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Ramon Perez may not be familiar to many comics fans, but his collaborators on his new graphic novel are quite well-known. Perez is writing and drawing Tale of Sand, a graphic novel just released by Archaia Press which is based on an unfilmed screenplay by Jim Henson and Jerry Juhl.

An experimental project that Henson began working on in the late sixties, Perez has transformed the script into a beautifully illustrated graphic novel. The book defies easy summary, something we discussed in the interview, because its a story thats much open to interpretation. Its strikingly different from the work that most Henson fans know and should hopefully help to start a new conversation about the kind of talent that Henson was.

The book also marks the arrival of Perez as a top tier comics talent. An artist of uncommon skills as a designer and illustrator, he also possesses an adept sense of color and layout. It says a lot about the Henson Company that they let an artist have such free reign in adapting the script and Perez rose to the task, crafting one of the best comics of the year.

We reached him by phone at his home in Toronto.


ALEX DUEBEN: Ive come across your name before and I know you drew a Captain America one shot earlier this year, but I dont really know your work. Could you just talk a little about your background as an artist?

RAMON PEREZ: Sure. I tend to jump around around a lot in comics. I also work a lot in editorial and advertising. My comics catalog isnt the hugest. Ive done some independent stuff online. I have two webcomics; Butternut Squash, which I just wrapped up after years of sporadic updates, and I have an Alice in Wonderland kind of story I do twice a week. I work in gaming, science fiction literature, all over the place. I love comics but we just seem to have this relationship where I do it for a while then step away for a while and then come back. I actually do a lot more personal endeavors which is why I jump from corporate work to more independent work.

AD: In that sense, do you think of Tale of Sand as closer to your more personal work?

RP: I think so. This is one of Jim Hensons earlier works when he was starting out. He was experimenting with film a lot and trying new things. This was at the same time he was developing more commercial work. He was developing the Muppets and Sesame Street. When that took off he kind of left his experimental work behind. As an artist who jumps around and does advertising work and comicbook work and does my own work, Ive had to put my own personal projects on hold when I get caught up in the corporate work world. Im very much familiar with having to abandon things and return to them, or hopefully return to them. As an artist I can totally relate to where he was coming from when he was working on Tale of Sand. It was one of the last vestiges of his work that kind of fell by the wayside because he got caught up with the Muppets and Sesame Street, which really took off in the late sixties early seventies. Its very similar to his short films of the era and its nice to be a part of that.

AD: Usually when working on a project like this youre asked if youre a fan but, well, its Jim Henson were talking about.

RP: [laughs] I know. Who didnt know who Jim Henson was?

AD: How did you end up working on Tale of Sand?

RP: I was contacted by one of the editors at Archaia, Chris Robinson. He was shopping around for talent to work on this project. Rumor has it the writer that I worked with on a Dazzler one shot for Marvel the year prior, Jim McCann, loved my work and he recommended me as a person that they should hit up. They approached and asked if I would submit some samples for the job and they sent me some pages from the script. It was the first twenty pages and the last page was a cliffhanger. I was like, you cant do that to me. I coaxed the editor to send me the full script and I got to read the whole thing. Its a bizarre story. At first pass I was like, what just happened? But it all came together at the very end. As youre immersed in the project you become more and more aware of it. It was actually nice to work on something like that where the I was working directly from the script not a writers adaptation of it. I got photocopies of the original script and worked from there. There were notes in the margins. Anyway, I guess Lisa Henson chose me out of the pile and the rest as they say is history. Or, hopefully its history.

AD: Now you worked from original film script. Did you have to write a script and get that approved before you drew it?

RP: Not at all, actually. The script was pretty tight for a movie script. I really didnt want to break it to down to a script because first of all, theres very little dialogue in the actual manuscript. Being an artist, I just sat down with the script and had a custom sketchbook and just basically starting going through the script, breaking it down and then I drew the whole thing out. That was probably a week. I sent that in to the editors and that came in at about thirty pages past what they wanted me to come in at so we had to edit and shift things around. With Lisas permission we cut out a couple parts that were lengthy. We figured that Jim might have done this anyway during the filming process or editing. We hoped we were doing it right, but I think that the choices that we made were smart ones. It kept the story going at a nice pace. The interesting part was in the movie script where one line can be three pages of illustrations and then on the flip side three pages can be one panel.

AD: So was the script more detailed than the average movie script?

RP: Everything from the peoples outfits were described, the pacing, the emotions, the impact of all the scenes. It was very, very descriptive. Im not sure if that was more him or Jerry Juhl because I know earlier Hensons scripts were more storyboarded than written. It could have been Jerry who lent [the script] that. But yeah, everything was very detailed. The other thing that was great was that the Henson company sent me most of Jims earlier works so I literally immersed myself in all his earlier films and just drowned in it while developing the script itself. I really tried to get in his headspace and where he was at at the time.

AD: I know that the first draft of the script was written in the late sixties. Did it seem dated to you in any way?

RP: I think stylistically if it was made as a movie, it probably would have to be reworked for todays audiences. Its very much a movie of its era in the pacing, and the stylistic touches. It really reminded me of and I dont know why because its really quite different but movies like Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. All those wacky journey movies where theyre racing across the globe and weird comedic situations happen and serious stuff happens and it gets dark for a moment and then it gets light-hearted again. It touches on a whole lot of genres and I think for todays audiences youd probably have to really rework it to fit their attention span. I find most audiences these days dont like to mix genres a lot. Theyre very picky about that. European audiences do that all the time without any trouble. I think it would definitely have to be reworked. I think in the book I took that into account and I tried to make it reflect the era it was made in but also keep it interesting for a modern audience.

AD: Reading the book I kept thinking of films of that period like Nic Roegs work and the cross-cutting and editing styles that came into vogue. How much of that was in script because it seemed like you were trying to work from that kind of visual approach.

RP: The actual editing style really wasnt talked about. I guess thats something that Jim would have brought to the film had he filmed it himself. There were cuts that were mentioned or camera shots but the actual stylistic flourishes that made Jims work Jims, I think, he would have brought to the table had he directed it. What I did with my cuts and the way I approached the book graphically was like I said earlier I was immersing myself in his work his earlier work. I tried to take into account his usage of color, his cinematography, and I tried to apply that to the book. I tried to very much filter my style through his and this is what I came up with. I often try to change my style depending on the project so this is very much in tune with how I work. Hopefully the storytelling translates and the feel gets across.

AD: You use a lot of two page spreads in the book very effectively and why did you decide to alternate between the two page spreads and single page layouts?

RP: Well, thank you. Obviously with film you have very panoramic cinematography and with comics if youre just taking one page youre kind of limited, I think. I tried to use the double page spreads in moments where I really wanted to really accentuate a situation or a scenario or an emotion. When he was crossing the desert and I wanted to show a panoramic shot of the dessert or a death-defying situation or a car chase, it allowed me to play more with the panel layouts to better reflect how I wanted to convey Jims stylistic-ness. That was my reason. As I was adapting the script if something hit me as a strong moment in the script, I would make it a two page spread.

AD: That would be why most two-page spreads are bunched together, because for you its the expression of a scene.

RP: Yeah, they tend to group into a few sections in the script. I think I really tried to use them to denote important parts or emotions of the story.

AD: It plays with pacing and how its read, as well.

RP: When youre reading a single page, youre reading one then the other. If you flip to a double page youre suddenly swept across this larger canvas which I think changes the emotion and the speed with which you read it. I tried to use panels in peculiar ways. It was interesting to utilize the double pagers and the panel layouts. The hard part was playing with those but also keeping in mind that the larger audience is not necessarily comicbook readers. As funny as it seems to me, many people if you put a comic in their hands dont know how to read it, so I tried to make it as obvious as possible but still be creative with the panel layouts and make it clear for the non-comic readers.

AD: You also worked on the coloring. How important was the color?

RP: Very important. If you look at some of JIms earlier work, Timepiece, for example, where he jumps in from black and white sequences to drab colors to very vivid colors and actually things like Sesame Street where he used colors and movement of color across the screen. He really played with color and sound and I couldnt really play with sound. I tried to use the color as sound in the book at certain points. If you were to look at the whole book as a contact sheet, youd probably see a very symphonic use of color where the color changes depending on the mood of the scene. I really tried to use it because the book is very low on dialogue I tried to use the color as a kind of soundtrack for the movie.

AD: There are football players in the book and their dialogue is is fabulously depicted as notation from a playbook. Was that in the script?

RP: No, that was a choice on my part. I think the football players had one line of dialogue. Same with the Arabs. All other dialogue was referred to, but never actually written in the script. Youd have the script saying, Peter yells something at the crowd and they go do this or the football players yell at each other and run down the hill. I was like, what do they yell? For the football players, looking at Jims earlier work he played a lot with graphics so I thought it would be neat to have them talk in plays. The one line of dialogue for the Arabs was written in the script in English. I had a friend translate into Arabic and give me some other words I could use at different points. That was my choice and luckily my editors gave me a lot of free reign to play with it and they went with it.

AD: Your idea to have them speak in plays or in untranslated Arabic works because that way it doesnt feel forced that theres no dialogue, its just that the man character doesnt know whats being said just as he doesnt know whats happening.

RP: Yeah. At the end of the day, its not important whats being said. I dont think any of the characters except for the cowboy or the sheriff talk directly to him. Theyre mostly talking around him. I really just wanted to have something to fill the vocabulary air, if you will. I thought it would be a neat visual addition to the script.

AD: Weve been talking for a while now, but weve never talked about what the book is about. Its hard. When youre asked, what do you say?

RP: I did a huge press junket for the book earlier this year and everybody asked, so whats the book about? I was like, well, I cant tell you without spoiling it. I really think its one of those scripts that on first read it will just be a fun wacky story but on consecutive reads, it will really depend on the reader what they get out of it. Its very much open to interpretation. I think its interesting cause between myself and the editors at Archaia, when we were talking about the book we all came to it with different ideas of what it was about. I was eating and sleeping Tale of Sand for about six months straight. I really began to peel away the layers of the story and read into things depending on what I learned about Jim, depending on what was going on in the world news, my own personal life as an artist was tapped into. I really think it was Jim doing a bit of a commentary on his era but also reflecting on his own career. Stephen Christy, my editor on the book, suggested we should do a DVD commentary track on the book because I have my own views on exactly what the book is about, what each character represents, but I dont really want to go into it. I dont want to people to read the interview and take that knowledge going in. Id rather they go in blind and figure it out for themselves what the story is about and what it means to them.

AD: Did you get to talk to the Hensons, and people who knew and worked with Jim Henson?

RP: I talked to his daughter Lisa, not really about the script but she talked about her father and what kind of a personality he was. There was also Karen Falk, who was the archivist for the Henson Company. She would also send sketches or photographs and she talked in depth about his life in that era. All that history and knowledge I learned form other people did help shape my interpretation of what I thought the story was about, but no one actually commented directly on it. No one ever said, this is what its about.

AD: They were conscious of letting you interpret the work.

RP: Yeah, it was great. Lisa Henson really gave me free reign. She had a couple of editorial comments on scenarios in the book. Things like, can we expand this scene or focus more on this. They were all good suggestions. With my editor at Archaia we went over the book with a fine tooth comb after I laid it out and decided what situations had to be cut down or expanded upon and what wasnt clear. For the most part they let me run with it. Its very much my interpretation of what I think Jims story is. Like I said, I tried to do it through his eyes by immersing myself in his stuff, but obviously had he done it himself, it would very different from what I did.

AD: What comes next for you? What are you interested in doing after this?

RP: I would love to have the time to develop some of my own ideas. I love playing in the Marvel and DC universes and doing other independent projects. Right now Im just taking a break and focusing on more corporate and advertising work briefly. Ive returned to my online comic. I hope to publish that in 2012. I had to put that aside for six months while I worked on Tale Sand so I was eager to get back to it. In a weird way the books are very much in a similar vein so it was interesting to work on Tale of Sand halfway through another book I was working on that was in a similar headspace. Well see what comes after this. Im in no hurry to keep such a crazy schedule. The schedule on Tale of Sand was like trench warfare. [laughs] Im taking it easy for the rest of the year just developing personal projects and I will be talking to Archaia. I dont know. I tend to play it by ear and see what comes next.