Have you already assembled a dossier on the upcoming graphic novel TECTIV: Noirtopia, written by Richard Ashley Hamilton, illustrated by Marco Matrone and lettered by Dave Sharpe? Here’s the official detective’s report from Mad Cave Studios:
When her best friend vanishes, Bingo Finder — the only literate person in a post-apocalyptic L.A. — turns to her beloved, ancient books for inspiration, becoming the first detective in centuries. But to solve this mystery, Bingo must fight for her own life and uncover a conspiracy within this fragile civilization.
Currently available for preorder, the first volume of Tectiv is scheduled to arrive at your local bookstore and/or public library beginning on December 10th, 2024. In the meantime, you can gather clues about the upcoming graphic novel thanks to Comic Beat’s interview with Hamilton! Read on to learn more about Tectiv, and be sure and let The Beat know if you’ll be picking up a copy in the comment section.
AVERY KAPLAN: What were the origins of TECTIV? Did you always envision the story as a graphic novel?
RICHARD ASHLEY HAMILTON: To answer your second question first, yes, TECTIV was definitely meant to be a graphic novel for a couple of reasons.
One is that, when you see the sheer scope and ambition of the world building in Matrone’s artwork, it becomes pretty clear pretty fast that this story would be very expensive to realize in live action or even in animation.
And the second reason is a little weirder and maybe more personal. I had been thinking for a while about the themes that would eventually find their way into TECTIV. But when I sat down to write up the final outline and bible, it was in the middle of 2020. I’ve been lucky enough to write for other media over the years, only all of that work stopped completely during the dog days of the pandemic and lockdown. So, in order to keep from going completely insane, I just decided to write for myself, as opposed to writing for a client or studio, almost as a form of therapy. Anyway, when I went back and looked over all I had written during that period, every single thing was for a graphic novel, not a “Hollywood pitch” or a script for VR or whatever. So, yeah, the whole process just confirmed what I’d long suspected, which is that my heart always has been and always will be in comics.
KAPLAN: Do you have a personal history with detective stories? Are there any that stand out as your favorite (in any medium)?
HAMILTON: Oh, yes. Like all hard-boiled mystery writers, I grew up watching Murder, She Wrote and Matlock with my grandparents every Sunday and Tuesday night, respectively. I’m sort of joking, but sort of serious, because those shows were actually hugely influential to me as a kid, not that I realized it at the time. My brother and I just loved sleeping over at Grandma and Boompa’s house twice a week, and they lived next door to us in Miami, so it was easy. And that’s the reason I play the banjo and wear seersucker suits to this day. True story.
Later on, when I was in film school at the University of Miami, I saw LA Confidential when it came out. That movie is still one of my favorites to this day, and it introduced me to the writing of James Ellroy, who is still one of my favorite novelists. His books, specifically his “L.A. Quartet,” probably have the biggest impact on TECTIV, particularly when you read the P.I.. narration of our protagonist, Bingo Finder. That’s pure, be-bopping Ellroy right there. In fact, our version of L.A. is called “Ellay” as a tip of the fedora to the master.
I’m also really inspired by Donald E. Westlake. I know he’s more of a crime fiction writer, but he can get as dark as any noir, especially when writing as Richard Stark. And Westlake also wrote a ton of heists, which I consider to be mysteries in reverse, since you know the culprit up-front, and then the fun is figuring out how it’s gonna be pulled off.
But my favorite favorite detective story? That’s gotta be Veronica Mars, hands down. She probably has a greater influence on my other series for Maverick, SCOOP, but there’s surely some Mars Investigations DNA in TECTIV, too.
KAPLAN: Are there any famous detectives in particular who inspired TECTIV?
HAMILTON: Yes and no. I think what we were more interested in was distilling the essence of what makes a prototypical private eye, and then reinterpreting those hallmarks through this savagely beautiful world that Marco has designed. I know that probably sounds kinda pretentious and high-falutin’, but it just seemed like a way to freshen up some elements that might have become tropes over time — and also a way to give our readers some relatable touch points that they can easily identify and understand as they navigate the more foreign parts of Ellay.
For example, a lot of classic detective yarns involve a heartbroken P.I. investigating the murder of some femme fatale that he either loved or, at the very least, lusted after on a level that may seem superficial by today’s standards. I personally enjoy a lot of those stories, but there are some aspects that don’t really fly in this day and age. So, in TECTIV, we follow Bingo as she investigates the disappearance of her best friend, Fenn. These two girls share a deep — if not complicated and sometimes confusing — relationship, and we really wanted to mine their bond for emotion and stakes.
It’s also kind of expected at this point that the detective has a drinking problem. And without giving away too much, we sort of raise the question of whether or not Bingo has a substance abuse problem of her own. Only we don’t treat this as a punchline. Instead, we look at the personal and societal issues that might lead someone to any form of dependency and try to reflect what that says about our world today, hopefully not in a preachy or obnoxious way. Ellay may look and feel like a utopia at first glance. But like all civilizations, it has its dark secrets.
KAPLAN: What as your reaction to seeing the work from the rest of the TECTIV team (artist Marco Matrone and letterer Dave Sharpe)?
HAMILTON: You know, Avery, people throw around the term “soulmate” far too casually these days. But that is EXACTLY how I feel about Marco and Dave! I was fortunately enough to collaborate with them on another book we did a little while ago called Fearbook Club. Even though that was a horror comic set in a middle school, I thought I knew what to expect from them on TECTIV. But, boy, how I was wrong in the best possible way.
Yes, there is a lot of world building in this story, but Marco always finds the humor and the humanity in all of it. Every time I look back at his pages, I find some new detail or character or moment. Ellay feels like a very “lived in” place with tremendous density and, as a result, our main characters pop against it. I also feel like Bingo’s journey walks a real tightrope of tone, yet Marco nails every single vibe, whether it’s an insane action sequence or just the moodiest noir moment. And his character acting is second to none.
And Dave, aside from designing our killer logo, brings so much clarity and personality with his lettering. He does some really cool things with Bingo’s narration and caption boxes, especially in this one part where she’s experiencing the effects of a certain type of toxin. And in a gritty city populated by robot cults, giant talking coyotes, and mutants, every single character has their own distinctive voice. I don’t know what else to say about Dave other than seeing his first letters come in informed how I wrote the rest of the book. As with all great letterers, he had a profound impact on not just the storytelling, but the story itself.
I just want to point out two other members of our team: Our editors, Christina Harrington and Mike Marts. Not only did Mike and Christina first introduce me to Marco and Dave way back when, but they also made so many meaningful creative contributions to TECTIV. Their notes always make me a better writer, and I truly believe that you can feel their care and attention to detail on every single page.
KAPLAN: Did your work on animated shows inform your work on TECTIV at all? How about your previous sequential graphic narrative work?
HAMILTON: Absolutely. I had the very good fortune to work on the How To Train Your Dragon franchise at DreamWorks, and the writer/director of those films, Dean DeBlois, became a very kind, very patient, very giving mentor to me. Thanks to Dean, I got to learn that the best type of world building comes from character. When you see the transformations that happen to Berk and beyond in those films and shows, you know that it all started with the friendship between Hiccup and Toothless.
So, I definitely tried to apply that lesson to TECTIV by figuring out how our post-post-apocalyptic Ellay came to be in a very humble and human way (which we will keep a mystery for now) and by looking at how Bingo’s world influenced her before she starts to influence her world. She is very much a product of her upbringing, which makes it all the more rewarding when Bingo uncovers the hidden faults in her society and takes a wrecking ball to ‘em.
As for my previous comics work, yeah, I think it’s all been building to this. The more I write, the more I tend to focus on character and emotion than on plot. Which is not to say that the plot is an afterthought in TECTIV. At the end of the day, it’s still a twisty, turn-y mystery with all sorts of surprises and reveals and reversals. But noir, by definition, tends to be rather cynical, and I wasn’t really interested in telling that kind of story. Real life feels cynical enough to me these days. So, I tried to double-down on Bingo’s personal journey and, again, with the help of Mike and Christina, I think we were able to find a trace of hope amidst all the shades of gray we come to expect in a detective potboiler.
KAPLAN: What went into setting the story in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles? Did you ever take to the streets of modern day LA in search of inspiration?
HAMILTON: Well, I have been living in L.A. for over half of my life at this point, so this was the easiest research I ever had to do. Basically, I went to my favorite spots in the city, which are not coincidentally the haunts featured in many noir films, sent photo reference to Marco, and then tried to extrapolate how they might look in our version of the future. We wanted everything to be mostly recognizable, again to give readers some familiar context in such a whacked-out setting, but we wanted to reconstruct those landmarks in ways that surprise and delight and reveal more information about our characters. So, the classic foot-chase through downtown becomes a giant-bumblebee-powered rickshaw race across the La Brea Tar Pits, which now span hundreds of acres and which only Bingo can survive due to her background as a scavenger of ruins. That sort of thing.
And by placing TECTIV in an era that’s X number of years away (we’re not telling the exact amount just yet), we allow for all sorts of things to have happened in the interim — everything from natural disasters to cataclysmic nuclear wars to A.I. uprisings to alien invasions. That gives us a lot of interesting creatures and locations and set pieces to play with.
KAPLAN: Is there anything you are specifically hoping readers will take away from TECTIV?
HAMILTON: Mostly, I just want them to have a fun, page-turning time while reading it in the moment. But if readers happen to fall in love with Bingo and the rest of our colorful cast in the way I hope they will — and if that happens to cause our readers to look at our own world and see what they can do to make it a safer and more just place — then so much the better.
I’m a parent of two teen boys and, as hokey as this sounds, I truly, truly believe that our kids will somehow save our future. They have inherited a deeply messed up present thanks to a lot of past mistakes, many of which were made with the best of intentions. But today’s ascendant generation shows so much empathy and determination in their activism, and they inspire the hell outta me every single day. TECTIV is ultimately a story about devotion and book about books, but it’s also a love letter to and for our young saviors.
KAPLAN: Is there anything else you’d like me to include?
HAMILTON: Two things, if I may!
One is that TECTIV: Noirtopia is only the first volume in a series. Marco and I are currently working on another unannounced book for Papercutz, so we’re still keeping it in the Mad Cave family, because we love it here. And as soon as we’re done with that, we’re jumping right back into Ellay with Bingo, King Coyote, and the rest of the TECTIV crew.
And the second is just a heartfelt thank you to said Mad Cave family. From our president, Mark Irwin, who has championed TECTIV since the very beginning, to our publisher, Chris Fernandez, and the exceptional marketing and PR teams, and all the way through our book designer, Jack Levesque, everyone has put so much time and care into this story and this world. It’s an incredibly rewarding feeling for me, and I think it will be for anyone who checks out TECTIV. So come join us as Bingo solves the crimes of the past in the world of the future!
Learn more about Tectiv on the Mad Cave Studios website.
English (US) · 