Ande Parks has teamed up with Ignition Press for his latest set of comics, including Bad Thoughts and Tyler Rake: An Extraction Story. Working with creative teams that include Dave Wachter, Brad Simpson, Ronan Cliquet, and Ronda Pattison, Parks is churning out top-notch action thrillers and enjoying the creative freedom he’s currently experiencing.
The writer chatted with The Beat at San Diego Comic-Con about his work.
Interview has been edited for clarity
ANDE PARKS: I had not actually been [to San Diego Comic-Con] for 14 years. I did like 12 in a row, and I got a little exhausted by the hotel lottery and all that, and I took a long break. So coming back with Ignition, I’m really happy working with them, and they’ve taken great care of us.
It’s a little different because I haven’t been to the con floor much. We have this lovely space across the street, and I’ve been enjoying that. I did walk to a panel one day, and I was like, oh my God, this is what it’s like over here. And then I ran screaming.
DESTITO: So how has this new pavilion been?
PARKS: Really cool. I don’t think any of us knew quite what to expect. This is our first time in this particular [space]…Really steady traffic, a little tight at times, but that’s the way it is out here with everything. You know what’s cool? You don’t need a badge to get in here. So I’ve had a lot of local people just like, “Hey, we’re walking around and thought we’d come in here.” I had a lady who was probably in her 60s. I told her what comics I was doing. She bought a comic for the first time in her life. She was all excited.
DESTITO: Very cool. So what books are you promoting with Ignition here at the show?
PARKS: A long time ago, 16, 17 years ago, I teamed up with the Russo Brothers to create Extraction, the book that became the Extraction films. We have that book back in print, and I also have a new series called Tyler Rake: An Extraction Story. Issue #3 is out. Then I have a brand new thing called Bad Thoughts, and the first two issues of that are out.
DESTITO: How has it been working with Ignition on these books?
PARKS: Really great. One, I knew all the guys. Jamie Rich, my editor, edited the first graphic novel I ever wrote 20-some years ago. Jeremy Haun, the creative director, is a dear friend of mine. I’ve known Filip Sablik forever. Eric Gitter has been my Hollywood rep forever. He’s the guy behind the scenes. So I know all the guys and trust the guys. Two, it’s a model where they are really encouraging us to pitch the projects of our dreams. And when I first pitched things, I thought, well, you’re not going to go for this one, but it’s my favorite, and they right away said, yeah, do that, great. I thought, but that’s not very commercial. If you believe in it, we want to see what you can do.
So, I did books in other places where you retain ownership, but there’s no money up front; it’s all back-end money. And that can be exhausting after a while, especially as a writer. It’s really hard to find an artist who can dedicate that much time and make promises of royalties. Ignition does all that same stuff, but they’re paying us a living wage to do it up front, so it’s really nice.
DESTITO: Ignition really has their own model, I guess, different from the others.
PARKS: Yeah, and it just lets everybody relax. They’re also working way ahead. Like, my next series, which won’t be out for at least a year, I’ve already written the whole thing. You don’t have to live on that treadmill… You have the luxury of time, and nobody is screaming, “It’s got to go out Tuesday.”
DESTITO: How do you team up with the artists? Do you get to pick the artist or have at least some input on who does the art?
PARKS: I absolutely have input. Jamie will throw people at me, and I say, hey, what about this one? Dave Wachter, the guy drawing Bad Thoughts, was actually my idea, and they signed off. He wasn’t free right then, but we have the luxury [of time]; we can wait a few months for him, so it’s very collaborative.
Ronan Cliquet, he’s a Brazilian gentleman. There’s another thing that was cool. I knew I wanted to set this [Extraction] series in the Philippines, but it was going to start off somewhere else and then move there. Ronan is in São Paulo, so I said, oh well, let’s start there, then you can draw some local stuff.
DESTITO: Do you like how Extraction has been translated to film?
PARKS: Yeah, very much. The first film is really the story I developed with the Russos and based on the graphic novel; it’s kind of the same plot. And there are moments that are very directly that I know, like, oh, I pitched that. I think in the first month, a quarter of a billion people were exposed to that idea.
But moving on from that, I’m not really directly involved in the story. It’s just my character and my ideas, but I’m just thrilled by how they’ve translated the idea of a non-stop kind of R-rated action thing to the screen. The director used to be a stunt guy, stunt coordinator, and he believes in filming things with the camera, so there’s not a lot of CGI, which I think can kind of get mentally exhausting. He wants to smash things in real life. Like, there’s a scene in the first one, a car chase. There’s a behind-the-scenes video on YouTube. Sam [Hargrave], the director, is strapped to the hood of a car holding a camera.
DESTITO: There is something about real stunts and real things versus CGI. I agree with that.
PARKS: There’s a moment in the second movie where Chris [Hemsworth]’s car slams into a couple dudes on a motorcycle, and Sam talked about, “you know, we could have CGI’d that. I thought it’d be cooler to strap a couple of dummies to a bike and run them on a wire. If you slow and freeze frame it, you might go, those are dummies. But you don’t. It’s a second, and there’s real weight flying through the air instead of just some computer model.”
DESTITO: What do you have coming up?
PARKS: I can’t talk about them yet, but I can say that my next two things have already been approved, and I tend to be Ignition’s crime guy. So there’s gonna be crime, and they’re gonna be set in real places because I like doing research. One of them is a period thing, so I’m gonna make the poor artist draw period cars and hats and guns and all that stuff.
DESTITO: Do you like to stick in the crime genre?
PARKS: I do, yeah. People ask me what I write, and if I’m being flip and I don’t have time to get into it, I say, “I write damaged but redeemable people doing violence.” That’s kind of my thing.
DESTITO: If you had a chance to write any of those bigger legacy characters, even if it’s not your style, is there a character that you adore from, say, childhood, or just that you have a guilty pleasure for that you would like to write?
PARKS: I don’t have really strong itches to touch licensed properties anymore. I wrote Lone Ranger for a couple of years. My answer to your question might actually be Captain America, who I dearly love, but I felt like in Lone Ranger I was able to talk about some of the same values. A very principled, stand-up, black-or-white values guy, running into gray situations and trying to handle those as best they could.
So yeah, I’m really happiest telling stories that I can come up with. And in my career as an artist, I got to touch Green Arrow, Batman, and Wonder Woman, and all this cool stuff. So I feel like I’ve kind of done all that, and now I want to make up things.
I had a long career as an inker in comics, and that was great, and it kept the roof over my family’s head for a long time. But at some point, you want to own some things that are out there in the world. I want to put some balls into the property lottery before I check out.
Stay tuned to The Beat for more news from SDCC ’26.
