Tomorrow (February 18), the new comic Budding Crisis hits Comixology. Created by MK Reed and Jonathan Hill, the book is “a horticultural fantasy series about the depletion of a precious resource and the most powerful material in existence.” But what does that mean? What does that meeeean?
Well, we’ll tell you what that means. Or rather, Reed and Hill will, as Comic Book Club exclusively presents a conversation between the two, talking about the world-building in the new series:
Best Buds Make Comics: Budding Crisis Creators Talk World Inspiration
By MK Reed and Jonathan Hill
Creators MK Reed and Jonathan Hill talk about the collaborative process of building the world of their new project, Budding Crisis.
Jonathan: So I thought we might start at the beginning with when you were first coming up with the idea for Budding Crisis and the world it inhabits. Can you talk about what you were thinking?
MK: Well, so the premise is that it’s a world that’s about to lose its most valuable resource. I was thinking of a post-industrial world and what it would actually look like after the end of gasoline, not in like a Mad Max sense where it just all burned to the ground and fought over, but in the actual reality of people continuing to live in that place and keep it habitable. Like if someone who got to make wishes about the environment actually got to overrule lobbyists, what would they maybe do? What if we got to not look at energy infrastructure and it wasn’t crowded into urban centers where it affects people’s health? What if chemical waste HAD to be actually dealt with all the way down, maybe we’d just stop making a whole bunch of things. If there just isn’t petroleum, it hard mode removes a bunch of things like plastics and synthetic fibers. And you’re left with natural fibers, clay pottery, and big stuff that doesn’t move very far from where it’s made unless someone really wants it to. Architecture gets more localized to deal with different climates without AC. It looks like an older world.
Jonathan: There was a note in the brief you shared that was basically like ‘imagine it’s Star Trek TNG and them visiting a planet that appears to be an agrarian society’ and you mention if it was filmed for TV they would use a Napa winery and remove all the modern signage. That really stood out to me. It made me think of those 90s TV shows and how they had limited resources and budget to try to convey the world. It might not be obvious, but that ethos was stuck in my head while I was working.
MK: I maybe also took into consideration that our corporate overlords also run a TV studio, and local location shooting might be a built-in feature if anyone were to pitch it up the ladder.
Jonathan: Ha ha. The brief also mentioned this post-industrial world that maybe had remnants of that industrial world, but when I started sketching I kind of forgot to include that. It makes me think about how it has kind of been like a game of telephone. We go back and forth, but some things get lost, but maybe it’s like an editing process in a way? But we’ve worked together so many times and have known each other for so long, it just becomes part of the process?
I guess I’m also curious, has this process changed how you write the later issues? Like does seeing how it comes to life in the art change how you see the world as you’re writing?
MK: Oh totally. For a long time it was just stuff in my head, and I had a vague idea of how I’d draw it or how to describe the vibe to someone else, but it wasn’t until you started sketching and inking things that it really was more solid. And then again when Allie came in with the color, it was really much more solid from what I’d imagined, it suddenly had a whole new depth. And then seeing what you guys responded to in terms of characters gave me a better idea of what to run with, and then other stuff could get dropped without really feeling like I was losing anything.
Jonathan: Another big thing that I wanted to focus on was making Budding Crisis less traditional Euro-centric fantasy and less, well, white. I absolutely hate how homogenized fantasy has become and I get so excited when I see people doing different things with it, which is happening more and more. I spent my teen years living in Kuwait, going to an international school, getting to travel around that part of the world, and there’s always been a love for Middle-Eastern and Mediterranean design and aesthetic that the city of Cygnus seemed like a great opportunity to bring that inspiration.
MK: Yeah, I think like the first game I ever GMed for you, in like 2012, you played a Sikh fighter and we kept having to figure out how that worked in the world, just in personal ways to your character. So I know that’s always going to be something you’ll bring to a project, in part just to create a world with more depth beyond ye tired olde Englande renfair tropes. And while I haven’t quite decided in the text yet whether or not I want this to be a future Earth or just some made up place with a different history, it’s made me question where it would be if it were our future reality. Decentering it from Europe poses more interesting options, even if it ends up being its own world.
Jonathan: Can we talk a little about how much fun it is to work together again and how well we riff on ideas together? I love writing and drawing my own projects, but I forgot how much fun it is to work with you. We mentioned the back and forth earlier, but I just love how there’s this process of everyone adding to the ideas and it ends up as this thing that no one could have done on their own.
Like from you to me to Allie, everyone is riffing off of each other and adding a new layer and we get to see this world come to life in what feels like real-time and it’s such a beautiful amazing thing.
MK: It’s been such a long time as just something in my head, like I came up with it in roughly 2019, and then between pitching and getting approval during COVID, that added some time. Then as soon as it got approved my spouse and I moved to Seattle, and I dealt with a bunch of medical stuff for awhile, so it was just like, this story that was in my head that I had a few scripts for that I couldn’t get going and it just dragged. And then that changed when your schedule opened up when you finished the next Lizard Boy book, suddenly I got to talk to you about it and get something BACK from someone that was solid and added to the story and the world. It was no longer like, let’s work on a story about a world disappearing while society is maybe actually crumbling apart and you can’t see anyone you care about too.
Bringing Allie into it, who you’d worked with before but I hadn’t, she’s really added a great layer to it all. I feel like she’s our first reader who’s not involved with the script itself- she reads it, but she’s the first person whose input isn’t what happens in the story here in words or pictures, but is more like, how do I get the most out of what’s here. And because I don’t know her as well I don’t know what she’s going to respond to, and also I’m not putting things in specifically for her, but finding out what clicks with her is fun for me.
The second issue got a lot less depressing and became more about finding ways to reconnect with old friends and enjoy each other again, and on some level that has to be related. I threw out a whole other draft of that one because the vibe ended up just feeling off. You were drawing the first issue already when I decided to redo it. I sent it to our editor Greg, who edited Americus too, and realized it felt off right after I sent it over, and by the time he was ready to give me notes I started our call with “So the issue is just talking and I think I should rewrite it so it’s not such a bummer.”
Jonathan: It makes me think how we’ve known each other for almost twenty years. We’ve collaborated in so many ways on lots of different things. This is actually our third major project together. But having this conversation now reminds me back to when we were first starting, working on our first book together and how different things were. We had both worked on our own comics, but had never worked with someone else. So much of it was learning to work together. I always use the example that we were like two strangers learning to dance with each other and kind of clumsily stepping on each other’s toes.
MK: Yeah, there was definitely an ego death I had to go through when we started and learn some humility & that the words I wrote at 26 years old weren’t 1000% genius. But learning to trust what another person could do with things when I let go of more was great. You always came up with better visual solutions. Part of the joy of you joining was that I knew that I could catch you up to speed on it and then you would just come up with better visuals than I would. So I can move on to the meat of what’s happening in the scene and trust you and Allie with what a hat is gonna look like or something that isn’t an upfront part of the story. You’ll decide to give someone a hat and then it ends up being part of their role and defining something else in the world that I haven’t thought about. But it’s also you deciding to draw another panel or two than what I put in the script so this gets expressed better or the action reads better. It’s so delightful to get thumbs and inks and colors back and be surprised at how something looks and reads. It’s really been keeping the whole process so fresh. It’s nice to get that!
Budding Crisis #1 hits Comixology Originals tomorrow (February 18). Check out a preview of the new book, below – and click for larger versions:
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