Rob Reger’s Emily has appeared on skateboard desks, t-shirts, in comic books, and novels. The next step for the black and white little girl couldn’t be more clear–Emily’s going to get her on movie. In this second part of our interview with the graphic designer turned mini-mogul, we squeeze what little information about the upcoming film project he’s willing to spill.

[Part One]

Do you have a compendium of facts about the character that everyone works off of?

We have style guides, yeah, for the basics. It depends on what the project is. I’ve working with Jessica [Gruner] on the novel series, very very closely. She’s been doing it with me for eight years, so she knows Emily as much as me—or better, sometimes.

That’s an added dimension of this character, turning it into a novel.

Yeah. It’s all been a natural growth. It started off as t-shirts with a simple one-liner, and then graphic books, with the same sentences and a little bit of art, and then the comics, with Darkhorse here. That was the first time we ever actually told mini stories. And the novel is the first real look at Emily’s mind, because it’s a diary format. We’re writing exactly as Emily’s thinking in her mind. More than she says stuff, she thinks stuff, so that’s kind of the perfect format for her.

Is that out now?

It’s out in June 09.

People get really attached to characters, and when your taking one and adding an entirely new dimension, it probably acts to turn some people off. There’s this character unto which they’ve probably projected a lot already. Do you get feeback from fans about things like that?

In terms of how they think she should be different?

Yeah, or how she’s not lining up to the image that had in their mind of her.

Not a whole lot. I think people are pretty accepting of where we’ve taken her, and we’ve been pretty true to the whole concept of her being a strange girl who celebrates being yourself and avoiding other people.

You almost had to make a progression into other storytelling formats, lest people make up their own stories on the Internet.

Definitely. It was a very logical progression. It did demand that.

You had to beat them to the punch.

Yeah, yeah, and I think a lot of it started when I started getting interested in Hollywood for making a film or a TV show or something like that. I’ve been working in that direction for about five years now, and the first time I met with a producer, he asked me about a dozen questions I didn’t know the answers to, so I went back that night and figured out all of the answers to those questions.

What sort of things?

Like, does she go to school? Where does she live?

Pretty basic questions.

Yeah, basic questions, but I hadn’t considered where she lived, so I had to start thinking that up. I think the novel series is going to be fun, because you’re going to find out where she lives.

As you said before, the beginning of this character was very enigmatic. Do you think she loses something when you pull back some of that mystery?

I thought so for a long time, but now there’s just so many great ideas that we have that the roller coaster ride is just so much more fun that keeping it a secret. I think ultimately that became limiting, but in the early days, that was a lot of fun, saying, “well, I don’t know, what do you think?”

What’s the latest on this Hollywood project?

Well, I’m working with Mike Richardson, who is attached as the producer. And he does all those other great movies. He’s a master of turning a comic book into a Hollywood blockbuster. We’re just working on final points of a deal right now. We’re working on a live action film. Can’t really say too much more, until we sign some papers.

Was there a lot of question about whether it would be live action or animated?

Not really. Mike’s experience with the studio we’re talking to is that they were really looking for a strong, female, live action movie, so it kind of fits right in with what they wanted to do. I’ve always wanted to do animation, and we will sometime. I’ve got to see her animated.

That seems like the next natural step in the progression.

Yeah. Maybe we’ll see her in a video game before then.

So you’re pretty much looking everywhere for a place to branch her out to.

Yeah, and the video game is the final frontier. It’s animation, it’s action, it’s storytelling—it’s everything.

–Brian Heater

Emily the Strange was born on the bottom of a skateboard deck—an odd little girl created to be a one-off character for the Santa Cruz Skateboard company. Soon she appeared on t-shirts. A decade later, she became an industry—comics and books and stickers and stationary, and even a limited edition guitar, endorsed by Lil’ Wayne.

For the past 15 years, skateboard-turned-graphic designer Rob Reger has over seen Emily in her various forms, from the image of a black cat-loving 13-year-old goth girl to the fleshed out star of her own novels—an evolution that will continue on into a feature film slated for release in 2010.

We sat down with Reger at the New York Comic Con, to discuss how the girl who started life as fodder for a skateboard grew into a full-fledged phenomenon.

How many of these shows do you come out to?

It’s my second New York show. But we’ve been to Comic Con for maybe five or six years now.

Do you go to any others?

I’ve been to Wizard. We did Dragon Con. I was actually slated to really have a good time at Dragon Con, but I hurt my back last year, but hopefully I’ll go that this year.

It seems like the Emily character has a brand that spreads much further than just the comics world. Do you go to book shows or anything of that nature?

We’re represented at a lot of international book shows. Most of the book shows. We do a lot of fashion tradeshows throughout the world, like Bread and Butter, London Edge, Magic here in the United States.

You use the word “we.” It sounds like it’s become more of a company than just a creator and character.

Very much so. And it really has been that way all along. I’ve had a team that developed Emily and an art department behind me. I’m really the idea guy. In the early days, I did all of the design, of course—and I still do today, but I spend more of my time on the books, working with writers and writing myself, illustrating the covers for the books, and stuff like that. But some of the product design, I definitely have teams. I have a lot of great creative people that I work with. That’s one of the things that I really like about the company is that I spend a lot of time working with really cool, creative people.

A lot of people are very protective of their characters. Do you feel somehow less invested, running this company?

Oh no, I’m very invested. I’m very protective. Don’t get that wrong. I’ve invested 15 years of my life, with pretty much 12 hour days, most of the time on Emily and Cosmic Debris in general.

Is it clear to you when someone introduces something that the character should not do?

Yeah. Usually we just have a good laugh and put that away.

Are there any absurd scenarios that come to mind?

Well, in the olden days, I wouldn’t accept anything that wasn’t red, black, and white. That was easy—”no we’re not going to do it on pink, unless it’s a ‘welcome to my nightmare’ shirt.” I’m more accepting of color and things like that, nowadays. But really, I think anyone I work with, it’s understood what I’m going for. We have a foundation and I’m very clear about what I want for them, and usually everyone’s very on-target. We do things to kind of mess with people more to mess around than anything. I remember we turned in a galley for Chronicle Books, and just to see if they ever look at the artwork, we snuck in a little naked Emily in there. I had to point it out to them. They’re like, “it’s great Rob.” I had to tell them to look at page 13.

It sounds like they’re affording you a sense of freedom.

Oh, absolutely. That’s what it is. All of my publishers, including Dark Horse, really trust us on the art. They really trust my sense of graphic design. I really get a lot of freedom.

She originally came out as a skateboard deck.

Yeah. Originally it was a skateboard deck for Santa Cruz Skateboards.

How did it turn into something larger than that?

Well, I was doing t-shirts at the time and I had a friend who worked at store in Santa Cruz called Pipeline. I was selling tons of stuff there, and it fit in perfectly with what I was doing. It was just one of those designs that kind of lingered and turned into another design and another design and just turned into five or ten shirts. Finally I decided that I was going to kick this into gear. I hired one of my good friends, Brian Brooks, and we just put a lot of time into it, gave her her own label and stuff like that.

It’s one thing to move from skate decks to t-shirts. It’s an entirely different thing to move into storytelling—to have a character come out of an image.

Yeah, well, the interesting thing is that each shirt included a phrase—a description of Emily, like, “Emily didn’t search to be long, she searched to be lost.” So there are these little things that made you think there was something more to it. And once we had like ten of those things, we showed it to the publisher down the street from me, Chonicle Books, and said, “hey, here’s an idea for a book, about this crazy character.” They dug it was totally different for them.

It was pretty clear to you what the character was?

Yeah. It was very purposefully very mysterious for a long time, and very slow, when we would release more information about her. I had developed at that time characteristics—50 things she is and 50 things she isn’t and her cat’s name and her cat’s ancestors and her mom’s name. And people still don’t know what her mom’s name is.

[Concluded in Part Two]

–Brian Heater

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