From 2020s to 1920s

Look, the roaring twenties were 100 years ago, it was very different from the world we live in now. Or was it? The Daily Mobster is not set in a time where our phones know where we are or our watches know how fast our hearts are beating. Today we can speak to someone on the other side of the planet without thinking twice. AI can write, draw, compose and imitate almost anything we can imagine…for better or for worse. And yet, increasingly, we seem fascinated by a world that had none of it. The Daily Mobster’s cinematic graphic novel universe takes us back to a time when technology was simpler, but life’s problems and personal drama? Perhaps not much has changed.

There is something wonderfully strange about creating and reading stories set a hundred years ago while living in an age that seems determined to rush toward the next hundred. Maybe that distance, especially one with a nice perfect number like 100 is exactly what makes the era so appealing to us, and hopefully, readers of the Daily Mobster noir comic.

The 1920s had its own technology, its own anxieties and its own obsession with the future. Radio was changing how people communicate with the world. Automobiles were transforming how we moved about, in a more personalized, independent way.. Movies were becoming a cultural force, telling new stories to the masses in an almost communal way.. Jazz was shaking up music by being "experimental" and anti-rule. The modern world was arriving at full speed. Sound familiar?

In many ways, the 1920s were experiencing their own version of what we're experiencing now: a rapidly changing society trying to figure out what the future was going to look like. The difference is that they didn't have smartphones. And maybe, that's the point.

When we write The Daily Mobster story, we get to strip away the constant noise of modern life. The instant notifications, the impersonal texts, emails or social media posts. Not everyone had an outlet to voice anything that came to their mind, only newspaper barons and media tycoons said what we should know. There were no social media feeds telling us what to think about next. Instead, there were streets, shadows, newspapers, train stations, big headlines, lots of gossip, smoky rooms and mysterious strangers. There was time for a character to walk into a room. There was time for a secret to remain a secret without being blasted on social media.

This is where nostalgia becomes more than simply making something look old. The visual language of the 1920s is really important to us as we craft The Daily Mobster. To me, the 20s and 30s are all about texture. Whether it’s the feel of a tweed suit coat, the silk scarf, the hardened leather, the cold gun case, the gritty sidewalk, the crusted blood, the pooling rain puddles or the smell of old gas cars speeding down the pre-asphalt roads. The noir era that The Daily Mobster tries to capture, creates an entirely different doorway into a story.

We aren’t asking anyone to believe we're actually living in the 1920s. We are trying to imagine what it might have felt like. Afterall, none of us lived through that era firsthand. That may be why nostalgia is returning so strongly in contemporary art and writing. We aren't necessarily nostalgic for the past itself, we're nostalgic for the feeling of discovering something we haven’t experienced and yet feels familiar. The Daily Mobster also tries to do this with its “cinematic visuals” by making you feel like you’re watching a movie, while also reading a comic. The blend of the two feels both new and foreign but also familiar.

A story set in the 1920s gives us an excuse to slow down and look around. For a few minutes, the 2020s can wait. The phone can stay in your pocket, unless of course you read on your phone…which let’s be real, most of us do. The future can knock later. Right now, there's a mystery to solve, secrets to be uncovered, heists to be had, deals to be made, shadows to light and all the fun and rich texture we try to bring in The Daily Mobster cinematic graphic novel.

If you haven’t caught up, Chapter 5: A Bargain With Shadows is out now, and the stakes really heat up for both the families. Have the tables finally turned or is this just another bump in the road?