It all started with a picture in Joe Kelly’s head.
“[It was] a single image I had of a barefoot kid holding a Tommy Gun and a Dragon on a leash,” Kelly said. “I didn’t know what it meant or what the story was, but ultimately that image expanded into a wider world for me and Four Eyes was born.”
Four Eyes, produced by Image Comics, is set in 1930s Brooklyn, during the Great Depression. It was that first image of the protagonists, Enrico the child and Four Eyes the dragon, that prompted Kelly to set the tale during that era.
“Once I started doing some research and linking the real world happenings with the themes of the book it made perfect sense to me.”
The art chores on Four Eyes are handled by Max Fiumara. The pair met at a convention and discussed collaborating, but Fiumara was under contract with another publisher. “. A few years later I sent a card for the holidays to Joe that caught his eye so much that we started to talk again about doing something,” Fiumara said. “He offered me two projects he had in mind, and one of those was Four Eyes. I didn’t have to think too much before saying yes to Four Eyes, I thought it was a wonderful and original idea.”
Adding to the uniqueness of the story is the dragon, the titular Four Eyes. Most people picture dragons as large, mean, firebreathers, but Four Eyes is, according to Kelly, “the runt of the litter.
“You want a least likely protagonist, especially in a story like this with lots of fighting,” he said. “The weaker the better… because ultimately. it’s a false weakness. There is a deep strength in both Enrico and Four Eyes that is revealed throughout the story. Deep flaws too, and that’s the tension. Which will win out?
While writing Enrico, Kelly relished the idea of putting the young hero of the series in grown-up situations.
“I love putting kid protagonists in darker more mature stories,” he said. “Pan’s Labyrinth is one of my favorite films. Watching a kid struggle with big questions of morality or try to make sense of the adult world is great fodder for stories.
“It also sets the reader out of their comfort zone in a way that’s very effective for me,” Kelly added.
The collaboration between Kelly and Fiumara has been a match made in heaven.
“One of the greatest compliments we ever got was when someone said they thought the book was written and drawn by the same person,” Kelly said. “Max has an uncanny ability to pluck images directly from my brain and make them real. He seriously is the maestro, and while we are getting some help on this arc from Rafael Ortiz (very talented dude in his own right!) there is no Four Eyes without Max.”
Fiumara said “we are very in sync, he sends very loose scripts, I can do basically whatever I want. And he’s also very open to my ideas and point of view. I’m lucky to have him as my collaborator!”
The artist added that “when I first read the plot of the book, I imagined Fox, the trainer, as a black person. But Joe hadn’t seen Fox as a black person before, and liked my interpretation, so we moved forward that way.”
Kelly calls the series, which debuted in 2008 on an irregular publishing schedule, very accessible to new readers, but advised giving the first volume a read.
“It’s worth it to pick up the first volume a) because Max is amazing and you need that art in your eyeballs, b) the “origin story” part is fun and c) you get a bigger sense of the world we’re dealing with,” he said.
