Matt Kindt has collaborated with Hollywood stars and fellow comic superstars, but his latest project teams him with someone he’s known all his life: Mrs. Margie Kraft Kindt.
Kindt and Kraft Kindt’s new 3-issue mystery comic called Gilt Frame (from Dark Horse Comics through Kindt’s Flux House imprint) stars Sam, an orphan in his early twenties, and his rich Aunt Merry (who bear a striking resemblance to the creators of Gilt Frame).
Gilt Frame sees the duo travel from Paris to Hawaii to Montenegro, encountering jewel thieves, art-forgers, gun-runners, the century-old ghost of the woman in black, a lost puppy, and a master French detective along the wild way.
We were lucky enough to get to conduct an interview with Matt and Margie about Gilt Frame and their unique mother/son collaboration in this exclusive interview.
Matt-When did you decide to approach your mother Margie about collaborating on Gilt Frame?
Matt Kindt: We just sort of stumbled into the idea. We’d been talking about the first season of Only Murders in the Building which I’d recommended to her since my parents live in the same kind of building here in St. Louis – with an equally colorful cast of characters. I thought she’d get a kick out of it. But halfway through the season she figured out the twist ending – the “whodunnit” part of the show. I was surprised and when she told me I thought – that is a GENIUS idea…but I don’t think the show is that kind of show. That twist is a little too smart and dark for what they were going for. So I told her – if they don’t do that twist ending – let’s take that basic twist idea and make our own story – I loved the idea so much. And then we really did just wait…until season 1 and 2 were finished – it had done something completely different so we started working on this story. She’d already written a few mystery stories so we looked through those and picked one that had an interesting plot and then grafted our ending and our new characters into it…a LOT more went into the entire book but those were really the seeds that everything grew out of. Every story ends up having a life of its own so we started there and then twisted it into this really fun, dark, mystery story that has a gut-punch of an ending.
Margie—Were you surprised when Matt asked you and were you at all intimidated at the prospect of writing a mystery comic?
Margie Kindt: When Matt suggested a collaboration for a graphic novel mystery, during one of our weekly family dinners one evening, I was totally surprised by the idea, but not in the least intimidated—we have always enjoyed whipping out wild stories for each other, so if he believed we could do it, then I believed it, too . . . he has proven himself a good judge of what works.
Although I generally write nonfiction, about twenty years ago I wrote several mysteries when I needed to kick back and just have some fun, but then they were shelved and forgotten . . . until now. So we did have some material to blow the dust off and draw on for a start, though the mystery that unfolded, Gilt Frame, is a far more lively, intricate mystery with lots of plot twists thanks to the curious and compelling character, Sam, that Matt created and wove into the story.
We set up the kitchen table like a partner table, with Matt on one side and me across from him, our computers and materials spread out around us. He roleplayed the persona of Sam and I took on the character of his great-aunt, Merry. We imagined a scenario and he invented Sam’s quirky dialogue and mannerisms while I provided a snappy retort from his gutsy Great-Aunt Merry—sometimes we laughed so hard that we had to remind each other that one of us needed to be getting this material down.
From the beginning, we had a compelling story to tell and were fearless in following where it led us, no matter how gruesome the path.
Matt-You have collaborated with many writers and artists over the years, but did you approach this assignment differently because it was your mother? Did you find that you could be more or less honest about your process?
Matt: My collaborations up until BRZRKR had all been really disconnected. We would have an idea together and then there would be a clear division of labor when it came to writing – we’d chop the story up and each write part and then stitch it together. But when I started on BRZRKR – Keanu wasn’t interested in doing it that way but it was the only way I’d collaborated before. So I learned a new way with him where we would just sit in a room and hash it all out. Plot and then dialogue and then scripts and scenes and action. It was a constant back and forth. I had so much fun working in this way that I feel like it ended up being great training for the collaboration with my mom. I knew how to work this new way because of BRZRKR so we just did it the same way. Sat at the kitchen table and hashed out dialogue and story beats. I even convinced my mom to help with some of the water color painting – I had her go through and paint all the skin color of the character in the entire book. I’m not sure if I could get Keanu to do that…but now I think I might try next time. It’s a therapeutic process.
Margie—How do you think all of those mystery role play activities that you set up for Matt as a young boy contributed to his curiosity and the creation of Gilt Frame?
Because raising a child is such a challenging responsibility, I knew we had to have fun along the way and we found it by observing and investigating simple mysteries in everyday life.
Since we often had travel time in the car during Matt’s growing up years—back and forth to school—that was the perfect time to look out the car window and ask, “Why is there snow on that side of the building but not the other?” or, “What made those tracks in the snow?”
As Matt grew older, we upped the ante and moved on to more exciting, contrived crime scenes—maybe he headed to the family room to watch Saturday morning cartoons, only to find that one of his action figures is knocked out, after an obvious brawl inside a Lincoln Log cabin while another action figure is passed out behind a rock, wearing gloves even though it is July . . . Matt’s job was to look for evidence and figure out what happened.
Sometimes the role playing worked in reverse, when Matt and his brother provided a real crime scene for me to solve—how did gravel get on the window sill and floor of the boys’ bathroom? A quick investigation revealed that little Matt was the lookout while his older brother cranked open the window and climbed out onto the garage roof for a stealthy walk-about. Matt said that taught him not to lie to his mother, but I think it also taught him something about how to plant, conceal, or use evidence in a mystery story, and that abetting is a crime, too.
Because he grew up learning the importance and the entertainment value of solving a good mystery, it is probably not surprising that he hung on to the tradition and found a way to work it into his work.
Margie—What do you remember about Matt’s initial interest in comics?
Matt never knew a world without the enrichment of comics, because they were on the family bookshelves, valued along with the encyclopedias and literary classics, as well as his first picture books—everything from vintage Little Lulu, Bugs Bunny, and Scrooge McDuck with the scheming, blundering Beagle Boys, to Batman, Superman, and the more current Star Wars comics.
When Matt was four years old, he entered a local newspaper’s Star Wars drawing contest and won for his age group—four tickets to the just-released film. So I knew he loved to cartoon, and that he had plenty of inspiration and models around the house. At that age, he often fell asleep reading a comic and wake up with it twisted among his blankets, the cover pulled off and pages crumpled—gradually he grew into cardboard backing and plastic sleeves so many survived his childhood.
For years, starting in the mid-1980s when Matt was about twelve years old, every Mother’s Day afternoon was celebrated at the annual comic book show at a strip mall in Kansas City, Missouri. Each mother was issued a carnation at the door and a warm thank you for observing the day in such an untraditional way, but it was truly an event we all enjoyed. A mother can be acknowledged any day of the year, but the comic show was a now-or-never, once-a-year, not-to-be-missed opportunity. Nowhere else was there such a wide offering of comic books, plus the opportunity for Matt to meet and watch graphic artists at work, like Steve Lightle, and talk with them about their inspiration and craft—it was there that Matt learned from Lightle that shadows on faces were painted with blue watercolor.
Matt: Does the dynamic between Aunt Merry and Sam resemble your relationship with Margie?
Matt: For sure. The mains share a kind of acerbic dark humor that my mom and I share. If I could classify it I would say it’s a kind of sarcastic jaded optimism. Yes – full of some fun contradictions.
I think it’s heightened versions of our younger selves. Or alternative reality versions of us that “could have been.” It was important to have some distance from the characters – to make them fictional so that we could be free to push them into places we couldn’t/wouldn’t go and to say things we might not say to each other. But I think the souls of these characters – the heart – it’s real. The humor and the pathos and ideas…all of that comes from a very real place. And like the characters – I think we might have solved a real crime in this book. There’s a true crime element – a heist that happened at the 1904 World’s Fair – and I’m convinced we figured out what happened.
After writing Gilt Frame, what did you learn about each other and would you do it again?
Margie: We learned that Matt’s suggestion, to collaborate on a graphic novel, was a great idea and fantastic fun. Because of previous collaborations, Matt knew how to work with a partner to create a story, using learned techniques for creating dialogue and for working out creative differences—and it did not hurt that we have been working together all of his life.
Because Matt also drew the panels, I began to fully realize how a graphic artist works and how skilled he has become in his craft. The old masters painted portraits, but the graphic artist not only draws the bust, but then draws and transforms those facial features through hundreds of different expressions that reveal love, hate, revenge, malice, anger, murderous thoughts, sadness, shock, remorse, every emotion or feeling. Then the graphic artist sketches the rest of the body that, through hundreds of gestures and stances, helps develop the character and the plot.
Impressionists moved their easels around the outdoors, looking for the perfect landscape to paint, while the graphic artists pulls the scene out of his or her head—the scene did not exist, until imagined and made real only through pen and paint.
Only when I helped watercolor the panels and had to reach for the smallest-tipped brush did I really notice how detailed each page is—even if an element will be lost when a page is shrunk for book sizing, still it is added because it makes the drawing right.
Perhaps we both learned that working together to solve mysteries is still topnotch entertainment and it seems to be our destiny.
Matt: I learned to be more grateful for the position I’m in – to be published – to have a publisher and an outlet to create books and have total creative control and freedom. I think over the years I’ve begun to take it for granted a little bit. Just focused on story and art. And not seeing the big picture. Working with my mom has really made me take stock and be grateful for how far I’ve come – and I didn’t get here on my own. I was raised right. I had a great family support system my entire life. I count myself lucky. And another book? We have ideas for a trilogy.
The nature of this first book lends itself to a trilogy where the nature of the new mystery changes along with our characters. There is definitely not a formula to these stories. That’s a trap I think a lot of crime and mystery series fall into. The “mystery of the week” kind of thing that becomes formula. I really want this series to evolve. The main characters change with each book. The mystery is inherently different. Even the subgenre of mystery is going to change. We have big plans. It will be a real progression that we’re excited to tackle.
The first issue of Gilt Frame is currently available at finer comic shops everywhere.
