Chip Zdarsky, David Brothers & Marcus To on Weaving Chronological Chaos in TIME WAITS

If Time Waits #1 proved anything, the past can't be forgotten...even if it's in the future. The sci-fi blockbuster from Chip Zdarsky (Batman, Daredevil), David Brothers (Mangasplaining), and Marcus To (Guardians of the Galaxy) hops timelines and blows as consequence visits action. This harrowing truth becomes a emergent threat to Blue, a former mercenary from a dystopian future seeking refuge in his past, and our present. He's turned his back on his life as a time-traveling soldier of a private sector militia, cultivating a new life in small-town Americana with local Sheriff Grace. 

But Blue's former employers haven't forgotten about their wayward asset...and a secret he's stolen. In response, Blue's former soldiers in arms storm his pacified life, forcing him back into brutal action. 

Ernie Estrella grilled the creative team about their cinematic influences and where the story's headed into its second issue—out 11/13. 

Time Waits #2 Open-Order Cover A by Marcus To 

Chip, David and Marcus, how has the DSTLRY experience been for you? I'm mostly speaking about working with the increased page size, drawing double-page spreads at this size and pacing a story when you have that much real estate and the extra pages. 

Chip Zdarsky: It’s a much nicer rhythm for writing. You can dig into characters a lot more, which is nice! Also, I feel slightly less bad when I get to the seventh panel on a page.

David Brothers: The extra pages are a gift. I've seen it in action in manga for years, and it was fun to figure out how to spend the real estate. Forty-some pages is a good length for a comic to feel dense without feeling compressed. That's a tough balance to strike, but totally worth the extra brain power.

Marcus To: While I have worked with this size before on personal projects, working on the increased size of the DSTLRY format has been a fun challenge. For the artist, there is a lot more drawing to be done to fill out the scenes but with that you can play with different layouts and story telling techniques that can better suit the format.

Time Waits #2 Open-Order Cover F by Rafael Albuquerque

Did you try anything new/different or experimental with the DSTLRY format that was successful, or unsuccessful and needed to adust?

Chip Zdarsky: Less about experimenting and more about letting myself get used to the extra space, I think.

Marcus To: I wouldn’t say I tried anything experimental. I tried to study more European comics and see how they told their stories in that format. Trying to tell a story visually in a more wide screen format is always a fun exercise as I am normally working on the north American format which is more narrow and more suited for pinup-like work.

David Brothers: Similarly, I was mostly thinking about pacing and rhythm, and how to make the action as intimate as we could get it for the story. Using the big space for a tight story seemed like a fun way to flesh out certain parts of that story that would go unseen with shorter issues.

Time Waits #2 1/25 Incentive Cover D by Rossi Gifford

Chip and David, you're listed as co-writers, could you explain more about how the two of you came up with the story, who wrote what, and what the collaborative process was like? 

Chip Zdarsky: I think maybe I had the germ of the idea, but after doing the Mangasplaining podcast with David for so long, I knew that this would work for both of our sensibilities. I’m not used to co-writing and generally avoid it like the plague, but this was a really great process. We would hop on Zoom and work out story beats and then split the scenes between us to write. Afterward we’d massage it all together so it worked as a whole. My favorite part was that, usually when I get stuck on something, I’m just stuck. But here we were stuck together and could help each other get out of our individual messes.

David Brothers: I'm pretty sure you won't be able to guess who did what, though I did figure out a clue while getting the lettering script together for issue one. My favorite kind of collaboration is when we all go off to do our parts as best we can alone and then come together to make it better when we're done. I think we definitely met that here, and again when Marcus and Marvin, and then Matt and Ariana, got their turn too. While writing, Chip and I gassed each other up, but I think we also did a good job of realizing when we'd drifted too far while riffing on an idea. It was really smooth, like he said, but I was still unprepared for just how fast he writes.

Baker says something interesting while talking about his parents in the first issue: "Everything happens in its own time, not ours," perhaps as words of wisdom or a harbinger. I know that I'm calling out this one instance, but it’s tough to ignore whenever someone mentions time in any way, like in panel one, page one. How closely should readers be looking at any mention of time?

Chip Zdarsky: It’s definitely a theme! 

David Brothers: Speaking of themes, have you ever "spent time" with your loved ones? It's something we all love to do, but taken literally, or maybe as originally intended, it sounds like spending a finite resource, doesn't it? Which means that at some point, time will run out. The fun thing about stories like TIME WAITS is that there are all types of places to have fun and tease while we explore these themes.

Marcus To: I think this theme resonated with me a lot lately. Time really is a finite resource and many people try their best to control it.

Time Waits #2 1/10 Cover Incentive Cover C by Sweeney Boo

When I look at Grace in her Sheriff uniform, I can't help but think of Richa Moorjani who played Police Deputy Indira Olmstead on the latest season of Fargo, especially in the way she has a nurturing, casual way with Duke. What was the inspiration for her character and how much does she know enough about it that will keep her agency throughout the series? 

Chip Zdarsky: I’ve never seen Fargo! I know, I know, I have to. With Grace I really like the idea of someone who knows what they want, to balance out Blue’s journey of trying to find himself. She’s young and, much like Baker, inherited her position. But she still has to keep proving herself.

David Brothers: That season of Fargo was pretty good. While writing Grace, I thought a lot about some of the young women I grew up around in Georgia, who already had a very firm idea of what they wanted to be when they were grown-up and I was still trying to figure out if I liked SNES or PlayStation better. I always kind of envied their confidence and foresight, so I tried to think of her from that perspective. She knows she's good enough. She just needs a chance to put what she wants to happen in motion.

Marcus To: While drawing Grace, I always felt like she was the anchor for Blue and this story and what makes everything that he does matter.

A lot of time is spent building up Grace and Duke, it feels as if they're going to get equal billing to Blue. Is that safe to say?

Chip Zdarsky: This may sound weird, but I don’t really believe in the idea of secondary characters? Every character has to want something, has to have a journey.

David Brothers: If Grace and Duke were flat, it'd raise the question of why Blue sticks around, why he isn't anywhere else doing anything else. We want the readers to believe in Blue, and that means they have to believe in what Blue wants to believe in, too.

Time Waits #1 Interior Art by Marcus To 

Would you say that Blue is a man who lives in the past through his mistakes and failures, lives in the present, or is more a man working for the future? And what category would you put yourselves in?

Chip Zdarsky: I think he lives in the past and is struggling to live in the present. And Grace is talking about the future when he’s still trying to catch up. I live roughly one week ago when my next script is due.

Marcus To: I live in the past a lot, and am ignoring the future at times. I am however trying to live in the present as much as my brain will allow.

David Brothers: Tomorrow is someone else's problem and I somehow survived yesterday, so it's all present for me!

Chip, you've stated in the announcement of Time Waits that you and David share a love of stories where a man who's built a peaceful life for himself is pulled back into violence. One could make an international film festival created to show just these films. What are your top three and why?

Chip Zdarsky: A History of Violence is number one. It’s very easy to see Viggo Mortensen as a peaceful man with the ability to do great harm. Unforgiven is another one, and a smart one to play with Eastwood’s past roles. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also put The Equalizer on this list. Denzel Washington’s calmness in any scene lets you know that he’s the most dangerous man in the room

David Brothers: It's one of those types of stories that's great from any angle. The fun is seeing their competence at work, right? Seeing the rust come off, or seeing the expertise shine. In Lady Snowblood and Kill Bill, Yuki and The Bride are the "violence from the past" haunting men who thought they escaped from fate. The best Bourne movies are about a man discovering that he isn't as peaceful as he assumed, and then fighting to be left alone. Get Carter paired the almighty "one last job" and was set just before the character retired, a real fun twist.

Choosing a top-three is always fraught, but I'll recommend Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past any day of the week. It's maybe my most favorite movie ever. I think Chip has some great choices, so I'll just add on a couple more: You're Next and Hell or High Water. You're Next is a horror movie that's a thrill and a treat as it plays with this kind of trope, while Hell or High Water has two brothers turning away from their peaceful life in order to save it.

Marcus To: I’m all about the old man revenge fantasy kinda thing. Or a person unable to escape their past. Highlander is a classic, Roadhouse, Les Miserables. I dunno about my top 3 but I wanted to shout out different movies than Chip and David.

Who do you find to be more interesting of a character study, the protagonist, whether it's John Wick, Rambo, or even the family in Parasite, or the people who just keep poking at these characters until they unleash complete mayhem onto the world? Do you feel this informed you for Time Waits?

Chip Zdarsky: Both! It goes back to my “no secondary characters” rule. Blue is fascinating to me, but Wyatt’s determination is also fascinating.

David Brothers: The Invisibles features a story called "Best Man Fall," by Steve Parkhouse & Grant Morrison. Ever since I read that, I think that everyone is deserving of a character study. Everybody is interesting if you do it right.

Marcus To: I always enjoy a deep dive into why any character, or person for that matter, makes the decisions they make. Good or bad, we all justify things to ourselves and it’s always fascinating when you can unlock the why.

The last half of the first issue has to have some of the most impressive, complex, close combat choreography that I've seen in a comic. Was this staged at all in person to help build those scenes or was there another method at which Marcus used to make it feel so authentic?

Chip Zdarsky: Oh man, I think 90% of that was David. I’m a peaceful man!!

Marcus To: I’m a big '90s Hong Kong action movie fan and dabble in some martial arts myself so I do like that kind of thing. I always enjoy when I get the opportunity to choreograph a scene.

David Brothers: See page 38? I think Marcus nailed it. He excels at drawing characters that have a real weight, so I took that aspect of his work and blended it with my love of BattlARTS, a Japanese pro-wrestling group founded by Yuki Ishikawa in the '90s. I figured out the rough draft of an encounter, and Marcus choreographed it out so it would look great on the page. 

What is it that you hope to deliver with Time Waits and is there anything specific you can't wait to see readers' reactions to in regards to this first and subsequent issues? 

Chip Zdarsky: I think I just want them to really feel the characters. When you’re writing a book like this you start to really feel for the people you’re writing and you just hope that the audience will get to that stage as well.

David Brothers: This is sci-fi, but the heart of it is rooted in crime comics, so my main hope is to deliver a good yarn. If you like it and you make crime comics too, send me a link.

Marcus To: I hope people can see my work isn’t only good for superheroes. I love to tell stories and these kinds of projects are a fun way to highlight that skill.