Remember the first forty-five minutes of Wall-E? With nearly zero dialogue, Pixar was able to craft a deeply affecting, emotionally charged narrative about the last robot on Earth, his cockroach pal, and his obsession with the pop culture of yesteryear. That’s all well and good for films, but does the same concept translate to comic books? The answer, according to Geof Darrow’s Shaolin Cowboy #1, is a resounding yes. With nary a sound effect or a line of spoken dialogue in the first issue, Darrow manages to craft a bloodsoaked epic that finds our stoic, taciturn Monk slicing the scalps off countless zombies using his trusty bo-staff with chainsaws affixed to either end. It’s a rollicking, frentic, and supremely fun return to the classic character that is packed to the brim with jaw-dropping set pieces and plenty of “Oh, shit!” moments.
This isn’t Darrow’s first Shaolin rodeo though. Originally – and sporadically – published by Andy and Lana Wachowski’s Burlyman imprint, Shaolin Cowboy has existed in one form or another since 2004. Issues trickled out over the next several years until the series went on hiatus in 2007. At New York Comic Con in 2011, it was announced that Dark Horse would be releasing more Shaolin Cowboy stories, and now, at long last, we finally have our hands on the first of a four-issue mini-series. Darrow is still handling primary writing and artistic duties, but colorist Dave Stewart brings the book to glorious life with his sublime palette and eye-popping color choices.
To help get you as excited as I am about the return of Shaolin Cowboy, I caught up with Darrow to talk about what draws him back to this character, his design influences, and just what the hell happened to that long-rumored Shaolin Cowboy animated feature.
Nerdist: I really enjoyed this first issue. Itâs a real barn burner. You waste no time getting into the awesome action-packed, chainsaw-wielding fun. Looking forward, what sort of stuff can we expect from this mini-series? Itâs six issues, correct?
Geof Darrow: Itâs four.
N: Four â OK.
GD: Well, if you donât like what happens at the end of the first one, youâre not going to like the rest of it. [laughter] One giant bite â Iâve just got to be funny to do it. Maybe somebody â I think in Japan theyâve probably done it. Itâs a big action sequence. It has kind of an ending, and â I donât know, I think a lot of wacky fun, I think. I hope!
N: Oh yeah. No, it was definitely a blast. I wasnât quite sure what to expect when I popped it open, and my fears were immediately assuaged when I saw countless decapitations at the hands of a double-bladed chainsaw staff. That was definitely up my alley!
GD: Youâll get tired of that pretty quick, probably! [chuckles] I donât know â I just wanted to do a big action sequence, which I had never ever really done. I worked on some other stuff that I was kind of frustrated, and I couldnât do it â not that Iâve done that much â and in this one, I got that and zombies out of my system, I think.
N: [chuckles] Yeah, it definitely packs them both in there, in a very effective fashion. Something that really struck me about this first issue is your use of silence. Thereâs remarkably little dialogue, and I think that makes these bursts of violence all the more potent. Can tell me a little bit about what motivated that decision, and is this use of relatively minimal dialogue something thatâs going to continue?
GD: Yeah, it does, because it â I donât â shoot, I guess when youâre fighting somebody, I donât think youâre going to be talking that much. I mean, you can have sound effects in there and Iâm not against sound effects (and thereâs a little bit), but I think your mind kind of makes them when youâre seeing those heads are getting chopped off. I think you kind of hear the sound; At least, I do. So, you know, the only interplay he really has is with those guys in the car in the first one. I supposed he could be having an inner dialogue, but thatâs been kind of done to death, and Iâve always been a big fan of the Japanese films, especially Kurosawaâs Yojimbo and then Leoneâs Fistful of Dollars, the Man with No Name, the silent character, he just â he does, he just does something, he doesnât talk about what heâs doing.
N: Yeah.
GD: I could have had him saying goofy stuff, and I mean, maybe Iâm wrong. I think I can write goofy dialogue, and probably have [chuckles], if I want to, but I said letâs have the drawings tell it all and just fight a bunch of things.
N: And not every hero needs to have that constant, Peter Parker stream of endless witty banter.
GD: Yeah.
N: I think thereâs something to be said for silence. I actually thought it was very effective. It made it stand out from the crowd.
GD: Well, thank you, because thatâs what I thought. Because I looked at it and I thought, well, you know, itâll just be kind of, you know, because the James Bond movies that I like, especially the Daniel Craig ones, heâs not too much of… that a deal that Steven Seagal would know, one of those movies where he goes âYou can take that to the bank â the blood bank!â [laughter] Or the CSI: Miami thing where David Caruso would go â someone gets hit by a lawnmower, and he goes, âWhat happened here? He must have got cut down.â That kind of âAaaahh!â
N: [laughter] Yeah.
GD: I mean, you know, theyâre pretty cheap shots. I think itâs easy to do. You know the whole other thing of describing the action: âIâm going to hit this guy or Iâll be dead!â
N: [laughter] Crazy!
GD: âIf I donât beat these guys, I can⦠barely⦠keep⦠my strength. Got⦠to⦠rest.â You know? I couldnât put that stuff. I didnât want to do it.
N: And I think it pays off when you put a little bit of faith in the reader, that they can follow whatâs happening.
GD: Yeah. I mean, you know, if you go back, some of my favorite â I know Moebius did some, those Arzach stories are all basically silent, if youâre familiar with those, and theyâre brilliant, I think. Even the Japanese, you see a lot of the older style manga thereâLone Wolf and Cub, theyâre generally, when somethingâs going on, heâs just doing what he does; heâs not saying âSeagull Style,â you know.
N: That would kind of ruin the mood.
GD: Heâs not saying what heâs doing. Youâre drawing it; I think you can kind of â I used to work at Hanna-Barbera, and they used to have describe what they were doing because they never wanted to animate it! âIâm going to hit this guy with a truck.â
N: [laughter]
GD: And then they would go, âI got him!â And youâd cut to the truck and it had already hit the guys â they didnât draw them doing it.
N: [chuckles] That explains a lot of my childhood right there.
GD: I could tell you stories about working there. What cracks me up is that they are releasing a lot of those shows that I worked on â Super Friends and some of these â at the time Empire Strikes Back comes out, science fiction was the thing that was hot, and they did a lot of science fiction based shows, and they had gone back to Herculoid and all of their old shows, and I worked on some of thoseâthey were horrible.
N: They donât hold up?
GD: People say, âOh, I grew up with those,â and I go, âEww.â Especially the Super Friends ones, some of those.
N: Nostalgia can involve wearing some very rose-colored glasses sometimes. I know Iâve gone back and revisited certain animated features from my youth, and I was a little horrified, because I remember loving them. And then, going back, I kind of broke that illusion a little bit.
GD: Yeah, I still have great affection for â actually, I probably wasnât that young when I saw them â a couple of Japanese TV shows â the live action ones, like Johnny Sokko. I just still think those things are â but I thought they were funny when I watched them, and I still think theyâre funny, because the whole idea of giving a skyscraper-sized robot to this little kid â it would be a great comedy thing, the wrong kid gets a hold of it, some really arrogant little kid with a lot of self-esteem issues. âJohnny Robot, I want that kid smashed now!â [chuckles]
N: Exactly, yeah! Try taming him now if you thought he was unruly before.
GD: That sense of entitlement. âGet me that PlayStation, now!â
N: So jumping back to Shaolin Cowboy for a moment, I want to talk about the design and the visual tone, because it feels like such a remarkably specific world. I was wondering what influenced the design going into this? I know our hero â maybe this is just me â he reminded me a lot of Shintaro Katsu, the Zatoichi actor.
GD: Yeah, thatâs my inspiration.
N: Oh, awesome!
GD: You know, itâs funny, because I had seen his brother, Tomisaburo Wakayama, who is Lone Wolf, in those Baby Cart movies â they released one in English here in the early ’70s, when the whole kung fu craze was taking off. I thought it was a kung fu movie â it was called Shogun Assassin 2: Lightning Swords of Death, and I had never seen anything like that. I had never seen a movie that bloody, with as many decapitations.
N: Yeah. [laughter]
GD: And he looks a lot like his brother, Shintaro Katsu, and then when I heard that he did the blind swordsman, and then I saw one, and I wasnât that â âcause they were kind of funny, there is some humor in them, right?
N: Mm-hmm.
GD: I thought they should be really serious, but then I grew to prefer those â both of those guys, theyâre really kind of unlikely looking heroes, and I donât think that â when I was living in Japan, I donât think â but maybe it was through my Occidental eyes â I donât think heâs really handsome, Shitaro Katsu. He has charm, but heâs not like Toshiro Mifune. Maybe they consider him handsome, but he just has an allure in those movies. Zatoichi is just fantastic.
N: Yeah, I feel like itâs a similar case to someone like Beat Takeshi, where theyâre not traditionally handsome, per se, but they still have a magnetism about them.
GD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I, you know, heâs been a big inspiration to me, in terms of Shaolin Cowboy, but he doesnât look like a hero.
N: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. You donât expect the protagonist to be more advanced in years.
GD: You know, I mean, what I like about a lot of the Japanese films â and when I was over there working â I found that now theyâre really into archetypes, they reallyâyou know, theyâd say to me, âWell, your character doesnât look like a hero.â And I said, âYeah, thatâs what I want.â And he goes, âUh.â I mean, when Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt or Clint Eastwood come in, you know theyâre going to do something. But somebody that looks like Shitaro Katsu, youâre just kind of like, âPht.â And then youâre dead before you realize you messed with the wrong guy.
N: Yeah! [chuckles]
GD: And that, I find, thatâs really cool. Beat Takeshi, gosh, thereâs a guy that just out of the blue, the violence, when it happens, itâs just so shocking. Itâs super effective.
N: Oh, yeah, especially in some of his movies, like Hana-bi, where itâs very, very sweet and serene and beautiful and thenâ¦
GD: Oh yeah! Weâre on the same wavelength. That one has just such â I mean, fireworks, in all senses of the word. When it happens, youâre like, âOh, geez!â
N: Yeah, heâs really something else. You should also check out Blood and Bones, a Korean film, if you havenât seen that.
GD: No â whatâs that one?
N: He plays the horrifying, very brutal patriarch of this family, and it follows them through a couple of generations living in Osaka before and after the war.
GD: Itâs a Korean film?
N: Itâs a Korean film about a Japanese family, and itâs unrelenting, but itâs some really good stuff.
GD: Iâd better write that one down. Blood and Bones. Huh! Did you see The Grand Master?
N: I havenât seen it yet. Thatâs on my list.
GD: See both versions. Itâs interesting. Itâs beautifully, beautifully shot.
N: Yeah, Iâve heard pretty good things about this new one, so Iâm excited to see what they did. Iâm also excited for â Iâve heard similarly good things about Keanu Reevesâ Man of Tai Chi, actually.
GD: Yeah, Iâve seen it, and I really like Keanu, and I think he did a really good job, but you know, it tries too hard to make the point, and the scenes, when you see it, when heâs with his master, say it all, without the other stuff. I donât want to give it away, but some of it, I just kind of wish that he had â geez, itâs so hard to make a movie, and I shouldnât be criticizing, because he did a really, really good job. I just wish he had let it â he had let it talk for itself. He didnât have to make the point, because he had already shown it.
N: Yeah. I gotcha. Sometimes less is more, as is the case with Shaolin Cowboy. Look at that segue!
GD: I donât know anybody thatâs ever said âless is moreâ with me! [chuckles] Itâs more, and itâs less.
N: In terms of just superfluous exposition.
GD: Oh yeah, oh yeah â OK. Yep.
N: I think youâre definitely leading the way on zombie decapitations.
GD: Yeah⦠it gets worse. Like I say, Iâve kind of â you know⦠yeah. [chuckles]
N: So with Shaolin Cowboy, youâre serving as both writer and artist. Iâm curious if you find you prefer being able to control both aspects of a book, or if you prefer to work with a creative partner? If not, do you prefer wearing one hat over the other?
GD: Well, you know, like when I worked with Frank [Miller], I drove Frank crazy, because the first time I just did what I wanted. And then when I worked with Frank, he gave me a script, and I didnât know you werenât supposed to change things. And he was so nice to me, didnât say anything until later, but I put a lot of stuff in there that â like, the first issue I think thereâs ten pages of script, and I just went off on tangents, and if he described a scene, Iâd say âOh, OK,â and it would become two pages, not add things.
So Iâve never really sort of been under anybodyâs thumb, per se. Like with Big Guy [and Rusty the Boy Robot] â Big Guy was just two paragraphs, basically, of the monster attacks Japan, and he kills them with an atom bomb, and that was it, and then Frank went back in and put dialogue in it, which was kind of like the Kirby/Lee way of doing things.
N: Yeah.
GD: So Iâve never really worked under a script, so I donât know. I like to have some leeway. Like in a movie script, when you get a movie script, the action in it, Joe goes into the room and fights all these guys, then the storyboard guy is in there, then the stunt guys and they figure out that scene, but itâs hard to kind of write that kind of action in a script form, and if somebody did it for me, Iâd probably get bored. I kind of like to have some sort of creative input in that respect.
N: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I can imagine itâs nice to have a little bit of wiggle room in there. That way you can kind of suss it out and adjust accordingly, as the story evolves.
GD: I think a lot of people think â for instance, if I understand, Alan Moore writes really complete scripts. He says âThe guyâs in the room, thereâs a can of Coke and some Cheerios and an open bag of Doritos, and thereâs a peppermint Schnapps bottle on the floor, and a Chihuahua lapping up the blood from a guyâs neck.â But I donât think everyoneâat least, I donât think everybody writes like that. I know Frank never did. I mean, a lot of the stuff in the backgrounds I drew was just stuff I came up with, like in Hard Boiled. There was no â he didnât say, âIn this panel we see Nixon and heâs wearingâ¦â â like in Hard Boiled, in the last issue, he puts on a shirt, and the shirt heâs wearing says âGodzilla,â and the old lady is wearing a shirt that says âKing Kong.â And thatâs something that I did because I thought it was funny.
N: [laughter] Yeah, well, thatâs the nice thing, though, because that way everyone gets to put their stamp on the book.
GD: Yeah, and itâs a collaboration. I donât think thereâs anything wrong, obviously, with the way Alan Moore does it. I, myself, I donât know that I could do it, becauseâ¦
N: Yeah, definitely. I understand for some people itâs nice that they include all that detail, but I can see how that would be restrictive, as well.
GD: You know, I have people come up to me at the conventions, and theyâll say âWell, you knowâ¦,â and Iâll say, âI did that. Nobody told me to do that.â Iâm not just a robot. At least Frank never treats his artists like robots. I know Bill Sienkiewicz, he gave him â Bill really went wild when he was doing Elektra: Assassin. But Frank let him run with it. Iâm rambling.
N: No, no, itâs fine. With Shaolin Cowboy, this is a series that you kept returning to in one form or another for the better part of a decade. How has the book evolved since you first started?
GD: I just think I draw a little better, the storytellingâs a little betterâa lot better, Iâm thinking. My drawing got better. I donât know â you know, the next one will be more of a story, per se. Itâll be more of a beginning, middle, end â not just a piece of time. That was kind of like, in terms of film, some guy – Altman, I think his first film was just a day in somebodyâs life. It was just, the sunâs going down, the day is over, and he filmed it. This comic â especially this one â is like that, itâs just about 15 or 20 minutes of time, and something happens in that 20 minutes of time, but itâs notâ¦
N: Yeah, but thatâs cool too, because you want the sense that they â he existed before this book took place, thereâs a 15 or 20 minutes span before then, thereâs going to be a 15 or 20 minutes span afterwards.
GD: I mean, it may sound pretentious me saying this, but life is â you donât know whatâs going to happen today. You take an hour of your day â you may have a very interesting afternoon. However, the rest of it is just doing your laundry, making dinner, then maybe around 11 oâclock, the zombies attack.
N: [laughter]
GD: After that, you go back to making your dinner. I never⦠yeah, I have never, ever done â I guess Hard Boiled, even Hard Boiled is basically just a piece of time, but it had an ending, I guess. Nothing has evolved, I donât think! Itâs not like in a Marvel comic when Captain Americaâs finally destroyed the cosmic cube, or a James Bond movie⦠I donât know. I donât know what Iâm talking about.
N: [chuckles] Thatâs fine. Something that Iâm curious about â is there any update on the status of the Shaolin Cowboy movie?
GD: Well, Iâm always talking. I was trying to find some money, you know! In terms of the movie, itâs not a lot of money. But the one thing is that itâs traditional animation, and you need like $3 million to finish it, and itâs so hard to describe, because people will ask, âHow much of it is done?â By Japanese standards, itâs about half finished. But thatâs by Japanese standards. If you went to DreamWorks or Disney and you say the movie is half finished, you have whole sequences that you can show. You can probably actually show half of the movie.
N: Yeah.
GD: With this, you canât, because they work in a way in which â well, when this guy â thereâs a specialist whoâs really good with certain sequences and cars â when heâs available, heâll do that part. But in the meantime, weâll do the dog thatâs running alongside of the car, and weâve got another guy whoâs really good at doing the running sequences, and heâll do all of the running sequences, but the backgrounds arenât done.
N: Mm-hmm.
GD: And so I always describe it this way â if you had a house, and somebody started building that house, and they put the carpeting down on one floor, they might have the toilet ready for upstairs, they might have the light fixtures for another room, and have the wallpaper in one room â if you put all that stuff together, it would add up to half of it. But if somebody walked in there, it would look like a mess, because itâs just a bunch of stuff, but all together itâs like half, so I can never really show it to anybody because thereâs only like nine minutes you can actually kind of look at.
N: Yeah.
GD: But itâs all sitting in these boxes, all story boarded over there, which is the biggest thing.
N: Have you considered looking to something like Kickstarter?
GD: I just donât think itâs enough. I donât think I would ever get that kind of money.
N: Gotcha.
GD: And the Japanese, I donât think, wouldnât know how to do it. I mean, they had the hardest time with this thing, and theyâre really great, but they had the hardest time wrapping their head around this thing anyway, despite the fact that heâs supposed to basically be Shintaro Katsu, they did not like the way he looked, which really kind of took the top of my head off.
So weâve kind of moved on. I mean, over there, I discovered that if youâre good, youâre Brad Pitt. If youâre bad, you look like â I keep wanting to say Steve Buscemi, but I like him â yeah, Steve Buscemi. I mean, thereâs no… Steve Buscemi couldnât be the good guy in Japan.
N: Yeah, exactly. They like their protagonists to be very handsome there.
GD: And the women, theyâre either knockouts, or theyâre super ugly. Thereâs no in-between, and thereâs no middle-aged, thereâs nothing over thereâ¦
N: Yeah, itâs just one day youâre suddenly an old lady.
GD: Yeah, and thereâs a sequence in there with these strippers, and I drew some, and it was funny that they look like… when I was a kid, I remember going to a strip joint, and there were some pretty seedy looking ladies! And thatâs what I drew, and they were, like, âMmm. Mmm. Are these women your fantasy?â [laughter]
N: [laughter]
GD: âNo, theyâre not my fantasy!â Every time I draw something, they say âIs that your fantasy?â Thatâs not my fantasy, but thatâs, I mean, look at the way this place is! Theyâre not going to have Salma Hayek and Megan Fox working there! It ainât gonna be that way!
N: Oh, my goodness.
GD: But thatâs what they would draw, so I kind of gave in on it, so youâve got all of these seedy characters, and all the girls, except for one â thatâs the one that I drew â they all look like Vegas showgirls, in this seedy… which is kind of funny, I guess, hole in the wall strip joint, and theyâre wearing Vegas-style costumes. I mean, itâs funny now that I mention it, but it doesnât make a lot of sense. The movie is pretty wild now.
N: Well, hopefully youâll be able to get the funding at some point, because that sounds like something Iâd really like to see.
GD: Yeah, it was pretty â it was quite an experience.
N: Is there any chance we could see a Hard Boiled movie someday?
GD: Well, theyâre working on it.
N: Yeah?
GD: Yeah, itâs been optioned and theyâve been working on it. Theyâve mentioned someone theyâre talking to about it, but I canât say… but itâs going to be great. But there have been a few guys that have been mentioned that are really good, but I donât know.
Itâs real funny, because when they first started talking about it, I go, âNobodyâs going to make this thing,â because, you know, itâs got kind of a Terminator thing to it. Theyâd go, âAh, itâs just a knockoff of Terminator.â But now thereâs enough water under the bridge that they think people will go – I donât think people will forget Terminator, but itâs OK. But maybe, you know. They want to do it, and at one point they were going to do it. The Wachowskis wanted to do it. They wanted to do a huge animated version of it. But, you know â Pft! It would have been amazing, I think. Frank didnât want to do it.
N: Thatâs a bummer, because I feel like the Wachowskis got Cloud Atlas made, which I thought was an unfilmable book. I feel like they could definitely do an animated Hard Boiled, no problem.
GD: Oh yeah, yeah. They should have. But, I mean, at the time, I donât think Frank, I donât think Frank had seen The Matrix, and I donât think he knew who they were. I mean, it was right at the time when they were at the top, they were the hottest guys in Hollywood. Theyâre really wonderful guys, and they called me up and say, âGeof, weâre going to make you a million dollars!â
N: [laughter]
GD: And I said, âWhy? How?â They said â âcause they were telling everybody, when they were asked what they wanted to do, they said âHard Boiled.â
N: Nice! That is cool.
GD: And then Frank shot it down, and I donât blame them. They kind of walked away and I said, well, I donât blame them.
N: Yeah, itâs tough.
GD: Itâs so hard to get a movie going if one of the persons is kind of negative, you knowâyou donât want to go forward with it.
N: You donât want that kind of ill will playing into your production.
GD: Because at that point, Nicolas Cage wanted to be in it, and Frank felt that, you know, we should put Nicolas Cage in it, and remember, Iâve got to figure, those guys have a million irons in the fire, and if you wait for them, Pft! Theyâre going to move, theyâre going to jump at whatever is going to happen. I always go with the guy that, you know, has got the money and is ready to go! [laughter]
N: Exactly! [laughter] Whoeverâs on board.
GD: Yeah! So, anywayâ¦
N: Very nice. Thank you so much, Geof.
GD: Iâm sorry I rambled on so much.
N: No, I had a pleasure talking to you. This was one of the more enjoyable interviews Iâve done, so thank you very much!
GD: I appreciate your support of the comic, because itâs an odd kind of comic â thank you, I appreciate it.
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And now because we love you guys, check out some exclusive preview pages courtesy of Dark Horse.
That’s a little fuel gauge in the top corner — hint, hint. Dark Horse’s Shaolin Cowboy #2 comes to a comic book store near you on November 13th. What do you think of the book? Let us know in the comments or tell me on Twitter.
Love the fact it’s going for a lot of silence. When I read the first Shaolin Cowboy series, I wasn’t digging it until I stopped reading and just followed the pictures. Then I loved it. I’ll add this to my pulllist.
Hard Boiled the movie may actually be happening?! Yowzah! One of the best books I’ve read.