Minor Arcana is the latest ongoing series from industry legends Jeff Lemire, first appeared on Prosperity! studio this month. The comic follows a damaged woman who returns to the small town where she grew up, where she discovers that her pseudo-psychic family history is a little more involved than she bargained for. This is a wonderful read and is shaping up to be one of Lemire’s best works. The Beat contacted Lemire to ask some questions about the Minor Arcana, which you can read below.
This interview was conducted via email and has been edited for clarity.
JARED BIRD: What I love about this series is its focus on small-town mystery shops. What prompted you to make a comic about a psychic shop and a tarot card reader?
Jeff Lemire: This book has been in the works for about three or four years, so the initial spark came a while ago. I do remember doing a scene in my series fish fly A character visits a small town asking for help. This started to amuse me. You see these little storefront psychic shops everywhere. I see them in cities and I know they exist in small towns too. It feels mysterious. What’s going on behind these windows? Who manages them? It kind of grew out of that. The story really started to happen when I thought about a prodigal’s daughter coming home and her and her mom running one of the stores and living in it.
I was working on Essex County Canadian TV shows were unable to start any new comics for a while, so the idea was shelved. I’m glad it did because the longer it sat the more it developed, cooked and grew. So, when I actually started doing it last year, it was already fully formed. I got the whole story. Beginning and ending. All the various supporting characters. Everything is there.
The focus on Tarot cards grew out of this research. I started reading books about mediums and channeling, and Tarot was just emerging as a treasure trove of imagery, symbolism, and stories. The more I read, the more it integrated into the world and characters I was creating.
Byrd: Teresa has some misanthropic tendencies, and she has a lot of baggage about returning home. She tried to escape it for a long time, but eventually came back. Do you think readers might be able to relate to it?
Lemire: I believe many people will encounter this situation. Not everyone has a happy childhood or family life. When many people are young, they just want to make their own way and build their own life. I know I did it. But family is a powerful thing, and it can pull you back whether you like it or not.
When we found Theresa, she was at a crossroads. The life she left behind in the city was a mess (we’ll learn more about that other life in future issues), and it all coincided with her mother’s illness.
So Teresa returned to the place where she grew up out of necessity. Partly because of her own failings, partly because her mother needed her. There was some resentment in her heart, but she was also angry with herself. The misanthropic tendencies you mentioned don’t help. She is a pessimist and her worst enemy may be herself.
Of course, we have Teresa as the Fool, and her journey will be one of discovery and reinvention.
Bird: Over the course of your career, you’ve written a lot of series set in small towns, and you’re from a small town yourself. What do you think about the small town environment inspires your creativity?
Lemire: Well, that’s where I’m from. So, it all comes from the same well. I lived in a small town and, as I write, was at my most impressionable, when my tastes and sense of self were still forming. So it’s no mystery why this is so deeply integrated into my creative life.
Also, I really enjoy painting small towns and rural settings. It played to my strengths as an artist and aesthetically I still really like it. Every part of me is still drawn to these country stories, and maybe I always will be.
bird: Minor Arcana Touches on a lot of dark themes. Among them are ideas about the afterlife and grief, recovery and facing trauma, and dealing with substance abuse. Was this series difficult to write?
Lemire: Well, I’m still writing it, a month at a time. So it’s definitely going to be a multi-year journey. Yes, it was a very difficult time for me personally. When I started working, I personally went through a lot of Minor Arcanaand to some extent I still do. This was a difficult time for me. But the irony is that writing about these dark subjects can actually be helpful. It’s cathartic. I also know where all the storylines are going. This is very much a book about community and healing. This does not mean everything The result would be great, it’s more layered and complex than that, but darkness is a means to an end.
Byrd: The colors of the first tarot reading sparkled on the paper. Have you always imagined that scene as an explosion of color in a quiet world?
Lemire: color in Minor Arcana It really grew as I worked on it. The original plan was for me to write the book in black and white and only use blue watercolors, as I did Fish flies. But as the scope of the book expanded, my editors, Eric Haborn and Matt Gagnon I had a conversation and we knew there needed to be a more diverse approach to representing Teresa as she moves between different worlds and realities.
I considered having another colorist work on the “real world” portion of the book, while I worked on the more limited space. But Eric and Matt encouraged me to try drawing the entire book myself.
I knew the psychic shop had to be almost garish and very colorful to represent Vicki’s personality. And the rest of the world will be more silent, more like Theresa. So, I went crazy with washes on these pages, going very dark, very rich, and choosing colors that were way out of my usual comfort zone. It was fun trying to give each location and each environment its own color scheme. The first issue took a long time, but now that I’ve nailed down the look and the different locations, it’s much faster.
Bird: You’ve said this series is a love letter to the “first wave” of Vertigo comics. They inspired your previous work e.g. animal man, Personally, this is one of the first comics I read every month. What was inspiring about that era? Minor Arcana?
Lemire: Those original “Vertigo” books, sandman, swamp monster, animal man, doom patrol, Shade the ever-changing person etc. are all very important to me. I was 14 or 15 when they were published, and in 1993 DC’s “Berger Books” officially changed its name to Vertigo.
These books were much more sophisticated than the mainstream books available to kids like me at the time. And, while they still use genre, they have complex characters and worlds that really appeal to me as I get older. They wanted me to keep reading comics, really. Of course, there were many independent comics, and European comics at that time were also very literary and mature, but I had not been exposed to them because I lived in a small town. But I did get the Vertigo books because DC distributed them more widely.
It’s hard to define what I wanted to capture from those Vertigo books. There’s definitely a supernatural aspect to it, but really, it’s more of a mood and a tone and a feeling that I still get when I look at those original Vertigo comics. It was all mixed with my love for post-punk and early alternative music of the time.
Bird: What do you hope readers take away from this series?
Lemire: I hope this book becomes a rich tapestry of a small town. I want the characters to feel like one thing when you first meet them, but slowly find themselves becoming more layered and complex. I want readers to fall in love with them, fall in love with the world, and take this journey with me.
Like I said, this is a book about community and healing, and I hope that happens as it develops. But it’s also filled with lots of twists and surprises.
I also want to celebrate ongoing series and single-issue comics. I want each issue to feel special and not just a chapter in a paperback book. The storyline in the book will be smaller. 1 -3 questions, there is a larger, underlying story running through it all.