Wil Moss talks to rising star Josh Cotter about the upcoming release of the collected edition of Skyscrapers of the Midwest:
PW Comics Week: Tell me about the genesis of the story of Skyscrapers—did you know it would be the story it is now, or did it start out smaller?
Joshua W. Cotter: I’d just finished a three-part minicomic called FUN—it was the first thing I’d ever done in comics. It was a little experiment that grew into a 72-page narrative. After finishing a story that long, I was interested in writing some short stories. There were a lot of issues about childhood that I wanted to address and [so I] decided to do a little one-man anthology-type thing. It took me about three months to create the first Skyscrapers mini from concept to execution, and I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.
I wasn’t actually certain if I was going to do any more Skyscrapers minis after completing the first one, but once it started getting some positive feedback from the outside world, I figured I’d go ahead and do one more. Chris [Pitzer, AdHouse publisher] and I decided to collect the first two minis into one large issue, and at some point we decided to make Skyscrapers a four-part limited series.
I have reservations about calling the collected Skyscrapers a “graphic novel.” There are consistent themes and characters throughout the four issues, but I just don’t feel right about calling something that wasn’t initially conceived as a novel a “novel.” Not for me to decide though, I suppose.
