Portions of this interview have been cut and reordered for clarity and conciseness.
BlackNerdPromblems: Hello, welcome to “Black Nerd Problems Interviews Various Comic Book Folks.” My name is Mikhail Snyder, your local comic interviewer for today, and we are joined by the author and art director of HYBRED from Street Noise Books. It is my pleasure to introduce conceptual artist, culturist, and writer Jamie Mustard.
How are you doing today, Jamie?
JAMIE MUSTARD: I’m doing very well, thank you for having me.
BNP: Let’s start us off with the question of how would you describe HYBRED? Because I have my own interpretation of it, but before I spoil it for folks, how would you explain your book?
JAMIE: So, HYBRED is a science fiction, future adjacent, alternate reality version of Los Angeles, loosely based on the story of my life. It’s a metaphor for my escape from an impossible situation, and I think there was a little bit of magic in that escape, and so therefore there is magic in HYBRED. And then the last thing I would say is when you hear the word Hybrid, you think of H-Y-B-R-I-D, which means superior mixture. HYBRED, the graphic novel, is spelled H-Y-B-R-E-D, which would mean superior breeding.
And as a mixed person, I like the notion of creating, it’s almost like an origin story for a superhero, of this idea that a mixed person would be something special.
BNP: To add on that on a couple different fronts, it sort of reads like a mature children’s book in a lot of ways. It has that sort of like picture book quality as like you’re reading the text and you’re flipping through the pictures.
It’s a very surreal type of world that you’ve sort of conjured in this alternate Los Angeles, and it really is striking to read the text and see Filomena’s art is just absolutely like ethereal in a lot of ways, and it really captures a lot of this essence. And yes, as a mixed kid myself, I related to pieces of Johnny James’ ostracization from society, but being Filipino and white is probably a very different experience from being black and white. So what are your experiences diverge from Johnny’s?
JAMIE: Well, I will say, you know, I grew up in East Hollywood towards downtown Los Angeles, and mostly in mixed neighborhoods, Mexican neighborhoods, Nicaraguan neighborhoods, Armenian diaspora neighborhoods, and Filipino neighborhoods.
In this Filipino kind of Armenian Mexican neighborhood I went to, my grandmother paid for me to go to this karate class down the street, and they’re called Choi Karate. One day this guy came named Ernie Reyes, and he did a demonstration of Arnis, Filipino stick fighting, and it was one of the most rapturous things I’d ever seen at nine years old. It literally over…I just couldn’t believe it, you know. So I’ve had a kind of fascination with Filipino culture, and then years later in Hollywood, I met his son who was one of the Ninja Turtles, Ernie Reyes Jr. So I grew up with a lot of kids.
I think that society, it’s better now, but when I was a kid, there weren’t a lot of mixed people in the media. Now, it’s maybe the most really hyper common, but back when I was a kid, it was less common, and when you would see things on TV or in the movies, you wouldn’t see yourself. And so when you’re trying to process the world as an abandoned kid without parents, you’re kind of asked, it’s an identity crisis, you know.
Who am I? Is there a place for me? And ultimately, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. I don’t think that outcome would be true for a lot of people. I think a lot of people kind of just stay in that identity crisis.
But for me, it forced me to find myself within myself and not to seek external validation.
BNP: That’s very powerful, very relatable, and also brings up a lot of memories of desperately trying to find people who look like me on television and struggling at various points. Yeah.
So you mentioned that it’s sort of a metaphor, but would you classify HYBRED as more of a parable or allegory or something else entirely?
JAMIE: I think a parable or an allegory is a good way to describe it. I’m trying to, and again, some people might find it, I hope it wasn’t heavy-handed in any way. I wasn’t trying to teach anything when I wrote it.
What was so striking about me writing that thing during COVID is that I kind of wrote it as a yarn. I didn’t think of any sort of symbolism when I was writing that thing. And then all of a sudden, when we started animating it, I noticed all of these things that I was saying that I never thought of, you know, like growing up in Hollywood and calling it Follyland.
I only did that because I needed a name for it. And the Hollywood sign used to say Hollywoodland, and then the land broke off. And I thought, oh, Follyland, right? But I was not trying to say, okay, we’re making all the movies here while people are living in the slums in downtown Los Angeles that all the people in the Hollywood Hills have views of and think are beautiful, but really they’re staring at slums.
I was not thinking that and was not trying to say that, but I found as we started to illustrate the book, there was so much symbolism and it almost made me nervous because I thought, will people think that I’m preaching? So I hope you didn’t find it preachy in any way, Mikkel.
BNP: No, no. I thought one of the most interesting elements of your book was sort of like the slant of language in a lot of ways, how Casket became Casque, Hollywood became Follyland, like you said, but also had the Latins and how you spelled Filipinos as Philinos and Koreanos and Minionos, all of these things. It transformed reality in a way to give it that fantastical element. And it sort of like gave it just enough separation from the world while still grounding it. It sounds like it wasn’t entirely intentional, but like it also helped with it. And also it kind of conveyed like a childlike cadence in some ways with Johnny’s narration.
JAMIE: I love that. I love that you say that. And maybe this was one thing that probably was intentional.
And again, I don’t know how, we live in a time where there’s a lot of talk about identity, but in my mind, I was paying homage. I thought, it’s just, these are sensitive issues. I felt that one thing that maybe was intentional is I think we have a hard time looking at reality as reality, but when we can show somebody reality through the lens of science fiction, especially science fiction, that distortion that you just so intelligently mentioned allows us to stare at it.
Whereas if we’re staring at reality, if I were to bring you down to the worst part of the neighborhoods where I grew up in, you might go this, I’m uncomfortable being here. But if I can distort it a little bit, if I can change and alter the names, alter the universe, if I can create a mist of…something like a haze that you might see through a welder’s mask where you’re staring at the fire, but there’s a protection of color, you can stare at something and absorb what you wouldn’t normally want to stare at.
BNP: Kind of like how you’re told not to look at the sun during an eclipse, even though it should be fine, right? You kind of need something there to act as like a sort of distancing mechanism in a lot of ways.
JAMIE: Yeah, exactly that. I think that if you want people to see themselves, you have to create distance. And I think the best science fiction, and I’m not saying HYBRED‘s that, that’s for other people to decide, but the best science fiction that I like as a fan, which is my, it’s my favorite genre, is, and in that way, this is my first science fiction book, and I was intimidated by it.
But the best science fiction communicates something that’s unexpressed in us, in all of us, and then creates some distance so that we can see it. And in that way, it creates a release. Hopefully, it makes us feel a little bit less alone in the world because, hey, there’s somebody else, this is maybe a universal experience.
BNP: In your expert opinion then, what is the best science fiction? And you can list several, because I know picking one is a gargantuan task.
JAMIE: That’s really rough. I think, you know, for me personally, either a book that really speaks to me is Ender’s Game, and that whole series.
I think it’s an existential examination of childhood alienation. And I think that even though HYBRED is about a mixed guy, and you think, okay, I think that everyone, to some degree, no matter how or where they grow up, feels some sense of childhood alienation. And so hopefully, they’re going to be able to see themselves in this guy.
It’s just hyper-realized. I hope that answers the question.
BNP: Yes, it does. We’ll talk more about your media preferences as the interview goes along. But sticking to the process, right? So you started writing this during COVID, like the start of, peak of, was that incidental? Was that intentional?
JAMIE: It wasn’t intent. I just had extra time, you know, I wasn’t able to leave the house. It was probably middle peak. And I had had this really, this kind of highly unusual childhood where I carried a tremendous amount of shame, and I was never going to talk about it. I was almost living a double life, in a way, because it was a secret.
I just didn’t want to ever look at it. But I was feeling this need to express it. And I thought, okay, if I write it as fiction, then I can maybe start to look at my story.
And what’s so wild about that, Mikkel, is that it, I did it, I did about two thirds of the book in Italy with Francesca, and then it sat. And then I ended up having moments of bravery, decided to do a long form memoir of my life, which I thought I would never do, I was going to die with it, and then signed that contract. And then, so I was writing this incredible, this harrowing story of real life.
And then Street Noise came in and said, hey, we want this. So it was, it’s very strange, you know, they’ve both been released within months of each other.
BNP: I was curious about that, because your previous works included two nonfiction titles. I didn’t realize that, like, you had started work on this story before writing your memoir, Child X. And then, so this fictionalized memoir, in essence, like, went on pause for a little bit, as you wrote this whole other thing. And then you, that’s wild. That’s a lot.
JAMIE: Yeah, yeah. I mean, in certain ways that you can’t separate them. And I will say this about Francesca, you know, I wanted to do something different.
I was frustrated when I was looking for illustrators at the homogeneity of illustration. Even in some of the really bold and beautiful stuff, I wanted to just do something that had its own identity. And, you know, when I approached Francesca, I saw elements of what I wanted, but she’d never done a graphic novel.
She’d never really done anything dark. Her style is kind of light and airy. But there was one kind of Caravaggio like image on her Instagram.
And I just loved the way she painted light. It reminded me, the texture reminded me of this figure painter that I love called Odd Nerddrum. Many people consider him to be the world’s greatest living figure painter. And he’s dark. I mean, his work is dark. And so there was this kind of glow to her work in terms of the light that reminded me slightly of Caravaggio, but even more of Odd Nerddrum.
I use Caravaggio as an example, because people know Caravaggio and he’s Italian. But I really do think that the work that you’re seeing, one of the reasons it’s so unusual is because it’s this melding of two minds. I mean, Francesca first said no, when I asked her to do it.
She said, that’s just not anything I would ever do. And my response was, that’s why you need to do it. Because we’ll create something new between the two of us.
BNP: How much of the story was written when you approached Francesca? Or was it sort of a, like a, you had wrote two thirds of it and then worked? Or was it like a collaborative process from the onset?
JAMIE: I wrote, gosh, I’m letting you in here, Mikkel. I wrote two thirds of it. If you notice the story kind of accelerates at the end. I wrote two thirds of it, thinking maybe that was just it. You know, I saw it as kind of an origin story and I really saw it as something esoteric and maybe like five guys in turtlenecks in Brooklyn would like it. And that, you know, it was, that was who it was for.
And then I’d sent it to a colleague, and she helped me page it. And she said, “Hey bro, this is not esoteric. This is Marvel. This is a Marvel character.” And I thought, what? I mean, she saw it as a mainstream character.
And I didn’t really see that until Francesca and I started to bring it to life. And then I wanted, when I wrote that last third, I wanted it to, I really, one thing I loved about the way we did that is because I was really just trying to create an origin story for a hero. We really linger in his childhood.
We like, we take our time. We see the community and the poverty. We’re putting him in scenarios where, that are exceedingly ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. And we’re, we’re just kind of hanging out there. And, and, and I ended up really loving that because I feel like a lot of the times when you see an origin story, it’s too fast. Not always, but yeah.
So, I don’t know if I answered the question.
BNP: I think you did. I guess the other part of that is that like you mentioned that like this was like your first foray into science fiction is also your first foray into a graphic novel realm. Did you intend for this to be a graphic novel from an onset? Or was it more as like, as we’re writing the sci-fi superhero story like…oh this would be better with pictures?
JAMIE: No, I always intended it to be a graphic novel. And I always intended it to be done in this kind of bold, double spread style.
When I was a kid, I loved Conan. But one thing I’ve always felt about comic book art and graphic novel art, that’s really been a frustration for me is you have this amazing, astonishing, beautiful art. And then you draw these white bubbles in the middle of it.
And I really feel like it’s an assault on the artist. I’ve always felt that even when I was a little kid, I was like, you can’t see half this thing, right? So I thought one day, I’m going to take it. And I also feel like sometimes panels can be distracting. And said, so I thought one day, I’m going to write something without panels, and I’m not going to use big white bubbles in the middle of staggeringly, you know, really, really beautiful art. And, you know, I’ve written a second sci-fi graphic novel, which comes out in April, called War Poems. And now all of a sudden, I’m secretly working on a third developing the artwork.
BNP: Yeah, I won’t ask anything about secret projects. I know my limits. But you will working with Francesca, like side by side, it sounds like for the process of making some of these?
JAMIE: No, I mean, it was a really strange process. You know, Francesca lives in a small stone town in southern Italy. And that you know, and so we were it was a lot of zoom calls, and a lot of iteration, and a lot of me sending her photographs of Los Angeles: 1970s muscles, cars, Cholos, MacArthur Park, really create, you know, the graffiti of 1970s and 80s, Los Angeles, really trying to create this milieu.
And then you have this very emotional Italian. I mean, she’s not an emotional person in the sense that she’s, you know, a hothead, but she you could tell by her art that she sees things in the world in a very intense way.
And so, you know, you have her interpreting LA in the 1970s and 80s. And then, or and then we’re shifting the reality. And I think that that creates one of the greatest compliments that I’ve gotten on the book a few times, and I’m curious what you think of this, is people feel like they’ll say that it has kind of a hallucinatory dreamlike quality or a drunken quality or, and that, to me, was maybe very intentional, you know, in the sense that I wanted you to experience it more than read it intellectually. And I’m a big fan of Dostoevsky. And I, you know, his work is kind of more experiential to me.
And one of the things I wrestled with is to not reveal so much about what Johnny James is thinking so that you can kind of impose what he’s thinking or just see it play out in the action. And that could have been a mistake. You know, I really wrestled with did I share enough of his thoughts and did and does that, you know, I feel like it was kind of a we’re getting really into the weeds here, but it was kind of a teeter-totter.
I feel like if I’d shared more of everything going on inside him, then that surreal and drunken quality goes away.
BNP: I agree a hundred percent. And I feel like the surreal quality of the book is what drew me to it when I first opened up the PDF and saw it. Like oh this is going to be slightly different than I’m used to, and it was a very, very fun read. So what’s your favorite page that you can tell the audience about?
JAMIE: I mean, the page that comes to mind, there’s two, can I use two?
You see Johnny go through it, like in Child X, you’re in the beginning of this story, you’re seeing Johnny go through a lot of pain. But you’re also, what’s often not shown in these kind of, in very difficult poverty-stricken circumstances is there’s also community.
And that’s often not shown when we see these stories, you know, Boys in the Hood did an incredible job of that. But a lot of times that’s kind of the community part is left out. And the thing is, when you’re poor, that’s all you have. So community is amplified.
But so you’re seeing Johnny go through a lot of pain. But there’s this scene towards the end, where Johnny is expressing himself through his psionic abilities, after kind of being contained his whole life, you know, all the way up to his young adulthood.
And he is levitating in the countryside above the ground, and kind of holding back to create true harm. But there’s a rage in that moment, that I think is a kind of cathartic release, that when I see it in the book, I just kind of go, you know, but I don’t know that that’s the, so that would be the psionic expression.
And then there’s another image in the book, where Johnny’s in his studio as an adult, and he’s doing a painting. And I won’t say what the painting’s of, but the painting is of something that he, of something dark that he would have seen in the neighborhood that most of us would see as horrible. And he sees a beauty in it. The way we’d see a beauty in Braveheart, like, you know, the way we’d see beauty in a film, a battle in a film, but you wouldn’t normally see that in a painting.
And that moment of him staring at this painting, which is also a painting of rage, is isn’t in again, I’ve never thought about this before you’re bringing this out of me, Mikkel, but I feel like that is the creative catharsis of expression. And one is his expression emotionally through his psionics in that one scene of levitation. And then the other is his creative expression of, by painting this rage, he creates a mastery over self, and seeing beauty in the ugly. Rather than letting the ugly define him, he creates a mastery of himself.
BNP: That’s why I love interviewing creatives. It’s so much fun. So I have one more question for you.
And this is something that I ask everyone that I interview, no matter what venue, no matter what format, it’s a must for me. But what’s a piece of media you wish more people knew about? Not necessarily your favorite, but something you wish more people were aware of?
JAMIE: A piece of media that I wish more people are aware of? What am I moved by? I mean, how obscure do you want something? Can I say like, I don’t think graphic novels get enough attention? Do you want me to do something that really people don’t look at?
BNP: However you want to interpret the questions. I had somebody once answer this with video game manuals or an underappreciated art. And I was like, yeah, no you’re right.
JAMIE: I will say what inspires me is two things. One is interior spaces.
Like how you can make an environment theatrical. We’ve kind of grown used to boutique hotels. They become common in the 2000s. But, you know, Philippe Starck and this guy named Ian Schrager kind of invented the boutique hotel in the 1980s. They created these theatrical environments. I think the first one was the Paramount in New York.
And when I had escaped, you know, 19, 20 years of repression, I couldn’t write. I was, you know, 19-, 20-years-old, and I’d been kind of grown up in this bubble of poverty and mind control. And one day I was in Midtown in New York after I escaped to New York. And I walked into the Paramount Hotel and it kind of overwhelmed me because it was a hotel lobby that looked like a spaceship. It looked like Foundation. And I think that spaces that can create a theatrical environment and what that does to inform us spiritually, what that does to inform us emotionally, creating an entire environment in a hotel or a restaurant, something simple that we could take for granted that transports us.
Interior architecture, interior architecture, architecture celebrated. Interior architecture, I think, is unsung. And then obviously oil paintings are a huge, you know, classical painting is a huge inspiration for me.
BNP: You’re speaking my language. Before this recording started, we talked about how I’m based in St. Louis. And one of our big draws is the City Museum, which is a bunch of repurposed industrial goods made into a giant adult-sized playground.
And that sense of wonder, that idea of like a bespoke thing made from things that you were supposed to interact with and be inspired by, that is one of the things that I fell in love with my city about. So it’s really cool thinking about like physical spaces as media, because they are, they are physical things that exist that we can draw inspiration from.
JAMIE: Yeah, there’s an incredible interior designer. I mean, I love Philippe Starck, but he, but just as a designer, and one of the things he talks about in terms of his, you know, you see him as this incredibly complex French designer. And I saw this thing about his philosophy where he talks about like, he’ll take a spoon, something that doesn’t change for thousands of years. And then he’ll go and he’ll research, what did a spoon look like a thousand years ago, 2000 years ago? It looks the same, but it’s a little different.
And then he looks at a spoon today. And then he asks himself, what will a spoon look like in a thousand years? And then he’ll do that with objects that he designs. And so he creates this realistic kind of modality as a way to approach these things that become very exciting and different.
And there’s a designer that I love called Axel Vervoordt. I believe he’s Dutch. And he creates these kind of naturalistic, future. I mean, they’re very naturalistic, but they have a lot of stone and curves and minimalism, and they end up looking like naturalistic, ancient future. And I feel like…I love Axel Vervoordt.
BNP: Well, that wraps up all of the questions that I had. Is there anything you’d like to show for our audience watching?
JAMIE: Yeah. I mean, I feel just so honored to be, I never thought as a fan of science fiction, of Heinlein, of Philip K. Dick, of Asimov, that I would ever enter that space.
And so I’ve entered it, and I’m kind of continuing on. And it’s just been the most amazing experience to enter this world that I never thought I would have any personal connection to. I would always stand back and be a fan.
And I’ve just been so welcomed by this community. It’s been tremendous. And then just lastly, I just would like to thank Street Noise Books for taking a chance on a unique vision.
It’s different. And where I think other publishers would be a little bit afraid of it. Liz Francis, the brilliant Liz Francis, the publisher of Street Noise Books, who curates books in a way, I mean, she did six books last year, last year. I mean, she’s doing more and more every year. And two of them got nominated for Eisner’s.
So where she, where other people would have been afraid, she runs towards it.
So I am just grateful for Street Noise Books.
BNP: This is hard. Making a whole book is difficult. What the motivation behind it?
JAMIE: When I was a kid growing up with mind control and poverty that’s hard to describe, less than developing country poverty, you know growing up in these dorms three bunks high with lice and filth. Animalized conditions I grew up with as a child, and a tremendous amount of pain, a crucible of almost 20 years with few breaks, what got me through it was I had a proximity to Hollywood Boulevard and I was taking a bus to Hollywood Boulevard by the time I was seven year old by myself. And I would pass out flyers, or pretend to, and steal money and go to the movies all day.
And it was art, movies, and science fiction that gave me hope and made me feel like I could become the hero in my own movie and overcome my circumstances which seemed impossible. I think the drive behind HYBRED was to make a piece of science fiction that made me emotional. Would do for others what science fiction books and movies did for me as a kid, which is say my life.
BNP: I think it just might. I think it just might. That’s as good a note to end on. Thanks so much for taking the time out of your day to talk to me about your book.
JAMIE: Thank you for having me, I hope I gave you some good stuff.
BNP: I mean, you said it yourself, I was drawing stuff out of you that you didn’t know you had in, so I think that’s a good interview.
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