SP talked to TC Pescatore in March 2023 upon the launch of his series Junction Jones and the Cordory Conspiracy.
🗣The story has a clear detective noir/sci-fi blend, what’s the appeal for you of telling that kind of story?
👤I started having an itch to write this story maybe 7-8 years ago. At first I had this idea of a surrealist, almost psychedelic, crime noir set between Earth and Junction, a futuristic novella written with a voice like a 1930s Dashiell Hammet novel, but within a world that resembled something closer to Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain, haha. But I couldn't get anything started. That was until I started to see the story more like subtle absurdist hard sci-fi. I thought, what if I could do a noir that featured all the tropes a reader would recognize, but with the circumstances of a murder that didn't make any sense, in a world where they didn't know any of the rules?
I think especially with cyberpunk and dystopian sci-fi there's that perfect element, a cool outsider character, almost brought in from another time. Like the design itself calls to mind the danger and intrigue of early 20th-century pulp. The anti-hero, the almost villain as the protagonist in a world othered by technology...it's certainly a sweet spot.
Why does it appeal to me? I guess it was the perfect vehicle to show a particular type of sadness and desperation, but in a way that abstracts and obfuscates dramatically any kind of critique on society or whatever as a whole...
🗣This first issue doesn’t tell us much about the protagonists. Will we find out more as the story progresses?
👤Yes! Well, I wanted to delve into their pasts and what makes them such desperate characters slowly, tease it out through their own dialogue as they descend further and further into the dangerous depths of Junction. With the first issue my goal was to make you like them, or at least sympathize with them in a way, so that with each successive issue we can peel more of the layers back. There are hints throughout, but by the time the story is complete you'll know (most) of the where/when/and whys about Jones and Nibs.
🗣Is it challenging to devise a sci-fi world that’s not so advanced it’s easy for characters to solve their problems? Were you tempted to make things simpler and set it in the present?
👤Ha. This is a great question and one I did think a lot about. My concept, because I focused on making the Junction a sort of Neo-Liberal Capitalist hellscape (dreamscape?), was that any and all products that would aid in workers' declining production would be illegal or impossibly, prohibitively expensive. So most, if not, all the tech Junction Jones and Nibs have is illegal, probably repurposed to refurbished.
We really wanted to delve into a world based on exploitation of labor and resources and slowly progress from the worst slums into the technological and opulent center of Junction. In fact much of the production economy is based around allowing the richest citizens to travel to Earth and possess the bodies of humans as a kind of vacation trip.
It was very tempting to set the story in the present. At first most of the book did take place in 2017, and it was only held back by the narrator being weirdly obsessed with 1930s-type noir detective work (mostly because Mr. Nibs was the narrator and has no opposable thumbs, lol).
🗣Why did you decide to include metatextual elements, like the newspaper clippings and blog posts?
👤The metatext elements are definitely important. They’re always some of my favorite things and I wanted to expand that concept as much as possible. So there will be three distinct stories and main characters that appear, and three storylines set on Earth in 1938, 1970, and 2019. Including newspaper and blog stuff there will also be excerpts from books, handwritten letters, journal pages, magazine ads, links to Bandcamp pages (with actual music), a faux 70’s punk zine, FBI documents, etc. Within them there will be tons of hidden and (maybe) impossible-to-find Easter eggs. I kind of got sucked down a rabbit hole of my own creation on this one! I really leaned into this area considering my day job working in archives and records management.
🗣There are hints that the story has connections to the distant past. Should we expect time travel?
👤Haha yes? Definitely? Probably...and most likely dimensional travel as well?
🗣Who are the Junction Agents?
👤Simply put, they are the agents of the State, in a similar way that the Judges in Judge Dredd are (Judge, Jury and Executioner), except Junction Agents don't possess a thought process outside of doing the bidding and committing the violence of Capital. Their goal is to protect and serve those in power and eliminate any and all things that could pose a danger to that.
🗣What’s your process like working with @locomotiongonzales?
👤Once we started working and I saw how he imagines the world of Junction, I basically rewrote the entire story. As we became actual friends and talked and talked about the story I started to alter characters and add things I thought he'd have more interest in/fun drawing. I think we push each other in ways that have made Junction Jones greater than I could have ever imagined; my favorite thing about making comics is the collaborative process and I value it over something like "telling my story.” The way he commands body language and with the slightest gesture can capture a characteristic has freed up the dialogue so much that I don't think there is one exposition dump in the entire story (I also rewrote all the dialogue after seeing his pages--luckily, I also letter). At some points in the script there is a lot of description. But then on another page I'll write a quick description like “Mr. Nibs makes a pipe bomb” and just let Luciano go crazy.
I should say even at the beginning I was planning this comic for Luciano to draw. I found his work on an art website one night and I could tell from the way he drew dystopian/cyberpunk worlds that he was perfect for Junction. So I semi-cyber stalked him making sure he wasn't going to announce some grand project until I had enough of the scripts done, and messaged him about his interest and (THANKFULLY) got a quick 'let's do it!' response back!