In case you missed it, you can find my review HERE.
Today, Howard was so kind to drop by and have a little Q&A with us. I'm super excited that this comic is now available for purchase, and I know so many of you are going to absolutely love it!
Howard Shapiro
The Stereotypical Freaks
GL: Welcome, Howard! Please introduce
yourself to everyone.
Howard: Thanks! My
name is Howard Shapiro. I am from Pittsburgh, PA. I am married with two thirteen-year-old sons
and my regular job is being the Controller for a Visual Effects Studio. I also own a business named Supersonic Storybook
Productions… Through that business I have authored four children’s book and
also my debut graphic novel, The
Stereotypical Freaks. My Hockey Player for Life e-book has been
the #1 kids hockey book, off and on, in terms of downloads on the Kindle sales
chart the last 26 weeks.
GL: Now, tell us a
little about The Stereotypical Freaks.
HS: Sure! The Stereotypical Freaks is a 140-page
graphic novel about four disparate high school seniors… Tom, Dan, Mark and Jacoby, who share a love
of rock and roll. They come together to
form a band to play in their high school’s battle of the bands. When a life-altering secret is revealed, the
guys initially wonder if they should go on.
Their decision sets up the last part of the story.
GL: What was the inspiration
for this story?
HS: In the spring and summer of 2008, there were a lot of
stories written about a local Pittsburgh area kid named John Challis who was
dying from liver cancer. There was a
sports angle to the stories as he was a big baseball fan, but his personal
story was very inspiring and he was wise beyond his years. After reading the stories, I thought I wanted
to write a character like him, with his story of courage and determination, and
so John was the catalyst and inspiration for the story. To learn more about him and see the work that
his foundation is doing, please check out their website: http://www.courageforlifefoundation.org/
GL: Why a
comic/graphic novel?
HS: Well, I’ve always loved comic books and at one of my
school visits the librarian told me that the kids would take each and every
graphic novel, regardless of the subject, out.
So, the little light went off above my head that maybe I could make my
next story a graphic novel. So, I went
to our local public library and took a bunch of them out and fell in love with
the genre. Now, 95% of the books I buy
or borrow are graphic novels!
GL: My son absolutely LOVES graphic novels. I think,
especially for a child with ADHD, they are so much easier to follow and you can
get through them as quickly or as slowly as you’d like without really getting
“lost.” Probably three out of ever four books he checks out from the school
library are comics :-).
GL: How is the
publication process for a comic different from a traditional novel?
HS: That is an excellent question because the process, at
least to me, is completely different. I
got into the mode of being a film director in that I thought everything through
in a visual sense first and constructed the dialogue around the settings rather
than vice versa. So, everything revolved
around the visual elements and I wrote it as a quasi-script instead of just
writing it out in a more “normal” fashion.
Plus, I did it by panels, so I’d write the panel number, the character
and then put in parentheses the characters actions, facial or body motions to
give my illustrator the visual cues.
After that, I’d write their dialogue and even that had to be clipped or
edited down because you only have so much space in each bubble. It was a very different process but an
extremely fun one and one that I would recommend to any writer to try!
GL: Who did the
artwork for the book?
HS: I was very lucky to have the great Joe Pekar (http://www.joepekar.com)
do the artwork. He is a very talented
illustrator and does a lot of work for card and video game companies. He also does covers for one graphic novel
publisher. The other member of my team,
on lettering, was Ed Brisson (http://edbrisson.com), who is a very talented
artist and writer in his own right.
He’ll have a five-issue comic book coming out this fall.
GL: Is there any
particular character that you relate to the most?
HS: I’d have to say that Tom is me and I am Tom! This is my fifth book using this same
character and in many ways he has been my doppelganger! I relate things that have happened to me through
him and sometimes I will write him the way I wished I would have acted in that
circumstance or say what I should have said.
But more often than not, his actions were my actions.
GL: Are any or all of
the characters based on someone in real life?
HS: Yes, as I mentioned, Tom is based on me, the Mark (the
lead guitarist) character is based on my best friend in elementary school who
moved on to other friends once he became a star athlete. In the book, Tom and Mark’s reconciliation is
pretty much how the real life Tom (me) and my friend reconciled. Dan (the bass player) is based on a kid I was
friends with in seventh grade and his real name was Daniel Roberts and that is
the character’s name and one kid in our class called him Dan Bob and for some
reason that stuck with me all of these years.
So, the name is the same, but after that,
Dan is sort of amalgamation of every kind of overweight bass player in rock
music… and there are many! And, of
course, Jacoby was inspired and done as a tribute to John Challis.
GL: Are you a
musician? What do you play?
HS: I used to play the drums… never in a band or anything,
just for fun. I never took lessons or
anything like that. I used to just bang away in my parents’ basement throughout
my high school and college years. If I
was to pick a dream job, it would be to be a drummer in a great rock band.
GL: That sounds more interesting than piano or clarinet
;-)…
GL: I loved the
suggested playlist that accompanied each chapter! Why did you decide to do
this, and how did you pick the songs?
HS: Thanks! I
appreciate that as music is very central to this story as well as in my
life. The songs were chosen for several
reasons. In some chapters, lines in the
dialogue were straight from a song. In
one chapter, when Tom is describing his relationship with Mark, he says how
hurt he was that Mark dropped him as a friend.
He goes on to say that even though that happened a long time ago, “the
past was close behind.” This is a line
from “Tangled up in Blue” by Bob Dylan.
So, there were parts or phrases from songs in each chapter and in some
cases the songs listed were songs that I listened to while I was writing. So, as a way to tip my cap to the bands that
helped me, I wanted to list the songs out.
And one day, hopefully, when The
Stereotypical Freaks gets made into a motion picture, the director will
have a readymade soundtrack!
GL: Sounds like a plan! I’m sure they will be grateful :-).
GL: What other books
do you have published and where can we find them?
HS: My other kids picture books (Hanukkah Counts Too!, Destructo
and Spillerella, and Hockey Days
and my middle grade novel, Hockey Player for
Life) are available on Amazon or via my website: www.howardshapiro.net
GL: You have an
entire day to yourself to spend however you wish. What do you do?
HS: Wow! That would
be great… I think I’d go to our art and history museum and then to our public
library… all three are in the same area.
That would be a very fun day!
GL: What is the last
movie you watched and what did you think?
HS: At the theater I saw Men
in Black 3 which actually turned out to be better than I thought it would
be. But, everything else will pale to The Dark Knight Rises, which I plan on
seeing twice (once in IMAX and then in a regular theatre) in the same
afternoon.
GL: Okay, obviously we did this interview a while back :-). I hope The Dark Knight Rises
did not disappoint! I liked it. And Men in Black 3 surprised me too. It made me cry…
GL: What would you
have for your last meal?
HS: I went to Chicago once, by myself, to see the band Urge
Overkill and I had heard about Giordano’s Chicago-style pizza and how great it
was. So, I stopped at one of their
locations, which was near my hotel. They
take your order first and then seat you about an hour later or whatever the
wait is that day. Then the pizza arrived
and I ate almost the whole thing and there was sauce everywhere. I think I used about a dozen napkins, but it
was worth it. It was the greatest pizza
I have ever had and I look forward to going to Chicago one day soon to relive
the Giordano’s experience!
GL: Best piece of
advice ever received or given?
HS: Work as hard as you can… and then work even harder!
Thanks so much, Howard! Congratulations on the release, and I wish you the very best!
For more about Howard and The Stereotypical Freaks, including where to buy and other reviews and interviews, please visit http://www.howardshapiro.net.
