Real Interviews – Gearbox

Greetings Mark and Deborah of Gearbox Comic. How are you doing this evening?

We are currently fine. And animating.

You’ve recently started Gearbox. Could you give me a brief rundown of what Gearbox is?

Gearbox is a trans-media mash up of comics, animation, music and live-action video. The story follows Xiao, a novice warrior who travels to parallel realities in an effort to derail the advance of the Monocline – a brutal female society that has plagued the universes for years and are holding Xiao’s mentor captive. That’s the basic log-line. It’s a story that’s been gestating inside my (Mark’s) head for about ten years and it seemed like the right time to finally realize it.

What inspired you to try and mash up different types of media for the project?

Gearbox first and foremost, is a comic book but given that we had such diverse interests and experiences in so many different kinds of media, we decided to put them all together and see what worked. The technological possibilities of the internet and mobile devices right now are growing so fast that it seemed like the right time to tap into that. A lot of on-line comics are cool but they’re not using the media for its strengths.

Did you examine or take inspiration from any projects in particular that seemed to at least partially go in the right direction?
There are a few motion comics that we really like but Gearbox is more of a wild west project than anything else. Trans-media — the idea of what it is and what it could become — is so new that there isn’t really much out there yet. We also want Gearbox to develop into a project that involves other artists taking story threads and developing them in whatever direction they like — an exquisite corpse.

So how is Gearbox going to be published or released?

Right now it exists solely on-line, and can be viewed on most mobile devices and computers. We have a very un-scheduled schedule of updates we call fragments, which are new parts of the story that we drop into the site as fast as we’re able to create them. Which isn’t so fast unfortunately. The mixed media reality is that it takes a realllllllllly long time to create. We hope to build the site out and ultimately have a printed version – a comic book version!

Were there any comics that really inspired your work on the project?

I (Mark) am inspired by artists like Barron Storey, Moebius, Grant Morrison, writers like Phillip K. Dick and William Gibson, as well as a lot of animators and filmmakers.

Before we wrap up is there anything that you’d like to plug besides Gearbox?

Deborah’s bandmate, Jamie Jackson, composed all the music for Gearbox. Their band, Hot As Sun, are currently working on their first full-length album. Hotassun.com and you can find all of our collaborations at: Waverlystock.com. Thanks!
No problem!

Luke Herr

Luke is a writer and an aspiring professional comic writer who is also the editor in chief of Nerdcenaries. He currently is working on a graphic novel called Prison Spaceship.

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