Father Pat: Creating Secondary Characters

Retrowood is my attempt to do a detective graphic novel  that looks looks like a black and white Matinee movie of a bygone era. The protagonist is private detective J. Parker Wrighte, who finds on his upwardly mobile career path that every advancement comes with cost and compromise. I've avoided doing a straight period piece by condensing the history and geography of the mid-twentieth century into a Depression era version of Hollywood and Los Angeles. While the stories have the hardboiled plots of Hammett and Chandler, the tone remains as whimsical as Eisner's Spirit.

While the detective is the center of all the stories, I've tried to surround him with a continually expanding cast of secondary characters that bring a nuance to his world. One of my favorites is Father Pat, the alcoholic priest who is tied to Parker's past.

(A painting of Gary Copper and the lovely Lira Kellerman for Retrowood development.)

Retrowood is a two tiered society, where there is one set of rules for the rich, and another for the poor. Parker has little interest in being a social reformer; he's far more interested in moving out, moving on, and moving up. He morphs from Jimmy into J. Parker, which he considers a much more posh title. But every time he thinks he has created a bit of distance between himself and his former surroundings, he manages to run into Father Pat.

While he was once an energetic and idealistic young priest, Father Pat has seen too much injustice and misery in his labor class parish to have much of either quality left. For him, alcohol has long been the answer as he watches the immediate world around him continue to deteriorate.

Parker desertion has been one of the tougher blows, since the priest is a sort of foster father to the detective. After Parker's own father disappeared, Father Pat began a long standing affair with the boy's mother, who is his housekeeper at the time. His mother is now dead, but Parker's sister Mary has remained close to the priest, working as a teacher at the parish school. Parker escaped the neighborhood with a college basketball scholarship. He is trying to keep the move permanent by working in the fashionable Kinchay Detective Agency and rubbing shoulders with the rich and connected. But that task is more difficult than he realizes, and Father Pat lies at the center of dilemma.

(A  sequence from an upcoming Retrowood story "All Roads Lead to Rome" with Father Pat.)

A lot of the Retrowood back story and material I tried to take out of my own life experiences.I was brought up Catholic, went to 12 years of Catholic school and taught for three years at Catholic schools. As I tell people today, I went to church almost every day of my life for the first 20+ years...but I haven't been since they stopped paying me to go. My dues are paid up for a while. If they had an All-American team for altar boys, I might have been picked for it. 

(Two pages from the "H.I. or L.O" story in the Retrowood graphic novel.)

My older brother , who was in the seminary, committed suicide at 19. Father Pat (my brother's name) is a bit of an extension of what he might have grown into had he lived. Even as a kid I could see that ifyour were rich and went into the seminary, you were eventually going to be a Monsignor or Cardinal; if you were poor you were going to wind up working at one of many low income neighborhood parishes. And growing up Pontiac, Michigan in the 50's/60's I saw a continual line of priests like Father Pat burn out in my parish .

(A few frames a Spawn storyboard with the mad priest character.)

I used my own likeness as the model for Father Pat. It's not the first time I've been cast as a priest. I was also the model for the psychotic bomber cop-killing priest in Spawn, Souls in the Balance. But despite being typecast, once I decided as a youngster not to be a cowboy or a viking, I never had any inclination to be a priest. After I saw Miiko Taka in Sayonara  at the age of  eleven, I had no interest in the celibate life. Of course I had no idea then that in the real world it wasn't necessary to take any of these rules seriously, as long as one  maintained a decorous front.

Father Pat has  learned that in Retrowood, and Jimmy Wrighte is trying to decide whether the rules or the front are more important.

 

(A cover rough for Gypsy Twins...enough priests...more women.)

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