Surprising Similarities Between Batman and Hatter Madigan
In the vast realm of fictional characters, two iconic figures stand out for their enigmatic personas and unparalleled skills – Hatter Madigan from The Looking Glass Wars universe and Batman from DC Comics. Both characters share a commitment to justice, distinct styles, and formidable arsenals. In this article, we dive down the rabbit hole into the intricacies of Hatter Madigan’s capabilities, weapons, and magical elements, and then we’ll draw comparisons between the intrepid Milliner and the legendary Dark Knight.
Hatter Madigan’s Mystical Arsenal: Hatter Madigan, an intimidating figure with a tall and athletic build, dons a captivating ensemble complete with a sentient top hat, versatile trench coat, unique vest, high-tech armor, military-inspired boots, lethal wrist blades, and the complex backpack, known as “The Bug.” Each element of his arsenal is imbued with caterpillar thread, Wonderland magic, and advanced technology, creating a tapestry of unique capabilities.
Top Hat: Hatter’s iconic top hat serves as more than a mere accessory; it is a semi-sentient sidekick made from Wonderland’s mysterious caterpillar silk. The hat boasts a mesmerizing red bejeweled eye on its “stovepipe,” signifying its sentient nature. It scans terrain, assesses danger, and can even track enemies, analyzing heat signatures, vulnerabilities, and voice recognition to provide Hatter with an overwhelming strategic advantage. With a flick of Hatter’s wrist, the hat flattens into a series of spinning S-shaped blades and is thrown to slice through attacking enemies.
One of the most unique aspects is the hat’s kinship to its owner. It communicates telepathically with Hatter, establishing a deep bond that goes beyond mere attire. The hat also offers a metal shield, precision aiming, and catching capabilities, showcasing its multifaceted utility in combat scenarios.
But it doesn’t end there. The hat can alter its size, strength, and color, seamlessly adapting to various situations. It is attuned to nature and the laws of the universe, which allows it to maneuver independently when separated from its owner. Further, its reality alteration capabilities, including the projection of illusions to confuse enemies, demonstrate the depth of Wonderland magic woven into its fabric.
Trench Coat: Hatter’s trench coat, seemingly crafted from a Kevlar-like material, resembles Deckard’s jacket from Blade Runner and is both flexible and durable. It incorporates caterpillar silk, adding magical properties and it’s equipped with slits so blades from Hatter’s backpack can subtly emerge.Vest and Armor:
Vest and Armor: Hatter’s vest, worn over his armor, features double-breasted Victorian detailing and piping with angled heart emblems. The shiny metal armor inspired by Thor’s armor adds to Hatter’s formidable appearance.
Boots and Wrist Blades Hatter’s boots seamlessly blend military and equestrian design, showcasing Victorian and magical stitching details. The wrist blades, a departure from typical assassin tools, serve as a warrior’s weapon for parrying and slashing. They can even be used as projectiles over a considerable distance, adding a ranged element to Hatter’s offensive capabilities.
“The Bug”: The Bug is by far the most complicated part of Hatter’s arsenal. Its extensions, linked together by gears, form arms with various attachments, each reaching a good 4 feet in length. Bringing to mind the machinery of Spider-Man foe Doctor Octopus, the Bug’s arms can retract, bend forward, equip different ends, and unfold with eight points of movement, allowing for versatile combat maneuvers and providing a unique advantage in battle.
It communicates with Hatter and operates symbiotically through imagination, adding an element of wonder to its functionality. The Bug’s arms are complemented by the Arsenal Cube, strapped to Hatter’s back by Jabberwocky hide ‘bladeoliers.’ This cube is a marvel of Wonderland physics, expanding to reveal an infinite interior filled with blades and weapons, following the principles of sacred geometry.
Hatter Madigan and Batman: Now that we’ve unraveled the complex components of Hatter Madigan’s arsenal, let’s turn our attention to the Dark Knight of Gotham City. Batman is renowned for his unparalleled detective skills, martial arts prowess, and an arsenal of gadgets.
Detective Skills and Intellect Both Hatter and Batman share a keen intellect and exceptional detective skills. Batman, known as the “World’s Greatest Detective,” relies on his deductive reasoning to solve crimes and unravel mysteries in Gotham City. Hatter’s telepathic connection with his sentient top hat enhances his situational awareness, allowing him to gather information and make informed decisions.
Combat Skills: In terms of combat, both characters excel in hand-to-hand combat and strategic planning. Batman’s mastery of various martial arts styles is legendary, allowing him to take on multiple opponents effortlessly. Hatter, with his unique arsenal, exhibits a more theatrical and mystical combat style. The retractable spinning blades, precision aiming, and catching capabilities of the hat, combined with the versatile arms of The Bug, provide Hatter with a dynamic and visually striking approach to combat.
Gadgets and Technology: While Batman relies heavily on cutting-edge technology and an array of gadgets, Hatter’s arsenal is fueled by Wonderland magic. The hat’s scanning capabilities and reality alteration and the Arsenal Cube’s transcendent properties showcase a magical aspect absent in Batman’s more grounded and technology-driven toolkit.
Stealth and Camouflage: Both characters are adept at stealth, but Hatter’s top hat takes it a step further with its natural camouflage capabilities. The hat seamlessly blends into its surroundings, allowing Hatter to navigate discreetly, a feature not present in Batman’s typical attire.
Mobility and Transportation: Batman’s iconic Batmobile and Batcycle are extensions of his mastery of technology and symbols of his ubiquitous presence in Gotham. Hatter, on the other hand, relies on the unique abilities of his sentient hat and The Bug’s arms. The hat can expand into a parachute to help slow one of Hatter’s many falls, while The Bug’s arms can bend and extend, providing Hatter with a distinct advantage in navigating diverse terrains.
Motivation and Symbolism: Both characters share a commitment to justice, driven by personal tragedies. Batman’s origin story is rooted in the murder of his parents, inspiring him to become a symbol of hope and justice in Gotham. Hatter’s journey in Wonderland is equally poignant, as he strives to protect Princess Alyss Heart and reclaim Wonderland from the clutches of the Red Queen after she overthrew and murdered Queen Genevieve, whom Hatter was sworn to protect.
Style and Aesthetics: In terms of style, Batman is often characterized by his brooding demeanor, dark and stealthy costume, and gritty aesthetic. Hatter, on the other hand, embraces a more whimsical and fantastical style, with an almost theatrical flair.
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ALL THINGS ALICE: INTERVIEW WITH GARY MURAKAMI
As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.
The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”
For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have Gary Murakami join me! Read on to explore our conversation and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.
Frank Beddor Welcome to the show Gary Murakami. I’m super happy to have you on and we’re here to talk about the love of your life, Liz Cavalier. You guys were together for 30 years. I met Liz shortly thereafter.
I want to have this shared experience with you because, unfortunately, Liz passed away in 2016. She was not only the love of your life, but she was the most inspirational and important creative collaborator and friend that I had here in Los Angeles. She was instrumental in all of these creative endeavors, many of which we would sort out in coffee shops, taking notes, and you would often accompany her and do your own thing while we were talking about story.
I wanted to start today’s chat based on our lunch a couple of weeks ago. You mentioned that you had a lot to do with Helmet Head Girl Hero. I met Liz through a producer friend and the first thing I read of hers was this script: Helmet Head Girl Hero. It was an amazing script and I just loved the tone and the personality. You said that was her big break. Can you, as a way of introduction, lead us to your meeting Liz and then subsequently your collaboration on that script?
Gary Murakami I met Liz in Santa Monica at a dance and exercise studio. I was taking dance classes. I remember wearing red tights that I had drawn stuff all over. Liz was stretching and exercising and I thought, “She’s really sexy.” But she was married at the time. So we eventually became friends. We hung out pretty much every day, going to cafes and taking trips to places like the Channel Islands. Eventually, her husband got arrested in Pakistan for smuggling heroin. So that ended the relationship. Liz had a really dramatic life. I think she passed more in her life than anyone I’ve ever known.
FB I knew this was going to be a good podcast.
GM He was in Pakistan. Eventually, he bribed the police so he got out but she didn’t want to be involved with that. Turns out he was bipolar as well, too. So that was enough of that. But we got together in 90 or 91 or so. She was looking for a story to do. She had gotten some stuff done, but never got it made.
She told me stories about her life. She was always a precocious child. Really smart. So much so that her parents had difficulty dealing with her because she was also the class clown. Her grandparents told her parents, “Look, she’s just so smart. You guys don’t know what to do with her.” So she was looking for a story and after hearing all the stories of her as a kid I told her I thought she should do her own childhood story. She was so cute. So precocious. She was always climbing trees with binoculars, creating forts, and spying on the neighbors.
When she was about four, she was annoyed with the neighbors so she wrapped a note for them around a rock and she tried throwing it out the window. But the velocity kept taking the paper off so eventually, she picked up the paper, knocked on the door and gave it to the annoying neighbor.
So I said that she should write a story about your life because she was so precocious and so cute and there were so many stories about it. She said, “Yeah, but they don’t do leading women or girl heroes.” I responded, “No, sure they do. People want the hero to be somewhat vulnerable so they can rise up and become a hero. They love it. What’s more vulnerable than a little girl or a woman trying to make it in life?” So she did. I never helped her write it but she would always bounce ideas off of me. So that’s how that started.
FB The lead character’s name was Beverly. I thought she maybe needed to increase the size of the production. So we came up with this idea that there was a real conspiracy with Russians. So it became “Helmet Head Goes to the Moon”. I was convinced it was a hit movie and we had a lot of traction.
But then Paramount made Harriet the Spy. That stopped the momentum of Liz’s script. But then I had this other kid’s idea, which was based on this dog in Telluride. It was called Dog Breath, which was funny but I didn’t think it was a big movie title. Then Liz said, “How about Eating Avalanches?” I said, “Okay, now that’s pretty cool. That’s memorable.” We developed this story that took place in Telluride about this dog that would go up the mountain with its owner. It became like a Goonies-style treasure hunt. In Telluride, they had this old mining town that still had all of the shafts and you could go down and tour to see what it was like in the early 1900s. But Liz was so much fun and so creative and she really created a lot of empathy with those characters. We worked on that for so many years. I loved working with her. We would butt heads a lot, though, because I would work from the plot side and she hated working from the plot side, she only wanted to come from the character and the inspirational side.
But the most significant aspect of us working together was her writing on the Hatter Mgraphic novel series and all of the wonderful characters she came up with. Where do you think she got this inspiration from? You talked about her as a child being precocious and super smart. She was way ahead of her time in terms of focusing on women characters. That was one of the reasons she didn’t think these movies would get made because they were female-led. Now, almost all of the television and films for a period of time were women-led, which was a nice reversal. Sadly, she wasn’t around to see the transformation, but she came up with some amazing characters – Realm, Shaman of the White Flower Tribe, from graphic novel number three, The Nature of Wonder, or Jet Seer, which is one of her favorite characters. Did she talk about these characters and how they were coming together?
GM Liz was an assertive person. She was the leader of her gang back in Eaton, New York. She was the class clown and always instigated stuff, like the high school graduation prank. Everyone got in trouble. Liz was a bad liar so she always got caught. She got caught shoplifting because she was such a bad liar.
All the characters are her. I was reading Zen of Wonder, and they’re all her, Hatter M included. She had that very rational, realistic side but she had the other side where she was just surreal and liked to be inspired by thoughts that came out of nowhere. I always encouraged her to write women leads because my mom was really important in my life. My mom was such a strong person and Liz was the same way. A very strong, capable woman.
FB You’re also a very creative person. You’ve been an artist and you’re an actor. What other things have you done?
GM I booked that video job.
FB Congratulations! You owe me lunch.
GM I will pay for lunch. It’s being produced by Tennyson, that huge Chinese company. They’re drawing up the contracts this week. They’ve written me into the cast. I didn’t book any of the two characters I did, but they liked me so much they’re writing me a character. And I may do other characters as well in the project.
FB You and Liz had a really unique relationship. I’d like you to talk about that a little bit but also the creative space that you lived in. I was always struck by the art on the walls, the spontaneity, the affection, and the path less traveled you both took. Both creatively and in terms of how you see the world. The two of you were so in sync and you were so compatible, which doesn’t seem like the most romantic thing, but compatibility is ultimately so romantic. Because when you feel compatible, you feel yourself. And whenever I was in your presence, you both felt like yourselves yet you also felt like one. Is that accurate?
GM Whenever I went to the restroom if the door was unlocked, Liz had a camera and she’d just bust that door open. There are so many pictures of me on the toilet going, “Liz why do you do that?” She’d say, “Because Gary, that’s the most animated I see you.” When we got our first apartment together, I remember, she would get a bucket of water whenever I went to take a shower. She’d have me screaming. We’d be laughing so much. At one point the neighbors were like, “Shut up!”
FB I love doing this podcast because you don’t normally get stories like that in life. Those are very, very funny. She was such a practical jokester.
GM Constantly. It was almost too much. You know how much Liz liked to talk.
FB Would you say that you’re super chatty or not?
GM Not at the time. But when she passed away, I missed all that chatter so I decided to become more chatty.
FB With The Looking Glass Wars, the idea behind it is that it’s the true story of how Alice came to our world and Lewis Carroll got the story wrong. So Liz wanted to create the Hatter M Institute for Paranormal Travel, which was a group of people who got together to discover the secrets of Hatter’s 13-year travels in our world and she never wanted to break that fourth wall. Whenever we went to Comic-Cons or schools, or did any interviews, it was, “This happened. We’re sticking to it. This is the real story.” She was so committed to it and it was so much fun to watch her pontificate on the work that they’ve been doing or the secret missions they were going on when we would do Comic-Cons. Did she talk about the conception of that?
GM Wonderland is real to Liz. That idea that Wonderland is real, or the realm of imagination is the fourth dimension comes from Edgar Cayce, who was a clairvoyant and psychic in the early 1900s. There’s a whole foundation based on him, the Association for Research and Enlightenment. He said that all ideas, all imaginations, are in this fourth dimension, and anything on Earth is imagined there first, and then it’s here. The original, which is in the other dimension, is much more vivid. She took that seriously. When I read Hatter and all the characters, I see her philosophy, because she always wanted to start a religion.
FB That does not surprise me. After the success of Scientology, she was probably thinking, “Yeah, I can do better.”
GM She took those ideas about imagination really seriously. That’s what our conversations were most of the time. They weren’t based in reality. It was, “What if?” and “Maybe this.” So we would go investigate in the Desert Hot Springs and look for clues and stuff like that. We’d play k.d. lang and Sergio Leone tapes in the car while we were cruising around the desert.
FB You guys did a lot of exploring off the beaten track. She was often feeding her imagination and I think it’s so important as a writer, to be very open to receive. I remember her saying one time that ideas are everywhere. They’re just all around you. As long as you go out into the world and explore, you will find ideas. You’ll be inspired. You’ll be touched. She lived that life with you.
GM She did. Liz told me if she were a man, she would have wanted to be a Merchant Marine so she could explore the world. She really meant that.
FB She did a lot in her imagination as well.
GM Physically as well, too, though. Liz was able to take care of herself as well. She had the strongest punch of any woman I’ve ever felt. Not that she punched me in the face, she punched my hands and stuff. She had great torque in her body. She never wanted to be the kind of writer who was just kind of anemic-looking just typing away. She wanted to experience things. She wanted to be capable out in the world as well. She always tested herself, riding the metro by herself or just driving by herself. Just the challenge of yourself out in the world. I think she put it into her writing as well through the kinds of characters that she admired.
FB She was so well-read. She would introduce me to writers that I had no idea of. I think it was out of that the Wonderland portal idea emerged because she was interested in pop culture but she was interested in pop culture through a unique lens. That Wonderland portal was her baby. She was in charge of the content and she would pull all the content from pop culture and then write whatever she wanted to write. It always seemed to be catching the zeitgeist of what was next.
GM Liz always wanted to be ahead. She had the spirit of a pioneer. She just wanted to be ahead and if you wanted to join, great. If you didn’t, that’s fine, “See you later.”
FB That’s why she loved that World War II story about the WASPs, the Women Airforce Service Pilots. She came up with Sis Kipling as a character, who had all the agency in the world, all the ability to fly a plane better than the men. Held back by society but damn determined to bust out and to make a difference. I see how much of herself was in the characters she created. That’s where the best writing comes from. When you put yourself out there, people feel it, then it comes off the page the way it’s meant to come off the page.
She was terrific. I really miss her deeply. The conversations, the back and forth, and the little Christmas presents that would show up in my inbox. She was funny at Comic-Cons. I’m very outgoing and I’m sticking my hand out, stepping in front of people, and waving them over to the booth. But when Liz started talking to people, they would lean in and she would engage them on a deeper level. I was giving them the elevator pitch and she was giving them the reason they should really care. It was really impressive to watch, her passion for the inside game of what the graphic novel was about, or a character she introduced or invented. I also miss getting her perspective on things.
GM When she was ill, her friends had come from New York to help out the last two weeks. They were more in grief before she passed away and she was actually trying to cheer them up and help them. And I thought, “Why does Liz have to do this?” But she was good at that stuff. I never saw that side of her before that time.
FB She was really nurturing, especially in the creative sense. “Let’s all come together. Let’s deal with this. I think I have a solution. I think I have a point of view. This is going well, let me take that off your plate.” She was incredibly giving like that. But the longest lasting really comes down to the work and the five graphic novels. If you read those graphic novels and look at the back matter and think about other comic books, you will see an enormous talent in Liz. She came up with almost all of that back matter. All of it was important to her to contextualize these ideas in the book, but to contextualize Wonderland, the power of imagination, these characters and where they came from, and then the fun. I want to lean into how much fun and how comedic she could be.
GM I read her graphic novels and I said, “You got that comedic rhythm.” She said, “Really?” She had no training in that at all. It was natural to her, in both writing and in life. She just had that rhythm and timing.
FB You write you write from being, which is exactly what she did.
GM That’s why Helmet-Head was so successful. It was her.
FB That’s still an amazing piece of work. I was thinking about how I could turn that screenplay into a book.
GM We read that several years later and we were both so shocked that she didn’t realize it contained a lot of the things between her and her parents when she was a little girl. She exposed a lot of things. She had no idea she wrote that stuff. She really didn’t. It’s like, she subconsciously put it down on paper.
FB I have a lot of different drafts as well, but I think it would make a great book. Tsunami Surf Sisters is going to make a great graphic novel, which we at Automattic are in the middle of creating and expanding. We’ve been really inspired because it seems so perfectly timed now. She was really ahead of her time. Tsunami Surf Sisters is about a bunch of female surfers who are interested in what’s happening to the oceans. So it has an environmental slant to it. If there was a relevant time, I think now is as good as any. We’ve been working on it as a graphic novel and certainly want to honor Liz’s contribution.
I’m also keen on Sis Kipling as a graphic novel as well. Liz and I learned a lot of television and movie projects stall out whereas writing books and graphic novels, you have the full experience of creating something, publishing it, and then taking it out to the audience. It feels no different than my movie, There’s Something About Mary, than going into a Comic-Con and selling a copy of Zen of Wonder, and having the readers come back and say, “When’s the next one coming out?”
How much interest did Liz have in writing novels?
GM I remember her saying that full-on novels are just too much work and take too much time. She likes short, fast, funny things that had a point.
FB That’s why she liked scripts and graphic novels because you can write those relatively quickly. They’re dynamic in the creation and they’re collaborative, which was perfect for her because she was so outgoing. We did all of our best work in coffee shops just sitting there talking.
GM I remember so many of them.
FB What was Liz’s or your introduction to Alice in Wonderland? Did that subject come up much in your life together?
GM It was a constant thing. Alice was such a big part of our lives. But in reading the characters she wrote, each one is a part of her. They seem to be living, like dream symbols. Nekko was the Zen part. Alan Watts was a Zen advocate and also Eckhart Tolle, who is huge now, (as you said, she was always ahead of her time). He wrote The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, which is basically mindfulness and being present.
FB That’s absolutely true. I remember she introduced me to Alan Watts. Nekko was the Zen guide for Hatter in book four, Zen of Wonder. She also created Little Dick, who was also in book four.
GM And Mr. Murakami, where Hatter said, “The crapper?!” Thanks, Liz.
FB That’s very funny. Really relevant given where this conversation started her taking pictures on the crapper. Now we know an inside joke that I did not know about.
GM This is actually a dream from last night, I was in bed and she was poking me in the bed and I heard her laughing. Then the last thing was you and I were walking in Santa Monica on Fourth Street and we got to the overpass over Ocean Avenue. You said stop, “You’re ready there and you’re gonna take photos.” I said, “Okay, Frank. I like this like that.” And you gave me some little toy butterflies to pose. I couldn’t hear you because when I said “Frank, you didn’t finish your sentence!”
FB She talked a lot about dreams. She talked about mindfulness a lot.
GM She was very much into it. She was taking cold showers back then. Which is really big now in all the longevity stuff. She used to take cold showers in the morning and she would pound her chest.
FB As I said, way ahead of her time. What was her first introduction to the classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?
GM I’m sure it was in school but she never really talked about that much. She got into Alice only when she started collaborating with you and she started expanding. I think she wanted to update it. Add more to it.
FB Suddenly, we both became really aware of Alice and pop culture. “Did you hear that band has an Alice song?” Or she would send me a piece of art from a garden where the plants were Alice-themed or cut out.
GM I think she felt that the film and story were going to become not so literal and not so black and white, because I think I really believe people can understand metaphor now. Or accept gray areas, whereas before it had to be this way or that way. I really feel that Liz felt that everything was going toward where one symbol would mean many things. It wasn’t just one thing and there were many gray areas. In a way, everything’s become surreal. It’s almost unbelievable.
FB If you’ve just reread Zen of Wonder you can see she really communicates that successfully.
GM She does. She didn’t respect the powers that be, the elite. She felt that an individual had their own power and they could do whatever to make a difference.
FB Do you remember she came up with a character for Whoopi Goldberg, the Queen of Clubs? The Queen of Clubs is best friends with Redd except she doesn’t believe in Redd’s ruling theories so she’s working behind the scenes. Then Redd finds out and it’s no good deed goes unpunished, off with the head. Liz would laugh and say, “Whoopi’ gonna die.” Then I had to tell Whoopi that on The View. It turns out that Whoopi Goldberg is a huge Alice fan and was in the TV movie. She narrates the Alice in Wonderland statues in Central Park in New York.
FB The outpouring of support from her friends who reached out to me when we all got the news that her illness was terminal, which is a really hard moment in life to contemplate. She often shared with me some of the pain she was in and in doing that, I felt like I was a little bit on the journey with her. Because I know she was really private. And she didn’t, but we had
GM Most of her friends didn’t know. She didn’t want to tell anybody.
FB Why do you think that is?
GM She was so into organic food and cold showers. She said part of it was that she was embarrassed. With doing all that, that happened.
FB She described this growth that was in her stomach as this kind of alien. In the end, she just wanted it to get out and move on. I just thought she was incredibly brave and it really revealed, yet again, another side of her courage and her sentiment because she didn’t seem that afraid. Even though she was taken young, she prepared herself. She used to tell me, “Check in on Gary.”
GM She was always concerned about me because I was not worldly at all back in those days. I became so after Liz left because I had to.
FB Thirty years is a long stretch with one person. It was a really great, successful run.
GM She lived a very full life. Maybe two or three lifetimes full and I told her so. She knew it. She did not die perfectly preserved. She was worn out because she did so much. That’s the way to live.
If you just look at you and your family, the Beddors, you guys race cars, you’re flipping in the air off of ski jumps and risking your life or being paralyzed. You guys weren’t trying to stay perfectly preserved. You had the Sin Bin and, sorry about the Sin Bin, maybe your friends don’t want to hear about that. Your mom was the fastest car driver in her age group. She beat your father who was a big, wheeling dealing business guy. You guys live fast and full.
FB Thank you for that. The Sin Bin isn’t a big deal other than for my mom. I had moved out to Salt Lake City and was on the U.S. Ski Team. I had made a little bit of money and I bought a condominium. Very modest, but I bought a condominium and I called my mom and told her and for whatever reason, my mom associated that with a “Sin Bin” as she called it. “I don’t know what you’re doing living in a Sin Bin.” Somehow, condominiums were different from houses or apartments. I guess she had seen too many teen or college movies. I teased her relentlessly her entire life about the Sin Bin.
GM I’m sure it was squeaky clean.
FB It was far from squeaky clean. Squeaky maybe. Having a full life is what we all hoped for and Liz did. She made my life so much more exciting and richer. I really learned how to collaborate and communicate with somebody on both the creative side and the friendship side because, after 28 years, you’re gonna have your differences and you have to sort those things out. I’ve been lucky that I have a lot of long-term friendships and I attribute that to taking responsibility for my part of differences and being able to express that. She was equally good at that, which makes for a good friendship.
GM I related to a lot of the messages from Nekko to Hatter because Liz told me that she always saw me as Hatter. Not that I’m trying to get myself into your movie.
FB You’d be a good Hatter.
GM Nekko’s messages to Hatter were, “Don’t be so rational. You gotta be open. Gotta be in the moment. Gotta be spontaneous.” Liz even got me to take an improv class. I’ve had many dreams since reading Zen of Wonder. I think one of the reasons she wrote Zen was to provoke insightful dreams in the readers, because all the characters are so surreal.
FB She had all those Japanese demons which I didn’t realize there were so many.
GM For everything.
FB I thought Catholicism was scary.
GM Catholicism is scary.
FB You drew some characters for Liz and me for one of the graphic novels. You drew a Milliner, I believe.
GM Yes, a Milliner. Sarah, your producer, sent them to me. I don’t wanna brag, but I was surprised by how good they were. They’re very flowing.
FB They’re really good.
GM I mainly drew them for Liz because I think she always wanted me to be a visual artist. When I was young, that’s what they said I should be. I told everyone I was gonna become a graphic artist. I didn’t know what it was but it sounded really good and adults approved of it. “I’m gonna be a graphic artist. I’m gonna go to art school.” I was in line to do it until some other grade school kid’s mom called my mom and asked, “Which art school is Gary going to because I want to send my daughter?” My mom said, “What are you talking about?” But yeah, I left it for Liz to show you. She was encouraging me to do that. I like him. I was surprised.
FB I’ve gone back and looked at a lot of different artists and I’ve been surprised in terms of the different styles and what people have been able to produce in the world of Wonderland.
GM Originally, I guess Hatter was supposed to be bigger and bulkier like a bodybuilder. But I remember telling Liz, “No, I think you should be because of his skills, more like Bruce Lee.” More like a swimmer with a more athletic build and able to move quickly and all that just popped up.
FB That was a really good choice. I think Bruce Lee is the perfect prototype for Hatter, a stranger in a strange land with a remarkable set of skills that many people underestimate. You get the satisfaction of the comeuppance for the know-it-alls or the baddies who think they can take anybody.
GM No matter what Tarantino says, Brad Pitt cannot beat Bruce Lee.
FB That’s for sure. I’m going to keep you posted on the creative material that we’re trying to birth into the world that Liz was a part of, whether that’s Tsunami Surf Sisters, Sis Kipling, or Helmet Head. I was even thinking Eating Avalanches might make a nice nostalgic adventure story. So we keep her memory and her work alive.
I’m going to take the graphic novels and repackage them. I think as we move forward in terms of getting a TV show or a musical going, there’s going to be a resurgence in interest in reading the graphic novels.
GM I’ll be going to Peru from the 14th to the 25th and apparently, there’s an underground city underneath Manta Picchu. I’m hoping to bribe somebody like $1,500 or something to get under there. We have a shaman, Don Juan, who’s going to be leading some meditation so maybe he can get me into that underground city and I’ll report to the Hatter Institute.
FB For any Hatter sightings or exotic artifacts, you might discover.
If you were a character from Alice in Wonderland, either my book or from Lewis Carroll’s book, would you think you’re Hatter Madigan, as Liz suggested? Or do you have another idea?
GM That or the free ghost Mr. Murakami, from the outhouse.
FB Okay, the character that you already are. All right, good. Thank you, Gary. Thanks for going down memory lane with me about one of the most important people in both of our lives, Liz Cavalier.
Put to rest any delusions or disinformation you may have of the tea-guzzling madman of Alice in Wonderland and prepare to expand your consciousness with the story of the real Mad Hatter and his relentless search for Alyss, the lost Princess of Wonderland. In The Looking Glass Wars, Royal Bodyguard Hatter Madigan was ordered by Queen Genevieve to take Princess Alyss and leave Wonderland after a bloody palace coup staged by the murderous Redd. But while escaping through the Pool of Tears (the portal from Wonderland to our world), crushing centrifugal force pulled them apart. Hatter finds himself in Paris in 1859, shockingly separated from the child he had been sworn to protect. Crisscrossing the globe for 13 years in search of the princess, Hatter was aided by some of our world’s smartest and bravest women. These characters form the “syndicate” of women around the globe who have met this mysterious, gallant, stoic, otherworldly, and relentless bodyguard. Each vowed to assist him in finding Alyss and serving Light Imagination.
Hatter M – Book 1 – Far from Wonder
Magda Pushikin – An ambitious reporter covering Budapest. Location: Moscow
A glamorous and pushy Russian newswoman determined to track Hatter Madigan and uncover his mission. During her sleuthing, she and Hatter end up joining forces to rescue a group of schoolgirls including Girl 42 – a seemingly deranged and uncontrollable child with an uncanny ability to channel other people’s thoughts, Wonderland, and blue butterflies.
All are imprisoned in a sketchy orphanage run by proponents of Dark Imagination.
Magda forms an unbreakable bond with Hatter and promises to help him with his search for Alyss in any way she can.
Hatter M – Book 2 – Mad with Wonder
Sister Sally – Bible Belt healer in America’s South Location: New Orleans
Hatter learns of this glowing girl and her mission for mankind and believes she may be the lost Alyss. He tracks her down only to see her snatched by a local slave trader/soul stealer (Van de Skulle) with ties to Redd’s Wonderland. Hatter rescues Sister Sally and a strong alliance is formed. She owes Hatter her ‘soul’ and is determined to be a faithful friend for as long as he needs her. Sister Sally’s healing abilities are epic and she has a direct line to God. You know you’ve got a good friend when they’re a friend of Jesus! Amen.
Hatter M – Book 3 – The Nature of Wonder
Philomena Ark – Civil War Intelligence Agent Location: Washington D.C.
Philomena, the fierce, pigtailed, inventor of the ray rifle works in the X-Files-styled Illuminated Forces (I.F.), an investigative branch of intelligence dealing with paranormal events. When vials of Dark Imagination are inhaled by the Confederate army in the final days of the Civil War, the Illuminated Forces are ordered by President Lincoln to find the antidote – Light Imagination. At the same time, Hatter Madigan arrives in Washington D.C. in hopes of discovering the answers to secrets that will lead him to Alyss. Philomena is a hyper-intelligent blend of paranormal investigative genius, romantic teenager, and inventive lab rat. If you need it, Philo can build it. Hatter will rely on her futuristic skill set and loyalty as he navigates the globe.
Realm – Shaman of the White Flower Tribe Location: Secret caves within the Grand Canyon
Hatter discovers Realm and her people after the Illuminated Forces airship piloted by Philomena Ark is blown out of the sky by a hail of burning arrows launched by the White Flower tribe.
Near death, Hatter’s life is saved by Realm in a sweat lodge ceremony that reveals her distant ties to Wonderland’s Queens. Realm and Hatter are drawn together by their exceptional qualities of duty and service to others. Attacked by the United States army, Realm and her tribe are forced into hiding in the Grand Canyon. Hatter assists the tribe in escaping and Realm is forever grateful. Her mystic abilities to astral project, shapeshift and distill the rare substance known as Light Imagination from the scent of her tribe’s namesake White Flower render her a formidable ally.
Hatter M – Book 4 – Zen of Wonder
Nekko – Twelve-year-old Zen Master. Location: Mountain Top Monastery in Japan.
Hatter meets Nekko on the rooftops of San Francisco after she steals his hat and leads him on a chase to her secret dojo. Nekko recognized Hatter as a searcher in need of guidance and, despite his objections, volunteered her services in his quest for enlightenment. When Hatter meets Nekko, she is in her ‘traveling clothes’ of gangly teenage J-pop Zen adventuress. It is written that when you are ready a teacher will appear, but if that teacher is a 12-year-old girl and you are a high-ranking Bladesman you may discover that all you can do is laugh. Hatter and Nekko’s adventure around the ring of fire begins when they track a stolen samurai sword with a Wonderland connection to San Francisco’s 19th-century hip-hop crime madam Missy Tong and her eager protégé, the outspoken Lil’ Dick. In return for her assistance, Hatter acts as Nekko’s bodyguard during her return to a mountain-top Zen monastery in Japan. After Hatter leaves, Nekko shifts back to her essential ‘in-house’ self, the Happy Cat Buddha. Nekko will be available with wisdom and wit, whenever Hatter’s plans become too serious and he needs enlightenment.
Hatter M – Book 5 – Love of Wonder
Agent Jet Seer – DNA Runner for 21st Century Bio Corp Location: Undisclosed
Jet Seer is an agent from a future that needed saving. As a badass time, traveler, she tracked the glow of Imagination throughout history in search of enlightened ones, men, and women whose incredible minds could inspire her timeline – a time where automation, algorithms, and virtual reality have reduced man to a listless and sedentary existence. From Aristotle to Zappa and everyone in between, nothing could stop the incomparable Jet on her quest.
A mix of Egyptian genetics and Lawrence of Arabia style, Jet is discovered by Hatter and Dalton (Hatter’s long-lost brother) in the desert outside Constantinople singlehandedly attacking a slave caravan in search of a mysterious girl. She is a time-traveling DNA runner hired by a mysterious Bio Corp. Hatter realizes they are both seeking Alyss of Wonderland but for very different reasons. The powers in the future have discovered the source of all Imagination, what amounts to the God molecule that once existed in Alyss Heart of Wonderland, known to be lost in our world for 13 years. Enabled by time travel tech, they have sent this time-traveling bounty hunter back to collect it. Agent Seer is committed to her mission until she meets Hatter and realizes there is a higher calling than DNA harvesting. In the service of Light Imagination, she assists Hatter in locating Alyss. They plan to return to Wonderland together but Jet is arrested by time-traveling agents who arrive to escort her back to the 21st century in virtual handcuffs. But Jet Seer is not deterred. She promises Hatter she will be looking out for him from the 21st century and will do everything in her power to help him. Returned to the 21st century, Agent Seer escapes the agents and starts her own time-traveling agency to serve Light Imagination.
One of my readers was very, very upset with me. I was on a tour of British schools promoting The Looking Glass Warsand, though it had been a great success overall, at that moment I was in the crosshairs of a very cross young man who believed I made a grave mistake. Why had I neglected to tell the story of Hatter Madigan’s 13 years searching for Princess Alyss? It was a damn good question, one I didn’t have a ready answer to. But on the plane back to the States, I thought, “Maybe I could do a comic book about those 13 years.” That’s how the Hatter M graphic novel series came into being.
School visits are one of the more rewarding aspects of promoting and talking about my stories. You’re going right to the source. You have to go out to the audience to understand what your world is and how it’s affecting them. Having the feedback from kids in terms of what they like, what they feel is working, and what sparks their imagination is really important.
I met Kira Assad (the writer of the article below) when I spoke at an event hosted by Professor James Blasingame at Arizona State University during the promotional tour for Hatter Madigan: Ghost in the H.A.T.B.O.X. Kira told me an amazing story about how The Looking Glass Wars inspired her to study English in college and to write fiction herself. It’s so gratifying and humbling to know that my work has been a looking-glass through which young people fall in love with reading and storytelling. As evidenced by the stern English lad who inspired six graphic novels, sometimes your readers can provide the biggest sparks of imagination.
All Things Alice: Interview with Adrienne Kress, Part 2
As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.
The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”
For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have Adrienne Kress join me as my guest on this episode! Read on to explore our conversation and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.
Frank Beddor As a kid, the whole idea of identity and trying on these different identities while growing up is really universal. But what’s remarkable, since I’ve been working in the Alice universe, is how deeply seated it is in culture and how Alice has become such a muse for creatives. We never had this conversation. Can you tell us a little bit about Alex and the Ironic Gentleman? I didn’t know that it was inspired by Alice. How did you use elements of Alice in your book?
Adrienne Kress The very basic plot is a girl, Alex, has to rescue her grade six teacher from pirates. She was raised by her uncle but he was killed and the only adult in her life who’s a parental figure is this teacher. At the same time, she’s found a treasure map, which is what these pirates were looking for. So it’s also a treasure hunt kind of thing. Act One establishes everybody and begins the adventure and has pirates kidnap the teacher. Act Three, we go to sea. We’ve got the H.M.S. Valiant, we’ve got our good guys and then we’ve got the Ironic Gentlemen, who are the pirates. We have a proper Treasure Island-style, Peter Pan-style adventure.
But Act Two is very much Alice in Wonderland. Alex has to get to Port Cullis, which is a port town where she’s trying to get a boat. So the journey from her town to Port Cullis, that’s the Alice bit and it’s very much Alice in Wonderland. She’s thrown into a very absurdist world. Even though it’s her world, her world is absurd. Everything is very episodic. It starts with a very strange train sequence that’s my Beckett, existential absurdism. My very first play was that Waiting for Godot style, the circle that never ends. I find it horrifying and deeply amusing at the same time. So it starts with that and then Alex ends up being plopped in a forest. Then in this forest, she comes across different people who are absurd caricatures or, in one case, an extremely ginormous octopus who’s an older English-style lush actor like Peter O’Toole.
Alex has to help solve its problems to move on to the next step, which is yet another person who needs another thing. She’s basically trying to get to Point B but she keeps getting waylaid. I remember my editor being like, “Okay, if we’re going to do this, it’s not very forward moving so let’s make sure that we have no extraneous words.” We did cut one scene where she meets a French horn player, which I was sad about because I used to play French horn which is why that was in there. But she has these scenes and for some readers that’s their favorite bit. I think the Alice fans at heart get it. Then some people are like, “Oh my god, I just wanted to get to Port Cullis.” They wanted that more straight journey.
FB They wanted Treasure Island.
AK Exactly. We get there. I just wanted to do a little bit before that.
FB So if you like Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Treasure Island, or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, this is a book for you.
AK I did call it an homage to children’s lit. It’s the first book I ever finished writing. The first children’s book I ever wrote. So everything was very much an homage. Everything was something else. I put friends in it. Previous employers were in it. I tried to represent everyone nicely.
It was just everything I love in a book not thinking it would be published, not even thinking about publishing. Then, of course, there’s the challenge of realizing you have to write a second more challenging thing. I think writing a first book is hard but you’re so focused on this crazy huge accomplishment, “I have this goal and it took me 10 years, but I’m going to do it and put everything I’ve got into this thing.” Then you get published and you start to have a career and somebody asks you for a second book and you’re like, “But I can’t do what I did. I can’t do that all over again.”
FB I thought it was exactly the opposite. There was something about the first one in terms of not having any pressure because you don’t think it’s gonna get published and you can take 5-10 years, however long it takes. However, once it’s there, and you figured out the rules and the logic, then yes, there’s a pressure. But so much of it’s already a roadmap, and much easier, and the second book certainly took me a lot less time. I did feel pressure from the editors a little bit more, but I was happy that I had already established that, if they liked this world, I’d been working on it. I have all this stuff in a filing cabinet. I’ll just pull more stuff.
AK There is a difference. I don’t know why I did this to myself. I’ve now written some series but generally, I always enjoyed standalones. I decided for the second book, I was going to write a completely different story. It was set in the same world but with completely different characters and, a completely different story, and then halfway through, we would bring Alex back into it and stuff. So I think writing a direct sequel has its unique challenges, especially if people really liked the first one. It’s like, “Oh, no, how do I make this as well-liked, if not more well-liked too? How do I write the second book, but not rest on my laurels? There are a lot of challenges with that. But I think for me because I decided I’m going to write a second book that’s completely not the first, I felt again like I was starting a bit from scratch.
FB That’s for sure
You have a whole new series out. You have three books in the Bendy series.
AK The Bendy books are a series, but they’re also standalones. So we’ve done it again. But The Explorers, which is just mine is a proper three-book series.
FB Can you walk us through that? Did you know you were going to have a trilogy when you started it?
AK Yes. It was a three-book deal from the beginning. Just from the beginning, it was a very classic, hoping that each book is their own adventure but it had that very classic overarching arc. They had to collect things and they had to rescue somebody by the end.
FB Were they saying they wanted the book to come out every year or every 18 months? Did you have that added pressure?
AK It was every year or 18 months, I can’t remember which, but it was definitely that. So that window where you had to write the whole of the next book and then go through the whole process again and write it in time with their deadlines
FB I found that very stressful, by the way, hitting a deadline for the book. Because they said you’re going to lose your audience. The audience is going to find some other series.
AK There’s one book in the Bendy book series, which is in the YA section because it’s a memoir. In the very first game, there’s a book called The Illusion of Living, which is the memoir of Joey Drew, who’s the Walt Disney of this animation studio. So they wanted me to write the memoir, which was a really cool experience writing a memoir about an adult male for a young adult section. But with these three books, the other two are technically Y.A., there’s less of the pressure that you’re talking about, which just blows my mind. “You’re going to lose your audience.” Who says that? But that kind of pressure, when the developers of Bendy decided they wanted the next book, I guess they would talk to Scholastic about it, then Scholastic would come to me and say, “You have to get this to us in two months.” That level of fast. It isn’t the same way as writing a series where they’re like, “We need the next book ASAP for the series.” It was more like, “When we’re ready for the next one, we gotta go, go, go.”
FB Just to make it clear for the listeners, Bendy is based on a video game. So they needed these books for the day and date of releasing a new game?
AK I don’t fully know what the decision-making process is there. I’m just happy to be a part of it. So the second game was released this time last year. I think it’s possible that when they finished working on the game, they were like, “Okay, now we would like another book.” They were so focused on the game, as they should be. But I believe it was a year from being told they’d like another book. So that’s even before I’ve written an outline to send to them. It was a year, from that point to the release of the most recent one. This time last year, I would have been knee-deep in writing it.
The most recent one, Fade to Black, came out at the beginning of October and I don’t think I had started writing it last year at the beginning of October.
FB Let me just get all these titles right. So Bendy and the Ink Machine: Dreams Come to Life was book one, which came out in 2019. Did you have to audition for this? Send in an outline and based on the outline, they chose you or did you have a pre-existing relationship?
AK I think they reached out to maybe four other authors and there was very little that they required. They wanted it to be Y.A., set in the studio, the games take place decades after the studio is over, so essentially, they wanted it set in the 1940s. That’s about it. Then I came back saying I’d like to do an apprentice who’s 17, and works in the art department because obviously, the whole point of his game is art. So let’s put them in the art department. They liked that and they were thinking the exact same thing. At that point, all of us who they had asked wrote pages. I think they wanted about five pages but I asked if I could submit 15. So I did the opening which is almost entirely the same opening of Dreams Come to Life. I guess they liked it, which was very nice.
FB And the second is Bendy: The Illusion of Living. The third one is Bendy and the Ink Machine: The Lost Ones and the most recent book is Bendy: Fade to Black.
Also, it was published through Scholastic, which is great because they have such a far reach and they were your original publishers as well.
AK They were the ones who published Alex and the Ironic Gentleman. They were the very first.
FB You’re keeping it in the family. That must have been nice. Do they have an editor that they assigned to these books?
AK So it’s fascinating and goes back to what I was saying about reluctant readers. They have an imprint called AFK, which means Away From Keyboard. For those who don’t know your acronyms, which I did not, that’s a very cool online acronym. They did the Five Nights at Freddy’s books, which are massive.
I don’t know when they actually started the imprint or whether it was on the back of how successful the Five Nights at Freddy’s stuff was but they do all these video game tie-ins. My editors have all been incredible. What I really liked about it beyond it being fun is that they have this imprint that’s all focused on video game tie-ins and you’re getting all these readers like me, reluctant readers, who might not be into a book going “Well, that is my favorite video game.” I get it all the time from kids and teenagers, “I hate books,” or “I don’t like reading. I’ve never really read a book. But I read this one because I love Bendy and it was really good.” I hope that the Bendy books spark that realization of “There are books for me. I just have to find them. They might not be what even the school is showing me but somewhere there are books for me.” So as the reluctant reader I really, really love that.
It’s so fun to read certain reviews, like on Goodreads, where they said the author didn’t have to go this hard. No, I did. I have to get themes. I have to get morals. I have to get complicated ethics questions. I love that I’m able to do that and sneak that stuff into these books. Then next year, they’re adapting the first book into a graphic novel, which I’m also super into. I’ve got a graphic novel of my own that’s coming out in 2025 because it takes forever. It’s 250 pages and this incredible artist, Jade Zhang, has to illustrate it. I don’t know how she’s doing it. To me, it seems fast. But they’re releasing Dreams Come to Life as a graphic novel next year. Again, I love that because I think graphic novels also open the world of reading even more.
FB Are you adapting your own book, the prose, into the graphic novel or are they hiring somebody else to do that?
AK They’ve hired a writer named Christopher Hastings, who’s done this a fair bit. When I was first told there was going to be a graphic novel I was like, “They probably already have somebody but I could do it.” And then I thought, “No, even though I know how to write a script, how on Earth do you make that book that’s almost 300 pages into a graphic novel?” Even if it’s got the same number of pages, it’s not going to be that same length.
FB Let’s go to your graphic novel because that’s fascinating. I wrote my prose and then I had no idea what I was doing and then I did a graphic novel and I look back on it and go, “Wow, I made so many mistakes and set up this so terribly.” But it was really, really fun to do and now I understand how different it is. Can you speak to writing your first graphic novel?
AK The way that one writes a graphic novel is you have page numbers, specific pages that you have to dictate, and then what happens in specific panels on those pages. That is what is so challenging. I love it. I think very visually to begin with and I’ve read a lot of graphic novels. So I felt very comfortable playing around with how to use the space and what to do. I have a friend Stephanie Cook, who has a lot of kidlit graphic novels out now, and also is an editor, and she does tons with graphic novels in the comics community in general. So we met up, and I’m like, “Help me.” She told me generally, for middle grade, you don’t want more than five panels on a page. Very pragmatic things like that which were very, very helpful. But generally, I had a good vibe, I had a good sense of aesthetics.
But what I didn’t know until I was going back over it myself, and then working with an editor on it, was how hard editing a graphic novel is. Because in a book, screenplay, or play, if you need an extra bit of dialogue or an extra section to fully understand what’s happening, “Sure, I’ll put it here.” But if you add a single thing to a graphic novel script, it’s Tetris. You add another panel, and then that fifth panel has fallen off the page. Can I fit it into the next page? Or can I make this page six panels? Or do I need that panel? Maybe I can get rid of that panel? Or do we move everything down? But of course, there are two-page spreads and you have to make sure that you have pages two and three side by side. It can’t be three and four because they’re on opposite sides of the page. It’s math.
FB Every page you add is hundreds and hundreds of dollars for the artists because they get paid by the page unless you make a deal with them where they’re part of the authorship. I found the editing process really, really challenging, as well. But the heavy lifting is the artists. Also, the artists can say, “Hey, I can’t fit all those panels,” or “There’s so much dialogue in this particular panel, we’re going to have to move it around a little bit.” I was really leaning on Ben Templesmith.
AK I’ve given so many challenges to Jane. So the story is called Ghost Circus and it’s about these two kids and we meet these ghosts at the circus.
FB Not in the H.A.T.B.O.X.?
AK No ghosts in the H.A.T.B.O.X.
FB It’s in the circus, not the H.A.T.B.O.X. Okay.
AK There are flashbacks to how the ghosts became ghosts and they’re set in all different time periods. So Jade’s drawing 1930s New York and then the savanna with elephants, plus the main timeline we’re in with the ghost circus itself and all the characters there. It’s so impressive. I feel like I’ll know whether or not she had issues or whether she solved them. I think there’s one or two times she’ll do something with a couple of panels and I’m like, “Oh, yeah, that makes more sense.” But maybe just because I was so aware of the middle gradeness of it all, that was very much at the forefront of my mind. So being aware of the number of panels I needed per page. Then before even Jade came on board, editing it and working on it with the editor, he’d be like, “This is too much though. We’re not going to fit that dialogue on our panel.” That’s where the math came in. But it was an incredible learning curve.
FB But being a playwright, you really had a handle, because that is the closest form to writing for graphic novels.
AK One hundred percent. Thank goodness I had that experience. Because I did look at other people’s scripts, I wanted to learn, something even just as simple as page one, panel one. I wanted to know how that works. It’s great to have that reason for us to look at what other people have done but it didn’t feel awkward because graphic novel writing comes from playwriting and the scripts look like a play.
FB My wife and I are working on a graphic novel and this is her first graphic novel but she had been a staff writer on the show Bones. So she sort of understands but we were having the simplest conversations, “So, on the one page, is it panel 1 through 5, and then on page two, it’s panel six, do you continue?” “No, it’s just one through five and then the next page is one through five.”
AK That question makes perfect sense. Like, “You’re not repeating the same pattern?”
FB But this time we hired an editor from the very beginning and said, “Okay, here’s the basis of the story.” Then he was saying you have to have a sensitivity reader read it because some of the names and some elements don’t quite line up based on the story. So we’ve done that. It’s really a science, as you say, it’s a math question. There is a lot more going on in the world in terms of when you create something to make sure it’s accessible to all.
AK I do think it’s quite wonderful because I think we’ve been using sensitivity readers for a while, as authors. Reaching out to people we know or asking our friends, “Hey, do you know somebody who might be able to look over this section because I want to make sure this is as correct and sensitive as possible?” It’s all kind of already existed but I like that it’s been codified as a proper job. It’s something that I think is more front and center of awareness, which I think is important. We had one, specifically for Bendy: Fade to Black, which is set after World War II and the dad has PTSD from the war. It’s thematically important to the story. The whole story is actually about PTSD and mental health, and living with that sort of trauma. I did my level best, researching and trying to make things as sensitive and as authentic as possible, but Scholastic did give it to somebody to read over just to make sure that we were doing it right.
FB I agree with you. The level of subtlety is really different and we must be mindful. For the graphic novel my wife and I are working on in particular, the characters all come from different places and we wanted to make sure that we were honoring everybody’s heritage and getting it right. Are you interested in World War II much after doing that research?
AK It’s one of those things that I think is by virtue of being a cinephile there are so many movies about World War II. But then, for my generation, it impacted our grandparents. So it’s a very present thing. You’ve got a real direct connection versus perhaps other history that feels like it’s almost a story. You don’t have that visceral connection, which is why I think I might have struggled with other history classes and other history. It wasn’t until I started doing art history where you could actually go and see the actual works and connect to the reality of it that I realized I did like history. I just need to consume it differently.
There are a lot of phenomenal YouTube shows that are about the domestic side of history. So a day in the life in Victorian England. What did you eat? Where do you sleep? With the first Bendy book, they wanted it just after World War II. I had been to New York and somebody recommended the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side. They found a boarded-up tenement that hadn’t been renovated, and hadn’t been touched, and from there they started reaching out to families generationally for stories and objects, they looked at census information. What it’s become is you go on these tours and it’s like just walking through history. You’re there. You’re seeing and touching everything and it was incredible. Shortly thereafter, I got the gig for the book and they wanted it set in the 1940s and I was like “Okay, I’ll make it New York.” I know their lives. I know where he lives.
FB That’s great. You were destined to write these. Are there going to be more books in this series?
AK It’s been such a pleasure and I really enjoy working on them. I know the developers are very focused on the next games as well. They’re very sweet about it, which I’m grateful for because I was very nervous with a pre-existing fan base. I felt the same way about Hatter Madigan.
FB That was really fun, working on Hatter Madigan: Ghost in the H.A.T.B.O.X. together. I knew I was in good hands when you came up with the idea that he was an insider and not an outsider. Your rationale was that Harry Potter had done that to such great success and there are a lot of other stories that do the same thing, that Hatter being an insider would make the story in this book unique. Once you pitched that, I said, “Okay, that’s a very smart idea.”
AK Thank you. It was so much fun. The world is, God…creating that world the way that you have, with literally an encyclopedia, is so phenomenal and so intimidating as a writer. I admire so much just the depth of the world-building you had. As we were talking about with Alice in Wonderland, that’s what’s so great about all these adaptations of Alice is everybody’s unique perspective.
FB I was really trying to create a jumping-off place. Take some of the motifs and then use that creativity and share the sandbox and see what other people can bring to it. In every conversation I had with you and with other creatives, it doesn’t work unless you bring yourself to it. You bring something unique that you can do. That’s what I’m looking for. I don’t want to be precious. I want to actually break away from it a lot more because I’ve gotten so focused. I think about it in a loop and I can’t break out of it unless I have another voice.
AK That’s so fair. You were asking me about the adaptation of Dreams Come to Life. There is no way, with the narrowness of focus that I have, that I could possibly bring a unique look to that book. But a new person adapting it would. That’s the crazy part, isn’t it? Getting to write and make stuff up as a job.
FB How do you balance writing your own work, adapting something, producing, and auditioning? What’s the day-to-day balance that you try to accomplish?
AK What’s balance? I wish it felt more like I had a plan and I really stuck to it. The truth is, it’s a little bit flying by the seat of your pants. I can’t speak to what they are but I’ve got two write-for-hires that just happened this month. So right now balancing those…and I feel very good about the plan because the jobs are so vastly different. There are a lot of reasons why I can do that. I wouldn’t always say yes to doing two projects right at the same time but these worked very nicely together, they complement each other. But this summer, I had no writing, anything. I didn’t have edits. Nothing was sorted that way. So I decided I really wanted to write. I have a middle-grade story that’s much more in the style of Judy Blume. So not fantastical in any way, more coming of age. I’ve been really wanting to write it for a few years so I’m like, “That’s what I’m doing this summer.”
It takes place over a summer so it felt like the right temperature because I’m in Canada and we only get this so much. That’s with my agent and we’ll probably go on submission to publishers in the new year. But I’m glad I did that, over that gap in the summer, because then these projects came along and it would be sad because I don’t think I would have been able to balance them with my original work. The key is taking advantage of moments. If you can’t plan everything out ahead of time you can still have a sense of how long a project will take and maybe when that’s done I’ll do this thing that’s more in my control. The pet projects that might not have a home yet. You have to still honor and give space to that project.
FB You had a good summer. You finished a new book and you had a movie come out.
AK Post on the movie was a long post. There was no way you could focus on anything else. I was also injured at the time so that didn’t help. I think you’re well aware that moviemaking can be entirely consuming.
FB When you’re on set, forget it. You only have so many hours in the day and then you’re gonna lose crew and locations.
AK Exactly. If I was just acting, that would be different because you have a lot of downtime as an actor on a set. That’s a great time to maybe just get a few words in the computer. It’s much easier to multitask. But as a producer and as a writer on it, you do not have the same level of free time.
FB You said fly by the seat of your pants and one of the reasons for that is so much of the work is speculative. There’s the focus you need to finish your book that you’re not getting paid for or the movie that has enough financing just to get it made, but you’re not making any money unless the movie sells. Then depending on how many bills you have to pay it’s like “Okay, where am I putting my attention?” If I need to pay bills, I need that work-for-hire stuff, or for this movie, let’s gamble and see if we have a little payday at the end of it. It does feel like when you’re doing so many different mediums, you’ll fly by the seat of your pants because there is no structure to it. It’s really a self-generated structure. That’s not so easy.
AK A lot of people I talk to, even writers who are also doing a day job, I’m like, “Oh, if only I had all that free time.” I am very lucky. I get to write professionally as my job. That is an amazing, amazing gift. It’s incredible. But there are other challenges. There was a long period where I was writing, especially with Alex and the Ironic Gentleman, but I also had a day job. Even once it got published, I still had a job. That job schedule does actually help schedule out your writing too because you only have certain windows in which you can do it. If you have the whole day, it’s very hard to schedule things.
FB I had this equivalent when I had kids and it’s like, “Wait a second, I only have from 10 to midnight.”
AK Exactly. It’s hard. I do really admire people. There are just unique challenges for all of it. In the end, you have to be your own boss. You have to give yourself your own deadlines. With my deadline for this coming-of-age middle grade that I finished, I was telling friends, “I’m a week behind. I know I finished it the next week, but I really wanted to get it done earlier. I’m really annoyed with myself.” And my friends will say, “But it’s your own deadline.” I treat my own deadlines like somebody else has imposed them.
FB I agree with that. I think the more discipline, the better off you are. So yeah.
Before we go, if you were a character from Alice in Wonderland, who would you be and why?
AK That’s a good question. As a drama major in my art school, every year you had a different focus and in grade 10 a lot of that was performance, putting together a little production. We were very fortunate in our year that we got to do Alice in Wonderland. I was cast as the White Queen, which is what I wanted and I loved playing her. I don’t think I had ever played a flighty character. I tend to get cast as intelligent, grounded human characters. I think the White Queen might have been the first sort of flighty, weird character I got to play. That meant a lot to me. I realized I like playing these characters. I just love the character and her wordplay. Her particular scene that she has with Alice, with all the wordplay, “tomorrow, yesterday, today.”
Growing up, I’d obviously seen the Disney movie. But there’s a TV version from 1985 and Carol Channing is the White Queen, and she has a song. I grew up with that version. The Jabberwock was so scary that I couldn’t watch half of it because it gave me nightmares, but I still loved it.
FB That is a very, very good answer. It might be the best answer of anybody that I’ve interviewed because not all have played the character. So it’s generational from the 80s.
AK I’ve always loved her. Of course, I did get to dress as your Alyss and that was amazing. I need to wear that jacket again.
FB If people wanted to start reading your work, where would you suggest they start? Would you say something like Alex and the Ironic Gentleman or The Explorers?
AK I’m approaching 20 years since Alex came out, which blows my mind. It’s just a very weird feeling. There’s one boy who wrote this really great review. He sent me an email for Alex, probably one of the first kids who emailed me about a book. I reached out and we had this whole chat. He was 13 at the time, and now he’s an author.
But I do think Alex is still out there. It hasn’t gone out of print, actually, which is very exciting. A few years ago, pre-COVID, I was in LA and went into The Last Bookstore, and the one thing they had Alex. I was thrilled that Alex was the one that was there. So if you can find Alex and the Ironic Gentleman that was quite seminal as it’s my first book. But if you can’t, yes, go with The Explorers because that’s out there. That’s Random House.
FB Thank you so much. This has been a real pleasure. You have such a diverse creative life. I think it’s really inspiring.
AK Thanks for having me. It’s so nice to see you again.
All Things Alice: Interview With Adrienne Kress, Part 1
As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.
The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”
For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have Adrienne Kress join me as my guest on this episode! Read on to explore our conversation and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.
Frank Beddor I want to talk about your books and writing. But I didn’t realize that you started as a playwright. You started as an actress, as well, so I want to talk about that.
Adrienne Kress I’m also a producer now. So we have that in common. My husband and I produced this very small indie horror movie over COVID.
FB Congratulations on that.
AK Thanks. We wrote it. He directed. I starred in it. We were supposed to go on a honeymoon in 2020 and that didn’t happen so we used that money to make a little movie.
FB What does that say about the launch of your marriage?
AK That was how I knew I had met my soulmate.
FB I’m interested in the acting part of it because I started as an actor. I had been doing commercials for ski companies so I caught the bug. You started really young though, as a kid.
AK I did theater school first so I wasn’t doing professional gigs until high school. I was studying at art school and doing plays. So it’s interesting because with theater acting, even if you’re 10-11 years old, there’s still all this technique just by virtue of being on stage.
There are definitely habits you learn and then when you get older, and you’re suddenly in theater school in England as an adult, they’re like, “You need to just relax. You overthinking it. It became less about technique and more about just being in the moment.
FB I found it hard not to try and do what I thought they wanted. The performance versus tapping into my own truth at the moment. Auditioning was very, very scary and daunting. But in terms of the couple of movies I did, I thought, “Oh, if you’re just really relaxed, and you start by being yourself and then think about what to bring to it, you find a voice at the moment.” Did you find the same thing? What was your approach?
AK Absolutely. I came to film acting after theater acting. One of the things almost all theater actors will tell you is there’s a steep learning curve of doing less, do nothing at all. I found that very challenging, but at the same time, I agree, it’s very freeing, with film, to have multiple chances to do some things and multiple takes. You’re also having an intimate moment, just between you and the other person, but there happens to be a camera there. It’s very freeing.
But I’m with you on auditions. I think I’ve gotten to a place now with auditions where I’m just like, “If they want me, they want me.” If they want what I can do and they want what I look like, they will want me. If they wanted someone else then they didn’t want me. I know I’m good enough that it’s not going to be, “Oh, no, this person is terrible. Why would we work with her?” It’s very much centered on what they’re looking for on there. I’m a lot more relaxed than I used to be. I used to be so wound up and tried to read their minds. What do they want? Now my attitude is I’m just gonna take advantage of this moment to act because it’s not like you get a ton of gigs.
FB I was shocked at how little you have to do in film. It’s you. It’s just the thoughts that come into your mind, through your eyes, and in your expressions. If you try, you’re dead. You’re overacting. That was startling to me.
AK It’s completely different and it’s very hard. It’s tough when people will fall down. Sometimes, actors aren’t to blame if there’s a bad performance in a movie or TV show but nine times out of 10 what that actor is doing is still very, very difficult. It’s all the stuff around it, whether it’s the lines or whether they were given time with the work before shooting because I don’t think people realize how hard it is to do nothing. It’s really, really hard.
FB It’s really the thought process. You have to prepare and you have to get in that frame of mind so you’re thinking the thoughts that get communicated. Much like writing. You have this idea that you’re trying to communicate with a sentence or a paragraph or a Chapter, and you think, “I think I know what I’m feeling and it’s just gonna come off the page. Is there any chance this is gonna happen? Probably not.” At least that’s how I felt, there’s no way they’re gonna get this.
AK It’s the best feeling when they do.
FB Both in acting and in writing. When they come back and ask you, “Subtexturally, what was going on for you when you were creating or writing that scene?” And the same thing with acting. It’s so effortless, right?
AK Probably in all areas of life, the more effortless the thing looks the more effortful we’re not to assume it is. The more impressed we shouldn’t be.
FB That’s so true. When I was acting, one of my acting coaches said that if you really want to understand the playwright, you have to understand who they are as a person. Read their biographies or learn why they’re telling the stories and that will give you hints into the text. Then she had me write the scenes before the scene you’re acting as if you were the playwright. That’s what queued me into wanting to write books because I love playwrights and I think the work is remarkable, how so much of it comes through this dialogue. But that experience of writing out the scene before the scene I was acting was what motivated me to start writing.
So I’m curious about you. First, you had English teachers as parents, that seems like a high bar to deal with. It’s in your DNA. Obviously, you started writing. Tell me about writing plays and ultimately how the process of writing a play might inform the actress you are.
AK I love that question. I was always writing things. My dad taught creative writing, so, when I was five, he’d have me do exercises he was doing with his high school students. I was always creating stories and playing make-believe. But when I came to playwriting properly, I had been a drama major for long enough that I’d seen enough scripts that writing plays came from understanding character as an actor. That has also translated into the book writing subsequently, but with writing plays, as you said, they’re generally very dialogue-heavy. That’s really what you have to go off of as an actor and as a director. I think that led to my very, very dialogue-heavy books. Writing dialogue is probably my favorite thing to do in general and specifically in books and then in one of the Bendy books, The Illusion of Living, I literally just put in a short play. So I guess the acting informed the playwriting, which in turn informed the book writing so it does come back to acting for me, being inside the head of the characters and going inside out. I think there are some authors, like your George R.R. Martins or Tolkiens, who might create mythos and world-building and then think about how to tell the story and which characters they need to tell the story. Whereas I generally come from the germ of the character.
FB That makes sense to me as well. Do you say the dialogue? Do you read the dialogue out loud? Do you play the different parts when you’re writing a play or prose? Or do you read it to somebody and see how it works or do you just trust it?
AK I can be just going for a walk or something and then start to create a little dialogue in my head. I do a weird sort of humming, which I only realized I did recently. I’m reading not even just dialogue but any words on the page, but I’m not saying the words out loud. So I’m constantly reading out loud, but it’s very small. With plays you often workshop and take them out to actor friends. With books, obviously, I have beta readers as you know. My parents, the English teachers.
FB Really? I have two kids and my son is writing essays for college and I’m like, “Hey, do you want me to read your essay?” He goes, “Oh, no, I’m good dad.” Really? You don’t want me to take a look at it? I’m a writer.
AK He can take advantage of it.
FB He came around. But I have to be very careful in terms of walking him through any ideas or changes. If I’m too forceful he shuts down. My daughter doesn’t show me anything unless she’s under a deadline and she’s stuck. How were your parents?
AK They’re very good high school English teachers and I’m an only child so I was it. They would go, “Oh, this is an interesting idea. Hey, Adrienne, have you heard of it?” Not just when it comes to writing, there was always a lesson to something or an educational component growing up. Having them look over my schoolwork growing up, it’s just the next step.
FB You felt they fostered your work and your homework and your creativity, and you didn’t really bump up against them because they were good teachers.
AK They’re good at being harsh, which is the point. The good thing about my parents when it comes to this is they’re very honest. They’ve always been very good at being that teacherly, “Okay, so I’m not sure this bit works and I’ll tell you why.” But they were also so supportive of all my creative endeavors and very proud and impressed by me, which is nice. It also meant that I had confidence in what I was doing. Even though it always hurts, whether it’s editors or your parents, to hear this isn’t quite working or they didn’t like this bit. That will always be like a dagger. I also had the confidence that generally, my work was good so I kept moving forward. Also since my first book, Alex, I’ll say, “No, I disagree. I want to keep going with this.” I’ve also always had that relationship. It’s not, “We’re the parents, therefore we’re right and you’re wrong.” It’s always been a conversation.
FB So you’re equals when it comes to the creative process.
AK Maybe when I was a little younger, I probably couldn’t have fought but now yes and it’s great. So I have my parents and I also have my agent. She’s wonderful. Not all agents necessarily edit and they don’t necessarily want to, but she’s very good. We’ve been together for close to 15 years. She knows my work inside and out and I really respect her thoughts. Again, it’s the same vibe as with my parents.
FB That’s what a good editor does. My editor made a point of saying, “This is your book. I love everything that you’re doing. Now, I’m going to send you a couple of suggestions.” So after softening me up, then the suggestions come and it’s page after page.
AK I think it’s called the sandwich method. Praise at the beginning, then you give your critique and then you end with praise. I’ve definitely had editors use that on me, as well.
FB What was the first thing that you wrote that was really satisfying and gave you that start of confidence? Was there a moment when you said, “I think I want to do this and I can do this?”
AK I have no clue when but my mom and my dad, specifically with his creative writing, started teaching me creative writing. But, from birth, it feels like I’ve had competence in my storytelling ability. Writing stories in English class in elementary school was always my thing and I always got really good grades. I had all the validation in the world. I did a book with a friend. She and I were both known for our creative writing and it was so popular that the principal got a copy of it. So I’ve always had that validation. Then throughout high school, I was doing creative writing classes. But in my last year of high school, I wrote a play for a playwriting class. It was probably one of the first one-act plays, a properly structured play that I wrote was chosen for a student-run one-act play festival. All the producers, directors, writers, actors, crew, everybody were students. One of my friends was chosen to be a director and he chose my play and I was cast in the first play of three. So I was there every night and I would sit at the back of the audience for the third play, which was mine, and listen to it being performed.
It’s what we were talking about earlier when you write something and you hope to get an effect. When people laughed at the jokes right on cue as if they were being directed to, I thought, “Is this a better feeling than acting?” I still don’t have the answer, but it was really up there. So I became really interested in playwriting at that one, not so much novel writing. Then I went through drama school for university and in my last year of theater school at the University of Toronto I did another playwriting class and it was taught by this incredible Canadian playwright, Janet Sears, whom I’d studied already. It was this great intimate, seven-person class that you submitted writing samples for to get in. The way she structured it was amazing. The class all bonded and we got on great. The assignment was a one-act play and we had these tutorials halfway through the term, as we were in the middle of writing, and we were just chatting and I was saying, “I’m not sure this might be two acts. I don’t know.” And she said, “With you, Adrienne if you want to just make this one act for a two-act play, I’ll let you do this. Because I think you’re really good at this and I know how much you like acting but I hope you keep writing as well.”
I’m paraphrasing but I just remember the moment. Up until that tutorial session my attitude was, “Yeah, I love to write creatively and I guess I’m good at it. But don’t we all like to write creatively?” I guess it was the first time a true professional had called me out as having some sort of skill that was at a certain level that I wasn’t aware of myself.
FB Those are really clear moments because of the way that you were describing coming out of the womb almost with a notebook and your dad saying, “Let’s get to it,” it was just part of who you are. But we all need that validation or that really clear moment where you see the audience responding as if somebody said, “Hey, by the way, the writer is in the audience. So make sure you laugh at these five places.” Then of course you have a professional validate your work.
AK It was everything. I turned my focus to playwriting after that. I went to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and did a yearlong classical acting-specific program. After that, I tried to write some plays to direct and produce but I kept having trouble. So I decided to write a kidlet novel because I really love reading kidlit novels and it was a way to refresh my brain and completely cleanse the palate. It took a year. I’d never actually written more of a novel than 18 pages. So I kept writing and writing and writing and that ended up being my first published novel, Alex and the Ironic Gentleman. So what was supposed to be an interlude sent my career and everything about my life in a completely unexpected direction, which was being a writer of novels.
It sounds so much like actors who accidentally become actors and get the lead in something because they looked right. I never want to give that impression as an author that I just sort of tripped into it. I think telling the history of coming out of the womb and learning how to write, it’s been in there the whole time. But it really was a sudden change of trajectory because everything in my head at that point was theater – write a play, direct a play, act in a play. Then Alex came along.
FB Were you writing plays about young adults at the time?
AK No, my plays were entirely about adults. They were sort of absurdist with some shocking moments of violence in them. But I was really into absurd things and I actually did the absurdity thing in Alex and the Ironic Gentleman. It was a very classic children’s adventure, episodic adventure, very inspired by Alice in Wonderland. She has her main throughline of trying to go home but then she meets all these weird individuals and has these mini-adventures with them. I really structured the second act of Alex on Alice in Wonderland. Act One was more Roald Dahl-y and then Act Three was very Pirate-y, Peter Pan or Treasure Island. But I had gone from writing total adult stuff to even completely skipping young adult and going straight to middle grade.
FB You said you read a lot of kids’ stories growing up or as an adult to relax. Can you share some of those stories with us and what is it about those stories for you?
AK I can talk about kidlit forever. I’m what’s called a reluctant reader, which is a term that wasn’t around when I was a kid, which is unfortunate because it’s tricky to be the daughter of two English teachers and not really want to read. My parents had to do everything to convince me to pick up books but when I did pick one up, I was a voracious reader. I’d read it in a day and then I’d have to read everything by that author because I trusted that I would like that author. But even as an adult, I’m sort of that same way. If I read an adult book, I’m still like, “I don’t know, man, I don’t think I’m gonna like it.”
But growing up some of the first books that my parents really pushed on me were the Beverly Cleary Ramona books. They’re very entertaining and they’re a really easy and fun read. My dad also really loved the adventure books by Enid Blyton. Some elements don’t fully stand the test of time but I really glommed onto the adventure part of it. Then as I got a little older I got into Judy Blume. At the same time, my dad would also read to me every night, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Hobbit, and all The Lord of the Rings, and he did all the voices.
My dad also introduced me to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when I was probably 12-13, which changed everything in my brain and really introduced the notion of absurdity and that kind of humor. That’s probably been one of my greater influences. But as I got older, young adult didn’t exist as an actual named category but some books featured older protagonists that weren’t adults. But you ended up jumping to adult and there were some adult books I enjoyed. I enjoyed Michael Crichton and Agatha Christie. I enjoyed books that had really forward-moving stories. But a lot of adult books I found were depressing and the arcs that the characters go on, by the end, you’re like, “Oh, that’s sad.”
In my last year of high school, we had an English assignment where we could compare any two books, so I chose Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. I really dug into those and as I was writing it, I realized what I liked. The idea with these kids’ books is you’re still dealing with big issues and strong emotions. Anyone who thinks there aren’t big issues in kidlit hasn’t read any kidlit. They’re just being snobs. The emotions are the saturated colors. They’re not quite as messy. I like the saturated feelings and regardless of how dark it gets, and some of them get very dark, they always end on a hopeful note. As cynical as I can get with the world, I am, at the core, very optimistic. I believe in hope. So that’s why I love reading those books. I kept reading them after high school, like A Series of Unfortunate Events, which sounds like it shouldn’t have hope, but I was reading all of them.
FB I was reading the first book, The Bad Beginning, at a fancy resort, and I was by the pool and this woman was sitting next to me and she goes, “What are you reading? Isn’t that for, like, elementary kids?” And I said, “No, it’s not actually. It’s amazing. You should check it out.” But she gave me so much judgment that I was self-conscious after that. I didn’t know people across the pool were going to be judging my book. But A Series of Unfortunate Events is a dark story and just brilliantly told. The whole thing that he uses with vocabulary and spelling and spelling out this is what that means, it’s so perfect for kids, but adults can also read it and go, “That’s so clever.”
AK I think the best kids’ books and kids’ media are written and created on two levels. There’s the level of the audience it’s intended for, let’s say the eight to 12 audience. But also, especially with books versus a Pixar film, kids’ books are one of the last places where we still read out loud, where we still have an oral tradition. We don’t do it so much with adult books. I think the way audiobooks have taken off shows how much we love them. But that communal experience of somebody telling a story is rarer and rarer the older you get. When I write kidlit, I keep in mind that there’s going to be a teacher or a parent or somebody reading this to kids. I have some parent easter eggs in there, some jokes that probably the kids won’t get yet. But also when the kids come back to it when they’re 10-11 or even in their 20s, they’re like, “Oh, I didn’t get that joke at the time.” I think there’s always that nuance and depth.
But even if there weren’t any adult jokes, there’s just some great stuff in it. If you like the book, the book is meant for you. That’s how I feel about this idea of gatekeeping ages. I actually have a more controversial opinion, which is with adult books and kids. There can be some stuff in an adult book that is intense and maybe certain kids shouldn’t read it, but there are other kids who are ready for it. As long as you’re having a conversation with them, and as long as you’re having a parent or teachers talking with the kids and working through possibly more complicated issues, I actually think that’s okay.
FB What Pixar does so brilliantly is that it works for kids and adults. They have that four quadrant thing they talk about in marketing, which is why Harry Potter, became the book that was in the young adult section but all adults started reading it. Then it’s okay to read this stuff. But nevertheless, you brought up Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, both of which, on the surface, are kids’ books, but adults started reading them before any kids probably did, certainly with Alice in Wonderland.
AK That’s the other thing. We, in retrospect, recategorize things. For people categorizing The Outsiders as Y.A., I guess it is. I don’t know. But the young adult genre didn’t exist (when it was published). I understand the need to find places to shelve things and I think that’s important. At the same time, new adult is becoming a marketing category and there’s been a lot of conversation about how we’ve lost the category between middle grade and young adult. By putting labels on things, we can exclude things. I think that’s just something we know, in general. There’s a benefit to knowing and understanding what a category means and using that in a positive way but at the same time there are people I know who are trying to be published who have books where the characters are 13-14, or even up to 15, and we have the eight to 12 category. Even though 12 and up is the category for young adults, they want characters that are 16 plus. Because of the need to categorize, there is a wealth of books and writers that are being ignored because we don’t know where to put them on the shelf.
FB When The Looking Glass Wars was turned down by everybody in the States, my problem was that the lead character started as seven, the next time we see her she’s 12, and then she’s 18. It was after Harry Potter and everybody said, “Well, I don’t know where this fits, and who did you write it for?” I didn’t know that there were categories. The categories were just coming into shape.
I think the middle-grade genre or categorizing middle grade is smart because after doing a lot of school visits, those six-, seven-, and eight-year-olds are looking for somebody to aspire to who’s not a teenager. So if you have a 13-year-old character, that’s pretty spot on. And they do the lion’s share of the reading. They have more time.
AK Yes. So you have teachers and librarians who are reading to them and introducing them to these books. We don’t have that as much in high school and we certainly don’t get opportunities as adults. I’m not a parent myself, but when people become parents, they get that opportunity again, and they get excited. “We get to go to the library and have somebody read to us.” We should have adult reading time because it’s something that’s in our DNA. We want to sit around the fire and tell stories.
FB So share with us your theory on Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, because both of these stories have been around a long time. I’m curious when you wrote your paper if you have a theory on why these stories in particular have lasted so long.
AK I had this theory that we were dealing with two main characters, and I’m making Wendy the main character in Peter Pan, who have two completely opposite goals. Wendy’s scared of growing up, but in the end realizes she has to grow up. Whereas I think Alice is feeling frustrated by the grownups and she wants to find a place to belong as a kid. So one character is trying to figure out how to grow up in a way that pleases her and the other one is like, “No, no, I don’t want to grow up so fast. I want to stall growing up.” Even though weirdly, Wendy does want to start growing up at the beginning.
But that question of growing up is one of the big reasons they both appeal. Because we’ve all had our own relationship with growing up. Some people are desperate to get older. I just wanted to be a kid. Teenagers scared me. They scared me when I was a teenager. They still scare me. I respect the heck out of them but they scare me. I liked being a kid and this goes back to the books I like to read. I didn’t want to read angsty teen stuff. I didn’t want to really read romances. I just wanted to read plot-driven adventures. That’s all I wanted. I definitely had desperate friends. “When can I wear makeup? When can I have a boyfriend? When can I be independent?” I think that’s very relatable in both Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan.
Then on top of that, they’re so specific. I’ve been talking to a lot of kids lately about writing and I feel like the more specific you make a character, the more universal it becomes. You have these incredible specific characters like Captain Hook and the Queen of Hearts. These very meticulously wrought characters have very specific aesthetic features and personality traits that just spark so much imagination. On top of that, for Alice, people have always played make-believe with their cards and their chess boards, tapping into a very basic form of make-believe. Which you also get with pirates and mermaids. You get a lot of classic make-believe stuff that was also particularly popular, I assume, at the time of the original Peter Pan play. It was stuff that kids of that time enjoyed playing so that made it also relatable.
I think there are so many universal themes in both of them and then the specificity of the characters and how enjoyable they are contributes to both stories’ staying power. It’s so fun.
Mad Hatter Day is officially upon us! October 6th is the day dedicated to our most favorite milliner. In a world often bound by conventions and expectations, the Mad Hatter represents the freedom to be authentically and outrageously oneself. People yearn to don his oversized hat and mismatched attire, to dance a frenetic futterwacken, and to engage in absurd conversations that defy logic and reason. His tea parties, marked by their perpetual chaos and whimsy, beckon us to release our inner eccentricities and celebrate the kaleidoscope of our individuality.
Moreover, the Mad Hatter teaches us the value of embracing the present moment, no matter how bewildering or absurd it may seem. He reminds us that life’s journey should be a delightful, unpredictable adventure filled with laughter and imagination.
Celebrate Mad Hatter Day by inviting the Hatter’s spirit into your life through whimsical purchases that echo his eccentricity. These fun and exciting purchases not only commemorate the day but also remind you to embrace creativity, individuality, and the delightful madness of life. It’s a whimsical journey that lets you channel the Hatter’s charm, sparking imagination and a touch of Wonderland in your everyday adventures.
Purchasing a spooky Mad as a Hatter Tee for Mad Hatter Day is a brilliant fusion of whimsy and Halloween spirit. This unique tee allows you to blend the eccentricity of the Mad Hatter with the spooky ambiance of October. It’s the perfect way to celebrate both occasions, adding a touch of Wonderland madness to your Halloween festivities.
The tee becomes a conversation starter and a statement of individuality, making you stand out in the sea of traditional Halloween costumes. It’s a creative and fun way to embrace the whimsical side of life while embracing the spookiness of the season, truly making Mad Hatter Day memorable.
The Hatter M Graphic Novel Bundle, on sale for Hatter day, is an enticing gateway to a mesmerizing world of storytelling and visual artistry. This bundle immerses you in the captivating adventures of Hatter Madigan, expanding the truth behind Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland universe in beautifully illustrated detail. By purchasing it, you’re not just acquiring a set of graphic novels; you’re investing in a journey through the surreal and imaginative realm of The Looking Glass Wars carefully crafted by Frank Beddor.
You’ll traverse Wonderland’s enchanting landscapes, encounter whimsical characters, and delve into Hatter’s complex narrative. It’s an opportunity to relish the fusion of literature and art, all while enjoying a fantastic deal. Don’t miss out on this chance to own a piece of Wonderland’s magic.
If you partake in the wild adventures of Hatter M. you are going to need this handy bookmark. Adorned with the iconic imagery of Hatter Madigan in his zen lotus pose, adds a touch of delightful eccentricity to your reading experience. It serves as a reminder to embrace creativity, imagination, and to relax your mind in your pursuits.
Whether you’re immersed in a gripping novel or exploring the depths of a philosophical text, this bookmark is a charming companion that encourages you to pause, reflect, and savor the present moment, just as Hatter Madigan would amidst the chaos of Wonderland. It’s not just a bookmark— it’s a piece of Wonderland magic in your hands!
Purchasing Disney’s Mad Tea Party Tabletop Game is like bringing a slice of Wonderland into your home. This board game combines the whimsy of Disney with the charm of Lewis Carroll’s creation. It offers a chance to immerse yourself in the fantastical world of the Mad Hatter, Queen of Hearts, and Cheshire Cat.
With its intricate design, bright artwork, and gripping fast-paced gameplay, it provides hours of family-friendly entertainment. It encourages strategic thinking, fosters healthy competition, and sparks laughter as players navigate their way through the topsy-turvy. It’s a magical journey into the heart of Wonderland, perfect for Disney fans and board game enthusiasts alike.
Purchasing a Mad Hatter Funko Pop to celebrate Mad Hatter Day is a delightful choice for collectors and fans alike. This miniaturized, meticulously detailed figure captures the essence of the iconic character from Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland. It serves as a quirky reminder of the spirit of eccentricity, imagination, and unbridled joy, which the Mad Hatter embodies.
Display it proudly, and let it become a conversation starter, inviting others to share in your appreciation for Wonderland’s madness. Plus, as a collectible item, it carries a certain charm and value that can grow over time. On a shelf with your collection, adorning a desk, or even treating the tea table – there’s nowhere this Funko wouldn’t be perfect.
What Hatter Day would be complete without tea time? And, what tea party is complete without sugar? This Mad Hatter Sugar Bowl from Gracie Bone China is essential, embodying the spirit of whimsy and tea-time merriment. It’s not just a functional item; it’s a symbol of camaraderie and eccentricity.
As you gather ’round for your own mad tea party, this sugar bowl becomes a centerpiece, invoking the enchanting chaos of Wonderland. It invites friends and family to join in the revelry, pouring sugar with abandon and stirring creativity with each spoonful. Crafted with exquisite bone china, its elegant and nuanced Mad Hatter design adds a touch of enchantment to teatime. It’s not just a sugar bowl; it’s a charming piece of functional art that elevates your tea experience.
Teatime may require some snacks – take a walk on the wild side, leave the tarty tarts behind and go for something a little more spicy! A bottle of Mad Hatter Hot Sauce is like adding a dash of Wonderland’s eccentricity to your culinary adventures. This “super-condiment” isn’t just any hot sauce; it’s a versatile flavor enhancer that transforms every meal into an unusual experience. Its universal appeal means it pairs seamlessly with a vast array of dishes, from steaks to pork, chicken to fish, and even eggs.
The Mad Hatter Hot Sauce isn’t just about heat; it’s about elevating your taste buds with a unique blend of flavors. Its zesty, tangy, and spicy profile adds depth to your meals, making them truly memorable. By adding Mad Hatter Hot Sauce to your Mad Hatter Day celebration, you’re not only embracing the spirit of whimsy but also elevating your culinary creations to an entirely new level. It’s a must-have condiment for the mad amongst us!
Hopefully, you found some exciting accessories for your Mad Hatter Day – and if you want more, be sure to check out the Hatter Day Sale on Frankbeddor.com!
Meet the Author:
After cutting her teeth in live sports television production and scripted independent features, Sarah transplanted from her native state of Indiana to LA where she earned her MFA from the American Film Institute Conservatory. She specializes in genre fusion storytelling, with an insatiable devotion to producing high-quality, character-driven sci-fi. She works at Automatic Pictures as Head of Development where she has continued to sharpen her eye for premium content creation.
An Alice in Wonderland Adaptation Could Include These Actors
As was established in my previous blog post, where I discussed hypothetical castings for Princess Alyss Heart/Alice Liddell, The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor is the book that needs a television adaptation. With its fantastically large, magical, world, action-packed and emotional storyline, and the inventive re-imagination of characters we all know and love. It’s the perfect book for a hit show. The character I will be hypothetically casting today is the hat-throwing, acrobatic, globe trotter, Hatter Madigan, Frank Beddor’s version of the Mad Hatter.
This isn’t the Hatter of old though, no. There are no tea parties or mercury poisoning involved with Madigan. Hatter Madigan is a high-ranking member of the Wonderland Military called the Millinery. Hatter is a masterful fighter, his acrobatic fighting style incorporates his blade-rimmed hat and a backpack filled with a seemingly endless amount of knives. Very few have taken him on and lived to tell the tale.
While he is a talented fighter, he also has a softer side, during the coup of Queen Redd, when Ayss’s parents are murdered, he is tasked with protecting Princess Alyss. Unfortunately, during their escape from Wonderland, he loses Princess Alyss in the Pool of Tears. After Losing Alyss, Hatter tirelessly walks the globe for thirteen years, exhausting even the most minuscule of leads in his obsessive search for Alyss.
Hatter takes on an almost father-type role for Princess Alyss. An orphan himself, he understands what it is like to grow up without your birth parents. If I may be so blunt, Hatter is a morally grey badass. In regards to his actions, at first glance, you may not think that the ends justify the means but he is only supposed to follow one rule, protect Princess Alyss, by any means necessary. And when I say any, I mean it.
Hatter Madigan is a complex and powerful role. The correct casting for him is crucial not only for his character but for the overarching story. While I’m no director myself, I mentioned in my last article that I had worked in casting, so if you’ll allow me, I’m going to dawn my “Scorsese hat” and dive into the list.
Tom Hardy
Tom Hardy has a truly incredible catalog of films and TV under his belt, The Dark Knight Rises, Mad Max Fury Road, Peaky Blinders, The Revenant, Inception, Dunkirk, Black Hawk Down, Locke, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, etc. He effectively portrays morally complex characters aided by his seemingly gruff exterior.
Behind the gruff exterior in his roles, he masterfully brings out a softer side to the characters he embodies. Along with this, he can perform many stunts as shown in Mad Max Fury Road so the acrobatic fighting style of the Hatter would be a cakewalk for him. Tom Hardy would be a fantastic actor to portray Hatter.
Jason Momoa
The Game Of Thrones star, Jason Momoa, would be an amazing Hatter. With his imposing figure and strong frame, it would not be a far stretch of the imagination for him to be a bodyguard. While he may seem intimidating, the reason I truly believe Jason Momoa would be a fantastic Hatter is due to the fact that he brings a certain sweetness to his roles that would fit Hatter perfectly.
Princess Alyss not only has to be physically protected by Hatter, she also has to be emotionally protected, which Jason has shown in his past performances he is more than capable of doing.
Idris Elba
Idris Elba is a man so suave that he was being considered to be the next James Bond. Unfortunately for him, yet fortunate for us, that did not happen. Idris Elba is an insanely talented actor, established from his performance in the hit show, The Wire.
In Hijack, Idris plays Sam Nelson, a corporate negotiator who must use his skills to save everyone on board the hijacked Flight KA29. In this role, Idris brings an exciting resourcefulness as well as a calm demeanor during stressful situations that would translate perfectly to mysterious and competent Hatter. He’s definitely got the chops for the role and would bring so much mystery and intrigue to Hatter.
Henry Cavill
Henry Cavill is no stranger to big flashy films and television. From Superman to The Witcher, Henry is a force to be reckoned with. His imposing frame alone would fit well for the powerful bodyguard that is Hatter. What’s more, though he is strong and handsome, he is a massive nerd. He openly talks about his hobbies such as World of Warcraft and Warhammer, which means he understands what it means to fans when something they love gets an adaptation and would give his performance his all to get it right.
In The Witcher, he played Geralt. Geralt is a man who doesn’t really belong in the world he lives in, just like Hatter as he travels the globe searching for Princess Alyss. Cavill will bring power as well as sorrow to the role that makes him a strong contender to be the Hatter.
Ewan McGregor
Obi Wa- Sorry, Ewan McGregor, is a powerhouse. He is instantly recognizable and would bring so much fun and mystery to the calculated and deadly Hatter Madigan. Let’s start with the obvious, to me and anyone in my generation, he is Obi-Wan Kenobi. In Star Wars, Episode One: The Phantom Menace, Obi-Wan is a powerful Jedi tasked with protecting young Anakin Skywalker. This would translate over perfectly to the Looking Glass Wars. It’s no stretch of the imagination to say he would convincingly portray a powerful soldier turned bodyguard who is tasked with protecting, then finding, Princess Alyss.
Playing a Jedi also means that he is no stranger to wild stunts and fighting with a “blade” just like he would need to do as Hatter. He fits every necessary part of the Hatter perfectly, I’ve established that he can convey convincing staged fights but he also showed us that he can be a tender and loving caretaker as he did with young Princess Leia in the new Obi-Wan Kenobi show. I can say with no hesitation that Ewan McGregor would make a great Hatter Madigan.
Javier Bardem
Javier Bardem might feel a bit like an odd man out on this list at first glance, but give me a couple hundred words and I know I can change your mind. All we have to do is look at his performance in No Country for Old Men. Okay, wait, don’t leave, hear me out. Javier’s character, Chigurh in No Country for Old Men is a psychopathic assassin who leaves a wake of dead bodies behind him in his hunt for Josh Brolin.
This on the surface may not seem like the right thing for Hatter Madigan but allow me to remind you of when Princess Alyss is separated from Hatter during their escape from Wonderland and ends up in our world, what does Hatter do? He walks the globe, using every bit of his training from the Millinery to find clues to lead him to the one he was supposed to protect. Remove Chigurh’s psychopathy, the make wake of dead bodies justified killings, and change the end goal from killing Josh Brolin to protecting Alyss, and boom, Hatter.
The laser-like focus, the strong silent type energy, the detective work, to put a perfect cherry on top, Hatter Madigan is a morally grey hero, he is not moralistic when protecting exploited children, he is a trained killer after all… Told you I would convince you. Javier Bardem can and will provide.
Michael Fassbender
It seems as though Michael Fassbender is no stranger to big set pieces, from the recreation of ancient Greece in 300 to the distant planet that is the setting of Prometheus. Big works for Fassbender. But, then I remembered Steve Jobs. A movie that takes place in one location over the span of many years. It is essentially a play. Yet it still feels massive. And that’s when it clicked for me, Fassbender brings the “big.” His performances have that weight. The perfect weight needed for the role of Hatter.
Hatters presence is always felt, even when he is being quiet. Fassbender has the chops to bring awareness of Hatter, without drawing attention. Striking the perfect balance of an assassin. Which Fassbender is already familiar with due to his staring in Assassin’s Creed.
James McAvoy
James McAvoy has the ability to disappear into his roles unlike any other. This skill is highlighted no better than in Split, where James portrayed a man with dissociative identity disorder. Every time his character changed personalities, you fully believed he became a new person. Even though it was the same face.
James is also no stranger to the fantasy world, portraying Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. With his rugged looks and previously mentioned top tier acting chops,he truly has all the raw ingredients to become a perfect Hatter. The only missing ingredient here is him. James, are you reading this? Call Frank Beddor, his cellphone number is [REDACTED].
Alexander Skarsgård
A couple of months ago, my girlfriend was rewatching True Blood. Now, I had never watched this show before, as I’m not it’s target demographic. But, let me tell you, while she was watching the show and I was doing other things, any time Alexander Skarsgård came on camera, I was glued to the screen. I was surprised that a romantic drama about vampires in Louisiana had a performance so nuanced and genuinely unsettling. He (along with my girlfriend) made me watch the whole show.
As shown in The Northman, Skarsgård is no stranger to sword play, masterfully executing the choreographed fights like a true master of the blade. Without a doubt, Skarsgård would bring an incredibly interesting performance to Hatter. Plus he’s got a brother, which would be amazing if he cameo’d as Hatter’s brother, Dalton. Just throwing it out there.
Jamie Dornan
Okay, let me address the elephant in the room before I fully get into why Jamie Dornan is a great contender to be hypothetically cast as Hatter Madigan. Fifty Shades of Grey. For those of you who don’t know, Fifty Shades of Grey… How do I describe this without getting in trouble? Oh, I got it! Go ask your mother. Roasted.
Okay, but seriously, those of you who have watched the movie or at least heard of it might be wondering why he is on this list, that movie (and book) is a lot different from The Looking Glass Wars. And you’re right to think this, but all I need to say is one word to get you on my side, smolder. Those who have seen the movie get what I’m saying. There is a lot of smoldering in Fifty Shades of Grey. Especially from Christian Grey.If we were to remove the BDSM undertones (and overtones) of the smolder and replace it with anger and determination. He’d be a damn good Hatter.
I believe any one of these actors would be a terrific Hatter Madigan. What do you all think? Is there anyone you would prefer to see play Hatter Madigan? Anyone you think I’m incorrect about? I would love to hear your takes on the perfect actor to play Hatter Madigan.
Meet The Author
Jared Hoffman graduated from the American Film Institute with a degree in screenwriting. A Los Angeles native, his brand of comedy is satire stemming from the many different personalities and ego’s he has encountered throughout his life. As a lover of all things comedy, Jared is always working out new material and trying to make those around him laugh. His therapist claims this is a coping mechanism, but what does she know?
All Things Alice: Interview with Christopher Monfette
As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration. The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”
It is my great pleasure to have Christopher Monfette join me as my guest! Read on to explore our conversation, and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview. For the full transcript with exclusive content, join our private Circle community.
FB:
Chris Monfette, I’m happy to have you on the show. The title is All Things Alice, except it’s really turned into a podcast about pop culture and creativity.
You’re deep into Star Trek: Picard. I’m curious where you left off with the show, given the strike, and what your state of mind is. Are you on the picket lines?
CM:
We were lucky in terms of Picard because Patrick Stewart had only wanted to do three seasons. They knew going into it, because I didn’t come in until the second season, that it would be three and out. So there was a really unique structure to Picard where it was handed off from showrunner to showrunner for three seasons in a row. The novelist Michael Chabon had developed the first season with Akiva Goldsman and was the vision and the showrunner.
In Season 2, they had brought in Terry Matalas, who was my showrunner for 12 Monkeys, and Terry brought me. Because of the crazy pandemic pandemonium, rather than Terry taking the reins completely, season two was split between him and Akiva. Terry didn’t really get the keys to the car until season three, which is really the season that we feel we were allowed to do the kind of Star Trek we signed up to do, and really tell the story that we were longing to tell. And I think we did it really well. I’m very proud of what we did and what our team accomplished and I think folks have received it really well. It’s been really embraced critically; the fans seem to have loved it. I feel like we checked all the boxes and took the right path with that season.
What’s interesting is it started to air concurrently with all of the strike talk. It was very strange. In one half of your brain, you have all this anxiety about, “Oh my God, am I not going to work? How long is this going to go? How am I gonna pay my bills?” Then, the other half, it’s constant praise from the internet being like, “We love this. This is great week after week. This episode is better than the last episode!” There’s this weird feeling of getting all of these rewards that you hope for as a writer at the worst possible time. You can’t put them to use. There’s no show to springboard to right now. I can’t leverage this into selling my own thing or going to work for some show I dreamed of working for.
FB:
That’s very entrepreneurial of you to think, I need to leverage success. That’s a big thing in Hollywood, but at the same time, given there’s the WGA strike, there are a lot of folks that don’t have that reinforcement of their work every day. That must be a nice little buffer against the reality of a strike. Are people jonesing for a season four? Is that a possibility?
CM:
Just to be clear, it’s not so much leveraging, it’s wanting to continue doing the thing that we love doing, telling stories.
Coming off of season three, there’s been real fan fervor. Terry, in the press, pitched his vision of how Picard could go forward, sans Patrick Stewart, and move into a series that he called in his head, Star Trek: Legacy.
The fans picked up on it and really started demanding it. There’s a petition, a lot of online momentum, to make that show a reality. We’ve never been in a position where we’re more poised to springboard into something like that and to convince Paramount and CBS that it should be the next Star Trek adventure. Yet, we just can’t. All the writers are hungry to get back in the room and tell more stories in this universe with these characters. But everything’s on pause right now.
FB:
There’s all that uncertainty of when the strike is going to be resolved but then, it’s the worry of, have you lost that momentum from the fans to use their enthusiasm to hopefully convince Paramount to move forward. Fingers crossed it’ll work out.
CM:
I think we can get there. I’m hopeful. And if not, this will resolve itself. There will be other shows and entertainment is not going away. But, the strike is a fight worth fighting.
The strike is very interesting because there are several tiers of writers. Some writers are new to the industry and just got their WGA cards. Some writers are pre-WGA. Some writers have worked, for quite a while, but are not paying their bills off of WGA credits or are staffed on shows. Then you have the middle tier of writers who go from show to show and are also developing. They don’t have other jobs. I’m one of them. This is how we pay our bills. Then you have a whole upper tier of writers, the Ryan Murphy’s, the J.J. Abrams’, the super producers, and even just the very hyper-successful showrunners who have overall deals or have had incredibly successful shows. They can financially weather a six-month or eight-month strike in a way that other writers can’t. It’s rare when you can get all three of those tiers, who have varying degrees of urgency, to agree that this is a fight we have to win, and we have to stick it out no matter how much it pains us to do that. And I think we’re doing it.
FB: It seems the middle is holding, which is going to be important. One of the issues is staffing and what the writers room looks like. From 12 Monkeys to 9-1-1 to Picard. How would you describe each one of those shows in terms of how many writers were on staff versus the arguments surrounding the strike about making sure that there are staff writers that are learning their craft and moving the show forward?
CM:
I’m of several minds about it. I’ve been fortunate enough to work on shows, whether it was 12 Monkeys, 9-1-1, or Picard where we had eight to 12 writers in the room at any given time. We were really blessed to have full rooms certain seasons, but we never had an empty room. All the shows that I’ve worked on really benefited from all of those voices creatively. I’ve always said this in interviews, Terry Matalas, especially in 12 Monkeys, and Picard really has a talent for conducting the orchestra. He knows how to staff a room of writers, each with unique strengths, and then knows how to get them to play off of each other so that there’ll be certain writers who are better at the comedy, there’ll be certain writers who are really good with the big sci-fi 35,000 foot ideas. Other writers are dialogue people, and we’ll all write and rewrite each other’s script and it’ll be better for everybody’s contributions. Whereas something like 9-1-1, for example, you’re assigned an episode, you write the episode, the showrunner polishes it, then production tells you what’s too expensive, and what’s not expensive. It’s less of a symphonic collaboration of voices because it’s a little bit more episodic with the case-of-the-week structure. So that was a really unique experience as well.
But in all of those experiences, you had the benefit of 8, 10,12 different minds sitting around a table pitching ideas that all complemented each other and ultimately made the work stronger or made the episodes more interesting.
Now, I do totally support the idea of individual auteur writers/directors who have a story to tell they feel can only be told in their unique voice. You look at Aaron Sorkin, you look at Noah Hawley, creators who have very unique and specific voices and visions. I feel there needs to be room in the conversation for singular auteur creators to be able to create, but I do think that to protect the vast majority of shows that really do benefit from the collaboration of voices, there should be a minimum room number so that ultimately the producers can’t reduce what we do to a UK model, where scripts are freelance and you can’t ultimately pay your bills.
If Taylor Sheridan has to put up with a room of three writers sitting around, he’s free not to use them, he’s free to write every script, he’s free to use them for research or to pop in now and then and ask for an idea. Otherwise, let’s just subsidize them showing up to work and eating snacks, and leaving at night. But I do think there does need to be a minimum room size to support what we’re doing in the long term. The amount of shows that have those singular visions are so few and far between compared to the vast majority of the rest of the industry that this is a hill worth dying on.
FB:
But also, isn’t it the idea of these mini rooms that you’ve been putting together, where they’re not officially assured it’s moving forward, and yet you’re doing the same work that you would have been doing if it was greenlit? That seems to be a major problem.
CM:
Yeah, we need to get more clarity and definition on what constitutes a room, the length of the room, and the population of that room. I think mini rooms started as a potentially interesting idea. Before we greenlight this thing and bring in 10 people, the showrunner wants to bring in two or three of their closest collaborators and really figure out what the thing is before we dive into it. The principle is unique and interesting. But the problem with that model is, all of a sudden, it was, “Okay, well, if you think you can get most of it done with three people in 10 weeks, why are we going to give 10 people and 20 weeks? So the burden falls on too few writers, who then aren’t allowed to go to set, and aren’t allowed to amass that experience and learn how to produce.
I certainly ascribe to the theory that so much of what we’re talking about stems from a lack of smart, creative producing in Hollywood today. When streaming became a thing 10-15 years ago, when it was a kernel of an idea, the thought was always, let’s take the mid-budget movie ($50-$90 million) and amortize that budget across 10 episodes versus two hours. We’ll be able to dig into the character and we’ll tell more story, I don’t think it was, necessarily, this level of spending a billion dollars on The Lord of the Rings IP was the initial thought. When you’re making these big spends that equate to what you spend on a theatrical mega-budget summer blockbuster, you can’t possibly recoup your costs. We’re at a point where shows are spending so much money that they don’t have to spend.
I look back at my time on 12 Monkeys, where I went and lived in Toronto for 18 months, and produced seasons three and four, back-to-back with Terry Matalas and a handful of other writers. That is a unique and rare experience. We produced a time-travel show where the protagonist was going to different times every week and it often looped back on each other. There’d be something in this episode that didn’t pay off for 10 episodes. We crashed a time-traveling city into another time-traveling city. We had spectacle and production value and we did it for $2.7 million an episode. We were really smart about how we produced it because we understood when to go abroad, how to cross-board episodes, how to work with actors, and work with each department to get the most bang for your buck. That is not something we would have been able to do if we didn’t have writers who were emboldened and taught and instructed and had the experience of learning how to keep those costs down so that we didn’t have to do it for $5-10 million an episode when we could do it effectively for less than three.
I think we have to empower power writers to learn their trade and to become good at that aspect of this industry. The more you can keep budgets down, the more that we can keep studios from having to freak out about their bottom lines and having to take content off platforms. The more we can keep writers working, the more shows we can produce for the same amount.
FB:
The notion of streaming coming in was that they were going to buy their way into the market. In the same way, Amazon sold books and lost money, but took a big piece of that business, when Netflix came along and spent a lot of money on House of Cards, they bought their way to the top echelon of Hollywood and continued to spend, and everybody jumped on. Now, of course, the market’s been saturated.
What’s going to be desirable, I would think from a studio standpoint, is finding folks like you and that team that did 12 Monkeys and trying to produce shows for more reasonable costs with broader storytelling and hiring more writers and empowering them.
CM:
I also think there’s an interesting thing going on from an audience perspective, too. You’re seeing it with the box office reception to The Flash or even Indiana Jones, for example. Spectacle is so available on every platform. You can go see a billion-dollar, Lord of the Rings fight sequence on TV. Also, the stakes in big-budget, blockbuster IP-driven stories are the end of the world, the destruction of the universe, and the collapse of the multiverse. There’s no respite from these artificial ridiculously high stakes that you can never top.
It’s never been more important for writers to get in there and say, “Look, you don’t have to do a $250 million Avengers movie, where the fate of the world hangs in the balance again. Maybe you can do three $100 million Avengers movies, where the stakes are more emotional and more personal, but the concept is still really high.” What’s Ocean’s 11 with the Avengers? You can find all of these touchstones to make movies that still have all this stuff in them that audiences love, but are more creative about the story, the emotions, and the themes. You can make them cost less too and then the audience will feel like they haven’t seen this in the eight other things.
The one Marvel show I responded to the most, and this isn’t a criticism of any of the shows on their own, but I really liked She-Hulk. Because the stakes weren’t like, “Oh my God, this is the end of the world!” It was, is she going to find happiness? Is she going to find contentment? How is she going to navigate this strange, unique thing that has happened? And how could she do that and keep herself and her family and her friends together? It was written cleverly and warmly and it probably didn’t cost $300 million to make. I found it really refreshing and really original. You need writers more than ever to tell you how to take all the great ingredients that IP gives you and execute them at a high concept level at high quality for less money.
It’s not superhero, or I.P., or blockbuster fatigue, but there’s a certain level of stakes fatigue like we’re telling the same story over and over again.
FB:
People are looking for a fresh take. I remember when The Joker came out and it was so dark and so interesting. I did not expect that it would be so successful.
But the great thing about television is, there are so many options. I saw on Twitter, you mentioned Drops of God. I’ve been watching Drops of God along with Hijack on Apple and that’s a really unique, interesting story framed in a way that I never would have expected a story about wine and vineyards to be framed.
CM:
I loved it. It’s so beautiful and unique. It’s the perfect way to lean into this thing that streamers are looking for now, which is, wanting to make one thing that can serve a bunch of audiences. It figured out a way to tell a French story and a Japanese story in an American way that allowed any of those audiences to plug into it and yet it was emotional and visually interesting. It’s one of my favorite shows this year by a mile because good writers figured out how to execute it well.
FB:
It’s a great example of writers having a voice that AI could never replicate. Also, that idea of the multicultural. They have the same thing going on in Hijack, which is pretty exciting.
CM:
That show speaks to what we’ve been talking about. We’re gonna build one set, we’re gonna spend our money on that. Then we’re going to tell a seven-episode story. That’s a fairly financially responsible way to make television and if you can execute that at its highest level, I don’t think audiences will find themselves wishing for $100 million on screen. I think they’ll be captivated by what they’re watching.
FB:
Your story and your career trajectory are interesting. You started as a journalist. Was IGN your first gig?
CM:
I began my career in PR and marketing. I was always a nerd growing up and my first real gig in that universe was working for Microsoft and launching the Xbox 360.
FB:
You said you were a nerd. Were you taking your interests and saying, “How am I going to figure out how to work at a cool company that does games?” For those people that are coming out of college and thinking about being in the business, you need a first step. What was your strategy?
CM:
Growing up, I always knew that I loved reading, writing, and video games. I loved books. I was a big genre nerd my whole life. I was going to Fordham University in New York, which doesn’t have a phenomenally strong film program but they do have a good communications program and decent screenwriting classes. But that was never going to tip the scales for me so I started writing for the school paper. I didn’t have any money but I still wanted to play video games and listen to music and read comics and I realized I could call companies and ask to review products they’ll send to me for free. So, I really embraced this idea of journalism as a way to get paid to consume and do all the things I love doing anyway and write, as well.
The second strategy that I figured out was that I was going to get more value from internships than from the actual classes. So I started interning for a lot of the same people I was asking for stuff from. I was an intern for Fox’s marketing and PR department. Then I went to Sony and then DreamWorks and I tried to learn as much about the industry as I could and make as many contacts as I could. So, when I got out of college, I was equipped to go do marketing and PR. It wasn’t necessarily my dream, I wanted to be a writer, but it was adjacent to the things that I cared about. After a couple of years, eventually, the journalists I was working with every day said, “Hey, you can make more money over with us playing the video games and watching the movies and critiquing them than you can shilling for them on a PR site.”
I’ve always said to anybody who asked me because there is no one path to success in this business, that the most you can do is put yourself where lightning can strike and cover yourself in as much tinfoil as you can. That’s really what I was doing in the early years of my career. I went from college to that one job which led to another job that was a little bit closer to what I really wanted to do. Then, while I was at IGN, I was able to make all these great friendships and relationships with producers and actors, which five years later paid off with my first staffing gig. There wasn’t a grand master plan, it was a selfish desire to get paid to be the thing that I had been my whole life, which was just a genre nerd.
FB:
How were those internships?
CM:
They were all basic internships, all unpaid. The college only asked you to do one, but I did three, just to learn and grow and make those relationships and I liked doing them.
My first job as an intern was going to the entertainment section of hundreds of newspapers and seeing if there was an article about something our company had done, physically cutting it out, putting it on a piece of paper, and photocopying it. Then I’d put a book together and make 100 copies of that book and distribute that to everyone. That wasn’t a particularly rewarding job but I became very close with my boss and over three of those internships, I came out with a pretty complex understanding of how the business works.
FB:
You also wrote a novel while you were working at IGN, as I remember.
CM:
It was a short story. When I was at IGN, I got to meet Clive Barker, who had always been a hero of mine as a kid. I was doing an interview with Clive and we were talking about my upbringing and my love of his work and he goes, “I don’t think you’re a journalist. I think you’re a writer. Pick something of mine and adapt it. I’ll give you the rights.”
He mentored me and I did two movies for his production company. I never made a ton of money, but they were great opportunities to get my start and take my writing to the next level. Through him, I got to do a Hellraiser graphic novel that was eight issues long and this Nightbreed story. It was one of the centerpiece stories at the heart of this collection they were doing. A bunch of great authors were contributing short stories and novellas to a collection based on his Nightbreed universe. That was a joy. He was the first major personality with a reputation in the industry to take me under his wing and see my potential and try to nurture it.
FB:
I remember you wrote an episode of Hatter Madigan for me around the same time. You had pitched me the story of Hatter in the Wild West in Death Valley.
But you come across as the kind of person that has a lot of story engine inside of them. How do you see yourself as a writer in terms of your strengths?
CM:
My story is unique in the sense that I grew up loving video games, comic books, and all the nerd stuff that a lot of really terrific genre writers grew up with, but my uncle was a theater guy. He introduced me to writers like Sam Shepard, David Mamet, and Arthur Miller. So, I became a fan of really finely honed, character-driven dialogue. I was also fortunate enough to be a teenager in the Miramax years, the rise of the independent movie, where there were all these amazing writers like Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh, with hyper-specific voices were being allowed to make these really interesting films.
Then you had someone like, I know that circumstances have made the name a little passe at this point, Joss Whedon came along and took all this really sharp, stylized, amazing dialogue and applied it to genre storytelling. These people can be talking as cleverly as someone in a David Mamet play or an Aaron Sorkin drama.
I like to think that’s where I bring value to a room. I can do the big swing 35,000-foot sci-fi concepts but then also more granularly, do a great scene with really crackly dialogue and sharp character work. I’ll never write a broad comedy. I’m not funny. We had a writer on Picard, Cindy, who’s tremendously funny. I could never do that and I’m in awe of that kind of talent. But dialogue writers were really my biggest influence in film and TV coming up.
FB:
I studied acting for a short time under Stella Adler and one of the things she required was for you to study playwrights like David Mamet and understand where they were coming from so you could really grasp the work. I think I learned more from playwrights and the economy of storytelling and the necessity for great dialogue to make things work. It’s satisfying as an actor, but I was really fascinated with their backstories, the reason they became writers, and how these plays came about. That was very influential to me in writing The Looking Glass Wars.
CM:
No one will ever accuse me of writing a scene with naturalistic dialogue. There’s no right or wrong here but I know a lot of writers who want their characters to talk the way people really speak. I’m 180 degrees in the opposite direction. I love words and I want my characters to use those words as best as they possibly can and in the most inventive combinations. I look at shows like Succession, and I’m just in awe of the way they’ll take a simple idea and wrap it in the bacon of this incredible verbiage. Or Steven Moffat on Doctor Who, who has this amazing crackerjack, very twee kind of dialogue, or Amy Sherman Palladino has this machine gun rat-a-tat-tat of words. I really love the mechanics of constructing a sentence with wordplay and rhythms in a way that other writers don’t find value in because, for them, it’s about making the scene as human as possible and as relatable as possible. For me, if I go to the theater and I see a truck turn into a robot, I want the dialogue equivalent of that. I want to go see entertainment in a way that I don’t experience in real life. I want to see people talk at a level I wish I could talk at. That’s my jumble of influences.
FB:
With the story you wrote for me, the first thing that I read was Hatter’s interior dialogue. That’s how the story opens. I thought you were able to get into his head and be very poetic at the same time, and then set the story up for a classic villain who underestimated our exceedingly talented and deadly hero who is “the other”.
The dialogue was very poetic and not all that realistic. I think there was a line where the bad guy said, “You have a six-shooter?” because he wanted to draw on Hatter and Hatter responds, “Yeah, it’s under my hat.”
CM:
I remember when you first introduced me to your world, Hatter was the character that I plugged into immediately because I am such a Doctor Who fan and I’m so deeply influenced by it. Hatter Madigan and Doctor Who are nothing alike but they are these lone heroes unstuck in time and they have the flexibility to find themselves moving through their narratives in these nonlinear ways. There’s something I’ve just always liked about those kinds of stories, whether it’s Sam Beckett and Quantum Leap, or Doctor Who. These characters want, in a weird way, what everybody experiences. They just want to go from Point A to Point B to get the thing that they so desperately want, but because of the way their life is structured, they can’t get there that way. There’s something beautiful and lonely and interesting, whether the character is as serious and action-focused as Hatter or as whimsical as Doctor Who. I’ve always loved those kinds of stories.
FB:
I was quite rigid in the story structure with Hatter, not in terms of dialogue, but in terms of following historical events, so that it would feel like the audience could really suspend disbelief in terms of the notion that this was a real place. But in exploring television, and exploring the idea of doing this as an ongoing show, conversations I’ve had with you and other people was, “Why doesn’t Hatter go through a portal to our world in 1871, why shouldn’t you have him time jump and start to create that fish out of water in all sorts of times, and have that contemporary lens?” It’s a really interesting idea, getting into The Looking Glass Wars through Hatter and his time in our world. I just haven’t quite been brave enough to pull the trigger on that, because I keep thinking, “Where’s Alyss in this? Would I be cutting back to Alyss? Or would I just simply leave her until this series runs its course for three, four seasons, and then introduce Alyss and expand it?
CM:
You’ve quite purposefully created a world that there are 10 ways into. You could choose any of those and they would be wildly successful approaches.
FB:
I don’t know if they’d be wildly successful but maybe if you helped me out, they would be. But I’m exploring that. You and I worked together when we did that mini room to explore the structure of The Looking Glass Wars TV show. The Queen’s Gambit hadn’t come out and I thought it would be interesting to start the show where you have a cold open of the adult character and then you would use the first episode to tell the origin story. But I still think that most people who read The Looking Glass Wars hook into Hatter. He’s the most popular character.
CM:
Hatter, in some ways, is the wish fulfillment. We all wish we could be as cool as that character and as composed and as strong and stalwart. I always loved Alice in the original books because she’s so driven by a sense of curiosity and discovery. I think we all are. We all in our own lives come to a rabbit hole and wonder what’s down there. And it’s, are we brave enough to jump or not? Curiosity, especially for writers, is the best quality you can have. The most important quality you can have is to wonder why and to wonder what and then to go chase those things and experience them and manifest those things in your own life. I think what you’ve done in your fiction is to expand upon that. You have these two central characters and one is about curiosity and discovery and then the other is very much about loyalty. He is on this mission, experiencing this other world, but it’s with an almost singular purpose to get back to where he’s from. He’s not interested in shedding that purpose to discover and consume and learn. He just wants to blaze through the world. I think there’s a little bit of all of those characters in everybody.
FB:
Though, the wish fulfillment and blazing ahead, in terms of doing a series, would probably get a bit old if he wasn’t able to have interior difficult problems, that he’s failing, and how that affects his search and his personality and these obstacles that he comes across.
You brought up the word curious. In my book series, I always use imagination. What do you think about the combination of curiosity versus imagination to ultimately create something?
CM:
I think imagination is just an extension of curiosity. Curiosity is standing in front of the rabbit hole and imagination is picturing what might be down there and the reality is, whatever you’ll discover when you jump.
I have traveled more than this but, maybe you’ve never been to Europe before and you’re curious about it, and you want to break out of your American view of the world. So you get your passport and you go to Europe, and you taste the Netherlands and you see Paris and you see Italy and you experience all these wonderful cultures and foods. Imagination is taking that experience and saying, “Okay, what if that happened in a fantasy world? What if that happened in a sci-fi world? And you’re able to write those stories better because you’ve empathetically, as a human being, shared that same degree of experience in your own set of contexts and life.” The key is coupling that sense of real empathy for what is out there in the world and then applying imagination to it. Curiosity and imagination are inseparable.
FB:
There are levels. It’s also research and curiosity, immersing yourself in whatever that thing is that you’re interested in, and then trying to imagine what you’re going to create and then working on creating that. It’s all a part of this zone that we’d like to get into where those two come together and give you some inspiration.
CM:
I think some writers can do both and some writers have made wonderful careers out of doing one. Certain writers have their things. Carl Hiaasen will always write books about Florida. He knows one thing and he’s gonna drill down until he’s explored every nook and crevice of the one thing that he knows well. Other writers will say, “Well, I want to experience the world and I’ll go write that.” Both are fine because they’re driven by a curiosity to understand either many new things or better understand the one thing that you find yourself around. It takes the same quantity of imagination to tell the smallest, most granular story as it does to tell the biggest, most fanciful.
FB:
Were you introduced to Alice in Wonderland through the novel, the Disney movie, or something else?
CM:
Through the books. Growing up, my grandfather always really encouraged me to read. He would go to yard sales and tag sales and people would just throw books out on their tables for a quarter. So my grandfather would always come back from the sales with a paper bag of books that he found for me. A lot of those books were older. Doc Savage novels, which still predated me by 20-30 years. So, at a pretty young age, I was reading John Carter of Mars, old Doc Savage books, and pulp stories that he would pull from these tag sales. Eventually, he brought home a really beautiful hardcover version of Alice in Wonderland. I can’t remember exactly what age I was but I remember it being really formative for me. I really enjoyed it and then I think the animated versions came after that.
My experience with Alice was unique in the sense that my first visual of it was whatever I made up in my head. I wasn’t cobbling it together from cultural reference points.
FB:
Which most of us are doing now because it’s so deeply seated in culture. Have you seen it much in television? I see images of Alice popping up. I think it came up in Stranger Things.
CM:
It’s gotten to a point now where you’re like, “Yeah, okay, we get it.” It’s a staple but if I hear “White Rabbit” as the soundtrack to a given scene ever again it’s, “I get it, guys.” Alice is a universal story in the sense that every story, whether it’s Star Trek or Lord of the Rings, it’s the hero’s journey. We’re leaving home, we’re going to a strange place where we’re going to find out things about ourselves and that change in us will allow us to complete our journey and hopefully come home. That structure of storytelling shares inherent DNA with Alice so it makes sense that it pops up everywhere.
FB:
Do you have a favorite? Whether it’s a song or a movie or any piece of art of Alice that resonated with you along the way?
CM:
The American McGee Alice games because I like horror a lot. It was great to see someone step in and do a darker, horror-driven take on these things. I like that game quite a bit and there’s been talk ever since it came out about there potentially being another so it gets refreshed in my gaming zeitgeist every couple of years. I remember that making an impression upon me in terms of one of the first adaptations of that material that was really interesting and cool and visual and unique and spun it in a way that it wasn’t just telling the same story. It was telling a different story from a different point of view, which I liked a lot.
But I’m of the opinion that the best adaptation of Alice in Wonderland has yet to be made. I go back through all the various ones that I’ve seen, and I don’t think I love any of them. The Disney ones, whether it’s the Johnny Depp one or the original, they’re so polished. I’m waiting for Guillermo del Toro to try it or Tarsem Singh, or a filmmaker who weirdly uses practical and CG in an interesting way because so much of Alice to me is tangible. Other parts of it are very painted and illustrative. None of the other adaptations I’ve seen get the balance that I’ve pictured in my head for so long.
FB:
It’s also a struggle, because she’s 13, and it’s seemingly episodic. Everybody that’s done a take on it, including myself, tries to find a structure that allows the reluctant hero story to play out in a way in which you can suspend disbelief and buy into it.
CM:
Stranger Things is an Alice in Wonderland story in a weird way. We went into the upside down, and they cast those kids young and they made it work.
FB:
But in television, you have a little bit more opportunity, and certainly, when you have a show, and even movies that have both young characters and adult characters, you have those four quadrants. That show can be nostalgic as an adult and it can feel completely fresh for my 13-year-old.
CM:
There’s a weird Ouroboros effect with these IPs. With Alice, the book is published and it comes into the zeitgeist, and it inspires all these other works. There is an Alice in Wonderland quality to all of these other different stories that are being told in different genres. It gets absorbed into the zeitgeist in other ways, whether it’s a poster in the background or a music cue that nods to their roots in Alice. Then, eventually, it comes back around to, now we want to remake the thing that inspired all the things that inspired us to remake it. Do we remake it using all of the iconography of the things that it inspired? Do we use the visual language of all of the different iterations? Or do we have to find some new visual language to tell that story again? Because otherwise, it’s a song that’s singing itself.
That’s what you’ve done so well with creating your world. You found another way into it, that visualizes it differently and contextualizes it differently. It feels like Alice without feeling either too dissimilar or too similar. I think that’s what you guys have been doing brilliantly in your world.
FB:
Thank you. I’ve been trying to push outside of what people know as Wonderland. Whether it’s bringing Wonderland to another culture, another timeline, or expanding the geography of Wonder nations. I’m looking to expand with other writers and other voices who can see the world in a way that, having done this for 20 years, I might not be able to do or see. It’s been interesting and exciting to talk to other creators about handing over the universe and saying, “What would you do with this?”
That whole collaborative effort, whether it was working with you in the room, collaborating on a graphic novel, and now working on a game, it’s very exciting to have a world that is big enough with a bright enough canvas that attracts other creators.
CM:
Even looking at something as recent as Across the Spider-Verse. Even just that little section where they dip into Mumbatton. For 10 minutes of the movie, we’re going to show you what Spider-Man through an East Indian lens looks like. There’s a lot to explore there and you realize, even just telling the same story with a slightly different aesthetic, or cultural view, gives it all these new layers. It’s not just a quick glow-up. It gives it a real depth. I could have spent two hours in just Mumbatton alone learning what that kind of Spider-Man story would be like. It’s great that you give other authors voices to explore these things from other angles because there’s a lot to find there.
FB:
I know you have a lot of original work. You’re obviously on this big show but you’ve written a lot of pilots. I know before the strike, you were pitching projects. Tell me where you’re at with some of your original work. I remember you did something called The Survivors.
CM:
I had a run there where I would write these pilots that I would send to my reps, and they would go, “Yeah, no, I don’t think anyone wants to do anything with that.” Then, a year later, some other version of it would be huge. I had written a script called Survivors, back in 2014, which was about a support group for the survivors of various horror movie scenarios. At the time, I was patting myself on the back for having such an original idea. But my reps were like, “Oh, this is a little meta. I don’t know if it’s gonna work, blah, blah, blah.” Years later, how many seasons deep are we into American Horror Story? Also, there’s a terrific novel called Final Girl Support Group that came out a few years later that touched upon the same concept.
Still to this day, the pilot that I’m proudest of is a restaurant drama. It’s about two brothers who couldn’t be more different, forced to come back together after the death of their father. But, at the time, my reps were like, “Nobody wants a food show.” Now you have The Bear.
All you can do is write what you’re passionate about writing and keep writing, which is the problem I’m struggling with now. The strike is such a stressful time that it tempts you to take a break. You think, “I’ll put my pen down because I can’t do anything with what I make anyway, or blah blah blah.” But that muscle can atrophy. So, you have to pick up the pen and work at it every day.
I’ve got a horror feature I’m working on now, which I can’t say too much about. But every day I go to write it and I kind of shake my head and think, “Why am I this insane?” This idea is crazy. Hopefully, there’ll be some life in that at some point. Terry Matalas and I have a number of things on deck that we’d like to do, and hopefully, we’ll be able to do once the skies clear and the strike is over. We have a retelling of Phantom of the Opera that we’ve been wanting to do forever and we’d love to find a way to make that happen. Terry certainly wants to keep on exploring the world of Star Trek and hopefully, the powers that be will let us do that. It’s writing a new pilot, writing a new feature, and then hoping when this all resolves itself, we can get back in a room because that’s really where I love to be. I love sitting in a room with smart people coming up with cool stuff.
FB:
In the room we put together you always were the first to jump in almost every time.
CM :
It’s ‘cause I’m obnoxious.
FB:
Yes, you are very obnoxious, which is such a superpower. I wish I was a lot more obnoxious having witnessed you jumping in but you were a driver of the room. It was super helpful to be fearless in sharing an idea that people could jump on and start to riff off of so you need that. It’s no surprise that you’ve gone from show to show and that you and Terry have a strong partnership and understanding.
CM:
I’m starting to believe this, and maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like it has a lot to do with having worked on a time travel show. Because when you’re working in time travel, not only do you have to have these big creative sci-fi ideas and couple that with emotional character-driven ideas but you have to think, “Well, if we do this, then it undoes this because it goes back in time so that wouldn’t work.” Your brain teaches itself to iterate really quickly, to have a really good idea, explore it, realize if it contradicts something else in the time travel, and if it does, throw it out and go back because you can’t lose the time. Then if it works, great, go to the next idea.
I found that a lot of the writers who came from 12 Monkeys have all described entering subsequent rooms and feeling like they’re going faster than everybody. They’ll pitch 10 things and maybe other people in the room have pitched one and they feel like the asshole, like, “Oh my God, I am bullying my way into the room? Am I being too loud? Am I pitching too much?” And I think it’s just because we’ve taught our brains to iterate and calculate the math of a story beat in multiple timelines, and it makes your brain faster. It really is a testament to the more you do this, and the more you do it with great people who challenge you, the better you become. You can take half of your idea and half of their idea and make something that’s better than either idea. It’s an amazing feeling. There’s nothing I love more than working with great writers.
FB:
I have had a delightful time chatting with you, reconnecting, and talking about the business and your career, and fingers crossed for the strike and fingers crossed for this new idea.
CM:
Thank you for having me. I always love reconnecting with you and it’s great to be able to have a long-form conversation and really dig into it. This was a blast.
Imagination, Caterpillars, and Light: How the Magic of the Wonderverse Works
How does magic work? That might seem like a silly question. Magic is defined by its ability to bypass the laws of our terrestrial world. It transcends rules. That’s the point, right? Well, not quite. Storytellers fixate on the rules and forms of magic in their worlds, consistently aware that one misstep might cause them to lose their audience.
What if Harry Potter suddenly just started Force Choking Voldemort during the Battle of Hogwarts in Deathly Hallows? Okay, that might be kind of cool. But it’d be weird (and a massive copyright infringement). The act of making a clenching motion to invisibly choke someone is not part of the Wizarding World, where magic is channeled through wands, incantations, and concoctions derived from plant and animal matter. It would damage the story, by breaking the rules of the magic system.
Frank Beddor’s Wonderverse has an interconnected web of elements and rules which fuels Queen Alyss and Hatter Madigan’s exciting adventures in Wonderland and beyond. It’s the reason Alyss was able to escape to London when Queen Redd took her crown and why Hatter was able to finally bring her back to Wonderland to reclaim her birthright.
Wonderland’s magic powers everything in the realm and beyond, including Hatter’s ever-reliable top hat. So, how does it work? Let’s explore what makes The Looking Glass Wars’ intricate and exciting magic system rank among the A-listers of our favorite fiction works.
First, the primal source of all magic in Wonderland is Light. From the Everlasting Forest to the Chessboard Desert, Light makes Wonderland wonderful and fuels the two chief pillars of its magic: Imagination and Caterpillar Thread.
Imagination:
Imagination, as it exists in the Wonderverse, is an immensely powerful form of magic, created by the Great Light of the First Wonder and the White Butterfly. In many ways, it is similar to the Force in Star Wars. Imagination is an energy current within every being that those who are trained in its use can manipulate to create almost anything. The key is not to use it selfishly. This is where we get to Light Imagination and Dark Imagination.
Light Imagination is reflective and generous, sharing and spreading the energy it uses. Dark Imagination, however, does not give, it takes. It hoards and absorbs Light, utilizing it for selfish purposes and never sharing the energy with the rest of Wonderland.
Light Imagination the basis of almost every magical item in Wonderland: looking glasses, pools, shards, and crystals. The latter two are the main receptacles for Light Imagination and their uses and creation are heavily studied and monitored by the Millinery. The most important source of Light Imagination is the Heart Crystal, which radiates the energy across the Queendom and into different realms of existence (like Earth).
A consideration to always make when crafting a system of magic, is to bake in dichotomy. This interplay between oppositional magic is the everlasting source of conflict and tension in good fiction. For instance, Imagination is not inherently good or bad, its morality is determined by the user. This allows for not only Light Imagination to play against Dark Imagination, but also the mixed shades of grey that will complicate matters at every opportunity.
Be it two school magic systems like those of The Looking Glass Wars, Harry Potter, andeven Warhammer 40,000, or multi-faction systems such as the elemental powers of Avatar The Last Airbender—the strength of the conflict generated by magic is contingent on the interplay between oppositional powers. Remember, these points of fiction can even exist within a single group, spurred by differing philosophy on the usage of their magic.
Caterpillar Thread:
Much like the tension and conflict created by the diametrically opposed Light and Dark Imagination—Caterpillar Thread introduces a more tangible mode for magic to be utilized in Wonderland. Similar to the potions of Harry Potter or the Alchemy of The Elder Scrolls, Caterpillar Thread is an expression of magic that can be manipulated physically—and in almost infinite combination.
Simple systems with well thought out interconnected relationships of strengths and weaknesses create a web of possibilities. Not only can users specialize based on their personality and style—but this world building can be the foundation of endless dramatic tension. Leave no element of your magic system without an opponent that can genuinely threaten it.
Legend states that Wonderland was woven using Caterpillar Thread from the First Caterpillars. Now spun by the caterpillar-oracles deep in the Valley of Mushrooms, Caterpillar Thread is the tangible, tactile counterpart to Imagination. A condensed, physical form of Light, Caterpillar Thread has a plethora of uses ranging from the construction of magical gadgets to even imbuing life into an inanimate object. But first, to understand how Caterpillar Thread is used, we need to understand the different types and their unique properties.
Blue – Connection
The Wonderverse’s answer to cell phones and glasses, Blue Thread is used to communicate across long distances and enhance one’s senses through goggles or earphones, for example. It is highly useful for the spies and bodyguards trained by the Millinery while the Blue Caterpillar is so attuned to the Thread’s abilities that he can even see into the future and make prophecies.
Yellow – Energy
Yellow Thread is an essential item in any Milliner’s wardrobe, yet it can be very dangerous if not used correctly. When used with good intentions, Yellow Thread can power objects and be used as an electrical self-defense device (like a taser). Yet, in less scrupulous hands, the Thread can be used to drain energy from other lifeforms.
Green – Growth
The favorite salve of the Milliner Medics (the Green Berets), Green Thread closes wounds, heals burns, and can also be used to mend a Milliner’s gear. A multi-faceted fabric that can heal the living and inanimate alike.
Orange – Strength
Orange Thread is the perfect item for a Milliner who wants to upgrade and reinforce their equipment. For example, if a Milliner weaves Orange Thread into their hat, they can turn it into a buzzsaw through their mastery of Imagination. Pretty handy if a ball turns into a brawl.
Red – Imagination
Red Thread enhances the Light Imagination of which a Milliner is already a master. It takes our earthly concept of visualization and turns it into reality. If a Milliner wants to jump over a broken bridge or outrun a herd of stampeding horses, they only have to imagine it using Red Thread.
Indigo – Consciousness
The most advanced and mysterious Thread that only the most learned Milliners can use, Indigo Thread is the spark of identity. It’s essential to the construction of a Milliner’s hat, imbuing the headwear with “life” so it can help and advise its wearer. Indigo Thread can be dangerous, however, as it can be used to manipulate the consciousness of living beings.
Using Caterpillar Thread:
How a Milliner can incorporate Caterpillar Thread into the execution of their daily duties is just as varied as the types of Threads themselves. There is a wide range of Thread Spells such as knots, hems, lacing, darts, and buttons, all tapping into the power of the Thread (or a combination of Thread Types) according to the Milliner’s needs.
The most iconic example of the use of Caterpillar Thread in the Wonderverse is certainly the Milliner’s hat. Just as important as a Jedi’s lightsaber or a wizard’s wand, and much more versatile, the Milliner’s hat is woven from a combination of different Caterpillar Threads and features a vast array of capabilities.
As mentioned above, the use of Red Thread gives the hat sentience, with its red eye that can survey the surrounding area, alert a Milliner to danger, and execute the transformations ordered by the Milliner. Such transformations include acting as a shield, smothering assailants, projecting illusions to confuse the enemy, and protecting their Owner from heat or cold. Above all, the hats know to whom they belong, and, no matter how far-flung, they will always return to their Milliner.
Caterpillar Thread and Imagination combine to form the twin pillars upon which the magic of Wonderland is built. Light, channeled through either the ethereal or the tangible, can be harnessed by the attuned and used to defend and enhance the Queendom. Yet, when used for selfish purposes, Light becomes Dark and saps Wonderland of its energy.
It is this eternal conflict between Light Imagination and Dark Imagination that caused the civil war that ravaged Wonderland before the events of The Looking Glass Wars and it was Queen Redd’s obsession with Dark Imagination that drove her bid to steal Alyss’ crown.
This final point illustrates the golden tenant of Magic System Creation: always think of narrative integration first! Cool magic will win big style points, but if the small details and the sturdy rules of the system don’t serve the emotional journey of your characters—you may need to rethink how you are building your story.
Enjoy the ride of creating your own universe, and never fear sharing your work with the world. Sometimes the boldest ideas are the most terrifying and uncertain… and ultimately the best. Your imagination is the finest tool you will ever wield, and it is worth the work to manifest your own magic system.
An itinerant storyteller, John Drain attended the University of Edinburgh before studying film at DePaul University in Chicago and later earned an MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute Conservatory. John focuses on writing mysteries and thrillers featuring characters who are thrown into the deep end of the pool and struggle to just keep their heads above water. His work has been recognized by the Academy Nicholls Fellowship, the Austin Film Festival, ScreenCraft, Cinestory, and the Montreal Independent Film Festival. In a previous life, John created and produced theme park attractions across the globe for a wide variety of audiences. John keeps busy in his spare time with three Dungeons and Dragons campaigns and a seemingly never-ending stack of medieval history books.
