Chris Hunt on Carver

Carving a Niche For Himself

Carver: A Paris Story is the first long form comic from creator Chris Hunt, published by Z2 Comics. Tripwire caught up with him to find more about this noirish series with an adventure twist

TW: Carver is obviously a very personal project. How do you feel now that it is finally out?

CHRIS HUNT: Honesty I feel an overwhelming sense of relief. CARVER as a project has been years in the making for sure, but the release of issue one is more about answering a ten-year-old question which is “Can I do this?”

I’ve wanted to make comics since I was 9 years old when I read my first comic by, well, Paul Pope. I tried to talk myself out of it for years but in 2005, I couldn’t lie to myself anymore and began pursuing the endeavor in earnest. I still remember that day I said to myself, this is my path now. In hindsight, it’s almost like Jules saying in Pulp Fiction that he’s going to walk the earth like Caine in Kung Fu. I was this 20-year-old kid in Idaho who didn’t know anything about making comics, and didn’t go to art school, but basically I decided that I’m going to figure this out. Looking back on it even I think it sounds crazy hahaha.

And to tell you the truth, I never really thought I was going to succeed in getting my work to this level of recognition. I knew the odds were against me and that it was going to take a LONG time, so I kind of just dug in for a long winter, so to speak. So holding CARVER in my hands in New York City is basically confirmation that I wasn’t insane for dedicating a third of my life to just getting to the starting line. There’s still a lot to be done though. Truthfully this is the actual beginning. It just took ten years to get to the starting line. So I’m excited now because I feel like I can dedicate my time to working now instead of working to prove myself.

TW: Who are your biggest influences in terms of writing and art?

CH: Well when it comes to writer/artists in comics, again, Paul [Pope] is up there at the top for me. Beyond his work though, Paul is an interesting intersection of other creators, so people like Frank Miller, Moebius, Hugo Pratt are also up there for me. I’m also heavily influenced by Hemingway. I admire his desire to find the truest sentence, the purest way to tell his story. I’ll ditch backgrounds whole hog sometimes if I want someone to pay attention to someone’s face. He was bold in style and execution.

TW: How did Paul Pope did get involved (he drew the short story at the back)?

CH:Well Paul and I are close friends, and he’s been aware of Carver as a character since its inception. I think it just came about pretty organically. He mentioned that he would willing to do a cover for issue one, then we kept talking and thought it would be fun to collaborate on a short back up.

I’m very fortunate that I’ve had the chance to get to know the person who inspired me to go down this path, but we became friends a long time ago. I would never have asked him to do the cover because I don’t want to commoditize the friendship, especially when there’s such a disparity between the points we are in our respective careers. Really at the end of the day, Paul is less a straightforward mentor, and is in fact just a very generous, very considerate friend who shares his knowledge and experience.

TW: Pope is obviously a big influence on your work. How did it feel to have him contribute to the first issue?

CH: I already owe so much to Paul, as I said above. He has been incredibly generous with his time and guidance that it’s overwhelming to see his touch on this book. I wear my heart on my sleeve generally. I mentioned above it’s a huge relief to have this out now and hear how positive people are towards it but the most special moment was when I first saw the pages for the backup.
I was chatting with a friend who works at a bar/coffee shop around the corner from my apartment in Manhattan one night. In the middle of the conversation my phone vibrated and I saw that Paul had sent me a text. I opened it up and it was three photos snapped of the backup pages on his drawing table. I just started crying. It was overwhelming. Even now I can’t really describe to you what it feels like to see something I created, be reinterpreted by the person who inspired me to be here in the first place. I am humbled, and I am grateful and also tearing up again as I write this. I think that’s the best I’ll be able to say about that.

TW: You have mentioned that it is your homage to Corto Maltese. Should we expect it to be a rollicking adventure story rather than a noir tale as the series progresses?

CH: Definitely. I’ve said before that the noir vibe was more an accident than anything on my part. It was definitely an influence, but it’s more a result of wanting to find a unique way to introduce this character in a way that is a bit anachronistic. Without giving too much away, in many ways, Francis Carver is like the character of “Buck” in The Call of The Wild.

So by the time we catch up with him at the beginning of A Paris Story, Carver is essentially a wolf pretending to be a dog when we meet him in issue one. I felt like doing it this way was going to give me a chance to show different facets of him before he went full-on Indiana Jones or Corto Maltese. I wanted readers to feel like they “got” this guy before it turned into full adventure mode so that they could get a feel for where he came from and what shaped him, and in turn make their own judgment about the morality of the character.

TW: Is Carver an ongoing series or a miniseries?

CH: Well that depends on how this first series is received over all. There are two more self-contained arcs that would tell the full story of “Francis Carver” and his path back to redemption into the beginning of WW2. I also would love to tell stories along the timeline before A Paris Story with Carver and with other characters too. To me, it’s its own universe that can branch in multiple ways and in multiple mediums too, and I’d love to keep working on it for the rest of my life after the main 3 acts. Really at the end of the day, a new book by a new creator is a hard sell, not to mention we’re talking about a black and white comic, written and drawn for a European sensibility in a genre that isn’t exactly thriving. So it’s going to be hard to establish an audience for something like CARVER, which is just the honest truth. I get the feeling though that it may be possible, so we’ll see. I’d love to keep it going.

TW: As your first long form project rather than a short story or one, was it daunting to creating a comic series?

It was more challenging to distil it down honestly. I originally saw it as a graphic novel, but Josh Frankel of Z2 convinced me it would work as a periodical. Which does make sense honestly given the throwback nature of the story. The character’s backstory alone probably could fill a couple trades if I were to sit down and script it out and draw it. I think that’s the mistake a lot of storytellers make starting out. They want to do their magnum opus first, so they sit down and are trying to tell a 400-page story. I recognized pretty early on that even if I had the giant story, that I needed to trim it down to parts, and/or phases of the full story. I’m not writing and drawing The Lord of The Rings hahaha. I’m writing and drawing an old school adventure story.

Carver: A Paris Story is out now

Z2 Comics