• the217
• Blogs
• Capes & Cowls
• Hybrid Bastards!, the Interviews

• RSS

Hybrid Bastards!, the Interviews

posted by Matt Knicl at 11:21 pm.

• Bookmark & Share
• Comments (3)

By The Beard Of Zeus!

Last week in The Buzz I talked about indie comic book publisher Archaia Studios Press and some of their new, unique projects.

One of those titles was the absurd Hybrid Bastards!, a series about Zeus’ various one night stands with inanimate objects, from a car to a brick wall, and the resulting offspring.

The series debuts next week and there will be two more issues in the series, for now at least.

I was lucky enough to get in touch with the writer, Tom Pinchuk, and artist, Kate Glasheen, to talk to them about this… interesting project.

Matt Knicl: What message(s) are you trying to convey with the Hybrid Bastards!?

Tom Pinchuk: It ain’t how hard you hit; it’s how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. Wait—that’s the message of Rocky VI.

Seriously, not to be coy, but people will have to read it and figure that out for themselves.

Kate Glasheen: This message and this message alone: Drop your keys, get a bad dream.

Matt: Why did you choose the inanimate objects that you did for the bastards?

Tom: Walter was the first one I came up with, way back in ninth grade. I was joking with a friend about what would happen if someone humped a wall and the mental image of a wall bulging because it was pregnant was so amusing that it stuck. The rest honestly started with me making a list of names that could work as puns. Narrowing that list down was an issue of finding ones that could represent groups of objects—one for clothing, one for machines, one for buildings, etc.

Kate: Well, since Tom had already decided on some rough character designs by the time we teamed up, my role was mostly developing their visual style.

Since Cotton is kind of a bastard (HAHAHA…ahem…), I wanted to model his facial features along the lines of something reptilian. From his sweat sock fingers to a body comprised of braided patterned shirts and jeans, it was kind of a test to see how ludicrous I could get it to look when he does anything remotely functional, such as breathing or blinking.



With Walter, the original idea was to include gutters and drainage pipes that you sometimes see along brick walls. It got a little too busy visually, so I knew I had to dumb it down, but I also wanted to find a design that continually revealed details. So what I ended up opting for was to create the humor and nuances in the way clothes fit him, since no outfit would look flattering over a stack of bricks. No, not even a onesy unitard.

Carmine was my favorite to draw—trying to derive this meek little guy out of a station wagon was an interesting task, but it happened kind of naturally. The car’s characteristics turned into the most easily exaggerated features—his headlight eyes, his giant rear-view mirror ears, and of course his antenna, all served as the perfect emotion broadcasters.

Matt: What do you think your comic brings to Archaia that other projects may not?

Tom: I think it’s their first humor book. Even if it isn’t, I’d say it brings an unusual welding of the esoteric and the ridiculous. Smashing the low brow and the high brow together.

Kate: How about a list?
1) A really horny old man
2) A frigid wife who hates her husband and may or may not be doing her cousin
3) A laughably egotistical but good-hearted young man with a plant on his head
4) A douchebag pile of dirty laundry
5) An adorably shy station wagon
6) A frat boy reincarnated as a brick wall
7) The death of someone you’ll probably end up wanting dead anyways

Matt: What was the inspiration for Hybrid Bastards?

Tom: Mainly it was reading the uncensored versions of Greek myths in high school Latin. Most people have only gotten to see bowdlerized versions, but the original stories were full of all sorts of twisted stuff: incest, bestiality, and so on. I was particularly amused by the magical disguises Zeus would take on to have secret affairs with mortal maidens. He’d turn into random things like a swan and, I’m not joking, a golden shower.

Now, yeah, that’s all there because these myths weren’t told for children and they intertwined all aspects of life, sex and pregnancy included, into the metaphors. But I don’t think anyone can read those parts without snickering, so I figured it was all ripe for spoofing. That was the start and the story’s taken plenty of twists and turns since then.

Kate: This Native American chief was smoking peyote and drinking fire water. He started drunk dialing and ended up randomly calling me. Instead of hanging up, I recorded the conversation, and then stole its contents.

Matt: Are there any comic book influences that helped shape your vision?

Tom: For this project, I’d say probably Scud the Disposable Assassin, the Morrison/Case run on Doom Patrol and 2000 AD. The first two because they have a real manic energy, with bafflingly weird events running at such a delirious clip that you honestly can’t predict what’s coming next. They play by their own storytelling rules and read more like lucid dreams.



And anyone who wants to learn about pacing in comics should read some 2000 AD. That magazine shows you how to tell an entire story in five pages, or three, or even one. I think the reason a lot of British creators have made such a splash on the American market is because most of them cut their teeth in 2000AD.

Kate: Probably the biggest influence for me was “Betty the Feudal Beer Wench Gets Hit by a Clydesdale”. Interpret that how you may. It was a twenty-seven part limited series that really opened my eyes to narrating the fantastic.

Matt: What do you feel about mainstream super hero comic books or the industry in general?

Tom: I grew up on those comics and would probably get far on any superhero trivia contest. But I do wish more fans could step outside their comfort zone and venture into stuff outside the genre. So many people complain about how dissatisfied they are with some long-running title, yet they keep buying it out of habit when they could really get a lot more enjoyment out of trying something new.

For the industry in general, I’d like to see the glorified movie pitches go away. It’s like you can’t ever do a comic for its own sake anymore, because it can only be a placeholder for the story to be “legitimately” done in some other medium. Comics has its own language, and these books that are just storyboards with captions slapped on are really disingenuous.



Kate: Mainstream super-hero comics are like any other genre within comics, or any other genre in any medium for that matter. There are some that are done well, and are anywhere from amazing to entertaining, and there are some that are uninspired and just fill a template.

As far as the industry, one disturbing trend I’ve noticed is Hollywood’s growing influence on the comic industry. I think it’s awesome that the medium is finally getting recognized in a serious enough light to have films based off of strips succeed. On the flipside, it drives me crazy that after a movie does well, the comic then changes to embrace the new audience it acquired as a result. I think that’s pretty insulting to the fans who gave it the support it needed to be adopted in the first place, and it feels like a real sell-out move to me. Want some examples? Well, sorry, I can’t give them. I’d like to continue to find work.

Matt: Do you feel like your book is mainstream or not?

Tom: I think it’s actually a pretty accessible story. The bastards are all relatable characters with very human personalities and the plot has a beginning, middle and end. Yes, it’s ludicrous and hard to describe, but so was a comic about mutant turtles parodying Teen Titans and Miller’s Daredevil run some 20-odd years ago, and look how mainstream that got.

Kate: It definitely isn’t a concept on everyone’s top ten, “must see books written about this subject or I will go to a grade school to obtain and hold hostages, maybe children maybe teachers, and perhaps execute them until my demand is met” list, but I think everyone who hears about it is curious to at least check it out, if not more. It doesn’t synch up with any one group, but it doesn’t alienate any either.

Matt: Who is your intended audience?

Tom: Anyone who’s looking for something truly unique and unpredictable.

Kate: This book isn’t capable of having an intended audience—it’s just too weird and eclectic. But to add to last question’s answer, I think there’s something in it for any audience, whether it’s the mythology, the humor, the sex with inanimate objects…

The sex with inanimate objects.

The sex with inanimate objects.

The se—I know you’re out there, you sick f***s.

Matt’s Last Word: Today in comics we see the after-effects of Alan Moore’s Watchmen, where comic writer’s are wanna-be Frank Millers and Neil Gaimans. Every comic is dark, serious, and brooding with gratuitous violence and sex for really no reason other than it is more “literary.”

And Tom and Kate are right - comics seem to be made solely as a movie pitch. Comics were saved by the movie industry, but now it seems to be driving the nails back into the coffin.

But luckily for us the trend has shifted back this decade where there are comics, like Hybrid Bastards!, that are just plain fun and refreshing.

Images used with permission from Archaia Studios Press.

Matt Knicl: My name is Matt Knicl. I am a Senior in Creative Writing and English at the U of I. I've been reading comics since high school and one day I would like to write them. My goal is to expose readers to what is out there in the world of comics and using my English powers, show what is worth reading or not. I can be reached at buzz.comics@gmail.com.