Even for comic book fans, the world of Slow City Blues stretches the limits of what’s possible, when reality itself is governed by one man’s imagination. Only this time, the detective at the heart of this mystery isn’t hunting down a suspect… but trying to escape the city created inside his very own head.

The new series marks the comic book debut of writer and creator Samuel Haine, the mind behind Detective John Loris (the aforementioned imprisoned hero) trapped inside his imagination after a horrible accident leads him to take his own life. But instead of death, John discovers Slow City, a world crafted by his own imagination, memories, and pop culture touchstones. But a world that is also keeping him from ever leaving to the world, the wife, or the child he left behind. Needless to say, John–like Haine himself–will have to rely on some backup to get the job done. Backup that includes penciler Shawn Moll, inker John Livesay, colorist David Baron, and legendary editor Jim Shooter.

SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY

After creating the instantly-compelling premise of Slow City Blues, Haine joined forces with Livesay, who recruited former Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, along with a host of top-tier variant cover artists like Dough Mahnke, David Finch, Yasmin Putri, Howard Porter, Brett Booth, and many more. Now Slow City Blues has officially launched in just as unique a fashion as the story itself. Taking to Zoop, a new crowdfunding platform acting as a ‘concierge service for creators’ and tailored more suitably to comics (and other similar campaigns). After reading Slow City Blues #1, Screen Rant was fortunate enough to speak with writer Samuel Haine, inker and coordinator John Livesay, and story consultant Artisha Mann-Cooper about the world, the story, and the new publishing process. It’s a book no fan of imaginative noir action should pass up, and readers can find our full interview embedded below.

Screen Rant: Slow City Blues is not the detective story that some people might expect from the opening page. How would you set up with a start of this story? What is the doorway that readers are going to be taken through from the outset?

Samuel Haine: What’s the tagline, the elevator pitch? Detective John Loris ends up trapped in his own imagination after a horrible accident, and has to fight his inner demons if he’s ever going to return and escape to the real world back to his wife and son. It’s like the most vague, spoiler-free tagline.

Was the opening of the story always planned to be this scene?

Samuel Haine: No, actually! It only changed – absolutely for the better – because of Tish. We realized that what was in the front, Tish smartly pointed out should be in the back of this first story arc. Otherwise, we’re gonna turn a lot of [readers off]. The reveal of what happened, you needed that empathy for John, going into it.

Tish and I had spoken about this, but we had two very splashy, impactful moments literally sitting one next to each other. Because I think page one was normally page five, so it’s like, “We could just take this, and leave it as page one. Then take this front part and put it all the way at the end, and make sure that really lands well in full context.”

And now you’ll have people always saying, “What a genius opening. Brilliant from the very start.”

Samuel Haine: Yeah, Tish. All Tish.

The premise is enough to sink in hooks, but can you give your reaction to what it was about that hook, and the person it was coming from, that made the story feel like it could really last?

John Livesay: Being that this is Sam’s first title, and shot at being a comic book writer, I knew the story was good. After looking at everything, when Shawn [Moll] sent me the penciled pages, it so different. We had all these countless different characters that needed all that attention to really pull their look out. It was my job to make everybody look unique from all the stuff that Shawn put down, so I really got overly involved in making sure of the consistency.

The story was there, but obviously with comics, you’ve got to have the artwork. I really wanted to make sure I put 1000% into this and make it look [good]. It’s a little different than what I usually do, and there’s some cartoony line work here and there. So, it was nice to try to do something different compared to the usual Big Two stuff I do, with the capes and tights and the punchy punchy and fly-ie fly-ie stuff. It was a nice, different change of pace.

Artisha Mann-Cooper: Honestly, as a story consultant, it was a story for me. Immediately, when I saw the original version of the story before it was edited and changed and tweaked, it was very catchy. From the beginning, when I first read it, I was like, “Okay, where are we going with this, Sam?”

When I read the original, I saw the vision that Sam was going for, but I did think that it needed to be edited so that the reader could be invested in the story from the beginning. For me, it was just being able to help Sam change it around a little so that it could a real investment for all our comic book readers out there.

I don’t know how you wrap your mind around the different parts of the story as creators. Do you focus on what’s going to be most engaging for readers, or what’s going to be the easiest to follow?

Samuel Haine: Hopefully this answers your question, but I think it’s about clarity. Our job as writers is to make sure you care, and if we’re not doing that, then we’re not doing our jobs. It’s definitely a lesson that Jim has hammered into me, and then I’ve definitely picked up binge-watching Grey’s Anatomy. I’ve definitely gotten all those Shonda Rhimes [moments] of like, “I care so much about all of these characters. I’m crying all the time. Why am I crying? I don’t even like you, Karev!”

Sorry, I’m getting way off track. But it’s about empathizing, I think. And Tish was very pivotal in making sure there’s a through line of authenticity and honesty and something we can relate to – because if you don’t have something to latch on to, you’re not going to get pulled all the way through this story. We can get as crazy and wacky and [full of] spectacle as we can, and I think we do throughout these five issues – but if you don’t care about John or Moof or what’s going on, then it’s like, “I don’t care. What’s the next thing?” It’s a balancing act.

The opening we’re talking about should cast a dark shadow over this entire story. But at the same time, this is a very light book with fun dialogue and interactions. Can you speak to that balancing act as well? Also, on top of that, the timeliness.

Artisha Mann-Cooper: It’s really interesting when you say the balance between light and dark, because the reason why you’re so interested from the beginning is because of the darkness. You want to know what happened that got him to that point.

It’s one of those things where it’s such a timely thing to even have that be the beginning, because we know what’s happening and how crazy the world is right now. It’s just one of those things that I felt, when we initially even proposed it, would twist people’s interest even if it was something that was super dark.

John did such a great job with the visuals that it just grabs you. It is a little bit of an emotional thing that grabs you, and it’s a little painful. But you have to get through that, to see all of the other stuff.

Samuel Haine: We like to call it the candy-coated Trojan horse. It’s bright, it’s colorful, it has that Adventure Time palette – but then we also have the grit from John’s inks, and we make sure that it’s honest and real and grounded through Tish and I’s work on this. Like you said, it’s this balancing act.

And thank God we had the speed bumps we did, because then we really got to hone things in and make sure of the pacing and how everything is laid out perfectly. Tish got to come on board, and we made sure that our impact matched our intent, because we didn’t want to end up on the path to Hell paved with good intentions. We didn’t want to do inadvertent damage with good intent. It really helps toe that line, where we’re talking to somebody instead of talking at somebody, because no one likes to be talked at.

But if you can give them a fun splash, hilarity, action, nut punches – because I think people getting hit in the nuts will always be funny to me, probably until I have a kid and get hit in the nuts myself – on top of the themes of introspection and empathy and imperfect allies and regret and guilt and remorse and redemption. We have all that, but like you say, it’s this great balancing act. So you’re not walking out of this like, “Oh, cool. I just had to do a required reading segments.” Instead it’s, “Well, that was rad. Also, maybe I should be nicer to people. Maybe I should give the benefit of the doubt.” At least that’s the hope.

This is one of the most insane page 1 to page 2 turns I’ve ever witnessed. Was that thinking, “We just have to throw them into the deep end here?”

John Livesay: Yeah, that splash page didn’t take that long. Even like that double spread where we get, boom, thrown into the world – they call it a Cantina scene, where it’s every crazy character there is. That one, once I kept staring and staring and figuring out what I was going to do for each character, I just started doing pieces and got it done. I don’t show Sam anything for a little bit, and he’s like, “Are you done? Are you done?” Then I’ll show him, and he’s like, “Okay, great.”

But yeah, that one was cool because there was a lot of levels of separation, just to give it all the depth with the 60 characters that were on those two pages.

Samuel Haine: But that really was John. He gave us that gritty weight. We really get to rely on his inks for that noir feel, and then when you turn into page 2, it’s clean. It’s the weird juxtaposition that he then has, where he can do gritty and noir, but then he has this very methodical and clean style. And then Dave [Baron] just vomits all of the rainbow onto this page. Like you said, you almost get whiplash from how much is going on in that page turn.

Artisha Mann-Cooper: Vomiting rainbows. That is very descriptive.

Samuel Haine: That’s the quote! Slow City Blues vomits rainbows.

John Livesay: Also, I can add that Shawn Moll [the penciler] is the one doing all the heavy lifting. So, when I get the artboards from him, it’s my job to see where that is, and I have to pull it all out for you the reader to absorb it. Shawn’s just laying it all down, whether it’s loosey goosey or not, and he’ll indicate stuff. And I know what to do, since we’ve been doing this a while. It’s just my job to pull everything out, and then you get to enjoy it.

Like Sam said, we’ve got the insane colors that Dave will put on. We want to make sure you’re really getting your money’s worth when you’re hunkering down your handful of dollars for these issues.

I was most impressed while reading the comic that this doesn’t feel like somebody’s first comic. There is a unique attitude and dialogue–but I imagine, for a writer, you’re probably your worst critic about showing too much of yourself. How do you handle that?

Samuel Haine: That’s a huge compliment, first of all. Thank you so much. But it’s really because I was mentored by Jim Shooter, so I’ve had to go to what I call the Shooter School of Storytelling. It’s like the school of hard knocks but with more onomatopoeia.

You do the flashiness – and I even have this tattoo of a purple hand on my wrist because I was always too flowery, too purple, too poetic according to our producing partner, who actually connected me with John and Tish. I’d say things like, “Fried fare who gazes the faint,” and Mike would just go, “Do you just mean bacon and eggs in a pan? Could you just say bacon and eggs in a pan?” It’s really going, “Do less, do less.”

My dad’s a musician, so he’s always saying, “It’s easier to have a sharp singer hit the right note than have a flat singer try to push to hit it.” Having Mike say no is like that scene from I Love You, Man on the surfboard. “No, do less.” On top of Jim holding a stick – because it’s always all stick and no carrot with Jim. If it’s not clear, you’re not doing your job. [Editor’s note: the scene in question is from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but Sam still nailed it as Paul Rudd and Jason Segel scene, so we’ll give it to him.]

And so, at that point, I took all the funny and all the fluff and all the cool and all the referential – and you start to strip it away. Then what is the heart of that scene? Once you have the most important beats, then you get to layer back on the gags and the action bits and the writer’s notes for the song or the quippy little caption boxes. Because it’s like story, story, story comes first. A character’s journey comes first, which is dictated by the story, and then – pardon my French – f*** all after that. Gags and action stuff and getting hit in the nuts, that’s all secondary to making sure you’re telling an authentic story that lands. And then your voice hopefully gets to come through, which I hope it did.

You chose the most impossible-to-resist-indulging backdrop of this grown man lost in his imagination, filtered and flooded with pop culture and universal touchstones, but there is restraint there.

Artisha Mann-Cooper: Yeah, I agree with you. What’s so interesting about this is that you have to find a balance between being a little pop-y, and [focusing on] the story. And that’s one of the things that I really enjoyed about this, because there is a balance between that. You have to be able to draw the audience in and also bring familiar elements to them, without it being boring or something that they’ve seen before.

But Sam is such a great storyteller, that it wasn’t hard for us to find that balance. It was just talking about the story from beginning to end, and what the intention is and the journey that we want the readers to go on, to really clarify what they could get out of it. So, there were just things where we were just like, “No, we’re gonna take this out,” or “Oh, no, that’s perfect.” That just takes someone who’s really great at storytelling.

Honestly, Sam gives me all of this great, but he’s such a great storyteller. I just came in, and I was like, “Well, yeah, you’re a great storyteller. But you’re going to lose people with this, you’re going to lose people with that. You need to edit this, you need to change this. You need to bring this to the beginning or the end, you need to reverse this.” But it really was his imagination, the way he put it together, and the way he saw this world.

I tell you, it will take you on a whirlwind. And you can easily get lost if it wasn’t for the way that Sam told it.

John Livesay: I don’t have such a good answer like you just said. So, I’m just gonna go along with yours. Hey, man, I’m just sitting here drawing this stuff. I got ink on my hands. I need some sleep, but your answer was perfect.

For you specifically, let’s talk about the character of Moof. I feel like most people will have the same feeling when that character enters the picture. You know the imagination and you get it, but if you ask 10 people who this character is supposed to be, you might get 10 different answers. He’s a character who I feel like I know, but I don’t know from where – which seems like a kind of core part of this artwork and style.

John Livesay: I think we all know or have been around somebody who, they’re your buddy, but they’re also very smart-alecky. Maybe they’ll bail you out, maybe they won’t. With me giving him that look, I was really trying to get his face down with the smirks and the little eye raises and his smile. And then I have the crazy task of figuring out how to render his very short and course fur. Trying to show that tail in any of these panels, it’s so big, and I’ve got to turn the lines the show the shape wrapping around. And I’m like, “Oh, there’s the tail again. Let’s fit to tail in here.”

That was my two big things every page: making sure I can fit that tail in there, and then making sure I didn’t forget to put the wedding ring on John. Because once in a while, we’d forget. And I’m usually really good about being the second set of eyes after I get the pages from Shawn. I was like, “Alright, I didn’t miss anything.” And then like a week later, I was like, “Crap!” It’d be so tiny, that it was almost to the point where I wouldn’t put it on there. Or maybe Shawn would pick it up, or Sam would say, “Oh, man. We forgot the ring,” and I was like, “Ughhhhhhhh.” Those are my two nemeses trying to finish pages: his tail and that darn ring.

Artisha Mann-Cooper: John, I also feel like the way you made this character was very intentional. How familiar the character is – like you said, it’s very, “I feel like I’ve seen this character before…” It’s very intentional, the way that you did that.

John Livesay: I would think or hope that, with the line work that Shawn and I did for Moof’s face and his expressions and his smirking and his eyebrow raising – you know that guy. You’ve been around them, whether it’s a friend of a friend or your college buddy or your buddy from high school. It’s always fun to hang out with him, but you knew you could be getting high jinks, and you never know what’s gonna happen.

So, it’s like, “Alright, we’re hanging out together, but what’s happening next?” Or, “Are you gonna help me if stuff is going sideways,” like in the first issue, or is it like, “You know, man, I’m over here at the bar. You handle that fight, and I’ll just make sure you’re doing everything okay.”

Sam, how did that Moof aspect of the story take shape, as it pertains to John – I mean, Detective John?

Samuel Haine: Oh, yeah, there’s so many Johns. He’s John, my dad’s name is John. All the characters in everything I ever write are John or Jack. I guess I spent myself by just doing Salvador Dali details in the background. It’s like, “Well, what’s the character’s name?” “I don’t know, John?”

I think how it pertains to John is that those are the people in his life. Those are the things – the media, the books, the shows, the movies – that he’s ingested as a child, as a teen, as an adult. Those are the books that he read to his son at nighttime. That’s how it came apart for me too – my dad, another John, read to me every night ’till I was 12 and I definitely should have been reading my own books by then. But anything and everything is in there, so it’s either things he has taken in, or people in his life, and they are anthropomorphic imaginary reflections of those people. So, it’s all just this balance.

It’s almost in a world five degrees outside of our own, because there are those references and, again, hopefully we don’t get sued – of boggy or the bit where he pulls the tail and it’s the lion’s mane, or the Ninja Turtle lip color… It’s like, “Is this taking place in our world? Is this in another thing, and it’s another world inside of a world?” Like you said, it’s that great balance. But it’s always pertaining and relating back to John and what’s in his head.

Artisha Mann-Cooper: But also, one of the things that I always felt when I initially read it was that Moof is almost the conscience of the audience. It’s almost like you’re looking at it and being like, “Well, this is me. I definitely am not going to step into this; you be the crazy person.” I always felt like it was that character that you see when you read, and you’re just like, “Yeah, he’s exactly like that element where you know everything that’s going on, and you know you’re not going to step into it because of that.” It always read like that to me.

Samuel Haine: He’s like the Greek chorus. I call him the clever to John’s smart. He’s the one who’s tapped in and can see the forest for the trees.

The publishing plan for this is almost just as interesting as the story itself. For the average reader who wants to read this book, it’s not going to be made available to them the way they expect.

Samuel Haine: No, it’s not. We couldn’t really find a release date with the old publisher, then 2020 happened and literally just flipped the whole table on everything. Which was good, because it gave us the time to really finish and re-evaluate. Tish had come on board, so we’ve made sure our impact matched our intent.

But we started looking around and it’s 2021; things are starting to look up. We wanted to take that do it yourself, bootstrap 2021 energy; that “here we go, phoenix rising from the ashes” out into the world with this book. And we didn’t want to give away ownership, because everyone wants ownership, everyone wants 50% or 60%. Everyone’s worked so hard and so long on this book, it would be a shame not to keep creative control – especially on a story where we’re really walking that tightrope to not have too many cooks in the kitchen and throw everything off.

But we were looking into other traditional publishers, or we were looking for the Kickstarter route, and then John luckily was talking to Brett Booth.

John Livesay: Yeah, just my random good luck. I found out about Zoop, and we got in touch with them the next day. We had a meeting with them the following day, with Sam and I and the two Zoop guys. We hit it off immediately, and we just got the ball rolling from there. Once we all agreed this is going this direction, it was just, boom, we kept going.

Luckily, compared to any other crowdfunding campaign – I know some of them have had it completely all done – we’re totally all done with all five issues. All the ridiculously amazing covers are all turned down, they’re all ready to go. And this will be a very slightly different, but very cool way, crowdfunding will be done. It’s just a little sideways. We’ve taken all the good and the bad, and streamlined it.

As Sam likes to say, Zoop is basically like Amazon Prime easy for the consumer to get their product. And it’s also going to be a great place for comic pros like myself, because Zoop handles all the heavy lifting. So, if you need to have time to finish your artwork and your pages – which, as we know, takes a long time – but then you have to also balance the act of running the campaign, talking to printers and doing all the shipping and boxing everything with the labels and everything? It’s a lot of work. They take all that off your hands so the pros can focus on getting your best product ready to go to market. It’s very easy, they’ve been very cool, and Sam can tell you even more about the way the page is run for getting product. It’s very easy.

Samuel Haine: It’s fantastic. Like John said, I call it Amazon Prime easy. There’s no after-campaign backer kit to get any additional things; there’s no getting your credit card, your wife’s credit card, your dog’s credit card, your son’s credit card, your grandma’s credit card to try to get multiples of different exclusives. It’s literally, for the customer at least and for fans, point and click however many times you want of however many you want. It’s that easy.

These guys and gals, they ran the Scott Snyder Nocterra campaign, and they ran the Keanu Reeves BRZRKR campaign. They know exactly what they’re doing. They took the best of both worlds from traditional publishing and crowdfunding, and they jettisoned all the junk. It’s surprising that it hasn’t been done this way before, but I definitely credit it to the 2020-2021 energy where it’s like, “Of course it should be this way.” We’re really happy to be that guinea pig.

On launch day, people can get all five issues of Slow City Blues?

John Livesay: All five issues, first story arc.

What is it that you hope a new reader takes away from the story?

Samuel Haine: I think it’s, at its heart, a story of introspection and empathy. Tish and I have gone back and forth about this, so hopefully she’ll reiterate or elaborate on that. It’s about imperfect allies, and it’s about regret and guilt and redemption.

We find ourselves so divided right now as a people that it’s that old Catholic adage of, “When you point one finger, you find three pointing back at yourself.” I found that, at least for me, a journey inside somebody’s mind was the perfect platform for introspection. And thankfully I had all of these great story consultants and mentors that have helped really shape this.

It was a story of trying to understand who I was as a cis straight white guy in the world, as I’m growing up from my early 20s into real adulthood and trying to figure that out while the world is changing – thankfully, for the better. It’s a story, at its heart, about introspection and empathy. Because we could all use a little more empathy.

Artisha Mann-Cooper: To piggyback on that, one thing that I also felt like was important is that everybody could find themselves in John. It wasn’t going to be something where people are going to say, “Oh, only this type of person would choose this type of action.” We really wanted it to be something to where, if anybody read it from beginning to end, they can say, “That could have been me.”

That’s what we tried to accomplish when we were making the edit: we didn’t want to marginalize people and say, “Well, this would be the only type of person who would make a decision like this.” No; it is regret, it is pain, it is hurt, it is introspection, like you keep saying. And we all can experience that through the decisions that we make, but you have to be able to follow the character and their journey and really understand what they’re experiencing to be able to pull out those things.

You’ll pull those out when you read the first four comics, and then when we get to the fifth one, you’ll really get to go into the world of what is really happening with this character. But you have to get to that point first, so I really wanted each person who reads this to find something about John that they could see in themselves. And I think we accomplished that.

Samuel Haine: That’s how we’re gonna do all of them from now on. I’ll stumble through, she’ll nail it on the head, and then John tries to sweep up.

John Livesay: Linework? White out, erasing? I don’t know. I cannot speak as eloquently as she she can speak, that’s facts. It’s a darn good book. I’ve been a massive comic book fan since I was four, and I’m a huge collector. So, I put a ton of thought and effort into making sure you guys are getting your money’s worth. We’ve labored over every page; the cover lineup I picked out – nobody can top us on it. I got the best cover artists there are in such a wide variety of styles. There’ll be something for everybody, and you will not be disappointed.

As for the products we have in the campaign, there’s only a few. But they’re very nice. I put a ton of thought into what we’re going to do for these. There’s only a handful, there’s not a lot – but if you love floppies, we’ve got awesome floppies. And if you love the hardcover, we’ve got a great hardcover. Even for the prints, if people have been getting prints of their campaigns – we’ve turned that up to 11. Ours is very cool; you’re going to get a very nice, hardbound portfolio with a print of every cover inside. So, we’ve got some great stuff.

And the early bird special we’re having for the first two days of the campaign will have some exclusives you can only get those two days, and we’ve got some nice sale prices on some of the things. All the prices are very reasonable for any fans. We made sure that everyone who wanted to have access could enjoy this, and we wanted to make sure everyone could really have access and get it.

Samuel Hain: Yeah, we put a lot of work into it. And then John really went above and beyond and curated this so that it was as affordable and accessible and excitable as possible, so everyone gives it a shot and hopefully really enjoys it.

Slow City Blues #1-5 are available to be pre-ordered now direct through Zoop’s official website. Readers who purchase the Early Bird Special within the first 48 hours will also be entered to win an original piece of art from the book.

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About The Author


Andrew Dyce
(3247 Articles Published)

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Screen Rant Editor Andrew Dyce was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Despite calling the vast nothingness of the Canadian prairies home (or perhaps because of it) film and television have been a passion since birth. As a graduate of the University of Manitoba with a degree in English Literature, Andrew has grown to appreciate the story and writing behind everything from blockbuster comic book movies to schlocky B-movie action.

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