BY JENNIFER M. CONTINOWhen something "jumps the shark," usually that's a bad thing, but
Chris Reilly is hoping his anthology series
Strange Eggs will be one of those able to buck the trend and be just as successful after as before. Close to two dozen creators are involved in this volume of the
Slave Labor series. Reilly says the title came from his "childhood trauma" over seeing
Happy Days' The Fonz jump that great white ....
THE PULSE: What is Strange Eggs? It's not the breakfast special at Denny's is it?
CHRIS P. REILLY: I wish. No it is an anthology coming out from SLG Publishing July 1st. It is a lot raunchier than a breakfast at Denny’s and may get me murdered if that guy that shot Dr. George Tiller escapes custody.
The actual dictionary answer to the first SE all those years ago is: Strange Eggs #1 included a fictitious back-story claiming that the comic book was based on a now-cancelled television show produced by “The Christian Learning Network.” The premise of this supposed show—and therefore the premise of all the comics stories in Strange Eggs #1—was the following: The young twins Kip and Kelly Hatcher live with their father, a scientist, on a farm in rural Maine. In each story, deliveryman Roger Rogers delivers the twins an egg and they are forced to deal with whatever hatches forth. Creators can have virtually anything hatch out of the egg, and have the twins deal with it in pretty much any fashion.
THE PULSE: How long have you been working on this imaginative series?
REILLY: The first four page short story illustrated by Tommy Kovac appeared in Brillig Productions “PUPHEDZ: The legitimate puppet society back in ‘’04 and the first issue of Strange Eggs from SLG came out the next year, so five years give or take.
THE PULSE: Why did you do this newest volume as a big anthology instead?
REILLY: This will actually be the third anthology titled Strange Eggs (turns out no one gave a rat turd about a SE book without blood, guts and content offensive to Christians and right wing nuts); the second to star the SE characters. The last SE book we did was an all ages GN called Weirdly World of Strange Eggs. I couldn’t resist doing this anthology when I found out the amazingly diverse group of talented creators who wanted to work on it. So, we went back to formula; blood, guts and content offensive to Christians and right wing nuts and let the pigeons loose.
THE PULSE: What do you enjoy the most about working in this genre?
REILLY: Telling stories, really. I love comics, so I love telling comic book stories. There are also no SFX budget limitations.
THE PULSE: How do you decide who gets to work on each anthology?
REILLY: I invite the same people back that were in the earlier ones and just ask some people whose work I like if they want to jump on board. This time around we have
Jhonen Vasquez, James Turner, Ben Towle, Derf , J Mark Schmidt, myself,
Todd Meister, Jorge Santillan, Roger Langridge, Kenny Keil, J. Chris Campbell, Jen Feinberg, Paul Friedrich, Chris Grine, Tara Billinger, Colin Miller, Steve Ahlquist and David Ray.
THE PULSE: That's quite an eclectic mix. What kind of guidelines do you give contributors to Strange Eggs?
REILLY: They got this theme: In Strange Eggs Jumps the Shark, the original Strange Eggs has been on the air for many years and its ratings are increasingly poor. The network executives are desperately searching for some twist to the show’s basic premise, or some outlandish gimmick, that can save the show. For Strange Eggs Jumps the Shark, each creator (or creative team) should produce a story that features just such a twist. No idea is too ridiculous! After that they could do whatever they wanted and it would be in the book.
THE PULSE: What are the challenges of working with a variety of creators, who all have different voices, but who are working on the same general theme?
REILLY: None really. They are doing their own thing and I have no say in it. The real challenge is making sure you stay in touch with everyone. I think that's why a lot of small press anthologies fall apart. Someone says let's do an anthology and have it ready for October. Six months goes by and that same someone starts calling people asking if they have their stories done and 90% of the creators are like, huh? I thought that thing was dead. You have to let people know the book is still alive.
THE PULSE: What are some of the highlights from this volume? What kind of stories will we see?
REILLY: Not to under shadow any of the contributors, but getting Jhonen (Vasquez) to contribute a four pager he wrote and illustrated was something. And his story - let's just say we're wearing bullet proof vests to Comic-Con. Everyone is at the top of their game in this book. Well, I suck, but that's an editor's job when they bully their way into writing.
THE PULSE: What have been the biggest challenges to editing this and getting your story done just as you envisioned?
REILLY: Me and Ben (Towle) are the editors, but we don't really do anything, except for our own stories. We are hands off on the other creators.
THE PULSE: So why "jump the shark"?
REILLY: Our shared childhood trauma. That three parter on Happy Days, that aired in '77. In the third of the three parts of the "Hollywood" episode, Fonzie (Henry Winkler), wearing swim trunks and his trademark leather jacket and boots, jumps over a confined shark while water skiing. This was particularly ironic, in that Fonzie, famous for being a biker, had previously jumped his motorcycle for a publicity stunt, over 14 garbage cans—but was severely injured in the process, and very remorseful for his actions; he then learned a valuable lesson, and delivered a moral message, that taking foolish risks "isn't cool" (a clearly role-model message against popular 1970s trends of youths imitating daredevil stuntmen like Evel Knievel or Ernie Devlin). In contrast, Fonzie's later decision to take an even greater risk on water skis "to prove a point" came across as absurd in many ways (particularly since the "motorcycle jump" episode was a major point in Fonzie's character development).
When I went to school the day after the episode aired, my friends were ecstatic "
THE FONZ JUMPED A SHARK" could be heard down the halls of a school where the chlorine from the drinking fountains burned your eyes like acid. My take was that they were betraying Happy Days' 1950s setting and its earlier character development by cashing in on the 1970s fads of Evel Knievel and Jaws. I saw Ron Howard on Bill Maher and he said the cast and crew just stood there in horror, looking at Winkler in his boots and leather jacket preparing the stunt and they were all just saying “I can’t believe they are actually going through with this – he’s really going to jump the shark.” They managed to make Fonzie look un-cool and that is quite an achievement.
Even odder was that the episode before this three-parter was entitled “Fonzie's baptism” were after nearly being killed in a stock car race crash, the Fonz questions his own mortality, leading Fonzie to decide to be baptized. I guess God was going to protect him from Jaws at this point.
So religion plays a factor in the origins of Fonzie’s Jump the Shark as it does in our book. SEJTS has been accused of being nothing more than a vicious attack on religion, but you have to remember that we worked on this book while there was a president in office who claimed that not only did God tell him he would be president but also claimed God told him to attack/liberate Iraq, so speaking for myself, I was fed up with religion being used as an excuse for our administration to do whatever it wanted to, no matter who it hurt or killed and half the country thinking that was just fine. We would have probably done a book bashing rodeo clowns if people had been using them to justify atrocities (like Bush being elected twice). There is the argument that a huge chunk of the world that is not part of the Western hemisphere have killed for thousands of years because of their insane religious “organized” religions, but I believe in leading by example. We are the USA not Cobra or the Taliban. That last eight years have brought a lot of psycho ans sociopaths out of their safe places at home and abroad.
This is not an attack on religious beliefs, but more like what Harvey Kurtzman wold have done in the 1950's if MAD's parody of the month was Christianity.
THE PULSE: What's coming up next for the world of Strange Eggs?
REILLY: WE just signed the Hollywood film and video game option three days ago. So next up is a pile of option money and then I'm ditching everyone and heading off to South Carolina to be with my Argentinean mistress for the weekend. Seriously, whether the movie and game happen now, it’s just nice to have some money.
THE PULSE: When is this volume of Strange Eggs due in stores?
REILLY: July 1st, exactly 365 days after the release of Will Smith’s Hancock; I liked Hancock.
THE PULSE: What other projects are you working on?
REILLY: Adora and the Electric Elephant with Tara Billinger. It is another one of my "exploring dreams" things but this one is an adventure and takes place in the graveyard of dream; the place all dreams go once the dreamer has awoken. If they are prone to recurring dreams, this creates a problem. I am also working on O Tesla: The Death of Topsy and a biography about my uncle Henry who just passed away who was a survivor of the Bataan Death March. The working title is Henry’s March.
You can learn more about Chris Reilly at these links:
http://www.SLGpublishing.comhttp://www.CastleFreak.comhttp://www.forcesofgeek.com
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