The fantastic Worst Man is out now and we reviewed it in last week’s Full Lid. We also got the chance to sit down with the wonderful Brandt & Stein, creators of the book to talk all things Worst Man and whether or not Nevis is in fact, the best.
1. Ted and Ro! Hello! Please introduce yourselves!
Hi Al! Hi, Al’s readers! We’re Ted & Ro, and professionally we refer to ourselves as a gestalt cartoonist, hence Brandt&Stein. As in the monster. It’s the easiest way to describe ourselves, honestly, because there’s no stage of comics making (at least until the lettering) that we don’t share, so it’s generally easiest to just sidestep the “who did what” questions altogether.
2. Tell us a little about Worst Man.
You know what? Describing your book is so much harder than making it, somehow!
Ok, here goes.
Worst Man is a fast-paced, crime-oriented queer romcom. Our protagonist, Radcliffe Raleigh, is the Worst Man, a relationship ruiner for hire. But he has his principles! A loved one of the couple has to convince him that they are wrong for each other before he takes the job. He only broke that rule once, for greed, but it’s come back to bite him in the ass. Now vindictive billionaire Valentina McElligott has given him an ultimatum: destroy her youngest daughter’s wedding in the next 32 hours, or no-one will ever find his body. Can Rad survive Valentina, the weekend, and his clash with hunky Best Man Chris Kafka, and come out on top? You’ll have to buy the book to see!
Ultimately, it’s a story about the magic and struggle of connecting to other people, and the expectations we hold for them and ourselves. It’s cheesy to say, but we love love!
3. Rom-coms are one of my favourite genres, and it’s always surprised me they haven’t got more traction in comics. Why do you think that is?
Romance comics used to be a big deal! Until they weren’t, and nobody can quite agree on the exact reason why that was. But these days, we would say there’s probably at least an element of writing them off as “chick-lit” (as if that’s in any way something worth disparaging). It’s also at least somewhat a chicken-and-egg problem by this point too, you know? They aren’t really supported because people won’t want them, and people don’t want them because they aren’t supported. Who knows? It’s not like there isn’t a thriving market in prose, and one of our long-term dreams would be to get at least a little of that into comics as well.
4. Do you have a favourite character from Worst Man?
Ro: No, because each one of them has a bit of us in them; it’s very difficult to pick a favourite, because they’re all so different but still us on some level. Each of them has moments that I really enjoy, so in terms of picking one out from the others? I don’t think I can do that.
Ted: I mean, Ro isn’t wrong. But I will always reserve the biggest fondness for Rad and Chris; they’re the heart and spine of the story, and it all came from them. We had at least rough sketches of them before we had anything else; the others only got fleshed out at the same time as the plot did.
5. You have incredible comedic timing, and I’m curious: were there any gags from the rom-com playbook you were especially pleased to get into the book?
Honestly, it’s been a while since we wrote it so our memories may be fuzzy, but probably not? Largely because while we drew a lot of tropes and structure from romcoms, what we were more conscious of for the humour were farce and slapstick. The book was designed as a farce as much as it was a romcom, just as a way of handling the enormous cast and keeping it all ticking over even as the core story plows on. The comedy in the book is as varied as we could make it; we have one-liners, we have setup-payoff, we have rule of threes repetitions, we used pretty much every trick we had to hand, but not much of it came specifically from romcoms!
6. I loved so much about the book, especially the characters. You hit this remarkable spot halfway between exaggerated and realistic, and I’d love to hear more about your design process.
A good part of how we handle character design uses the principles of animated characters and the semiotics associated with shapes. For example, Valentina is the villain of the story; she has a sharp, spiky personality and so used shapes to match. She’s all angles. When you compare her to Rad, who definitely has his own angles going on, Rad’s design is nowhere near as sharp, his chin is still pointed but is more blunted, he doesn’t have the cheekbones you could cut glass with. Then if you were to compare Rad and Kafka, Rad’s body type give the idea of agility, to be able to pivot and think on his feet, squeeze through different situations. Whereas Kafka is solid, strong, dependable and doing his best to hold everything up on his ridiculously broad shoulders.
We also gave everyone a wardrobe palette, so that even if a character changed outfit over the timeframe of the story there would still be that immediate association of assigned colours.
7. Similarly, the trick of having other characters fade into the background by being almost blocked out was brilliant (I’m thinking in particular of the people on the dock). What led to that?
There were a couple of reasons for the way we drew the background “characters”. One of the reasons being that they aren’t even really characters. The majority of the book is being literally told by Rad! As such, while there are people in the background, they are not the focus of the story he is telling and therefore do not get the same level attention as the key players. That’s not to say that the background people didn’t get properly designed; the ones that are on the island did. They may not have the same the level of detail that the rest of the cast had, but they were resolutely kept track of panel to panel. We didn’t want there to be random extras wandering around in the background because we hadn’t kept track of who was where. And that was also another reason for the cardboard cutout treatment, we simply didn’t need to have an extra 20 or so other characters to fully render. It would have taken so much extra time and they would have just become intrusive on the page, pulling focus from what actually mattered.
8. My favourite thing about the book was how it quietly blossoms into an ensemble piece. It feels really inclusive and kind, and I’m curious how you approached ensuring everyone got a moment in the spotlight.
As to how everyone got a moment in the spotlight – that comes from the story design as much as anything! We built the character list at the same time as we built the plot, deliberately choosing personality traits that would bounce off each other well, and give specific focal points of narrative. So before we even wrote the script, we knew where everyone would be at any given moment, and who would run into whom. Once you have that, balancing it all to make sure everyone gets their moment is really easy.
As to it being inclusive and kind – the whole book is about connecting to people! We’d have done a lousy job of that if we’d been mean about the characters. Just because you’re laughing at something they say or do, it doesn’t mean you’re laughing at them, and that’s a crucial distinction. A lot of comedy comes in the form of relatability, in that recognition of someone doing something potentially ridiculous that you can absolutely understand.
9. Nevis is magnificent. No question; I just wanted to state the obvious.
You are correct.
10. I had very distinct voices in my head for the characters, and I’m curious whether you found that too. Could you hear how they spoke? And did dialogue influence design or vice versa?
We had the designs before we had the dialogue; but before that, we had a small but useful spreadsheet. It held their names, their role in the story, personality foibles/flaw, and it held a fictional character who had a vibe or way of talking that was a useful jumping off point. None of those references lasted all that long once we started writing, but as a jumping off point they let us have a really confident idea of at least the rhythm and cadence of their speech. So yes, we absolutely could hear them speak! We often ran dialogue chunks together as we were writing, to make sure they each sounded distinctively like themselves.
11. Is there room for a 2 Worst 2 Man? I’d love to see these characters again.
Al, we have a really solid plan for book 2, and a loose plan for book 3. We are ready and waiting, and all we need to make that dream come true is as close to one million people buying the first one as we can get, so Titan has no choice but to let us.
12. What’s next for you?
Unfortunately, everything we have on our plate is stuff we can’t discuss! Though in the background we’re slowly chipping away at the plans for Worst Man 2 and another OGN we have cooking. Which of them will see the light of day first? We’ll see!
Thanks so much for talking to me, folks! Worst Man is out now and is wonderful. Find it here, our review here, and here’s Brand & Stein.