“She’s totally true to the spirit of the era” Mask of the Red Panda writer Gregg Taylor discusses how to write the perfect female sidekick (and also get the girl)
What do you think being a comic brings to the characters that you couldn’t get on radio and in book? And how much influence did Dean Kotz have on the look and feel of the book?
GT: I won the freaking lottery when I found Dean for this book. It baffles me. When we started out, I did write a long, rambling description of certain things that we know about the characters, things that had already been established in terms of how things work and how things look, and we had some good back-and-forth on that… mostly because I wanted this story to work in the overall continuity. I always feel cheated as a reader when the “reset” button gets pushed, and it isn’t what we wanted to do at all. But then the pages started coming back from Dean and they were eerie. There was an early page that came back with the two heroes in their lair and it was note perfect. It was exactly how I had always seen it. So of course, feeling very clever, I looked at my script and notes to see how I had conveyed this information in a few words, and I really hadn’t said anything about it at all. He had just known. And after that I stopped feeling like this was all something that I was making happen by myself. Dean had all the freedom in the world to interpret the look and feel of the book, because it turned out to be much easier to stay out of his way and let him be brilliant. I never had to wonder if the next set of pages would be on the mark or not, because we were very much in sync with where this story wanted to live and how to get it there.
March 30, 2013 @ 1:48 pm
I’ve been following the audio drama from the get go and feel that Greg has really set a milestone on the Internet Audio-drama map! He’s right about the comic book industry being more “set up” and I hope this gets him a bit more cash and renown, but I hope he never lets the AD go by the wayside, .. at least till he’s honestly finished with it. The comic books are great, but MANY great comic books have come and gone, and my feeling is that the frequency of the coming and going of good digital books will be even faster than those of paper pulp. Congratulations Greg, and my best to the whole Decoder Ring Theatre crew!! .. and yes, I’m a monthly donor!
News: IDW to release MonkeyBrain's Mask of the Red Panda in printPipedream Comics
December 6, 2013 @ 7:36 pm
[…] If you want to find out more then read our exclusive interview with Gregg Taylor discussing the laun… […]
Our top 10 favourite MonkeyBrain Comics available on ComiXology
July 9, 2014 @ 12:19 pm
[…] #2 The Mask of The Red Panda Gregg Taylor and Dean Kotz’s Mask of the Red Panda is another glorious flashback, this time to the world of pulp heroes and radio serials but with a very contemporary feel and a generous dose of supernatural elements. August Fenwick is a billionaire playboy by day and a masked detective by night (so far so familiar) but where the Red Panda truly excels is with sidekick Kit Baxter aka the Flying Squirrel. Baxter is much more than just another damsel in distress or sidekick in strife though, giving the book a plucky central character that is the real heart of the story. With strong Will Eisner inspired artwork from Kotz to go with Taylor’s well worked scripts (he has been refining the Panda for many years as a podcast and radio serial with his Decoder Ring Theatre group) Mask of the Red Panda feels like a book that has been running for years the characters are that well realised and so after it’s initial 3 issue run, this is one book we cannot wait to return later in the year. Read our exclusive interview with writer Gregg Taylor here […]