Dead wood version of Comics Journal hits newsstands this week. Interviews this time out feature "Skeleton Key" creator Andi Watson:

PAUL GRAVETT: Silence is something that comics can capture beautifully and specifically, in a way that perhaps no other medium can. What appeals to you about using silence in your comics?

ANDI WATSON: Silence is one weapon in your comic-book armory that you can deploy. My aim with it is to capture a moment and keep it there, because it's in front of your face. A movie is temporal and constantly moving, whereas with a comic you also have more control and can get the feeling in your head you want to convey and hopefully put it down on paper. It's the same with expressions on characters' faces. And then you can make a point by making a panel bigger or by showing the same scene with minor changes over several panels. One of the bands I like is Low — they're very slow and they use minimal instrumentation and notes. Their moments of silence are as important as their moments of music. There are so many ways a story plays out in comics, not only in choosing a moment to have stillness to highlight an emotion or a moment, but also the gaps between the panels, where you try to suggest things in between.

GRAVETT: Do you see the page as the unit of the comic, to end a scene or make a reader pause, if only to turn the page over?

WATSON: Exactly, like a full stop, the page and double spread, those are the units that go back to thumbnailing. Though I've had to change that slightly with Slow News Day because of space constraints.

GRAVETT: Here in Breakfast After Noon, you have a silent transition, a passage of time.

WATSON: Without saying "The next day" in a caption.

GRAVETT: So you never use location or time captions?

WATSON: No, saying "Meanwhile back at the factory" invades your suspension of disbelief. It's like you're breaking the moment. There's no division between writing and drawing when I'm thumbnailing. When I start, they're usually more detailed, but at a certain point they're like chicken scratchings! First, when I've refined it down to a story and its scenes, I work out my order of scenes, each on a different piece of paper, and then I write out each scene in longhand. And then I'll go back and work out the thumbnails and page divisions. Then I break it down per page and do thumbnails. And often that's when I find out I don't have enough pages to fit in all the story. So I go back and start editing again. For Dumped, I had to go through three times. That's the hardest part. All longhand, not on computer, since I'm not a very good typist. I'm sat here in my chair and can plan on the paper as directly as possible and scribble notes, erase, add, correct, do changes as I go along. Then when I'm thumbnailing, I may lose bits, it keeps it organic. So I've got some room to expand or contract scenes, or I might edit some out or contract two pages into one. And I leave some pages or panels blank for "passage of time" sections. So it's not all predetermined. I got Dumped finished to this stage at the end of January and I'm going to be drawing this sucker 'til mid-March. I don't want everything decided ahead of time, there's got to be room for some flexibility.