Notes on Kid Maroon

Behind the scenes with Christopher Cantwell and Victor Santos.

The making of the Kid Maroon graphic novel is a story nearly two decades in the making. What began as a novel transformed into a stylized comic book steeped in noir, loss, and legacy. The creators of Kid Maroon share their personal journeys and creative choices that brought this hard-boiled mystery comic to life.

The only known surviving comic strip of Kid Maroon.

Writer Christopher Cantwell (Iron Man, Doctor Doom, The Blue Flame) offers a raw look at the origins of Kid Maroon:

"KID MAROON has had many evolutions in my mind over the last 20 years. It began as a novel I wrote in 2005 / 2006, when I was not yet a professional writer or much of a professional anything. I often did not have enough quarters for my laundry machine at my apartment. I was tutoring rich kids in the Verbal and Writing sections of the SAT but I could not get paid for a single written word of my own. I had a production coordinating job for a year at a small commercial company which was fascinating and I traveled a lot, but I was let go the moment I asked to be moved to full-time staff so that I can get health insurance. Somewhere in all these early adult growing pains, Kid Maroon was born. The character to me was always about feeling like a child thrust into an adult world where you don’t fit in, aren’t taken seriously, are condescended to, and mostly, you end up missing your childhood, feeling like you grew up too fast. Kid is very much that character even in this recent comic incarnation.

Pep Shepard is a different story. I only recently conceived of having a comic creator who disappeared being the one who created Kid back in the 40’s. It was something I designed only after I’d begun talking to Vault about doing this story as a comic. I think in the years I’ve done comics, I’ve been struck by stories of creators who sacrificed everything on the altar of what Art Spiegelman calls “Termite Work” in his amazing biography about Jack Cole—that is, art / work that is instantly consumed and disregarded both by the manufacturer and the consumer. Only later, when and if someone remembers the ghost of that work, can it be reappraised and reevaluated, if anything of it still survives. Pep was crafted in that kind of vein, a hyperbole of what so often has happened to comic creators (and still does, surprisingly, to more an extent than many realize). The visage of Pep is a fear of mine, that you can put everything into something, no one cares, and in the meantime you’ve destroyed yourself, and then as a husk you merely fade away."

Vintage Kid Maroon ephemera from the 40s.

While Cantwell delved into the story and industry commentary that shaped Kid Maroon, artist Victor Santos (Polar, Violent Love) describes to us the visual development of the comic book. Santos describes the challenge of creating a unique visual identity that honors the past while pushing noir comics into new territory.

"For me, one of the most important challenges for the story was to achieve a level of storytelling and art with its own style. On the one hand, I wanted to pay tribute to the classic masters that had inspired me: Will Eisner's The Spirit, Jack Cole's Plasticman, the EC comics, the classic animation of the Fleischer brothers... but at the same time I didn't want to make a retro-pastiche. I wanted something with a modern and attractive look for today's readers.

Another important factor was that I had already drawn many comics with a noir aesthetic, this look with big contrast, black shadows and expressionist framing and at the same time a higher or more subtle use of a cartoon style influenced by animation, depending on the kind of project. In this book I wanted to find a point between caricature and expressiveness but at the same time dramatic. One of the great virtues of the cartoony style is just its contrast when used in drama. A very good example (in the distance to the USA comic market) is the work of the God of manga Osamu Tezuka, which has also influenced my research.

So my job was to take Chris's story and enhance the drama in every frame and every expression of the “actors”, but in the right measure… because Chris’ stories are full of this human true emotion but I didn't want to fall into cheap sentimentality. Wanted to be honest and truthful.

If I can sum it up in any way it was the search for a balance in all the parts."

What is Kid Maroon?

Set in the spoiled city of Crimeville, Kid Maroon follows 12-year-old boy detective from a small town who now faces real danger and adult corruption. Haunted by brutal murders and escalating fires, he must rely on his childhood instincts and sharp wit to survive, while quietly wrestling with the question: what if he just wants to be a kid again?

Kid Maroon is a genre-defying comic that blends hardboiled noir, mid-century aesthetics, and a coming-of-age story.