Posted in: Comics | Tagged: hybrid novel, kickstarter

What's A Hybrid Novel? I'm Not Sure Exactly… But I Created One

Michael Van Cleve has been working on a hybrid novel, now available. But what does that mean? He writes for Bleeding Cool;

There is a wiki on the hybrid novel. But the genre is not well-defined. Eleven years ago, I started working on the screenplay for a biblical epic called about Samson called, Child of the Sun. Eventually, I adapted it into a seven-issue limited series that was compiled into a graphic novel. It was a good time. I met a lot of cool people along the way. I went to some conventions. I got the t-shirt (courtesy of my sister at Christmas time). But the book took ten years to finish. I thought I might take a break from writing, but then…I met Halil Mete. Halil is a German artist boasting some very impressive sequential skills. He seems to have a real knack for horror books, but I was really in awe of his work altogether. He inspired me to do another story. As luck would have it, I moved back to El Paso. Guess what the next story was called?

This time around, I wanted to do something different, something that had either never been done or rarely done. While Halil was drawing, I started creating documents, you might see if a real-life event occurred in the city of El Paso. The experimentation created a consistent theme of the hyper-real throughout the book. The result is that the novel is not just a graphic illustration of a story, but some type of Frankenstein hybrid with a dream journal, police reports, news articles and opinion pieces, investigations, a letter, social media posts, text messages, a mock fundraiser, and even a court opinion. Every document is used to supplement or expand upon the main narrative, and nothing is on accident – so yeah, a hybrid.

Almost every character introduced in the illustrated pages of El Paso is connected to an ancillary document that expands upon their motivations, history, objectives, or persona. You do not have to read these documents to enjoy the comic book portion of El Paso, but you will never completely understand the entire story without scrutinizing all the documents in the book.

El Paso is largely illustrated by Halil. He used earthy-toned watercolors to create striking images and a somber mood throughout the book. The latter half of the story is colored digitally by Guatemalan colorist Carlos Jimenez and Texas colorist Peyton Freeman. A bit of an acid trip dream is illustrated by Miami storyboard artist, Vince Rodriguez. I wrote it. Yes, everything. And yes, the Michael in the story is me from an alternate universe. Don't believe me? Ask Sean Carroll.

Generally, El Paso is about a young woman named Larona living in the city of El Paso, who is desperately trying to break her addictions while being chased by a West Texas prison gang called the Aztecas. But what is it really about? I hope you're bored enough to read and find out.

El Paso is available on Amazon. You can also support the Kickstarter, which is currently live. The Kickstarter includes some extra goodies and content for El Paso, such as new covers, exclusive artwork based on the dream journal, and additional artwork for my very divisive sci-fi short, Titan.

El Paso is largely an experiment in the loose genre of hybrid novels. The indie world is good for this type of thing (experimenting or doing weird stuff), so if you are curious about hybrid novelization, check it out. The Peteypedia on HBO's website for Watchmen is probably the closest thing to it, just in case you want to know what you're getting yourself into.

Check out the trailer, put your thinking cap on, and get prepared to read!

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