Interview with Reverend Wesley Sun and Brad Sun, creators of Chaplain, Part 2

        

Editor’s note: this interview has been edited for length and clarity

Interviewer’s note: Part 2 contains significant spoilers. 

Lizzy: Right. The conversations [Charlie and Marie] have together feel like real conversations between a mentor and a mentee. At the end, when they’re working together, I was so happy for both of them because he’s able to go on his journey and she is just beginning hers. It was just really beautiful.

Brad: Because our stories are horror stories, we tend to go with dark endings. There was a very distinct part in the storytelling where we stopped and asked, why are we forcing such a bleak ending when we can see where there’s this other path there. There was a point in the writing process, I remember very deliberately, where we were like, maybe there’s a place for an ending that has some grace to it, that isn’t the most nihilistic thing that we can conjure. Once we were like, okay, let’s allow ourselves to not be as miserable as possible, the ending kind of just came. The line that sold it to me was when the chaplain asked her, “will you remember me?” She says, “I’ll miss you.” Because to him, he thought the best end he could get was, at least someone will remember me. The idea that someone would miss him didn’t even enter his mind. So it’s like, I’ll give you what you wanted, and I’ll give you even more than that.

Wesley:  I remember exactly the moment you’re referencing, Brad. Brad’s in Boston right now, I’m in Chicago. During the course of this writing, we’ve dealt with a good system of working at a distance, but there’s a certain kind of real-time magic of being in the same room together, bouncing ideas, reading back the lines. I remember, I think it was a time you were in Chicago, when I thought, at least I internalized it myself, can’t we give him something? Do I hate this character? What did he do to warrant this level of torture? Brad, you were the one who found the  “I’ll miss you” line. It was clear that the characters had taken on a life of their own.  I had a relationship with him, I could hate him or love him or want him to have something. To that moment you mentioned, there’s a part where she’s literally just dragging him through the hospital, he’s just become catatonic. I remember thinking, we’ve got it: we’ve got the direction.

Lizzy: That weird tension to the buildup when they’re talking in the chapel and he’s wondering about the dream, and Maria says it’s already here, and there’s the maw opening, Everything from that point, I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s like the tension that builds and builds and builds, and it just explodes and boils over through the rest of the book.

Brad: I’m really glad you brought that up because that particular line came out pretty early in the writing process. It was almost like once we got that as like, okay, that’s going to be the turning point of the story.

Brad: It was almost like the story expanded out from that midpoint. We outline the endpoint and then fill in the middle. But I actually hadn’t thought about it until you just mentioned that scene. The story builds itself out both ways from that moment, as that kind of the turning point. So you were able to see the bones of that in the writing.

Lizzy: Stillborn children and the grief of their parents feature prominently in Chaplainin different scenes. Was this something that you faced in your work more than you expected?

Wesley: Oh, yes, and it is something that all of us face. At one of our book signing events, we had a moderator, herself a queer Filipino and former intern of mine. We gave her an advance copy of Chaplain because we wanted her to be able to do what you’re doing,which is to ask questions. I remember she said, “good choice on the dead kids.” She said, those are the ones that stick with you. I would say that the death of children, stillbirths, or children who do not survive birth is a very common reason why chaplains are called, and why they have a 24-7 rotation. I’m such an old dinosaur in the profession. We were trained on 24-hour and 32-hour shifts. My students now work 12-hour shifts, which is much more reasonable. I’m sad to say, chaplains were the last ones to learn what truck drivers and nurses’ unions had figured out well ahead of us, that your judgment, your ability to function after 12 hours, is pretty compromised. The idea that you’ll be up all night dealing with the death of children, then you have to function the next day, and you’re in a daze and the night is still with you. You don’t even know what time it is. And you’re like, when do I sleep? That is such a quintessential part of hospital chaplaincy that it had to be in the book somewhere. Having it as this inciting event, and again, that perfect connection of the aswang specifically linked to the death of young children or even death of children in the womb. It’s got to be that prominent. It fits into the theme of the book of passing on things to the next generation. We don’t know if the chaplain even has a personal life, but insofar as he might, I don’t assume he has children, but a stillborn child is an interruption in the natural passage of generations, right? That is part of what the book is about: it’s Maria’s time, right? I think that a night in which new life isn’t allowed to happen is the inciting tragedy, the horror. For the book, it felt right, and it is very true to the profession. The other thing, too, about the death of children from a liturgical and religious perspective, it’s often the time where the chaplain has to improv the most. When you do a funeral for an old person, old people are supposed to die. It’s natural. It’s what you hope for, right? I assume parents want their children to bury them, not the other way around, right? Your church or your religious community or your culture probably already has rituals. Families want a ritual, but there isn’t really one prepared because children are not supposed to die. Having the chaplain stumble over his own words, create an incantation, mix it up a little bit.

Lizzy: How did you approach working with the artistic team to translate the horror of the story into images?

Brad: We started with a script because we knew relatively early that we would be working with a separate team for the illustration. We had to be a little bit more structured, a little bit less cavalier. The initial step was similar to where it usually is with our projects, where we tend to break up the book into scenes. I’ll tackle this one, you tackle this one, and we’ll go back and forth with the dialogue. I went back and did a final pass where I put in some tentative panel breaks, some essential directions, those kinds of things. I think that’s where being an illustrator myself helped to leave enough room for the illustrator to be able to put his own voice into it, but give him the essential elements of what he needs to know to illustrate the scene properly. Raúlo was amazing in terms of picking up some of these little details in the hospital, even ones that we didn’t mention. We sent him some reference photos of things. He was also very generous. Some of the concept sketches that I had for the creatures and things like that, I think, helped. He integrated those into his own style when designing some of the aswang’s transformations, so that was very gratifying to see. Once we gave them those key points, Raúlo and Ryan really took it and ran, Raúlo in terms of illustrating and then Ryan with the colors. I gave him a few touchpoints of different color tones that I was looking for, referencing certain kinds of classic horror cinema, like Suspiria,and things with different psychedelic colors. Once he was on the right track, there honestly wasn’t much direction we had to give them. They took what we had and really made it their own. That was really a great process to become a part of.

Lizzy: Raúlo’s artwork is so detailed, and the color palettes were very intense. Were there particular scenes that surprised you?

Brad: I was absolutely delighted with all the ways Raúlo managed to depict the fact that the aswang is constantly shapeshifting. It’s not like film, where you can literally see a transformation. It’s from panel to panel, and you have to let the reader fill in the gaps. The way he was able to really capture the undulating mass of the creature was fantastic. Wesley received the physical copies of the book first. I remember telling him to take a picture of the page with the dream sequence, the one after the aswang is there, where it’s probably the most nightmarish part of the book. That was one where, despite what I just said earlier about giving them directions and making sure they were on track. It was like, let’s see what they come up with, because I had in my head how I would have illustrated it, but at some point the script just goes crazy here. Raúlo is some kind of mastermind, his speed is incredible in terms of turning out pages, and the level of detail, but then also just playing with the form. I’m sure you’ve seen all those pages where he breaks up the panels, or he uses things to be the panel borders and the way he’s able to integrate those. I mean, I’m sure on our end, it looks effortless. I’m sure he’s putting the work in. But the pages kept on coming in, without missing a beat, and just nailing that sequence and that final double-page spread of the aswang over the whole hospital. I don’t think we had any notes when we got it back. We were like, oh, yeah, he nailed it. That’s exactly what we were hoping for and more.

Lizzy: With that double-page spread, in particular, I was wondering if the creature had transformed itself into the hospital.

Brad: I think the implication that earlier, where things start going really crazy with all the stillborn births, is that the aswang somehow has seeped into every facet of hospital life, from the tragedies that happened with the patients, to the janitor having to mop up the leftover things in the morgue, the crying patients, the crying nurses and doctors, that somehow theaswang is all of that. That is what the aswangis. So, to come up with an abstract idea like that, we couldn’t be happier with how he managed to capture that.

Lizzy: After that two-page spread, with Charlie walking through all the rooms…it was just fleshy walls and fleshy doors and the floors.

Brad: Yes, I think there was a note there, like, from that point on, it’s all nightmare. There’s no going backwards.

Lizzy: Absolutely, and there are a lot of the visuals that stick with me after reading Chaplain, like the Mardi Gras parade with Mrs. Shaw and her children. How did the Mardi Gras theme come up?

Brad: Wesley can speak on the Mardi Gras thing because that was his contribution specifically. I know he’s quite fascinated with the ritual. I’ll just say, writing the scenes with the kids was a delight. I just tried to make those kids as awful as possible.

Wesley: Brad killed it with those kids. That was all him on that. When I got the pages from Brad, where they’re like stomping their mother into a garbage can, I’m like, oh, you got it.

Lizzy: Treating their mother like medical waste.

Wesley: I have a fascination with what I would call ecstatic religious practice. These moments of dancing and singing and wailing are very interesting to me. Like so many things in the book, it has a connection to actual practice in the hospital. We don’t have parade floats and a big band playing and stuff like that, but we do what we call an honor walk when an organ donor dies. We want to give them a good send-off. We line the hallways. Everyone stops, the whole floor stops, and we wheel the patient down. Usually a family member is playing music on their cell phone, and the janitors get involved, the nurses, everyone stops what they’re doing. We all pay our respects. So I just wanted the worst version of that, the most horrific version. And when Brad nailed the characters of the children, I was like, oh, it’s perfect. We got it. We got the most spectacle possible.

Lizzy: Another scene I was thinking about was that tense conversation between Simone and the chaplain in a very disturbing setting, the small dark room, and she’s enjoying her salad.

Wesley: Mmh. With the foot, yeah, yeah.

Lizzy: With that maggot-covered foot! The conversation, if I’m interpreting it properly, is like the calling versus career kind of conversation. What influenced that section?

Brad: There are a few things there. We wanted to have the kind of conclusion of the ongoing conversation she’s been having with the chaplain throughout the book in as dramatic a fashion as possible. We wanted to really pull out all the bells and whistles and give Simone her due, because, even though the chaplain and Maria take up more of the story, Simone is that crucial third character in the story. You could see her as the voice of the hospital, the voice of the institution, drawing him back in. Then there is the mundane eating of her meal next to this gruesome thing, that is kind of necessary for the job, that level of compartmentalization. Like you’re never going to be able to clock out at the end of the day. It’s not like there aren’t more people to help.

Wesley: I love that because it’s mundane on top of mundane. It’s not just that she has to eat her lunch, and she also has to get him a new ID badge. That’s the most mundane task of any job. A lady did eat my badge one time, and I needed a new one. Maggot Leg was an actual patient. We had to clear the maggots, which did save him. That’s all true. I think, too, the maggots are another analogy to the aswang and the field of chaplaincy, which is you have to live off the dead, you know? Maggots eat dead flesh; they are used in medical procedures. It’s amazing in modern medicine how many archaic things we use. One of my students almost fainted last unit because they brought in leeches to clean the blood on a patient. She’s like, they still do that?  Simone flat-out says, “Chaplain, you are like a maggot. You do this. Isn’t it the same with you?” We try to avoid, in a heavy-handed and uninteresting way, having characters tell you what things mean or whatever. Simone’s dialogue is probably the closest we get to spelling it out. It’s a really important scene. I agree with everything Brad said. It’s the horror of hospital life.

Lizzy: This next one ties back to the panel that you mentioned with the pregnant woman with the tube. I don’t know if you’d call it a phobia, but I have a fear of foreign tubes in my body. I have been through a major hospitalization with anaphylaxis and there were scenes like that one, specifically where Charlie and Maria see the doctor working on the ASL patient who is standing upright. 

Wesley: Oh, yeah. 

Lizzy: So that whole scene, yeah, I had to put the book down for a minute. 

Wesley: Ohh, yeah. 

Lizzy: I am terrified of catheters and other medical equipment, so I see this guy with his insides all over the place, and they’re keeping him alive with all these tubes and things in him, and it’s just like, nope. That definitely tapped into some more personal stuff for me.  

Wesley: I think your question is like, what’s wrong with you? Or like, why? Well, why do this to someone? 

Lizzy: [laughs] What influenced that? What made you write that into the story? 

Brad: One of the things that Wesley and I have talked about multiple times, not even related to this book specifically, but just about his hospital work in general, is how scary it is for a patient. There can’t be anything more intrusive and degrading than having to let yourself just be completely helpless and be like, literally, do whatever you want to me. You can be inside my body, and I don’t even know what you’re doing. That is one of the real horrors about going into a hospital and just kind of accepting it. That time between when I enter and I leave might be the worst part of my life. That feeling is something that is a very relatable fear and definitely an important thing to put in the story. 

Lizzy: The doctor’s comments about there being time, which was like what Chaplain said, as he’s taking care of the patient?

Brad: Wesley, maybe you could talk about that. Sometimes we’re watching a medical show and I’m like, yeah, that doctor could have said that better. And Wesley would be like, oh yeah, but that is how they kind of talk. One of the reasons we need a chaplain is just to comfort the patients for having to deal with the doctors.

Wesley: The doctor in our comic with the ASL patient is more compassionate than a lot of doctors. A lot is going on in that scene, right? We talked about how we didn’t want to make the chaplain really good at his job and Maria really bad, or vice versa. The time where the chaplain steps in and says, we don’t have to fill out these advance directive forms at all, when they probably should have, because if you don’t fill out advance directives, families will just decide to keep you alive forever, and it’s horrible. You really should think about when you want to pull the plug. If we didn’t have that scene, as a reader, I would have assumed like, oh yeah, that shows the chaplain’s maturity in the job and Maria’s inexperience. But honestly, if Maria kept badgering the patient a little bit more, maybe Hodges would have signed it. I mean, we’ll never know what Hodges wanted or didn’t want for his own body because they never had the advance directive conversation, right? Because the chaplain stepped in and said, we don’t have to talk about this now or ever.

Lizzy: Maybe he would have signed it. Right.

Wesley: Early on in my chaplaincy, before everyone had cameras on their phones, this is how old I am, it would have been quite novel to have a high-quality camera on your phone. Going back to the death of children, it was my job to take family photos when a baby died. Because unlike an adult, when an old person dies, you assume there’s a whole lifetime of photographs. But when a child dies, if you don’t take photos, then you have no photos of this person.

Lizzy: Ohh.

Wesley: Right? There’s no such thing as that family photo. I would be taking pictures and the family members would hold up the baby and like flop its head to one side and they’d be like, oh, he’s so beautiful, or oh, you can tell he’s got my nose or he’s got your eyes. To me, it looked horrific, but to the family, it was so beautiful. I think that kind of like extreme perspectivism is also a little bit at play. It’s more common than not that families will say, I want you to do everything you can to keep this person alive. I was like, we’ve got to show that. We need to have a scene where literally everything is being done. There are times when a family says they want everything done, but we can’t keep doing this forever. I’m not a doctor, but there are scenarios where it looks to me like we could resuscitate the patient for an indefinite number of times, but…I’ll bring the family into the ICU, and I’ll say I know you want to do everything. I want you to see what is happening. I’ll show them a patient like Hodges, and they’ll say, oh, then I think we should stop, I didn’t realize that’s what it looked like. The other thing I really like about this scene is it is a time when Maria shines a lot, where she says, “Mr. Hodges, I’m sorry this happened to you.” She’s still being a chaplain. Charlie is checked out completely at that point. He’s no longer doing anything useful. Maria is still humanizing, and she’s the only one in the scene doing it. I think that’s the time for Maria to really demonstrate that she really does deserve the coat.

Wesley: She’s doing all the work, doing like five jobs in that scene. She’s so much more competent than he is here. As a person who spends most of my time supervising interns, that is the scene where I’m really proud of Maria. She’s holding it together pretty well. She’s got the stuff. She can build a whole career out of this.