The Spotlight interview with Jonah Hardenbrook

The Quarterly Cure is an online newsletter providing the fans with frequent company updates, the Quarterly Cure also wants give you the opportunity to get to know the creative forces behind the titles through candid interviews. In celebration of the release of their second title, Black Jack, we sat down with creator/writer Jonah Hardenbrook to get to find out how his journey began what he’s learned along the way.

Before getting into the details of Black Jack, let’s talk about the beginning. How did you become involved with Antidote Comics?

Chris, Curt and Anthony all know each other from college. Chris is my brother-in-law…our wives are sisters, and I met Anthony on a road trip to a Star Wars convention…because we are that cool (Laughs)!
Well, Anthony and Chris had gotten together to start work on Bloods Own, they laid out the story and completed the thumbnails, but were having trouble putting words with the pictures. Knowing I have always aspired to be a writer, especially a comic book writer, Chris approached me asking if I’d write the script. I basically said that they could either pay me up front for the script, which I knew they could not afford to do, or make me a partner! It also made sense because there are a lot of stories I personally want to tell, and this is a great opportunity to tell those stories.

Of all the stories you want to tell, why choose Black Jack as your first?

Just as Bloods Own is Anthony’s “baby”, and is something he has been planning since he was in college forty years ago, Black Jack is my “baby”. The idea is nearly a decade old, stemming back to my days when I wanted to write and direct movies. The initial idea was for a horror/western called Cursed World in which a posse of gunfighters and lawmen hunted down a werewolf. As I grew older I gave up on those less-than-realistic aspirations, but never abandoned the concept. Over the years it slowly evolved into it’s current incarnation.

The first issue of Black Jack is a self-contained story, however there is quite a bit of setup for possible future stories. Is Black Jack planned as a mini series, or an ongoing?

I wanted to kick off the series with a self-contained issue because in all honesty I do not know when a second or even a third issue will be completed. That being said, Black Jack is definitely planned as an ongoing series. I have the scripts for issues two through five completed and have the first thirty-five or so issues outlined. As I said before, there are a lot of stories I want to tell!

It has been over a year since the inception of Antidote Comics, what have you learned throughout the creative process?

It’s not necessarily what I’ve learned, but what I am still learning. And the answer is…everything! Bloods Own was the first script I’d written, and even that was based on thumbnails that had already been laid out. Black Jack was the first time I had to create a script from scratch including panels and descriptive images, so the entire process from script to layouts to lettering has all been a learning experience. The most important thing I’ve learned is that praise is good, but criticism is even better. I’ve never improved by receiving praise, and am looking forward to as much constructive criticism as necessary to better hone my craft.

Any advice you can give other aspiring creators looking to self publish or break into the business?

I don’t know about the breaking into the biz part since I’m still working on that myself. I guess the best advice I can give anyone that wants to be a writer is advice actually given to me a few years back: If you want to be a writer you need to stop talking about wanting to be a writer and actually start writing.