“The One Hand/The Six Fingers” Writers Ram V & Dan Watters On Unique Mysteries At the Heart of Their Latest Series

Contains spoilers for The One Hand #1 and The Six Fingers #1

On their own, The One Hand and The Six Fingers – from Image Comics – represent the latest work from all-star comic book creators Ram V and Dan Watters. Together, they form a daring narrative feat, intended to use the comic book medium to its greatest advantage, making these two of the most exhilarating independent titles in years.

With the first several issues of the intertwined miniseries out now, Screen Rant is thrilled to present an exclusive interview with Ram and Dan, going in-depth on the conception and evolution of the series, as well as the critical thematic and artistic goals that motivated them to bring this project to life. Not only do the stories seek to use the comic page to its maximum potential, they also capitalize on the nature of comics’ release schedule, setting out a dialectic narrative through the alternating bi-weekly release of the books. Below is Screen Rant’s insightful conversation with the co-creators.

SR: First off, thank you both for agreeing to chat with Screen Rant about “The One Hand” and “The Six Fingers”. Before we dive deep into the opening issues, let’s start by talking about the conception of the project.

Ram, you’ve described this as a “wake up at 4AM and immediately jump into it” sort of idea. What was the first thing that took hold of you and made this a must-work-on project?

Ram V: For me, it was this twin narrative idea. It was the idea that I was going to write a detective, in search for this killer, and then I didn’t know what the killer side of the story was going to be. So to me, the most exciting thing about it was to work with Dan, and have Dan write a story, essentially, that was one half of a project – and necessarily a half that I would then be reacting to. I think that was one of the earliest things I looked at and went, “oh, this is going to be interesting, because I don’t think anyone’s executed a monthly comic in quite this way.”

And I think once Dan and I started talking about it, we figured out the ending right at the beginning, which was also super exciting to me. Usually, I don’t like to know the ending to my stories when I’m writing them. But in this case, arriving at the end is kind of the culmination of the entire experience. So, knowing that, and knowing what that reveal was going to be — without spoiling it — was also very, very exciting.

Dan W: Yeah, I mean having the ending was very good, especially with the nature, and the structure of the project. It gave us this sort of north star that we were both working towards — which meant that we could let our stories evolve outwards in different ways, knowing that we’d still be taking it back to this same place. And that was a place that we could sort of sprinkle hints and ideas throughout the books that would take us there.

As far as the conception of the books goes, this was one where we were working from similar influences and creating one sort of story with them. I had certain ideas – like idea of a character with six fingers, in itself, was something I had already, but I didn’t have a place to put it. So, it’s always nice when something sort of slots together like that.

SR: That’s awesome. So, you had the core concept, and the ending, from the start of the writing process. With those in place, how did the rest of the story evolve over time? You’ve been working on this project since 2019 — have there been any significant changes, or deviations, from your original plan, or has it really been one of those projects where everything falls into place?

Dan W: I think we started with some kind of tighter outlines that have completely gone out the window, because when we did start writing the issues themselves,…we still knew where the endpoint was, but it gave us so much more to bounce off each other. Having a full script of Ram’s in front of me when I was going to write the first issue of “The Six Fingers” –I could see all these places where we build this world. Not even where the two stories could connect, or directly share scenes – there’s a tiny bit of that at the beginning, but the stories go off in their own direction, and they’re two complete stories. Everything kept getting fleshed out, and everything kept bouncing back and forth. So, it did sort of deviate quite far from our original plan, but always going back to that same endpoint.

Ram V: Yeah, I would say I tend not to think of outlines as these kind of road maps. I think outlining in itself is an exercise that helps you think, that helps you find your way in the dark. Once your eyes have kind of gotten used to the dim lighting, then you’re happy to feel around and find your way as you go, and the outlines the outline don’t really matter at that point.

Dan W: There’s almost a strange optimism to an outline, because it’s like you’re sitting down going “imagine if it was this easy.”

Ram V: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But also, I think there’s a great joy to, sort of losing your way a little bit, trusting yourself, and then finding that you’ve come around to where you need to be. I think, frankly, that’s the magic of writing stories, as a creator. To write something, trust in yourself, trust in your ability to think about the story and then get to a point where you’re like, “ah, I made it, this is where I wanted to be. This is where I needed to be in the first place,” — and then to have that happen across two books…

Like, then number of times Dan and I have been like, “oh my God, this is an unsolvable problem” and then two minutes later, we solve it. And now that we solved it this way, it has this wonderful resonance and reflection between the two books. How cool is that? So, I think there’s a real joy to writing the project this way. You’re very alert to the possibilities of finding patterns within your own story. I think that’s a little bit magical.

SR: Absolutely. That kind of storytelling form and process is evident immediately in the first two issues of “The One Hand” and “The Six Fingers,” and it is definitely part of the excitement of both books moving forward, finding out how those patterns continue to expand.

Let’s talk about one of the first places readers can look for familiar patterns in the story: it’s setting. Before we talk about the physical setting, please tell us more about the temporal setting. Your story takes place in the 29th century – it seems that at times, spec fiction and sci-fi writers can be hesitant to vault that far into the future, perhaps out of a sense of concern that they’re going to lose their connection to the reader. You two have circumvented that problem completely with this very clear retro-future. There has to be a very specific reason the story is set so far in the future. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Ram V: In as much as I want to say yes to all these things without giving too much away… I think when you make choices like that, to set something in the near future, or the far future, whatever it is, you make those choices because it adds something to your narrative. Ideally, it’s never just window dressing, right?

So the question here is, we made two choices here, that are one. The story is set so far in the future, but it’s also retro-futuristic in its aesthetic. You could question that and go like, “what a silly thing to do,” or you could go, “does that say something about the story? Is that giving me a hint as to what’s going on?”

And I suppose that’s something for the readers to discover. I’m always amused when people make assumptions about these things. They might be right, or they might be wrong, but it’s always amusing because it’s kind of fascinating to see what a simple thing like a date (2873) will do to a reader’s perception of what’s happening in a book.

Dan Watters: Yeah, we’ve been watching with a little bit of glee. A few people are furious at us, because we’ve just got it so wrong.

SR: Got the future wrong?

Ram V: Yeah. They’re like, “why are there still trench coats? Why are people still gifting wristwatches? What’s going on?” And I think the problem is contemporary readers have gotten so used to viewing everything in clichés and stereotypes that the assumption always is that, of course, it’s just that stereotype. What else could it be?

I’ve always found it interesting to still have a small group of readers who go, “No, that’s a deliberate choice.” And I think that’s going to be an interesting thing to follow from here.

SR: It will be exciting to find out what more there is behind that decision. Readers will get to know the physical setting of the city much more quickly, at least on the surface. What can you tell us about Neo Novena, the far future city where “The One Hand” and “The Six Fingers” take place?

Ram V: We designed the city to feel familiar and nostalgic. I doubt there will be too many cities in 2873 that are still going to have the kind of dirty unkept streets Neo Novena has, with people still vacuuming trash off the streets – except the people vacuuming the trash on the streets are high tech robots, in our story.

I think that setting being familiar is very much part of the mystery of the book, and part of the reveal of the book. Beyond that I think the city also changes. It’s malleable as a setting depending on which book you look at. I think Neo Novena in “The One Hand” feels much more like a classic noir city. There are shadows everywhere, and it’s always raining. Traffic’s always gridlocked. Whereas I think in “The Six Fingers,” it feels much more like a malleable, mutating place. It has reveals that you might not expect around the corner. I feel like those are both indicative of where the stories are going.

Dan W: Yeah, the city kind of grew out of what the books needed, as well, story-wise. There are certain things we needed, how the city functions and things. There was certain things wrong. Part of it grew organically out of that, for sure.

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SR: Neo Novena, as we’re introduced to it, certainly feels familiar, as you said was the intention. Part of its “lived in” feeling comes, naturally, from the characters we find living in the world of the story. Let’s start with “The One Hand,” where we’re introduced to Neo Novena homicide detective Ari Nassar. You’ve talked about this story growing out of tropes, and cliches, and Ari is a perfect example of that. It’s his last day until retirement, and then he’s pulled back in for one more case.

When the One Hand killer strikes again, Ari has already put away two people for the murders previously. That’s a different dynamic to add to the trope, so already you’re starting to tweak the familiar to achieve your thematic and narrative goals. What else can you tell us about Ari, and what to expect from his journey coming up.

Ram V: Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right. For Ari to feel like, “oh this is something we know. This is a scenario we know,” rather than a character. At the very beginning of the book, he starts off as more of a scenario than a character. As the book goes on, even toward the end of the first issue, you start learning that there might be more to this character. And I think that sets the tone for what the book intends to do.

This is a character everyone knows, this is a character everyone loves. And what does that mean for him, in terms of a character who is aware of their own trope and narrative? As we start to break that down around him, Ari’s journey as a character is going to be very interesting. I don’t think that is something people are going to expect, per the trope, if you will.

SR: Excellent. Ari’s story specifically, with all the baggage that comes with the prior One Hand murders, feels we’re getting – to talk about it in noir or hard-boiled detective terms – the third book in a serial. Whereas, Dan, part of what makes “The Six Fingers” such an interesting flip side for that is readers are getting the origin story for a serial killer.

More specifically, we’re getting the origin of Johannes Vale’s descent into murder and mayhem, and by the end of issue #1, it seems like his journey is going to be about figuring out why. Can you talk more about that, and the intentional counterpoint between the two characters’ narratives?

Dan W: Yeah, it’s safe to say this is very much an origin story, because Johannes was a little kid when the last One Hand murders were taking place – so that’s part of the whole mystery of the thing. There’s an interesting development there as well. When Ram came to me with this concept, Ari was already there, because there had to be a detective who was chasing the killer. He was already around, already doing things before we started. But Johannes kind of had to be created from whole cloth.

He’s younger, and he’s a bit of a nasty piece of work, but I also didn’t want to write – I love writing villains, but I didn’t want to do a sort of hand-rubbing, obsessed serial killer as the protagonist of a book. I wanted to do someone who was more of a detective in their own right. Not in as black-and-white of a way. That’s why I gravitated toward making him an academic. He’s someone who wants to be in control of his life in all times, and has absolutely lost control, because he’s started committing these murders, and doesn’t know why, or doesn’t even understand how he’s doing this. He is a foil to Ari in a lot of ways, and they both kind of have the same fatal flaw, which is that they won’t stop. They’re two sides of the same coin in that way.

Ram V: This is something I’ve noticed only after we started working on this, Dan, but if you really think about it, this is not two stories, where one is a detective, and the other is a killer. Technically, it’s two detective stories that we’re telling – and so the real counterpoint is not one of intent, or purpose. The real counterpoint is point-of-view.

I think one of the stories is coming from a place of cynicism, of knowing, of already having been there twice. The other is coming from a place of discovery, of innocence, of not knowing, and wanting to know why. I find that it’s a much more interesting conversation to have than, “I’m the good guy and you’re the bad guy.”

Dan W: Yeah, I mean there’s a interesting question of value there, as well. Because you’ve framed that as Ari represents cynicism, and Johannes is innocence, where as the other way to look at it is, Ari is trying to determine societal cost, whereas Johannes doesn’t give a crap.

Ram V: Also, I think by the time you get to issue five, your perception of who is innocent and who is cynical might completely shift around, so…

SR: Wow, okay. That’s a perfect way to segue. We should talk about the history of the One Hand killings and the uncertainty you immediately inject into the story, as to whether the two men who’ve been previously imprisoned – one of them is dead – were in fact as guilty as Ari and the criminal justice system decided they were.

Avoiding spoilers, is there any useful context, or any details, about the One Hand case that haven’t made it under the page yet, but you might be willing to share with the audience?

Ram V: I think the only real thing that is important to carry forward into the books as you go is that there is no way it is logically possible for the One Hand killer to have resurfaced. There is no way.

How could the same killer go across the span of an entire policeman’s career, having been caught multiple times before, and continue to commit the same killings? There’s also the fact that there’s a cipher that is left on the wall, which has never been released to the public, at least not in its entirety, and yet somehow years, decades apart, people seem to have exact perfect knowledge of what the cipher contained.

You’re supposed to go forward not with the assumption that someone got something wrong, but rather with the assumption that this is logically impossible. I think that’s an interesting place to start a mystery from. I think, to my reading, the best mysteries start off that way.

Dan W: So, it’s a locked room mystery.

Ram V: Yes, exactly, exactly.

SR: It’s like an ontological locked room mystery.

Dan W: I like that. Ontological locked room mystery.

SR: Going off of that, we definitely want to ask about the themes of the story. The predominant one so far, at least as far as the first issues of “The One Hand” and “The Six Fingers” go, is the gaps that always exist in knowledge, and the limits of truth and certainty.

What you’re saying here about the “logical impossibility” of the successive One Hand murders certainly is a fascinating way to test the boundaries of what each character can known. Can you speak a bit more on how you continue to push on those themes and ideas throughout the series?

Dan W: It’s something fundamental in our books, but also in all human experience. There are always these uncomfortable impossibilities, or the fact that we have to build entire lives based on the foundations of a universe we don’t understand. I think just getting into the character, finding who I wanted to tell a story about, was someone who finds that fact to be a total and utter outrage, and is absolutely furious about it.

So, placing him into Neo Novana, where there’s all these sorts of impossible things – it all went right back to our first conversations about the book, where we were talking about Cormac McCarthy, particularly “The Sunset Limited,” which is referenced several times, at least in “The One Hand.”

I was also getting interested in chaos theory, with Johannes. This sort of idea of things getting so fractal that they basically become impossible to predict. They might as well – you can follow the trail of a thing, but you might as well not know where it starts and ends.

Ram V: Yeah. Just to pick up from that point, for me the thematic obsession of the story stems from my reading of “The Sunset Limited.” There’s this two pronged idea, right? So the one is that human endeavor exists to look into the unknown, to look into the gaps, to try and find knowledge wherever a gap is shown to you. We’re always presented with this idea that trying to find that knowledge is somehow a noble and wonderful endeavor. Whereas I think “Sunset Limited” is one of the first times I read a story where the argument was that trying to find that knowledge is entirely self-serving, and only leads to doom and darkness. Which is an interesting viewpoint to take.

I also think that reflects on how we look at contemporary society, where we engineer all of these lies so that we can live within them in some measure of comfort, and not go crazy, because to reflect on the absolute truth would be to admit that nothing works and we’ve all failed at everything. So, I think that idea of living in an engineered lie becomes very, very important to the story, and I think to be writing a protagonist whose function is quite literally the opposite of that, to uncover truths, to uncover the truth no matter how uncomfortable it might be, I think it’s a very interesting point of view to take. Because, and I think Dan said it, we’ve ended up writing the most Hegelian comic book series.

And so, to quite literally have these opposing viewpoints at the very beginning, and then play out the book as a conversation, and see where that takes us, was very much the intent.

SR: Let’s talk about that a bit more. Because the end goal of the dialectic is synthesis, right? The first issues of your books contain a few small instances of overlap. Some are specifically visual, and then there is one moment where the two characters bump together. Should readers assume they’ll get more of that? Would you want to maybe speak about how the books continue to have that dialectic over the next couple issues?

Dan W: Sometimes it’ll be literal. Sometimes it’ll be thematic. I mean, inevitably, as we get deep into the books, the characters do get closer to each other. But I think there’s always an interesting thing about synthesis, which is that it can also mean one idea eats the other. There’s not the assumption that they’re going to meet directly in the middle. I think that was part of the joy of writing these characters and exploring each of them.

Ram V: I would in fact argue that they don’t meet in the middle. They come very close, and then right as they’re about to meet – they don’t. And because every bit of that argument has been fleshed out over five issues, when they don’t meet in the middle, you’re left with a missing piece. You’re left with a silhouette of what should exist in that middle.

So the synthesis exists, but the synthesis also presents you with a gap that neither of the individual characters can see, because they’ve only filled in half of the argument towards the end. The only person to have had both sides of the argument is the reader, and so the reader can see the shape of the thing that is missing.

And I think that is wonderful way to have a reveal in a mystery. I thought that was an interesting exercise to undertake in a dialectical sort of narrative.

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SR: Touching on literary influences, what you’re describing also is very reminiscent of Paul Auster’s “New York Trilogy,” which is very much the same. In each of those three stories, Auster gets the reader up to the point of revelation and then leaves you with massive uncertainty.

Ram V: I’m a very self-professed Auster-influenced creator.

Dan W: Auster’s a mutual touchstone, that we talk about a lot, actually. Maybe more than any other author.

SR: That’s awesome. There are just a few more things we want to ask you about “The One Hand” and “The Six Fingers.” You’ve spoken about how this project represents something novel, and exciting that hasn’t been done with the comic book medium before. In a way, would you say it’s a narrative effort to test the limits of the medium?

Ram V: I don’t think we’re testing the limits of the comic book medium, really, as much as really using the format. I’ve always been someone who enjoyed using existing frameworks and interrogating them, or trying to see if there was a way to express the story, express the art through them, and use them as a storytelling tool. Rather than look at form as a box, as a container that sits outside of the storytelling.

Our books are quite literally two narratives pushing and pulling at each other. I don’t think we’ve seen that ever in comics before, where you question the assumptions made in one narrative, or your perception of one narrative is reframed by your reading of the other. I think we’ve seen that in film a couple of times… but not really in comics. And I thought the monthly single-issue comic was a very interesting way to do this.

We’re using the release format, we’re using the fact that we can release an issue one at a certain day, and then two weeks later release another issue, and have the reading experience be “I read one thing, I digested it, I made up my mind about certain things…and then I went and read the other thing, and it made me question everything I had assumed was true about the first one.” That is what we’re trying to do. Each argument makes you question the assumptions made in the previous one.

Dan W: Especially thinking of the delivery system for our medium, which at this point exists primarily for financial reasons, because releasing single issues means you can make money on a comic before you get to the graphic novel. What we’re doing is making that an entire reason to tell a story, to structure a story in a certain way.

SR: That’s so cool. What you’re saying about using the individual release schedule to your advantage really makes this one of the most exciting comic book projects going right now.

Ram V: Yeah, it has been really fun having people catch on to it in that way. We didn’t really put in a lot of effort into telling people to pick up both books. Or that they’re connected. We didn’t go too wide, or blast that out every couple of days. And so I found it really interesting that people picked up “The One Hand”, and then you had a conversation. People were coming in and saying, “you should pick up ‘Six Fingers’ as well. It comes out two weeks from now.”

Then people picked up “The Six Fingers,” and then you saw collectively, this moment in the readership, where they went “wait, all of a sudden ,I’ve had this experience of reading two things, two weeks apart, that have somehow created a whole.”

SR: That kind of storytelling, which requires a degree of active participation from the reader, is super fun. It is worth asking, before we wrap up here, about the reading order of the two intertwined miniseries.

“The One Hand” came out first, followed by “The Six Fingers”, but reading the first few issues, it does feel like a reader could start in either place. Is that something that carries throughout the book, or does it feel like a definite reading structure emerges as you progress?

Dan W: I think from our perspective there definitely is a reading structure…

Ram V: Yeah.

Dan W:…that you get when the collection comes out. But if we’ve done it right, both books should be entirely readable on their own merits as well.

Ram V: I guess the way I look at it is there’s linearity within the individual narratives. But there isn’t necessarily linearity when you read them both together. There isn’t even paralleling. Sometimes you’re retracing footsteps.

Sometimes you’re skipping ahead in time. By intent, the reading experience across the books isn’t linear, or as constrained by linearity as the individual narratives are. You don’t necessarily need that linearity to exist across both narratives, and in fact, your experience of reading one narrative is tainted in some way by your experience of reading the other.

SR: Ram, Dan, Thank you both so much for talking with Screen Rant about this project. Is there anything else you want to say about the story, before we wrap up? Anything else you want to let Screen Rants readers know about “The One Hand” and “The Six Fingers”?

Any last tidbits that you want to share? Any teases?

Ram V: I’m very not inclined to give people any hints as to where this is going. I want to be very careful about giving too much stuff away. I will say this. No one so far has any idea.

Dan W: Yes.

Ram V: No one has any idea where this is going, based off of the reaction to the first issues. I don’t think people will even begin to understand what’s happening with the grander narrative until they’re about halfway through the series. They won’t see the revelation that comes in at the end. Right now, readers should be asking “why it this the genre that it is, where will those genre elements truly begin to show themselves.”

SR: Awesome.

Ram V: Every answer you receive will only make you ask more questions.

Dan W: It’s really fun watching people speculate at this point. So, I think giving anything else away would kind of undermine that a little bit.

Ram V: No one’s got it right yet. No one’s got it right.