An Interview With ‘Reversal’ Writer, Alex De Campi

Humanity has a horrible track record of fearing things they don’t understand. When magical creatures start causing property damage and people to get hurt, then, it’s no surprise when people respond by calling for their forest home to be destroyed in Reversal, a graphic novel by writer, Alex de Campi, and artist, Skylar Patridge. With colors by Kelly Fitzpatrick and letters by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, here’s what De Campi had to share about the book and writing for each member of Tré’s family:

Rachel Bellwoar: When did you first start toying around with the idea for Reversal?

Alex de Campi: Oh wow, it was 10 years ago, in 2015. I had finished some fairly heavy-duty stories  and just wanted to do something light and fun, with punching. But of course I’m me, and so the story grew all these messy feelings. It also took a really long time to get the book made, and so every time we hit a roadblock I’d go fiddle with whatever parts of the script weren’t drawn yet.

Bellwoar: Initially the series was released in installments on Webtoon. Were there any plot developments that surprised you or did it pretty much go according to plan?

De Campi: Actually we had the book fully finished when I serialized it on Webtoon, as a way to advertise it a bit and also force myself to letter it. I was super swamped with other books (Bad Karma, Parasocial, and Scrapper were all happening at the same time). I really enjoyed the conversion process to Webtoons, as well as the storytelling potential of the vertical scroll format, but it was a LOT of production work. Ultimately I only serialized about half the story on Webtoon, so if readers want to preview it there, they’re welcome to.

Bellwoat: As a kid nothing could’ve sounded more appealing than a world with magic, yet the response to magic’s return in Reversal is resoundingly negative. Do you think that’s more realistic to how people would react, if magic was real?

De Campi: Look at the world we’re living in right now. Anything remotely different from some false idea of a “norm” is facing backlash. The kids know that magic is, well, magic—look at Tré’s reaction to it throughout the story. But the adults only see danger. And with monsters from myth and fable regularly attacking the city, who’s right?

Bellwoar: Science and fantasy don’t always get paired together but science isn’t just about finding answers. It’s also about being comfortable with the unknown. Did you always want science to play a prominent role in Reversal?

De Campi: Yes, absolutely. If magic suddenly existed right now, we’d definitely be looking for some sort of logical way to explain it. Two thousand years without magic means even the crystal girlies and the woo-woo antivaxers still look at the world primarily through a lens that was created by science. Also, science has plenty of unknowns! We still don’t know how everything works. So it was very important for me to have a scientist character front and center, tasked with explaining the inexplicable.

Bellwoar: It’s not just that science is featured, though, but that Tré’s mom is a scientist, so not only is she feeling protective as a mother, but she’s having to reconsider everything she thought she knew about the world and how it works. How was it getting to show her perspective?

De Campi: Tré’s mom is a character who is balancing a lot—caregiving for her father in law, taking care of three kids, working a demanding job where administrators are increasingly making bad decisions. I love her because she feels real. One early feedback I had from editors (not at Dark Horse) was “nobody wants to see the mom’s point of view” and I’m sitting there as a single mom reading that and thinking some pretty stabby thoughts, I have to say. So fuck it, we get to see a lot of the mom’s POV because parenting is hard and messy and even though you try your best you always have the feeling you could do better, and you definitely have days where you just want a do-over, and you’re tired all the goddamn time.

Bellwoar: Everything starts changing for Tré after she finds the artifact. Did you consider any other options for the artifact or was the classic sword route the best choice?

De Campi: It was important to stick a bit to the cliches, because the whole point of the sword and of Niko is that here is the classic hero, here is the fit white man who is the option mainly foisted on us by mainstream films and games and that we all have to see ourself in, no matter what our race or gender or age or body shape/disability. Here is your Western European fairytale hero with a sword, and he can’t fix this.

Bellwoar: In commercials it’s always adults who are shown struggling with chronic pain. How important was it to you to show that children can suffer from chronic pain, too, like Tré does?

De Campi: In Reversal, just as science can’t solve magic, it also can’t solve Tré’s body—she also struggles on a very personal scale with something that can’t be fixed. I wanted her to have chronic pain/fibro because I wanted her to not be the running, punching young teen hero. It’s important to me that everyone can be the hero of a story, including a young girl who has to rest after going up the stairs. Tré has so much to offer, and is the key to solving everything, if people would just listen to her.

Bellwoar: With everything going on it would’ve been easy for Tré’s brothers to get lost in my mix but some of my favorite moments in the book are seeing how Anthony and Omar are reacting, even if they’re just in the background of a panel. Were those characterizations written into the script or did a lot of that get added during the art stage?

De Campi: Skye and Kelly (both of whom were dealing with significant chronic pain issues while drawing the book, which is why we took our sweet time with it) did an amazing job with Anthony and Omar, but a lot of their moments were written in the script. We’d have these scenes with a bunch of people in them and one thing I learned while working with Fernando Ruiz on Archie vs Predator is you can always sneak in a B or a C gag in the back of a big panel like that. So it was pretty easy to be like “and Anthony tries to make off with all the Chinese food” or “Omar makes a face.”

Bellwoar: Job accomplished! Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Alex!

Reversal goes on sale March 18th from Dark Horse Comics.