Jason Thibault

The EmeraldAge staff would like to thank Jason for taking the time do this interview with us. Jason is the founder and co-owner of Optimum Wound Comics.

EA: How did you and the others of Optimum Wound Comics meet?

Richard and I met in Montreal, Quebec 15 years ago at a comic store that we both shopped at. We hit it off right away. I ended up being the best man at his wedding. We didn’t decide to create a publishing company until 2005 when I had already moved out to Vancouver, BC . I met Sean four years ago here in town. And our relationship with Danijel Zezelj began over email as he lives in New York .

EA: What challenges does your team face working together given your distance from one another?

We have to communicate a lot by email. Sometimes it takes a day for a question to get answered bur generally it’s not a problem. It will start to get expensive if we decide to attend conventions as a group.

EA: What are you thoughts on the state of retail comic books vs digital comics?  And what is your thoughts about illegal down loading of comics?

Digital comics are definitely the future. I personally will always want to hold a printed edition in my hands but webcomics have been an amazing tool to get thousands of people to read our various series. I can only imagine how much harder this would have been without the internet. As for illegal downloading I imagine it hurts the major publishers and probably helps the independents as far as getting the word out.

EA: Who were some of your influences when you were getting started?

Our collective influences have been artists such as Mike Mignola, Kent Williams, John Van Fleet, Jae Lee, Richard Corben, Simon Bisley, Jorge Zaffino, Ash Wood, Sean Phillips and Tim Bradstreet. Writing-wise Rich and I tend to gravitate towards crime novelists like James Ellroy, Andrew Vachss and David Peace.

EA: Any artists or writers you would like to work with?

I’d love to work with an established crime or splatterpunk-type writer. Ken Bruen, George Pelecanos or David Peace would be amazing, but they don’t work in comics. As far as artists I’d love to work with Nathan Fox. www.foxnathan.com

EA: Do you guys attend comic conventions?

We had a table set up at the Emerald City Comicon in Seattle (2007) but there’s no plans to attend any this year other than local ones in Vancouver . We’re going to hit the circuit a lot harder in 2009. We desperately want to get to the New York Comicon in the spring and back to Emerald City shortly after that. Living up in the Pacific Northwest of Canada makes it prohibitively expensive to travel to a lot of cons in the US but we’ll improve our record next year.

EA: Does Optimum Wounds Comics support you or do you work another job?

No sir we all have regular day jobs. We’re trying to put as many things in place in order to do this full time. But up until now our day jobs pay for our publishing endeavours.

EA: What title at Optimum Wounds Comics would you like to see made into a movie first?

I’d love to see Richard’s Memento Mori made into a movie. That whole comic is a love letter to 1980’s & 90’s genre films and comics. It would probably work the best cinematically. Soldiers versus zombies, rogue agents and pedophiles.

EA: What inspires your work, such a type of music or movie?

1970’s Italian & Japanese gangster films, spaghetti westerns, Takashi Miike’s movies, Miles Davis, hardcore, grindcore and dub music. It all seeps in there.

EA: What can fans of Optimum Wounds look forward to in the coming months?

Memento Mori Volume 1 will be the next graphic novella released into stores, my webcomic Battles Without Living Witnesses will finally start updating several times a week again and more Danijel Zezelj is on the way.

Thanks again Jason for answering our questions.

-EmeraldAge.net