Chris Sebela: Pantomime – Creator Spotlight

Pantomime is a wordy book, despite no dialogue being ‘spoken’ between characters, how much research went into writing?

I’m a very chatty writer, both the kind that happens between people and the kind inside a character’s head. Even when I try to pull back, it’s my own curiosity that makes me get all wordy. So I never approached this book with different intentions, our characters still speak, probably more than most people because they’re kids in high school, they just converse in american sign language.instead of spoken english. I did a fair bit of research in preparation for writing this,

Early responses to the book have been positive, were you scared with how readers, especially those with hearing disabilities, would respond?

I’m always scared of how people will respond to anything I’ve written. The downside of being my own harshest critic is I’m always braced for the worst and the upside is I get a lot of pleasant surprises when a book comes out and people connect to it for all the reasons I was hoping and a bunch of reasons I never even thought about. I was definitely nervous about how the Deaf community would react, but I set out to tell a story that didn’t treat deafness as either a curse or some magic gift, it’s just another aspect of who our characters are. We tried to just make them as real as we could and hopefully we succeeded in the eyes of everyone who reads it.

What would you say to new comic readers, within the Deaf community, who are picking up Pantomime?

To me, comics is such a singular medium for storytelling. It can do things that no other format can and it can do them in ways you never thought you could tell a story. Any story is possible in comics, from the superhero stuff that everyone knows about to romances, crime stories, fantasies, autobiographies, whatever you can think of, someone’s done it or is doing it. I guess I’d say that if you like Pantomime, there’s so many great comics out there for you to read after this. A huge library of them from the past and great stuff coming out right now. It’s all super exciting and I tend to sound like a cult member when I go on about it very long. But I still haven’t convinced my mom to read all my books, so I’m a better writer than salesman.

On Twitter, you often post pictures of your dog, how is she doing lately?

She had to have surgery a little while ago which freaked me out, because this is my first dog and I’m a nervous parent, but even with that, she has the best life possible and it’s all completely normal to her. I work from home and have since I got her, so she gets walks and backyard access and treats all day long. But she’s really gotten me through this cursed year and makes it so I have to leave the house and go on walks. So we kind of take care of each other like that. But she’s definitely got the better end of the deal.

Are there any other stories you would like to tackle in the future? Any big plans coming up?

There’s tons of stories I still want to tell, lots of them already in some kind of development. I never thought I’d get inside the gates of being an Actual Writer and now that I’ve wedged myself between them, I’m eager to tell as many stories as I can. I’ve got romance, sci-fi, fantasy, horrror, more crime stuff, I bounce from one to the other pretty regularly. I’m working on a novel, short stories, a non-fiction book that isn’t comics and isn’t prose. I feel a bit like a shark at the moment, I don’t stop moving if I can help it.

If you want to read more of Christopher Sebela’s words, don’t miss out on Pantomine #1 at your local comic book shop on November 4th!