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The characters in Sean McGrath’s Frater Mine face painful memories of black magic and being bullied in high school…and you can’t put it down!

One Sunday evening, I caught up with Sean McGrath’s comic, Frater Mine. The first three issues were collectively called "Family Reunion.” The second story arc (issues 4 - 13) is called "Here, There and Nowhere.” Issue 4 was released back in March and issue 5 is out soon.

What better time for an online chat with Mr. McG about his comic, his work and…undead zombie sex?

SEAN: Is that Joey from Blossom you have on your avatar?

JONATHAN: Whoa! It's Ryan from The OC—a relic from years past that I have never changed. Let’s try this again.

JONATHAN: So, Mr. McG, tell me a little bit about Frater Mine. A lot of magical stuff going down here and coming back to haunt our main characters, right?

SEAN: Yeah, exactly. Matt, Colleen and Jake did something REALLY bad, which will be explored in a later issue, but in essence, they were trying to cure Colleen of her nightmares.

SEAN: But they made the nightmares much worse once they were outside of her head. They barely won and afterwards just drifted apart. Trauma and whatnot.

JONATHAN: That happens to almost every group of childhood friends. Well, not the evil magic part.

SEAN: But even when they get back together in Issue two (their first real time together) the past just taints everything they say and do to each other. Colleen is freshly angry at Jake. Jake is arrogant. Matt tries to be an intermediary. The same roles they always played with each other.

SEAN: There's actually a song by Cross Canadian Ragweed titled "17" that is about the truest song ever written (next to "Jolene" by Dolly Parton) that has the line "You're always 17 in your hometown."

SEAN: Jesus, aren't we all?

JONATHAN: haha oh yeah, that's brilliant. Why do you think that is?

SEAN: I wish I knew because then I could get over it myself. But, ya know, part of me enjoys the nostalgia.

JONATHAN: Me too. Without it, you'd be someone completely different.

SEAN: I owe a LOT to my past. So, I think we move on, but even if the tree grows, visiting the taproot once in a while is still nice.

JONATHAN: There's a lot of layers in the book...like when Colleen is talking to her daughter, she's the mom on one layer, but remembering back to her high school self. Same with Matt and his students...except some of his students are the modern day equivalents of him and his friends...as a teacher, does that really echo for you? You remember what it's like to be the student, but like you said, you've moved on and are in a new position?

SEAN: I think that life spirals outward. We come near to things "as they were" but never to the exact same moment.

JONATHAN: I like the way you put that

SEAN: Two summers ago I was blessed to be able to go to the NEH's Teaching through Performance: Shakespeare in Ashland workshop. We saw Twelfth Night (twice), and even in that play that long ago Shakespeare talked about the spirals in life.

JONATHAN: Really?

SEAN: In the last scene, Feste, the clown, sings a song about himself as a boy, then as a man, then him turning around and seeing another little boy taking his place. So, we never stop doing what we do, it's just that other people do it for us.

JONATHAN: Is that why it's important for Matt to have the "special" students?

SEAN: Yeah, that's totally it. Matt and Colleen and Jake did what they did out of whole cloth, so, it's important that there be a whole new generation of shiny children that need teachers and (god help me for saying this) role models. Plus, they shiny children have their own part to play in "Here, There and Nowhere", the story arc that begins with issue 4.

JONATHAN: Which is very cool, with shades of the Stepford Cuckoos?

SEAN: Nah, nothing as convoluted as that—clones of Emma Frost whose sole purpose was to have a diffuse central ego that would confound the Phoenix Force, thereby making it vulnerable to mechanical control. Whatever.

SEAN: I like my stories to be simpler than that.

JONATHAN: I just meant that you'd look good in white thigh-high boots.

SEAN: Well, that goes without saying.

SEAN: In Issue 5, all the shiny children start to disappear, beginning with Colleen's daughter Virginia and Matt's nephew Powers. So, we get a "Thelma and Louise" road-trip-chase-find-the-bad-guys-and-clear-our-names thing going on.

JONATHAN: Very, very cool.

SEAN: Actually, what I was worried about was issue 4—both in Frater Mine and the back up story All Students Must Die!

JONATHAN: It made me laugh. What inspired that little tale?

SEAN: I'm glad to hear you liked it. Given the times, and especially after Virginia Tech, there are some people who will be less amused than you, I fear.

JONATHAN: It's definitely a fine line between getting the joke and being offended...getting finer each day.

SEAN: When I wrote the story, I was in my last year of secondary education. I mean, I SWORE I would not be teaching the next Fall. I would have sooner sold my body on the streets than been in front of a classroom of high-schoolers again.

JONATHAN: Which you did anyway, right?

SEAN: Uh.. quit secondary education or sold my body on the streets?

SEAN: Yeah, you probably don't want to hear what I did to raise cash to get to Comic-Con last July! :-)

SEAN: I taught at Texas School for the Deaf for…seven years, I think. And by the end of my time there I was completely fed up with the system and, to a certain extent, the kids.

SEAN: In class, I was as calm as I could be (and some days that was not very calm at all) - teaching, being encouraging, checking homework, leading discussions and whatnot. But outside of the classroom, I could not stop talking shit about the kids and the school and the administration.

SEAN: I mean, it was vitriolic, just pure spite.

JONATHAN: I can relate to feeling that way about a job, definitely.

SEAN: And I think most people CAN relate, but teachers, we have a special kind of relationship to our jobs since they're alive and breathing.

SEAN: Anyway, what kept me sane in the classroom and NOT bringing my bad attitude in was writing ASMD! I wrote the whole series in about two weeks. And it's a bloody, violent mess by the end.

JONATHAN: But pretty therapeutic, I would assume.

SEAN: It's teachers vs. students vs. administration and I think there's ONE person left alive by the end: the principal. Oh no, wait. Well, the vice-principal is killed as well, but then reanimated by a teacher who always wanted him while he was alive, but he was married. No such ties after he was dead, so they would fuck with impunity.

SEAN: Undead cock. Yuck.

JONATHAN: Hey, you never know...haha

SEAN: It would have to be a very special zombie.

SEAN: And the principal only survived because she was wearing "rose colored glasses" which made her not see the problems around her (which was her problem to begin with anyway) but ironically allowed her to navigate around the dangers in her school. And, yes, it was very therapeutic.

SEAN: But going back to making Matt and Colleen (and Jake, even if he is in Hell) more independent characters and less "Mary Sue", I had to get Matt out of his teaching job. So, I had him beat the snot out of a student—in defense of his friend, Anne, but still. That sort of thing is frowned on.

JONATHAN: Yes, and it is always interesting to see a main character type like Matt actually lose his cool.

SEAN: Ha ha ha! Matt's on the edge anyway.

JONATHAN: He was pretty hardcore to the pregnant girl before mindwiping her, though.

SEAN: When I put Becca on the receiving end of Matt's "prophecy" it was meant to be uncomfortable. The class was obviously bright and well-behaved, but out of nowhere Matt reaches into this girl's life and pulls out this horrible memory she'd rather forget. So, it was pretty hardcore because it shows Matt losing it.

JONATHAN: I love the art in Frater Mine!

SEAN: Juan Romera is a GREAT artist. He keeps getting better and better with each issue. I will keep him forever, if I can. I like his style. It's realistic, has amazing detail, but at the same time is versatile enough to show the unreal without falling back on cheap tricks.

SEAN: And I don't want Frater Mine to be cheap or take easy, well-worn plot paths.

JONATHAN: The covers, too, are really creative and I love how they're so unusual.

SEAN: The covers. Wow.

SEAN: The first one I did for issue one and it blew Dick Cheney, it was so awful. I look at it now and think, "Dear lord, take a refresher course in drawing, dear."

SEAN: And then along came Dan MacHold, a friend of mine in Austin. He is an AWESOME photographer.

JONATHAN: I like the rubber ducks especially, and the wall with the night sky...I just like how mysterious they are.

SEAN: Anyone who's interested can check out more of Dan's work at his website. His photos were the best gifts anyone could have given me at the beginning of this project. I'm torn between which is my favorite: the grackle, the light post or the ghosts and duckie.

JONATHAN: I just love how they seem both familiar and exotic at the same time...very, very cool stuff.

SEAN: Like you said, they all have this atmosphere about them. They're gorgeous.

SEAN: Issue 4's cover was done by my brother.

SEAN: As will the next few covers.

JONATHAN: #4 was very Sandman-esque I thought

SEAN: Scott will be thrilled to hear you say so :-)

SEAN: He's an admirer of Dave McKean. I actually love what he did for #5.

JONATHAN: How much alike are you and your twin brother? Not at all?

SEAN: We are almost nothing alike in most things. I mean, we're both teachers; we both draw and write; we both read way too much and are terrible at dating.

SEAN: It's just the STYLES with which we go about all this are completely different.

JONATHAN: is he straight?

SEAN: He is straight.

JONATHAN: That's always interesting when it works out like that.

SEAN: More so than you can imagine.

JONATHAN: Are you two identical twins?

SEAN: Nah, we're fraternal. We don’t even look alike. Well, let me qualify that. We look more alike now that we're old and bald than we did when we were young and coiffed :-)

JONATHAN: Twins are fascinating to me.

SEAN: Since I've always been one, I'm never sure what it's like to NOT be one. I think the idea of being a separate child is fascinating.

JONATHAN: I guess it's always a case of whatever you're not is more fascinating, right?

SEAN: Scott used to get so upset when people would see us and yell, "Twins!" as a form of greeting. Even in second grade he would say (rather tartly), "It's Scott and Sean."

SEAN: He even corrected a parish priest one time.

SEAN: That's my brother - the rebel punk.

JONATHAN: I like that about him already ;-)

JONATHAN: I'm glad we got to talk!!

SEAN: Me too - this was quite fun :-)

JONATHAN: Good luck with the comic. I love what I’ve read so far and can’t wait to see what happens next!

Issues are available at Indy Planet or at the Prism Online Shop and info is available at Making Comics Studios.

Jonathan Riggs edited Prism Comics: Your 2007 Guide to LGBT Comics and would be ever so happy if you’d buy a copy from the Prism store. He’d also think it would be real swell if you’d check out Frater Mine.

Prism Comics promotes the works of the LGBT community in comics. It does not implicitly endorse any other material or products associated with those works. Any opinions expressed are those of the author(s).