by “Aussie Dave” Lobato, Tanya Lobato and Jayden Leggett, Reporters

Dark Horse Comics readers would definitely be aware of how big a name Scott Allie is within the industry. As editor and writer for Dark Horse, Scott has had many years of experience within the industry that we all love so much, and in the lead up to Melbourne’s Oz Comic-Con which was recently held on June 30 and July 1, ComicsOnline’s “Aussie Dave” and Tanya Lobato were given the chance to interview Scott, resulting in some really insightful inside tips regarding the comic book industry.

ComicsOnline: How did you get into writing comics?

Scott Allie: It was writing comics that I was focused on in the beginning. When I was a kid I didn’t understand it as a career path at all, I just knew that I liked doing it. My first actual job out of college was for a literary magazine that allowed me to really focus on writing, I wasn’t editor there but it really put my mind on to writing and I saved a lot of money during that job and left it to self-publish. I was self-publishing an anthology of horror comics that I wrote myself, drew some of and had other people draw parts of the stories. So I was writing a lot and really focussed on that, and it was that work of putting those self-published books out that got me the job at Dark Horse as an editor. For a couple of years I was editing at the assistant level and gradually moved my way up and started getting the occasional writing gig. Over the years at Dark Horse (I’ve been there eighteen years almost) there’s been more writing done at some times, and then less, and I might go a couple of years without writing anything. Lately I’ve been on a bit of a streak, co-writing a lot of stuff with Mignola on the Hellboy books and then a certain amount of Buffy related stuff that I’m either co-writing with Joss or on my own.

After being successful in the industry for so long, what sort of things inspire you now?

Inspiration is a tricky thing, but I think I’m really lucky, I’m really constantly inspired. It’s sappy and it probably just sounds like good PR but the fact is I’m just constantly inspired by a lot of creative people I work with. Working as closely as I do with Joss shows me that I always have a lot to learn about how to tell a story, how to get into character, and that inspires me, and seeing what he did with The Avengers inspires the hell out of me. And working with Mignola inspires me because he does something so unique and so wonderful. Also a lot of the younger folks that I work with, two of the most inspiring people in the world to me are Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon, a couple of artists that I’ve worked with on a number of different things, and these guys just live and breath comics, comics just ooze out of their pores. They’re so talented and they’re so incredible, and being able to work with them in any capacity is really inspiring to me. One of my co-workers here, (Sierra) Hahn, she’s my co-editor on all of the Whedon stuff, she inspires me. I’m just lucky enough to work with a lot of different talented people that kind of blow my mind on a regular basis and make me want to do more work and better work. One of my big challenges is that I can’t stop taking on more books, in the later part of this year there are some months where I have like ten or eleven books coming out that I’m editing, which is about twice what anybody in my department has, but I just keep taking on more because I’m excited about it, you know? We don’t get a percentage for the books that we put out, so I’m not greedy, it’s just that I get really excited about stuff.

Well that’s good for us fans because it means we’ve always got something exciting to look forward to.

Yeah well with all of the stuff that I’m working on now, some of it I know won’t sell very well, some of it will sell really, really well, but it’s all motivating to me for the same reason because it’s the chance to tell a story well in this particular medium that I just love.

You’ve mentioned some of the stuff that you’re working on now. Can you tell us what we can expect to see in the future from Dark Horse and from yourself?

The big monolith in front of me right now is at the end of this year we’re going to be doing a very big push for our horror line, and not much has really been said so far but we’ve announced a couple of books. Exsanguine with Tim Seeley, Colder with Paul Tobin and Juan Ferreyra, we’ve got a number of these books coming as well as The Goon which is back monthly, and a bunch of Mignola stuff is happening; Hellboy in Hell is going to kick off pretty soon. So we’ve got this real critical mass of horror books coming at the end of the year, and we’re managing a very cool campaign to promote it, and that has me excited because coming up with a good marketing campaign is a whole different kind of crazy challenge. That’s sort of the thing right now that feels very big in part because it contains most of the stuff I’m working on. Almost everything that I have this fall is somehow a part of this horror line push. And I’m getting stuff from Richard Corben, who was one of my heroes from when I was twelve years old and now I get to work with him, that’s pretty inspiring and that’s a part of what’s coming out later this year.

Over the years there have been films based on Dark Horse comics like The Mask, Alien Vs Predator etc, are there any upcoming Dark Horse films that we can look forward to?

You know there’s always a million things in the works, but the big one that’s on the schedule is R.I.P.D, I believe it’s June or July of next year but it’s one of the big summer movies next year. Ryan Reynolds, Jeff Bridges, a big special effects movie which is kind of the supernatural version of Men In Black, if I were to give you the elevator pitch. So that’s going to be big. It’s based on a graphic novel that we did a number of years ago and it’s been in the works all this time, it takes forever but now that the film’s coming next year we’re going to have a new edition of the original graphic novel, as well as a new series coming for R.I.P.D – Rest In Peace Department. It’s cool to have Jeff Bridges next to one of our movies.

Do you find yourself critical of the movie adaptations of the likes of Hellboy and Conan the Barbarian given that you are editing or writing some of those?

I don’t know, you can’t help but be too close… it’s such a different animal. It’s not just that you’re doing it in a different medium, it’s that you’re trying to achieve something really different. So I think what Guillermo Del Toro did with the two Hellboy movies is really cool, very different from what we do. I’m glad he did it, because my god nothing sells comics better than having a movie out there! Having two movies really raised the bar for the comics and it exposed the character to a lot more people, and that is great. The first movie Guillermo I think was trying to stay pretty close to the source material, then the character he had developed in the first movie took a different path in the second movie, and so even though when Golden Army came out there were certain similarities with what we were doing in Darkness Calls and Wild Hunt, it’s such a different thing. I will say the one moment in one of those movies that blew my mind was when I was watching the first film, and early in the movie you see this cutaway to deep space where the Ogdru Jahad was floating out in space. To see that on film was a very cool moment.

Being such a big name in the comic book industry, do you have any advice for writers out there looking to make their mark in the comic book scene?

I’ve actually got tonnes of advice in that department but I actually just tweeted or blogged tips for writers or artists who are trying to pitch stuff at conventions, and there’s also something on the Dark Horse blog that I wrote a year ago about that. You know, it’s incredibly hard. The number one thing if you’re trying to make an impression, if you’re trying to get your stuff noticed, be really professional. That should be obvious, that should be common sense but you’d be amazed at how informally and slack-ass people are when they come to show you their work. Treat it like a job interview because best case scenario: that’s what it is. Treat it like that. The other thing is you’ve got to be amazing because the market is so competitive right now, there’s a relatively small number of books that really pay the bills, and a lot of books are being done where guys have to write and draw the stuff practically for free. So if you want to make a living doing this you’ve got to be better than lots and lots and lots of people who are already out there working. It’s very competitive so don’t just think that you’re better than some of the shitty guys out there in the industry, you’ve got to be able to compete with the best and you’ve got to hold yourself to a really, really high level or no-one’s ever going to take a chance on a new guy.

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