From Screenplay to Comics, Talking ‘Dog Eaters’ with Malcolm Wong

October 21, 2008 by Gary Rodrigue
Filed under Interviews

Malcolm Wong did not intend to have his screenplay adapted into a comic book but due to a first place finish in his genre at the 2006 Creative Screenwriting Screenwriter’s Expo 5 that is exactly what happened. Gary Rodrigue of ComicNews.Info recently had the opportunity to talk to Malcolm Wong, the man behind the soon to be released comic book series, Dog Eaters.

Malcolm, can you give readers who may not be familiar with you a quick introduction.

I’m new to comics — or I guess you could say that I’ve come back to them as a writer after a long time of not following what’s been going on with them. I’m Chinese-American, 3rd generation with a bit of British blood, which I just found out about. Born in Baltimore, MD, graduated from high school in the Greater Boston area and then after two years at UMass, Amherst I moved to Hawaii where I studied fine art (sculpture and glass blowing).

After graduating, I moved to Japan where I directed music videos. After a few years, I started writing when a fortune teller told me I had talent. I wrote a couple of novels, which were repped by agents in NYC and then London but I couldn’t get them published. After a motorcycle acciden, I was visited in the hospital by a friend whose mother was a script supervisor in Hollywood. I always had movies in the back of mind and that inspired me to adapt one of my novels into a screenplay which also won a small screenplay contest. A wrote a couple more. DOG EATERS is my third screenplay. It won three awards at the the ScreenwritingExpo5 in L.A. One of of the awards was that the Dabel Brother would adapt the screeplay into a graphic novel. So I have gone from writing novels, to screenplays, to comics — I guess if you were to do a career extrapolation, you might assume that my next step is dirty limericks!

What’s the history of the ‘Dog Eaters’ itself? How did it come about? Was it your first idea/attempt?

DOG EATERS, the screenplay, was not written with an outline. I just sat down and started writing the adventures of the Black Dog Clan from scratch. I’m not saying that it just flowed out in one sitting; there were a lot of dead ends, rewrites, and about six or seven drafts. After the Dabel Brothers chose it as the script they wanted, Sean J Jordan was assigned to adapt it. He re-formatted the 118 page movie script into a 168 page comic script. He did a great job of fitting into a graphic novel structure. I then went back in and did even more revision, so this story has been looked at very closely from a number of different angle. It should be very tight. It better be tight!

What can you tell readers about ‘Dog Eaters’?

Basically, the logline is: Mankind failed in its first attempt to transcend the Petroleum Age. The Die Off killed nine out of ten people worldwide. One hundred and seventy five years later, civilization consists of scattered nomadic tribes, isolated casino-cities, and roving bands of predatory bandits.

This is the world of the Black Dog Clan.

And it’s a family story! Well, a story about a family.

What inspired you to create such an apocalyptic tale?

I started to write DOG EATERS at a time when I was totally disgusted with what was going on in the USA: the addictive preoccupation with celebrity, the political incompetence and arrogance at the highest level, the needless and endless war, the feeling that Americans were ‘fiddling while Rome burned.’

I started to speculate about what would happen if this current incarnation of Rome did in fact burn, bringing down the rest of the world with it in a chain reaction of economic collapse, war, disease, and famine, culminating in the ‘Die Off.’

Suddenly, starting with sub-prime mortgages, the world economy is reeling. You can see the backlash against against the current ruling party and the neo-cons, but at the time I started writing DOG EATERS, there was no end in sight. DOG EATERS comes out right after the election, so we’ll see if there will be any real change pretty soon and if there is, can the tide be turned? If not, well we may well be entering the prelude to the Die Off.

So DOG EATERS is a speculative story. A “what if” story. Hopefully it won’t come to this, but who knows?

Native Americans usually don’t show up very often in comics, why did you choose that ethnicity for your lead characters?

I like the idea of Native Americans taking back the land. But they are not the only ones who survive. Prisoners isolated in high-security prisons also survive, interbreeding to create a super-brutal outlaw. There are also military personnel and scientists in secret bases in the Southwest. It’s a melting pot of cultures with upward and downward mobility, just like America is now.

What type of printing schedule/print run will ‘Dog Eaters’ adhere to?

There will be 6 issues with Issue 1 coming out November 11 or so. We originally had a Nov 5 sale date, but we’re going to be a week late. Issue 2 is on schedule for early December, with Issue 3 scheduled for early January. There will be a one month gap between Issues 3 & 4, so Issue 4 will be out in March, Issue 5 in April, and Issue 6 in June. Then all the issues will be compiled into a graphic novel in time (hopefully) for San Diego Comicon 2009.

The story is complete of course. It’s the pencils that take the most time. Guillermo A. Angel is the artist and he’s doing a really inspired job, putting everything he has into this. We could go faster, but that would mean compromising the quality of the artwork. We just have to hope that people will excuse us if we are a little late once in a while.

Who were the other creative talents involved with ‘Dog Eaters’?

Sean J Jordan did the adaptation. He was with the Dabel Brothers when the project first got off the ground, but is no longer with them.

Guillermo A. Angel, as mentioned earlier, is the artist. I think he will be recognized internationally as a comic artist superstar after DOG EATERS comes out. Just a great person and artist to work with. Guillermo lives in Santiago, Chile.

The toning & inking for the SDCC exclusive Issue #0 was done by Shari Chankhamma, a Thai artist living in Bangkok. She’s done pencils for a book published by SLG. Also very talented.

Color for Issue #1 was done by Ruben De Vela and Michael Bartolo, both based in Manila, Philippines.

Color finishing and quality control was done by Guillermo and Digikore (based in India).

Bill Tortolini, who runs Lithium Pro, did the lettering and pre-press production for Issue #0 and will do the rest of the issues as well.

So why should people pick up the book and read it?

Hmmm, you got me there. Here comes the hard sales talk…

Well, it’s worth it just to check out the art which fans and professionals alike have been raving about. And the story’s not too shabby either, if I do say so myself. Hopefully there are characters that people can relate to. The meat and potatoes of this action story is seasoned with inter-family dynamics and conflict, with a dash of a love triangle, a one-night stand, and a teenage crush. So you have a multi-faceted story here that should appeal to both male and female readers.

Where could someone find this comic book to purchase?

It’s listed in Diamond Previews, so hopefully in your neighborhood comic book shop.

Thanks for taking the time to chat with us, is there anything else that you’d like to say?

I guess my main hope is that people will be able to visualize this story as a movie. My goal is to get this made as a big studio movie. It’s a movie I would pay to see!

For more information on Dog Eaters check out http://www.dogeaters-manga.com/