EXCLUSIVE! Brian Joines talks IMAGINE AGENTS and KRAMPUS!


While attending this year’s Emerald City Comicon I was able to sit down with scribe Brian Joines, the awesome author of Boom Studio‘s Imagine Agents, and of course, Image ComicsKrampus!

UTF:. For our audience out there, who has no idea what Imagine Agents is, can you boil it down for them?

Brian Joines: Yeah. Imagine Agents is about a pair of operatives that go after the imaginary friends of little kids who are not on the up and up.

UTF: That sounds great. Where did the idea for that come from?

Brian Joines: When I was a little kid I had an imaginary friend. And as I got older I thought: what would have happened if they had been real and I had grown out of it, and it was just this person running around. Who would take care of it? So I came up with the idea of doing this organization with an acronym: the Institute for the Management, Acclimation, Guardianship, and Incarceration of Notional Entities, which took a good two hours of figuring out. When I hit notional I knew I’d found the sweet spot. But, yeah, so this is an agency that cares for imaginary friends once the kids have outgrown them. Or if the the figments, which are what we call imaginary friends, go bad these are the guys who capture them and incarcerate them.

Imagine Agents 1_Widescreen

UTF: Who was the illustrator that worked with you on them?

Brian Joines: The illustrator’s name is Bachan. He’s out of Mexico, and a great guy. I mainly knew him from doing the Justice League Unlimited books that DC did a while ago that were based on the Bruce Timm style. Imagine Agents is him doing his own stuff, and it’s beautiful.

UTF: I understand the 4-issue mini series wrapped. Are there any plans in the future for these characters?

Brian Joines: Hopefully. I know that we were waiting to see how the trade does. Which, I think, is going to be due out late 3rd quarter, early 4th quarter this year. Hopefully it does well. We’ll get another crack at them. Or, you know, of course a movie deal.

UTF So what projects do you have lined up? Are there any that you can talk about right now?

Brian Joines: Well, I’m still doing Krampus! from Image. I have another Image book that’s going to be coming out late this year, early next year. Beyond that, I’ve got a couple proposals in that hopefully will turn out well. So we’ll see. We’ll see.

Krampus! 1_Widescreen

UTF: Well, that sounds great. I got one last question: we have a lot of fanboys and fangirls that frequent our site. Do you have any message that you want to send them? Any final word?

Brian Joines: I would say, just, I love DC. I love Marvel. But, you know, there’s a whole other world out there, Image, Boom, Dark Horse, all that stuff. Don’t be afraid to let go of the superhero thing and see what else is out there. And buy Krampus! and Imagine Agents.

I want to take the time to thank Mr. Brian Joines for chatting with me. It was a pleasure, and I’ve picked up both the titles we discussed in the interview and if you’re not reading them then you’re absolutely missing out!

So what did you think of the interview my fellow fanboys and fangirls?

Sound off with your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below!