Ben H. Winters has built a career out of defying easy categorization. He’s the Philip K. Dick Award-winning novelist behind The Last Policeman trilogy and Underground Airlines, a TV writer whose credits include FX’s Legion and Apple TV’s Manhunt, and the creator of Tracker, currently one of the biggest hits on CBS. If that sounds like a lot, it is, yet somehow he’s also found time to dive headfirst into comics.
After contributing to Oni Press’s acclaimed revival of the EC Comics line, Winters has now made his miniseries debut with Benjamin, illustrated by the Leomacs. The book follows Benjamin J. Carp, brilliant, slightly self-destructive sci-fi author who died in 1982, as he wakes up inexplicably alive in 2025 Los Angeles, forced to investigate the impossible mystery of his own existence. It’s surreal, funny and deeply strange in the best possible way. The trade paperback collection of Benjamin is out now from Oni Press.
I got the chance to talk to Winters about how he came to comics, what makes Benjamin tick, and what it’s like to bounce between network television and deeply weird graphic novels. He also let slip some details about what’s coming next.
I thought we could start with your secret origin. How did you come to comics, both as a fan and as a creator?
My secret origin is massively boring — I started reading comics when I was about twelve years old, like many a twelve year old kid before me and since. I had a couple of older cousins who were big collectors, and I used to love visiting them in Pennsylvania and burrowing into their collections. My favorites were Batman and the Flash. I think I liked Batman’s square-jaw stoicism but recognized more of my own goofus-y wise-cracking personality in Wally West.
Tracker is a massive hit on CBS (my dad is a HUGE fan). Does that sort of mainstream success change how you think about more offbeat, ambitious projects like Benjamin?
First of all, God bless your dad.
There are a lot of constraints to working in television, of course, notably the budgetary constraints that limit what is literally possible, and the complicated mazes from notion to execution that exist in even the best-case scenarios. Working in comics is in certain ways the opposite: gifted with a great artist and a supportive publisher (both of which I had on Benjamin) you can do any damn crazy-ass thing you want to. There is a freedom there that is refreshing and inspiring, when you’ve been tryna figure out how to execute TV. But I do love them, both very much.
You’re working across novels, TV, and now comics. Do you think about those as separate creative modes, or is it all just storytelling to you? What are some of the differences between them, and what’s the same?
As I was saying, comics lets you do more at less cost. Fiction is similar; no actors, no battles with the studio, no last-minute rewrites because an actor is sick or got fired. So the range of possibles is different in all of them; the structure is different; the way they are consumed by their audiences is different. But yes, at base, a good story is a good story, and that almost always depends on a good hero. Who do we care about here, and why? How do they change over the course of this thing — whatever this thing is — and how does that change us?
Benjamin J. Carp is described as a genius who “always just escaped mainstream success.” What drew you to that specific kind of figure as your protagonist?
I love heroes who don’t quite deserve to be heroes. Who don’t quite fit the mold, who don’t quite have the right skills. I like a hero who is learning how to be a hero over the course of the story. Like in my book The Last Policeman — it features a detective who is too young, too inexperienced, and only becomes a detective because of terrible circumstances. So we’re not just watching him solve the problem, we’re watching him learn to solve the problem. Benjamin is kind of the same way. He’s a slightly off kilter. He’s not heroic. He should have been successful, but he got in his own way. He has something to prove.
Los Angeles feels like a character in the story. Why was that setting essential to you when creating it?
Oh, well, for one thing, I live here and I love it here. But really the contrast between Benjamin’s crabby, curmudgeonly POV and the bright and blue LA backdrop was irresistible. Sunny SoCal has always had that special connection to noir — from The Big Sleep to Chinatown to The Big Lebowski.
How collaborative was the process with Leomacs? How much did his visual interpretation shape the story itself?
Leomacs and I never sat down together to work, which is a shame, because he seems like an extraordinary person. But I feel like it was a close collaboration nonetheless — I would send my stubby little notions for what a given page would look like, and he would turn them into these complex, multilayered inter-dimensional masterpieces, and I would go “holy shit,” make some dumb small suggestions, and he would make them even more perfect. What good luck for me!
You now have Benjamin under your belt, along with stories in Oni’s EC anthologies. Do you have any plans for more comics work?
Indeed! I am working on a top secret series, which is sort of a Hollywood memoir but also sort of a horror story, and kind of a spiritual sequel to Benjamin. That’ll be out… oh, let’s say next year, but first I gotta finish writing it!