29. The Making of a Comic: 'X-Maschina' by Steve Urena, Misty Graves, and Lane Lloyd
Creators reimagine Santa Claus in their holiday horror comic
Howdy Brave Being,
Welcome back to The Making of a Comic! This week, I’m joined by co-writers Steve Urena and Misty Graves, and artist/letterer Lane Lloyd to talk about their holiday horror comic X-MASCHINA, now on Kickstarter. Their futuristic concept of Santa leaving his life of magic and gift-giving behind, but then facing a robot uprising hooked me. I’ll let the creators tell you all about it. Let’s hop to it!
Reimagining Santa Claus
Brittany Matter: Tell us a bit more about X-MASCHINA.
Misty Graves: X-Maschina is a Holiday sci-fi horror comedy comic that is also like a "wild west" story of redemption. At the start of our story, Santa has very much lost his way. The year is 2045 and global warming has stopped the snow from falling in the North Pole. Santa has put many of the elves out of their jobs by automating his toy manufacturing. He is starting to believe that most of the earth's people are naughty, and he has developed some unhealthy coping skills. As a result, his magic is fading. So he makes a Faustian bargain with a tech CEO, selling off what he thinks might be the last of his power in exchange for snow at the North Pole. The CEO intends to use Santa's magic to collect naughty/nice data to fuel the AI in his new app, SLEIGH, a permanent replacement for Santa. Santa prepares to take his last sleigh ride…when something goes horribly wrong.
Steve Urena: Santa has had it with the holidays. His wife left him for the Abominable Snowman and after thousands of years of service, good old Chris Kringle has decided to hang it up. He partners with a Mark Zuckerburg type (Jeffrey Stevens) and gives his Christmas magic to a big corporation. The corporation takes the magic, makes an app and the app becomes sentient deeming everyone naughty. Santa must dig down deep and fight his sour self in robot form in order to save Christmas.
BM: What inspired y'all to create this story?
MG: Steve and I started working together around Christmas of last year, so the spirit was in the air! He was a guest on a podcast I co-host called "The Longbox of Darkness", on an episode where we discussed well-loved Christmas horror comics. The decision to collaborate with each other, combined with our exchange of ideas, resulted in us trying our hand at a Christmas horror comic.
SU: We just had a blast reading the comics we were assigned. We hit it off and kept talking and combined two ideas we had into X-Maschina. I wanted to do killer elves and she had a twilight zone like idea where a search engine grants your wish in the worst way possible. I thought it would be a blast to combine both ideas and here we are.
BM: How is your Santa Claus similar and different from the legendary figure we all know and love?
MG: When I think of the traditional Santa, he is jolly, benevolent, generous, happy - very present in the moment. Our Santa is none of those things. Over the years, he has devolved into a very selfish person, only caring about his desire to retire and to see it snow again in the North Pole, one last time. He's petty, suspicious, and lonely. In this story, he is challenged to find the Christmas magic he lost along the way.
SU: If you took Clint Eastwood and Danny McBride and combined them together, that’s how I envision our Santa Claus. He’s tired, he’s weathered, and he just doesn’t give a crap anymore. He’s had a rough go of it and he’s a little rough around the edges. He also likes his cocaine.
BM: What other characters can readers expect to see in the pages of X-MASCHINA?
MG: We've got Jeffrey Steves, a billionaire tech CEO. Gabrielle, Jeffrey Steve's assistant, whose brilliance takes a backseat to his megalomaniacal plans. Ellie the Elf, Santa's oldest elf friend, and long-time workshop employee. "Abby" or "Abs", the Abominable Snowman, Santa's former best friend, now married to Sheila Claus. Sheila Claus, Santa's ex-wife. and Sleigh, the atrocious algorithm, a Frankenstein's monster-type amalgamation of machine parts and corrupted AI.
SU: We’ve got elves, robot elves, robot reindeer, Mrs. Claus, the Abominable Snowman and some other holiday favorites.
BM: What kinds of traditions did y'all develop as a team?
MG: Using Google docs to write collaboratively.
SU: I definitely think doing podcasts and roundtable discussions as a trio is money. All of us just work together so well. We didn’t know each other before this project but once we met it all flowed together. This is a team I’m incredibly proud of.
BM: What's been your favorite part about making X-MASCHINA?
MG: Working with Steve—making a new friend! Steve and I had many laughs while writing this. It is also very rewarding to see something that was once just an idea become a tangible object. There's something magic about it.
SU: I’ve loved it all. I get to make comics with fun and interesting people. What’s better than that? I love talking to everyone about our project and world building. This could have just been Santa vs. Robots but our world is vast and deep. I can’t wait to write more within this world.
Lane Lloyd: Honestly, just getting to draw some of the wild, off-the-wall stuff that shows up in the script has been a blast. I looked forward to every day that I got to draw a new panel. I mean, Santa fighting robot elves? What’s not to love?
Santa’s Workshop
BM: Lane, what sold you on Steve and Misty's concept?
LL: The script is scary and funny at times, but the thing that really sold me on it, is the immense heart that lies underneath the story. I love getting to draw the wacky and the intense, but what I really love getting to play with is the tender emotions of a story, and in X-MASCHINA, we have it in spades. Steve and Misty wrote one hell of a script, I’m just lucky I got to be the one to illustrate it.
BM: What was your first step in making this comic?
LL: I played around with some character designs before thumbing out the entire comic. I don’t tend to do a separate pencil stage, so I try and make my roughs as readable for myself as I possibly can, so the inking stage is not a nightmare. (This works most of the time, haha.)
BM: What techniques in the layout and character design did you use to convey horror and humor?
LL: I wanted Sleigh to be big and imposing. He’s the big bad, right? But, I wanted to add little “funny” bits to his face to add just a bit of levity to him. As for the horror parts of the story, a gift box made out of organs seemed to be the right way to go.
BM: Tell us a bit about your use of color and how you went about choosing a palette for this story.
LL: I fell in love with this color palette a couple years back when I stumbled upon working with it by accident. I love the vintage comic look, which comes with a lot of bright, brilliant colors. I think it’s a great way to convey whatever feeling you’re going for!
Get the Scoop on Steve, Misty, and Lane
BM: What do y'all love about Christmastime?
MG: I love decorating for Christmas! Bringing down all the decorations from the attic, unwrapping all the ornaments and tinsel and lights and just goin' nuts.
SU: I love the lead-up to Christmas and getting people gifts. I think its safe to say I’m the greatest gift giver ever!
LL: I love the quiet when you come back to your own home after a long day of seeing family. Getting to wind down after all of those emotions is an amazing experience.
BM: What are some of your holiday traditions?
MG: Watching The Muppet Christmas Carol!
SU: Spending time with family, Christmas music is a must, and lots of Spanish food!
LL: The most recent one that has become my absolute favorite is just getting together with my friends and celebrating the holidays long into the night.
BM: What are some things that inspire your work?
MG: Golden age and pre-code horror comics. The news. History. I have a morbid curiosity that drives me to learn all about horrifying things. I'm also inspired by a desire to create, at least in comic form, the supernatural justice I'd like to see in the world.
SU: I love anything with a good story. Video games, comics, novels, TV, movies. I try to absorb as much of that as I can. Always down to talk video games. I have a handheld with every video game from SNES, NES, Genesis and others. I love it all.
LL: Mike Mignola and Kohta Hirano are my artistic influences for sure, but other things that inspire me are the works of Hideo Kojima, Final Fantasy character designs, and unfortunately, sad music seems to be the only kind that really gets me pumped to draw, haha.
BM: Do y'all have any pets?
SU: Yes! I have a cat named Spencer and a beautiful pug named McKenzie.
LL: We lost one of our cats at the start of this year, but we still have our chubby goblin, Rouge, who sits in my lap while I work most days.
BM: Lane, I’m so sorry to hear that. My sincerest condolences. It sounds like Rouge is helping y’all through the grieving process, and I imagine feeling the loss as well.
BM: Will we get to see more of X-MASCHINA this Christmas?
MG: There will be a second issue. One of our Kickstarter tiers pledged to kill off some of our most loyal supporters, so we've gotta make good on that. We don't have a date for its release yet, but we'll let you know!
SU: Here’s hoping. We definitely have a ton of ideas we want to put into the next one. I hope this becomes a holiday tradition. I loved working with Misty and Lane Lloyd.
LL: I hope so! I’m always saying we need more of Santa beating the hell out of things.
BM: Dear readers, don’t forget to check out X-MASCHINA on Kickstarter before it ends and find out if Santa can stop the robot uprising and save Christmas!