Mike Rhode posted his interview (Meet a Local Comic Book Writer: A Chat with Joe Carabeo) last week for Washington City Paper. Here is a sample of the interview followed by a link to the full interview.
Washington City Paper: What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?
Joe Carabeo: At this point in my comic book career, I’m focusing mainly on writing and character creation for Curls Studio.
WCP: Who are your influences?
JC: If I can name a few writers that I have influenced me the most just as a writer, I would have to say Billy Wilder, Joss Whedon and Rod Serling.
Billy Wilder’s razor sharp dialogue, his use of environments, and the importance of objects to motivate and push the story is something to this day that I don’t see storytellers fully capitalize on, and it’s a device I try to fully utilize in all the tales that I spin. To me, there’s more to writing than just people talking and running. We have objects that we can touch, that make sounds, they can even tell time and reveal memories. The ideas are endless for their use in storytelling.
I grew up on an extreme healthy dose of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Twilight Zone. I feel that when it comes to creating a world and characters that you’d want to follow to the end of time, Joss Whedon has been my biggest influence. The TV work that he did almost became a lifestyle. I felt that the audience grew with his characters, as viewers invested time and the characters became introduced into their daily lives. The characters that he created became friends to the audience, and people to this day still want them around. His work resonated that strongly with its audience because of how rich they were, and that is something I have always thrived to achieve with whatever I create. Something that people really love.
The influence that Rod Serling and his Twilight Zone TV show had on me is pretty unbelievable. I could go on a massive long tangent on this subject, but simply, the Twilight Zone is in my blood — it was one of the first shows that I even remember watching. There is so much I’ve learned from it. It’s always been to me a show that truly had no rules and if it ever did, it creatively broke them. The show was the best commentary on life ever, and the fact that Serling was never afraid to have the stories and characters on the Twilight Zone go astray has always been influential to everything I create.
WCP: What work are you most proud of?
JC: In the comic world, I’m proud of the characters that I have created with Carolyn Belefski for Curls Studio. They are all definitely not what they seem and I think the readers will find that with the more they follow the comics’ journeys, and I’m really excited about that. I believe we’re really getting a hold on who these characters really are and I’m proud that we’re at that point.
Continue to read the full interview here: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/books/2010/10/22/meet-a-local-comic-book-writer-a-chat-with-joe-carabeo
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