Road to ‘Bitter Root’: An Interview with Chuck Brown

In the second of three interviews leading up to the much-anticipated release of Bitter Root, Black Nerd Problems interviewed co-writer Chuck Brown. Chuck’s a veteran of the self-publishing and indie comics scene. And he’s also a frequent collaborator with Bitter Root artist Sanford Greene. They’ve worked together on Rotten Apple for Dark Horse, and 1000, which is currently on Line Webtoon. Black Nerd Problems: Creators usually build off of one central idea that’s the foundation of their story. Usually, it’s an image or a scene. Maybe a character. Which was it for you? Chuck: Honestly, it was a barber’s chair with bloody rags on it. I know that sounds strange, but that’s the first thing that popped into my head. It started off as barbershop talk. And it was like a barber that would set bones and do minor surgery in the 20’s and things like that. And I thought to myself that would be a cool cover for something. It kind of spun off into monster hunting and then the Harlem Renaissance was during that time so it kinda just snowballed into more and more things. And the main villain, he was the victim of a lot of hate crimes. It just kept snowballing. I told all this to Sanford and he just fell in love with it. He asked for some character profiles. And I was like okay, fine I’ll get it to you whenever. Then a couple days went by and he was like hey, where are those character profiles? I was like okay is he actually going to do something with this thing? So, I sent it to him and befo…