By Autumn Daughetee

Kymera Press is currently in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign to fund a graphic novel of our first project—Gates of Midnight. We also hope the campaign is successful enough for us to fund additional projects. Among the projects under consideration is an adaptation of author Pati Nagle’s novel, Pet Noir, in comic book format.

For those of you who are not familiar with Pet Noir, it is a novel about Leon, a talking, genetically engineered cat who is indentured to a police department on an off-world space station. Leon works off the price of his creation solving crimes with his human partner.

Now, take my advice. As soon as you finish reading this blog, visit Amazon or your favorite online book retailer and purchase a copy. Then pull the blinds and pretend you’re not at home while you read this book.

I recently had the opportunity to ask Pati Nagle a number of questions about Pet Noir, comic books and teaming up with Kymera Press. I was excited to hear what she had to say and I’m excited to be able to share it with you.

Nagle is a longtime fan of comic books. “I read comics a lot as a kid. Less so now, because of other demands on my time (like writing), but as an adult I’ve enjoyed more sophisticated comics such as Elfquest and various manga,” said Nagle. “I also adore Sydney Padua’s 2-D Goggles. Ada Lovelace is a wonderful comic hero!”

Teaming up with Kymera Press was a natural fit for Nagle. “Kymera came to me and I was absolutely delighted,” she said. “I love working with other women, and I love the concept of a press that focuses on women’s creative efforts.”

The one question I was most eager to ask Nagle was, “Where did the idea for Leon come from?” A crime-solving, genetically engineered, talking cat isn’t something that one passes on the street. Nagle said, “Gosh, not sure I remember. Sometimes ideas and characters just come in fully formed from a side door and present themselves. I think Leon came to me that way. ‘Here I am, a talking cat who works as an undercover detective. Tell my story!’”

“I’m a cat-lover and I’ve thought about how they might (or might not) adapt to living in space” she said. “I love the juxtaposition of futuristic outer-space with the mood of old noir detective stories. All those fun ideas kind of jumbled themselves together in my brain and started coming out as stories.”

Nagle believes that Pet Noir would adapt to comic book format beautifully. “Cats in zero-g. Need I say more?” she said. “Seriously, I think the stories that make up Pet Noir would really come alive even more in a comic. It’s got kind of a comic-book feel already, with the science fiction setting and the noir atmosphere. There’s a lot of rich potential for expression through visual media. I’m excited to see what happens!”

For those, like myself, who have fallen in love with Leon there is good news. “I definitely plan to write more Leon stories, and they’ll be prose first,” said Nagle. “There’s more to say, not only about the crazy adventures of a cat fighting crime in space, but about some of the more serious underlying issues, such as his indenture. He’s stuck fighting scummy space criminals until the expense of his genetic engineering is paid off. He would probably sympathize with a lot of college graduates these days.”

I ended our interview by asking Nagle if there was anything else she’d like to share about Leon or this project. She said, “Just that I’m so pleased whenever a reader tells me they like Leon and his stories. People really get into it. I had one reader tell me, ‘That’s not how cats talk!’ I just had to laugh, because if they were that engaged in the story, that they had their own opinion of how a cat would talk, then I did my job.”

Head over to our Kickstarter page at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/812703115/gates-of-midnight if you’d like tohelp bring Leon to the world of comic books.