Curt Pires is on a meteoric rise this past year with critical hits “POP” and “Mayday”, two books that hold a scathing mirror up to culture and celebrity and deliver on every side.  We at Bloody have been really impressed with both series, calling “POP” “profound” and “as visually spectacular as it is smart”.  This summer Pires begins two new series’ that will no doubt hit as many high points.  From the solicitations:

“The Tomorrows” – They told you the counterculture was dead. They were wrong. Welcome to the new reality. A bold new speculative-fiction comic from the mind of writer Curt Pires, with each issue illustrated by a different brilliant artist!  The future: Art is illegal. Everything everyone ever posted online has been weaponized against them. The reign of the Corporation is quickly becoming as absolute as it is brutal—unless the Tomorrows can stop it.

“The Fiction” – Four childhood friends discover a box of strange books that, when read aloud, can transport them to the beautiful, imaginary worlds described within. But when one of them goes missing, the others vow never to reveal where they’ve been and what they’ve seen. Years later, when one of the remaining kids, now an adult, also mysteriously disappears, it’s up to the last two of the group to dig up their dusty books to find him and finally figure out what happened to their friend all those years ago.

Bloody Disgusting – I’m glad to see you are starting a long-form series, why is “The Tomorrows” the right story to develop an ongoing around?

Curt Pires – The Tomorrows is the right book to build an ongoing around because it’s conceptually huge. It’s the biggest story I’ve ever tackled in so many ways. I don’t think the scope of the book even becomes clear to people until issue five of this first arc? But it’s huge. I’ve spent like two or three years playing with the idea, and just finally gotten to a point where

I feel like I’m in a place where I can execute it on both a craft and logistics level.

I’ve said this before in another interview but writing The Tomorrows is kind of like just diving into the ideaspace and surfacing and trying to make sense of it all. It’s immersing myself in all the ideas and narratives I see circling me and forming something cohesive from it.

BD – “Tomorrows” is noticeably more optimistic than your other recent work, emphasizing the role we all play in creating our future.  Does this series represent a shift in your own perspective of the path mankind is on?

CP – we all play in creating our future.  Does this series represent a shift in your own perspective of the path mankind is on? I don’t know if I feel like mankind is on that path,but some of us are. I look at most people and I don’t even think they’re aware that that’s a path that exists or that is even necessary. That said I am hopeful when I look around, I see a few people, a small group of us realizing that the world is broken and the only way it’s going to get fixed is if we fix it. A lot of the book is me trying to write my way out of a bleak future we’re heading towards. already since I started writing the book reality has gotten better

So It’s not too late. I don’t think it’s ever too late.

BD – We’ve reached the point of no return in a lot of ways with regards to privacy, virtual identities, and corporate control.  How do we adapt and make the best of a world that feels already too far gone?

CP – It’s this give and take really, they keep advancing the surveillance technology, but we–the people fighting against it also haven’t just given in I think one thing we have that the corporations and the governments don’t have is absurdity. Get drunk. Through a brick through a corporate window. Throw a rave in an all night banking centre. Fuck in public. Piss on a bank. Get fucking crazy. They can’t own you.

BD – The opposing forces in “TOMORROWS” are business and art: the evil corporate magnate, who is developing a mind control program, has to deal with the free thinking artists standing in his away.  Do you see enterprise as the enemy of expression?  

CP – That’s complicated. It’s not black and white, it’s grey. But often the people with the money who are funding the art–the money men, often don’t get the creative process and want to step in and interfere, create fires, just so they can feel involved. Other times there’s executives who know to just get the fuck out of the way and let the art happen. If we’re talking on a very broad level, I do think corporations are the enemy of art. Big

Banks don’t care about making the world more beautiful, or sustainability, they just want their money and they want it now.

BD – Who are the modern day “Tomorrows” for you?  The people that reject the homogenization of culture and oppose government and corporations overstepping their bounds.

CP – Myself. First off. My friends. My friend–amazing writer,  Jordan Van Niekerk, definitely. Gaspar Noe. Andy Warhol. Nic Refn. Any artist who makes what they want in a fearless manner. You don’t even have to be an artist I think. You just have to be someone who embraces the ethos. Who sees how fucked the system is. I’m inviting every reader to be a Tomorrow. Shit, by virtue of picking up the book they are already sort of a part of it. I think we can all be Tomorrows. The invitation’s open. Let’s get weird.

BD – “The Fiction” has such a tidy premise yet the potential to go absolutely anywhere, knowing you I expect things to get pretty dark before it’s over.  How would you describe the tone of “The Fiction”

CP – It’s a double-edged sword of fantastical beauty and deep horror. It’s a lot like real life in that regard. But yeah, it’s me exploring wondrous highs, the peak of imagination, and also crushing lows–the loss of a friend, the dissolution of a family.

BD – One of the themes you are dealing with in this series is trauma, and more specifically childhood trauma.   I think this metaphor of escapism through books will connect with a lot of people in a very visceral way.  Was it your intention to speak to trauma survivors through “The Fiction”?  

CP – My first and foremost goal with THE FICTION was just to make sense of the story that kept coming to me. The Trauma angle? Once I started writing it and realize it was there? Definitely. That said–I don’t necessarily want to jump in and say that this angle is going to work for everyone. The thing about trauma is it’s different for each and everyone one of us. I think we all leave our childhood with some scars. Some of us get small ones, easy to hide, others get absolutely put through the ringer. I want to show love and sympathy for everyone though. The world needs more kindness.

BD – Along the same lines, the themes in “The Fiction” are more acute than the sort of social and cultural themes you’re dealing with in “TOMORROWS”, “POP”, and “Mayday”, how has the experience of writing “The Fiction” been different from your other work?

CP – I think THE FICTION definitely treads new ground in terms of my oeuvre. The Fiction is still just as heady as those other books, it’s just concerning itself with more metaphysical and philosophical content. It’s an exploration of imagination more than anything. Writing The Fiction has been a lot of fun though, that’s for sure.

BD – “The Fiction” it strikes me as a fairly more personal series than your other recent work.  What are some books that really sucked you into another world when you were a kid.

CP – Trying to think. Ender’s Game. That’s before I realized Orson Scott Card was a raging homophobe. That said, like Brian K Vaughan has said before, that book taught me how to separate the author from the work. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Neil’s work is actually a pretty big influence on me on the whole.  Harry Potter was big for me too when I was younger. I was definitely part of a generation of children who got wrapped up in that phenomenon. I love JK Rowling. The universe she created in those books was so wonderful.

“The Tomorrows” will be available from Dark Horse Comics July 8th

and

“The Fiction” will be available from BOOM! Studios June 17th