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Entering The Spill Zone With Scott Westerfeld Ahead Of Free Comic Book Day

Published Sat, 29 Apr 2017 17:00:08 -0500

By Jason Borelli

A small town is destroyed instantly by an unknown cause. Everything remains intact, but since the cause of the disaster is anything but normal, physics is turned on its head. Addison Merritt lost her parents to the "Spill Zone," but she ventures to the quarantined area to take pictures for art collectors, risking her life and sanity in the process as she provides for herself and her mentally-scarred sister.

This is the premise of Spill Zone from First Second Books. Set for an early May release, Spill Zone is written by Scott Westerfeld. Best known for writing young adult prose novels, Spill Zone is his first full graphic project.

"I went to college in Poughkeepsie, where the novel is set," Westerfeld explained at the MoCCA Arts Festival. "One of the things I did there as a hobby was to sneak into abandoned buildings and climb around inside them. Me and my friends would go in, explore, and go kind of urban spelunking. The idea of going around a ruined place, a place where all of the life has been sucked out of there, and where everything's sort of left to rot away. You can see the community and the facilities that used to be there, but it's gone now. That's been with me for a long time. I wanted to do something like that as an adventure novel, about a character who goes to a ruined place and takes pictures and tries to document it."

In 2012, two graphic novels based on Westerfeld's Uglies books were published by Del Ray. "Shay's Story" and "Cutters" were co-written by Westerfeld and Devin Grayson, with art by Steven Cummings. For the novelist, those provided invaluable experience.

"I started working on [Spill Zone] in 2006," Westerfeld noted, "but I realized I didn't really know how to do graphic novels. That wasn't something I ever tried before. I sent it to some friends of mine who were comics writers, and they told me what I was doing wrong. I pulled back a little bit and did the Uglies graphic novels as sort of an apprenticeship, and [I] figured out how to do it. Then I came to First Second with the idea in 2012."

One inspiration behind the creation of Addison Merritt was based in part on an Internet hoax centering on a woman riding through the Chernobyl exclusion zone and taking photographs. While most of her story was proven false, the idea stuck with Westerfeld.

"I based Addison on her," he said, "even though she turned out not to be telling the whole truth. She had just taken a tour bus. It's not that hard to get into the exclusion zone, but I like the idea of someone sneaking in with a motorcycle and taking pictures."

Wsterfeld's partner on Spill Zone is Alex Puvilland, who has provided art for such First Second graphic novels as Prince of Persia and Templar.

"I've been with him a couple of times in San Francisco and Los Angeles," Westerfeld recalled. "We had a couple of good conversations about the book and about where it [was] going.

"I look at what he's doing at thumbnails, pencils and inks. I don't say that much, but I occasionally have notes about a panel or page. [It's] no more than he changes my script. When he thinks something is a little too rough, he usually lengthens it a little."

Westerfeld and Puvilland worked with a lot of distance between them, as the artist resides in Los Angeles, while Westerfeld splits his time between New York and Sydney. For the writer, this was not a major obstacle.

"Mostly, he's looking at script," Westerfeld said. "We're not talking too much stuff through. Occasionally, a new character comes along, and we'll do a little back-and-forth about that. He's really thoughtful and conscientious. He just made things before.

Spill Zone is scheduled for release on May 2. A follow-up volume has already been written, and First Second anticipates a May 2018 release date. Spill Night, a prelude to the events of the book, will be the publisher's offering on Free Comic Book Day, slated for May 6.

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