Ivan Brandon's Working 24seven
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on August 8, 2006 Sign up now!
by Douglas Wolk, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 8/8/2006
Until recently, Ivan Brandon was best known in the comics world as the writer behind Image's quirky robots-in-New-York series, NYC Mech. Now, he's spun that premise into a full-color trade paperback anthology, 24seven (also published by Image), which made a splash at Comic-con International a few weeks ago. Edited by Brandon, 24seven features stories about Big Apple robots by a handful of very big creators (including Adam Hughes, Alex Maleev and Eduardo Risso) and dozens of up-and-coming cartoonists. And, as Brandon revealed to us, there's more to come.
PW Comics Week: How did 24seven come to be?
Ivan Brandon: Through NYC Mech, we'd gotten tons and tons of input from a lot of creators about ideas and art and covers. At San Diego last year, it became clear that there was potential for doing an anthology about robots that everybody would be excited about. It seemed like an intriguing idea to see different creators approach it from their own perspective.
PWCW: Was 24seven intended to be based on the world of NYC Mech, or was it just "robots gone wild"?
IB: Just "robots gone wild"—the idea, for me, was that each creator could interpret what the idea of robots means to them. The only guideline I set was that I didn't want any humans in the book.
PWCW: Were there any pieces that really surprised you when they came in?
IB: I've been blessed with quite a few really talented friends in comics, and I knew the book was going to end up being amazing-looking no matter what. But, for instance, Eduardo Risso does art for 100 Bullets [the Eisner Award-winning series done with writer Brian Azzarello] every single month, pencils and inks. For him to squeeze in another couple of pages for me, my assumption was—not that they would be bad pages—but they certainly wouldn't be his best pages. Still, there really are some examples [like Risso] where they are absolutely the best work the creator's ever done. They were just phenomenal, mindblowing, nothing but pure unrefined creativity. I guess people clicked with the idea of robots. Clicked more, anyway, than drawing Superman or what have you.
PWCW: Was 24seven modeled on Flight [an acclaimed full-color anthology of emerging comics artists] at all?
IB: I don't think I would've had the guts to do it without Flight. It sort of did open the door. Conceptually, beyond being a color anthology, there's not really much similarity, but we did look to Flight in terms of a bar that was raised for quality of art. Just the idea that an anthology in that context could be successful definitely inspired us. Not that I was sure that 24seven would be successful, but before Flight I'd have been sure that it wouldn't be.
PWCW: Are there any plans for a sequel?
IB: It's a monster amount of work and I sort of intended to take a little break from it myself, but then a bunch of amazing artists got in touch about doing future volumes. One of the names in particular—I'll say it for Publishers Weekly—Gene Ha wanted to do a story, and it's very hard for me to turn down an opportunity to work with Gene Ha. There aren't firm plans in place for the next volume, but I'm definitely getting another ball rolling.
