The Magic Man Made of Science

by Vince Brusio

They say art imitates life, but that’s an adage lost on Matt Kindt when you talk to him about his new comic book, Ether. A new series being rolled out by Dark Horse Comics, Ether #1 (SEP160025) begins a story that stands on its own, and is not intended for scholarly interpretation. Despite inferences one could make, Matt Kindt asserts Ether is a standalone tale of what happens when science meets magic. Things can get messy. Things can get complicated. Kind of like life. But this isn’t life, Matt explains in this PREVIEWSworld Exclusive interview. It is, however, very entertaining.

Ether #1 (SEP160025) is in comic shops November 16.

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PREVIEWSworld: Boone Dias works in two worlds: one is given to acts magic, and the other (his world) is rooted in scientific reality. So what parallels in today’s music, politics, or religion could we see that might make this juxtaposition all the more familiar, and relevant? 

Matt Kindt: Honestly, I think I'll let the readers figure that out. As a writer it's not my place to tell you what the story means or how to apply whatever message is in there to your life or politics or religion. I find stories that have easy real-world parallels or "messages" to be kind of boring. The beauty of art to me is showing ideas and letting readers uncover a train of thought for themselves, and not beat them over the head with messages.

Life is messy and complicated, and my work isn't trying to push or sell a particularly overt message. What I'm doing with this series is taking a character that assumes there is an answer for every unexplained phenomenon and situation and setting him loose in a world of "magic" that defies explanation. I guess the closest parallel would be what we wake up and face every day via the news, or just anything that happens in your life. This book is tackling that bigger issue:  the meaning and nature of existence, and our human desire to explain and understand everything. Those are the questions that this book explores. When is it okay to just let a mystery be a mystery?

PREVIEWSworld: Boone is said to have “an explanation for everything.” Does that mean he’s arrogant? He likes to pontificate about any subject to the point where he’s the only voice in the room because he’s really the biggest brain? Or is he capable of so much more, and would fit well into the role of statesman? The guy you’d want in charge of the UN because he sees the invisible glue that holds worlds together?

Matt Kindt:  I think of him more as a Sherlock Holmes-esque personality. He knows he has the answers , but it's irrelevant to him whether anyone else realizes it or not. He sees knowledge and information as an end in itself. He's driven by curiosity and a need to find answers for himself. In that way, if he did end up in a room with other people, he'd definitely be the smartest one in it but also the most annoying. But...being in a room full of other people is something he'd avoid at all costs. People...are not his favorite thing.

PREVIEWSworld: The question arises in the book’s solicitation that “keeping the real and the abstract separate” may be too big a job for one man. This plot detail is probably the most open to a political metaphor. One could make the observation that it’s best to have borders because the culture of two countries are too different to live under the same roof. Is that a fair assessment to make if we wanted to draw on current events to illustrate where you may be going in this story culturally?

Matt Kindt: You're welcome to do that if you'd like (laughs). Here's the thing: 99% of friction and conflict in the world comes from misunderstanding and ignorance. The more you understand a thing, or a person, or a culture, the less conflict and friction there is because there's understanding. It's simply empathy. Without understanding it's hard to have empathy. Without empathy, you're going to have conflict and war and hate.

Those are big issues and maybe some of that may be in Ether.  I'll let you decide. For me, it's a personal story about the need for answers and logic in a world that defies those things. It's about a guy who's driven to find answers at the cost of everything else in his life and the emotional consequences of that. Which all sounds very grown up and sad — which it is — but I'm using a giant purple gate-keeping ape, singing vomit-inducing birds, war-like faeries, gnome-librarians, and copper gear-filled golems to tell this story...so there's a little more to it.