Matt Heistand of The ThreeOneFive Talks Deep Dive Daredevils

Recently, I had the opportunity to talk to Matt Heistand about his awesome web comic Deep Dive Daredevils, and the creative process of The ThreeOneFive, the three person writer's collective behind Deep Dive Daredevils and Baby Girl.  Check out my review of Deep Dive Daredevils to find out some of my thoughts on the comic.

How did you come up with the concept of Deep Dive Daredevils?

Well, we (The ThreeOneFive) were asked to pitch a story for an iPad anthology - something similar to the format of Marvel Comics Presents. The only instructions were that they wanted something akin to Heavy Metal, but appropriate for all-ages. So Evin, Dan and I percolated a while and we decided that we wanted to take a shot at combining a Star Trek-esque sci-fi story with some Goonies zaniness, and the germ of the Deep Dive Daredevils concept was born.

At the same time, we thought it would be interesting to utilize Golden Age/pulp stylings in a story that would be consumed digitally. Old school meets new. Eventually, we decided that the adventures would take place underwater, in a submarine, and once the idea of a Captain who was one with the boat was floated (heh) it all started to come together.

We pitched Deep Dive Daredevils to the anthology and it was accepted. Unfortunately, the anthology was scrapped altogether not too long after, but we were having so much fun working on the Daredevils that we decided to publish it online ourselves…and here we are!

How did you find Danilo Guida to illustrate the comic (beautifully, I might add)?

We got really, REALLY lucky.

We placed a want ad, looking for an artist, at Digital Webbing and all the other usual places and Danilo responded. We all really liked his previous samples and thought he would be a perfect fit for the book, so we offered him the job.

From the start Danilo was super-professional and enthusiastic about the project. And best of all, he just got it! Every character that you see in the book, Danilo nailed their design on the FIRST try. We never had to ask for changes - we were on the same page from the start - and in many instances he added elements that made the characters better. Danilo is the reason the Captain doesn’t have legs - he showed us his version of the Captain and we were floored!

Over the time we’ve been working on the Daredevils we’ve become friends, and it is unbelievably freeing to know that anything you write will be executed so skillfully and beautifully. He is a great illustrator and storyteller, and makes Deep Dive Daredevils better than the sum of its parts.

Do you think that Deep Dive Daredevils will ever be available as a print comic?

Absolutely. It's just a matter of the right time and the right format. As soon as Secret of the Beaufort Sea (the first story arc) is finished we'll begin seriously looking into options for a print edition. Whether we go through a traditional publisher or something like Kickstarter is all up in the air at the moment. Time will tell.

Was there any consideration of putting ads on Deep Dive Daredevils?

Yes, and eventually you will probably see some ads on the page. However, one of the things we are most proud of is that the site's design really serves and enhances the visual aesthetic of the comic. So, before we introduce advertising we'll probably have to do a re-design of the site, and figure out how to integrate the advertising without sacrificing the feeling that you are sitting at a musty, old desk reading a comic from the Golden Age/pulp era.

Something I find very interesting about Deep Dive Daredevils is that it's a comic that's written by three writers.  What is the ThreeOneFive's writing process like on Deep Dive Daredevils?

I imagine it’s a lot like a television show’s writer’s room. Either in person or through IM we spitball ideas, hammer out plots, and discuss themes until we’ve broken a story. After that, Evin will usually go off and write a bible/synopsis. Once he’s finished it will go through the grinder again, and then I will take it and script a first draft. From there, we have another revising session, usually over-seen by Dan, and then if we’re lucky we have a script ready for Danilo.

Sometimes it’s frustrating. Sometimes it’s maddening. But, when the script is finally finished it’s always better than what anyone of us could have produced on our own.

Deep Dive Daredevils has been running at an impressive rate of a page per week since April...how long do you plan on continuing this comic?  Do you have an endpoint in mind for the series, or is this something that could continue indefinitely?

We've kicked around some ideas for an ending to the adventures of the Custer and it's crew. However, before we ever get to that point we have A LOT of Deep Dive Daredevils stories to tell. At this point, we have a good three to four years worth of stories roughly plotted, with more ideas popping up all the time. Starting in 2013, we begin the slow build-up to an EPIC story that will rock the Daredevils to their core - especially the Captain and Doc!

So, all the Daredevilers out there can rest assured, there's a lot more of our signature nautical adventure coming their way.

Are there are other current or upcoming ThreeOneFive projects that you'd like to talk about?

At the moment, we are really concentrating on Deep Dive Daredevils, but we are always shepherding other ideas through various stages of development. So, stay tuned!

Also, our print debut, Baby Girl, just finished it’s run as a back up in Joe Keatinge’s Hell Yeah, issues 3-5. So, if you like naughty adventure (i.e. for mature readers), dig through the back issue bins and check it out!

Digital Pulp: Deep Dive Daredevils

"Some call them pirates, some call them heroes, but none dare call them cowards! In all of nautical legend, never before have such strange and courageous figures come together to unravel the incredible mysteries lurking in the inky ocean depths. If the heading be danger, make way for the DEEP DIVE DAREDEVILS!"

There's a contradiction at the heart of Deep Dive Daredevils.  It's a tribute to pulp adventure comics, a genre named after the cheap pulp paper it was printed on, yet it's published online and is unavailable in print.  Deep Dive Daredevils is digital pulp, a new kind of pulp that has transcended the limitations of paper publication and made the jump to purely online distribution while celebrating the core elements of the genre.  Deep Dive Daredevils is a strange concoction of time travel, cyborg submarine captains, and shamanistic magic, and it's released on the web, one page at a time, on a weekly basis.  

Writers Matt Heistand, Dan Fifield, and Evin Dempsey, who make up the writers collective known as The ThreeOneFive, begin Deep Dive Daredevils with a pirate ship sailing the Arctic Ocean in 1851.  I was immediately struck by Danilo Guida's art style on this first page.  Guida portrays the Aurora Borealis beautifully with modern coloring techniques, but his penciling and inking has a rough, old school look to it.  The page itself has been modified to look aged and faded, as if Deep Dive Daredevils is an artifact salvaged from the pulp era of comics that has been scanned and uploaded to the internet.  

(UPDATE:  Danilo Guida contacted me to let me know that the aging of the pages was done by Fonografiks, the letterer of Deep Dive Daredevils.)

The Aurora Borealis mysteriously strikes at the pirate ship and sinks it, and we then cut to 1937.  The Custer, a submarine, is traversing the very same waters that the pirate ship sank below in 1851.  Joe, a young boy with an eyepatch, and Cup, his three legged dog who also wears an eye patch, spot a man out on the glaciers.  Joe rescues the man and brings him aboard The Custer where Dr. Eugene McCarver cares for him.  The man is Captain Ulysses Armstrong, and he doesn't seem to have any idea how he got here.  

The strength of Deep Dive Daredevil's narrative lies in its escalation of shocking reveals that make you reevaluate what's happening in the comic.  This is a smart way of structuring a comic that's published one page per week because the frequent, mind blowing reveals keep you on the edge of your seat for the next week's installment.  So, at this point, I'm just going to go ahead and suggest that you read the comic before continuing because we're about to enter pretty spoilery waters.

The plot explodes into madness from this starting point as the time displaced Armstrong is transformed by the odd Aurora Borealis energy (which may in fact not be related to the Aurora Borealis at all), and he begins to mutate into a sperm whale.  Guida's full page spread of Armstrong clawing at his face as beautifully colored energy streams into his eye sockets is stunning.  Armstrong is rapidly expanding into a massive sperm whale inside of the confined space of the submarine while Joe, McCarver, and the other crew members struggle to get him to the shuttle bay.  The mysterious Captain of The Custer is barking orders to them throughout this sequence over the intercoms in intervals of "bztk" noises.  

This scene is built on the pretty solid foundation of the visual weirdness of a man morphing into a whale, but the ThreeOneFive hivemind make it something more than mere spectacle.  The rapidly expanding Armstrong gives the scene a ticking clock, a narrative deadline that forces the crew of The Custer to eject the creature before it destroys their vessel and them along with it.  The ThreeOneFive also make the crew humorous and relatable characters rather than just chess pieces to move around Whale Armstrong (Whalestrong?), and they tell a dirty joke that flies over the head of the young, eyepatched Joe.  Joe rushes into danger to fix the jammed bay doors and is sucked into the ocean along with Whalestrong, and this elevates the stakes of the narrative while simultaneously resolving the problem of the expanding whale.

While Cup swims after his master Joe, McCarver runs to the bridge where the as of yet unseen Captain has been incapacitated by the traumatic damage to the ship.  The ThreeOneFive structure this scene in a brilliant way; this week's page ends with Joe lost under the Arctic waves and McCarver dramatically facing the door to the bridge where, "Captain Custer's terrible secret waits beyond this door".  They even make their intentions to leave you desperate for the next week's page explicit in the caption, "Hold thy breath, constant reader".  

Of course, beyond that door, the comic's next mind blowing and game changing reveal awaits.  A full page spread shows us that the captain of this vessel is a legless cyborg plugged into the systems of the submarine! Guida's art here is just amazing, and the ThreeOneFive's captions summarize the captain's condition in a concise and compelling way, "Long ago, after unspeakable tragedy, Doctor McCarver cobbled together  man and ship...once done, this strange symbiosis could never be undone, and neither could function without the other."  Once you get past the surface level of the sci-fi image assaulting your senses, you realize that the ThreeOneFive have crafted a mythic character here.  Captain Custer is one with his ship, and "neither could function without the other".  This is a literalization of the mythic idea of a captain's bond with his ship, and it's really quite a poetic concept in addition to being a nice heaping of sci-fi awesomeness.

McCarver manages to "reboot" Custer just in time for the cyborg captain to belay his order to abandon ship.  The ThreeOneFive deliver on the promise of a cyborg submarine captain by writing him full of fire and passion and humanity despite his mostly mechanical body, and he rallys the crew with a fiery speech.  Meanwhile, Whalestrong is assaulting the ship as it crackles with unearthly, purple lightning.  Guida shines again here with this illustration, and the color of the purple, mystical energy really pops in contrast with the faded colors that he uses to give the rest of the page an artificially aged look.  

This is only 21 pages into the 32 page comic...there's still deals with Shaman representatives of local Sea Goddesses, vengeful animal spirits, time travelling, and mystical trials to come in that eleven page gap.  Deep Dive Daredevils is a comic that is jam packed with sci-fi craziness.  It's a comic that embraces its weekly format by giving the reader enough thrills, excitement, and mind bending reveals to keep them coming back every seven days for the latest page.  

It's also an homage to a genre of pulp adventures from a bygone era, but Deep Dive Daredevils is published on the screen rather than the cheap, poor quality paper of the original pulps.  It retains the familiar aspects of pulp stories while it capitalizes on the advanced coloring and production techniques available to modern artists.  Still, despite it's online nature, the beauty of the comic is that it's created to appear aged in such a way that the reader is given a pulp experience, as if they've stumbled upon this forgotten gem in a dusty attic.  Deep Dive Daredevils is digital pulp, and I'm looking forward to where the ThreeOneFive steer this crazy ride of a comic in the future.