A Big Heart Means Big Trouble For Amelia Cole

by Vince Brusio

If you’ve been poking around the world of Amelia Cole, then you know she’s not exactly living in Pleasentville. Things aren’t black-and-white at all. Her reality consists of an environment that’s soaked in both magic and science. And because of her big heart, she’s continually in the crosshairs for being a sympathetic shoulder to lean on when you need a friend, or someone who can listen. In this PREVIEWSworld Exclusive interview, writers D.J. Kirkbride and Adam P. Knave talk about the craziness of keeping things going, and keeping track of who’s doing what so that one can account for the explosions in the new book from IDW Publishing, Amelia Cole And The Enemy Unleashed! (SEP140488)

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PREVIEWSworld: For those who may not be up to speed about Amelia Cole, what can you tell us about the character, and her unique place in the universe?

D.J. Kirkbride: Amelia is a young mage who used to live between two worlds: our world of science, and a world of pure magic. In the first volume, Amelia Cole And The Unknown World (SEP140490), she gets trapped in a blended world where magic and science co-exist. It's not an equal world, though, as magic is a quicker road to the top than science. Amelia has dedicated her life to helping people out of a sense of responsibility that those who can should, and this ends up getting her in trouble in this blended world, where there are laws against mages using magic to assist non-mages. In her adventures, she ends up defeating the magic Protector of her new world and takes his place, which leads into Volume 2, Amelia Cole And The Hidden War (SEP140489). That war involves magic-sucking monsters and scheming ghouls who are in the shadows until this third volume, Amelia Cole And The Enemy Unleashed. Throughout all this madness, we have one young lady doing her best to save the day, often at the expense of her own health and life balance, whether she knows it or not.

PREVIEWSworld: How did you approach the new book, Amelia Cole and the Enemy Unleashed?  How did the work relationship between Monkeybrain and IDW play into this book being produced?

DJK: The first volume was kind of a standalone. It has the feel of a complete story that could grow into something larger, but that last page is satisfactory. Now we're full speed into the bigger tale, so we were able to get denser with the number of characters and juggle more plots with Volume 2, which leads directly into Volume 3. Monkeybrain and IDW have been nothing but supportive. We are left to our own devices in terms of story and scope.

Adam P. Knave: We also have no plans of stopping now. We talk to the folks at both MonkeyBrain and IDW to make sure we're all on the same page as we shift into Volume 4 on the digital single side, and get to making that trade work for IDW as well.

PREVIEWSworld: How did you bounce ideas off one another for this project? Give us some insight as to what ideas worked and what was put off for another book?

APK: All Amelia Cole stories start with D.J. and I sitting on the phone talking out ideas and seeing what fits, what is naturally an outgrowth of the story we've told so far, and what is just plain fun that works within the world. We go back and forth for hours and then write it up and go back and forth some more. Then we shoot it over to Nick Brokenshire who weighs in and adds to the ideas, and slowly we firm everything up into actual plots. In this volume the end scenes were a huge source for noodling - they had to be right and the ideas to get there kept evolving. There are some new characters that will be introduced in the next arc that almost ended up in this one but the story simply felt crowded with them, so we had to push them off and rework where they fit.

DJK: The deeper we go into the story, the more we have to keep track of, which has gotten interesting. There is a lot of checking back to see who has done what, at least for me and my bad memory. As Volume 3 was being drawn and serialized on ComiXology from Monkeybrain, Adam and I were writing Volume 4. That led to some interesting, "Wait... who is doing what to whom, and what just exploded?" moments. It's fun being able to get deep into a really fun story like this.

PREVIEWSworld: Without spoiling the book, what would you most likely want to blog about to tease as being representative of the work?

APK: Amelia Cole is a book about responsibility, and being true to yourself and a large part of that is that actions have consequences, for good and bad. This volume is a whole lot of stuff coming due all at once, and how anyone copes with that is endlessly interesting. How Amelia reacts to being in the middle of a war, what she needs to change about herself, versus what is worth paying any price for is a theme that crops up over and over again. Also she once had to fight a giant corgi called Puppyzilla.

DJK: As the cast and scope of the overall story expands, our main emotional focus remains with Amelia. This started out as a story about a magic do-gooder, stopping purse snatchers and always wanting lunch while walking around with her giant golem pal and making new friends. Very quickly it has expanded to her being thrust into impossible scenarios where the fate of many lives rest on her shoulders, and it'd make perfect sense for her to buckle under the pressure. That she won't let herself, and that she keeps her unique sense of humor and point of view is what makes Amelia a truly fun character to write and, hopefully, to read.

PREVIEWSworld: If people want to talk to you more about this project, are you able to correspond with them through any social media sites?

APK: Oh, of course! We have a website at ameliacole.com which is Tumblr based so we can answer questions if people want to ask them. I am also on Twitter at @adampknave.

DJK: The official Amelia Cole Facebook page is facebook.com/AmeliaColeComic. I also Tweet at @djkirkbride, and we love hearing from readers and potential readers who need convincing to give the book a shot. Adam and I enjoy guiding folks to take a look at the comic, so if you're not sure about it, just check in with us! We're here to help... you read our book.