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Talking Boom! Studios' Lucas Stand With Caitlin Kittredge At San Diego Comic-Con

By Octavio Karbank

Last week at SDCC 2016, I found myself with the opportunity to sit down and talk to Caitlin Kittredge about her work on the Boom! comic Lucas Stand. Let me begin by saying I think this book is superb! It hits a lot of beats for me, as both a reader and fan of the supernatural genre, and I think it has the potential to strike a chord with plenty of other readers. Unfortunately, Lucas Stand is one of those comics that's under the radar, at least for the moment, but it's definitely worth picking up and checking out! Penned also by the talented Kurt Sutter, the creator of fan-favorite shows like Sons of Anarchy, Lucas Stand is fantastic.

In San Diego to promote her work on Lucas Stand, Ms. Kittredge was an absolute joy to talk to, incredibly polite and bubbly all around. Sitting one-on-one in a room closed off from the rest of the convention, the two of us had a chance to go back and forth about Lucas Stand and what makes the book stand out. I figured the best way to lead in was simply by asking Ms. Kittredge what Lucas Stand was about and how she got on the book. After all, not everyone knew about either the comic or its premise.

"Lucas Stand was pitched to me with the tagline, "Hell Hires a Hit-man", and that is fabulous, obviously. It's about a really broken army vet named Lucas Stand who gets a shot at redemption and that shot of redemption takes the form of hunting down and killing rogue demons from hell. It's kind of a redemption story, but not really.

"I was contacted by our editor at Boom who I've known for a couple years and am pretty good friends with. We had wanted to do a project together for a while, but couldn't make anything work. Then she called me out of the blue and said that Kurt Sutter was looking for someone to work with and since I did horror, she wanted to know if it was something I'd be interested in. I was sold within thirty seconds."

Of course one of the questions I always hear people ask at comic book panels is how so-and-so got into comics and can THEY get into comics. There are plenty of fans out there that want nothing more than to be a part of the dynamic world that is comics. Everyone has his or her own way of breaking in, so I had to know what Ms. Kittredge's route had been like. To which she essentially explained how it took years and years of hard work. After all, good things don't come easily:

"People always get angry when I tell them, but I was headhunted by Vertigo to write a comic for them. I always tell people that it sounds like this fairy tale thing, but I wrote fantasy and horror novels for about ten year before that. I had okay to minimal recognition through that, but I definitely put the work in. I love comics and have always wanted to work in comics. I think I did leap-frog a lot of the steps that lots of people take to get into comics, but there are lots of different avenues for people to take."

On that note, I wanted to ask her how it was working with someone like Kurt Sutter. After all, it's not everyday one gets to work with such a powerhouse in the entertainment industry. On some level, it's easy to imagine it could have been a difficult process, but apparently Mr. Sutter was nothing if not a complete gentleman.

"The collaborative aspect has been great. I've had other collaborations that haven't been, I want to say, as collaborative. It's really been great and Kurt has been really generous in letting me play with this concept he came up with and literally letting me pitch my ideas and add in stuff I might think up. He's just very easy to work with. I also endeavor to be easy to work with. My personal favorite part of the writing is getting to write Lucas's internal monologues, because he's really messed up and broken, but I love tha"t he has this horrible dark sense of humor and will make jokes at the most unappealing moments.

It's good to hear that many creators are open to the collaborative process and not just looking to shut everyone out. And it's even better when as an interviewer, I barely have to ask another question, when the interviewee does the work for me, explaining what makes the book's protagonist an engaging character.

"In a weird way, even though he's kind of been broken down to nothing, as a veteran, someone with a drug addiction, and suffering from PTSD, he's still got a resilient spark in him. He's a survivor and I really identify and enjoy writing characters like that. I was working on the first issue and these jokes kept popping up in the narrative and I had to question whether it was appropriate to joke during these awful moments. In the first issue he goes to Nazi-occupied France during World War II and you have to walk a very fine line if you're joking in that particular era. I finally just decided to go with it and no one told me to change it. Bringing out his F.U. attitude, rekindling his flame, has been a big part of his characterization as the book has gone on. He goes from being a sad, pathetic mess at the beginning of issue one, and we're working on issue five right now, to someone, who through demon hunting, is on the road to recovery."

Despite the fun we were having, what with talking about time travel and demons, eventually all good things must come to an end. Throughout it all, Ms. Caitlin Kittredge engaged every question I had swimmingly. For those of you who are fans of her work, you'll be please to know that she's working on the Image comic Throwaways and the first issue just came out last week. Additionally, she's also working on a TV tie-in comic for the TV show Grimm from Dynamite, which starts in September. For everything else, we just have to wait until New York Comic Con where more announcements will be made.

Yet I couldn't let it end there, so I concluded with one of my favorite questions:

What does the art of storytelling mean to you? To which I got an excellent answer:

"That's an interesting question. I'm going to have to give that a minute of thought because I want to give you a good answer…to me storytelling is the lifeblood of humanity and society. I realize that's a huge answer, but that's kind of a huge question. Civilization as we know it wouldn't exist without stories. Human beings need narrative to their lives to keep themselves human and keep their souls alive. I think that if you can tell a good story then you kind of owe it to people to tell it to them. If you don't respect your craft, it shows, and if you do, even if you're not the most experienced, I think it's going to shine through. It's something I really believe in that's just as necessary for society and is on par with laws, money and even sewer systems, which are super important for civilization!"

All in all, the interview went very well. If you're in the market for a comic a little off the beaten path, look no further. Lucas Stand certainly deserves your attention and it will do you proud!

Octavio Karbank is a writer and bona fide Whovian. Living in Massachusetts, you can find him on Twitter @TymeHunter and his blog www.cozmicventures.com

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