FLOG! Entries tagged 'Diaflogue'

Diaflogue: Michael Kupperman Exclusive Q&A

janice

This interview with Michael Kupperman about his new book Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010 was conducted by Fantagraphics intern Steven Davis. Thanks to Steven and Michael!

STEVEN DAVIS: You’ve been talking about doing a longer-form narrative for a while. What made you decide on the autobiographical format?

MICHAEL KUPPERMAN: It’s just what I fell into doing. I find the reasons for doing things, the “why,” is very important, and if you’re doing what you’re doing because it genuinely amuses, you’re in the strongest position possible. I just started writing a couple of chapters and I was enjoying it, and it felt like the right thing to do to go for a book.

DAVIS: How do you feel about your results?

KUPPERMAN: Well, I’m always self-critical to a painful degree, but I do find myself laughing when I look at it. I feel pretty good, I guess; the reader’s reaction is all up to whether they find me funny or not.

DAVIS: Was it refreshing to work with a different format?

KUPPERMAN: It’s interesting to notice the difference. Both are wonderful escapes — and with writing I’m able to execute some rapid changes of idiom — but one notable thing is that writing has more of a time limit. You can only write for two or three hours at a stretch before you start to lose focus, I find. Whereas drawing is an activity you can really lose yourself in for as long as you can stay awake — I’ve drawn for as long as 20 hours at a stretch.

DAVIS: Why is Mark Twain a better target for parody than his partner Albert Einstein?

KUPPERMAN: Well, there was the occasion of the anniversary of his death: That really tipped the scales. But Einstein only really works for me as a character in relation to Twain: the same way Harpo only worked in relation to Chico or Groucho. Not alone. I’d love to do more with the two of them, though.

DAVIS: There’s a full chapter in the book that is cartooned, in which Mark Twain finds himself an accidental member of the Apollo 11 mission. Why did you decide to cartoon this section?

KUPPERMAN: I just wanted to break up the text a bit, and the Moon mission seemed like a good excuse to do some cartooning. That’s one in which many of the jokes are more visual.

DAVIS: Did any ideas that you’d originally intended to be comics get transformed into prose?

KUPPERMAN: No. That’s not so easy to do… A lot of ideas only work for the medium you invented them for. I have a bunch of material from my various aborted TV pilot deals that I can’t find a way to re-use, unfortunately.

DAVIS: What is the appeal of autobiographies? How does that translate into satire?

KUPPERMAN: Autobiographies have an automatically funny component in the self-deception that we all practice, which can be inadvertently revealing. The self-justifying and obfuscation that most autobiographies contain are comedy gold. The last two I read were the autobiographies of Jerry Weintraub and Esther Williams. Both contained comedic elements, although Esther was by far the better swimmer.

DAVIS: What specific autobiographical tropes did you most focus on subverting?

KUPPERMAN: False modesty is a big one, also unwittingly revelatory anecdotes, such as when the aliens try to get Twain to have sex with Sophia Loren; and the shaping of one’s life into a narrative, and how unreliable that can be.

DAVIS: You’ve talked about simplifying the cartooning in order to better focus on the humor. How is this reflected in Twain as compared to your past works?

KUPPERMAN: I think the Twain book is a big step forward in that direction. The art is much more streamlined, and less influenced by art from the past. I concentrated on just carrying the jokes through the art.

DAVIS: There’s a momentum in Tales Designed to Thrizzle that moves the reader through the book, even though it lacks a continuous narrative. In what ways did you approach flow and progression for Twain?

KUPPERMAN: I tried to vary the tone of the chapters enough so that the reader would be carried through what is basically a series of routines… I’ve never sustained one scenario for so long, but I’m eager to move on to longer projects still.

DAVIS: How did Snake ‘N’ Bacon become your flagship strip?

KUPPERMAN: People kept asking for it. And when Avon (subsequently bought by HarperCollins) asked me to do a book, they insisted Snake ‘N’ Bacon be in the title. Then later on Scott Jacobson and Rich Blomquist from The Daily Show spearheaded the Snake ’N’ Bacon pilot for Adult Swim, same thing. They’re anti-characters, basically: extremely limited in almost every way.

Some people do really seem to like them. I’ve even seen tattoos!

DAVIS: I’m curious about your past pseudonym P. Revess. Where did this come from and where did it go?

KUPPERMAN: It was just the prefect pseudonym I came up with— mysterious, ambisexual — and I stopped using it because some dumb editor at New York Press told me I should just use one name, my own. And I was an idiot and listened to her.

DAVIS: Were your parents supportive as you pursued a career as an artist?

KUPPERMAN: Yes. I don’t know if they saw it coming but they’ve adjusted well.

DAVIS: What type of art were you interested in when you attended art school?

KUPPERMAN: Basically anything and everything (still am):What I didn’t know was how I should fit into it all...

DAVIS: How were you first exposed to surrealism and dadaism?

KUPPERMAN: Through Alice in Wonderland and books like that, but I think it’s just part of the culture now. Comedy now has a strong strain of surrealism in it.

DAVIS: What has kept you interested in surreal humor?

KUPPERMAN: It’s what I respond to. I love idioms sliding into each other and situations that melt and transform: dream logic, where meaning shifts and overturns.

DAVIS: You’ve talked about being influenced by sketch comedy shows, Monty Python and SCTV. A few years ago you had the chance to write some sketches for The Peter Serafinowicz Show. Was that a pretty easy adjustment for you?

KUPPERMAN: It wasn’t an easy situation, because I was so far away. The real writing action was taking place in London, and I was in New York. Even when an idea came from me — the whole acting-class thing, which in my version was with Michael Caine —it would be so heavily re-written that it wasn’t so much mine anymore. That’s just the way things work. I’d love to try again on a more level playing field.

DAVIS: I know you’ve talked a little about this before. But can you discuss some of your experiences writing scripts for DC — Any differences in your process? Any challenges? Any new creative avenues it allowed you to explore?

KUPPERMAN: It was frustrating — the more of those comics I did, the less rewarding it became. The very first one — a Jetsons story where Mr. Spacely becomes a baby— was probably the best. But the editing became more and more severe. The last story I did was a Scooby-Doo — they even changed the name of a character I wrote from Murderous Pete to Homeless Pete! I didn’t pursue it after that.

DAVIS: You’ve called Twitter a "petri dish of comedy.” For you, is the Internet mostly helpful or distracting?

KUPPERMAN: Helpful, but you have to limit your exposure or depression will result. I do love Twitter and the people I’ve met on there, and I try not to let it prevent me working.

DAVIS: You’re currently producing a weekly comic called Up All Night. Will any of these strips or related strips be featured in future issues of Thrizzle?

KUPPERMAN: Perhaps some of them…

DAVIS: In an interview last year you mentioned a potential project with Adult Swim after the Snake ’N’ Bacon pilot wasn’t picked up. Can you elaborate on that at all?

KUPPERMAN: Yes- they hired me to develop a horror pilot. But by the time I had characters and a scenario their attention had completely drifted away. This happened to a lot of talented and well-known comedy people last year, so I’m not alone! Dealing with Adult Swim is like trying to talk to someone peaking on an acid trip. You never know what they’ll say or do next...

DAVIS: Between TV Funhouse and the Snake ’N’ Bacon pilot, you’ve done quite a bit of work in animation. How do you feel about the current state of animation?

KUPPERMAN: I am indifferent, since I’m not involved. There really isn’t anything that’s compelling me to watch lately...

DAVIS: Many alternative cartoonists have transitioned into animation and videogames. How interested are you in pursuing jobs in different media?

KUPPERMAN: I’m only interested as long I continue to exist as an artist! So it has to be on my terms to some extent. I had that with the S&B pilot, which is why it was so amazing. I drew every inch of the animation, that’s why it looks the way it does. But I have a horror of producing crap, and unfortunately most media product ends up being just that.

DAVIS: How does your work reflect what’s going on across media, in terms of humor, today?

KUPPERMAN: I think my humor is very contiguous with the humor that’s going on now in live comedy, the better TV comedy, podcasting the smart stuff. Not comics though: I feel very alone there. Most other humor in comics is excruciating.

DAVIS: You have a serious graphic novel called Henry Spelman in the works. Can you tell us any more about that?

KUPPERMAN: Not at the moment! I’m trying to examine my options with as clear a head as possible. My bank balance is always a concern, and right now I’m just trying to stay alert. I’m hoping to get into the Spelman project soon, but it’s a matter of balancing the work against the chances of an advance in today’s publishing world, truly the worst and least hospitable ever. And I’m waiting to see how the Twain book does…

Don't forget to catch Michael Kupperman on the "Twain in the Membrane" book tour! -- janice

Diaflogue: Kevin Huizenga Exclusive Q&A

janice

This interview was conducted by Fantagraphics intern Sam Chattin. Thanks to Sam and Kevin!

Ganges 4 hits stores in October, or get your mitts on an early copy at SPX, September 10th & 11th in Betheseda, Maryland! Kevin will be signing at the Fantagraphics table from 1:00-3:00 PM on Saturday, and 3:00-4:30 PM on Sunday. -- janice

NOTE: THERE ARE SOME SPOILERS IN THIS INTERVIEW [esp. #8]. READ THE COMIC FIRST IF YOU DON’T WANT SOME STUFF RUINED FOR YOU. -- Kevin H.

SAM CHATTIN: Your stories are marked by this deep comprehension of the various sciences (everything from zoology to physics). Why do you choose to include those expository elements in your stories (which often take up multiple pages)?

KEVIN HUIZENGA: That’s nice of you to say, but I feel like my knowledge of these subjects is still pretty superficial. Laying out things and looking at things is more interesting to me than dramatic storytelling. That’s not a value judgment; it’s how my brain is wired. Other writers I know can effortlessly think up dramatic situations —characters who want things and have conflicts — but my story ideas tend to be more like “what is chlorophyll?” or “walking around/oxytocin” or “terrifying TV commercial,” which are the kinds of things that reveal how solitary and lonely a life I live. I’m terrified that if I really indulged myself and my instincts I would just make comics that are diagrams of how things fit together, like complicated diagrams or giant flowcharts, and become a completely hopeless case.

CHATTIN: The often anti-climatic endings and rambling narratives add a sense of realism to your stories. It feels as though we’re peeping at not only the life but also the working mind of some stranger. What made you go this particular route?

HUIZENGA: I wish I had a more interesting answer, but really it’s just as simple as writing in a way that seems least gross to me. I feel pretty good about how things turn out, for the most part, but at the same time there’s little voices saying “what are you doing?” and “you thought this was a good idea why?” But you have to ignore these voices and start another one and keep moving. Judging by the kinds of ideas I start out with, I maybe could be writing essays or poems, but I got mixed up in comics. I thought it would be a good idea to draw comics and build upon and around Glenn Ganges as a blank character, and now it’s too late. I’m only being half-serious here. Because there are limitations to writing prose without pictures that would be very frustrating to me. I want to see what things look like and I want to see things diagrammed. When I read pictureless prose I’m often imagining illustrations or emblems or diagrams of whatever I’m reading about, and part of me is frustrated that those don’t exist.

Or Else #2 ©2004

CHATTIN: Sometimes your panels veer off into the uncharted areas of the subconscious. They appear to depict the convoluted and distracted thoughts that occur in us daily (well, at least some of us). What is your creative and drawing process for such panels?

HUIZENGA: I write notes, I think about a story, I get irritable and crabby, I eventually start drawing it, etc. I don’t think I go very deep into my subconscious. I’d like to try doing that more in the future. It’s a way of thinking and trusting your gut that’s not my usual method, I guess. In this issue “the Wanderer” was improvised in an attempt to, I don’t know, go from panel to panel with a different kind of story logic than usual.

There’s an interview where Dan Clowes says (this is pre-Ice Haven days, I think) something about how he thought he’d get faster over time as his skills improved but that he found himself getting slower because he kept trying out complicated effects and tricks in each panel. That really fits my experience drawing this issue. It took me a long time. There was a lot of trying something, then changing my mind, then going back and forth, etc.

CHATTIN: How heavily do the misadventures of your characters (specifically Glenn Ganges) reflect your own personal experiences?

HUIZENGA: It’s not autobiographical. I take things from my life, like any writer does, and I try to make a new thing out of it that others can identify with and hopefully enjoy.

CHATTIN: How do you choose which experiences will work best in the comic medium?

HUIZENGA: You just sort of know. Or sometimes you think it won’t work, and the trick is in finding a way to make it work. The point isn’t really the ostensible subject, the point is figuring out how to package the ideas in an interesting form. It’s like a puzzle. I like puzzles when there’s no pressure, and no one cares about how you perform. I think that explains a lot about my career and my personality.

CHATTIN: Glenn Ganges’ latest adventure concerns a restless night. What is your preferred method for combating these moments of temporary insomnia?

HUIZENGA: A bowl of cereal (low sugar) and a book that is kind of boring and/or hard to read.

CHATTIN: How would describe the structure of Ganges #4?

HUIZENGA: An infinite grid of panels, only some of which you can see and read, but occasionally you catch a glimpse of it fading off into infinity, and also the grid contains itself nested within itself at different levels.

CHATTIN: Was it an aesthetic or symbolic choice — or neither — to break up the panels on the bottom of pages 10-13?

HUIZENGA: I’m not sure what you’re asking, but I probably wouldn’t want to answer anyhow, since this seems like the kind of thing where I’m being tempted into explaining the thinking behind a story. Obviously I have to do some of that in an interview, but I try to keep it to a minimum. As a reader I often want a writer to explain their thinking behind a short story or a poem, but at the same time I really don’t want to know, either. And the same thing holds for writers too, I think—they often want to know what readers think, but at the same time they don’t, really.

CHATTIN: How did you tackle, visually, working with so much moonlight and shadow in Ganges #4?

HUIZENGA: Experimenting with tones and shadows in Photoshop, making a mess of it, and settling for the least gross-looking version of the panel. I wanted to try to draw Glenn walking around the house at night, and it took some experimentation to get something interesting that worked. I’m still not satisfied with it, but I think I know how to fix it for the collection.

CHATTIN: What are some of the challenges of depicting Death, who appears in your latest work?

HUIZENGA: It didn’t feel like it was a challenge at all. As I understand it, it’s been pretty well established that Death is a skeleton in a cloak with a scythe. I’d like to think that death appears in many of my comics so far.

CHATTIN: I found the connection with Earth’s calendar and Glenn’s calendar amusing. What kind of thought process goes into making these connections?

HUIZENGA: I don’t think it gives anything away to say that Ganges is largely about time, and different ways representing and thinking about it. The Earth’s calendar thing is a pretty common illustration in popular geology books and natural histories, and since Glenn is reading Basin and Range in the story, it was an obvious way to go.

Diaflogue: Jaime Hernandez Exclusive Q&A

janice

This interview was conducted by Fantagraphics intern Rolando A. López. Thanks to Rolando and Jaime! And, Esperanza will be in stores this week! -- janice

In his 1989 The Comics Journal interview (#126), Jaime Hernandez said: “I hope [Love and Rockets is] still fresh 20-50 years from now. I hope it doesn’t lose anything in the long run. Even if I’m writing about contemporary things . . . I hope people can look back at it as a piece of history instead of a gimmick.”

Readers have followed the lives of Maggie, Hopey, and the gang for almost 30 years now, and Love and Rockets is still going strong. Today, Jaime Hernandez is one of the most revered names in the world of comic books and beyond; cartoonists Alison Bechdel, Zak Sally, Simpsons creator Matt Groening, filmmaker Darren Aronofsky and writer Junot Díaz have all cited his influence. Hernandez’s work, simply put, is part of the comics canon.

Esperanza, the fifth volume in the Complete Love and Rockets, collects the stories from Love and Rockets Vol. II. Here, readers see Maggie struggle with the ghosts of her past, find Hopey settling down, and meet some new faces, which cause trouble in the already troublesome lives of the Locas. In this Q&A, Jaime Hernandez talks about growing along with his characters, his storytelling techniques and his elusive muse.

Rolando A. López: Esperanza, Hopey’s full first name, means “Hope” in Spanish. Why did you choose this as the collection’s title?

Jaime Hernandez: Actually, Kim Thompson came up with it. I couldn’t think of a better title so I happily agreed to it.

López: It seems to me these stories would be really rewarding to someone who’s read the Locas saga since it began. How do you take into account readers who have been following the series when you’re crafting your comics? Conversely, what storytelling techniques do you use to help acclimate new readers to new Locas stories?

Hernandez: I try to tell these stories in a way that a new reader can jump in and not feel overwhelmed and intimidated by the continuity that has built up for 30 years. It’s not always easy. [As for the fans,] I can only hope they’ll stay with me even if we’ve been at it this long.

López: Elliptical storytelling — how did you develop it and why did you develop it and what does it allow you to do?

Hernandez: It happened naturally. The storytelling was more of a learning process for me than the art was in the early L&Rs. I was trying whatever worked. Soon I started to visualize the story like a movie, with cinematic jump cuts and things like that, and came to realize I could cut a lot of corners and fit in more story. That also taught me how to let the character’s body language and expressions tell the story instead of letting the words do it. Finally, it taught me that leaving out actual “story” involves the reader more by letting them fill it in themselves.

López: How do you structure your stories?

Hernandez: It’s different most of the time. If the characters write the story, which they most often do, it’s sort of waiting to see what will turn out. If an idea writes the story, it’s more tightly structured: making sure there’s a beginning, middle and end.

López: You have a very intuitive approach to storytelling — you listen for your muse and almost “transcribe” what she says. Do you ever have “fights” with your muse?

Hernandez: Every time. That way it will flow naturally but still connect with the reader. Muse doesn’t always translate on its own.

López: How do you calibrate your artistic process?

Hernandez: I trust my instincts. I have to.

López: How did this process play out in the writing of the first half of the book (the “Maggie” stories)?

Hernandez: I don’t remember. It was quite a few years ago. The usual, I suppose. If I’m doing Maggie, she’s always gonna tell me where to go. Yeesh! Listen to me! “And then a UFO came down and ...”

López: One new character is Vivian, a femme fatale: she destroys everything she touches, and in turn, everyone that touches her either lives to regret it, or dies. How did you come to create her?

Hernandez: I wanted to create a character with no boundaries: someone who basically has nothing to lose. A character like that is the funnest and easiest to write because they can be put into any situation and it works. Making her very sexy only lets her character get deeper into trouble.

López: Why did you decide to put her in Maggie’s life?

Hernandez: It wasn’t planned, but I discovered they worked really well together because Maggie is the opposite of Viv. With Maggie’s nagging conscience, I can only take her so far. Dragging her into Viv’s world gives her (and me) a lot more to work with.

López: Sometimes I think of Vivian as being a darker counterpart to Penny Century; they’re both desirable and somewhat volatile. Is this an apt comparison?

Hernandez: In a way, but I understand Viv’s demons more than I do Penny’s and hopefully that makes them feel a little different from each other. I know why Viv is crazy but I don’t know why Penny is crazy and I prefer it that way. Both give me a lot to work with in different ways.

López: Throughout the book, Maggie seems to be in a midlife crisis. Why did you decide to explore these questions through her?

Hernandez: Probably because I was asking myself those same questions at that time. A lot of my characters are growing old alongside me, so I can understand and write them better.

López: In ancient Mesoamerican folklore, dogs are often associated with death. One tradition has dogs guiding the dead through the underworld, which actually somewhat parallels the climactic sequence in Ghost of Hoppers. Did you consciously draw from these stories?

Hernandez: No, since childhood I always heard stories about the devil sometimes coming to people as a black dog, sometimes as a baby and other times a red vision. I thought the dogs were a good dramatic device.

López: I feel like you’re doing something different with the “Angel of Tarzana” vignettes — they’re almost visual poems. Why do you write them?

Hernandez: To take a break from the dialogue driven stories I usually do. These also gave me more opportunity to draw more action and movement without it having to be a fantasy superhero comic.

López: I really like the story where she plays catch with her father. It struck me suddenly: This is the only functioning relationship in the entire book. Why did you do this?

Hernandez: I did actually want to portray a happier family life. It was something I hadn’t done much with some of the other characters.

Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez, at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, 2007

López: You and Gilbert have talked before about how you play off of each other. Do you still influence each other, and if so, how?

Hernandez: Gilbert does and always has got me off my ass to try to do better work every time by simply doing the work he does. I like the height he raises his bar.

López: In the ’80s, you painted the “punk” landscape — the grungy buildings, the hobos, the graffiti…. There was a conscious effort to evoke that place and time. What landscape are you trying to paint in these stories?

Hernandez: The aftermath. The fallout. Life goes on with or without my characters and some of them can deal with it and others can’t.

López: You’ve been working on these characters for almost 30 years. At this point, is it difficult or easy to write about them?

Hernandez: Writing the characters is very easy because I know them so well. Writing stories for them is the difficult part.

López: I noticed that depending on the collection, stories come in a different order. Do you revise the structure of your stories or even modify them when you assemble the larger collections?

Hernandez: When we’re putting together a single collection made up of a few issues of L&R, I mess with the order of stories so it will read more like one long connected story. When the material goes into the Complete L&R series, I usually let it play out like it did in the original comic. It just seems right that way.

López: There are definitely storytellers who write to convey ideas through characters (moral, philosophical, etc.) — and there’s others who are more naturalistic, who just want to get down the interactions between people. Where would you put yourself in this spectrum?

Hernandez: A little in between the two. I like to get moral and philosophical sometimes, but I always try to handle it naturally through the characters, instead of preaching through captions, like it came out of a textbook.

López: What advantages do comics offer you to accomplish this goal?

Hernandez: In comics, I can use as many or as little words as I want. In prose, all you have is words. Of course, you can reverse the argument, but that doesn’t concern me.

Jaime Hernandez, at the Emerald City Comicon, 2009

Diaflogue: Lorenzo Mattotti Exclusive Q&A

janice

This interview was conducted by Fantagraphics' Eric Buckler. Thanks to Eric and Lorenzo! (Ed. note: Hi Lorenzo! We miss you in North America! xo janice)

Lorenzo Mattotti is a talented necromancer; his hands give life to some of the most charged and heart-pounding characters in cartooning and illustration today. Having a cabaret of phantoms at his disposal, Mattotti has assembled comics that are a dangerous and dark exploration of human emotion. His latest cartooning project was a collaboration with Claudio Piersanti called Stigmata, which follows a man who bleeds from his palms as he trudges down a dark path that mutates wildly from the straight and narrow.

Mattotti has now collaborated on the book The Raven with Lou Reed, a project where he re-interpreted the works of Edgar Allen Poe and Lou Reed into creatures and situations in painting and illustration. Mattotti creates images from these stories that help to unlock any hidden power the pieces may have, as well as perfectly stating the obvious elements.

This interview was conducted at 3:00 am between Seattle, WA and Paris, France.

Eric Buckler: How did the Raven project come together?

Lorenzo Mattotti: I was contacted by Lou Reed's agency to ask me if I was interested in a collaboration. I didn't understand very well initially what he wanted. He wanted to make an illustrated book involving The Raven. At the beginning, I understood that he wanted to make a graphic novel, but when I read the text, I understood this was impossible. [laughter] So, he informed me that he would like me to make a book inspired by the show he made with Robert Wilson. But really, I still didn't understand it that much, so we decided to meet each other. I went to New York and we met, and I wanted to know how free I could be to make the book. Did he want classic illustration or could I be free to make my own interpretation? Lou wanted me to make my own interpretation, hearing the music. The style could be different according to the atmosphere and the music, in a very free way. I showed him one of my sketchbooks. Normally, it is very free, my personal work. So, I started to do many sketches in black and white, and I sent them to him by mail. He wanted to see everything. He told me what he preferred, and what he didn't really like, and we decided what to make in color. There were different techniques: there was pencil, brush, crayon, and ink.

Buckler: Do you have any personal connection with Edgar Allen Poe's work? Is it important to you?

Mattotti: I like his work very much. When I was young, it was strange, because I started to read Edgar Allen Poe done by a very good comics artist, Dino Battaglia. He made a version of a little novel by Edgar Allen Poe in a wonderful way with very evocative drawings. So, then I started to read the stories. I think Edgar Allen Poe is really inside my imaginary world because he has influenced so many other writers and so many other artists. I think he is now part of our collective imagination, really inside my idea of terror. The mystery, you know, the darker, the obsession of the head, of the brain. When I knew that he (Reed) wanted to make a book about Edgar Allen Poe, for me it was really natural. I did Jekyll and Hyde, and for me to go inside the obsession, you know to take the dark side of ourselves, for me, it is pretty much my work. And the idea that I could work with Edgar Allen Poe and Lou Reed pushed me to go really in a very straight way to not be afraid to make very strong images. I was justified. So it was really natural and it was really a pleasure to have the possibility to make these kind of images. It's a part of my work.

Buckler: What about the music of Lou Reed? What kind of a connection do you have to his music?

Mattotti: I knew the music of Lou Reed at the beginning of the '70s. I wasn't really impressed by his way of singing, to use the voice like an actor. Sometimes it was strange the way he changed his voice, sometimes he spoke, sometimes he sang. It was the way he interpreted the words, the expression of his voice. I remember there was a very good record, No Prisoners, I think, a live performance where there was really an atmosphere of the cabaret. I remember that I was thinking of a way to draw in this kind of voice. I was always interested by the music in the way that I draw. Really, I remember that I was thinking what kind of sign could be the voice of Lou Reed: very dry, and black & white with strange variations. I think that it is kind of my thinking with the voice of Robert Wyatt.

Buckler: Who was that?

Mattotti: Robert Wyatt, Soft Machine -- you know, an English group from the '70s?

Buckler: Oh, OK, Soft Machine.

Mattotti: Yes, the drummer of Soft Machine. Also, he has a strange way of singing. So for me it was very good to know that Lou Reed wanted to work with me.

Lorenzo Mattotti, signing books at TCAF 2011

Buckler: You illustrate in different styles throughout the book. Can you talk about how you decided on these different styles?

Mattotti: I found it more and more interesting to make books where I can put inside different ways I interpret images. The idea that the book would be not so monolithic; only one style, only one direction, really intrigued me. I normally use different ways to draw so I can make the same object represent different emotions. I wanted the freedom to interpret it in the same book, to put different emotion in different ways. Always the idea develops not in a closed way, but the book is like a laboratory, a development of different ways to interpret the text. I have always been interested in this. I can interpret one page one way, but I say, “Oh, maybe it is possible in another way, look at this.” I want to give to the reader the possibility to open their imagination, give them inspiration to think about a different way. Always the images must be strong, not a sketch.

Buckler: Right, they must be complete pieces.

Mattotti: Yeah.

A page from The Raven

Buckler: The book is full of creatures. Can you talk about where some of these come from, how you craft those creatures?

Mattotti: Creatures are always our insides. Its part of a long work that I have always done in my sketchbooks. I think in 30 years, I'll continue to make drawings like that in my sketchbook. They are always drawings about my insides, so they are metaphor, they are symbols, symbols of our natural inside. So, I don't think they are different creatures from us, they are not animals, they are us. They are our brains, they are our ideas. The drawing gives us the possibility to change the form to make signs that interpret the reality. They are the concretization of our imagination. So, maybe sometimes they explain much better than a realistic image would. So, the creature from inside you. You may think that they are creatures of another world but they are creatures of our world; the spider, the monster, the stranger, the character. The distortion is the distortion of our brain.

Buckler: So, you lent the creature inside of yourself to this work to help translate it?

Mattotti: To what?

Buckler: You said that the creatures were a concretization of the creature inside of you?

Mattotti: They are a concretization of ideas, of sensations, of emotions. I don't have an animal in my brain, I have emotion, contradiction, tension, pieces of sensation and emotion. And when I draw, my creatures are the concretization of emotions. I do not know before I draw what will happen on the paper, they go out in a very natural way. They are the symbol of sensations that I have inside.

Buckler: Can you take us through creating one of your images? What your process is?

Mattotti: There is always a different creative process. It depends very much on the work. In this case, I read the text of Lou Reed [Edgar Allen Poe], and sometimes I was impressed by some images. But it was more natural when I put on the music. So, I put on the music and I read some of the text, then I started to draw. The music gave me much more of the images, the atmosphere and tone of my images. Much of my work is influenced by music, so for many other images I let myself go on the melody and the atmosphere of the music. In my history, the music gave me some ideas and perspective for some of the work. It is not always like this, sometimes I must make an illustration and I try to make the composition in a very logical way, much more like a project, I have to make sketches and little by little I change. I do that when I have to make posters, or covers for magazines. When I make a comic it is between that. In a way it is a project, a very rational project, logic project, in another way you must make it possible for the drawing to develop the sense. So it is between the two.

Buckler: Could you talk further about how music relates to your art?

Mattotti: I could give you an example?

Buckler: Sure.

Mattotti: Fire is completely influenced by the music of Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno. I remember the first images of Fire were done hearing the music of Peter Gabriel. Always, my books have a sort of soundtrack that I use to concentrate with. The book Carnival, for me it was about the possibility to try to relate the place between music and images.

Buckler: Do you listen to music while you make art?

Mattotti: Yeah, yeah, all the time.

Buckler: You originally went to school to be an architect, correct?

Mattotti: Yeah, but I never wanted to be an architect. I really went into architecture because I couldn't go to fine art school. So, I decided to go into architecture school. There were good subjects. In a strange way I learned many things that I couldn't learn in a fine art school.

Buckler: Did you learn things in architecture school that you have been able to use in your career as a cartoonist and an artist?

Mattotti: I think architecture gave me the notion of space, the structure of the images. The idea of the project. Also, it gave me other influences in how to approach a subject. Not only in an artistic way, but about the historic way, also the logical side of the subject. In a way, it is more scientific. I learned how to be more scientific in the way I work.

A page from Stigmata

Buckler: Can you talk about the difference between creating these kind of illustrations for The Raven and creating comics?

Mattotti: It is a big difference. This kind of book is a sort of a mosaic. I started with some images from one side and another side and little by little the world of this book started to exist. In the comics, I am obliged to start the development of the characters. The structure of the pages are completely different. You must think about the tolerance of the style. If you change the style, it must be justified around the subject of the story. Maybe it is more complicated to make the comics, for me it is more complicated. There must be a tension inside that is done with the images and the text. Here in a book like The Raven, or other books, I am more free, less obligations. In a way I can go on the extreme side, the free way. The relation of the text and the pages is completely different. It is a sort of complimentary thing, you must open the structure of the text that you read, you put a way to interpret it. I don't think it is easier. I think it is more simple than comics. Comics are more complicated I think.

Buckler: Do you believe that this project can be interpreted any further, into another form?

Mattotti: Maybe, yes. It could be interesting. Lou Reed, once in an interview, said that this text could be a ballet. He is always interested to reinterpret this text in a different way with different artists. Maybe it could be a dance, or an animation. I don't know. I remember one idea that could be beautiful: if there is a reading with the music and a projection of the images. Could be interesting to make something with animation or something strange in the theater. I don't know in the future what Mr. Lou Reed will do, he has so many projects -- me, too. It's like a mine, it's a big concentration of images. It's a pity the book is not published with the CD inside. It could be a beautiful addition if people could hear the music and look at the images and read the text.

Buckler: I am sure you get asked this a lot, but I wanted to concentrate on your art. Who are some graphic artists who have influenced you?

Mattotti: There are so many, but I always say that for me one of the big masters is Alberto Breccia, the Argentine master. He opened so many doors, he opened the possibilities in comics, possibilities for the expressionists to be abstract. The explosion of sensation. There are so many other masters. I think about [Dino] Battaglia in Italy. There are many painters; Francis Bacon, Caravaggio. I love Alfred Kubin and Odilon Redon. For me this book is really in the tradition of the symbolic illustrator, like Alfred Kubin or Odilon Redon.

Buckler: Who are some cartoonists who have influenced you?

Mattotti: When I was younger I read all kinds of cartoonists, I was always influenced by the story of the cartoon. In Europe we have different tradition in comics: such good creators like Hugo Pratt, but I also like American comics like Walt Kelly and Dick Tracy [Chester Gould], [George] Herriman. I really fell in love with [Lyonel] Feininger, I use many ideas of Feininger. I grew up with comics history. Jose Muñoz, I am good friends with Jose Muñoz, so he influenced me. The relation with life and work. Also, Art Spiegelman influenced me. Robert Crumb, who opened the door for independent comics. There are so many. I grew up with comics. It was the '60s and '70s. For me comics was like film or literature.

Buckler: Are there any other projects you have in the works that you wanted to talk about?

Mattotti: Now I am working in animation, experimental for television. I will be working in one of my first books Huckleberry Finn Adventures by Mark Twain. We are putting color to it right now with computers, it will be put out in France. I will maybe put out new pages or a new version of Chimera. I want to continue some of my old comics projects, black and white. I had stopped for a while.

Buckler: Is there anything we didn't cover, anything you would like to add?

Mattotti: This book, The Raven, is really a collaboration with Lou Reed, because he wanted to give me ideas, to control and be part of the project. He really wanted to work on this project. The melody of the images was done together.

Photo Credit: Benoît Grimalt

Diaflogue: Megan Kelso exclusive Q&A

mike

This interview with Megan Kelso was conducted via email by editorial intern Hans Anderson, and proofread by Kristy Valenti. Thanks to all! Megan Kelso appears at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery tomorrow (Saturday, July 9, 2011) for the opening of The Quiet Rrriot, an art exhibit featuring Kelso, Stella Marrs and Nikki McClure. – Ed.

Megan Kelso’s career spans the ’90s to the present. In that timespan she has grown into a highly adept artist and storyteller. Her Ignatz Award-winning Artichoke Tales tackles the themes of power, feminism and the relationships that define our daily lives. In the early 2000s, she also spent time in New York, publishing her serialized strip Watergate Sue in The New York Times Magazine.

Kelso’s latest release from Fantagraphics is a reprint of her Queen of the Black Black anthology, originally published in 1998. This book collects stories self-published from her zine Girlhero, which was written and drawn by Kelso between 1993 and 1998 in her hometown of Seattle. In this interview, which serves as a snapshot of early ’90s self-publishing, Kelso discusses her influences, her Xeric Award, and her development as a cartoonist. — Hans Anderson

Early Life

HANS ANDERSON: When and where were you born?

MEGAN KELSO: 1968: Seattle, Wash.

ANDERSON: Where did you spend most of your early life?

KELSO: Seattle, Wash.

ANDERSON: Did you have any siblings?

KELSO: One sister: two-and-a-half years older than me.

ANDERSON: What did your parents do?

KELSO: My father was an urban planner, and my mother was a college registrar. Both are retired.

ANDERSON: Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is an anthology of short strips, self-published as the serial minicomic (zine?) Girlhero?

Girlhero #1 (July 1993)

KELSO: Yes, mostly. “Whistle and Queenie” was never in Girlhero. It was for an issue of Dark Horse Presents, and there are two stories that I did specifically for the book, “Queen of the Black Black” and “The Daddy Mask.”

ANDERSON: What years were you publishing Girlhero?

KELSO: 1992-1996.

ANDERSON: How old were you when you started drawing these strips?

KELSO: 23.

ANDERSON: How old were you when you stopped publishing Girlhero?

KELSO: 28.

ANDERSON: Where did you go to school?

KELSO: I went to public school here in Seattle with a couple years of private school in the middle. I started college at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but dropped out and finished my BA at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

Snapshots

ANDERSON: In many ways, this book is a snapshot of youth culture, in Seattle and elsewhere, in the mid-1990s. What were you drawing your subject matter from?

KELSO: I went to college in Olympia, Wash., which at the time was exploding with bands, zines and really amazing, ambitious art projects: people started galleries; organized music festivals; film festivals; elaborate art installations. People just went out and started these things, not really knowing how, but figuring it out along the way. Because it was a college town, a lot of this work was informed by what we were all studying in college: feminist theory, labor politics, postmodern theory. I started my comic Girlhero because I wanted to be a part of this explosion going on around me. The stories in Queen of the Black Black were not literally autobiographical, but I definitely drew from my life, my work, sex and relationship experiences, my dreams and memories. I was learning to draw comics in these stories, so many of them were kind of like challenges I set for myself — can I learn to draw a convincing bicycle? Can I pull off setting a story in the past?

ANDERSON: The book Queen of the Black Black takes its title from a short story in the middle of the book about a depraved old artist disillusioning a young one. Why did you choose to take your title from this comic?

KELSO: Depraved?! That seems a little strong! I think of her more as old, tired and a bit bitter and cynical. I have always been interested in power relationships: between women, mothers and daughters, teachers and students, babysitters and babysat, employers and employees. I think I’m fascinated by this because, while between women, the classic male/female power dynamic has been eliminated, other more mysterious power dynamics are still at work and are harder to pin down. The title, “Queen of the Black Black,” is from a poem written by the sculptor, Louise Nevelson, who is, in part, the inspiration for the Queen character in that story.

ANDERSON: Who were your artistic influences before and during the creation of these strips?

KELSO: I did not grow up reading comics very much, and when I did (Peanuts, Archie), I didn’t give them much thought. So as a drawer and a beginning cartoonist, I was much more influenced by book illustrators: Maurice Sendak, Doctor Seuss, Beatrix Potter, Tove Jansson, Ludwig Bemelmans, Arnold Lobel, Garth Williams.

I think the work of Julie Doucet’s is what really made me want to try making comics. Once I moved back to Seattle and started meeting other cartoonists, I learned a lot from my peers: Jason Lutes, James Sturm, Ed Brubaker, Jon Lewis, Tom Hart, Jennifer Daydreamer, David Lasky. We actually had a comics working group for a while and shared work, did critiques and helped each other problem solve. Later, I met more cartoonists who[se] work influenced me a lot — Ron Regé and Brian Ralph, who I mentioned earlier. Also, Marc Bell and Lauren Weinstein’s work had a big impact on me.

ANDERSON: Why did you name your minicomic Girlhero?

KELSO: Around the time that I started to make comics, a group of young women in Olympia and D.C. were forming “Riot grrrl.” Before this time, calling a grown woman a girl was considered demeaning. The feminists of the ‘60s and ‘70s worked very hard to be thought of as and called women because they were sick of being infantilized and disrespected by men. I remember my mother just hated it when men referred to grown women as girls. But something happened with punk and irony and feminism kind of expanding into a more complicated analysis in the mid-to-late ’80s where women re-appropriated the word “girl” and used it for their own purposes. Kind of like rappers re-appropriating “nigger.” Anyway, the word “girl” took on this coolness, this cachet at that time. And “hero” is associated with comics, so that seemed to work.

And also, I knew that I wanted to tell stories with female protagonists. I thought a lot about how women are so used to slipping inside the heads of male protagonists in books and comics and movies, but men are not as often asked to slip inside the heads of women. So “Girlhero” was kind of a statement of purpose. If you read this comic, this is what you’re getting. Girl heroes.

ANDERSON: There is an actual story called “Girlhero.” Would you say that’s the crux of the series and if so, in what ways?

KELSO: The main ongoing story in the Girlhero comics was called “Bottlecap.”

ANDERSON: Is there a reason why no segments of the Bottlecap serial appear in Queen of the Black Black?

Girlhero #1 (July 1993)

KELSO: I didn’t think it was as good as the short stories.

ANDERSON: Most of the characters within your strip seem to be trying to figure out their identity, such as the bike messenger who seems to almost hinge her self-worth on her bicycle. What drew you to this theme at that time?

KELSO: I think that searching for identity is one of the main themes of most people in their teens and 20s.

ANDERSON: This book collects your juvenilia. Can you talk about your decision-making process in regards to compiling and ordering these stories within the book?

KELSO: The story order is the same as the first edition that came out in 1998 from Highwater Books. As I said in my intro to the book, I decided not to order them chronologically, but instead to provide a good read. My main strategy was to begin and end with what I thought was my strongest work, and then create a balance between shorter and longer stories in the middle because I think a whole bunch of really short stories together can be tough going for a reader always having to change gears.

ANDERSON: What was your creative process during Girlhero?

KELSO: Most of the time, I would get an idea in my head of the stories I wanted to do for the next issue while I was finishing the drawing on the previous issue. I usually started a new spiral notebook for each issue, and as I developed the stories, I would write or thumbnail the early drafts in that notebook. Something about the lined paper made it less intimidating to start something new. I would draw really sloppily in pencil and convince myself it was no big deal. In the beginning, I wrote scripts for my stories, and then adapted them to comics. Eventually it became a combo of written notes and bits of dialogue and thumbnails, and then some more fully realized drawings of the characters and settings. I still like to do my early drafts in lined spiral notebooks.

ANDERSON: What did you learn as a drawer throughout the five years you were publishing these works that you utilized in your later works?

KELSO: I learned how to use word balloons. I didn’t really have word balloons in a lot of my early comics. I learned how to use timing and rhythm. I learned how to draw characters consistently from different angles. I learned to think of comics panels as stage sets and to think about moving my characters through the spaces in a logical progression. I learned how to negotiate flashbacks and transitions of time and place. I didn’t really do any color-work for Girlhero except the covers. It wasn’t ’til after Girlhero that I started doing color comics.

Girlhero #2 (February 1992)

ANDERSON: Your drawing style fluctuates significantly, perhaps a result of the stories’ non-chronological order. How did your drawing methods change? Did you switch tools regularly? Were you experimenting with different tools as a way to convey a different message?

KELSO: Well, this book definitely charts my initial learning curve as a cartoonist. At first I didn’t have a style. It was all I could do to just make some legible drawings and try to get my point across. I tried as many different tools and techniques as I could, simply because I was looking for what worked. At that time, I didn’t have a whole lot of control in terms of trying to create a certain visual effect. I think when I did the story “Whistle and Queenie” I felt for the first time like I kind of had some control with the drawing and the pacing of the comic. It’s hard to describe, but doing my early comics kind of felt like I was hurtling down a hill on a bike I couldn’t control.

Self-Publishing

ANDERSON: What inspired you to begin self-publish in the early 1990s?

KELSO: So many people were self-publishing in the late ’80s/early ’90s. In Olympia, I knew a lot of people self-publishing their own zines — mostly Xeroxed at Kinko’s, but the Tacoma band Girltrouble made their own zine that was offset printed. Then I moved to Seattle and learned about minicomics. I probably would’ve continued to do Xeroxed minicomics, except I found out about the Xeric grant from Jason Lutes, and when I got it, I then had the money to go to a printer. I found out about how to deal with printers from other cartoonists (Jason Lutes, David Lasky) and decided to go with a magazine-sized book because I liked the idea of having more space to draw and I liked the way Love and Rockets looked — not so traditionally comic-y, but somewhere between a comic and a magazine.

ANDERSON: Were you reading other minicomics during the time of Girlhero?

KELSO: Well, as I said before, I was really inspired by Julie Doucet’s Dirty Plotte, and then I started reading the comics of the cartoonists I was meeting. I learned about King Cat from Jason Lutes and immediately loved it. There was a lot of mail order going on then too. People would send you their minis and ask to trade. People would review each other’s minis in the back of their own. So yeah, I read lots and lots of minicomics.

ANDERSON: You got a grant from the Xeric foundation. What effect did that have on your work, both practically and in terms of your artistic development?

KELSO: If I hadn�t pursued and gotten the Xeric grant, I probably would�ve continued doing minis, and selling them locally or through the minicomic distributors like Spit and a Half and Wow Cool. The self-publishing grant catapulted me into a more large scale self-publishing venture. It gave me the money to have the comic offset printed, pursue the big comics distributors, etc. It was a kind of trial by fire, and in some ways, I don�t think I was ready for it � it might have been better to stay small for a while. But I learned a lot, and the comic turned out to be self-supporting for six issues and I felt pretty proud of that.

Eventually though, I got tired of all the duties and stress of self-publishing — a lot of distributors went out of business during the years I was self-publishing and it was demoralizing to then not get paid. I just felt like it was all impinging on the time it took to actually draw comics, and I wanted to concentrate on that more, so I started looking for a publisher. I had an informal agreement with Black Eye to publish Queen of the Black Black, but they were in the process of going out of business, and around that time, Tom Devlin was ramping up Highwater. He offered to publish Queen, so I went with him. Eventually Highwater started to wind down and go out of business, so that’s when I joined Fantagraphics.

I look at people like Tom Neely who is successfully self-publishing, and sometimes I think I should have stuck with it, but I know it’s a lot of work and also I don’t think I have the right personality for the promotional/sales side of self-publishing. And also, I got really tired of going to comics shows/conventions.

ANDERSON: Why did you decide to self-publish the comic instead of looking for a publisher?

KELSO: After I graduated from Evergreen and moved from Olympia back up to Seattle, I didn’t really know how I would proceed with comics. Somehow I connected up with a neighborhood newspaper in Belltown called The Belltown Brainfever Dispatch and they agreed to serialize my Bottlecap comic, which I had begun in Olympia. Originally it ran in my college newspaper, The Cooper Point Journal, as a weekly strip. But as it became a longer, more complex comic and less like a weekly strip, I stopped publishing it in the Dispatch. By this time I had met Jason Lutes and through him, a bunch of other cartoonists and they illuminated the whole minicomic/self publishing scenario for me. It honestly didn’t even occur to me to look for a publisher, as I knew I was still learning how to draw comics and had a lot of work to do before someone would be interested in publishing my work.

ANDERSON: How did you distribute Girlhero?

KELSO: It was a combination of the big comics distributors back then — Diamond and Capital City — and then a bunch of smaller ones: Tower did magazine distribution then. At the very beginning, in 1993, there were newsstand distributors that took comics, but that was all starting to crumble just as I was getting into it. I feel like I started self-publishing just as the whole distribution system was undergoing a massive transition, and it was confusing, plus I lost a fair amount of money to distros that went belly up.

I also worked with the more alternative distributors, Slab-O-Concrete in England, Spit and a Half and others I can’t remember. And I sold directly to stores, and sold to stores at conventions. And I did mail order — I kept up a mailing list and would send out postcards letting people know about new issues and I had some subscribers. I always made enough money to print the next issue, but I never made what you could call a PROFIT.

ANDERSON: Why did you decide to stop publishing Girlhero?

KELSO: I was tired of self-publishing.

ANDERSON: I don’t know if you still have your finger on the pulse of self-publishing, but how have you seen self-publishing change from the days of Girlhero?

KELSO: It seems like the main change has been the rise of online comics, but your guess is correct, I haven’t really kept my finger on the pulse.

Post Girlhero

ANDERSON: After Girlhero, you moved to New York and had a strip in The New York Times? Could you break down that timeline for us?

KELSO: We moved to New York in February 2001. I was working on Artichoke Tales Chapter 2 at the time. I was also working on short stories — including my first color strip ["Nettie’s Left-handed Flute"] for Pulse Magazine that was later in Squirrel Mother. Over the summer, Gary Groth invited me to do a story for the first [Comics Journal] Winter Special. I was wandering through Prospect Park trying to figure that story out (the first Alexander Hamilton story: “Publius”) on the morning of 9/11. I saw the giant ash clouds and heard lots of sirens, but was oblivious to what was happening.

Between 2001 and 2005, I worked on Artichoke Tales and various short stories for anthologies, and the occasional illustration job. I edited an anthology of female cartoonists called Scheherazade. I proposed a collection of short stories to Fantagraphics made up of all my anthology work over the last few years, and that became Squirrel Mother, which came out in the spring of 2006. My daughter Virginia was born around the same time that the book came out. By this time, the New York Times Magazine Funny Pages feature had been running for a year or so. The editor of the Funny Pages found out about me through asking Gary for recommendations, and when she contacted me she said she liked Squirrel Mother. Also, I think they were looking for a female cartoonist — it had been all men up to that point.

The editor contacted me in December 2006, when my daughter was about 8 months old, and I had just hired a part-time babysitter so I could get back to finishing Artichoke Tales (by this time I had finished drawing the whole book and had the two final chapters to ink). So in January, I set aside Artichoke Tales one more time, hired the babysitter for an extra day and got to work on Watergate Sue for the New York Times Magazine. My husband and I had planned to move back to Seattle before the summer of 2007, but with Watergate Sue I couldn’t think about moving, so we postponed our move to the fall when I was finished with that. We moved back to Seattle on Halloween of 2007.

ANDERSON: How did that experience differ from Girlhero?

KELSO: Doing Watergate Sue was different than doing any other comic in almost every respect. They were publishing the beginning episodes in the magazine before I had even figured out how it would end. It was very strange to send out drafts of an unfinished story for strangers to look at and comment on. My “editors” and readers had always been friends before that. It was super weird to have the comic out in the world in part while I was still working on it. I also hired Austin English to be my assistant. He did scanning, cleanup and color drafts for me. I’d never worked with an assistant before. The Times's editorial stance was very hands off in terms of the plot and story structure, but very persnickety in terms of fact checking, propriety (no vulgar words, no overt sexuality) and copy-editing issues such as punctuation, capitalization, etc. It was flattering to have these people scrutinize my work so carefully, but also kind of maddening, since I was used to the almost 100% freedom of alternative comics publishing.

ANDERSON: What were the advantages and disadvantages creatively of New York vs. Seattle?

KELSO: When I moved to New York, I already knew a bunch of cartoonists who were living there, so I had a kind of instant artistic community there, for which I was very lucky. I met a lot of cartoonists there and felt very included. Because NYC is the center of media and publishing, you just wind up making more contacts and getting more opportunities simply because you live there and meet people who[se] work in media and publishing. It was very exciting and inspiring to be in New York because everybody is so ambitious there, and it’s kind of contagious. But there are also a lot of distractions. In Seattle, it’s easier to hunker down, block out the world and do your work. But there are fewer opportunities, and you have to work harder to find them here.

I hated the summers in New York. It would get so muggy that your arms would sweat on your pages: so gross. I also think the high humidity in New York affects Bristol board and makes your ink bleed more: very frustrating. Drawing is much more pleasant in Seattle, but I do miss the inspiration of being constantly surrounded by people who are all striving for something. Seattle feels quite empty by comparison. I think the inspiration I feel here is more from nature. I would have scoffed at that before I moved to New York. Since I grew up in Seattle, I took the nature here for granted. It wasn’t until I lived in New York that I realized what an amazing place the Pacific Northwest is.

ANDERSON: But you are back in Seattle? What inspired that move?

KELSO: The whole time I lived in New York, I was homesick for Seattle. Every summer, I would long to be back in Seattle, away from the heat, the moisture, the stink of New York. Even though we had good friends in New York, we never settled in for the long haul. We couldn’t afford to buy a house or condo there in a neighborhood we would want to live in. I never felt like living in New York was worth every sacrifice. I always knew a day would come when the disadvantages of living there would outweigh the advantages. That came when our kid turned 1. All our family was on the West Coast and life with a toddler in a small 4th floor walkup was losing its charm.

I remember the summer after she was born…our landlord had just built a balcony for the apartment below us. It was right below our bedroom window, and I would have to put my baby to sleep while we breathed the fumes of somebody else’s goddamm barbecue wafting up through our windows. It was an extra hot, horrible summer in New York, and I vowed I would never spend another summer there. But we did wind up spending ONE MORE summer there.

Changes

ANDERSON: What other ways has your daughter affected your work or subject matter?

KELSO: It’s definitely affected my work habits. I have to work in smaller chunks of time, often separated by a few days, so it’s harder to build momentum with a project. I think my subject matter remains more or less the same, but I definitely think my perspective has changed. When I used to do stories about families, even though I tried to be fair to all the characters, my sympathies lay with the child characters. Now my sympathies are more with the adults: it’s not that I have lost touch with the concerns of children, but I have definitely crossed over to the parent way of seeing the world.

ANDERSON: How has your work changed since Girlhero? I ask this in regard to the relationship between “Pennyroyal Tea” and the graphic novel Artichoke Tales, specifically in the drawing and themes addressed.

Girlhero #5 (May 1996)

KELSO: “Pennyroyal Tea” was the proto-Artichoke Tales. While doing that story, I realized I wanted to continue telling stories in that world, and eventually planned the outline for the graphic novel Artichoke Tales. Five or six years elapsed between when I drew “Pennyroyal Tea” and when I got going on Artichoke Tales, so my drawing style had changed a lot. In 1996 and 1997 I met Brian Ralph and Ron Regé and their drawing style influenced me a lot. I especially liked Ron’s thin lines and sparing use of black.

ANDERSON: How has your subject matter changed since that time?

KELSO: I think I still draw on the same general themes, work, sex, relationships, and I still set myself challenges, especially with short stories. I think the main difference is that my scope has broadened as I have become more ambitious about drawing and storytelling — and since I’m older now I have different concerns — I live in a different milieu.

ANDERSON: Are you planning on expanding on any of the other strips within the book?

KELSO: No.

ANDERSON: In the intro to Queen of the Black Black, there is a quote attributed to you in 1998, which reads, “So let me just say this. I plan to be drawing comics when I am an old, old, woman, barring early death or a freak accident. Maybe I’ll own a skating rink or maybe I’ll be living on catfood omelettes in a damp basement apartment, but I WILL be making comics. Bear this in mind when you finish this book and put it back on the shelf. Forget about it. Then, a few decades from now, pick it up again, read it, and you will say, 'Ahhh... so this is where she began.'” Do you still believe this?

KELSO: I have always loved manifestos and rousing speeches and calls to arms — so I wrote one for myself in 1998. I have thought of it often since then, and it’s been quoted back to me many times. There is a funny kind of self-fulfilling prophecy to manifesto writing. My young self made a vow that my older self feels obliged to keep. I sometimes wonder if that very public vow I made is part of what has kept me at it. However, I love making comics as much if not more than I did back then, so I think I would’ve kept at it even if I hadn’t proclaimed it from the hilltops the way I did. I fear I’m going to be more on the catfood side of things than the skating rink side, but yes, I still believe it.

ANDERSON: How much of your identity is built around being a cartoonist?

KELSO: I would say about 60 percent. :-)

Megan Kelso self-portrait from Girlhero #1 (July 1993)

Diaflogue: Leslie Stein exclusive Q&A about Eye of the Majestic Creature

mike

This interview with the creator of Eye of the Majestic Creature was conducted (twice, due to a recording device mishap, and hence the references to "last time") by Fantagraphics' Ian Burns, and proofread and formatted by Janice Headley. Thanks to all! Leslie Stein appears with Peter Bagge at Desert Island in Brooklyn tonight (April 8, 2011) and at the MoCCA Festival this weekend. – Ed.

Leslie Stein hardly needs an introduction… because it’s late and I’m tired and I have to get up at 4am tomorrow. So, I’m going to make this short.

Stein’s work appeals to me because it contains pseudo-biography, anthropomorphic silliness and impeccable craftsmanship into one delightful package. Her work is traditional yet fresh, drawing from comic strip history’s rich library of gestures, expressions and fantastical characters while presenting innovative ideas in composition and texture.

I like it a lot.

Thank you. Good night.

IAN BURNS: You grew up in Evanston, Illinois. Could you describe the town and what it was like for you growing up there?

LESLIE STEIN: Evanston is a large suburb of Chicago. It’s a college town that Northwestern University is in. It’s a nice suburb. I lived on the southern side near Rogers Park so I was really close to the city, so as I grew older I could go into the city easily and explore and go to punk rock shows when I was a teenager. Stuff like that.

BURNS: Where did you go to high school?

STEIN: I went to Evanston Township High School. It’s the public school there.

BURNS: You did not enjoy high school very much.

STEIN: (Laughs) Right. I was an odd duck there. I was like a punk rocker and most of the other people who went to school there didn’t look that kindly upon that. So I didn’t have many friends, and I mostly made friends from other schools when I went to shows in the city. I couldn’t wait to get out of high school, so I actually took double classes my senior year and graduated early.

BURNS: So what year would that have been when you were kind of getting into the punk scene?

STEIN: ’96.

BURNS: So it would have been well on the wane of the big time punk scene, but you got in with a fairly big punk community?

STEIN: At the time all the kids went to the Fireside Bowl in Chicago. So I went there to shows every weekend. And yeah, it wasn’t as cool as it was, but it was what we had at the time.

BURNS: You were drawing at a fairly early age.

STEIN: I started when I was two. The story my mom likes to tell, that I came home from a pre-kindergarten kind of class, preschool, and I guess I got in the car and I told her, “Mommy, I’m an artist!” I guess someone at school must have told me I was an artist because of the way I was drawing so intently. So yeah I was really focused on drawing for my whole childhood.

BURNS: Were your parents encouraging?

STEIN: They were neither discouraging nor encouraging. They bought me art supplies and they let me draw, which is what most kids do, but I definitely wasn’t encouraged to pursue it seriously.

BURNS: As you grew up did you pursue any academic training in the arts?

STEIN: No, I attempted… I was so unhappy at my high school that I attempted to go to an arts high school, I applied. And I went through the whole process of applying for the school, and I got in. What they told me upon accepting me was that I couldn’t draw what they considered the cartoons I had shown them to get in. That was stuff I had to do on the side and I would have to do “real” art there. Because I thought my cartoons were real art, I didn’t understand what they were talking about, and I didn’t like being talked to like that ’cause I was already a little rebel. So I decided not to go to school there. I really blocked out most of high school. If I see people on the train from high school… they remember me and I have no idea who they are.

BURNS: Did you move to Brooklyn before you attended college?

STEIN: No, actually I went to school… I got accepted to the San Francisco Art Institute, and I went there for a year and a half; my major was interdisciplinary, so I figured I could get away with doing whatever I wanted to do. I took painting classes, drawing classes and print making classes, but what I ended up doing, I was just trying to draw comics, that’s what I wanted to do, because it was a conceptual art school, people really looked down upon that. I actually had someone in a critique ask me why I was even going to school there. (Burns laughs) So I transferred to the cartooning department at SVA as a sophomore, and that’s when I moved to Brooklyn.

BURNS: Ok. And that’s where you were the only girl in your department, correct?

STEIN: (Laughs) Right, right. Actually, when I first started as a sophomore there were two other women in the department and they both dropped out by the end of the year, so for the last two years I was the only woman in the department.

BURNS: You’ve got to tell the story about the Wolverine bust. I made a special note about that.

STEIN: (Laughs) So… (Laughter) I was thinking, I don’t know why I was thinking this, but I was thinking, “I’m gonna go and I’m going to find all these kindred spirits doing really really interesting comic work,” but it turned out that most of everyone in the department was drawing superhero comics. I don’t know why I didn’t assume that would be the case. So a lot of times I’d be sitting in class, and I’d be sitting behind a guy who I noticed would be drawing Wolverine over and over and over again. (Burns laughs) In different… He would draw him like a character study: From the side, claws out; from the front, claws in; from the side, claws out. Now, it wasn’t the same guy, but during one class, I actually was, I guess, forced to critique a bust of Wolverine.

BURNS: So he was a popular character at that school.

STEIN: (Laughs) Yeah, everyone liked Wolverine! I guess he’s probably one of the most popular superheroes, but yeah people REALLY loved drawing Wolverine. So yeah the bust was a full bust of Wolverine, and it was really quite impressive, it was a very nice piece of sculpture. It was, you know, him looking very muscular with his arms out to his sides and his claws out. But it was cut off right mid thigh, and the funniest thing about it was that he had the hugest package I’ve ever seen on a bust (Laughter), and the whole time, you know we’re trying to critique this, and I’m sitting there with my hands over my face just laughing so hard. And I think I actually raised my hand and said it was a beautiful piece of art.

BURNS: Were you and your classmates taking work around and showing it to publishers? I’m guessing they were trying to go up to the Marvel and DC offices, but was there that feeling that, “Hey, let’s try to get this published?”

STEIN: I was just trying to work on my skills at the time. I didn’t really feel I deserved to be published. Actually, I started Yeah, It Is!, the book I won the Xeric Grant to publish, between my sophomore and junior year in school. I’d done the first 30 pages of it, and I was sitting around, actually Dash Shaw was walking around, and he looked at it and he said, “Oh, you should apply for the Xeric Grant with this.” And I had no idea what he was talking about so he told me what it was.

BURNS: That was your first time meeting Dash?

STEIN: I had seen him around. I don’t remember my first time meeting him, but he was around. He was one year younger than I was.

FOX TROT AND BEYOND

BURNS: Talk about your first real love in comics.

STEIN: Well, I loved comic strips in the paper. That was my first love. I used to read them with my mom every Sunday when the Chicago Tribune came and they had a comics section. And my favorite was Fox Trot. So every time I’d go on a road trip with my mom when I was a kid she would let me go to the store and pick out one book I wanted to bring on the road trip. I’d always pick out a collection of Fox Trot. I just loved it so much I never wanted the collections to end. Weirdly, I think it still affects my drawing style, because I tend to do this three quarters view that Bill Amend uses all the time, and some of his hunched postures. Also the clean line was always really exciting to me.

BURNS: So why Fox Trot when you were a kid? These artistic conceits wouldn’t develop until much later I’d guess.

STEIN: I think I thought it was funny. I think I was obsessed with the idea of a nuclear family. So I liked those aspects of that.

BURNS: Was a nuclear family something you felt you didn’t have as a child?

STEIN: No, I didn’t have one. I grew up just with my mom and my brother. I visited my dad on the weekends and he had already started a new family. So I think, when I was really little, I was pretty confused about why my family was different and why it had always been different. I didn’t understand when I went to friend’s houses why, especially real young, like 2 or 3, why my family was different.

BURNS: Do you think now, any of those experiences with your family are influencing what you’re doing?

STEIN: Experiences with my family?

BURNS: I guess that desire for a nuclear family. Is that showing through or have you really even approached that yet?

STEIN: No, I think now it’s the opposite where I’ve embraced any kind of dysfunction there is in my family and found it funny and used that as fodder.

BURNS: So then you moved in with a guy who had an enormous comic collection, right?

STEIN: That was when I was in Chicago. After I graduated high school I moved out of my mom’s house a couple days later with a couple guys in this really really bad neighborhood in Chicago. And I couldn’t really leave the house, actually. I really couldn’t. One of the guys I lived with had a huge trunk of comics, and he had tons and tons of alternative comics in there, and I went crazy and went through all of them and was really excited by them. I would try to draw some of them. So that’s how I learned a lot about R. Crumb and Dan Clowes and, you know a bunch of underground alternative comics artists.

BURNS: Was that another case where the line work really appealed to you? I mean obviously the subject matter was more appealing than super hero comics to you.

STEIN: Yeah, and Fox Trot. One step above Fox Trot. Just one though. Yeah, of course. Charles Burns, when I saw what he was doing it blew my mind. It was almost kind of paralyzing because I couldn’t… I feel like you have to put away stuff like that in order to draw. In order to figure out how to master your own style so you’re not trying to live up to people who’ve already mastered one specific style. So I read all of it. Now… I started reading comics again, but for a few years when I was drawing all the time, I wasn’t reading comics at all.

BURNS: Interesting. Have you felt like you needed to play a big game of catch-up now that you started reading again?

STEIN: Well, I had very quickly gone through all the ones that I really wanted. Then I started sifting through ones that I found kind of disappointing. So, after a few years hiatus there’s more stuff for me to read now. So, I can go to the store and pick out new things and be excited by them.

BURNS: Leslie was a strip you drew at what age?

STEIN: Uh… I believe it was 12 or 13.

BURNS: This was sort of an ancestor to Eye of the Majestic Creature, right?

STEIN: (Laughs) Yeah. It was an autobiographical fantasy based comic where I have a little magical bunny and a helpful bird. And the bird, sometimes the bunny, would have a frying pan. So whenever I was being mistreated in class, I hated my French teacher or this or that, they would swoop in and bop whoever was causing me trouble on the head with a frying pan. And it was a strip. But the whole point of that was I knew how silly that was, and the whole point was that it was stupid humor. It was a joke on a stupid joke.

BURNS: Was that your first attempt at a comic?

STEIN: No. I had been drawing them… I don’t know, I think the first one I was six or seven when I started drawing them. I’d do little strips and I did a strip for my little brother called Simon the Super Spaceman. Simon was a really, really stupid guy who was mistakenly viewed as heroic, but really his alien sidekick was the intelligent one who would get them out of bad situations.

BURNS: You should sue Matt Groening. Zapp Brannigan and Kif. You thought of it first.

STEIN: Yeah that was before Futurama (laughter).

BURNS: Do you remember what the impetus was for Leslie?

STEIN: No, I just did it.

BURNS: Maybe to deal with your French teacher.

STEIN: There was definitely angst in it that’s for sure. I started doing it and some of my friends would watch me do it and they’re all collected, I still have the notebook, there’s just strips and strips all in one lined school notebook in blue ink. All my friends would say, “Put me in it, put me in it!” So, I’d put them in it and it just kept going for a while. Eventually I just forgot about it.

BURNS: Did you already feel like, when you were drawing Leslie, that you had a feel for the conventions of comics even then, or was that kind of your first big learning experience?

STEIN: I think, honestly, most kids have a pretty clear understanding of the conventions of comics. From, I would say, second grade on. You know you have the panels and the bubbles. You know your characters pretty much have to look the same.

BURNS: Right, you mentioned that last time.

STEIN: Yeah. That you need to be consistent. And I did follow all those rules in the comic, and I brought certain characters back. I would introduce new characters when it felt appropriate. So, yeah, I think I had a sense of it, but I don’t think that’s extraordinary at all.

BURNS: Yeah. You mentioned consistency was something you really remembered working hard at while drawing Leslie. You were really trying to make the characters look the same in every panel.

STEIN: Yeah, and that was difficult. Especially when you’re not a good drawer yet. It still is difficult when you develop a new character because they change over drawing them hundreds of times. If you look at the beginning of Eye of the Majestic Creature, Larrybear’s face looks totally different than at the end. But now I can draw her in my sleep. She looks the same every time.

SMOKE SIGNALS

BURNS: Had you been published before Smoke Signals?

STEIN: Not anything worth noting, no.

BURNS: Talk about how you got involved with Smoke Signals.

STEIN: Well, I heard that Gabriel Fowler, the proprietor of Desert Island, was opening the store. We had a lot of friends in common. I lived about a half-mile away from the shop. I was just about to self-publish Eye of the Majestic Creature #3, and I needed a place to have my release party. So I went by and I was talking to him about it. I had the release party there, it was one of the first ones he ever had, I believe, and then he started Smoke Signals after that and he said he wanted me to contribute to it. But he’s been great. He’s great for the community in Brooklyn. He’s really championed local artists, and his store is wonderful, so if anyone’s ever in Brooklyn and they want to see a really great comic book store they should head over there.

BURNS: Is Desert Island kind of a meeting ground for the underground/alt comics scene in Brooklyn?

STEIN: Yeah. Everyone has their openings there. I mean, there are a few other places in Brooklyn, but I’m not sure that they do releases. For Williamsburg, that’s the only real alt comic shop.

BURNS: Describe the strips that were published in Smoke Signal, the “Murmur” installments.

STEIN: Those were just me trying to have fun. You know, it takes me one year to do each issue of Eye of the Majestic Creature, so when I get the chance to do something else that people will see I want to make it different and have fun with it, and I love silent comics. I love them. So I wanted to do a silent comic. What I did with the first installment, not knowing that I would keep doing more installments after that, I wrote a poem and then I drew the images in thumbnails to go along with the poem, and then I took out the poem so it’s just the images with no writing, no bubbles, no text.

BURNS: Marshmallow and the instruments were already present in Eye of the Majestic Creature, right?

STEIN: Right, and this was in a different world.

BURNS: Right. Much more surreal.

STEIN: Yeah. And they exist alongside these slug creatures who are kind of evil. I mean they’re not really evil, they’re just these big animals, big carnivorous animals. They’re threatening to Marshmallow and Mimolette. And then the current one which I just did and hasn’t been published yet, which is a full page, the other ones were half pages, my lap steel that’s also in Eye of the Majestic Creature, named Ping Ping, he’s at sea, and he’s having his own adventure at sea while Marshmallow and Mimolette are kind of doing things on land.

BURNS: And that’s going to be in Smoke Signal… what are they on #8 now?

STEIN: I have no idea. Probably.

SELF-PUBLISHING

BURNS: One thing we didn’t talk about that I completely skipped over… You were self-publishing Eye of the Majestic Creature long long before the book.

STEIN: Right.

BURNS: How were you doing that? Taking it to the Kinkos?

STEIN: No, what I decided I wanted to do… You know, minicomics often look pretty bad. So, I thought that this comic deserved better treatment than Kinkos, so, the first one I self-published I did through a now-defunct co-op in Florida, and they were just an offset printing, little tiny company. They could do color separations for the cover, and then everything was just black and white on the inside. On newsprint. So I did that, and that was great because it was so cheap, and then they went out of business. Actually… yeah, it was called the Small Publishers Co-op.

The next issue I did, the #2 I did, was a black-and-white, because the off-set printer I used didn’t do spot colors. That was somewhere in Montana, I believe. And then the next one I did at another place (laughs), this was all a while ago, but the last one I used, they had never done a comic book before, they only did newspapers, so you know I gave them all the sizes and I gave them all these things and at the end one of the guys who worked at the plant sent me an email that said, “This was our first comic book, we’re pretty proud of it. It looks good.” So, I was happy about that.

And I was going to continue self-publishing them — actually I am going to continue self-publishing them, because the book, the Fantagraphics book is issues 1-4, and I’m currently drawing issue #6, so they’re going… they’re not picking up any new comic series put out as issues. I’m going to keep putting them out and hopefully they’ll keep collecting them in books as I put them out.

BURNS: How many copies were you able to get when you were self-publishing them?

STEIN: The minimum for these kinds of places was 1,000.

BURNS: Were you able to distribute most of them?

STEIN: No. (Laughter) Nope. I’m dwindling on the first issue though, which is great.

BURNS: So you’ve got quite a stack then, I presume.

STEIN: Yes. But it’s gone down a substantial amount. When I only have a few boxes left in my closet I get really excited. In New York, space is important.

BURNS: Describe Larrybear for readers who may not be familiar with Eye of the Majestic Creature.

STEIN: Larrybear is a young woman who is… well she’s a version of me. She’s a bit of me. A happier kind of version of myself, and a little bit more childlike. She’s usually a couple steps behind me in her development, and a few steps behind me by the time people see it. But yeah, her basic dilemma is whether or not she wants to be around people or be alone. When she’s alone, she’s not satisfied. Sometimes she is satisfied because she has these anthropomorphic friends that are instruments, but sometimes she’s not. When you first meet her she’s in the countryside having moved away from New York City. In the second issue, you see her trying to reach out to people in the countryside. In the third issue, she goes and visits her family in Chicago. So, you get her kind of back story. And then in the fourth issue, she moves back to New York so you see her amongst the civilized world.

BURNS: We spoke last time about how you feel your style, that you have a style became more apparent along the way. You were saying it felt like it developed organically. Do you remember points along in that development that you felt you had to change things about your drawing or concentrate on different aspects of the drawing to fine tune some things?

STEIN: Yeah. You’ll see in the book, from the first few pages to the last few pages it’s a huge jump in the amount of detail, the amount of blacks I’ve laid down on a page, the amount of stippling. In the beginning it’s just black line work. It’s kind of interesting, and I think in a way symbolic, because as Larrybear, throughout that book, as she becomes… as she’s more in the real world, things start becoming more realistic in the comic: the way they look. And that just started happening because I’m thinking, “Ok, now I do have to draw this building because she’s there and that’s what it is.” And to give more of a sense of where she is in the world as opposed to the countryside which really was, because I’ve never lived in the country, just my imagination.

ANTHROPOMORPH-O-RAMA

BURNS: Has it been difficult to convey emotion in the anthropomorphic, I guess possibly imaginary, characters? I guess Marshmallow interacts with Sea Shell, doesn’t he?

STEIN: Marshmallow is not so secretly in love with Sea Shell, and that’s a big deal for Marshmallow because he doesn’t like people at all. You know what, I was thinking about this, and my answer’s different from the last time we talked. I think, at the beginning… first of all, Marshmallow’s sense of humor is very very dry, so for him to have a lack of body movement and expression actually accentuates that dryness. So, I think it works in the character’s favor that he doesn’t have the facial expressions. In the last issue I drew, he gets seasonal affective disorder: SAD. And he starts drinking more. So I started drawing him a little more bendy and trying to make him look and behave in a more sad and pathetic way, and I think I was able to figure that out a little bit more than in the past. And it’s easier because I’ve been drawing him longer, so everything just falls into place.

BUNRS: What about the other two, I can never remember their names?

STEIN: The finger piano is called Mimolette, which is a kind of cheese, and the lap steel is called Ping Ping. Ping Ping and Mimolette don’t talk. Mimolette’s mute but she has a vibrant personality. She’s almost like a fifth grader, and she’s kind of there to show Marshmallow’s softer side because he pretends he doesn’t like her but he actually, when they’re alone, he takes care of her. And he also doesn’t like Ping Ping, but Ping Ping I’ve kind of held off… he doesn’t seem to have much of a personality right now because I’m going to use him in future issues and show his origins and where he comes from.

BURNS: So, as you take more away from what a more conventional character would have to express their thoughts and feelings, do you have to add new things? With Marshmallow you covered that really nicely, but what about without speech?

STEIN: Without them speaking. Well, I rely on Mimolette… They all have object fetishes. My object fetishes with object fetishes. (Laughter) So, I kind of rely on that to show were they’re at mentally. Mimolette is obsessed with a bouncy ball, because she’s kind of weightless and she can hover and twirl and almost float in the air, and so she loves these bouncy balls. And she’s very sweet. Ping Ping, you know he’s… I think he’s… not to give too much away, but he will be talking in the future.

BURNS: Spoiler Alert!

FANTAGRAPHICS, XERIC... AND BEYOND!

BURNS: How did Eye of the Majestic Creature get picked up by Fantagraphics?

STEIN: Well, I met Gary Groth at a convention in 2004, and I showed him this other construction paper graphic novel I was working on that I was hoping he would publish. So I have been seeing him around at conventions for a while, so he was aware of me. I was about to start self-publishing the fourth issue of Eye of the Majestic Creature, but I decided to send it around before I did. But I had pretty much given up hope, you know, “No one is going to publish this.” And right when I had given up hope, Eric Reynolds called me and said, “Oh, we’d like to publish the first four issues in a book.”

BURNS: You were awarded the Xeric Grant to publish Yeah, It Is! in 2003?

STEIN: Mmhmm.

BURNS: Ok. Now, with the Xeric Grant, you would have submitted Yeah, It Is completed, right?

STEIN: Right. I did.

BURNS: Then you were awarded the grant and you had to come up with… well, just tell me again how that works.

STEIN: So what happens when you apply for the Xeric Grant, you apply… they don’t need a whole project to be finished, but they need a bulk of it, 30 pages I think. That may have changed since I did it. The other thing they ask for is a quote from a printer for how much it’s going to cost. So, that money goes directly to the printer. You can’t really get away with, you know, just taking the money, running with it.

BURNS: Yeah, It Is! is another one of your construction paper graphic novels, and it was 48 pages, is that right?

STEIN: Yeah, it’s a small volume.

BURNS: And you described this as being a pretty big pain in the ass last time.

STEIN: (Laughs) Well, now that I look back, it really wasn’t. What I was alluding to was that process has trying aspects, being that you’re cutting very very small pieces of paper. It’s very, very messy. You’re cutting out an eyeball that’s ¼ the size of your pinky finger, and it falls to the floor with all the other pieces and you're going to have to arrange it all again. I had that happen three or four times in a row. I think I screamed out loud when that happened. But yeah, it’s really messy, and there’s some aspects of it that are infuriating. And using tweezers a lot. It’s really fun. It’s really fun, but it’s trying. But so is, you know, so is stippling. (Laughter)

BURNS: So, in one panel, how many pieces of construction paper would you include? I mean I know it would depend, but on average…

STEIN: Well, Yeah, It Is! is very simple compared to the one I did afterward that was never published. So, it got a lot denser later on. For one panel… God… hundreds of pieces.

BURNS: WOW! That is incredible.

STEIN: But it depends. It could be four if it’s just a close-up on someone. If it’s a building with windows and garbage cans and cats and people, you know?

BURNS: So how did you decide… let’s just take the side of a building as an example, how did you decide what was going to be what piece?

STEIN: Well, you’d start, let’s say you’re doing a city scene, your basic piece of construction paper would be blue because that’s the sky, and then you’re going to lay on your street or your sidewalk which is grey, and then your asphalt which is black or a dark grey, and you keep building and you have to keep sensing it out. I had a limited color palette, so I’d have to figure out how to balance everything within. So I don’t know… It’s intuitive.

BURNS: And you used some paint, right?

STEIN: Yes, watercolor paint.

BURNS: And that was just to put little accents on things. It was nothing major.

STEIN: Yeah. Like clouds. More so as I got deeper into the process. I would do more watercolors.

BURNS: How did working with construction paper change, or did it change how you think about comics? Did it affect your drawing at all?

STEIN: Yes. I think it made it stronger, because I think doing the construction paper before drawing Eye of the Majestic Creature taught me about composition. I would make my background, I would make my character and my dialogue bubble, and I would push them all around the background to figure out what the right composition was. So it wasn’t constantly erasing and going back, I would just have to slide things around. So I really think it made it a lot easier for me, because I don’t think I had a good sense of comics composition at the beginning.

BURNS: Do you think, looking back now, that the Xeric Grant was effective? Were you able to get Yeah, It Is! to more readers because of it?

STEIN: Yes. Definitely. People look who won online, so your name gets out there. Actually what helped me even more was Alternative Comics picked it up and distributed it in Diamond for me. So, I got it in comics stores around the country.

BURNS: You started, fairly recently, the Eye of the Majestic Creature blog, right?

STEIN: (Laughs) Right.

BURNS: And you were sort of reticent about that. Could you talk about why?

STEIN: I was, because I don’t like reading comics online. I don’t really think it’s the way they should be read. Because if you’re doing comics that are supposed to be published, you’re not thinking about the composition of one page or one panel, I mean you are thinking about that, but you’re thinking about opening up a two page spread. So, if you take a panel out of context, out of the context of the two page spread that it’s supposed to be published with, it can look bad, because it’s not supposed to be a panel on its own. The way my blog is set up, you can only really see one or two panels at a time. So, that makes me a little crazy.

That said, it’s a nice tool because I can show people, “Hey, I am working on this stuff. I am on issue #6. Here’s a little piece from that.” So yeah, it’s just great, but also it’s hard to get it to look proper on the screen, you know? And scanning things in panel by panel is really annoying. So… I try to make a blog post like once a week and have a little story up. Hopefully over time I can figure out how to tweak it and make it work better. A way that I would want to read a comic, even. But yeah, it seems like an important thing to do, to have some sort of web presence so people don’t… I don’t know, so people know that you’re alive.

BURNS: Right. And you had mentioned that you felt you’d shown Fantagraphics you were in this for the long haul. You weren’t just going to draw a couple issues and quit.

STEIN: Right. It wouldn’t do them any good to publish this book if they thought that. I haven’t really talked to them about my future plans. I haven’t really asked them if they want to publish more. One step at a time. But I have a lot of issues in my head for Eye of the Majestic Creature, and I’ve thought it all out. I’m halfway done with the next book right now.

BURNS: Do you feel like you do have a bigger presence on the net now? With the combination of the Xeric Grant, they have a website, and your blog. We talked last time about Tom Spurgeon — he’s been linking to your blog now.

STEIN: You know what I forgot to mention that’s been the biggest thing for me? Etsy.

BURNS: Oh yeah. I watched that video on there.

STEIN: My friend, Tara Young, who I’ve known a long time from the Brooklyn music scene, started working for Etsy. She was doing her “Handmade Portraits” series, and she said, “I’d love to do one on you.” So we did it and that really was great. It helped me with my sales through Etsy, people knew I was there. For people unfamiliar with Etsy, there’s tons and tons of sellers on there. I don’t know, millions. So to get people to your page is kind of difficult. So I’d say actually being on Etsy and getting that video made was probably the biggest deal as far as my presence on the web. Not that it was a big presence. Some presence. This interview will increase my web presence!

BURNS: Indeed it will.

Diaflogue: Wilfred Santiago exclusive Q&A about 21

mike

This interview was conducted by Fantagraphics' Eric Buckler. Thanks to Eric and Wilfred!

Wilfred Santiago has a striking cartooning style that he can mold to fit any of the diverse projects he has created or contributed to. He has worked on everything from Capes to XXX to the alternative In My Darkest Hour, his first graphic novel for Fantagraphics. His newest project, 21, is about one of the most inspiring individuals to ever play the sport of baseball: Roberto Clemente. Rob Neyer from ESPN.com said about the book: "Wilfred Santiago's 21 is brilliant and beautiful, challenging and lyrical...which seems exactly right, as Roberto Clemente was all those things and more." Santiago and Clemente are both natives of Puerto Rico.

ERIC BUCKLER: What is your personal relationship with baseball?

WILFRED SANTIAGO: As personal as any other sport. Growing up, you either did sports or you did not. You called a couple of neighbors and you played baseball, basketball or whatever.

It's been years since I played any sports at all, and it feels a bit weird not to have that today, so I got a kick out of "playing baseball" on 21.

BUCKLER: You are from Puerto Rico; what did legendary Puerto Rican baseball star Roberto Clemente mean to you as a kid, and how is he seen by Puerto Ricans?

SANTIAGO: As a kid, it was different. In Puerto Rico, he was more of a myth than anything else. Sure, 21 played great baseball, but it was his reputation as a good-hearted Christian that preceded his game: perhaps to the level of deity. And you get this sense, because that's all the adults talked about. I never saw him play; he had already died. For a time, I didn't get that I couldn't go to a game and watch him play, like he never left. But his image was almost everywhere: a coliseum with his name on it. I haven't been to the island for years so I couldn't tell you about his impact on the present.

BUCKLER: This book is a biography. How did you go about capturing what he was like when he was alive?

SANTIAGO: Dissection. Clemente was a private man. Once you go through the rudimentary written biographies and any available footage of the man, you can start shaping his presence.

There are two parts to Clemente: The athlete is one way on the field, and another way as a father and husband. Roberto doesn't have a secret identity per se. However, in order to write Spider-Man, you also need to depict his life as a regular teenager. Peter Parker in costume becomes someone else and so are athletes. And of course, the people that surrounded him, the period when he lived, these are things that shape all of us, which are the same things that shaped Clemente as a character. Many times you have to separate the myth from the person and sometimes you have to speculate within parameters. For example, it was a known fact that Clemente went to a certain restaurant, but you have to speculate about whether he had chicken or ribs.

BUCKLER: This seems like an anomaly in alternative comics, a biographical sports story. Can you talk about how this idea came together?

SANTIAGO: By process of elimination.

Non-fiction is something I enjoy very much and a biography is something I thought of doing after In My Darkest Hour. I compiled a list of people, and Clemente was the one that came out on top. It was a hard decision because there were so many good subjects out there, but there was a personal connection with Clemente even though we couldn't be more different.

That, however, was not the reason.

Once I narrowed the list down to three, it was an easy decision for Clemente to be the first biography.

The fact that sports, outside of manga, was an anomaly in comics was appealing, but that wasn't the reason either. Or that comics biographies sometimes make you feel like you are back at school, and I thought that was a good challenge. There were many reasons. It was a very calculated decision. I mean I knew it was going to take years to finish a book and do it well, and that wouldn't guarantee its success at the end.

BUCKLER: Did you have any particular challenges in the process?

SANTIAGO: Lots. There were challenges that you expected and then there were those that popped up during the process of creating.

BUCKLER: Could you give us some examples?

SANTIAGO: 21 took about a six years complete and a lot of things could happen in that period of time.

Known challenges —

Exhibit A: Sometimes it was difficult to decide what to cut out or leave in the story. For example, in the ‘60s Martin Luther King [Jr.] visited Puerto Rico and hung out at Clemente's farm. It would have been a nice scene to work on, but it didn't really move the story forward, so it was left out the book.

Unknown challenges —

Exhibit B: As I got close to finishing the original page count of 148 pages, I realized I needed more pages to make it work or give it to FB the way it was. The book was going to be delayed because I calculated I needed to add about 50 pages, bringing the count to 200 pages, so I was going to miss the deadline. I didn't anticipate any of this and at the same time the "21 funds"
dried. Book went over budget and I couldn't afford to work solely on 21 because I needed to get paying gigs, delaying the book even more. Yes kids, doing comics will cost you money.

BUCKLER: What did you hope to accomplish with such a concise title? Was his number that much of his identity?

SANTIAGO: It was and I still think it is. When Sammy Sosa used to play for the Chicago Cubs he wore 21 in honor of Clemente.

The first time I flirted with the idea of doing a biography on Clemente was back in 1997. I lived in Long Island City, NY on 21st Street. Every time I saw the street number, I thought about the idea. I'm glad I didn't take on the project back then because I would not have done a good job.

There was this story that Roberto Clemente Walker counted the number of letters in his full name and that's how he came up with 21. But according to the Maraniss biography, that wasn't the case. Nevertheless, 21 has always meant Clemente for a lot of people.

BUCKLER: Would you explain how you came up with some of the unique visual devices to display some of the ideas in the book (eyes on fingers, baseball bombs, etc.)?

SANTIAGO: I don't know how unique the devices are. Old cartoons are full of figurative language and puns.

With sports, baseball analogies are generally overused to describe something: therefore, you should be able to give an account of baseball with non-sports analogies or puns in an effective manner. The book tries to speak to a broad audience.

BUCKLER: Page 75 is one of the most engaging pages in the book: it depicts the "PANIC SQUAD." Would you talk about composing that page?

SANTIAGO: That's just a shout-out to the classics. Most of the comics I read are pre-1995. As far as mainstream comics, the Silver Age ones are probably my favorites.

The Panic Squad was a group of feared players in Puerto Rico that included Willie Mays and Clemente before he entered the MLB. As I read about the Panic Squad, the first image that came to mind was of the archetypal splash page with characters coming at you in comics. Why fight it? They all have a hell of an entrance: "Behold — The Sinister Six!" as they jump off of the page. Well, in this case it's "The Panic Squad!" I tell you, I haven't drawn superhero comics in a while, and that page gave me a fix.

BUCKLER: The colors you use in this book are very earthy: browns, yellows and golds (along with black and white). Why did you use this palette?

SANTIAGO: Yellow and a deep dark blue are the two colors I used; from these all the rest spawned. The Pittsburgh Pirates' colors (yellow, black and white) comprised the template. With the blue and the yellow, I could get colors as dark as black and sepia, browns, greens and beige, muted blues, etc. All this works great with the organic nature of baseball. You know, leather, dirt, grass, jockstraps: You get the idea. It was a nice coincidence that Pittsburgh's colors offered me a palette that compliments the story perfectly to the point I didn't need any other.

BUCKLER: How did you develop the cartooning style you have today?

SANTIAGO: That was just for 21. Today, I'm doing something different. I don't bug much on the style other than what I visually want the reader to see ... or not, with various degrees of success.

In 21, there's manga, Mad magazine, Golden Age illustrators, Daffy Duck, Scorsese, Silver Age comics and the Bible between two slices of music sheets.

BUCKLER: Can you talk about how this has differed from projects you have done in the past?

SANTIAGO: For instance, in 21, the man's story has already been written and that differs from some of the past work. It was a slower process too, because of the many facts and elements to keep track of.

On a technical level, the two-tone color process was something I experimented with before in my previous work, In My Darkest Hour. Each project has a set of challenges and advantages, so each required different preparation. I wanted a knockout, not a split decision. That's part of why the process is so fun; I don't treat two projects alike. The book, the thing itself, has to be part of it. In the graphic novels I do, the story begins on the cover. Of course, this is just the way I approach the creative process. We all strut in different ways.

Speaking of the cover, I drew the wraparound image, but it looks so good because it was actually designed by Jacob Covey. This was a last-minute decision, and he wasn't appropriately credited in the book.

BUCKLER: Clemente has had a lot of attention in pop culture. What do you think this comic adds to his legacy? And/or, what do you think it can do that cannot be achieved in other forms his story has been told in?

SANTIAGO: It's comics; there's so much to explore through this medium, so many possibilities: simple, but with as many variables as there are people.

BUCKLER: What kind of people do you think will be attracted to this book?

SANTIAGO: At this point it seems like all kinds of people! There are compliments from those who don't even like sports but enjoy the comics, and that says something about the depth of Roberto's story.

Not to mention the praise from the Baseball crowd who can easily smell an "intruder" a mile away. I treated the sport and its history with respect and took time to immerse in the sport in order to effectively deconstruct it for the comic-book page. It was a lot of work but well worth it.

BUCKLER: Can you tell us about any other projects you have in the works?

SANTIAGO: There are a few things going on, my next project is called Thunderbolt — a biography based on 19th century American abolitionist John Brown. No publishing date yet, but those who are interested can register for updates and news at www.captainjohnbrown.com.

BUCKLER: Is there anything we didn't cover, or anything you would like to add?

SANTIAGO: Those who bought 21 should go to facebook.com/21thestoryofrobertoclemente and let others know what you think.

I'm doing a couple of signings, and I hope people will bring their copies to sign, or buy another to donate to a school for Roberto Clemente day later this year. In the Chicago area, there will be a signing April 16 at Comix Revolution in Evanston, IL beginning at 2:00PM. In Seattle: May 4 at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery.

[Ed. Note: Wilfred has two additional signings lined up: May 21 at Phantom of the Attic in Pittsburgh, PA and May 28 at Chicago Comics in Chicago, IL.]

Mini-Diaflogue: 1 Q, 1 A with Johnny Ryan

mike

Ever since Book 1 of Prison Pit came out in 2009 I've had a question for Johnny Ryan and I finally asked him over email yesterday:

Q: Is there any chance we'll ever see a Prison Pit prequel where we see what CF did to get thrown into the pit and how he was captured?

A: No, I don't think so. You can probably already tell it was something pretty heinous. That's all you really need to know.

Well there you have it.

Diaflogue: Joe Daly exclusive Q&A

mike

This interview was conducted over email by Fantagraphics' Eric Buckler. Thanks to Eric and Joe!

Cartoonist Joe Daly grew up in apartheid South Africa. His perspective on storytelling and illustration have a deeply infused characterization and a mythical slapstick. The comics reflect a bizarre and amazing facet of imagination that is at once familiar as it is far flung and not of this planet. His characters in Dungeon Quest are on a mission to find the Atlantean Resonator Guitar, and will go through everything from beating the shit out of some homophobic goons to returning a magic penis sheath to a large breasted demigod. The crew will be suited up with new armor, weapons, and will have loads of new mind altering opportunities in the all new Dungeon Quest Book 2. Daly is the creator of Scrublands and The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book.

ERIC BUCKLER: Would you talk about how you pace your storytelling?

JOE DALY: Comics can be a very efficient form for story telling, so it's very easy and natural for a comic narrative to progress very quickly. I think a cartoonist is usually trying to counteract that natural tendency by trying to slow things down. You're always moving away from the last plot point and towards the next one, and so I try to be aware of what's needed in order to heighten the moment of arriving at that plot point. It often requires adding more panels, slowing down the action, and letting the dialogue ramble to build tension as one is moving into "the big moment." Very seldom do I encounter a situation where I find I need to eliminate panels. That said, it becomes a fine line between building tension and padding, so the idea is to let the plot point dictate how much tension is required to precede it, and then add no more or no less panels than is required. As a reader you have to arrive at a plot point organically, in a way that you're a little unaware that you've even hit a plot point. I know as a reader I don't like to feel rushed or shunted along from plot point to plot point, as if one were on a conveyor belt. One of my main criticisms of my Red Monkey stories, is that they tend to be plot dominant, and the reader is moved from point to point too quickly. A story shouldn't be all about plot, the reader needs breathing space, unfocused space, where they can engage in the story in a non-rational kind of way. Of course, some readers favor structure and plot heavy stories, and some don't: they'll prefer the rambling, looser approach. I think each story should inform the pace that's required to tell the story, and since I've found myself doing these strange action adventure stories (with quite a lot of dialogue) I've found it's natural to keep "medium pace," somewhere between Chris Ware's work (extreme patience) and an in your face superhero action comics (extreme immediacy).

BUCKLER: Why black and white? Did you consider using color on this comic?

DALY: My first two books were already in color, and I wanted to try something different. I'd discovered while working on the Red Monkey stories, which were in color, that coloring the work took me almost as much time as writing and drawing the work, and so given that I'm currently unable to employ a colorist on my books I decided to eliminate this time consuming process altogether. I was also interested in shifting from a clear line art style to a high contrast black and white art style, simply to broaden my abilities as a drawer and inker, and that's the process I'm engaged in at the moment. I think black and white, whether it's in photography, or in film, or in comics can be very elegant and complete. When "completeness" can be achieved in black and white, it's all the more impressive and satisfying to me, because of the purity and simplicity of black and white. I think perhaps black and white also engages the reader's own imagination more than color, in that they are filling in the white spaces with their own projected colors. When one leaves things out, one creates suggestions. Also, working in black and white helps to keep the cost of the book down.

BUCKLER: Can you talk about lexicons you draw when creating dialogue in Dungeon Quest?

DALY: For Dungeon Quest I was trying to evoke the kind of language that me and my video gaming friends would use when playing video games when we were 10-14 year olds. It as a strange mixture of general profanity, South African school-boy slang, American slang we'd learned from TV and movies, technical jargon and the pseudo-poetic language of high fantasy/adventure which would be used in the actual game. Saved games could be titled things like "got to get splendid key from orange dude," "kief!," "totally fucked," "dawn light factory skyline," "given frayed rope to little whore," "in lonely place," "got to open fucking bay doors," stuff like that. It became a kind of esoteric lexicon. I don't apply this lexicon directly to the writing in Dungeon Quest. I'm drawing from it, allowing it to inform my dialogue. It's a flavor.

BUCKLER: Would you talk about the design of the books?

DALY: For Scrublands and The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book I did drawn covers. When it came to Dungeon Quest I wasn't satisfied with a drawn cover for some reason, and I wanted to try something different. I'd already made a few sculptures of some of my cartoon characters in clay simply for my own satisfaction, but I hadn't figured out what to do with them, other than let them lie around on a shelf. When I was thinking about some of the themes in Dungeon Quest which relate to ancient cultures, I realized it might be quite appropriate to photograph the sculptures and have them appear on a background which looked like a black box to almost evoke a museum display of ancient Mesopotamian, Minoan or Pre-Colombian sculptures from South America. In this case it was meant to look like a display of ancient "Atlantean" sculpture.

The rest of the design was determined by the basic image of the sculpture against a black background. I kept it very simple and minimalist. Because Dungeon Quest is a series, the design of the other books in the series follows the rules which were determined while designing Dungeon Quest book one.

The end papers are actual Sumerian art, which I scanned and added color to. I liked this Sumerian art because the style of drawing isn't so different from my own, and it's designed to tell a story about life in Sumer. It's a comic strip, and one of the oldest ones ever, I'm sure.

The books are a smaller format than my previous books, because the original art is worked at a smaller scale. I really like small books at the moment, and I want to make a really small format book in the future — postcard size, perhaps.

BUCKLER: You come from South Africa. What is the comic culture like there?

DALY: Books and reading culture in South Africa is generally poorly developed, and since comics seem to occupy a marginal area of the general book culture, I think it's fair to say the consciousness in South Africa when it comes to comics is very low. There's quite a strong tradition of editorial cartooning in South African newspapers, but that really is a different realm next to narrative comics. So the combination of lack of consciousness about comics and lack of market for them means hardly anything is really going on here. We're a smallish ex-colony with the majority of the population emerging, hopefully, from a 3rd World culture and economy. Lack of access to books and illiteracy are amongst the many challenges.

I think that American comics like Marvel and DC Comics, and British comics like Beano, 2000 AD, Viz, etc. were somewhat popular here in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Tintin and Asterix were popular here too and were translated into Afrikaans. Stuff like Robert Crumb's work, Gilbert Shelton's Furry Freak Brothers and anything subversive or counter cultural was pretty much forbidden by the Apartheid, White Nationalist government up until the early 1990s. It got into the country somehow but it was essentially banned material. The mainstream culture doesn't seem to know or care about comics very much anymore. I'm sure this would be very different if we'd been a French colony linked to French comics consciousness, but we weren't.

There are a few comics shops, some of them actually very good, in the major cities like Cape Town and Johannesburg, and some book shops have a graphic novel section which are pretty dismally stocked most of the time from my point of view. Local book publishers rarely publish comics, and they're not successful publications most of the time.

So there is a lot of despondency when it comes to the big picture of comics in South Africa; however there is a small group of individuals here who know their stuff well, when it comes to comics, and an even smaller group attempting to make them. Of that group even fewer have had the good fortune of getting published overseas, which is probably what is required in order to seriously practice comics making if you're based in South Africa. Given the lack of consciousness around comics and the lack of publishing opportunities it's almost miraculous that South Africa has produced internationally recognized, independent comics artists such as Anton Kannemeyer (aka Joe Dog), Conrad Botes (aka Konradski), both of Bitterkomix fame, and Karlien De Villiers and myself, who've both been associated with Bitterkomix, at one point or another.

BUCKLER: The "status update," where you display each character's inventory of items and skills: What does that bring to the story?

DALY: I'm not sure that it brings very much to the story. However it's kind of a cute conceit as it relates to videogame RPGs, and their stat screens or windows. It's also helpful for the reader in that it lets you know what the character's statistics are, and helps them track the character's development across the whole series. It orients the reader and it's cute and fun. I also like inventing the names for the stuff. For some reason I find phrases like "padded flax jodhpurs" very amusing.

BUCKLER: The cross-pollination between video-games and comics, Scott Pilgrim for example, is an interesting phenomenon. What more about this synthesis do you want to explore?

DALY: Mmm, probably not much more. Whilst I think of Dungeon Quest definitely having its origins in videogame culture I also want it to stand alone as an original narrative which deviates off into strange new territories. The point I'd like people to get is that you don't have to be familiar with video games or fantasy literature to appreciate Dungeon Quest. It helps I suppose if you are familiar with those things, but it's not essential. Most people will probably not appreciate Dungeon Quest anyway, but for different reasons, not relating to video games or fantasy. It's really comics comics, y'know, not mainstreamy neutered graphic "literature." My next project after Dungeon Quest hasn't got anything to do with video games, but it's a long way away.

BUCKLER: Are the characters involved in the group, Millennium Boy, Steve, Lash Penis, and Nerd Girl, inspired by real people?

DALY: Yes, except perhaps Millennium Boy. He lives inside my mind. He's an elf, a sprite, a mini-magus. He's kind of like how I'd like to be as a person. He's a confident trouble maker but he's totally loyal to his crew, and he's a force for good in the Dungeon Quest world. He's a force to be reckoned with.

BUCKLER: How is your childhood reflected in Dungeon Quest?

DALY: I couldn't relate to the culture I was surrounded by (White, Western, Corporate, Judeo-Christian, Bourgeois, Anti-Shamanic, Materialistic, South African). I felt like a Mongolian, or something, and so there's a seeking, a yearning, for a tribe of my own, that's reflected in Dungeon Quest. There's a longing for other times and other places.

Besides that, I think I actually had a pretty normal childhood, mostly. I think, generally, children experience a great deal of frustration and anguish because they have no power, or are not allowed to have power in a confusing, threatening world controlled by adults who seem to behave like demigod-idiots. The world has all the power. The idiot adults try to keep everything hidden. Then when you grow up you get like a tiny measly little bit of power to play around with, and that's also frustrating and disappointing. Millennium Boy's quest is a child's fantasy of wielding the "christic-luciferian" energies against a dark, dangerous, deceitful world. It's a quest for personal freedom. But that involves going into the "dungeon," or through the underworld cycle. But that's kind of just the Jungian, Joseph Campbell kind of interpretation. I'm not exactly sure how my childhood is reflected in Dungeon Quest, to tell you the truth. It's really just a vibe.

I fucking hated school most of the time. It just seemed like of waste of most of your time as a child; your precious childhood. I think the other "learners" and the teachers were uncomfortable having me around. I only really enjoyed art, woodwork and judo class, I think. If you were a boy in a white school in South Africa in the '80s and '90s, like I was, you were kind of expected to play rugby. It was compulsory in some cases, but that was like the dumbest shittiest thing I could imagine doing. Only one guy I knew ever became a professional rugby player, and he fucked up his back pretty quickly. The other guys were wasting their time, but rugby was held up as this fucking glorious thing in our world, like a nationalistic religion. I dug judo because it was like for the outcasts who didn't want to play rugby, or weren't compelled into by their parents. It had grades and meditations and stuff and it kind of felt like belonging to a secret society. It was individualistic too. You also learned stuff like balance, calm, self-control, respect for your opponent, how to use your opponents strength against them, and Shinto-Buddhist philosophy stuff. Our judo teacher was a really good man. I'm a really skinny guy and I look like a nerd but I could break my enemies with the judo I know, but I won't kill them. That spirit is somehow reflected in Dungeon Quest I think, except the "not killing your enemies part," but it's only a comic book after all. I also did karate and skateboarding outside of school, also Shinto based activities.

BUCKLER: In the 2nd volume, we see the characters garments and accessories becoming much more ornate and intricate: different kinds of leather, metal armor, etc. Is there any significance to the different costumes?

DALY: I guess it's like accumulating personal, psychological armor in life-Character armor. Will the characters have to shed their armor at some point to advance to the higher levels? Readers will have to stay tuned to find out. On a less metaphorical level, I also like researching armor and designing the outfits for the characters. It's satisfying in its own respect. It also means the characters change appearance over the course of the series, which means I don't get bored drawing them the same all the time. Hopefully it will be an area of interest for the readers too.

BUCKLER: Do you have an endpoint for this series in mind?

DALY: Yes, but I want to get there slowly.

BUCKLER: The ruins that the group encounters are very intricate; are those based on any specific locale or culture?

DALY: Yes, the ruins towards the end of book two are based on the ruins of Ta Prohm, in Cambodia, built by the God King Jayavarman VII. I'm not making this shit up. Dungeon Quest is painstakingly researched to give it an authentic backdrop. I've made the deepest studies into the occult history of civilization for Dungeon Quest. It explores the known and the unknown. The main word you have to follow in order to tie it altogether is "Rama." Dungeon Quest has many levels to it, and those levels have levels, levels I don't even know about yet. It's an exploration.

BUCKLER: Can you talk about any other projects you have going right now, anything you would like to be involved in?

DALY: I'd like to be involved in a project that actually sells significantly one day. It's very difficult to produce these books in such a hostile, unrewarding marketplace — very difficult. I'm kind of working on a very small format, postcard size, yet very thick, self contained graphic novel in the background, but I haven't worked on it for almost a year now. I hope to work on it some more between Dungeon Quest 3 and Dungeon Quest 4. It's actually very special, I think, but that's all I want to say about it right now.

BUCKLER: Is there anything you wanted to add, anything we didn't go over?

DALY: Dungeon Quest book 3, which I'm currently working on, is already a longer book than the first two and drawn much better. It's got more panels per page than the previous books most of the time. It's going to be a fat book. I'm going to try to complete work on it this year. Dungeon Quest book 4 will also be a substantial book and it should be the last in the series.

Also, western civilization is over, it's a broken down old car. Mongolian Shamanistic civilization is on its way in. The United States won't have a president anymore, you'll have a Khan, and he won't be an American. People don't realize it but Nelson Mandela (N'el'son' Mandala) wasn't South Africa's first Black African president, he was South Africa's first "Mongolian" president. I'm not joking. There's a whole lot more to this revelation, but I think we've run out of time for now. Speak to you next time, and thanks very much for the thoughtful questions.

(Photo from Mahala)

Diaflogue: Stan Sakai exclusive Q&A

mike

This interview was conducted by Fantagraphics' Eric Buckler, making his Flog debut. Thanks to Eric and Stan!

Stan Sakai has crafted the adventures of his Ronin Samurai rabbit, Usagi Yojimbo, for more than 25 years. He has made Usagi one of the most recognizable "funny animals" or anthropomorphic characters in the comics universe through his unique storytelling and peerless craft. Usagi wanders through Edo period (1600s) Japan, running into the likes of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird) and Groo The Wanderer (Sergio Aragones). Sakai's work has been praised by the likes of Stan Lee and been awarded three Eisners for storytelling, overall talent, and lettering. Fantagraphics released a special commemorative edition of the first seven books of Usagi's travels last month.

ERIC BUCKLER: What is it like to revisit some of those first stories?

STAN SAKAI: I re-read them and I was quite pleased at how well they read. These were stories that I had done 25 years ago, even more. They really read coherently and they still play a part in the Usagi saga that I have been telling. You can tell how much the character has matured since then, of course, but I am quite pleased at how well the stories worked.

BUCKLER: What do you think Usagi Yojimbo has contributed to the pop-culture image of the samurai?

SAKAI: I think it has made comic-book readers more aware of the true samurai culture, even though we are talking about a rabbit samurai. It is because I have tried to keep the spirit of the samurai in my stories, both in the research of the history of Japan as well as its culture. I try to convey that.

BUCKLER: How much of you is in Usagi? Do you and the rabbit share a lot of qualities?

SAKAI: He is very idealized. I would like to think that Usagi has a bit of me in him. I have worked with him for a long time, and I think I have infused more of myself into him. You can see that his personality has changed from the early days; back then he was a bit more stoic, a bit more reserved. Now he is more engaging, he just seems to be more well-rounded now. I think it has to do with both my getting familiar with the character as well as — like you said — perhaps there is part of myself included in Usagi.

BUCKLER: So you feel like you guys have aged well together? [Sakai laughs].

Which elements do you think set Usagi Yojimbo apart from other anthropomorphic characters both in comics and elsewhere?

SAKAI: Well he is unique; physically there is no other samurai character that has his ears tied. So that sets him apart, as well as, I think, putting a character in an actual historical and cultural setting. I built walls around it and the walls are made by the history and the culture of Japan. But I try to keep it as a fantasy series. I can't really tell you what sets him apart from other anthropomorphic characters. I like to think it's the quality of the artwork as well as the writing. My wife was telling me that the artwork might attract new readers, but it's the quality of the writing that keeps them coming back every month.

BUCKLER: What was the most memorable moment for you in the first seven books as far as story genesis?

SAKAI: My favorite story is the kite story and that is in Book 5, and that for me was a turning point. That was the first time I did a lot of research for my stories and that story took about a period of two or three years. I had bought a book on Japanese kite making, and thought, " Oh, it will be nice to make a story about kites one day." But it wasn't until a year or so later that I was sketching in my sketchbook, and drew Usagi being lifted by a kite and that sparked the idea; I can do a story around this drawing. I dug out that kite-making book and did a bunch more research, and the story about kites came together. It's still one of my very favorite stories. It is told from the viewpoint of three characters — a kite maker, gamblers and Usagi. I told the process of making an odako, giant kite, for a festival. The gamblers come to town, and start cheating the people. Usagi comes to see the festival, and exposes the gamblers. Then the action begins.

BUCKLER: I love it when you go through and follow the manufacturing of the kite. That is really great.

SAKAI: For me I think that was a big turning point in my approach to doing Usagi; before then it was pretty much an action/adventure series, a fantasy series. But it was with the kite story that I really did put a lot of research and time into my storytelling.

BUCKLER: You did a lot of reinterpretation of classic and contemporary samurai stories in the first years (Lone Wolf and Cub, etc.) Do you still rely as heavily on these stories today in the continuing journey of Usagi?

SAKAI: Not really, actually I never relied that much on the classics, most of the stories are entirely from new cloth. But there were a few (because I grew up with those stories) that I wanted to bring part of those stories into Usagi: such as "Silk Fair" in Book 2 — that was inspired by Yojimbo, the movie by Akira Kurosawa starring Toshiro Mifune. But there is only a few bits of Yojimbo that are in it, if you were to read the story, you wouldn't really associate it with Yojimbo at all. There are a few things, such as it takes place during a silk fair and Usagi, like the Mifune character, climbs up a big watch tower. Other than that, the stories are very different. There were times when I would put Usagi in as the hero in a Japanese folktale, I did that for a few stories later on, such as "Momo-Usagi-Taro" in the Dark Horse run. Usagi is telling a traditional folktale to a bunch of kids, and he puts himself in as the hero.

BUCKLER: You have a very spare and clean style with your illustration. Could you talk about where your style comes from, what your influences were?

SAKAI: [Laughter.] Where my style comes from? It comes from so many places. My first big inspiration for art was Steve Ditko through his Spider-Man and Dr. Strange run. I grew up looking at manga, though back then we just called them Japanese comics. When I discovered the European folks, that was a revelation. I was first introduced to Moebius in Heavy Metal, and that just blew me away. A lot of my inking style is influenced by Milo Manara's early work. Alfonso Azpiri's color work is amazing. I love Hermann's storytelling. There are just so many different artists that have inspired me. Much of my attitude towards writing and drawing comes from Sergio Aragonés. I work with him closely on Groo the Wanderer, and a lot of that rubbed off on me. He's very dedicated to the craft. He's the one who actually pushed me to do my research.

BUCKLER: Can you take us through creating the backgrounds and environments for Usagi? Do you have any basis for them or are they actually taken from countrysides and cities of 1600s Japan?

SAKAI: Well, I try to make it as realistic as possible, so the farmhouses and the environments are as true as I can get it. There are some things like the clothing that has to be adapted for my comics. Usagi's sandals, or waraji, are based upon the Japanese sandals, but has to be simplified because Usagi has stubby feet. But I try to make it as true to the culture as I can. Besides kite making, I have done stories about sword making, various festivals, pottery making, and taiko drums. I even did a story about Japanese seaweed farming. I am probably the only Western cartoonist who has done a story about that. I do as much research as I can as far as the culture, the history, and the environment in Japan at that time. I try to put Usagi in a realistic world: that might be what differentiates Usagi from so many of the other fantasy series. He is in an actual historical environment.

BUCKLER: Your characters have a large range of emotions. What is the hardest part about putting a human emotion to a cartoon animal?

SAKAI: Oh I think it is easier. I think with the cartoon animals I can really exaggerate their emotions. For me it is much easier.

BUCKLER: What brought about the streamlining of the look of Usagi from the first early few sketches from Nilsson Groudthumper etc, that you provided for this new edition?

SAKAI: You mean the artwork is simpler?

BUCKLER: I mean when he was in the gingko leaf robe (from prototype images included in the special edition), he looks more streamlined now after that, almost more deadly.

SAKAI: Usagi has changed over the years and most of it is unconscious on my part. He acquired a little bump on his nose in Book 5 or 6. Before that, he had a straight Roman profile. But you know those are all unconscious on my part. The stories have gotten much more dramatic, along with that, his look has changed. He is not as cute and cuddly as he was when he first appeared. Back then his proportions were much more like a cute little fuzzy animal, he was three or four heads tall. Now he is more like five heads tall by Book 7 and that streamlining goes with the story I have been telling. I am really happy with the way the entire Usagi saga has developed over the years, because when I first created Usagi, I wasn't sure which way to take it. A humorous series? That seemed obvious when using animals. Or a purely historical series, or a purely fantasy series. I finally decided of a cross between a fantasy and historical series, that is, it is a fantasy series but with historical roots. I own the character, I am the writer and the artist, and can do any type of story I want. I have done romances, I have done action/adventure, I have done mysteries. It's great, I can do anything I want. I even did a science-fantasy series with Space Usagi.

BUCKLER: The cover gallery in the new edition is a great place to see all the cover art in one place. Could you talk about your approach to doing a cover?

SAKAI: When I can, I will illustrate a scene or convey the mood of the story. But often we'll need a cover, but I won't have a story [laughter], and I may do an interesting visual and build a story around that art. Or do a completely generic cover, completely unrelated to the story. I just try to make the cover as different from the previous one as possible. I had input from Kim [Thompson] for the first seven books. "Oh you did a cover with a lot of fighting, the next book should be a bit different than that." Or "You already had a cover with Usagi just standing around, let's do some action this time."

Kim was a great editor when I was just starting. He gave me my freedom yet gave really good advice.

BUCKLER: What character's story, besides Usagi, is the most pleasurable for you to see unfold? And why?

SAKAI: Gen the bounty hunter. Next to Usagi he is my favorite character. I like him because he is so different from Usagi. He is a rhinoceros because, physically, he is so massive next to the bunny. That makes a nice visual contrast. There is also the contrast of personality: Usagi is a more traditional type of samurai; Gen is more grubby and money-loving. [Buckler laughs.] And yet they get along and I kind of like Gen for that.

BUCKLER: You seem pretty strongly connected to your fan-base. How do you balance where you would like Usagi to go with what your fans might request?

SAKAI: You know actually my fans have had minimal input to the storyline; I may get their advice occasionally. Actually the Usagi website www.usagiyojimbo.com has sometimes been invaluable in finding research for me. I remember when I did Grass Cutter (Dark Horse). It is a legendary sword, which actually did exist. I needed visuals of Grass Cutter and it took fans three months before they actually found something. But eventually they said, "Here it is." The fan-base is just wonderful; I have amazing readers. I have met so many of them personally because I do travel. When I went to France, one of my readers took time off from work and took me around. I was in Croatia two weeks ago, and a guy from Slovenia came over and met me there, it is just incredible. I have the best fans in the world, literally [laughter].

BUCKLER: Has this landmark of 25 years brought you any revelations about the journey of Usagi?

SAKAI: Not really [laughter]. I keep going one issue at a time, I don't think about big landmark issues. When the 100th Dark Horse issue came out, my first thought was "Just ignore it, it's 100 issues, just keep going to another story," and it was my Dark Horse editor, Diana Schutz, who said, "Not every series reaches a hundred issues. Lets do something special." We had a Usagi roast, with lots of guest artists like Sergio, Frank Miller, Guy Davis, and Jeff Smith. The Dark Horse issue #141, which is scheduled for spring 2011, will mark the 200th issue of Usagi. Right now I have no plans to do anything special.

BUCKLER: The extras with this new Special Edition include a piece you did entitled "How I Do Usagi." Could you talk about that and how that came about? Also, could you tell us who the gallery of friends are that you show your work to in it?

SAKAI: [Laughter.] If you remember the first Spider-Man Annual [laughter], there was a three or four page sequence by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko on how they create a Spider-Man comic, but it was mainly tongue-in-cheek. At that time I was still going to junior high school and I had no idea how comics were made, but it was so tongue-in-cheek that it really told me nothing [laughter]. I did "How I Do Usagi" the way I would have wanted it to be. That was like 30 years ago. I tried to be as specific as possible: How big the sheets of paper are, what type of ink, what type of pen, the lettering, everything, I wanted to be as specific as possible. I work with Stan Lee, lettering the Spider-Man Sunday newspaper strips, and I actually told him about that and he was surprised and he said "Really? You actually took that seriously?"

But that is the way I wish it had been done. Back then there were no conventions and very few magazines, if any, on comic books. It was a very big mystery to me. And those people are guys in Hawaii I grew up with. There is Dennis Fujitake, Gary Kato, Dave Thorne, I think Sergio (Aragonés) is in that page too. My wife is in it and my daughter is the one ripping up those pages [laughter].

BUCKLER: Do you feel like there is anything we haven't covered, anything you want to add?

SAKAI: It is a handsome book; it is beautiful. I am glad Fantagraphics put this out. The first thing I thought was, "Oh this is a heavy book!" [Laughter.] Wow, when you see everything in one place like that, I was surprised how much work I had done with Fantagraphics. It turned out great. Jacob [Covey] did the art design, didn't he?

BUCKLER: Yeah.

SAKAI: He did a great job.

Oh, one more thing. This book also reprints the [comic] stories with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. A big part of Usagi's popularity was his appearances on the TMNT television series. People still come up to me and say, "I first learned about Usagi from the Ninja Turtles." That is because back then, 26 years ago, there were just a few black-and-white comics and the Turtles came out, and that sparked the black-and-white explosion. Usagi and the Turtles started in the same year, almost the same month, so we had that connection.

BUCKLER: I had definitely remembered a white bunny in the TMNT cartoons from when I was a kid and it wasn't until I got here to Fantagraphics that I realized it was Usagi.

SAKAI: It was at a San Diego Comic-Con that I was just talking to Peter [Laird] and they [Laird and Kevin Eastman] had a deal for a TV show and merchandising, and he said "Oh, would you want an Usagi toy in the Turtle line?" And I said "Sure." It was as simple as that.

BUCKLER: What was the experience like working with an animated Usagi as opposed to a comic book Usagi?

SAKAI: It was kind of neat just to see him move. I met with the producers about Usagi's voice and we weren't sure. So we talked about everything from; maybe he should just speak Japanese and have everything subtitled [laughter] to a complete turnabout and give him a Brooklyn accent [laughter]. We settled on one and I am happy with that.

Diaflogue: BEFOR I WUS BORN an interview with Zak Sally

jmiles

An interview with cartoonist, publisher, musician, professor and friend Zak Sally. Prompted by the release of Sammy The Mouse #3 and Zak's forthcoming appearance and performance at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery 4th Anniversary Party.

JASON T. MILES: Sammy The Mouse is one of the funnest comics I've read.

I think it's hilarious, it makes me laugh out loud and I find myself happier after reading and re-reading each issue to date. How much fun is it for you to make these comics? Is the process as excruciating as you describe in Like A Dog?

ZAK SALLY: Yeah, Sammy is a totally different deal; I really and truly enjoy writing and drawing the thing. I won't say that it's all roses, there's always still the problem solving and running up against your own limitations and inevitable crises of faith, but, you know: that's COMICS! There definitely is a feeling of "holy crap this is great there's nothing I'd rather be doing" more often than not while working on Sammy.

And yeah, in a lot of ways Sammy was a reaction to the whole thing I had going on with comics up until the Like A Dog and Recidivist material; by the time I finished Recidivist #3 I just thought – this is ridiculous. If I can't find some way to get some kind of happiness through this then I ought to just give up, for real. I'm supposed to LOVE comics, not hate them. I wasn't sure it'd work at the time, but it did, somehow.

I think I'd gotten too wrapped up in that "comics are SERIOUS" thing, and forgotten what a great medium comics are for just...telling a story. That writing an entertaining, engaging comic is... as big a deal as some snooty-assed art comic. Like those old issues of Hate ... man, each one came out and it was JAM PACKED-- after reading it you felt like you'd been to the free buffet at the casino but all the food was GOOD: more story than you could handle, at least a couple for-real-laugh-out-loud moments, great characters and art, a LETTERS PAGE... GOD that was a great comic book. Pete Bagge is an AMERICAN TREASURE!!

Sammy is still pretty slow and boring compared to that stuff, but what you wrote there at the top makes me feel really good; I want it to be fun, and funny.

I think it's funny, and it makes ME happy, so...

My only problem is that I can't find more time to work on them, get out at least a couple a year or something.

MILES: As you know, I'm also a big Bagge fan and similar to his work Sammy possesses a real sense of terror and consequence. In Sammy I think the hardest laffs quiver shoulder to shoulder with disaster. Can you speak a little more to how you're making comedy with dread and horror in Sammy? I mean, the skeletal bastard is simply awful! and when Pat the rabbit bartender hammers a nail into Feekes forehead...!!!

SALLY: Actually, I'm not entirely sure I can speak to that. Again, sort of in response to how I used to make comics, I really consciously set out with Sammy to not... over-think too much (as that hadn't got me anywhere all that useful in the past). I mean, yeah-- I've got a tendency to take stuff too seriously in real life, but I don't really walk around all day in a haze of existential dread, you know? I'm a FUNNY GUY, and... I think really hard about the story, and the structure and the mood and all that; I really do sweat the details but when I'm writing and drawing the thing, a lot of it is really, "Does this feel right?" If it does you nail it to the ground and if not you burn it off (note: this is harder than it sounds).

If something makes ME laugh, then... it's right, period. Thinking TOO much about it will kill it dead (I know this from experience).

And, you know: the "terror" of life is so subjective, and so is humor.

some folks will say that ALL humor is based on suffering... but all those people are pretentious, insufferable windbags, and can go get fucked.

With that said, I think when Sammy's all said and done, what it might be "about" is consequence. Maybe. We'll see I guess.

I need to work on being more inscrutable and mysterious: it increases sales.

How am i doing so far?

MILES: I think you're doing good-- wait! Do you mean "how am I doing at being inscrutable and mysterious?" or "how am I doing sales-wise?"

SALLY: (long, uncomfortable pause.)

I'm not telling.

MILES: Ok. Stepping back a bit... are you sure not ALL comedy comes from suffering?

SALLY: Hmm. Maybe you should go get fucked? No you're probably right. Or somebody is. Somewhere.

MILES: I want to try to get at some point of origin with Sammy. Where is all this stuff coming from, not just the comedy (and suffering) but the world and characters and colors? Has this stuff always been with you?

SALLY: Uh....ok; I should've known you'd make me put this stuff into words.

I really don't think any of this was CONSCIOUS, but... certainly, starting Sammy was a very definite and purposeful change in what I wanted to do with comics, in that I knew I no longer wanted to ALLOW MY OWN COMICS to MAKE ME MISERABLE AND INSANE which just so happened to coincide with some pretty heavy duty changes in my life: I quit the rock band, got married, bought a house, quit drinking and smoking and had my son Isaac in a pretty short stretch of time. I think the biggest factor in how Sammy looks and feels was that… my trying to figure out how to ENJOY making comics; and in doing that, it inevitably leads you to thinking about a time in your life when you enjoyed READING comics. Not through the filters of adulthood and "Art" and all that, but just that really pure..."I'm reading this because I LIKE IT, and it MAKES ME HAPPY." And besides, having a kid also just makes you think about that time of life, and being a kid, and how those things affected you back then and why they affected you.

I mean, there's a LOT of stuff that I'm remembering or half-remembering from childhood in Sammy, and I'm not questioning that or trying to analyze the hell out of it, but it's there, and it's semi-purposeful… "that skeletal bastard" you referred to (whose name is actually "Him") is lifted directly from one of the first drawings I ever remember doing. I still have this crazy memory of drawing it so I searched it out and luckily my Mom still had it... You know, it's hard to have peaked artistically art such an early age.

Seriously; I hope to someday do some comics and stories that my kids (and possibly other people's kids) can enjoy. Sammy isn't that kind of book by a long shot, but it's a quantum leap closer than anything I've done previously. I think it takes a very specific kind of intelligence and maturity to write and draw something that a kid will ENJOY… they do not like to be talked down to, pandered to, or lied to. It's very difficult to fool a kid in some ways (and yes I know in some ways they are really easy to fool), and if you read the best kids books, they treat kids like what they are… people. People who haven't really learned the finer points of bullshit quite yet.

There's this visual stuff… from whatever sources, comics, movies, etc and I think it just burns its way into your brain when you're a kid, you never forget it. Some folks feel like there's some VERY SPECIFIC touch points that I'm hitting in Sammy, even to the degree that they think it's some kind of post-modern take on an extant set of characters... which is horrifying to me. This is not and NEVER WAS my intention in any way shape or form. In fact it makes me ill to think it's being taken as a pastiche or something... not that I can't see people's reasons, just that however delusional I may seem, it was never, ever a conscious thing on my part). Never. I'm just trying to enjoy letting it all... I've used the term "vomit it up," but vomiting isn't fun and this mostly is.

And, like I said: I think that might be a bit of the "origin" you're talking about here, but it really is not something I'm "trying" to do... I'm just trying to... be true to this idea I've got, this story I'm creating that frankly is starting to write itself the farther I go with it.

And maybe the fact that it's all that stuff but ALSO it's, you know, got my experiences as a man pushing 40 banging against these really... kind of innocent childhood stuff that's making things terrifying.

Crap; I forgot to be inscrutable and mysterious.

MILES: Ah, being inscrutable and mysterious is overrated anyways... speaking of inscrutable and mysterious, what can you tell our readers about the seemingly unrelated panels of lamps and light switches?

SALLY: Nothing.

MILES: Is the disembodied voice Sammy talks to God? You? Are you god? I have to ask.

SALLY: No.

MILES: You have quite the reputation for being... grumpy--

SALLY: Really? That's too bad. Am I really that grumpy?

MILES: Well... yeah, but thats ok. I've just heard stories about people encountering you at conventions in the 90's and... but you're happier now and you're also a professor!

SALLY: As far as being grumpy, the glib answer would be "I got on some medication," but... I don't know; I wouldn't describe myself as a terribly easygoing guy, but I'm nowhere near as wound up as I used to be. Some of that's lifestyle stuff, some just getting older and such. Having a family has really changed the way I view the world for the better I think.

And, uh… I'm not a professor: I don't know what my title is, but it ain't that. I've been teaching comics full time at the college level for the past 2 years here in Minneapolis (at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, or MCAD). It happened because MCAD is one of the few places in the country that offers a degree in Comic Art, and they needed someone, so I gave it a shot. And, you know… I was offered a salary, with benefits and health insurance, and MAKING comics sure as shit ain't paying the bills. I was absolutely terrible at first, because teaching is a SKILL that you LEARN just like any other skill, but... I've always had kind of a (slightly irrational) beef with higher education, and art school in particular: "you can't TEACH someone this stuff!!!" I'm completely untrained in, um... everything, and so the idea that I'm teaching anyone this stuff is somewhat ludicrous.

With that said, I've really come to enjoy teaching a LOT, and I think maybe my (and my generation as a whole) experiences learning comics "the hard way and on your own" makes me a pretty good teacher, as does the fact that I have no idea what a college class is SUPPOSED to be like in the first place, because I never had that experience myself. There simply WAS no program for learning comics; and having to pull them apart from the inside out has been a really interesting experience for me, too. There's an insane amount of skills and knowledge required to being a good (or even decent) cartoonist; I definitely think there is a real and tangible benefit to having a directed, focussed program shown you by someone who can help guide you through that process. At its best, it really puts you through your paces.

You see folks with incredible amounts of God-given talent just kind of piss it out the window, and you see folks who seem to not have a shred of talent really dig into what's being shown to them, and it really can be miraculous in some ways. You see people learn stuff from week to week that it took you YEARS to grasp on your own. And, I don't want to sound like an idiot here, but there's been some times where I've actually been able to... use my experiences in comics in a way that I can actually help people learn. And it's one of the better feelings I've ever had in my life; it actually beats, you know... playing in a rock band or some of those other things that are supposed to be awesome but are often just kind of strange and don't make any sense.

You didn't ask all that though. I just went on and on about it.

Yeah, teaching. I like it, and would like to keep doing it on some level. Full time was a little much, but...

MILES: Whatever you say, professor... Who is H.G. Feekes?

SALLY: Check one box: He's me. He's not me. He's the guy who held my pants up for 6 years. He's a duck. All of the above.

MILES: I like all the cameo's in Sammy: John P.'s Racky Raccoon (issue 1), Mr. Mike's Carl Urbanski (issue 1), Kim Deitch's Waldo (issue 3) and Crumb's Weirdo #16 cover (issue 3). Can you explain why you've included other cartoonists' characters in YOUR comic?

SALLY: Well, again, I just felt like I should; it makes perfect sense to me. When I wrote earlier about how Sammy is a result of my remembering how I LOVE comics, I just thought it was a gimme to include some of those characters. I'm not sure if it's a wink or a nod or what, but... there's comics history and then there's Comics History and then there's MY PERSONAL HISTORY WITH COMICS, which probably plays a bigger role in my life than I'm comfortable admitting.

People think of John Porcellino as this one type of cartoonist, but those early Racky Raccoon stories are HILARIOUS. Nobody knows who Carl Urbanski is, but I do. Mr. Mike never really gave a shit about comics (unfortunately, because he was pretty damn good...), which is why I felt perfectly justified in flat-out stealing that character from him (also he said it was ok). All the rest are cameos, but Urbanski actually has a pretty major role in the story. I gotta email Pete Bagge and see if he'll let The Goon On The Moon be in the next issue. Or Chuckie Boy. Or Stretchpants.

They all count, and it's my goddamned comic.

MILES: Visually, Sammy is quite different from the majority of the work in Like A Dog. What led to the addition of color and how has it changed your process and the way you think about comics?

SALLY: Color has never been a priority of mine... all the best cartoonists do perfectly well in black and white, and just getting good with those tools is enough to spend your life studying.

To be honest, I can't even remember specifically what led to the color process I've got going in Sammy. It was mostly a response to the fact that the books were to be presented in 2 colors, which got me thinking "well, how much can I get out of that? What can I do that'd be interesting?" So I somehow landed on the insane process I'm doing now. There's the real "normal" use of a second color, which can be used to fantastic effect (I think of Clowes' Ghost World here) just for mood and tone and visual stuff, but then there's stuff that REALLY sticks out visually, like that Mazzucchelli strip from Rubber Blanket (where you realize he isn't using any "outlines", he's just creating and delineating through how he does or doesn't use or overlay the colors, which is just... unbelievable...) or what Debbie Dreschler did with Nowhere. I think Sammy falls somewhere in between those, in terms of how the color gets used.

There's no question that color affects the story… it's something I've been learning on the fly. Take a B&W panel and "color" it. Now fill it with red. Now fill it with baby blue. Each one of those panels will read differently, you can't avoid it. You've got to take it into consideration; for me, I've found that 1) it should be there for a reason and 2) the less you "notice" it, the better. That new Captain Easy Sundays book has been a revelation to me; the colors are so fucking beautiful, yet they don't detract from the story in the least; any time a "technique" is interfering with what's important on the page, it's trouble.

I'm happy with how the colors in Sammy work for the most part… when it works, it really adds depth to the page, and there's places where it helps the storytelling in reasonably subtle ways, as well. There's some spots where it's NOT successful, and I'll have to change later (in book collections or whatever). Almost invariably these are the spots where the "technique" calls attention to itself, which is a nice way of saying "I didn't know what the hell I was doing." It really all needs to be in the service of the storytelling, period.

There's a part of me that would someday like to see the thing in full color, when it's all done. I wouldn't want to do the coloring, myself, I think... there'd have to be good reason too, I suppose; most modern coloring looks really boring to me; I love flat Tintin colors as much as the next guy, but... there's that old school and old world color sep stuff that is just unparalleled to me… like the Easy stuff I just mentioned, but that's the tail end of the early century newspaper strips, or those Norakuro books. I'm not talking some nostalgia thing, I'm saying they are just indescribably understated and beautiful; there's an artistry there that is incredible. Too bad it's a totally dead art form.

MILES: Its hard for me to imagine your work in full color. Your stuff makes sense in black and white or 2 color...

SALLY: Yeah, I know… but I'm still gonna try it one of these days. I'm drawing the Frankenstein book for color... we'll see.

MILES: Your comics have always reminded me of homemade tattoos: personal, symbolic and PERMANENT. In fact, while we were putting together Like A Dog I couldn't stop thinking about that tattoo on your leg. Whats the story behind that?

SALLY: It's some teeth. And a screw. The "story" is... let's see; I was living in a punk rock house on Webster street in Oakland; maybe '92 or something, '91. In any case my friend Spanky says there's this woman who just landed at the Maxipad (yeah, that's right... all the ladies from Spitboy lived there... and Jason, come to think of it, who's in Green Day now) who does tattoos. So we go over there and meet her and get drunk; she's this tough-ass scottish woman who's just come over from a couple months in Thailand... basically she's been all over the world, just paying her way with the tattoo gun she hauls along with her. Now I hear this and think: "that's for me." I guess even then I knew that making MONEY drawing comics would be a tough deal, and also knew that "illustration" was… well, I'm not sure the idea of being an "illustrator" even crossed my mind as a valid thing. Anyway I knew I could draw some, and thought that was a skill that I might be able to do something with. Maybe I could pay my bills with tattooing and do my comics on the side, you know? So I say to Morag (that was her name) will you let me learn how to do this and she says sure you bet. Do one on yourself then do one on ME. So I came up with this design and got a bottle of whiskey and spent… I don't know, 6 hours trying to figure out how to do this on my leg. Bzzzzzzzt. Originally the drawing had these crazy big cartoon eyes and neat concentric circles but after 6 hours my leg was shaking (and I was drunk) and I just said "that's it I'm done." They came home from a party or something and I was so whacked out Morag was absolutely convinced that I was a junkie (I wasn't). Then I did a bulldozer on Morag's arm and the whole time she was just yelling at me "that line won't stay; you've got to punch deeper" or whatever, and I can honestly say it's the most stressful drawing I've ever done in my life. And basically, drawing doesn't have all that much to do with being a good tattoo artist: it's a real manual skill, a real knowledge of how skin takes ink or whatever. I didn't stick with it... decided it was too hard, or didn't like it. I quit.

It's kind of too bad, because that was the beginning of the tattoo "boom" where it seemed like every human under the age of 30 started getting tattoos (a "trend" that, unbelievably, still shows very little signs of fading). It was actually a GOOD IDEA for me, and if I'd have stuck with it a bit, I probably could've made some kind of living (doesn't Sophie Crumb pay bills with this? I thought i heard that somewhere...). Unlike comics.

Last I heard, Morag had a couple prominent shops operating in Edinburgh. Of course, I was totally in love with her, but she and Spanky hooked up and they were together for a couple years. Morag was pretty awesome. Spanky too. long time ago.

MILES: Thats a great story-- wait! Back up! What's this about Frankenstein!?!

SALLY: He's this monster. Big, green. Got bolts in his neck--

MILES: Are you doing a Frankenstein comic? I'm trying to get you to spill the beans

SALLY: --not so good at talking. Doesn't like fire. No, ok, I'll tell you… I was teaching a class and making everybody try to draw in the style that is the POLAR OPPOSITE of the way they draw "naturally" (they HATE this...) and sometimes when I'm being so outwardly cruel I'll do it too as some kind of gesture of good faith, and pow... there it was. Just this drawing of Frankenstein half way between Dick Briefer and, I dunno; Hal Foster. Don't know where it came from or why.

And, it was at this time that I was also making my periodic bid to SELL OUT, and BIG: like "hey, everyone, I've got this crazy SALEABLE idea and I'm READY TO GO. You know all those "graphic novels" that are doing really well and everyone loves them? This is LIKE THAT; I'm fully prepared to have editors tell me what to do and how to draw and all that crap, just PAY ME. Nominated for Eisners, blah blah blah. Just give me BARELY ENOUGH MONEY TO LIVE ON while I do this thing and we're good to go." Talking to agents, getting editors numbers, all that shit.

And no one had ANY INTEREST WHATSOEVER. You know, waving my arms in the air "PLEASE LET ME SELL THE FUCK OUT."

And, not a single nibble.

Which is good, because if I'm TRYING to sell out and no one'll have me, then what's the point in not doing EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT? I might as well do the dumbest, most ridiculous and unsellable idea I've ever had. So. 62-page European-style Frankenstein story. Self-contained, full color, totally silent.

The art style of Sammy was a very conscious effort on my part to loosen up from my previous style; more about an expressive kind of energetic thing than "good" drawing. But I miss some of that... drawing the heck out of stuff. I wanted to have an outlet for that, too... anyway I was pretty gung ho on it and thumbnailed 1/ 2 of it, did a couple test pages full-sized, in ink. It's not so much that I lost steam on it as that... Sammy has got to be my priority, I think.

The story... I've got enough that I've GOT TO do it someday. I just don't know when that day will be, right now; I've got a couple hundred more Sammy pages banging on my door.

I mean, if anyone reading this wants to give me 30 grand, I'll have it done right away.

I'm sorry that i'm swearing so much.

MILES: I'll be counting the days until your Frankenstein comic comes out.

SALLY: Keep counting, brother.

MILES: It sounds great and from the way you've described it to me in other conversations I can already see it.

SALLY: Wait... you've got 30 grand? whoo hoo!

MILES: Regarding the BUSINESS of comics... and since you've brought up MONEY and SELLING OUT... what's the deal? You go from searing, oblique, from hunger comics (Like A Dog) to Sammy The Mouse and Frankenstein? Are you trying to plant your flag in the world of popular entertainment? Are you really trying to be saleable?

SALLY: More like trying to plant my flag in UNpopular entertainment.

I think I touch on this a bit in the notes to Like A Dog, but... I'm really not sure who that early work was for. Or what it was... it wasn't stories, and it sure as hell wasn't meant to entertain anyone. I was just trying to figure some stuff out.

It wasn't fun to make, and probably not much fun to read. This is a much bigger, longer conversation than we can have here, but... as I was coming into comics, they were still in this transition phase... certain amazing stuff was going on, but as far as proving that comics could be a mature medium of expression to the world at large, there was still a pretty big chip on comics' shoulder; a kind of "yeah, PROVE IT." In that time a lot of comics got very serious in some ways, be it subject or as Art or just in terms of intent. Comics needed to prove they could be "real" art, or literature, or whathaveyou. And my stuff... I don't think it was all that experimental, but it was definitely trying to address some stuff that has nothing to do with standard entertainment or storytelling. In any case, all that stuff is a dead horse now. Comics have proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that they're plenty capable of handling whatever the hell the cartoonist wants or needs them to. But there's still that holdover of "seriousness" somehow… the idea that "Art" and "Entertainment" are somehow mutually exclusive... you know… "real art" isn't ENTERTAINING; "entertainment" is a crappy TV show or one of the million crappy movies that come out every year. Or that "I bless the rains down in africa" song.

I bought it somewhat too; it's a really thin line. I don't want to make SHIT, but I'm not going to be afraid of being entertaining anymore, that it somehow automatically lessens the work. Comics can be a blast to read, and that's what I want; I want to be so excited by the story I'm telling that the reader HAS to come along with me (and if they're not interested I don't want them messing up our fun anyway).

I think I used to be afraid of having an audience. This is no longer the case; I believe deeply in what I'm doing here, and would like as many people as possible to read it, period.

The "selling out" stuff in the previous answer is half kidding, of course, but... there's lines, you know? That particular thing I was pitching I think had some legs to it. John P. probably never would have done that Thoreau bio on his own, and I know it was strange for him at times to have an editor when he's so used to being his own editor after 20 years of King-Cat, but that book is still 100% John P; as a reader, I'm really glad he did it, and as a friend, it was great to see him make some $ off his labor. It wasn't a million bucks, but it wasn't the (LITERALLY) 5 cents an hour you get off of making "alternative" comics, you know? The thing I was pitching might not be my very first choice of what I'd spend my time working on, but hell: it'd be 1) a comic book 2) written and drawn by me that 3) I'd get paid for. I'd get paid to make comics. There is nothing wrong with getting paid to do a job, and doing the best you're able to do given the river you're swimming in, as long as... the river isn't made entirely of excrement. "Selling out" I think is... pandering, or doing stuff for a buck that you morally or ethically just can't get behind. There is PLENTY of that horrible, soul-sucking garbage in the world, and it's no joke. It's a real thing. But the plain fact is: you have to find a way to AFFORD to keep doing this; the unfortunate fact is that it's very, very difficult to make any kind of living doing "non-mainstream" comics. I'm not a kid anymore... I've got a mortgage, 2 (awesome) children, responsibilities. I am NOT complaining; I wish it were different and maybe someday it will be, but... most people get paid to do shit that they HATE doing. For their whole lives, sometimes. Who the hell gets to do exactly what they want to in this life, anyway?

I'm really not trying to be saleable, or selling out. I am doing what I love doing, how I want to do it. Insert cliché here, but it's the damn truth. I AM 1000% invested in telling THIS STORY, and in making it as engaging, immersive and entertaining as possible. And, obviously, Sammy is exactly the story I want to tell, and with Fantagraphics, I get to tell it EXACTLY how I want to tell it, period. You guys are pretty goddamn amazing in that respect, and sometimes I think that people forget Fantagraphics' role in letting cartoonists develop that way. In fact I'm not sure what comics would look like without Fanta, sometimes.

I'm realizing something about Sammy recently. I don't know how this is going to sound to the rest of the world, but... Look: you're in the "arts", or whatever, and you're in for the long haul, in whatever discipline. It's your vocation. At a certain point you begin to be able to see some recurring patterns, or peaks and valleys, creatively. Sometimes you're driving, sometimes it's driving you, etc. There's times when you're totally lost and you keep doing stuff just because you have to, be it $ or compulsion or inertia or 100 other things. Sometimes you're floundering, it just happens (and sometimes floundering even works out ok, because you stumble onto something...). But sometimes... sometimes you're NOT. Sometimes you know perfectly well what you're doing.

I've had this feeling a (very) few times in my life, most notably a certain period with Low. Just by years of experience and honing our aesthetic and touring and whatever else, we were just....ON. We just KNEW what we were doing, how we were doing it, and that we were capable of delivering if we just kept our wits about us and did or work. We weren't the BEST, but there was nobody who could touch... our little corner of sound. Nobody else in the world could do that thing, because it was OUR THING, and in that sense, we were unstoppable. It wasn't chest-beating or cocksure. It was a very good feeling. I know when I interviewed Jaime Hernandez he said he felt something like that about the "Death of Speedy". Stevie Wonder in the 70's. Whatever. You're just... certain. Certain about what you are doing. And in all honesty, that's the way I feel about Sammy. I'm not saying "it's TOTAL GENIUS" or equating myself to any of those artists I just mentioned or anything like that, I'm just saying that's what Sammy is for me. Maybe people will like it, maybe not, but for me... this is IT (and you also get enough experience to know that when you get to that spot, you better make the best of it because it's a window that can slam shut, too, real quick-like...). I've spent longer than most LOOKING for what I'm doing, and now... I'm here. I know what I need to do, I know where this is going, and I can see what it's going to look like when it's all wound up 7 years from now or whenever… and it's incredibly exciting to me, in a way that makes sales and money and all that of that other stuff not get to me so much. And on that level, I want very much for people to read the damn thing. I'm NOT doing comics "for me" anymore... I'm doing comics for PEOPLE TO READ; that is their point, that is their PURPOSE, that's why i'm making them.

Telling stories is something human beings have ALWAYS DONE. Always. it's what i'm doing right now, and I'm trying to do the best job I can with that.

God, I love comics so much. They will ruin you. It's sad. And awesome.

Diaflogue: Charles Schneider - exclusive Q&A about Catalog No. 439

mike

This interview was conducted by Comics Journal editorial intern Christine Texeira and proofread by TCJ's Kristy Valenti and myself. Thanks to all! –Ed.

Christine Texeira: This catalog is a reprinting of an original DeMoulin Bros. catalog from 1930, but there were other DeMoulin Bros. catalogs and earlier catalogs from competing companies (Pettibone, etc.) — why this catalog in particular?

Charles Schneider: Catalog #439 cannot be topped. It has nearly all of the devices ever created by the company. All of the stops were pulled out and the kitchen sink was thrown in. It is the best and final edition of this sort of thing and it's likes will never be seen again. It was, as historian John Goldsmith has stated, the "Christmas wishbook" of the DeMoulin Brothers. They put the most insane and ultimately super-wackiest things in it after YEARS of MADCAP creating. This was their final bid at creating lovingly crafted, truly inventive, deliciously surreal, nasty and often diabolically cruel works of art that were both appealed to the highest and lowest of aesthetics all at once. Often decadent dandies make the most merciless pranksters.

CT: Can you define exactly what "burlesque paraphernalia" and "side-degree specialties" are?

CS: They are props, devices, gags and gadgets designed to assist fraternal orders on creating dramatic, pseudo-esoteric initiation (or hazing) dramas.

CT: Can you give us a little history of pranks and fraternal organizations?

CS: Fraternal organizations discovered that they could gain members by increasing the fun and outrageous drama of the initiation "rituals." It is fun to be part of a "secret" club. And after going through a humiliating prank initiation, it was all the more fun to anticipate a friend's face — when he goes through the same gauntlet of goats and shocks!

CT: Specifically: fraternal organizations, like the Freemasons, never took part in any of these pranks — who did? How were they affiliated to established fraternal organizations, like the Freemasons?

CS: Groups such as The Modern Woodmen of America, the Knights of the Maccabees, The Woodmen of the World, the Knights of Pythias, The Improved Order of Redmen, The Elks, the Odd Fellows were just SOME of the groups that used the DeMoulin Bros. creations. Often, men would be members of multiple groups. Some people are just "joiners," and collect membership cards like badges. The[re] might be a member of the quite serious Freemasons, as well as groups which focus more on social interaction and networking.

CT: How were masks, wigs, beards, costumes, etc. used in "side-degree" initiations vs. traditional initiations?

CS: The wigs, costumes and beards etc. were used in the initiation skits. In fact, there are suggestions given for various costumes to be worn in connection with specific devices. Such as — wearing a donkey or tramp or "yellow kid" head while leading a man to his potential spiked and electrified doom.

CT: There is mention within the catalog, among the testimonies especially, that having contraptions from this catalog can really lead to a successful and popular fraternal organization. Is this a marketing technique ... or do you think these pranks really stimulated attendance and success?

CS: It simulated attendance and membership greatly. Numbers skyrocketed in the beginning. This took "hazing" to such a stellar and sophisticated new degree. Nothing like it had been seen before. It was like a terrifying form of sadistic vaudeville on steroids.

CT: Did the DeMoulin Bros. actually receive patents for all of these pranks? Do you know what became of these patents?

CS: Yes, they patented everything. I located several and we have reprinted them in the back of the book. A demented woodworker might try to make his own object of destruction. The patent blueprints are works of art in their own right. When I showed my friend, cartoonist Daniel Clowes, a certain DeMoulin patent blueprint drawing he exclaimed,"that's the most beautiful thing I ever saw ... !"

CT: Did the DeMoulin Bros. have any significant competition in the realm of "burlesque and side-degree paraphernalia"?

CS: There were other companies that made similar goats and spanking paddles, but none came close to the Rube Goldberg-like machines of mayhem which DeMoulin cranked out so artistically. Competition for costumes and outfits was considerably greater. Others merely copied the DeMoulin machines.

CT: Do you know if there were ever any serious or fatal injuries reported or suspected from using any of these contraptions?

CS: I have only one heard grim, vague whispered rumor of a man — fifty years ago — having a heart attack after being dumped onto an electrified carpet and getting jolted — but this could be apocryphal. I certainly would expect that there were dozens, and probably HUNDREDS of horrible injuries and events that followed the ordering of these potentially lethal super-gags. There were lawsuits. There is no proof of a death — as yet. John Goldsmith says, "People were tougher back then. They were hardier and could endure the pain."

[Charles Schneider photographed at the DeMoulin Museum in Greenville, IL]

CT: The contraptions in and of themselves are amazing and strange, but the descriptions in this catalog are fantastic. There are all sorts of literary references and hilarious witticisms (Kipling quote, Shakespeare reference). Do you know who wrote these descriptions?

CS: I am sure it was the DeMoulin Brothers, most likely Ed, the businessman and his brother U.S. In later years as they became less involved, other office folks probably penned the latter creations. Clearly, a distinctive, brilliant voice is the author — a man who knows how to sell you things by entertaining you. The great Johnson-Smith catalog has a similar "first person chattiness" as a means of appealing to the would-be-prankster.

CT: Are you aware of whether potential initiates were actually fooled by these pranks? Do you think people believed they were in submarines or eating raw meat?

CS: I bet they did. There was a time when cowboys shot back at the screen in rustic tented traveling cinemas. There was a time when hand-tinted flames in a silent film THRILLED more surely than our currently numbing state of the art CGI. If the other members of the fraternity did their parts well, why would it not seem real? It was a more naive time. Folks were a bit more gullible, yet it is hard to comprehend the mind-set back then. Plus, these things often worked off of the other senses. The smell of gunpowder ... the shock of electricity. PLUS — a hoodwink or blindfold can do wonders for the imagination. DeMoulin spared no expense in creating a brand new industry, complete with coaching and tips. It took itself quite seriously. It was kind of a mail order University of Super Scary Torture Pranks.

CT: Do you know what the most popular items were?

CS: The basic goats, spankers, hoodwinks and ballot boxes. The LUNG TESTER was a big seller. The smaller, more inexpensive items sold well. Most lodges probably acquired up to half-a-dozen gauntlet devices to put a guy through. Any more — he would have realized that something funny was up — a theatrical descent into papier-mache hell.

CT: Were the DeMoulin Bros. products primarily made to order or mass-produced?

CS: The basic, some popular items were mass produced, but many of the items waited to be ordered — before being built. There are ultra-ludicrous (such as the incredible "Flying machine" not in catalogue #439 but reprinted in my introduction) objects that may have NEVER been actually built, after being dreamed up and listed.

Also — MANY items were Made to Order. You could order the Judgment Stand with or without a fancy fringe.

CT: Were any of the DeMoulin brothers members of any fraternal organizations? If so, do you feel that greatly influenced their work?

CS: They all belonged to several fraternal lodges. It allowed the brothers to get to know the customers and how the lodges worked. They were very involved with the a Modern Woodsman of the World from the start of their business...

CT: Did anyone else, other than Ed DeMoulin and perhaps his brothers, have a hand in creating these pranks?

CS: No — the Brothers were the ones. Their names show up on the patents. Within DeMoulin the brothers did most of the inventing. Sure, some shop-workers probably assisted but the brothers created it all.

CT: Did the "lessons" of these pranks ever come close to pulling a focus away from traditional initiations?

CS: The lodges that did this stuff were more tongue in cheek about the entire process...

CT: Are you aware of any organizations that still take part in pranks of this sort?

CS: Doubtful ... except whatever watered down haziness are happening on college campuses. Oh, and The Ancient and Sacred Order of the Seven ... OOOOOPS ... forget I said that.

CT: I wonder if there is anything you want to say about what this catalog might show about violence and the psychology or state of the American (and/or French) man between wars.

CS: Men do seem to need their macho games and blood-thrills between wars. It can take the form of Grand Guignol theatre, torture porn, becoming childishly unified over soccer games — or an increase in lodge membership. Vets needed a place to make friends and get financial help if needed.

CT: You included a poem, "When Father rode the Goat." I was wondering where that was from and what you think it says about the initiation experience.

CS: It is from an amazing book called The Lodge Goat and Goat Rides (1902) by James Pettibone. A useful website called Phoenix Masonry states that, "the humorous idea that riding the goat constitutes a part of the ceremonies of initiation in a Masonic lodge is just a joke and has its real origin in the superstition of antiquity. ... the lodge goat and goat rides book above plays on the joke of riding the goat and plays on the humorous side of lodge life."

CT: Can you briefly describe the "fun in the lodge room" section at the back of the catalog?

CS: This was a very useful series of theatrical scripts, intended to be used in conjunction with the devices. These included characters, actions and other clever and hilariously dark ideas to maximize the initiates terror ... and enhance the believability of the nightmarish event.

CT: How likely is it that a fraternal organization would adopt one of these scripts (from "fun in the lodge room")?

CS: Very likely they were well-used. You ordered the stuff and it came with a whole script to make your event more intense. How could you lose?

CT: Moore's essay mentions that the DeMoulin Bros. led the way in burlesque paraphernalia because they invented all sorts of new forms. Do you know, or can you point out any examples of this in the catalog? (Things that would perhaps not turn up in the Pettibone catalog, for instance.)

CS: Most any device is unique to the DeMoulin Brothers ... the more extravagant and crazy things that really push it beyond ... are certainly uniquely theirs. Spanking Paddles existed before DeMoulin but they pushed these and other creations to a new art form. Their paddles were green and blue velvet covered!

CT: Which items are your personal favorites?

CS: I truly love the Pledge Altar where the skeleton pops out as you kneel to humbly pray reminding you of your mortality while spitting water in your face from his grinning and dead paper mache teeth! John Goldsmith loves the Invisible Paddle machine. It paddles yer rear-end while simultaneously firing a blank and shooting water at you. It's premise is A Strength Testing Machine ....

CT: Which items have you interacted with?

CS: I was helping John Goldsmith, at his DeMoulin Museum in Greenville, Illinois, moved the museum's lifting spraying machine — and he shouted "Be careful, Charles!!!" I almost triggered the spring-loaded board. It would have knocked me HARD ... an[d] onto my ass I imagine. I also stuck my head in the guillotine ... which was a hair-raising experience for unrelated and gruesome reasons best not mentioned here. Heh.

CT: Is there anything else you would like to add?

CS: Buy the book in triplicate — but don't try recreating any of this at home, or the local fraternal hall! And when near St. Louis, be sure to visit quaint Greenville, Illinois visit the DeMoulin Museum. (618) 664-4115. 110 W. Main, Greenville, IL. 62246. They have some of these outrageous things on display there.

[Charles Schneider photographed at the DeMoulin Museum in Greenville, IL]

Diaflogue: Cathy Malkasian exclusive Q&A

mike

We're very pleased to present this interview with Cathy Malkasian conducted by contributing Mome cartoonist Robert Goodin. We typically have Fantagraphics staff members conduct these "Diaflogue" interviews, but when assigning an interviewer to talk to Cathy, I couldn't think of anyone better than Rob, who has known Cathy for years and published her first minicomics under his Robot Publishing banner. I was thrilled when Rob and Cathy agreed to have this conversation.

Robert Goodin: I think you had a bit of an unusual path to comics. Why don't you tell us about your background like education and your main profession.

Cathy Malkasian: The wonder of mixing words with pictures started in kindergarten. We were given the task of doing little booklets depicting some event in our lives. We drew the pictures and the teacher or our parents would take our dictation for the story, writing words where there was room. The combination of words and pictures, bound in a stable form, really excited me. I can only describe this feeling as joy.

Decades later, when I started doing comics, that same joy came back, remarkably unpolluted!

My interests were so varied growing up, but they always centered around the study of character. I could have learned any subject well if there were compelling characters involved.

The school system back then was geared toward verbal and pattern-based/logical/verbal thinkers. Kinesthetic and character-based thinkers had to make our own way. I wish that higher math had been taught with characters, since it is so much about relationships and solving for unknowns. These can all be translated into character gestalts, involving emotion and even comedy in a way that makes abstract ideas stick.

I processed and translated experience in terms of character, either taking on the qualities of other people, or assigning characters to abstract ideas or words, such as the days of the week. Character created relevance.

So whether I was studying acting or music history, opera or eventually working in animation, I was always interested in characters and how they interacted and thought. Directing and storyboarding for animation was a very exciting experience, because never before had I the opportunity to see characters I'd drawn come alive in other people's hands! It was fantastic! A great way to connect with great artists. But the strictures of children's TV writing kept the stories from getting deeper, so comics seemed like the next logical step. Comics allowed for that gestalt experience, getting characters and their context to represent philosophical, ethical and emotional states.

RG: You've certainly got some abstract ideas attached to character in Temperance. There is a good balance between characters representing ideas, but also being real people (at least with Minerva and Lester, less so with Pa and Peggy). How did these characters come together in your mind? Did you begin the book with large ideas that you wanted to wrestle with or did you start with characters that these ideas glommed onto?

CM: I started with the idea of war and how it may be the larger expression of our struggle with entropy. Let's face it: nobody is a fan of decay!! Who wants to slide into chaos and emerge transformed? Even though that's the way of things it's too scary to contemplate! We all want to take our minds off this stuff, but it's there in the background. So we have to deal with it consciously or unconsciously. This story is all about entropy and synthesis; the two sides of change, the dual nature of everything. Of these two constants, entropy (and its psychological counterpart oblivion) gets most of our attention, paradoxically because we don't like facing it head-on. Look at our culture now: we hate decay as much we glorify it. Our pervasive way of dealing with it, of beating it to the punch, is violence. We glorify violence because it is entropy under the illusion of our control.

I looked at violence as our sped-up version of entropy, our way of fooling ourselves into overcoming nature. If we can just destroy things, we will somehow live, conquering nature. If we can harness what nature does, we won't have to succumb to it. Tearing things down, blowing them up, gives us the temporary illusion that we stand over and apart from the forces that shape us. War is the most absurd expression of this illusion.

So I wondered: how would I personify not just this force of entropy, but our deeply uneasy feelings about it? How would this force look to us on an emotional and ethical level? We often judge our own decay as cruel and unrelenting. It seems like a form of self-hatred. So I had to make the Pa character not just driven at every moment to do his destructive work, but to hate himself and everything around him. His "job" as this force is to keep going until even he is destroyed. But of course that's impossible, and he knows it, so he's in torment all the time. He can't enjoy the game he's a part of. Still, with his all histrionics he seems impressive and all-powerful.

On the flip side, everything that seems gentle, receptive and creative is still seen as weak in our mass culture. While we judge entropy harshly we often ignore synthesis/creation. This force, which Peggy represents, is very subtle much of the time. Peggy is in the background, in everything. Her influence is practically invisible so it's easy to forget her. She goes about her business more slowly. To personify her would involve a sense of knowing, kindness, compassion and, of course, love. Sadly these qualities still get punished in our popular culture. So Peggy must work "underground," just as the sustaining core of any culture must plan for rebuilding even while the fires rage above.

RG: Yeah, I’m picking up what you are laying down. Why is it that destroyers always trump creators? I guess it’s just much easier to destroy something than to create. I always think about how a given population only needs a small percentage of their number bent on destruction to make the society absolute hell. How many terrorists does it take, or corrupt government officials, or faulty oil rigs? It can seem like a lost cause. Your book ends on a note of hope. Are you completely full of shit?

CM: Destroyers are generally more seductive than creators because bonding via primitive instincts is easy, immediate and addictive. Destruction generally requires less skill and time than creation (even a three-year-old can start a forest fire), so any spectator can say "Hey, I can do that!” Creators, on the other hand, are methodical and patient, representing the more executive functions in the brain. They can seem more intimidating, since they don’t have that immediate bond with our simple instincts. Can you think of many people in our popular culture who are admired for their patience and persistence? False, fast power is always more impressive to more people, especially people who haven’t developed their skills at patience and methodical thinking, or who live primarily in their instinct-based emotions.

Another reason the destructive minority grabs influence is that we are transfixed by our own awe at destruction, at seeing natural forces hijacked in the form of grand spectacle. I have a hunch that our fascination with destruction is an outgrowth of our neurological need for contrasts and patterns. We need to find patterns and disrupt them, to keep our brains awake. And we are fascinated at our own fascination, too. Humans can't seem to get enough of ourselves…

Big disturbances, for good or for ill, really wake us up, sending ripples through the wider cultural mind.

The end of the book is a tableau of a cycle coming around again. Whether or not it’s hopeful is up to the reader!

RG: Since we are on the topic of patience and creating, I wanted to talk to you about comic making. You’ve been making your living in animation and have been drawing storyboards for many years. While there are some skills that translate well into comics, comics still have aspects that do not have any overlap (like designing a page to work as a whole, placing blacks and whites, and a nice, finished drawing). Did you find it difficult to make that transition? Was there anyone you looked at when (or if) you felt a little shaky?

CM: I’m really driven by story and character, and this applies to both media. It’s a pretty intuitive process, waiting to “see” the next scene or panel once I am emotionally involved. As far as page design goes, a lot of my visual instincts come from doing paintings. I don’t paint often, but when I do it’s a quite a challenging exercise of balancing all those things you mentioned. More than producing a nice finished drawing, I want to get into the scene. Once the scene feels “real” the drawing is finished. It’s great looking at other people’s work, and their influence sinks in, but I don’t usually analyze it. Getting too analytical takes all the fun away!

RG: I know what you mean. There is also the phrase, “Paralysis by analysis” that can creep in too. At some point you have to trust your instincts. However, you appear to be blessed in that good artistic decisions seem to come naturally to you, where I need years of studying and practice to put things together.

CM: Well, what may appear to you as good instincts is really the end product of hitting a lot of intellectual and creative brick walls. I always do a mountain of preparation then get frustrated and give up, at least until my brain airs out. At that point all you can do is let go and trust that all the research and notes and sketches will sort themselves out. So however you slice it, we're both putting in years of study and practice. And, by the way, your work just gets more and more stunning.

RG: Now that you have two graphic novels out in 3 years, what’s next? Are you going to do another big book or do you want to try something shorter? Do you have any interest in reprinting some of your short stories?

CM: I am so ready to do a comedy now! And shorter books, too! It'd be good to see what Percy Gloom is up to — he'd be a great little guy to work with again. I also have this novella I wrote that needs some spot drawings and paintings, so that'll be fun, too. There's a mini-comic I did a while back called "Little Miss Mess" about a couple of incognito space aliens. I really like the main characters and wouldn't mind continuing their adventures. So ideas are rolling around in the old noggin. I just need to find out which one is shouting the loudest.

Diaflogue: Michael Kupperman exclusive Q&A

mike

I had some questions for Tales Designed to Thrizzle creator Michael Kupperman, which he graciously answered over email. All links below were added by me.

MB: In the new issue of Thrizzle, apart from the move to full color, there also seem to be fewer short strips and gags and more multi-page stories — what led to this? Is this indicative of an evolutionary shift in the comic?

MK: Well, yes — the comic has to keep evolving to keep going. For this issue I had been developing these three story ideas for a while, and it just worked out that way. There will still be lots of shorter bits coming, but many of them will be under one conceptual umbrella or another.

MB: You count some pretty high-profile comedy writer/performers among your fans (Conan O'Brien, Robert Smigel and Peter Serafinowicz among them)... apart from the fact that they know funny when they see it, how did your work come to their attention?

MK: Someone showed it to them, or they noticed it somehow, and they though it was funny. And when someone you think is funny thinks your work is funny, that's about the best feeling in the world. Really kept me going when there were no other tangible rewards.

MB: You've also had comedians doing voices at your readings, as with your presentation at MoCCA this year, which was a big hit — do you see more potential for cross-pollination of comics and live comedy?

MK: Yes. I very much want to expand on this actually. I feel that I'm working at the intersection of where art and comedy meet, and I'd like to expand that intersection. Too many artists are scared of being funny, at least without a veneer of preciousness...

MB: Who are some of your favorite people working in comedy?

MK: Besides Conan, Peter and Robert? If I were to single out one person working right now — and I will — it's the English comedian Stewart Lee. He's currently doing a TV series called Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle in the UK. Oh, and the Channel 101/Acceptable TV people — they're doing truly great work.

MB: Can you reveal anything about the new television project you're developing?

MK: Not quite yet. One word: horror.

MB: My spine is tingling already! Any word from the Conan camp now that he's been scooped up by TBS? It sure would be great to see some Kuppermanic material on his new show.

MK: No, and "from your lips to God's ears."

MB: Amen. You've fully embraced Twitter as a joke outlet/workshop — have you made any specific or surprising discoveries from it that have found their way into your comics work?

MK: Definitely. I do trot concepts out there I'm thinking of using — Twitter is a very immediate way of testing an idea's conceptual catchiness.

MB: Having seen your originals on display at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, your artwork looks very labor-intensive. Can you talk a bit about your process?

MK: It's very labor-intensive when I actually do the whole page the old-fashioned way — but I do that less often these days. Not that I don't enjoy it — I do — but Time is the most valuable commodity right now, and I really haven't got enough. So I do use the computer quite a bit, any shortcut I can think of. But the most serious time is devoted to thinking and planning, working out the concepts.

MB: Tell our readers a little bit about the vintage men's-magazine scans you occasionally post on your blog and Twitter feed.

MK: Those are from an eccentric man's collection that I acquired from a now-defunct used magazine store on 40th street. He'd been buying men's magazines for decades, and then taking them apart and putting them back together in his own order, with cover defacements to finish them off. They've been a huge source of inspiration over the years — a surreal avalanche of period weirdness — and since I put some pages online a publishing company has come forward to do a book, which should be out in the next year.

MB: What attracts you to that type of material, and to that vintage aesthetic in general?

MK: Because art and design in those days was sharp and provocative — for people. Now it's sleek and boring — for designers.

MB: What are some of your other sources of inspiration that might not be apparent in your work?

MK: I read a lot of genre fiction — thrillers and the like. Lately John Sandford — he can really write!

MB: Was there a concept or persona behind the "P. Revess" pseudonym you used to use?

MK: I liked the ambiguity of it, also "Revess" suggests "Reve," the French for "dream."

MB: You did some 3D comics for Nickelodeon magazine — could an all- or even partly-3D issue of Thrizzle ever be in the cards? Please?

MK: I'd love to. BUT someone has to format the 3D, and then you have to include the glasses… You guys give me the word, I'll start working on it now. I love seeing my drawings move in the third dimension!

MB: I'll see what I can do about that! We'll call up Ray Zone. And finally: Any other projects in the works we should know about?

MK: I've been doing a lot of illustration: new writing from A.G. Pasquella and Jack Pendarvis, who you probably remember from their brilliant subtitling of the Turkish Jeffersons on the first Wholphin DVD; an LP compilation from Fayettenam Records; and a book by Kristin Schaal and Rich Blomquist, The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex.

Diaflogue: Kim Deitch exclusive Q&A

mike

This interview was conducted via telephone and transcribed by Comics Journal editorial intern Ian Burns and proofread by TCJ's Kristy Valenti and myself. Thanks to all! –Ed.

IAN BURNS: One of the new features [in The Search for Smilin’ Ed] is this huge fold-out here, and I was wondering, now that there’s over one hundred characters in your own personal universe, does having it that large affect how you create new stories at all?

KIM DEITCH: Well, it certainly gives me a lot of advantage in terms of I’ve got all these characters and I can use them in stories, but I’ll tell you, bein’ a character of mine isn’t all that great [Burns laughs]. If I haven’t got a good idea for ‘em, forget about it. A character’s only as good as he is contributing to the storyline that I want to tell. The only one that’s really lasted all this time is Waldo, and even him I’ll lay him off for years at a time if I don’t feel I’ve got a good story.

That’s why I think those stories are pretty good is because I never tried to force one. I never got up in the morning and go [adopts southern drawl]: “Hmm, I’m gonna make me a Waldo story!” [Burns laughs]. I don’t do that: to me, the play’s the thing, and it’s got to be a good yarn.

BURNS: In the middle of creating a story, do you think: “I could see the story from a different angle.” In the TCJ #296 interview, Gary [Groth] cited the Rashômon Effect.

DEITCH: God knows that’s a gimmick that’s gotten plenty of mileage.

I will say this: in “The Sunshine Girl,” the long story in Deitch's Pictorama, that character Eleanor — I got to like her so much that I’d say the story I’m working on now was suggested by the fact that by the time I was nearing the end of that story, I got to like that character so much I hated to give her up. But ironically, now that I’m doing the story she doesn’t really have that much to do with it [Burns laughs]. At the beginning, discovering this manuscript, and then there’s an epilogue at the end and this woman occasionally mentions her by name as she’s describing something she did, so....Well, you just have to see where things go, you know? I had it in my mind that I’d like to do another story with her and maybe I will but, oddly, I didn’t really do that at all. I just used it as a jumping-off point for another story with a new character.

BURNS: Great. Back on the fold-out: Did you go through any in-depth laying-out process for all these characters, or...?

DEITCH: When I submitted the idea to Kim that we do The Search for Smilin’ Ed, the reason I did it is I figured this one I’m working on now is going to take me so long, I’d like to have something come out in the meantime, so people don’t forget about me. But, he said, “OK, I think this will make a good book, but you know what, I’d like to have an article in there talking about ‘The Kim Deitch Universe.’”

Now, I didn’t make that term up. But you know the Marvel Universe: it just means the interconnectedness of all my characters. And when he said that, I immediately, feeling cocky [Burns laughs], said: “Well, hell, if you guys are going to have an article about The Kim Deitch Universe, the least I can do is draw it!” [Burns laughs.]

Having said this, then I’m going, “Oh my God what have I said? How the hell am I gonna draw that?” [Laughter.] But, in a way that worked out, because I even spun off my own uncertainty: I was proud of the thing I worked up, it’s almost like a story but it isn’t a story. It leads you into it. Along the way I got the high concept: “let’s have it all happening inside my head.”

BURNS: Right, that’s what I was just going to say: it’s all centered around that image.

DEITCH: Yeah, and once that happened, then I really started catching fire. I did several elaborate sketches of it, and it wasn’t exactly pure fun, but it was happening. I knew I was onto something good and it came out pretty good, I think. It was hell: I had two computers cave in under me because that was a huge file. I had to get Paul Baresh to cut it in half. If you look at the Universe ones that they printed separately, you look really careful in the middle you can see where there’s a slight differentiation, ‘cause we were doing it in two hunks. Pretty much the biggest file I ever worked on. “Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ roll” for Kramers [Ergot]; those were bigger, but they didn’t give me the trouble that this one did. “Kim Deitch Universe” was really blood, sweat and tears. But not the concept, so much, once I got going on that.

But the real bitch was colorin’ it, which usually is sort of fun for me. But I never had such a big busy thing. Like I said, first I started on my wife’s computer and it crashed, and then I went over to the other computer...it was giving me all kinds of trouble till I cut it in half.

COLOR

BURNS: Well, this has got to be one of the first color pieces you’ve done in a while, right?

DEITCH: I usually do a few. I did a one-page “Life of Paul Winchell” that was in the last McSweeney’s and, what else have I done? I just did a poster, but actually I did that with black-and-white separation. Yeah, I guess you’re right.

BURNS: Was it Corn Fed [Comics] that you did all in color?

DEITCH: No, no. And plus those Corn Feds, that was before Photoshop. That was done with black ink and gray Zipatone, and just mixing shades to make colors, which was how I originally learned to do color. And I could make up whole color scenes without using any color at all. It still comes in handy: I just did a silk-screen poster that way. But you now, workin’ on Photoshop spoils you. [Burns laughs.] You can just get everything exactly right in Photoshop. But I tend to get too fussy. I swear I’d still be puttering around with “Kim Deitch Universe” if I’d had the chance.

BURNS: I’m still learning all the ins and outs of that program.

DEITCH: Well, I’m not exactly an expert. I am not fast, but I think I’m getting an interesting technique together: It’s sort of based on the Seurat Pointillism. You just blow things up really big, and mixing with dots of color takes a long time, but you can get some really nice, flowing color effects that way.

POP MUSIC

BURNS: The Search for Smilin’ Ed features this huge archive of pop culture that’s honeycombing Earth’s core. Since it’s one of the dominant themes in your work, why do you choose to depict the history of pop culture in your fiction?

DEITCH: Well, I’m a big fan [Burns laughs]: you know the parts of pop culture I like, and more specifically, I really think that the 20th century was a real golden age for that. And also, just philosophically, I feel like the human race is a lot better at producing entertainment than they are at running the bigger show — you know, existing in the world, so it’s something more easy to celebrate. Another thing I was riffing on: you know what the Akashic records are, the mythological place where everything is supposed to be? Well you know now.

BURNS: Yeah, I do now. I’ve heard of the Borgian libraries…

DEITCH: Yeah, well, the Akashic records is mythological; Somewhere out there it’s all stored away. God, it’d be wonderful if it was true. Who knows, I tend to be a bit skeptical but... [Burns laughs.] One can dream.

BURNS: Are there any areas [of pop culture] you haven’t got to explore yet? I’m actually wondering if there’s anything you haven’t covered.

DEITCH: Well, I’m still not through with the movies. And there’s a lot more about the movies in the book I’m working on now, in terms of pop culture.

I guess I finally got into music a little bit in that music story I did in Deitch’s Pictorama. I wouldn’t mind trying some other music stories, but then the problem with that is, my musical tastes are so far afield from what even my own readers are into that, boy, it’s like banging my head against the wall, doing that too much. That’s part of the reason I couched that story “The Cop on the Beat and the Man on the Moon and Me” in a framing story that was about the early days of comics. Lure ’em in on something that they’ll find interesting then hit ’em with all this obscure history that you know: half the people don’t even give a shit about.

BURNS: [Laughs.] Right, like the classical jazz stuff, or maybe even pre-Bebop era stuff.

DEITCH: Or pop music: Who cares about Bing Crosby? Well, I do, but [Burns laughs] not a lot of other people.... But then I also figured, he was great once, and he even made a lot of authentic jazz records in his younger days, goddamnit! [Burns laughs]. Let these rock’n’roll phases at least know that such a thing happened. I’m not gonna sit there and do story after story about it but I feel that one of the things about today is that people are just musically ignorant, you know, rock’n’roll has been hanging around too long: It’s time for some other stuff. I liked it as much as the next guy once upon a time, but it just hasn’t grown in any interesting way that appeals to me. I collected 45 RPMs just like everybody else did, but at a certain point I started discovering there was something else in the world. And I just wanted to get on my soapbox one time and talk about it a little bit.

BURNS: There’s certainly some people that are trying to dig up some of those influences, but not many.

DEITCH: But even then they’re trotting on safe ground, talking about the blues and jazz, but you know what’s really interesting to me about music, is it used to be, back in the ’20s and ’30s, that all these musical influences were all over the place, you know? Hawaiian music got a little bit jazzy. Popular music got a little bit jazzy. Jazz music got a little bit un-jazzy. There was a lot more variety in it all then people seem to be aware of.

SMILIN’ ED

BURNS: I know Smilin’ Ed the character was based off of an actual kid’s show host, but does your character actually resemble the real Smilin’ Ed in any way?

DEITCH: Yeah, I got photographs of him: I didn’t get much information, but the photographs were around and like the picture in Bill Kartalopoulos’ introduction, that one I got right off the Google picture file. I actually taped a piece of paper over my computer screen and traced it. You know really, he wanted a photo, but I didn’t know where you were gonna get that, so I just tried to make something as close to a photo as I could for that picture. I remembered him pretty good: I’d forgotten about the glasses that he has in that picture.

BURNS: Obviously demonic possession was your insertion, but did he have those outbursts, or was that...?

DEITCH: Well he was constantly fighting with Froggy: Froggy was sort of his demonic side, because Smilin’ Ed did the voice of Froggy.

BURNS: Oh, so Froggy was an actual character as well.

DEITCH: Absolutely. There were even other weird characters that I didn’t get into: like there was Grandy the Grand Piano, and of course they didn’t have that on the TV show. I only found out about that when I was researching. ’Cause he’d been on the radio for years, years before I was ever born.

BURNS: So Grandy is this piano you’ve included in the background.

DEITCH: I included him pictorially because he was just too cool not to. But Froggy was the big cheese on the show, and the Froggy toy, a rubber toy, was a huge toy of my childhood. They were everywhere, in all different sizes, and they looked exactly like...well, in the introduction, again, Bill wanted a photograph of Froggy. Well I don’t know where the hell I’m gonna get one, and Kim Thompson’s just raisin’ hell, oh, “Where we gonna get these photos!” [Burns laughs.] So again, I took a piece of paper and pinned it on the computer and traced it off and shaded it, make it look as much like an actual photo as I could. I wasn’t trying to make people think it was really a photo, but a completely accurate depiction of what Froggy looked like on TV and what the Froggy doll that they sold all over the nation looked like. It looked to me on the TV show that they were using one of the toys they sold for the Froggy character.

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEMON

BURNS: Going from Froggy to Froganardo [laughter]: I wanted to know where that melding of cartoons and culture and that demonic possession and demonology came about. For instance, with Waldo, you...

DEITCH: Well, it just came to me: I used to read the Jack T. Chick books about demonic possession — those little small comic books? The one they do on exorcism is a classic. I don’t know: did you ever see the story I did called A Shroud for Waldo?

BURNS: I have not read, but I did flip through.

DEITCH: That’s basically the story where it’s revealed that Waldo is not a cat but a demon, and I was just starting to think: “Well, here he is, he walks around, he talks...” He isn’t at all feline. And in that story Jesus and him are walkin’ along the street, and they pass a pet-store window, and Jesus points to kittens in the window... “Well those are cats, that doesn’t look anything like you!” [Burns laughs.] “Face it, you’re a demon!”

BURNS: And he’s Judas, right?

DEITCH: Yeah, he’s the reincarnation of Judas. That just came to me too; I’m fascinated by the Jesus story anyway, suddenly it just made such great sense. Judas, in his own weird way, there are aspects of sympathy for that character. So it just worked.

BURNS: With the revelations of the Gnostic Gospels...

DEITCH: Right.

BURNS: ...there’s a whole well of mythology that hasn’t even been touched yet.

DEITCH: I’ve been keeping up on all of it too,’cause that’s one of my hobbies.

BURNS: Well, staying on the demon topic, with all the [new demons in The Search for Smilin’ Ed!]...Hecate, Rudolphos, Shotsy, Chandra, Behemoth, Abraxis, Abeloneas, and Froganardo...How did you come up with there specific traits?

DEITCH: My brother had a book, it was reproductions of old demons, old drawings. Most of those characters came from them: I might have slipped something in. Well, Froganardo just came out of my own sick mind. [Burns laughs.] The rest of them, even the names on most of ’em, were out of this demon book that my brother had. So that’s an easy answer.

BURNS: And Froganardo, he appeared before Smilin’ Ed, right?

DEITCH: No, no he’s special for Smilin’ Ed.

BURNS: OK.

DEITCH: And I doubt if he’ll ever show his face again.

BURNS: He was pretty horrible.

DEITCH: Unless I wake up in the middle of the night and get a great brainstorm.

PROCESS

BURNS: What do you do to start laying out a page, and how long does that generally take you?

DEITCH: You know what happens is I ease into laying out, because when I’m coming up with a story, I’m also drawing and doing sketchbook stuff, and when I’m mentally played out, rather than just start working, I’ll just shift over and start drawing. I’ll go back to the last point in the story where I thought I was going good, and just start drawin’ a picture of that, and that’ll start giving me an idea, so even by the time I’m ready to start doing layouts, I’ve pretty much designed everything as I was writing it, and in a lot of cases, have drawings that are just about good enough to be layouts.

Like in the story I’m doing now, a lot of my brainstorming-drawings that I was doing while I was writing it, I’m feeding them into the actual layouts, ’cause in many cases they’re good enough, so a lot of it is happening as I’m conceiving the story. Then, at a certain point I’ll start shifting over into the traditional approaches where breakdowns — another term you could use for breakdowns would be readable roughs — especially in comic books, I like to have the whole story in readable roughs. Meaning that you could take these rough drawings and see what is going on, and all the writing is there, and basically the way the page is going to be laid out is there. So I’ll do that, and then comes layouts.

Layouts, the way I do them, pretty much... the layouts is where the drawing happens, ’cause I’ll do really tight layouts, and if they’re just fine I won’t even change them that much when I trace them off onto Bristol board. I try to be doing the layouts a little ahead of when I’m going to be tracing it off because that way, say, if I did a layout 10 days ago, the bum drawing, if there is some, is more likely to jump out at me when a little time has passed. So then it goes on Bristol board and I tighten up, trace off onto Bristol board and ink.

BURNS: They are so tight, because some pages have the more traditional panel by panel, but some, they tend to start up in a background section in the corner, and then flow really nicely out towards another foreground layer.

DEITCH: Well, you know I like splashy layouts. My big influence on that was I was studying people who drew comics before me. Jack Cole: he used a lot of tilted panels and stuff, and just sort of more elaborate things than just panel panel panel panel. I like to make it a little more fun.

MIDGETVILLE

BURNS: So what is your fascination with midget characters?

DEITCH: I don’t know...[Burns laughs]. The early one, Blanche Microft, I happened to be reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and just in one of his ravings in that story he starts talking about some cute girl midget, and it stayed with me and it ended up in that story.

As far as the Midgetville thing, well, you’re always looking for ideas, and ideas come from everywhere. And that particular idea, the initial catalyst, was there was an article in the New York Times, it was like an urban legend story that there was a community of teeny houses that must have been inhabited by midgets in New Jersey somewhere, and ‘cause there’s no midgets living there any more ….So I thought, “Ah...this is good.” So I took a pilgrimage over to see that, and that was the root cause of that particular outgrowth of midget stories.

I don’t think I’m really just...I think it’s just potential material. I just land on that potential material at that time. I don’t really think that I’m obsessed with them [Burns laughs.] I mean you know there was 30 years between Blanch Microft and Midgetville. The other inspiration for Midgetville besides... and I don’t think midgets necessarily lived in this New Jersey town, I didn’t think the town was going to be much, but I thought going there would be an interesting right of passage to get me into the story, which it was. But also, there was this attraction in Coney Island. Coney Island has had different parks there, and one of the parks was called Dreamland, which burned down in 1911, but one of the big attractions of Dreamland was a midget village: and the midget village was basically peopled by professional show business midgets. In fact, it was the same troupe that they eventually used in The Wizard of Oz about 28 years later: Singer’s Midgets. But, you know you could go to this town, and it was all a show. You paid a ticket and you got to see the midgets going to the little midget post office and you could see a little cut-away house where they’re doing everything that big people are doing, only they’re midgets doing it, nothing weird. But that always stayed with me, and I think my Midgetville is as much influenced by this fabled attraction in Dreamland as it was by the New York Times article about a so-called Midgetville in New Jersey.

BURNS: And the Grey Ones, in this story [The Search for Smilin’ Ed], seem to be more of a connection with...this was before you created Waylow, wasn’t it.

DEITCH: She came out of a character called Wagandi, these little black midgets, people that were in Shadowland. And, in my own mind, Waylow is probably like a civilized version of one of these Wagandi pygmies, although I never actually say it: but that’s true those are midgets of a sort too, aren’t they?

BURNS: Right.

DEITCH: Hmm [laughs]. I don’t know what to say. I seem to be interested in midgets, I guess [Burns laughs]. I have nothing against midgets.

BURNS: You treat them very respectfully [laughs].

DEITCH: I try to give odd types of people a fair shake. For instance, when I used the Furries, I think I turned the Furry character into a sympathetic character.

BURNS: He was one of the great ones, yeah.

THE PREQUEL

DEITCH: The thing I’m working on now, I’m almost ready to send Kim Thompson layouts of to look at.

BURNS: Now, is that the prose book?

DEITCH: Yeah, it’s a spin-off of the long story in Deitch’s Pictorama called “The Sunshine Girl.” It’s going to be called The Amazing, Enlightening, and Absolutely True Adventures of Kathryn Whaley. And the setup is: that girl Eleanor, in the earlier story, I’ll explain how she’s married to some guy who’s serving in our Army in Iraq. The way this story starts out, the guy just gets killed, and it just rocks her world upside down. She finds this old abandoned manuscript up in this upstate New York property that her aunt Kathryn leant her and it’s in the form of a long letter to her, but what it really is this woman’s autobiography of basically growing up in a small lumber town in upstate New York and all the weird adventures that happened to her subsequently till she’s an old lady.

BURNS: Is that going to be illustrated fiction?

DEITCH: Absolutely. In Deitch’s Pictorama I started experimenting first with illustrated fiction, where I just took some of my brother’s work and added a lot of pictures to it. By the time I got to my own, I started experimenting around, throwing in the occasional word balloon, throwing in comic-type splash panels. This book takes it even further. There’s oodles of pictures and every now and then it just about turns into comics. Not so abruptly as the way Phoebe Gloeckner did in Diary of a Teenage Girl, but I’m trying to do what a lot of people are trying to do right now, which is come up with a hybrid medium that you could tell more sophisticated stories with but has all the pizzazz that we love in comics so much.

BURNS: Right. And in the [TCJ] interview you seemed to be really interested in finding that happy medium. Have you really come to some sort of realization about what the perfect blend is, yet?

DEITCH: Absolutely not. [Laughter]. I don’t know if I ever will, but you know something’s going on, I think this one has certainly got more of comics about it than the stuff I did in Deitch’s Pictorama. And also, really, a zillion of my things have been billed as graphic novels, but I actually think this is the first real graphic novel that I’ve written.

BURNS: Yeah.

DEITCH: The other ones, they’re collections of related stories that virtually make a whole.

BURNS: They’re comics.

DEITCH: Yeah. But this one... I doubt if it’s going to be serialized in any place, it’s all one long story, and it has a text that would almost, but not quite, stand without the pictures—but that’s a moot situation anyway, because it’s never going to be asked to do that. So, yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing.

I’m hoping to be able to put layouts of it in Kim Thompson’s hands soon. I keep getting stalled, because it’s all these pages. I got a million scans I gotta make, and what I did is, I started out drawing and writing at the same time, but just sketchbook stuff. Now I’m blending...I’m actually doing proper layouts, but where I started the layouts, I just went to some place in the middle of the story, where I knew the hardest fucking art was, and started there, and that was working out, so I just went all the way to the end. So then, now I’m starting back at the beginning and trying to meet up in the middle again and I’m real close.

“CONSIDER THE BEAVER!”

BURNS: The new story is “Consider the Beaver!” And was the general idea for that rooted in your feelings for the 21st century? ’Cause Waldo so prefaces that idea with 9/11 and Bush...

DEITCH: Yeah, we’re off to a great start...nothing really great has happened since the century turned, and also, the other thing I was trying to do with that story was, since this was a stop-gap while I was working on my new story, that story is also a prequel to the story I’m working on now. That character Charles Andreas Varnay is one of the main characters in the story I’m doing now. And the whole situation with beavers is, the way that story ends is, all the things he tried to do for the human race have been pretty much a bust, and there’s even a question that he might even be a big fraud. We never really find out, but he’s starting to spend more time studying beavers. I was just at that point in the story where this guy’s wistfully looking at these beavers on his property, and I just took that a little beyond the story, the ending of the story I’m working on now, and played with it.

It’s more evidence of the fucking Kim Deitch Universe [Burns laughs]. you know everything’s gotta be interconnected and it all has to make weirdly logical sense/ So this, “Consider the Beaver!,” along with everything else, is supposed to be the finish of Smilin’ Ed. It’s also the prequel to the Kathryn Whaley story, in the same way that the Kramer's Ergot story is a prequel to "The Sunshine Girl."

BURNS: This story seemed like a bizarre take on the utopian idea, because Varney’s got this plan for a beaver community, but it seemed to me to be more making fun of it…

DEITCH: It took a caustic view: the beavers start to evolve and they don’t necessarily evolve in a utopian way at all. They turn into similar crass creatures.

BURNS: Gaspard.

DEITCH: The crass human race. But part of the theme of the one I’m working on now is the human race is a work-in-progress, and we’re evolving yet, and in one way, you shouldn’t despair, because we could all blow ourselves up, it eventually might straighten itself out. I’d like to think it might be true. I mean one thing about the stories I’m writing, and maybe it’s because I’m getting older, I’m really starting to try to make sense of “what are we doing here?”

And so really “What are we doing here?” has been a theme that’s getting stronger in my stories. I’m trying to be very careful about that because you know you get too message-oriented and you can end up with sanctimonious stories that aren’t that much fun. But I’m trying to see if I can do that and still keep it fun...I want to figure out what the hell we’re doin’ here!

BURNS: It’s a good question [laughs].

DEITCH: I can’t help but feeling there is meaning to life, I’m not exactly sure what it is. But, I mean there’s just too many good things about the way we’ve evolved, I just can’t accept that it’s all just random occurrence. So more and more I’m grappling with that.

“It’s a cockamamie miracle.”

BURNS: [Laughs.] So Smilin’ Ed proper and the "Consider the Beaver!" story were more or less...well I guess they were over a decade apart, right?

DEITCH: I think that’s right, yes.

BURNS: So how do you think that your cartooning has changed or improved in the time? I know it’s a long stretch of time, but...

DEITCH: Well, harking back to something I said just a little while ago: I think that I am more concerned that stories are about something now then just be a far-out, wiggy trip, then I used to be. So there’s one specific thing. And you know, I know that’s dangerous ground to be trotting on too, but that’s an honest answer to your question. I hope they’re getting better; I’m working as hard as I ever did.

BURNS: Back to the layout question: the layouts seem even tighter. It is a more strict panel-by-panel, I think, too.

DEITCH: OK, well, that one was a return to comics. I hadn’t done comics in a while. I was doing Deitch’s Pictorama, and now I’m doing this one, and that is one change, I’m starting to explore...it goes back to the “graphic novel” thing, all of the sudden, Will Eisner coins this phrase, “the graphic novel,” and my initial impression of that was, “Oh God...” [Burns laughs], “How pompous can you get?” But then I started thinking, “Well, OK that’s one negative attitude you can take.” But the other attitude is, well, how could we really make a good graphic novel, how could we fine-tune what we call comics now into something that really would be something more than just a long comic book? So I am definitely experimenting along those lines. Again, that’s dangerous ground. I’m bound to get reactions from people going, “Well, wait a minute, this isn’t comics.” [Burns laughs.]

But part of the trade-off of being in this business, and not getting all that much money for doing this stuff, is that I get to experiment and do what I want to do. To me that was the great covenant that was in the air when I got into comics in the first place, back when underground comix got off the ground. So I figured this is a big part of it, you know? The day when I have to just be beholden to somebody to do things their way, well that’s the day I’ll go down and see if I can get a job at the local supermarket bagging groceries. Because, that will definitely be that the fun ran out of it, you know? So the miracle of my life so far, pausing to knock on wood, is that I’ve basically been able to do, pretty much, exactly what I want to do for 40 years and counting. It’s a cockamamie miracle.

BURNS: And that’s the dream.

Diaflogue: Tony Millionaire exclusive Q&A

mike

Tony Millionaire graciously agreed to answer a few questions about his new book Billy Hazelnuts and the Crazy Bird, due for release next month. This interview was conducted over email by our recently-departed Comics Journal editorial intern Jenna Allen and proofread by TCJ's Kristy Valenti. Thanks to all! –Ed.

Jenna Allen: It's been four years since the first Billy Hazelnuts book. What other projects have you been working on?

Tony Millionaire: The reason it took so long between Billy books was not that I didn't have an idea. I actually have the first three books generally laid out as a trilogy and maybe I'll keep it going from there. The problem was The Drinky Crow Show, which gobbled up huge buckets of time. I shouldn't really call it a problem, I loved doing the show and though the first few episodes were kind of awkward, by the time we got to the last few we were really running along. My favorite is the second-to-last episode, which takes place mainly inside Mme. Duboursay's uterus and Uncle Gabby's rectum. I also did the Elvis Costello record album and a few one-offs like the Iron Man piece for Marvel, and of course, the weekly Maakies. There was also about 80 pages of Sock Monkey squeezed in there somewhere. I hope to get Billy Hazelnuts 3 out much quicker.

JA: Have you read any comics lately that you enjoyed?

TM: Yes, Wilson by Dan Clowes. It's the funniest thing I've read in a long time. I love the switcheroo of styles all through the book, and I love the way you think at first that it's just a collection of one-offs about an annoying loser who you can identify with because he's blurting out all the things you'd blurt out but you didn't want your ass kicked. I've read his more serious stuff, it's refreshing to see this accessible, funny version of his earlier work, I really love this book. I've also been reading Fletcher Hanks, this guy was totally out of his mind, you can see his insanity in his drawings even more than in the writing, strange peculiar man, I am crazy about his work. I've been going over the Popeye books, the hamburger jokes never get old. "Come up to the house for duck dinner, YOU BRING THE DUCKS." Also, I check American Elf every day for my dose of regular family life, and while I could stomach the Pasadena Star-News I loved reading Drabble, Family Circus and Tina's Groove by Rina Piccolo with my kids.

JA: With all the attention and care you give to draftsmanship, it seems surprising that you're as prolific as you are. How long does it take you to make a single page of Billy Hazelnuts, from blank page to inks?

TM: Once I sit down, it's all work, I just crank it out. The problem is getting down to my table. When people say I'm prolific I have to disagree, I procrastinate a lot. Then again, walking around or doing nothing is a good way to come up with ideas, so I guess I'm always working. When I'm feeling good I get between one and two pages per night drawn from pencil to ink. I found a nice technique to speed it up, I work at a size which is just barely larger than the print size. That way, they shrink it down and it looks crisp, but I don't have to use a huge illustration board. With pens you don't need all that space, but if you work with a brush you do. I don't.

JA: Part of what makes your art so fascinating is the way you combine the grotesque with more classic illustration in the vein of Herriman or Winnie the Pooh. Do you ever feel conflicted between these two different aesthetics when you are drawing, or does it all come out very naturally?

TM: Sometimes I consciously try to draw more like Herriman or Ernest Shepard, but my hand always twists back to itself after a little while. Drawing is like handwriting, which is why you can tell a fake Pollock from the real thing. I can't, but I guess somebody could.

JA: Baby birds in your works seem to be connected to themes of life and what it means to be a living creature. It plays a big part in this Billy story, and it also came up in Sock Monkey too, when Uncle Gabby accidentally kills a baby bird. What do these baby birds represent in your work?

TM: Most baby animals are adorable; kittens, bears, horses, even alligators. But the poor baby bird, even with its giant eyes and wobbly head, is usually quite ugly. The grotesque pig-like skin, sticky feathers, ugly open screeching mouth. The curled up shitty feet and bumpy head, it really looks like a malformed earthworm. But it also exudes this charming sort of helplessness, you have to help the little guys, and when you see a dead baby pigeon on a city sidewalk it makes you tear up like a blubbering waif, pity mixed with nausea. There you lie, you hideous mass of garbage, if you'd gotten past this awful part of your life, you could have soared in the sunlight on a cold February morning! But look at you now, you look like the worst dish in a bad Chinese restaurant.

JA: Why does Billy feel such a responsibility to help this baby bird if he finds animals to be "disgusting bags of meat"? What motivates Billy?

TM: Billy's story in Book One was about him being made, going through changes which depended upon who was cutting his scalp off and stuffing his head. First he's a fighting monster, then a friend to Becky, a demon influenced by that crazy Gator built by Eugene, etc etc. It was about Billy's journey to figure out who he was. In Book Two he is still a tough guy, fighting the animals in the farm, full of self-hatred because he realizes he is close to becoming one of them. In his rage he harms this little bird by driving away its mommy, he is driven by guilt to help it. Being a very passionate person, he takes this new responsibility very seriously, it becomes his duty to assist the bird, even though the bird is eating his "flesh" (suet, bread dough, mold, molasses etc) all through the adventure.
It's the second stage of life, see? 1. Getting alive. 2. Having a duty. 3. Attaining enlightenment.

Our Aunt Judy embroidered a pillow for us: "Raising children is like being pecked to death by a duck."

So there you have it, I've spilled the beans about the whole book and series. Now I just have to figure out how to deal with Book Three, the whole Old Man Enlightenment volume. Coming soon!

JA: In this book, Becky assumes a much smaller role than in the first. Does she have her own adventures when Billy's away?

TM: Maybe, I haven't figured that out yet, but I want her to have a major role in Book Three. She's a very strong character and means a lot to Billy, just as all guiding angelic scientifical motherly saints do. Her presence means everything. She's the one who gave him the hazelnuts, she's an agnostical Goddess!

JA: Ann-Louise/Uncle Gabby seems to be almost the same as Becky/Billy, except of course with Becky being sassier and more involved than Ann-Louise. Do you think the relationships would be the same if genders were swapped around? Like if Ann-Louise or Becky were little boys or Gabby and Billy were girls? Would the stories still work? Or is there something about the mother/child relationship that is necessary for these stories?

TM: I think the mother/child relationship works for both genders, like me and my little dog "Whisky."

Even with me and my little girls, and vice versa. It just depends on the story.

JA: Have you received any feedback on the first Billy Hazelnuts from either children or their parents?

TM: Moms love the book, Daddies love the book, kids love the book.

When I presented my idea to Gary Groth at Fantagraphics he said, "Well, we don't really publish children's books." I said, "This is not a children's book! It appeals to the same audience that the Sock Monkey books appeal to!" He said, "I thought the Sock Monkey books were children's books..." I said, "No, they're great for kids, no swearing, but they're for people who remember being kids. Have you ever read an old favorite children's book and found it kind of lame compared to how magical it was when you were a kid? Well, Billy Hazelnuts is for that person!"

JA: Do you think there will be many more Billy Hazelnuts books?

TM: Yes, very many. I love these characters. I will always produce Maakies weekly, Sock Monkey now and then, and Billy Hazelnuts now and then. I don't like regular schedules, but I love continuation of character.

JA: Is there anything I've missed? Is there anything else you'd like to talk about?

TM: Let's raise the tax on tea by 15% !!!

Diaflogue: Tim Hensley Exclusive Q&A!

Eric

A couple weekends back I sat down on a Friday night and read thru printed proofs of Tim Hensley's WALLY GROPIUS and was absolutely blown away. So much so that immediately afterward I emailed most of my coworkers to tell them how much I envied the pleasure that awaited them in reading the book in its entirety. I was so excited by a Fanta book that I was pimping it to my own coworkers. That's like telling your pregnant wife that, boy, she's really going to love that new baby that's on its way. Probably a bit unnecessary. But I couldn't help myself.

Having serialized WALLY in MOME for the last few years, I'd read every chapter many times over throughout its creation and loved it every step of the way, but once I finally sat down and read the whole book, I was dumbstruck by just how perfectly crafted and funny and sublimely brilliant it functions as a whole. The way Hensley's lyrical and satirical dialogue/narration plays off his impeccably beautiful, retro-ish cartooning is sui generis and as fully realized as anything I've ever read in comics. But don't believe me. None other than Daniel Clowes calls it "one of my favorite graphic novels of all time. Hilarious and utterly unique, WALLY GROPIUS is a work of unassuming genius that rewards on ever-deepening levels on each re-reading." Obviously I couldn't agree more. It's part teen romance, part dada absurdity, and part satire of power, celebrityhood and modern culture.

Anyway, when the idea came up recently in an office meeting to do more author interviews on Flog!, I knew where I wanted to start and had emailed Tim before the meeting was even over. Thankfully, he agreed, and here's what came of it.

FLOG: Tim, one thing that struck me in the course of putting the book together with you was just how specific your vision was for how the book should look and be printed. You were unusually specific and confident in your choices, for someone who was putting together his first book. And now that I've seen the book, I'm impressed by just how perfect your choices were. You picked a paper stock that I was unsure about in the abstract, for example, but it just works perfectly. As you were serializing the story in MOME, did you always have a pretty clear vision for the eventual book?

HENSLEY: I knew from the start I was doing an old fashioned hardback European comic album in terms of size and page count. I chose that format because it best fielded the liability of my inability to turn out a phone book of material. It also made a lot of decisions for me--a lot of albums I looked at had glossy cover stock and coated paper inside, endpapers printed with only process blue... Also, Alvin Buenaventura sent me some paper and cloth samples to look at in advance, so that made me appear better prepared than I was.

FLOG: I'm curious to know if you remember when you had the first idea for Wally, and what that idea was. Meaning, when you conceived it, were you thinking mostly in terms of the plot of Wally having to marry the saddest girl on earth, or was the plot a secondary concern to a larger, more abstract idea about *how* you were going to tell this larger satire?

HENSLEY: The when of it was after I got an e-mail from Gary Groth asking me to serialize a longer story in Mome, but there wasn't any eureka biopic moment I can recall. Both the plot and the how of it were an accretion of details more than a big abstract idea. I'd seen The Lady Eve with everyone chasing Henry Fonda, I liked how Dell comics would reuse the same character logos and break their stories into chapters--things like that. It was like piloting a Beverly Hillbillies truck full of garbage most of the time. Although I wrote the story out in advance, I did keep the last panel after the veil raises blank until the last minute, not really sure who the winner would be, figuring anybody at all would likely work.

FLOG: That's funny, because I think the ending is perfect. I asked about the original 'idea' because your work has many things going on at once. There's this plot of teen romance and political intrigue, but as tightly wound as it is, as a reader much of the pleasure comes from the dialogue and narration and visual puns, all of which are funny, clever, lyrical and even poetic at times. It's a series of great gags and brilliant ideas and a such masterful use of the language of comics that the plot is almost gravy, and I wondered which came first, the overarching plot or these individual moments. I'm guessing the plot just because there are some seeds planted early that are crucial to the story's resolution.

HENSLEY: That sounds more like a compliment than a question! The main element of the plot was [spoiler alert: highlight text if you dare] the check fraud of changing "IRS" to "MRS.," which I got from a book at the library on confidence men. One thing I thought was weird about Richie Rich and Uncle Scrooge was that the villains always wore black robber masks. Whenever I'd read, like, Vanity Fair magazine, there'd always be an article about a millionaire falling for or running a Ponzi scheme, so a more accurate villain seemed like it could just be somebody charismatic; the idea of Richie Rich being simply talked out of his riches by a con man sounded funny. I didn't really get that in the final story, but that was where I started. There's an old Wash Tubbs continuity where [spoiler alert] a couple swindles Wash that was probably the inspiration for the idea of having a married couple posing as father and daughter. And I always liked in, like, Plastic Man when Plas would don a beard and glasses, as if the drawing itself or his plasticity wasn't enough of a disguise.

FLOG: I've been reading your comics since at least the early 1990s in Duplex Planet, and your Ticket Stub minis, and even asked you to contribute to Dirty Stories in the mid-1990s. But it seems like it you remained on the periphery of the "scene" until you started Wally Gropius in Mome. Was it really as simple as being asked to serialize something in Mome to get you to dive into comics the way you have the last five years? You never had any ambition to do a longer story before that?

HENSLEY: Nothing ever seems simple; it's hard to summarize the last twenty years. I had plenty of time when I was young and didn't know what to do, and now I have no time that I arguably do. I'm still too slow and don't seem to approach things like the hard-chargers I always read about. You couldn't really bank on me in a baseball card way. But it really did make a big difference to have a steady low-key place to work for a while. Where else could I have had the chance to serialize this story? Flight? I feel like I lucked into a few productive, if not breezy, years.

FLOG: I know music is a big part of your life and I think it comes thru in a myriad of ways in this book, as well as other pieces you've done in the past. Is that a very conscious thing or something that's so internalized that it can't be helped? Do you think of your comics in terms of musical rhythms and beats?

HENSLEY: My father is a professional musician and my mother sings in a church choir and I used to write songs, so both. I don't think of my comics as musical scores though.

FLOG: You don't write songs any more?

HENSLEY: I stopped writing songs after I lost my virginity and moved out of my parents' house. I still sing along with the radio when I'm driving.

FLOG: Ha! Okay. There's one truly shocking scene in Wally Gropius, at the end of "The Argument," between Jillian and her father. I don't want to give it away, but at that point in the story, it's a seemingly random and disturbing development. Were you intentionally playing this for shock value at that point in the story, or did you just think it was funny? When you delivered that chapter for MOME, not knowing what came next, I found it highly disturbing, and I'm wondering if you realized how chillingly that scene subverted all of the more lighthearted melodrama up to that point.

HENSLEY: I wanted there to be something at stake with the idea of the saddest girl in the world, and I wanted the readers to know something Wally didn't when they got to more scenes between him and Jillian. I also intentionally tried to make the page where he and Jillian kiss similar. To me, it explained why Jillian would be so interested in national anthems. I often get a reaction to my work which is "it makes me feel creepy, so you must be a creep." The scene is not anything from my own direct personal experience or inclination at all, and that I often have to explain that is just part of the veritable minefield the story is indirectly describing.

FLOG: This book has possibly the greatest sound effects in the history of comics: the sound of a closing door to a money vault is "TRUMP!", Wally's backfiring hotrod belches "DEUTSCHEMARK!" and "RUBLE!," Wally vomits "HEAR$T!", etc. Was that formal conceit inspired by anything in particular?

HENSLEY: One of the great reliefs of finishing this story was realizing I wouldn't have to think of any more money jokes. I can remember making a list of millionaire names and thinking, "OK, what sound effect would Vanderbilt make?" There wasn't any direct inspiration other than the way Richie Rich radiates currency gags into the physical environment. I did love Don Martin's sound effects as a kid; I recall he had "Poit" for the sound of a breast popping out of a dress. The font for all the sound effects came from John Stanley's Dunc and Loo. Tired of all the references to other comics yet?

FLOG: No! Speaking of which, recently my friend Jason Miles introduced me to The Adventures of Jodelle, which kind of fascinated me as a proto-underground, pop art artifact. When you were interviewed for Mome a few years ago, you mentioned that as an influence on an earlier piece you'd done for Dirty Stories. The reference was lost on me at the time, but now, I can see a bit of Jodelle in Wally, as a kind of pop art satire on excess. I guess that's not a question, but I'm wondering if you agree.

HENSLEY: The loud color scheme and the slamming door at the end may have been an influence, but, yeah, I was imitating Jodelle and Pravda more on the Daikon strip I did for Dirty Stories. Daikon was just before I learned how to really use a brush, so it could've turned out a lot better. Christophe Blain did an homage to Pravda you can find online that's perfect.

FLOG: Dash Shaw blogged about WALLY on Comics Comics, and described your visual style as, "It's like what [Tim] chooses to draw in the environment (and what he chooses not to draw) is determined by some graphic Feng Shui." Ken Parille ran with this, comparing your style to mid-20th Century kid's humor comics, which tend to use backgrounds sparingly, utilizing only characters and objects necessary for the gag. I thought it was a very astute piece. How conscious are these decisions, or do they just come intuitively to you in the layout stage?

HENSLEY: Those were both well-written posts, so I expect to get asked about them a lot! I knew I was drawing for color, and I was consciously trying to drop out elements to let the color through. Ken Parille was more specifically accurate that it imitates old humor comics. The danger is in losing so much detail you can't tell where you are. I would try to repeat certain colors if Wally was in the garage with the Dropouts again and always put three moneybags on a shelf there. The thing I thought more interesting in Dash Shaw's post was his note that he thought all the character's voices sounded the same; rereading the book, I can see his point.

FLOG: Right, he said the "voice" was the comic as a whole, which he meant as a compliment. Another thing Dash commented on that I found interesting was when he described how Wally's "monologue" at the altar in the final proper chapter to the book should resonate with anyone who's ever been in a relationship with a clinically depressed person. Would you agree?

HENSLEY: Ha, it's maybe been more the other way around or both at once, so maybe I couldn't tell you. Well, I haven't been clinically depressed in the sense of taking medication. I get depressed a lot, but it feels less chemical than "inescapable sorrow." It's where I get my sense of humor.

FLOG: Well, that's interesting, the idea of your humor coming from an "inescapable sorrow," because it somehow reminds me of some things I've read where you've talked about how you think having a mentally handicapped sister has informed your work. Maybe Dash was picking up on some of that?

HENSLEY: Yeah, probably. "Inescapable sorrow" was how Pearl Buck describes institutionalizing her daughter in The Child Who Never Grew. That's a book I re-read a lot. I don't have much of a social life other than taking my sister out to lunch once a week, when she isn't in the hospital. She's made half-hearted attempts at suicide, gone blind and back, had a stroke, been put under psychiatric lockdown, has COPD, diabetes, emphysema, hepatitis... At a certain point, it almost becomes absurd. Whatta world.

FLOG: One thing that surprised me in your MOME interview was when you said you felt much more confident in your writing abilities than your drawing, which surprised me, because I think your drawings are every bit as fully realized on the page as your writing and that they complement each other perfectly. That was almost four years ago -- do you still feel the same way?

HENSLEY: Yep, but I think my art has improved a bit. I can really see in Wally where I switched from a #2 brush to a #4. The compositions also get a little less afraid of overlapping elements. You can't wait to get good enough to draw comics, because you mostly pick up stuff through the routine of failing.

FLOG: What's next for you, comics-wise? I know you've done some Alfred Hitchcock strips for THE BELIEVER's comics section recently. What else?

Well, I'm working on a minicomic of Sir Alfred strips. It will be very low-key. Now that I'm briefly working again and only have at best an hour a day for comics, I'm trying to scale things down. I hope eventually if my life stabilizes a bit more to try to put together another long story to draw. It's weird how a sketch has more value than the pages of chicken scratch necessary to write. I'm very nervous how my book will be received, so then again I may just hide under a rock for a while!

Thanks to Tim for being so generous with his time.

WALLY GROPIUS will hit bookstores and comic shops in May, and Fantagraphics will have a limited number of advance copies available at the MoCCA Arts Festival April 10-11. Here is the official solicitation info:

WALLY GROPIUS
by Tim Hensley
$18.99 Hardcover
COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS / Literary
64 pages, full-color, 10" x 12 ½"
ISBN: 978-1-60699-355-2

Superficially resembling 1960s teenage humor comics, Tim Hensley's graphic novel Wally Gropius is actually an acute satire of power, celebrityhood, and modern culture that tells the story of the titular character, who bears a closer resemblance to a teenaged Richie Rich or a classmate of Archie Andrews at Riverdale High than he does the famous Bauhaus architect whose name he shares. Wally is the human Dow Jones, the heir to a vast petrochemical conglomerate. When the elder Thaddeus Gropius confronts Wally with the boilerplate plot ultimatum that he must marry "the saddest girl in the world" or be disinherited, a yarn unravels that is part screwball comedy and part unhinged parable on the lucrativeness of changing your identity. Hensley's dialogue is witty, lyrical, sampled, dada, and elliptical--all in the service of a very bizarre mystery. There's sex, violence, rock and roll, intrigue, and betrayal--all brought home in Hensley's truly inimitable style. Created during an era when another well-off "W" was stuffing the coffers of the morbidly solvent, Wally Gropius transforms futile daydreams and nightmares into the absurdity of capital.

Diaflogue: Peter Bagge exclusive Q&A

mike

We are pleased to bring you "Diaflogue," a new semi-regular series of exclusive Q&As with Fantagraphics artists conducted by various members of our staff! Leading things off: Peter Bagge interviewed by Larry “The Love God” Reid, curator and events coordinator for Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery.

We’re anxiously awaiting the arrival of HATE ANNUAL #8. Can we expect the responsibilities of parenthood to have an effect on the maturity of Buddy and Lisa?

Yes — or an effect on their immaturity.

As a father yourself, how much of your child-rearing experience will we find reflected in Buddy?

Lots. The big difference, as always, is that I was the father of a 5-year-old 15 years ago, while Buddy is going through it now, so there are different references and cultural touchstones here and there. The gist is the same, though.

Having served as a stand-in for Leonard on a couple of blind “Stinky Dates” myself, it came as quite a blow when we lost the “Love God.” Any other big surprises in store? Might we see a return of Valerie, for instance?

Maybe down the road. The next issue of HATE ANNUAL will most likely involve Buddy and Lisa going back to Seattle to visit her parents – whom Buddy has never met!

In many ways the fictional story arc of HATE foreshadowed actual events in the social counterculture of “Generation X.” An army of young adults seemingly followed Buddy to Seattle in the early ‘90s, came of age here, then meandered back to their home towns. Many are beginning to cope with delinquent children of their own now. Where do you see the grunge generation headed?

Does anyone in their 40s still think of themselves as “grunge”? God help them if they do! Unless they’re in the Foo Fighters or something.

Tell us a bit about your new Vertigo graphic novel OTHER LIVES.

It’s about 4 different people, each of who have past or present virtual and/or fantasy lives. As the story unfolds, all of their real and fake lives intertwine, and havoc ensues. A fun read!

Any other notable projects on the horizon?

I’m slowly getting started on several: besides another eventual HATE ANNUAL, I also plan on getting back in the REASON Magazine fold. My next feature will be about volunteering for an arts project at a women’s prison. After that I may start a series of biographical profiles for them, dealing with various women writers from the past.

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Peter Bagge appears at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle on April 17 signing copies of HATE ANNUAL #8 and OTHER LIVES. Also appearing is James Sturm.