Here is part 2 of my interview with John 'JG' Roshell.
9th Wonders: How and when did you become involved with 9thWonders.com (and the design of the 'prop' comics)?
JG: Ah, good story!
Comicraft has lettered all the comics Jeph Loeb writes for many years, and we have a great working relationship with him. Completely outside of work, Jesse Alexander's family and mine are friends. Since he and I are both big geeks, we've always thought what the other does for a living is immensely cool. So when the subject of comic book design for Heroes came up, Jeph and Jesse both insisted that I do it.
The funny thing was, neither of them knew that the other one knew me, so apparently they went back and forth for a while, like: "my guy will do a killer job on this", "no, my guy's the one we want" and it turned out they were both talking about me. :) One of the proudest moments of my career, for sure.
9th Wonders: That is awesome. So you must have been approached well before Comic-Con in order to prepare the prop comic?
JG: Yeah, must have been around April or May. But we really had to scramble to get the site done for Comic-Con. Jeph and Jesse, and some of the other writers on the show, really knew what they wanted to do with the "viral" marketing and such. They knew how important the comic fan community's support could be for the show. They told me it's possibly the first time that the writers of the show have been given a promotional budget, let alone be involved in the strategy, but I guess it worked!
9th Wonders: How long did it take you to come up with the design for the original site? Did you come up with one basic idea, or did you have a few designs that got narrowed down?
JG: One try. I just did exactly what I thought it should look like, and they said "yes!"
9th Wonders: Well let me chime in and say I think you've done an amazing job. I love the comic book banners.
JG: Thanks! It's really nice to know people dig it. I've actually had a lot of fun getting to do something extremely "comic-booky" for the show. Because, ironically, most comic book creators want their comics to look like something else -- usually a movie or TV show, like they'll be taken more "seriously" that way. Meanwhile these TV guys want their stuff to look like it's a comic book!
But I really like the whole 1960s-70s comic book look -- I grew up reading Amazing Spider-Man, and I think those comics are great. And now these TV show creators want their stuff to look like it's a comic book!
How great! I love hearing stories about things like this that are just nice people wanting to do fun, cool things with each other.
I know that's why Heroes is so fantastic -- you've got idealistic people who have worked in comics, fantasy & scifi for years and who are bringing this to the fans from a good place... because they're fans themselves!
