it settled on nine, which I like because it divides nicely in to three acts.

SJ: Can you talk a little about I Sell The Dead? How did that come about?

BR: I SELL THE DEAD, which came out only a week or two ago, was another project/collaboration with Larry Fessenden and his company Glass Eye Pix. Larry had begun producing low-budget horror films to give up and coming directors a chance to actually make movies. He calls them Scare Flix. I SELL THE DEAD, which was directed by Glenn McQuaid and stars Dominic Monaghan ( Lost, L.O.T.R) and Ron Perlman (Hellboy), was one of these movies. It’s a story about two grave robbers, in Dickens era England, getting in to all sorts of macabre and paranormal adventures. It’s very influenced by both the Hammer films of the ‘70s and the EC horror comics of the ‘50s.

Since it had that EC vibe, and because I already had a relationship making comics with Larry, it made sense to make an adaptation of I SELL THE DEAD too. And because of my work on GUERILLAS we were able to get ISTD into Image’s hands, who ultimately decided to put it out.

SJ: How did you divide your time between I Sell The Dead and Guerillas?

BR: The I SELL THE DEAD comic actually goes back a couple years, even before I drew the first issue of GUERILLAS. I had done a rough pencil version of the comic based on the screenplay before the movie was even cast. This was used as inspiration boards and early pre-visualization for investors and cast and crew. Then I took my break to get GUERILLAS started and they went off and made their movie.

Two years later the movie was done and ready to go to festivals and I had begun putting out GUERILLAS with Image. The bones of the comic was already there when I came back to it, but some changes did have to be made. Some character’s likenesses had to be changed because of the actors which had been cast, and having the actual movie finished enabled me to add some textural details that wouldn’t have made it in to the comic otherwise.

So after those changes it was just a matter of inking and coloring it, which I did during breaks from GUERILLAS. I find it very difficult to work on two different comics at the same time, so I would take a month off between issues of GUERILLAS and get as much done on I SELL THE DEAD as I could, then I’d get back to my monkeys. I just worked this way until ISTD was finally done.

SJ: What are your thoughts on self-publishing?

BR: I think that self-publishing, in the current climate, is more of an option for established creators. If you are an unknown, I think it’s very hard to first, get in to Diamond, and second, get retailers to buy it and put it on a shelf where it can actually be seen. I’m specifically talking about on-going series (mini or regular), because the problem is making enough money to pay for the printing of the second and third issues.

Self publishing graphic novels, or one-shots, may be a better bet, because it’s not as necessary to recoup immediately in order to fund the subsequent issues. The books can sit on the shelf and be bought over time.

That’s not to say that it can’t be done. Dave Sim and Jeff Smith did it as unknowns, and with only some previous notoriety, David Lapham put out one of my all time favorites, Stray Bullets.

SJ: What would you be doing if you weren’t drawing comics?

BR: Well, when I was little, I wanted to either be a comic book artist or a baseball player. But seeing as how “baseball player” could be considered akin to saying, “I’d be a cowboy,” or “a spy,” I guess I’d do something in a storytelling field, probably film. Most of my answers would be in fields somewhat related to comics, things like design, art, printing, writing, film or animation.

SJ: Guerillas is featured on an app for the iPhone by Comixology. What are your thoughts on digital comics and how do you think this format affects actual sales of printed comics?

BR: I decided to do the iPhone app simply because I wanted to expose as many people as possible to GUERILLAS, and at 99¢ a pop, I think people may be much more willing to give it a shot (not to mention the first issue is completely free!). That’s the main thing that excites me about digital based comics; you don’t have to charge very much for them. There is no upfront printing or shipping costs, and no distributor or retailer to take a cut. The Internet is your distribution tool and a website like the apple store could sell your comics and take far less of a cut than traditional retailers because it’s less of a risk. Self-publishing becomes much more of an option because all you really need to do is make the comic and it’s ready to go. You can charge less and still potentially make more per issue than traditional printed books, and if you charge less, people are always much more likely to give a new title a chance.

With the advent of the Kindle, the iPhone and the digital comic formats that are being bootlegged online, readers are already getting comfortable with reading books digitally. And given enough time, everything is gonna end up digital anyway, so I just assume you might as well embrace it or be left behind.

I can see a model, where monthlies, or episode-based books would be sold digitally and then collections would be printed if sales warranted it.

For now, I think comic buyers, who are natural collectors, will continue to buy the printed books regardless. If they read a digital comic they like enough, they’ll track it down and buy a hard copy for the archives.

SJ: What are some of your favorite graphic novels?

BR: High on my list are Mignola’s Hellboy, Otomo’s Akira and Jaime’s half of Love and Rockets. I’ve loved all of Mazzucchelli’s work, especially Year One, but I’m ashamed to say I still haven’t read Asterios Polyp. As I’ve said Lapham’s Stray Bullets is one of my all time favorites. I love Alex Toth’s work, though no particular stories come to mind. I also really enjoy Guy Davis’s work and am really excited to pick up Marquis: Inferno. There’s plenty more, but it gets hard to think of these things when you’re put on the spot.

SJ: After Guerillas is finished, what’s next?

BR: I’d like to be writing and drawing more of my own comics hopefully. I’ve got three or four ideas that I’m slowly taking notes on as I think of details or plot points. I don’t know which would be the next project I pitch, perhaps the one that is most developed when the time comes. But for now, I just have to concentrate on getting GUERILLAS finished. I’m at the halfway point now, so hopefully it’s all downhill from here…

Check out Brahm’s site here, where you can read the first two issues of Guerillas for free (I’ve had trouble locating hardcopy issues personally so this is a nice touch), and I Sell the Dead is available now at your local comic shop (it’s $4.99, but at 40 pages full color it’s well worth the price).  You can follow him on Twitter here.

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