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Dial H's Mateus Santolouco Talks To Bleeding Cool

Érico Assis talked to Mateus Santolouco for Bleeding Cool

Mateus Santolouco, who hails from Porto Alegre, the sourthernmost state capital of Brazil (also hometown to Rafael Albuquerque, Eduardo Medeiros, Cris Peter and many other comics artists), has been an up-and-coming artist in American comics for the last 5 years. After stints at Boom! Studios, fill-in work for Marvel and DC, and creator-owned stuff like Mondo Urbano, he's finally got a shot at starting a series from scratch: Dial H, at DC. He's joined by another newcomer to monthly comics, writer China Miéville.

Santolouco is set to illustrate at least the first 5 issues of Dial H. But the first one, which came out this month, already showcased his knack for creating odd super-heroes, in tune with the equally odd plans Miéville has for the revamped 60s franchise. And Rich, of course, wanted to know when Boy Chimney is coming back.

How were you approached by DC to work on DIAL H?

It was around September last year, when Karen Berger sent me an email saying I had a chance of working on the title. Then I sent some character studies and as soon as she saw those we were set for me to illustrate the first arc of the series.

How is it like to work with China Miéville? Did you talk a lot about this book, how were those chats?

China is a great guy, very imaginative. We talk sometimes, especially to get to some consensus about how certain aspects of the story should be presented. He has been completely open to my ideas for the characters' looks and to my storytelling choices, which makes this work even more pleasant.

How do you get to create such unique super-heroes – two or three each issue?

China always has a general, sometimes specific, idea of what he wants with these characters so I first try to understand what is he's goal with every single one of them. Once I've done that I throw all his ideas on a jar and mix them with my own personal references and insights about these personas. And voilà! Also I'm trying to make them look not only odd, but also cool.

What about Boy Chimney, the one Rich Johnston is in love with? Is he coming back?

I would bet on a Boy Chimney return but you probably should ask China about that.

Are you acquainted with Miéville's fiction?

I knew a few things about his work and heard about a couple of books like "The City & the City" but I had never read any of his stuff before. I'm solving this problem now, since because he is sending me some limited editions.

This is one of the first DC books in a long time being edited by Karen Berger, Vertigo's head honcho. What difference does it make compared to "normal" DC titles? Will it be a Vertigo-superhero book?

I guess you can say that. This is definitely not a regular DC title, though it's still a superhero book.

There are great expectations for this series. Bob Wayne said DIAL H is the best pitch he's read since SANDMAN. What can you say about working on it by now and what can readers expect?

Readers can expect a weird and great adventure story. An insane yet down-to-earth mythology with the craziest heroes of today's comics landscape and main characters that they can relate to in an incredibly deeper level.

You`ve been doing some indie work at your native Brazil. What can you say about these projects and how can people abroad get to know then?

Yeah, last year we made 3 indie books that had the single objective to serve as an experiment for me and my friends. Our goal was simply to have fun doing unpretentious comics. We've only published those in Portuguese, but there are stories with no dialogue. If anyone's interested, they can write to mocambo.zines@gmail.com or visit the publication's blog where they can find some previews and stuff.

Besides that, right now we are working on a new indie project called Gomakashi and we are using Tumblr as a platform to inspire ourselves and tease people around.

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