Launching on January 28th, the new Vertigo series EFFIGY has writer Tim Seeley tell the story of a childhood star returning to their small town roots. Also, there's something darker and twisted going on as well. Seeley talked to us over the phone about the book and answered a few of our questions.
COMIC VINE: Just getting right down to the basics, what's EFFIGY about?
TIM SEELEY: It's about a girl who is a former kid star from a science-fiction tv show. She gets involved with a murder case that strangely recalls elements of her old show. It points towards a global conspiracy involving a religion with elements from the tv show.
CV: The first issue gives the reader a "fish out of water" story, as Chondra once lived in Hollywood but it now back in her home town. There's the idea of culture shock within the first issue. Was this something you experienced in your personal life?
TS: Not really, but I think there's something interesting inherently about people who experience the "great life." I've done the thing where you go out to L.A. and you go to some meeting for a movie producer and they blow smoke up your butt, and you think "oh my god!" You see this other side of the world that you know that a whole bunch of people live in every day. And then you go back and you're just the regular crap that you always were and you have to go to Walgreen's to buy your cough drops. [laughs] Nothing's different, it's just that there's this world that we sort of believe and they fabricate about LA and Hollywood and the world that we actually live in. I always liked that weird contrast.
CV: The first issue really does center around Chondra. Is it more of a larger ensemble cast as this goes on or will it just focus on Chondra?
TS: It has three main characters coming right out of the book. There are only two of them in this one [the first issue]. You meet all of them, actually. It sort of becomes how they get together and how they end up stuck together becomes the focus as the book goes on. She's [Chondra] definitely the lead, and her story is the through-line. Her experience with fame and that culture and then why she got out of it and her experience of constantly being pulled back into it are definitely the through-line on EFFIGY.
CV: You're working on GRAYSON and you were writing on BATMAN ETERNAL. Is working with new characters and a new world over at Vertigo just as challenging if not more as working with these well-established characters?
TS: It's way harder. [laughs] It's much harder. The great thing about established characters is that they're always reacting against something. For me, when I make stuff up, a lot of my inspiration comes from something I've thought about, something I've already seen, and it's really hard to react against characters you're making up on the spot, so it's definitely a lot harder. It can be really rewarding, but it's so much more difficult. When I write an issue of EFFIGY or REVIVAL, I always try to follow it up with a GRAYSON or BATMAN ETERNAL, something simpler. It's a weird contrast.
CV: So GRAYSON and BATMAN ETERNAL are almost like a palate cleanser before you get back to creator-owned story?
TS: Maybe if I didn't do creator-owned stuff that was always complex and dark. [laughs] That kind of goes with Vertigo stuff. Maybe my next book will be a light and bubbly private investigating dog or something like that. It would be a lot easier too.
CV: The opening of this book is really light-hearted. I really felt like I was reading somebody else's work. As I was reading, I thought "this doesn't feel like Tim Seeley."
TS: What does Tim Seeley mean? [laughs]
CV: I always just go back to HACK/SLASH.
TS: Oh, ok. My natural impulse is sort of dark and funny. I think that's how my brain works. I tend to think of things like "oh man, that's horrible, but it's so horrible it's funny." I don't know. Some part of my brain thinks that way.I did this book to give you two sides of life. Basically, that sort of Hollywood side and this sort of regular life.
CV: You've worked on a book for it seems every publisher out there. What took you so long to do something at Vertigo?
TS: It took them this long to call me! [laughs] We have been talking about it for a long time, a few years ago. I've pitched stuff to Vertigo before. Every couple of years, someone would ask me, and I'd come up with a bunch of stuff that was too weird or sort of like something they had. Once REVIVAL came out, it showed that I can do something that wasn't just... I think HACK/SLASH always came across as schlocky sexploitation and that's not really a Vertigo thing. Once I started talking, we kicked around a lot of ideas for about two years that really gelled with EFFIGY. I feel like there was this idea I had at the moment. We really do live in a crazy world, with fame obsession and and especially with these ideas of the sex tape and the "momager" and it all kind of combines into one story.
CV: You have Marley Zarcone working on the art in this book. How did she get involved in this project?
TS: Shelly [Bond] brought her in. She worked with her on some other Vertigo books, MADAME XANADU and FABLES, and was looking for something to hitch her to, so she pitched this one [EFFIGY] to her and I think was most like Marley's style and approach. She picked me over the other pitches, so I got lucky.
CV: The opening scene has been gnawing at me since I read the book and I don't know if this is as important to everyone else reading this but where did the idea for Star Cops come from? It feels like such a 80s/90s cartoon in retrospect.
TS: It's totally inspired by an era. When the Power Rangers first came out, there was all this Japanese stuff remade to be for American kids and even some stuff that wasn't like there's this one where there's this show named Tattooed-something-something from Beverly Hills [Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills... no joke] and those kind of live-action, very schlocky, very cheap science fiction shows. I have an affection for it even though they're something I'm not nostalgic for because it came out after I was a kid. I kind of wanted to play with that.
CV: If Space Cops was real, would you have watched it?
TS: Probably not. Even Power Rangers and stuff like that... I was a teenager when that stuff came out, so to me, I totally had to be like "Lame!" I still like Masters of the Universe and G.I. Joe and Transformers, but I was way too cool for that, even though I wasn't. Even no, I'll catch that stuff when I get home sometimes, and I'll be enthralled by the weirdness of it and it's just so braise to be like "we'll ake this kung-fu, fighting giant robot thing and somehow kids will love it." I do sort of enjoy that stuff.
CV: Because EFFIGY is an on-going series, do you have an endgame in mind while writing?
TS: Oh yeah. You have to know where you're going. You don't have to know how you get there. You have to be ready for detours and emergency stops, but you have to know where you're going.
Thanks to Tim Seeley for chatting it up with us and make sure to check out EFFIGY #1 from Vertigo comics, which hits stores today (January 28th)