Giant robots are known to transform into cars, lions, dinosaurs, jets, but the one that you never hear about a giant robot morphing into is a hotel.
But a hotel is exactly what Josh Hicks’ giant robot turns into in his new graphic novel Hotelitor.
Hicks went over all of the aspects of his unique giant-robot-as-hotel concept, as well as the real life inspiration for the funny take on the idea, in this exclusive interview.
When did you decide to combine a hotel and giant robot for a graphic novel?
Josh Hicks: I drew the first iteration of Hotelitor as a big illustration a few years ago, and I have no memory as to why. Some perfect storm of divine inspiration and boredom. I kept looking at it and story and character ideas started to come to me: What if this thing got lost in space? What if it had to fight giant monsters? What if it was the site of a weird Lord of the Flies-style societal breakdown? What if I single-mindedly committed two years to drawing a book about it? That sort of thing.
How do you balance the satire and big robot action while maintaining a specific tone?
Hicks: A lot of that is intuitive and organic, I think. I always want to make readers laugh and give them a good time, but I also had specific things about work and the state of the world that I wanted to write about, if only to get them off my chest a little bit. You’ve just got to feel the vibe and trust your instincts in terms of when to go for the joke and when to commit a little bit more heavily. There’s no science to it!
When it came to designing Hotelitor, how did you approach it and what did you draw from?
Hicks: I did some different early designs of Hotelitor, but I think it was always going to end up being this big, classic, 70s anime & manga throwback. Our lead is Anna, who’s a teenage student doing an unpaid placement on this giant robot hotel, and she’s kind of at a crossroads between her childhood and looming adult responsibility. Giant robots were certainly a big childhood obsession for me, so drawing on those classic designs just felt right. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere. Also, a huge part of the book is that Hotelitor is not only a character, but an environment that all of our characters live in, so something bulky was important too. Plus it needed to be fun to draw, if only for my own sanity.
Tell us about your own experiences as an employee at a hotel. Did any scenes jump from life to the page?
Hicks: I worked a bunch of odd jobs that fed into all of the work stuff in the book. Nothing from those jobs leapt directly to the page – I was doing things like failing to sell extended Xbox 360 warranties at a game store, getting papercuts at a filing warehouse and trying to wrangle reality show contestants at an unpaid television job. I never worked at a hotel myself, but a friend did for years, and people complaining about the specifics of pool temperature seemed to happen daily. That made its way in. In terms of my own work experience, it was just a more general sense of being stressed, anxious, overwhelmed and not really knowing what I was doing. There’s a lot of that in the book.
Designing a giant monster must be just as fun, but different from a mecha. How did you approach this task and design your aliens?
Hicks: That was fun! I wanted to design monsters that felt otherworldly and strange, but the nature of the story meant it was also important that they didn’t look completely mindless and aggressive. I wanted to give them some dignity, I guess. I had a great time digging up old Ultraman concept art and stuff for inspiration. There’s a bit in the book where one of the characters imagines some other aliens that might theoretically attack Hotelitor, and that was fun, too. I got to play around with some designs that felt like a scary monster that a six-year-old would draw. That part was kind of just drawing the first thing that came into my head.
Which character do you most relate to in the graphic novel?
Hicks: Anna’s got a lot of traits that I had when I was her age, especially in terms of starting to work and the sense of feeling out of my depth and not really fitting in. So I certainly relate to her, but I’m older now, so I probably relate to Robert Gurney the most. I generally relate most to characters that are almost always frowning. He’s a disgruntled dog/journalist, and he just wants people to read the stuff he’s putting out, but it’s an uphill struggle. I’ve only now realized he’s semi-autobiographical.
Sequel?
Hicks: I’d love to do a sequel at some point. I’m busy with other projects at the moment, so it wouldn’t be any time soon – that’s one of the reasons I wanted the book to feel self-contained and complete. I do have a hypothetical sequel title and some ideas in mind, though. Also, I’m always doing animation work in the background, so who knows: maybe I’ll make my own weird Hotelitor movie one day.
Hotelitor is currently available to purchase in finer bookstores and comic shops everywhere.
