Ben Khan at Awesome Con 2018

In addition to the big names of the industry, Awesome Con 2018 also hosted a huge pool of talented smaller creators. One of which was writer Ben Khan, who is the brilliant mind behind the afterlife fantasy heist Heavenly Blues.

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YDRC: Today we are talking to Scout Comics’ Ben Khan, writer...and artist?

Ben Khan: Just the writer.

YDRC: Writer of Heavenly Blues.

Ben Khan: Art by Bruno Hidalgo. But I do do the lettering.

YDRC: Writer and letterer.

Ben Khan: I do do- that's a hard sentence. I do lettering!

YDRC: Double threat! Ben, how are you doing today.

Ben Khan: I'm doing great, how are you?

YDRC: I'm doing great! A little tired, rough train ride.

Ben Khan: Can I just say? I LOVE your Batman button-down shirt (author's note: this interviewer was wearing a Batman button-down shirt).

YDRC: Oh yeah? Thank you!

Ben Khan: It's great! It's fantastic, but it's subtle enough that I didn't notice till I started looking closely and now it just makes me love it even more.

YDRC: Thank you, you come dressed for the best at Awesome Con!

Ben Khan: They say dress for the job you want, not the one you have. And yet? Impersonating a police officer is illegal. What am I supposed to do with that?

YDRC: (Laughs). Is that some of the mind-bending, thought-provoking subtext of Heavenly Blues by Scout Comics?

Ben Khan: Heavenly Blues is about redemption, rejection of redemption, and finding purpose in what you love. It's about punishment, divinity, salvation, or damnation, and the idea that they are not places, they are states of mind. And then true salvation is then doing what you love and finding passions and following them through. That it is the very act of living that makes life.

Heavenly Blues #2. 

YDRC: That's a lot of great, deep, story stuff. Themes and subtext out of the way, would you maybe talking a bit about the summary of the plot?

BK: Of course! Heavenly Blues stars a team of thieves, from throughout history, who are all dead, and they team up to wage the ultimate heist on heaven.

YDRC: That sounds awesome.

BK: So your main characters are Isaiah Jefferson, a smooth-talking bank robber from the 1930s. And Erin Foley, who was a 12-year-old scam artist trying to escape the Salem Witch Trials.

YDRC: Fantastic! So there are a lot of varied historical members in this otherworldly, afterworld, Oceans Eleven.

BK: Part of the idea was, if I have all of history at my disposal, I should make an All-Star Team.

YDRC: What was some of the research you did in preparing for the script? I mean ultimately you are writing a book about a heist on heaven, so there is going to be some suspension of disbelief.

BK: Yeah.

YDRC: But what were some of the research you did to make sure the historical backgrounds and characterization were as authentic as you could make it?

BK: Different characters needed different levels of research. In regards to the bank robber and cowboy characters, I've been watching gangster movies and Wild West-ers my whole life. Didn't really need too much research other than seeing those old movies and seeing how they did those scenes. Some of the other characters really did require more research. The ninja character, Hideki Iwata, especially. A lot of historical research went into him. So issue #3, you get his flashback issue, and you see how he died in a battle in 1582 against Oda Nobunaga and his forces. That was a real battle, his clan, those dates are all real. Some of the other characters got a little more fudged, like the Salem Witch Trials taking place in the Summer? Eh.

Heavenly Blues #3.

YDRC: (Laughs).

BK: I wanted snow scenes, so it takes place in Winter.

YDRC: No one is going to break your back.

BK: Exactly! So some characters, I kind of fudged things to get what I want, and then other characters got a lot more real research to get them authentic.

YDRC: And then the other thing about having such a broad diverse group, that it also becomes a very inclusive group.

BK: Absolutely.

YDRC: Which is something that is coming up more and more within the conversations of our larger comic community as of late.

BK: Not a straight white man in the cast!

YDRC: (Laughs). So that was a big topic in the back of your head making the story?

BK: Like you said, it would be weird to look at all of history and go "hey! here's five Americans."

YDRC: Exactly!

BK: So, having a diverse cast, it is important to me. In this particular instance, the set-up for the plot kind of demanded that level of diversity. But a part of it is just what the characters spoke to me, and what I felt about them. The main character Isaiah Jefferson, the bank robber, there isn't a specific story reason why he is African American. I just closed my eyes and tried to imagine who this character is, and there was no version of him that wasn't an African American man.

YDRC: We've talked about themes, we've talked about plot, really quickly what is the elevator pitch of Heavenly Blues in a few sentences?

BK: The souls of the greatest thieves in Hell team up, to pull the ultimate heist on Heaven.

YDRC: Ben thank you so much! Great interview.

BK: Thank you so much for doing it.