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Welcome to Mignolaversity, Multiversity Comics’ dedicated column for all things Mike Mignola. We’ve been doing a series of retrospective interviews since December to say goodbye to 2022. If you missed yesterday’s, you can read it here.
Today we’re cartoonist Warwick Johnson-Cadwell on The Adventures of Professor JT Meinhardt and His Assistant Mr. Knox, a series he created with Mike Mignola. Mingola wrote the first book “Mr. Higgins Comes Home’, and Johnson-Cadwell handled both the writing and art for the next two, ‘Our Encounters with Evil’ and ‘Falconspeare’. The three are brought together in a library edition of Our Encounters with Evil and Other Stories, which hits comic shops tomorrow.
Before we begin, I should warn you that this interview assumes you’ve read the stories. There will be spoilers if you’re not up to speed.
Cover by Mike Mignola
with Dave Stewart
Each new book in the Adventures of Professor JT Meinhardt and his Assistant Mr. Knox series has its own distinct identity. When you started working on Our Encounters with Evil and Falconspeare, was that something you consciously cultivated as you were figuring out what those books would be?
Warwick Johnson-Cadwell: I think the books really have an individual identity, which is somewhat unintentional. Our Encounters with Evil is an adventure book. I wanted to create some mileage in our relationship with the professor and Mr. Knox. I loved the characters we had created in ‘Mr. Higgins goes home. Mike Mignola had brilliantly described these personalities in his script and I wanted to show much more of them (and introduce more). The view of their world in this book was pretty broad and overall has a wild adventurous spirit, in my opinion.
“Falconspeare” gives us a more personal, darker look into their world. The adventure continues and more characters are introduced, the world also remains creepy and terrifying, but this book has a calmer, darker feel to it. Hopefully it reveals more of our characters’ personalities.
I certainly enjoyed that, especially since the cast expanded to include Mrs. Mary Van Sloan in Our Encounters with Evil and James Falconspear in Falconspear. They mix up group dynamics and take the stories down avenues Meinhardt and Knox probably wouldn’t have wandered down alone. I’m curious, since you wrote both the second and third books, how many of these characters do you discover by drawing them and how much by writing them?
Warwick: Drawing comes first for me. Ideas are developed on paper, sometimes instantly, but usually over time. I might touch on a character’s design with an idea of who they might be, but nothing is fully decided until I’ve been drawing them for a while and sort of figured out who they are. But my main tool is drawing. Even when I write the books, I sketch out plans and ideas first (I also go through my own previous sketches) to figure out the basic story before I write a fairly loose script. Then with that I’m happy to go back to thumbnails and layouts which often ignore the first round of sketches and work from how the story has developed now that it’s a free script. Some conceptual work I’ve done for animation has used a similar process, painstakingly sketching around an idea before I start writing a script.
And you hit something there. Adding new characters like Mary Van Sloan and James Falconspear is great for taking the stories to new places. And it also serves to expand our relationship and understanding of Meinhard and Knox, I think.
In the sketchbook section for the library edition, you touched on this aspect a bit as you looked back at the early designs for Meinhardt and Knox. As you said, “I imagine the adventures play out in a very different way to our dear Meinhard.” That really speaks to how much storytelling in comics is in the design.
Other directions our character designs could have gone
From the sketchbook section of Our Encounters with Evil and Other Stories
Continued below
I wanted to talk to you about “Falconspeare” in particular because the book has such an interesting construction. In a way, the beginning is reminiscent of The Death of Lady Ruthven, which is this big action sequence used to reintroduce Meinhardt and Knox while also introducing Mary Van Sloane and showing how she fits into the group dynamic. By opening Falconspeare in a similar way and serving a similar story function, you can welcome readers back into that world with something that feels familiar, that reminds us of what we love about it before diving into the main part of the story.
Warwick: I suppose with both Mary Van Sloan and James Falconspear they should have been introduced, but it was important to show that they were new to us but not to the Professor and Mr. Knox. I wanted to establish a solid relationship with all of them as a group pretty quickly, but Meinhardt and Knox are definitely a double act. Van Sloan and Falconspear will largely end up on their own.
The thing with Mary Van Sloan was that I knew she would appear in some stories in Our Encounters with Evil, even though she was absent from others, which I thought would make her interactions with the others more natural. In “Falconspeare” I had to get a pretty clear sense of who he was and how close he was to the band, so them in the hot action of their earlier days fit the bill.
This opening is completely transformed from the ending of “Falconspeare”, especially since it reflects certain action rhythms, but the emotions wrapped in them are extremely different. A beat originally played for comedy, like blowing up the vampire, is repeated, but now it’s happening to a friend.
Warwick: Yeah, my biggest concern with the story was how well I could do something more serious and emotional than before. The whole book goes to a darker place and because of that I had to make sure that our relationship with the characters worked so that it didn’t just feel mean. I’m not a fan of vampires fighting their vampiric nature. I think their will changes first and foremost which makes them a much less human and more relatable character. The vampires in The Lost Duke of Kurtz are driven by hatred – they don’t fight their vampiric nature. We see the same in “Falconspeare.”
I hope the opening sequence tells us a lot about their friendship, and knowing that the book will get darker, I wanted it to be funny as well, which is what we’re used to with these characters. But with the end of the book repeating the beginning, I was hoping to feel that these guys are doing their job, they’re destroying vampires just like vampires destroy humans. Whichever they are in both cases.
That was a particularly fascinating part of Falconspeare for me, the way you used vampires to explore people. Baron Fontin is a villain, but he doesn’t even have the excuse of being a vampire. And it says so strongly who James Falconspear is that he invites his friends to hear his testimony, believing that they will kill him. That’s part of what makes this series so compelling. Sometimes it can be ridiculous, like with the fighting vampires in Blackwater, but it can also be very tragic, as it was for Mr. Higgins and James Falconspear. Do you find it challenging to find the balance between these two elements?
Warwick: very much so. This is a huge challenge. But it’s a balance I like to practice and bring to my work. Mike Mignola nailed it perfectly in his script for “Mr. Higgins goes home. Really funny and heartbreaking too. We had talked about the character of the “Sad Werewolf”; they really are the unwitting monster, I guess. Innocent (usually) characters transformed into monsters, then more tragically back to humans to face the horrors they’ve committed. I love fantasy and I think it’s best when it’s rooted in something real. And painting the way I do is a tough business to get right. I hope I’m more right than wrong.
While reading the sketchbook section, I found it interesting that you draw each panel independently. Does this present challenges for you while composing a page? Does this mean you lock your layouts early?
Continued below
Warwick: It wasn’t really something I had done before ‘Mr. Higgins goes home. I work with thumbs and then rough layouts, which I think is pretty normal.
For “Mr. Higgins Goes Home,” I had miniature pages, usually one page a dirty 1 or 2 inches high, on top of Mike’s script pages. For others it was while I was writing. I really wanted to leave some rich pages here. I wanted to have a book that could be re-read and offer something new every time, if possible. Doing it this way meant I could fine tune the pages for best effect. Enlarging or cropping, especially cropping wide scenes to fit into panels, or other things like taking them out of order (or straightening them). I do most of my work on the page and this system meant I could keep tweaking things at a later stage. So my layouts exposed the base of the page, but I had room to play. The challenge is mostly knowing when to stop.
Of course, I have to ask, is there a chance we’ll see more Meinhardt and Knox in the future?
Warwick: Well, as long as people ask me, I’m always hopeful. Drawing all these characters is a joy and each page brings more ideas. But I’ve gotten away with an awful lot so far. This library edition feels like an achievement I can’t top. But then I thought the same thing about “Mr. Higgins Comes Home” several books ago.
Join us tomorrow for our next retrospective interview and be sure to pick up Our Encounters with Evil and Other Stories.
Cover by Mike Mignola
with Dave StewartWritten by Mike Mignola and Warwick Johnson-Cadwell
Illustrated by Warwick Johnson-Cadwell
Colored by Warwick Johnson-Cadwell
Written by Clem RobbinsJoin the extraordinary monster hunters and jump into eerie and whimsical Victorian-style tales of monster hunters, vampires and supernatural detectives in this collection of stories that is equal parts chilling and charming.
In this three-part collection, Professor Meinhardt and his assistant Mr. Knox pursue the undead and the tragic story of Mr. Higgins; investigate strange supernatural occurrences with researcher Mrs. Mary Van Sloan; and seek to uncover the truth about the prolific vampire slayer and former compatriot, James Falconspear.
Gathering Mr. Higgins is going home, Our encounters with eviland Falconspeare from the iconic team of Mike Mignola and Warwick Johnson-Cadwell.
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