Interview: Writers Hannah Rose May And Utkarsh Ambudkar Discuss ‘The Guy In The Chair’

What happens when the guy from Ghost and the lady who wrote The Exorcism at 1600 Penn decide to make a comic together? You get The Guy in the Chair, a new series filled with spycraft, video game-like action, and a hacker used to working behind a desk. With art by Guillermo Sana, colors by Dearbla Kelly and letters by Steve Wands, here’s what co-writers, Hannah Rose May and Utkarsh Ambudkar, were able to spill:

Rachel Bellwoar: The Guy in the Chair is the kind of title that sounds like it started as a placeholder but then became the real deal. Is this an idea where the title came first or did you land on it later?

Utkarsh Ambudkar: This is a chicken and egg scenario. I’m going to give Hannah Rose May all the credit! She came up with and we ran with it – and that’s the story I’m sticking to!

Hannah Rose May: It was actually the name from the jump! I’m a big fan of titles that tell you what the story is about just like my other book The Exorcism At 1600 Penn. We wanted readers to immediately know that this book was about the guy behind the scenes and have them excited to see how he gets pulled into the action.

Bellwoar: What isn’t immediately apparent when you can only see the back of the-guy-in-the-chair’s head on the cover is that Abhi looks a lot like you, Utkarsh. Was that always the plan and what was that like to see when the art started coming in?

Ambudkar: The plan was not for Abhi to look like me – but it was very important to Hannah and I that we add a South-Asian character to world of comic books. Hopefully readers won’t mind either way what Abhi looks like – as long as the story kicks ass.

May: When we envisioned Abhi, we wanted someone who readers would endear themselves to and could see that he was kind and caring despite the brutal world he is connected to. Guillermo, our incredible artist on the book, brought a version to Abhi to life that sold that to us from the jump. Any likeness between Abhi and UTK stems from the fact that they’re both charming, charismatic and overall good guys.

Bellwoar: The premise of the series is there are operators like Abhi (who goes by the code name “Gatsby”) and then there are agents in the field like his usual partner, Merlin. How fun was it to come up with code names for everyone and did you always want to have the names not be from the same universe? For instance, the expectation would be to see a team called Jekyll and Hyde but instead Jekyll is paired up with Frodo.

May: One of the most fun elements of any spy-fi story is the code names that the agents have. Like double-0 agents in James Bond or characters from Arthurian legend like in Kingsman. All of our code names are drawn from the literary world, whether they’re characters or authors. We picked them to help communicate the features/characteristics of our characters.

Ambudkar: Great question! Diving into the zeitgeist to find operator and agent names so fun! We tried to match names with personalities rather than connect code-names to each other. As we expand the GITC universe, imagine all of fun code-names we can come up with.

Bellwoar: Pop culture is filled with flirty, will-they-or-won’t they spy duos (a personal favorite being Sidney and Vaughn from the TV show, Alias). Were you inspired by any of them when coming up with Merlin and Abhi’s dynamic?

Ambudkar: I think we pulled from all over the place. Mr. And Mrs. Smith, You’ve got Mail, John Wick. We tried to wrap them all into one.

May: Definitely inspired by those but also just by the types of conversations friends have over the phone or gaming online. You can have great banter with friends where everything is an inside joke or playfully shit talking. Sure it’s all Utkarsh and I do all day. Voice notes back and forth.

Bellwoar: Speaking of pop culture, this series is infused with all kinds of fun references. Do you enjoy getting to incorporate those and how was it getting to choose posters and memorabilia for Abhi’s room?

Ambudkar: This is a deft touch of Hannah Rose May’s. Her attention to detail is unmatched and was brought to life limitlessly by Guillermo.

May: I think it’s always a blast to try and build out the world around your story and characters. We want people to feel like this story is unfolding in our world without it feeling like it’s directly a 1:1 to the present reality we’re in. Guillermo took a lot of initiative here and he had a lot of fun. There is hidden meme if you look hard enough.

Bellwoar: One of the things this series addresses is how distancing screens can be. Abhi cares about Merlin a lot but, at the same time, the way this business is run, with leaderboards that stoke competition, makes it feel like a game, when real people are putting their lives at risk. Do you think that dehumanization is an issue we need to be contending with more, especially as technology becomes more and more pervasive?

Ambudkar: …you said it, not me!

May: Absolutely. When you’ve got drone pilots using X Box controllers to operate drones half a world away, you know we’ve entered into a strange dystopic reality. Plus with apps or wearables like Whoop or Strava, we’re turning working out into competition. I think the gamification of our everyday lives is something we wanted to poke fun at but also we wanted to nod to video games that track your K/D ratio and how that becomes a hierarchy in friend groups, etc.

Bellwoar: Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Hannah and Utkarsh!

The Guy in the Chair #1 goes on sale October 8th from Dark Horse Comics.