Talking The Dead With My Neighbor Necromancer's Dillon Gillbertson & Jason Piperberg
- Doug Wood
- Aug 7
- 10 min read
Comic Yeti Contributor Doug Wood sits outside the Yeti Cave with Dillon Gillbertson and Jason Piperberg to discuss their latest crowdfunded book My Neighbor Necromancer #3.
CBY: Thank you both for allowing me a review copy of your work. I am very much enjoying the story so far. Can we start at the beginning. How did this collab come about and can you each talk about how you went about building up toward each issues? Has there been any changes to how that process has gone now that you are at issue 3?
Dillon Gillbertson: Of course! Thank you so much for reaching out. So glad you're enjoying the series. Jason and I met through the Yule anthology back in 2020. Grant Stoye was the curator and invited all the creators to an online Christmas party and a lot of kept in touch. From there, it was a simple as telling Jason about this crazy story I had about death wizards and asking if he would like to draw it. He immediately jumped in and started on concepts that blew me away and I knew we had something special.
The approach to Issue 1 was a lot about design. We had character concepts, but the world itself needed a vibe to it. Jessie starts in this sunny, sanitized world and soon finds herself in the world of skeletons and necromancers. So we worked a lot together and with Luca how the two should differ and to make the necromancer world darker but not too gritty, spooky but not horrifying. And the rest was all world bundling and showing things to the reader without drowning them in exposition. Then obviously we had to end with a crazy cliffhanger.
Issue 2 was where we could dig in. The setting and story and the colors, vibe, etc are established, now let's show what Jessie is capable of, who she is as a person and what is important to her. The book leans a lot on relationships between characters and we got to showcase that a little.
But Issue 3 we get to take the brakes off a little. There is a 4-page section beautifully painted by Jack Foster that honestly hones the theme of the entire series. And that was really fun and an important scene we needed (and honestly one of my favorites so far). But after that, we thought enough with establishing, let's let loose and have fun. So we have some cool magic sequences, more humor, and a whole lot of action. Holy cow there is some cool action in this issue.
Jason Piperberg: Hi Doug! Thanks for doing this. Dillon covered the how we met part pretty well, and the general structure of what has and will be done in each issue. From an art perspective I think Dillon and I have luckily been on the same page on a lot of things. Most of the time if there is back and forth on an idea, particularly in regards to say a character design or a page layout, it's usually both of us having the same general vision for the design or page, but we're both kinda molding the same piece of clay, so to speak until we both hit that "Ah-ha/That's it" moment. It's honestly a really satisfying process from a creative standpoint.
There has only been one time where we seemed to start out with somewhat opposing views on how something should look. In issue 2 there's a character who is essentially a sentient suit of armor stuffed with sticks, leaves and earth. His name is Backstrom. That design was probably the closest Dillon and I have gotten to an argument, but at a certain point we realized the problem we were having was that we had two opposing visions for who the character was, and eventually found our way to a shared one that worked for both of us and felt correct.
No matter what I'm working on I'm very process focused. I go from page layouts, to Letters, to Tight sketch/pencils, to Inks, to edits. But every book has it's own learning curve for me before I feel like I really know what I'm doing. At this point I feel very in my element with this world and it's characters. There are obviously always challenges in each issue for one reason or another, but with Jessie and Cirino especially, I feel like I know their body language and expressions. they're like good friends of mine, at this point.
CBY: Jason, speaking of expression and body language, I love the amount expression and character acting you are able to produce on the page. Drawing children can be hard in comics, but you appear to handle it with ease. More impressive is how emotive you are able to make the animal characters. Had you a lot of experience drawing children and/or animal in comics?
JP: Thanks! I put a lot of effort into my character acting, so I'm glad that comes across. The "acting" in a book is usually my favorite part. If I manage to nail an expression or pose, especially a more subtle one, that's usually a highlight of my work day.
I've drawn a lot of made up animals such as Blöter from my comic Starset Delivery. But I think Necromancer is the first book I've had where I'm drawing a lot of real animals, as well as animal skeletons. That's definitely been a challenge in certain places. My style leans more realistic than cartoony, so I've had to really push the boundaries of that to get a character like Bibbits to emote. I'm glad to hear that that's working!
Drawing kids though, I wouldn't have expected it, but looking over my portfolio, I do actually draw a lot of kids. I worked on 5 issues of a comic called Patriot Tales for Valley Forge National Park (written by Christian "Patch" Patchell, and colored by Ryan Barr who did our variant cover for Necromancer #2), which centered on 3 kids with a magic feather pen that allowed them to time travel. I also work with Dr. David Suskind (a pediatric gastroenterologist at Seattle Children's Hospital) on comics focused on teaching kids about certain conditions/diseases, like IBD, and Functional Abdominal pain (https://livewellcomics.com/). And of course, the comic Raising Dion, had me drawing the main character Dion, who is child as well.
CBY: You are now on issue 3 of your comic. How would you pitch your story to entice readers that missed your previous campaigns? What is the thing you are most excited to happen in issue 3?
DG: The shortest pitch I have is “A small girl learns to raise the dead to save the world.” But if we aren’t in an elevator, I might say: My Neighbor Necromancer is a dark children’s-YA fantasy comic book series about an upbeat 12-year-old girl who chases her pet lizard Bibbits into the woods and stumbles into the wild world of necromancy. There, she finds herself embroiled in a battle between good and evil necromancers (yes, we have good necromancy!). Now she must learn to raise the dead to save the world and prevent an evil sorceress from obtaining the ultimate power: the literal Hand of Death itself.
Asking what I’m most excited about might honestly be the hardest question you give me. Part of me wants to say I’m most excited for Jack’s pages where see the story of how Death died. It’s something that’s been with me since the beginning. How people and how I personally think of death and the part it plays in our lives is extremely complicated especially for kids. Its job is to make us hate it. Death should be avoided at all costs, and in order to do so we treat other and ourselves better, to live better lives. We want nothing more than to rid the world of death while at the same time its existence is making us better as people. And those 4 pages do a terrific job summarizing this difficult relationship, so finally seeing it come to life is exciting.
But there another part of me than cannot wait for the fights we see in this one. Like I said, we took off the breaks in this issue. We have some character designs and fight choreography that might be the coolest things I’ve seen in a comic in a long time. People are going to go nuts.
CBY: Speaking of Jack Foster, who I am a huge fan of, can you talk about the decision of bringing on a guest artist for this issue? What made Jack the right artist for this section of the book?
DG: Jack is the right artist for every book. I love this work. But I wanted someone with a completely different style from Jason, something that made it obvious we were witnessing another time that went beyond just a color swap or added haze to the panels. I’m always a fan of movies or shows that cut to a completely different visual style to tell a little vignette or short story. Like how the Babadook does with the pop-up book or the beginning of Kung-Fu Panda when they tell the tale of the legendary Warrior. So watercolors are a distinct style different from Jason’s that have this naturally dreamy feel to them and Jack uses them with precision. If you’ve ever read his book GUN, you’ll know exactly what I mean. I like to utilize a lot of facial expressions, and he has the control over watercolor to accomplish exactly what we needed. Then I had a zoom call with him to talk about this scene and what I was going for and he understood it immediately. I was trying to verbalize some parts of it and found myself at a loss for words when he ended up telling me what I was trying to say. He just got it. And that’s one of the most important things when working with an artist.
CBY: Dillon, one thing I was very impressed with was the pace of the story. I like that you are taking time for the adventure and story to run out in a way we don’t see in a lot of direct market comics. Was there a conscious decision to pace the story like that? Did any of the decision making process of writing revolve around knowing this was going to be crowdfunded?
DG: Could I just get a little more clarification on what you mean by how the story is paced vs direct market books? i kind of have an idea of what you meant but want to be sure I'm answering it correctly haha
CBY: Western comics tend to try to get to the action right away. By page 5 or 10 they are trying to set hooks with an action or an inciting incident . Your story gives time to your lead and her pet before she ends up at neighbor for a quest. I would liken it to Japanese comics/manga which gives characters more room to react to situations instead of the pedal to the floor US brethren.
DG: It obviously depends which direct market books we’re talking about, but a lot of them need to make each issue the most exciting thing ever because it could be a reader’s first issue, and that usually means a lot of action. And action is great! I want at least a little action in every comic. But direct market books need to pass the flip test, where a would-be reader picks it up and does a quick flip-through to see if grabs them. So those books might start and/or end with fight scenes or explosions, maybe with some in the middle. I love a lot of direct market books, but that is something worth considering when you’re making one. For us, Kickstarter doesn’t have a flip-through feature. We still want something fun exciting to happen early so a reader is hooked when they get the book in their hands, but it doesn’t need to be something crazy that grabs your eye in a fraction of a second. We can pick and choose what pages to show a would-be reader without worrying about sticks out to them on a flip-through. And I really like character-driven stories, so I want to learn about and care for a character before they get thrown into things. For me, that sort of thing makes the action more impactful. Maybe I would have written it the same way if it went direct to market, maybe not. But it’s certainly something I would have considered. That was a tough one. haha. Great question.
CBY: We don’t get so many comics aimed younger ages on Kickstarter and I think that is a shame. Was there any comics that inspired you to take a chance with your comic on Kickstarter? Can you name any other comics that inspired your interest in writing comic aimed at younger age readers?
DG: You know, there were certainly comics that inspired me, between the Archaia Labyrinth comics, to Goosebumps, to Baba Yaga’s Assistant, but to your point Kickstarter has a lot of comics for teens or adults and fewer for younger audiences. So I hadn’t really discovered any until after we launched Issue 1. That’s not to say they don’t exist. I found one last year called AGATHA: A Tale of Three Witches that was so much fun, a truly joyous book by Andrew MacLean. But finding more of them takes some searching and we could definitely benefit from having more. Turning to Kickstarter for us was less bout the potential to tap into an existing market and more through necessity. We had a story we were dying to tell in the way we wanted to tell it, and what better place to do it than Kickstarter?
CBY: Ok last question, as I fear we will wake up the Yeti inside the cave, what tier would you most like to highlight for your campaign and why should backers get excited to grab it?
DG: Dang another Sophie's Choice question?? I'm personally a fan of the Necronomicon tier. Those journals are slick and I'm definitely ordering one for myself. But real talk, if you mostly just want to book, the best deal is the Doppelganger. The standard physical tier (with digital copy) is $17 and the limited Shapeshifter edition is $21. But the body farmer gets you both (and a digital copy) for $25. That's a massive price break, but I always want at least 1 deal that feels too good to be true. The rest are good deals, but the Doppelganger is the biggest discount.
CBY: Hit me with your socials!
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