INTERVIEW: Science, adventure, alien dinosaurs — ‘Alien Bones’ has it all
Image courtesy of 1First Comics / Provided by Superfan Promotions with permission.
Chris “Doc” Wyatt is a name often associated with TV and film. The writer has penned scripts for a wide variety of projects, everything from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Ninjago to Star Wars Resistance. He is perhaps best known as the producer of a little movie called Napoleon Dynamite.
Recently Wyatt has turned his creative forces toward the printed form — namely graphic novels.
Wyatt releases today, Oct. 2, Alien Bones in comic stores (Oct. 8 the title hits bookstores). It comes courtesy of 1First Comics and features a story by Wyatt and art by Chris Grine.
In the story, 10-year-old Liam Mycroft roams the galaxy in his starship with his paleontologist father. They are on the hunt for fossils of extinct alien dinosaurs. However, something goes horribly wrong, and Liam’s father goes missing in an underground alien city. It’s up to Liam and his friends to save the day and find Dad.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Wyatt about the new graphic novel, which is being released to coincide with International Dinosaur Month. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What inspired the creation of Alien Bones?
Honestly, the inspiration for Alien Bones started with my oldest son. I was a sci-fi nerd practically from birth, because science fiction made me feel an excited curiosity about the universe, a yearning to travel to bizarre places and meet wildly different forms of life. That need to discover the unknown led me to become an avid international traveler and to be someone who loves to learn.
I wanted to write something that would inspire in my son that same wild curiosity, that same sense of discovery that I felt when I was his age. Alien Bones was almost a love letter to my son. The main character is named after him and looks a lot like him.
Did you have to do any research on the many dinosaur species that once roamed the planet?
Honestly, I didn’t do a lot of research about Earth dinosaurs. I spent a lot of time researching what markers scientists look for when trying to determine what planets outside our solar system might have life. I did that because, in the first version of the story, Alien Bones originally opened with a sequence where Liam and Dr. Mycroft were at the university on Titan, using astronomical tools to determine where to go on their next alien dino dig. But then I realized that the story should begin with the characters already in the middle of their alien fossil dig site … so all that research time was wasted. But, hey, I learned a lot, and maybe I can use that stuff on the next project.
How do you make sure the content is for all ages? Do you have to get into the mind of a younger audience member?
Between Spider-Man, Avengers Assemble, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers: Rescue Bots, Stretch Armstrong, etc., I’ve written many hours of children’s television. My TV writing/producing partner (Kevin Burke) and I have written for kids in a range of ages, from pre-school (on shows like Disney Jr.’s Octonauts and the upcoming Netflix series Monkey With a Tool Belt), to older children (on shows like Star Wars Resistance), so a sense of what is age-appropriate has sort of been stamped into us. I never find it hard to get into the mindset of a younger viewer or reader,because I’m never too far away from that childhood mindset. Plus, I have kids, and that helps.
Would you write everything and then hand it off to artist Chris Grine? How did the collaboration work?
I did the outline while Chris did the initial designs. Then I would write the script in ‘chapters’ (issue-length chunks) and hand them off to Chris. If Chris had any notes, I would make changes. Then he would do pencils. If I had any notes on his pencils, he’d make changes, then go to inks. After that, color and lettering. Then we’d start all over with the next ‘chapter.’
Working with Chris is a dream. This is the second time I’ve done it, and he always amazes me with the way his vision makes all my words better. I usually wind up cutting some dialogue balloons after I get pencils, in order to give more room to his panels. I hope to work with Chris again, but I’ll have to get in line because he’s got a lot going on right now.
Did you love dinosaurs growing up? What was your favorite?
What kid doesn’t go through a dino phase? My was sparked off by the TV show Land of the Lost produced by the Krofft brothers. There was a T-rex on that show named Grumpy, and I was terrified of him. He was, for sure, my favorite dino in the world. Though, looking back at him as an adult, Grumpy is clearly a puppet, and a pretty shabby one at that. But as a kid of 3 or 4 he was the stuff of delightful nightmares!
Do you believe other planets possibly had/have what we might consider dinosaur-like creatures?
Our galaxy, which we call the Milky Way, has somewhere between 100 million and 250 million stars. That’s just in one galaxy. A pretty typical one.
The nearest major galaxy to us, Andromeda, has perhaps around 1 trillion suns. Our best space-based telescope can only see around 100 billion galaxies, but as telescopes improve we expect to see as many as 200 billion.
All those galaxies, holding all those suns, many of which would have multiple planets each … tes, I think the odds are pretty good that dinosaur-like life developed somewhere else in our universe.
It’s just a matter of the human race living long enough to become an interstellar species, so we can go out into the universe and discover the secrets it holds! We need to inherit the stars.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Alien Bones, written by Chris “Doc” Wyatt and featuring art by Chris Grine, is now available in comic stores. The title becomes available in bookstores Oct. 8. Click here for more information on the 1First Comics release.
