The bio of Dave Ebersole reads: He is director, playwright, comic book writer, amateur mixologist, and sometimes actor in the Philadelphia area. He is the co-creator and writer of Dash published from Northwest Press. Ebersole completed his B.A. in Theater from Temple University and also attended the Summer Seminar for Writers at Sarah Lawrence College focusing on comic writing, taught by Scott Snyder. His first comic story “Here’s Looking At You” was published in Grayhaven Comics’ anthology You Are Not Alone, with art by his Team Dash partner Delia Gable. His plays include: Task, Living Space, The Church Bells All Were Broken, Subdivision, and Redemption: A Romantic Comedy? which he is adapting into a film later this year. Ebersole was the resident director for Theatre For Transformation as well as the artistic director for Diversion Productions. Currently, he lives right outside Philadelphia with his husband Mike and his puppy Ernie.
(Writer/ Creator Dave Ebersole)
David Rondinelli: What was the idea behind Dash?
Dave Ebersole: Honestly, and this sounds kind of obvious, but I wanted to write the comic that I wanted to read.
I love the time period of the 1940’s, in particular, the few years right before America jumped into World War II. We were pulling ourselves out of The Great Depression, conservatism had swept the country and there was such danger of war looming on the horizon, everyone seemed braced for the worst, and in the middle of that is Dash. An ex hero cop, openly gay, private eye, who’s trying to solve murders, fight monsters, and find some kind of love he can trust.
That was it. He was out, he wasn’t hiding it, and he wasn’t worried if anyone knew about who he was because everyone knew who he was. That was the final hook for me. The “gay detective” isn’t an altogether new concept. However, the fact that he wasn’t in the closet in a time where he could get ten to fifteen years in prison just for being with someone in the privacy of his home, now that was something I don’t think anyone had explored before. Who is that guy? How does he operate? How can I be as truthful as possible about it?
When my co-creator/artist Delia Gable and I got together to get the look of the book down, we wanted it to have the feeling of an old comic. It’s a supernatural noir mystery, and I think the knee jerk reaction is to drown it in shadow. We kind of went the other direction, and I’m very proud of the results.
DR: What attracted you to wanting to write a mystery?
DE: I love being jerked around by a story but in a good way, if that makes any sense. I’m a sucker for serialized storytelling and I love a good hook; that plot point at the end of an issue that makes you scream “NO!” and then makes you wait until the next issue comes out. I’ve really worked hard to make every issue of Dash end in a way you want to know what happens. We were at MOCCA FEST this year and the best compliment I think we’ve gotten is on the first day. A guy came up and bought the first issue of Dash and then came back the very next day to buy issue 2 because he wanted to know what happened.
I love mysteries that make you want to go back and re-read the story to see what you missed along the way. We’re hoping to do that not only with this arc, but with the entirety of the series, which we’ve planned to go on for 42 issues.
(a scene from Dash)
DR: So are some of your writing influences in comics or other mediums?
DE: They’re in all mediums. In comics, everyone from Scott Snyder, Grant Morrison, Gail Simone, Denny O’Neil and Bill Finger. I love how Matt Fraction finds out of the box ways of telling comic book stories. If you’ve read Dash, you know it’s very inspired by a lot of the early crime fiction writers. Dash’s name itself is a nod…ok a big nod and wink, to writer Dashiell Hammett. The Maltese Falcon may be my favorite crime story. That said, I’m actually more of a Raymond Chandler man myself. Outside of that, To Kill A Mockingbird is like a bible to me. Also, playwrights Tennessee Williams, August Wilson, and Lorraine Hansberry have had huge influences on my writing.
DR: You have an interesting twist in the first issue. I won’t give it away, but what do you feel makes a good twist and how do you know where to put them in?
DE: The moment where you find out the thing you wanted to find out, even though you may not have known you wanted to know it in the first place. Well, the moment right before-- that’s where your twist or hook is. You delay that other moment just long enough to make the audience want to be there, even if they didn’t want to be there to begin with.
DR: Tell me a bit about your writing process for comics? What do you feel makes for good comic writing?
DE: I like to write an outline first, that usually starts on paper, and then I write it on the computer. I’m really old fashioned so I don’t use any fancy program, it’s just basic Word. When I have an outline down, I start scripting. I pack in a ton of reference pictures into the scripts because the scripts are for the artist only most times. Sometimes I’ll get lost for hours to get one image, most of the time it’s worth it. The right reference picture can get my point across better than any long, convoluted description. For example, my description of our sort of femme fatale, Zita Makara in issue 1 goes like this:
2.1: Here we meet Zita, I’m thinking Zita looks like actress Virginia Christine crossed with singer (and one of my very close friends) Shanna Massad.
(Actress: Virginia Christine) (Singer Shanna Massad)
And this was the end result:
(Zita - A Femme Fatale from Dash)
Sometimes if I can’t figure a page out, I’ll sketch it out myself. I try not to make the scripts rigid. If Delia has a better idea, we go with that. It’s that simple. I think good comic writing, a good comic script, is pretty much a map for the artist. If they want to take a detour off the main road, hopefully you’ve packed in enough that there’s some good scenery there.
Learn more about Dave Ebersole and Northwest Press at the links below.
Stay tuned for part 2 where Ebersole comments about the depiction of gays in comics, how he became a part of Northwest Press and some upcoming sneek peeks into the future of Dash! Stay tuned.
Websites: teamdashcomic.com& daveebersole.com
Publiser's Website: northwestpress.com
