Graphic novelist Matt Kindt was watching a whodunit with his mother, Margie, when Margie came up with a clever solution to the murder. “I think that’s too smart for what this show is trying to do,” Matt said, but he added: “If they don’t use that idea, let’s take that twist and make our own book out of it.”
Matt was right—the show had a different solution—and Margie held him to his word. The result is Gilt Frame (Dark Horse, Mar.), a murder mystery that takes its main characters, 70-year-old Merry and her 24-year-old great-nephew Sam, and a mysterious pair of armchairs on an action-filled trip to Paris, with a flashback to a mysterious female thief at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. By the time we meet Merry and Sam, they have already wound up a number of cases, and Margie and Matt have more adventures in mind for them.
While Margie has written several prose novels, this was her first graphic novel; Matt, on the other hand, is an old hand at the medium, with an oeuvre that includes the Eisner-nominated Super Spy and his recent collaboration with Keanu Reeves on BRZRKR. PW talked to them about the special sauce that each of them brought to this mother-and-son collaboration.
Margie, you hadn’t done a graphic novel before. What was it like for you?
Margie: I like to be descriptive, and Matt said, “Mom, I don't think you realize how few words you're going to get here.” But it was all right, because I could see that Matt picked up in the art what had to be cut in the words.
Matt: What was a bummer for you was actually great for me, because I had to cut all of your words out, but it was in my head. The challenge was to translate that into art.
Matt, how did you come up with the visuals for this story?
Matt: When we were kids, we had these picture books with crime scenes—the clock is on the mantel, the window's broken—and you're supposed to figure out, by looking at it, who did it. I always loved those, so to translate that into a graphic novel was kind of a no brainer to me. It was fun to create visual clues, where it wasn't just in the text. That made it more three dimensional.
How did you work together?
Margie: We were at a partner table, he on one side, and I on the other, and we each took on the persona of one of the characters, and we just started throwing dialogue back and forth. The more we started going back and forth, the wilder it got, and the more fun it got.
Matt: We wanted to have the craziest crime scene you could have and then worked our way backwards. Now we needed every character in the book to have a reason to have done it, and that means trying to make that plausible. Making all the motives plausible, that's where the real story is.
The problem I have with all whodunits is that once I’ve read it, I don't feel the urge to read it again, because I've solved the riddle. The challenging thing in any book like this is to make it so that the riddle satisfies but also you want to read it again for the characters or for the story.
How did you come up with a story about armchairs in Paris?
Margie: I won a pair of chairs at an auction, and when I got them home and did some research, I found out that they were carved around 1900 by a master carver who was using a model of Louis XVI's chairs at Versailles. So we took out a wooden carved mantelpiece and put the chairs in, and the story just took off in a different direction. And it took us to Paris because I actually did contact a Parisian expert on their provenance.
Matt: The part about the 1904 World’s Fair, in St. Louis, with the woman in black—that’s all true. That’s a real mystery.
Margie: Based on what we know, I think the chairs were carved to be shipped here in 1903 and were actually in their model of the Palace of Versailles in St Louis. We did have one little problem, when we were writing about 1904, about how the woman should be dressed.
Matt: I drew her in an evening gown.
Margie: Which was totally inappropriate for a woman outside. I said “That needs to be changed,” and he said, “I’ve already drawn it.” So I said “You can do it if you want to, but it’s going to be wrong.”
Matt: There’s no better note than that kind of note. “You can do whatever you want, but it will be wrong.”
Margie: So he got it right. And she had to have a hat. She wouldn’t go outside without a hat. I know his friends don’t know that, but my friends would know it.
Matt: That’s true. My readers don’t care, but yours do.
This book seems like it would appeal to mystery readers who don’t usually read comics. Are you going to try to reach out to them?
Matt: That was the plan, especially when we started working together.
Margie: I grew up with Little Lulu. I was a great comics reader, but then I got to a certain age where my parents thought I should grow up and put them aside. I don't think graphic novels were really part of our life, until [Art Spiegelman's] Maus came out, and our generation really hasn't taken to them. We didn't grow up with them, and they're new to us, so we are hoping that it can have some cross generation appeal.
Matt: Ideally, this book would sit right next to all the other cozy mysteries and whodunits that came out this year. That's the hope, that it finds that audience.
