Sometimes the stories you’re meant to tell aren’t even your idea.
“It wasn’t my decision to adapt it into a comic,” said Chris Condon, writer of the forthcoming Night People miniseries. “It was Hunter Gorinson, who’s the head of Oni Press. He’s loved this book for a very long time. He’s really loved [author] Barry Gifford’s work as well.”
As Condon tells it, it wasn’t just Gorinson’s fandom that necessitated this project. The book, a series of interconnected stories about characters tackling the “chaotic horror of the United States at the end of the 20th century,” had another life before that needed reconciliation.
“Night People was, in a way, adapted into Lost Highway, although it’s a very different thing,” said Condon of that celebrated 1997 David Lynch film. “That’s kind of the impetus behind wanting to re-adapt it and wanting to give it its due.”
But just because Condon wasn’t the driving force of the book’s creation doesn’t mean he’s not put forth some real effort into celebrating the source material with real vigor. Because, like few other books he’s read, it spoke to him in a decidedly novel and inventive way.
“But this was a case where, within months of the first time I read this book, I was rereading and rereading and really combing through it with a highlighter and making notes in it,” said Condon. “And it was a really unique experience to have that sort of relationship with his prose, which I’ve never really done before. It gave me a new appreciation of.the novel as a whole, but also just the idea of a novel and how it’s constructed and how the characters interact and appear and the world that it’s built around and just trying to figure out how do I bring that to this other medium.”
Condon went on to explain that the key into this whole project was Gifford himself.
“In reading the book, I wanted to very much capture that voice. I wanted to keep this as faithful to Barry’s work as possible,” he said. “I connected with the style of writing. I thought it was a unique style. That’s something that you don’t really see in comics too often, and I really wanted to try to do justice to Barry’s work. I thought it was exciting to just be adapting somebody else’s work. I thought that that was something that I hadn’t done before, which is something that excites me. If it wasn’t apparent by how we do That Texas Blood, it’s like every arc is a different thing.”
In fact, it was that very title that highlighted the similarities between Condon and Giffords — and maybe got Condon the job in the first place.
“We do have a similar sensibility. We both have an understanding of character and place, and not only that, but a sense of humor about it, too,” said Condon. “Right off the bat, he read That Texas Blood and was like, ‘This is the guy to do it.’ Then I sent my first script in for Night People and he read it and he was like, ‘This is it. Yep.’ I don’t think he had any notes really.”
Cover to #1 from J. H. Williams III. Courtesy of Oni Press.
Condon fully understands the sheer complexity at the heart of the book. It’s not just four novellas clung together, but this massive narrative that weaves characters, geographies, and whatnot in an ever-shifting storyline. It’s a powerful dissection of man’s baser qualities, but it ain’t exactly an easy read.
“I like to describe it as ‘[Thomas] Pynchon meets the Coen Brothers,’” said Condon. “Like, it’s very novelistic — obviously it’s a novel — but it meanders, and I love that about it. I think that’s something that, in terms of adaptation, how do you approach that? And so I found a way to be like, ‘OK, I’ll move this scene here and move this scene here and I’ll cut this scene out.’ And that was kind of the exciting thing for me.”
To facilitate this process, Condon emphasized dialogue as an important “thread” between the original novel and the comics adaptation.
“Well, Barry is also a playwright. I think that his dialogue has that feel to it and it feels like a play in some ways,” he said. “I also really enjoyed the dialogue, and so that was one of the things that I wanted to keep as much as I could. So most of the dialogue that’s in the comic is Barry’s dialogue. It just came down to shaving it down a little bit and reconfiguring things here and there. And when I felt that it needed it, I would make it…not more palatable, but something that I would almost imagine hearing better than the dialogue that as it was written initially. Comics is this visual medium that’s one step removed from film and TV, [and] so I’ve always written in dialect. And Barry does that to an extent, but I really tried to bring what I do in books like That Texas Blood or Hell is a Squared Circle. Because you do have to infuse yourself into it to a certain extent.”
The idea, as Condon mentioned, was to maintain the original as best as he could but to still leave himself ample space/room to change things as needed to make this feel more true to comics’ very specific functions and demand.
“I didn’t change much in terms of the story,” he said. “I think that I kept a lot, and that was, again, a conscious decision. I made the effort to try and keep it as bare as possible. But I ended up cutting out a lot and then just thinking about, ‘OK, this is an interesting story, but I don’t think that it can fit in with what I’m doing.’ I would add in dialogue here and there. Or, I would add in little scenes here just sort of as connective tissue a little bit more. Because a novel flows differently than a comic book, obviously. So I think you need that meat to hold it together.
Condon added, “Just moving things around was a big thing that I ended up doing. The opening of our first issue is actually, I think, the third or fourth chapter. Like, what would be a really exciting opening? What would be a good way, a more explosive way, to get people into the story than the way that Barry did it? How do you break it down there? And how do you also sell this novelistic, weird world to comic readers?”
Not that the book’s subject matter needs much selling; it’s gritty fare most comics fans can already appreciate.
“I also just sat down and tried to figure out what Barry was really saying with it,” he said. “And I think that when it comes down to it, this book is about this twisted idea of what the American dream has become at the end of the 20th century, right? And it’s also very much about men being bad and women realizing that.”
Perhaps the scenery, too, offers ample connective potential. Night People may take place in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida, but Condon has his finger on the pulse of proper Southern-fried noir thanks to his rich bibliography.
“I’ve sort of been pigeonholed into doing westerns when I’m from New Jersey,” he said. “I find the South very interesting, and I think Barry does as well. I met some great people in Texas. I’ve had great times in Texas. I’ve also met some awful people in Texas. Heard some awful things said.”
Art from issue #1. Courtesy of Oni Press.
There’s one anecdote or story in particular that speaks volumes about these places and how Condon perceives them as compelling havens for deeply human stories.
“From what I’ve been told, and I don’t know if this is true or not, but basically there’s a hell of a lot of corruption and people would basically pay people to vote a certain way or not vote,” said Condon. “And so that’s the thing that’s a very real and very horrible thing. That just perpetuates this perception of Texas among the American psyche. I think that that’s unfortunate, but I do think that it’s definitely interesting, I’ve said it time and time again: I think that it’s a fascinating place. I think that the people are fascinating. I think that the idea that [if] you talk to somebody in West Texas and they say, ‘Why would I go to Paris? I got everything I want here.’ They’re just so comfortable. They’re so set in their ways.”
Despite all of that approachability and hearty material, Condon’s own resume is full of such similarly “complicated” titles that ask something else of their readers. It’s about meeting comics fans where they are and building from that.
“I don’t think that the comics that I tend to write tend to be your typical comic anyway — in terms of like the Big Two,” said Condon. “Sure, we get a lot of praise for the work that Jake [Phillips] and I do in That Texas Blood and Enfield Gang Massacre. But there’s plenty of people saying that it’s boring. So I think you have to have faith in the audience to a certain extent.”
And while you must always confront your audience, it’s meaningful sales that keep titles like this coming out in the first place.
“But you do have to approach it in a way where, at the end of the day, you do want it to sell,” said Condon. “There is that sort of commodity aspect of where you do want to have it be a sellable object. So you do have to think about it and sort of boil it down and be like, ‘OK, what do I think would attract readers?’ I think that I don’t have a huge fan base, but I have people who like my writing. So I know that there’s going to be people that want to check this out if my name is attached to it.”
That’s where we get another important idea: Condon’s efforts to tell this story, make it engaging and thoughtful, and build some buzz. Beyond the aforementioned stuff with tweaking dialogue and playing with certain scenes, Condon’s presence lends the Night People comic something really important: vital clarity and focus.
“One of the things about the novel is that you’ll just drop in with a character and you won’t see that character again until the third story,” he said. “With every issue, I tried to see who was the main character. I think that there’s probably more lead characters, but I wouldn’t say that anybody’s, like, a main character. I wouldn’t say that anybody’s the main focus of anything. So that was one of the things that I tried to do is try to focus in on a character a little bit more to give us a little bit more of a through line and give us a more traditional linear narrative, but still keeping that meandering sort of feel to it.”
To facilitate this process, Condon did a lot of thinking about what makes adaptations not only good or bad but what that means to the larger creative process.
“I definitely think there’s more of a balance to it, at least in my experience,” said Condon. “There’s films that are adapted from a book or comic that completely change the source material. And I think sometimes it’s better for it. Whereas I think with what I was doing, I do have an affection for the material. I have an affection for the author as well and his style and his writing. So I wanted to do his work justice, but when you are adapting it into a different medium, you can’t do exactly what he did.”
He added, “You’re also talking to an audience that’s 30 years separated from when the book came out. And so that’s the other thing to keep in mind — there’s some things you might’ve been able to say then that you can’t really say now. I don’t really sand the edges off too much. There’s very twisted things that happen, and I kept them in 99% of the time. The things that I did shave off were just lines of dialogue that I just thought maybe went a little too far. Like, you just don’t need it. You can just pull it out and it’s fine. It doesn’t change the scene or the character.”
Art from issue #1. Courtesy of Oni Press.
Luckily, Condon had some guidance in managing a proper adaptation. Namely, he looked at other such offerings and what about them worked (or didn’t, in some cases).
“Take Zack Snyder’s Watchmen film,” said Condon. “I don’t really like that movie; it has its fans and that’s fine. But in my opinion, if you’re going to adapt something like Watchmen, I think you have to change it for film, especially because it’s such a comic. It’s such a comic that there’s no way that it could ever be translated into a film and to do the Black Freighter as a cartoon and insert that into the thing. It gets to be like, ‘What are you doing?’ It’s already this thing that exists that’s so wonderful. It’s never going to be as wonderful in a film. If you love the film, that’s fair. But I also think that at a certain point, why do you like this thing?”
He added, “I just brought up Watchmen as an example because I know that there are people who have read Sam Hamm’s [unproduced] script and hate it. I kind of love his adaptation of it because I think that he changed it and he makes it its own thing. And I think that that’s what you need it to be. Alan Moore, who read it at the time, said that this is as good as any Watchmen film can be. I don’t think that he loved it because I think that he probably loves his own material, but it’s like, if you’re going to change this thing and bring it to a new medium, I think that that’s what you got to do. It’s not a perfect adaptation by any means, but I think that they’re doing interesting things and trying new things and really trying to see how you bring the source material into another medium. It’s something that as a person who is heading an adaptation, how do you approach that material? It just comes down to engaging with the material.”
But there’s also this idea that, just because you may not like something, doesn’t mean there’s not still value to that thing.
“I don’t really like the ’90s TV adaptation of It, but I also watch it because I don’t feel like rereading it all the time,” said Condon. “And it’s shorter. And I like Tim Curry as Pennywise. There’s definitely times where I think that changing the thing a lot is beneficial to the source material. And I think it will actually end up elevating it to a certain extent, as opposed to just doing essentially like a carbon copy of it.”
And, of course, that idea — elevating a thing whenever possible — still proves true for the rather specific realm of comics.
“That’s mostly what you end up seeing — you don’t see as much of something being adapted into a comic,” said Condon. “Although one of the things that I actually loved as a comic is [Stephen King’s] Sleeping Beauties. I did not like that book. I thought that it meandered. However, the comic adaptation, I thought was fantastic. And they were really trying new things and different things and really playing into certain elements of the story that they didn’t sell me on in the novel.”
Ultimately, as Condon had mentioned earlier, a lot of it came down to the voice of this project.
“At the end of the day, I come back to how the Coen Brothers adapted True Grit,” said Condon. “They barely changed the novel. I think that sometimes when you have a novel that has a very unique, distinctive voice, I think that you would do a disservice if you didn’t pay attention to that.”
But all the books and films were nothing in comparison to the various collaborators across Night People. Each of the four issues will have a different art team. It all kicks off with artist Brian Level, colorist Ronda Pattison, and letterer Shawn Lee on issue #1. (Not to mention a killer main cover from J. H. Williams III.)
“I’m a collaborative creature. I love collaboration,” said Condon. “I love working with others and getting their thoughts and incorporating their ideas into something because I think that at the end of the day, it makes it better. I mean, that’s human beings to their core. We’re collaborative creatures. We thrive on community. That’s something that’s inherent to our art as well.”
Art from issue #1. Courtesy of Oni Press.
That collaboration meant that, while Condon kept things close to the source material, someone like Level could experiment a touch more.
“For somebody like Brian Level, who’s doing the first issue, he’s got this great sort of zany style — almost this ’90s, realistic cartoon style,” said Condon. “And I think that he brings a lot to the material as well. I think that all the artists are bringing unique things to the material. But just looking at the first issue, I think that what he’s bringing to it is that I did my thing and then now he’s adding to it. And, again, he sends pages every day and I see the pages and I don’t ever have any notes because I like what he’s doing. I just really like what he’s doing.”
He added, “But he’s sort of doing his own adaptation of what I did. So it’s a really unique thing to see that coming in. But I mean, he’s got an affection for Barry’s work as well. So he’s respectful of Barry and everything gets sent to Barry and Barry approves everything, too.”
And Condon has fully and utterly encouraged that kind of approach with Night People.
“I had a phone call with Brian before he started his work on Night People because he wanted to how I feel about adaptation and how he’s going to interpret my work and all that,” he said. “And I just told him, ‘I wrote the script, that’s the roadmap. You can go off road anytime you want. You don’t have to adhere to this. If you want to add a panel in, take a panel out, do whatever you wanna do. If I think it’s horrible, I’ll tell you, but like you said, I literally haven’t had a note for him.'”
It’s not just that Condon loves collaboration. The help he needed for this book may also stem from his past experiences, and what those have taught him about the real value of teamwork and how that translates on the comics page.
“I don’t know if you read the Crypt of Shadows story that I did in 2022, but my first pass had no narration,” he said. “Which is very much a me thing. I like silence. I like to let those scenes play, especially if you’re doing a horror adjacent thing and want to let it marinate. But they wanted it more of the Marvel method, like you’re in the character’s head. I was aware that that was their thing.”
While that approach works for some creators and some projects, it’s perhaps crystalized Condon’s own approach and why he writes the way he does now.
“Some people write the Marvel method where they go, ‘This sort of happens on the page.’ I go into depth — panel one, wide exterior, you see this and this,” he said. “If I feel like it’s important to talk about time and day and this and then that, and where the sun is this spot in the sky or whatever bullshit I end up writing.”
And understanding that approach and the value it holds has directly helped him in managing a rather complex, multi-layered endeavor like Night People.
“I felt pretty strongly that we should go in considering each issue different and each issue has a unique feel for each book,” said Condon. “I thought it would be beneficial to have unique and different artists do each story. It was definitely something we were cognizant of in terms of how I approached the stories or the scripts. I didn’t change anything in terms of scripts; the scripts remained consistent in terms of how I tell a story and all that.”
Art from issue #1. Courtesy of Oni Press.
He added, “I think you do need, especially if you’re doing a series, there has to be some consistency. So my work might be the anchor and then the art styles change. And, obviously, the design pages differently. Brian designs a page his own way. He likes to add in actions in smaller panels and he likes to do a lot more sound effects and things like that. It just had to be a different artist for each book just because of how the books are built. I think it would have been great if we had one artist throughout, but I think that it gives the series a unique feel and I think that will give each issue a unique feel.”
In some ways, that larger collaborative spirit even informs what Condon likes most about this book.
“I like Wes and Marble,” said Condon. “Marble, who was this little girl, meets Easy Earl and they have this relationship where he’s annoyed by her to an extent. And she just doesn’t stop talking. That was maybe the most fun dialogue to write — the back-and-forth because it’s a pretty intense issue. I was able to do that when I did That Texas Blood and the second and third arcs. In the third arc, Wilson and Joe Bob share a laugh as well after an intense moment. I think that that’s where you need those sorts of things.”
That spirit goes even deeper still. For Condon, it’s about capturing moments like that Wilson and Joe Bob scene, and how that kind of “collaboration” with others (if only in spirit) is the way we make it through life mostly unscathed.
“This is going to sound really silly, but I was having a very intense dark day and I was feeling very sad and really in my own head a lot,” he said “And I was driving around, trying to get my head out of things. And then ‘Bad Boy Boogie’ by AC/DC came on the radio, and I just started laughing. There was a line in it that just made me crack out, which is, ‘Being a bad boy ain’t that bad.’ What does that even mean? And that’s just what I mean in terms of there’s those moments in real life where you’re in a dark moment and there’s just something about your interaction with the things around you and people around you that sort of clicks and you’re just like, ‘This is stupid. What are we doing?’ And I think that was that kind of scene in issue #2 of Night People.”
While issue #1 doesn’t arrive till March 6 (the FOC is this Sunday, February 11), he’s already written all four chapters/titles — and now the other art teams (including Alexandre Tefenkgi and Jason Shawn Alexander on issue #2) have to finish up their work.
But despite how he entered this story, and the means and approaches its taken to finally makes its way into the world, Condon is already sure Night People could be something that resonates with audiences. That’s because, at its core, Night People is a story that we all need to have much more of in this life.
“I’m really excited for people to read this,” he said. “The feeling I get, from what I heard from Oni, is that they feel the same. It’s something unique that I’ve never done before. It’s a very human story and it’s just told in a really unique, funny way but a dark way.”
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