IDW Originals’ six-issue miniseries Dead Seas launched on December 21st, and today AIPT can exclusively reveal a writer’s commentary from Cavan Scott. Dead Seas features art by Nick Brokenshire in a story that follows a cynical convict turned reluctant hero after he finds himself trapped on a sinking prison ship swarming with ghosts.
Scott has written his fair share of comics from his great Star Wars comics to Batman, Doctor Who, Assassin’s Creed, Pacific Rim, Transformers, Back to the Future, Star Trek, Vikings, Adventure Time, and more. You might also know him from his creator-owned series including the supernatural spy thriller Shadow Service from Vault comics and The Ward, an urban fantasy medical drama launching this June from Dark Horse.
Without further ado, check out Scott’s writer commentary below!
DEAD SEAS ISSUE ONE COMMENTARY By Cavan Scott
WARNING: SPOILERS AHOY!
Page 1:
Originally the idea for the issue was to jump straight to the Perdition, our haunted prison ship where the majority of the action happens, but when scripting I knew I was missing a trick by not showing our hero Gus with his family. As we later discover, his daughter Natalia is the reason he made a deal with the devil to reduce his sentence, so we needed to see her.
Page 2:
The other reason I wanted to add this prologue is that it gave us a chance to get one of Nick’s amazing ghost designs upfront from the get-go and here is Natty’s spectral Abuelita. The nursery rhyme that the gruesome grannie is singing is one Nick’s own grandmother used to sing him when he was little, although it was never as scary as this.
Page 3:
And now we’re on the way to the Perdition, introducing our main players including the delightful Henry and the not-so-pleasant Hicks. I love the phrase ‘all hat, no cowboy’. It was suggested by our editor Chase Marotz to replace the more anglocentric term ‘all mouth and no trousers’ that I originally suggested in my first draft.
Pages 4 & 5:
There she is; the R.C.V Perdition and along with her Elvis. Our Presley-loving guard came from a sketch that Nick did earlier in the development process of a convict who modelled himself on the King. For a while this Elvis-fan became Gus’ best friend on the ship, before I switched him over to being one of the guards.
Pages 6 & 7 (pages not shown):
Ah, the expository briefing. I love and loath these scenes in equal measure, and this one had a lot of heavy lifting setting up our world so we could get to the action ASAP. Nick holds it together wonderfully because he’s a master of pacing.
Looking back at my notes, I suggested the actor Giancarlo Esposito as the model for Administrator Rider. I’d just come off binge-watching The Godfather of Harlem which is well worth a watch if you’ve never seen it before. Esposito is just superb in the role of a sleazy preacher-turned-senator.
Page 8 (pages not shown):
Meet Isa Barrimore, daughter of the Perdition’s owner. Isa and her entire family are British as everyone knows the British make the best baddies (at least that’s what all my American friends tell me. I mean, just look at the Empire in Star Wars!) But what about Isa? Is she on the side of angels or rotten to the core? Time will tell…
Page 9 (pages not shown):
Callow, our troubled convict, was actually the subject of a short six-page sample that Nick and I wrote and illustrated to help sell the series. It told the story of Callow’s first experience with a ghost, an experience that leaves him as the nervous wreck we’ve just met. By the time we came to working on the first issue, Nick wanted to rework the pages as his style had developed in the intervening years and I thought that it was better to get straight to Gus’s story. One day we’ll probably share this ‘deleted scene’ so keep your eyes peeled on my website, www.cavanscott.com
Pages 10-11 (pages not shown):
I love Nick’s use of light on this spread as Henry and Gus become trapped. This sequence is based on the deleted scene I mentioned above where Callow was the one who got shut in when everything goes dark.
Pages 12-15:
The Child, as our blobby infant ghost is described in the script, is another survivor of the pitch comic, although he (or should have be ‘they’?) look very different. Nick and I worked out some twisted rules for the ghosts early on in the process, their appearances governed by either how they died or, more likely, how they lived. We’ve purposely left the majority of these backstories out of the book so readers can come up with their own theories.
This is actually the second giant ghost baby I’ve written in an IDW comic. It was only after the art was done that I remembered that I pitted The Real Ghostbusters against a far less terrifying toddler in the Ghostbusters 35th Anniversary collection. I’m not sure what this says about my psyche, but I find the concept petrifying!
Pages 16-17:
Dead Seas – or Ghost Ship as we originally pitched the book – is my love letter to the disaster movies of the 1970s. I adore how films like The Poseidon Adventure set up a large assemble cast, spending time with them before things start going south. This entire issue is largely our version of those early moments as we work out which characters we like…and which we hope go down with the ship.
After his treatment Elvis, Hicks is definitely one of the latter!
Pages 18 – 19:
There was a lot of conversation about the ghost in Callow’s eye. Some members of the team thought less was more, but I loved the amount of detail Nick put into the spectre that has got beneath our poor prisoner’s skin. It’s now one of my favourite panels in the comic.
Page 20 (pages not shown):
It was very important to me that Brook is just as much a badass as Strickson. You wouldn’t want to come up against either guard, as Hicks and Gus find out here.
Pages 21 – 22 (pages not shown):
Originally the issue was going to be 20 pages long, but I argued the case that I wanted to give the final additions to our cast a hero – or villains – weclome. Meet Espinosa, a pirate who is going to cause merry hell on the Perdition. If Gus thought the ghosts were bad, wait until he meets her…
Join the AIPT Patreon
Want to take our relationship to the next level? Become a patron today to gain access to exclusive perks, such as:
- ❌ Remove all ads on the website
- 💬 Join our Discord community, where we chat about the latest news and releases from everything we cover on AIPT
- 📗 Access to our monthly book club
- 📦 Get a physical trade paperback shipped to you every month
- 💥 And more!
You must be logged in to post a comment.