Ivan Salazar

Ivan Salazar probably isn’t someone a lot of comic fans would know, but those of us on the press side have likely had some sort of interaction with him or gotten some assistance from him over the past few years. I first met him a couple of years ago while he was working for BOOM! Studios, where he worked with Chip Mosher, their former marketing and sales director. Ivan, Chip and the other members of the team worked together on several big initiatives, like press conferences with Stan Lee at the San Diego Comic Con and the BOOM! RV at ComicsPro.

Salazar left BOOM! not long ago and recently got back in touch with me to let me know he was now public relations and marketing manager for Studio 407. I wasn’t very familiar with them, so I asked him a few questions about both his old job and his new one.

JK Parkin: What did you do during your tenure at BOOM!

Ivan Salazar: Oh man what didn’t I do! Well first of all I worked directly with one of the comic book industry’s greatest marketing minds Chip Mosher, formerly the BOOM! Marketing and Sales Director, now head marketing hot shot at ComiXology. Working with Chip meant we got to do a lot of crazy things like hold a press conference with Stan Lee at SDCC 2010. Start up the lit-comix imprint BOOM! Town as well as spearheaded BOOM!’s digital initiative across nearly all digital comic vendors. We made video tours of southern California comic shops, and created a living legacy at the ComicsPRO annual conference with the “BOOM! RV”.

Basically, whenever Chip had a crazy idea I was there to make sure it would get done.

Hybrid

Parkin: What were some of the biggest wins you were involved with at BOOM!, and what were some of the biggest challenges you guys faced?

Salazar: One of the biggest wins would definitely be the Eisner win for Shannon Wheeler’s I Thought You Would Be Funnier. It was the first book out the gate for our lit-comix imprint and Chip and I poured over that book to make sure everything from the art to the editing and design was golden. So when it took the Eisner for Best Humor Publication it was great to see all those long nights in the office pay off.

In all honesty the biggest challenges came from working conventions. In two years I ended up working at least 30 shows across the U.S. and Canada, and that made for a monster of a schedule. Not only did we work the show on a sales end we also made sure we had all our promotions in line; telling people we were at the show, scheduling interviews to promote books and even hanging out after the show to build relationships and just spend time with industry friends that you don’t see otherwise.

This in itself also brought one of the biggest wins. When I first started going to shows and someone came up to the booth I’d spark up the conversation asking if they had heard of any BOOM! titles. This was met more often than not with a “No, not really…” By the time that SDCC 2011 rolled around all the shows I’d go to people would run up to me and tell me how many series from BOOM! they enjoyed. I’d like to think that Marketing played a nice role in hooking that many more fans.

Parkin: What made you decide to leave?

Salazar: That was a pretty hard decision. Working at BOOM! equipped me with so many skills that I didn’t have when I came in. The knowledge and experience that goes into creating comics, not necessarily in a writer/artist sense, but the nuts and bolts of it. What it takes to put a book together, to make sure it’s the best it can be and how to get other people excited about it to make sure it’s a hit. BOOM! taught me a lot about what it means to love comics and how to use that to really connect with others who share that love.

With the knowledge and experience I gained I wanted to take on new challenges and really spread my wings in the comic industry.

Parkin: Why did you decide to join Studio 407?

Night & Fog

Salazar: After talking with the Alex Leung, the managing director of Studio 407 it became clear that Studio 407 was a company to watch. They’re ramping up to launch a library of great titles and all they were missing was someone to steer the marketing. So we were a perfect fit. I’m excited for what’s coming down the pipeline and I can’t wait for what I’ll be able to do to market those books. It’s going to be a helluva great 2012!

Parkin: I didn’t know about Studio 407 before your email about your new position, so maybe you can share some of the company’s background. What are some of the titles they’ve produced?

Salazar: Studio 407 prides itself as being an east meets west comic publisher that doesn’t fear venturing into every kind of genre fiction. In the time that the company’s been around they’ve produced such really excellent titles like: Night & Fog the story a small band of soldiers fighting to survive against their former comrades who have been turned into the ultimate killers by a mysterious virus. As well as Hybrid, a chilling creature-feature about a rescue mission at-sea that that leads to the discovery of a blood-thirsty mutant from the watery deep. And Smuggling Spirits a uniquely illustrated noir/horror epic about a prohibition-era bootlegger turned monster-hunter.

Parkin: What are your goals in the short-term and long-term for your new position?

Salazar: Short term is really just to get people excited about the great new books we have coming out. I wish I could tell you more about about it but we’ll be unveiling them soon enough, and trust me when I say they’re pretty cool!

The long term goal is a bit trickier. In the same way that I’d go to shows and have people want to tell me how much they liked BOOM!, I want to be able to be anywhere and overhear people talk about Studio 407 with that same passion. And I’m excited to make that happen!

Add another comic to the list of ongoing series starring awesome female characters. Starting in April, Oni Press will publish a full-color Courtney Crumrin monthly series by creator Ted Naifeh. The continuing adventures of Naifeh’s girl monster-hunter is in addition, by the way, to next month’s Polly and the Pirates, Volume 2, written by Naifeh with art by Robbi Rodriguez, so 2012 is already shaping up to be an excellent year for young heroines.

I got to talk to Naifeh a little about Courtney Crumrin and his plans for the series:

Michael May: Thanks for talking with me, Ted. Let’s start with you. What scared you as a kid?

Ted Naifeh: Just about everything. Around the time I was Courtney Crumrin’s age, I was going to summer camp, and they told us some of the lamest fireside ghost stories you could imagine. I think they deliberately stuck with silly, half-baked stories. Or maybe they were chosen because they were local. Seriously, one was a frontier nurse whose hand was crushed in a mine accident, and so they sewed on the hand of a dead miner who apparently turned out to be a mad strangler. That was about the caliber. But damn if they didn’t scare the bejeezus out of me. That nurse followed me home and kept me scared for a year. A few years later, the first half hour of the movie Basket Case freaked me out so bad I didn’t sleep all night. I never did see the rest.

Now I realize I was just a super anxious kid and the scary stories were what my anxieties found to latch onto. Growing out of that phase really felt like a triumph, like I had, in a way, traversed a monster-infested underworld and come out the other side. Years later, I found myself relating so deeply to the kid in Sixth Sense it was astonishing. Like him, I learned to make friends with the monsters.

May: Which monsters are your favorites?

Naifeh: I like certain monsters for their design, like H. R. Geiger’s extremely sensuous Alien, or Stan Winston’s Pumpkinhead. But most monsters from monster movies bore me to tears. The kinds of monsters I tend to prefer are the ones that best represent the darkness of the human psyche. I don’t mean that I watch the movie and think, “This guy clearly represents such and such, so I’m sufficiently scared.” I just find that certain kinds of monster resonate with me, and when I think long enough about why, I find that it’s because they remind me of my own darkness. In a way, all monsters do this. But there are particular ones that work for me.

The Dementors in Harry Potter are possibly the most terrifying thing I can imagine. Their presence takes away all capacity for happiness. And they can suck out your soul in an act called the Dementor’s Kiss. In the books, they guard the wizard prison, which sounds like a living hell. I found myself wondering how much of my soul would be left after ten years without a single, happy thought?

I loved Hannibal Lecter, not simply because he can eat your face, but because he can dig into your mind and find your most vulnerable thoughts. The most harrowing part of that story was watching Clarice let him into her head.

I liked Chris and Jonah Nolan’s Joker for the same reason. The Joker of the comics is this hideous murdering freak lurking out there. I never found him all that original or scary. But the Joker in The Dark Knight is the hideous murdering freak lurking inside all of us. He doesn’t just perpetrate atrocity, he makes us do it for him, turns us all into monsters like himself. Inside the guy sitting next to you on the bus, or your grumpy neighbor, or the cop that pulls you over, there’s this capacity for evil. The Joker is the person we could all become if we had a bad enough day and decided to burn the world, consequences be damned. That’s a scary monster.

May: Tell me about the creation of Courtney Crumrin. Where did she come from?

Naifeh: Courtney started with something that happened to me in the middle of the night, when I woke up and there was something sitting on my bed. It skittered away, and when I’d got the light on, there was nothing in the room. It’s really unnerving when you wake up but your dreams are still hanging around.

Anyway, that moment became the first scene in Courtney, and the whole rest of the story evolved from there. In developing her character, I wanted to tell a traditional story of a miserable, neglected kid who suddenly gets a big wish fulfilled. But I wanted to explore the damage caused by neglect, which doesn’t simply go away the instant you get super-powers. I wanted a grumpy, alienated heroine that doesn’t have any friends, that has a hard time trusting anyone. There are enough plucky, cheerful adventurers in children’s books. My memories of childhood are full of sadness and anger. I wanted a character that your average isolated nerd kid could relate to; the kind of kid I was.

May: You’re known for writing stories about young, female protagonists like Courtney and Polly. And one of your recent, high-profile gigs was drawing Holly Black’s Good Neighbors trilogy, which also featured a young, female hero. What is about these characters that draws you to them?

Naifeh: There aren’t a lot of female protagonists in the comics world, at least, not a lot that are really fleshed out. There are plenty of boobs, of course. But once you filter out the characters that are basically guys with tits (Miller’s Electra comes to mind) or flawless fantasy women who bear little or no resemblance to real humans (Catwoman, I’m looking at you) there’s not a huge selection. So basically, to answer your question, it’s largely because it was unexplored territory, which made it easy for me to make a mark.

Also, having grown up a good feminist boy, it’s not always easy for me to tap into male power fantasies without feeling like a tool. I never had many positive paradigms of masculinity as a kid. In the eighties, self-worship seemed to be the highest masculine ideal. We had the likes of David Lee Roth, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Donald Trump representing various forms of male perfection. Even now, I feel like too many comics heroes are basically manifested ‘roid-rage. I have ideas for stories with male protagonists and masculine themes, but I’m still coming to terms with the dysfunction left by those specters of douchebaggery I grew up with.

May: What makes this an especially good time to launch a Courtney Crumrin ongoing?

Naifeh: It’s the tenth anniversary. That seems significant, that the books have been around for ten years and still seem to resonate. They sell steadily. I’ve done lots of work for hire, from Death Junior to Good Neighbors, but somehow I feel like Courtney and Polly have made a deeper, more lasting impression on readers. My editors at Oni felt it was time I devoted myself to the Courtney Crumrin series full time, and see what would happen if it came out on a reliable schedule. Who knows? It might build momentum and reach a much wider audience.

May: What’s the format going to be for each issue?

Naifeh: 22 pages.

May: And how much are you involved? Is anyone else helping you with either writing or art?

Naifeh: It’s the same as before. I’m writing drawing, and lettering, and Warren Wicinich is coloring. Have you seen his work yet? It’s great! [Oni helpfully provided us with the samples in this post so we could see how great. -MM]

May: Does the storyline of the ongoing continue straight out of the previous books?

Naifeh: More or less. The whole thing is one continuously unfolding story. It will start with Courtney living comfortably in Hillsborough, not looking to shake her life up too much. She has no idea that a series of hammers are going to fall.

May: Are you going to be able to do anything in the ongoing that you weren’t in the first series?

Naifeh: To some extent. I want to sink my teeth into some real continuity. On the other hand, I prefer a series to stop sometimes and let new readers climb on. I can’t even read DC or Marvel comics anymore, because it seems as though every number one issue refers extensively to something that happened in a previous series or event that I have no intention of tracking down. The first two issues of the new Courtney series will recap her story in an interesting way. Also, I want to mark places that chop off the series history, and simplify it to events in Courtney’s past that can be explained in a sentence. Of course, I don’t intend on forgetting what’s come before, and much of Courtney’s story will come back to haunt her in the coming issues, but I hope that folks will be able to jump on at issue 1, or issue 5, or whenever, and only have to pick up a few back issues to understand what’s going on and get a complete tale.

Thanks so much again to Ted for talking with me, and to Oni for the announcement and the artwork. Be sure to watch for Polly and the Pirates, Volume 2 next month and Courtney Crumrin #1 in April.

1-800-MICE

It can be hard to describe Matthew Thurber‘s comics. Certain phrases like surreal, absurd and dream-like get thrown around a lot and while they’re all true, it doesn’t accurately capture the free-form playfulness of his work or the way he manages to make his work both bizarre and accessible at the same time.

His latest book 1-800-MICE, now available in stores via Picturebox, is his longest narrative yet. An epic tale set in the imaginary town of Volcano Park, the book juggles a rather large cast of characters and their competing subplots as  various political and social groups strive for dominance in the town, not realizing that their actions may result in their own destruction. If that sounds rather grim, rest assured the book remains delightfully nonsensical and silly (in the best sense of the word), full of concepts like bagpipes that also serve as teleporters or rocket ships that run on urine. It’s off-kilter and disarming but never falls apart and is a surprisingly straightforward and easy-to-follow read. In short, it’s pretty great.

I talked to Thurber over the phone from his home in Brooklyn, N.Y., about the new book and the challenges of doing a longer and more involved narrative:

Give me a bit of biographical background about yourself. Have you always been interested in making comics?

I was always interested in anything with a narrative. When I was a kid I made movies and comic books with my friends. My friends Tom and Jeff had this series called The Killer Pigs. It was a sci-fi story. This was when I 10. They were making comics and I imitated them but I was also interested in making more professional versions of the Killer Pigs. I’d put a little Marvel Comics symbol in the upper left hand corner. My background was being into Dungeons and Dragons and comics, making videos with my friends and reading all kinds of books.

As you grew older how did you make that transition into making comics professionally?

From 1-800-MICE

I guess by the time I was in high school I was already doing a little zine called the Glistening Earlobe Review. And then later it was called Knickerbocker. So I was interested in self-publishing already in high school. I moved to New York to go to art school and went down different paths and started doing animation and stuff. When I got out of school it just seemed like a very attainable, financially possible avenue.

While I was in school I was seeing more interesting comics like Chris Ware or Tony Millionaire. I was also Dame Darcy’s intern during my sophomore year. I got school credit for going to her house and dropping off her public access VHS tapes and answering your mail. She had a nervous breakdown when I was there once about losing her mail key, which I can understand. I need to check my mailbox frequently.

It’s not like I got brainwashed and rejected comics. I was still interested in them as an art form. I had seen Raw in high school and that really rearranged my brain in thinking about the medium. And right after college it seemed like there was a lot of drawing related action in the art world. In 2000 I saw Paper Rodeo and then there was the Royal Art Lodge with Marcel Zama. They were a Canadian collective. There were a lot of collectives doing graphic or comic-related art as well as music and animation and video. Comics had always been one wing of a lot of different practices [for me].

Is 1-800-MICE your first attempt at a lengthy narrative?

It’s definitely the lengthiest, cohesive work that I’ve done.

Was that a conscious decision on your part to try a longer narrative?

From 1-800-MICE

I was always interested in serialization and serialized stories. I thought that I could create a comic series that would go on infinitely. But then, after a couple of issues, it seemed like it could actually be contained if that makes sense. Like, refer to infinite narratives but be a mini-series. And then I remembered when I was a kid I was absolutely obsessed with the mini-series that would come on TV, and be an event. One of them was Shogun. Do you remember that?

Yeah, and the Thorn Birds.

For some reason when Shogun came on I had to tape the whole series. It came on at night past my bedtime. I don’t know why I had tapes of it. Maybe it was just something about samurai. But then I started thinking about this comic as being a mini-series instead of Cerebus or something.

And that appealed to you more, the idea of closure?

Well that definitely wasn’t something I had much experience with. I’m always starting issue one of some conceptual comic series and not following up. This the first time I’ve [done] something with length.

Did you come across challenges you didn’t expect due to the length of the story?

I tried to tie all the ends together. I wanted there to be sort of a metaphorical reasoning for the events. I wanted it to be like a Rube Goldberg machine that the trees being cut down affected the activity of the volcano and the reason the trees were cut down were to make a stage for the banjo contest, and the reason the banjo contest was happening was because tree characters from the town were trying to prove their superiority. I just wanted everything to be like a little domino game. None of these clauses necessarily make a lot of sense, but I wanted them to all affect each other. I spent a lot of time just revising the plot.

Did you did a lot of preparation beforehand? To what extent did you allow for improvisation?

From 1-800-MICE

I didn’t do any research. My working method always allows for improvisation. Even the moment before I begin inking it I’ll still mess with the dialogue to fine-tune it. I feel like that is part of what helped the comic feel really lively. That’s another reason why I like the medium, it’s always in flux. That balance between improvisation and plot and the idea of intertwining plots would create an interesting friction. So that was intentional.

Was that tricky for you? It seems like you have this balance between wanting to make sure there’s a consistent narrative but also making sure you don’t lose the fantastical absurdist element, which I would imagine could break down the story and world you’re trying to build. Was that a difficult balance for you to maintain when you were working on the book?

I guess I just try to think of the location as being a real place and I’m like a journalist describing little subplots occurring in the town, so that it would naturally hold together. There’s a lot of visual noise or gibberish related to the setting but then also I didn’t want to get bogged down in subplots. There was a temptation to just keep introducing more and more characters. That would be a perfectly acceptable project for me. I could totally read something like that and really enjoy it — every page a new character — but I felt some obligation to have the characters play an actual role in the story. So I would introduce a character at random and later figure out their meaning in the story.

Were there any characters that surprised you as you were working on them?

Well, lemme see. Groomfiend doesn’t really change throughout the book. Peace Punk has more of a radical shift in his personality when he gets a job. I was having fun with his reluctant metamorphosis. I don’t know. I was worried that with so many characters they would all start to sound the same. I tried to work on keeping their voices distinct but also a lot of it is intentionally confusing. Like with the story of the cop who’s inhabited by another cop.

From 1-800-MICE

It does seem like there are points where the narrative seem in danger of toppling over. I was wondering if that was deliberate on your part or just the way the story naturally moved.

I’m just inspired by confusion, like watching a foreign film where everybody is dressed exactly the same and you can’t tell the characters apart. Or turning on a soap opera that’s being going on for 30 years and you’re completely dislocated. I find that inspiring somehow.

The book has some strong political overtones, especially in the various groups conspiring against each other. Were you trying to draw allusions to modern politics with that? Do you welcome that sort of connection?

I’m definitely interested in political readings of the book although I think that the only real message it might have is an ecological one. It’s lot to do with the health of an ecosystem versus the desire to control or dominate the environment.

There’s that one group that doesn’t seem to understand the effects of their actions, which seems to have allusions to global warming.

It’s therapeutic. It’s something I think about in New York all day long where the population density is insane and the place is covered with concrete and cars. I’m not trying to hit anybody over the head with it but maybe to address some issues in an amusing way.

I thought the terrorist group was interesting because they seemed more concerned with sowing chaos than having a political agenda.

The Creosote gang are deluded and a parody of nihilism or something.

They seemed like a parody of extremism to me.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. I don’t believe there’s any justifications for injuring other people in the name of your belief system. That group don’t even make sense. They take a drug that makes them have visions of mutilation of the environment. They’re also being manipulated by this dentist character, who for some reason that’s not really explained _ he’s probably most extremist character in that he has a scientific rationale for cutting the population down. (laughs) I don’t know, he’s sort of like a scientist that’s lost touch with reality, like Dr. Strangelove.

One of the other themes I got was the issue of sexual identity, most prominent with Peace Punk but also with the one cop, Nabb. They’re both characters struggling with their identity. Are issues of identity and gender things that interest you as a storyteller?

Ambiguity is really interesting to me. The confusion about definition of self and the way you might delude yourself. That’s an element of the Peace Punk character both in confusion about his punk identity and also his physical alluded-to hermaphrodite self. In the story of Nabb and Tom Chief, he is a cop, which is a very interesting social role to me. I was really influenced by the movie Serpico before starting to write this, which is the story of a police officer that goes undercover and in doing so starts to sympathize with the people he’s undercover with to the point where he alienates his fellow policemen and they set him up. I found that really interesting. I’m interested in the idea of what the self is. On the one hand I think Oh, I’m an individualist, but on the other hand I don’t know if there is a self.

Why does ambiguity attract you?

From 1-800-MICE

There’s a lot of traps by which you can hopefully identify yourself in our culture, a lot of ways in which your existence is at a disadvantage because you can be marketed to or pigeonholed. There’s a lot of group political activity that I think is very positive but in my personal experience it’s been hard to fit in. Say in a music scene or a comics scene or the art world, the workforce, a baseball game, there’s all these situations in which people feel like they have to adapt their personalities. I think people who either transgress that or can’t cope with that are really fascinating. People who masquerade as another gender for their whole life, or someone who pretends to be an Indian and is received in an English court. I want to make another comic about identity post-Internet. The confusion of trying to create an identity at this time. Or the independence of your internet existence that you keep separate from your actual life.

I wanted to ask you about some of the issues you were discussing at the surrealism panel at SPX. How important is absurdity and surrealism in your work?

It’s not necessarily important for me to be in that category or in that lineage, but it’s a really inspiring strain of literature and visual art for me. I can’t think of too many other movements — maybe the underground comics period was similarly inspiring to find out about — I guess it’s the feeling you can have absolute freedom in your drawing and writing. You don’t have to be funny. There doesn’t have to be a resolution or a structure that is familiar. Comics are so new that I feel like a lot of experimental there are already traditions but there’s no reason anyone has to accept those. They’re only very new. I feel like long-form comics doesn’t have a burden of thousands of years of examples. I’ve been thinking a lot about humor and the absurd.

Well that was one of the things I wanted to talk about because while the book has a very dark ending, there’s a lot of humor in the book, drawn out of these characters bumping into each other, which keeps the book from getting too dark, despite the drama.

From 1-800-MICE

Yeah, I think that’s a necessary approach. I think about having to be funny every time I draw a comic. I was worried this comic would start funny and then realize it was becoming a bit “Graphic Novel” and dreadfully serious. The end being serious is kind of absurd too. It was kind of a joke on Watchmen.

So humor is pretty important to you.

Oh yeah. The surrealists were the most humorless people in some ways. Andre Breton was a dictator. On the one hand they believed in convulsive humor, and on the other hand they were so serious. I think that comics are just inherently the best thing about them is they’re funny. My favorite cartoonists are funny, like Ben Katchor and Gary Panter. I think those guys are hilarious. I feel that humor is my favorite way to bridge serious stuff.

It’s interesting you name those two guys because they’re not the first two people that might come to mind when thinking of funny cartoonists.

It’s very dry.

It’s very dry and very subtle. It’s there but you have to spend time to see it.

Maybe it’s a tradition of dry humor that goes back to Hogarth or somebody drawing fine drawings. I don’t know what I”m talking about. I’ve been rereading some Milt Gross stuff and just the way he’ll draw someone with crossed eyes will make me laugh out loud.

Do you want to produce the same results with your own work? Certainly your characters have that look to them.

Chracter design is such a great place to find humor. It’s hard to make humor without making fun of people. I’ve been puzzling about that. You don’t want to draw a stereotype but you want to draw a funny character, so what’s funny? There’s a lot of characters with pinched noses in the book. I don’t know if that’s funny. Part of it is just how people move, their hand gestures or how they float around can be inherently funny. If you try to express something serious through these inherently funny characters, it can be really dumb or really, really interesting.

Well it can make the messages more palatable to the reader.

I think it’s easier to dilute ideas through making a mixture. Cartooning is like the special potent juice you’re’ mixing up your ideas with.

You mentioned the idea of working in the universe. do you see the possibility of a sequel or at least a story taking place in the same world.

I don’t think I’d do a sequel, but unfortunately the way my brain works in trying to figure out a new series I’m essentially doing the same thing over again. I feel like it will be I’m not terribly attached to the characters. In a way they’re like the characters in a play that don’t have too much personality. Maybe that’s something to work on in the future. Even so, Shakespeare didn’t make hamlet 2.

Well maybe if I get letters like L. Frank Baum did from crying little girls. “Please bring back Groomfiend!” Then of course I’d have to do that.  (laughter).

I might still like to do the Atom. I think there’s something great to be done with the Atom that hasn’t been done yet…I like the idea of doing an Atom story where he can only shrink to a certain size for each episode. One of the things I felt didn’t work about the Atom was that he was up and down [in height] and could do anything. I thought it would be really good to do stories of a guy who has so much power to shrink that he does it for missions when he’s brought in. So it’s slightly more Indiana Jones, where this guy works as a professor during the day, but sometimes he’ll get a call from the President — “There’s monsters in the White House carpet” kinda stuff. — and he comes in and deals with that. But in another episode he might just shrink to six inches and be chased around a room by bad guys and cats and dogs, like Incredible Shrinking Man stuff. I thought there’s a sci-fi series in there, where each issue is him at a different scale. In some he could be trapped at a molecular scale, and in other ones he’s one inch and trapped in the garden.

–Action Comics and Supergods writer and superhero-revamper extraordinaire Grant Morrison in conversation with CBR’s Jonah Weiland, who asked him what B-list characters he’d still like to take a crack at. And hey, Morrison’s proven his proficiency with sprawling supporting-player revamps in the past with projects like Seven Soldiers (not to mention the upcoming Multiversity, which he says will have a similar focus on DC’s deep bench), so would it be out of the question for him to throw a Ryan Choi: Rebirth and Atom Incorporated into the mix? For now, I’ll file this with his much-discussed desire to write Wonder Woman under projects we’ll hopefully get to see one day.

Watch the entire video above for more Morrison commentary on the Lois & Clark marriage, Superman’s costume, Action Comics, New X-Men, Supergods, Sinatoro and more.

Any Empire

Nate Powell wowed indie readers back in 2009 with the release of Swallow Me Whole, a haunting graphic novel about a teen-age brother and sister suffering from mental illness and attempting to hold themselves and their family together.

Now Powell has released his follow-up to Swallow, Any Empire. The book, available through Top Shelf, examines the way children are taught about war and violence and how even “acceptable” military violence can end up appearing on our city and town streets.

The book debuts in San Diego this week, and should be in stores next month. We talked to Powell about the book and its underlying themes, both political and social.

Let’s start by talking about the book’s origins. How did Any Empire first take shape?

Well, the book emerged as I was finishing up Swallow Me Whole, and I’d been pretty impacted by the books Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker, On Killing by Dave Grossman, the movie Children of Men, and also a zine supplement in an LP by some friends Please Inform The Captain This Is A Hijack. I’d been very focused on the long history of the state’s prime directive of ensuring its own existence, even if that meant killing or imprisoning its own citizens, or provoking air raids to flatten its own cities for a “proper” moral justification for war (as was one of Churchill’s many shadier moments leading into WWII). We’ve all grown up accustomed to seeing smoldering wastelands on CNN, but I began imagining the rubble as buildings, transplanting foliage back onto the blight, and couldn’t stop imagining my own neighborhood as a wasteland indistinguishable from the ones I’m so used to seeing on the news.

That, coupled with the culture of fear and distrust in which we live, the explosion of populist authoritarian rhetoric and evangelical bullshit, got me started on the book. It was originally a shorter, more concrete, essay-like book whose approach was pretty influenced by Gabby Schulz/Ken Dahl’s books. Over time, it became more and more about living with a very specific privileged fantasy surrounding violence, particularly state violence, and how our own perspectives on that cultural glory-myth will continue to crumble as we’re forced to join the rest of the world in the next fifty years.

From 'Any Empire'

Certainly issues of fantasy violence versus real violence are explored in the book, especially with one character’s daydreams/games involving his action figures. Did you draw upon personal experience for those scenes at all? Is anything in the book autobiographical and if so to what extent?

The book is a work of fiction, but yes, I was definitely a G.I.Joe kid, and I grew up in the South in a military family. It’s unavoidable that Lee is essentially me as a kid, and a lot of his experiences are similar to things that were part of my life. I was (and still am) a pretty private individual, despite the fact that a lot of my life comes through on the page. As a boy, I played plenty with other kids, but it was an entirely different kind of play. Most of my imaginative play was intensely private, and the space carved out had a certain sacredness to it — it was essentially the same space I later discovered could exist when making up worlds in comics.

Like most of my books, characters often have a basis in real people, and a lot of situations are based on something that really did happen, but the who and the what are often entirely shuffled around.

As with Swallow Me Whole, the book also deals with issues of childhood, fantasy and the tricky segue into adulthood. Are these conscious themes you like to explore?

In each of these stories, these themes presented themselves as very natural elements of the story. With the completion of this book, though, I finally feel satisfied enough to be disinterested in exploring adolescence much further in books, at least for now. Spending a few years on a single story is also weird, because by the time you finish a book, you sometimes can’t wait to move past certain issues or themes that might’ve burned in your heart three years prior. Highly subjective experiences will always be a focus to me, but the fantastic elements in this book are largely in relation to our cultural delusions of invincibility, of exceptionalism, and of moral preeminence.

From 'Any Empire'

The book jumps around in time a bit, and moves from fantasy to reality and back again. Were you concerned about the reader’s disorientation at all? I got the feeling at times you wanted the reader to be a little unsure if a sequence was really happening or was in the character’s head.

My sequences and transition give that feeling a lot, and I think they just require taking the sequence of events at face value. There’s a little bit of revisionism in one of the character’s heads as an adult, and some weird Twilight Zone business that brings the present day reality back around to an earlier imagined scene, but the division between fantasy and reality is certainly more clear-cut than in Swallow Me Whole.

Generally, scenes from youth occur without panel borders, unless they’re total fantasy scenes. Adult fantasy scenes sometimes have a formal affectation too, but it’s honestly not very important to figure out what’s really happening and what’s not. The big scene that leads into the end is really happening on the streets of Wormwood, and is based on a highly questionable Marine exercise in an impoverished neighborhood of my hometown in 2002. For six weeks, the DOD performed live urban warfare training exercises as people were trying to get about their daily lives. Not a stretch of the imagination by any means– the state just truly doesn’t give a shit.

Apart from the books you initially mentioned, did you have any other specific comics or comic creators that you referenced while putting the book together? Especially as far as the look and design of the book goes?

I’d say that Dylan Horrocks’ Hicksville and Anders Nilsen’s Big Questions series certainly made their mark on the page layout and narrative flow. Swallow Me Whole was kinda drawn in a vacuum and was really freeform in certain ways, so it was exciting to reel the layout back in, and define a little more carefully what was signified by certain aesthetic choices. That approach revealed more patterns and themes within the book than I was initially aware of, and discovering those unexpected echoes was exciting.

I noticed that you tend to eschew panel borders in most of your comics. Why?

Speaking for myself, when I look at a panel without borders, it seems I internally expand my “view” of the scene far beyond the edge of the panels, and seem to slow down my reading of the image. Whenever I’d do a page that’s just one floating panel in the middle of the page, it seemed to provide the sense of both a splash page and of the pause in the story’s beat given by all the negative space. The next step was to see how an entire page of these vignette panels would read, and there are times where it feels like each panel on the page is its own splash page.

From 'Any Empire'

There’s a bit of gender issues at play in the book as well, as the boys, especially Purdy, seem driven to be by a need to prove themselves as men and as boys engage in aggressive, “manly” games, whereas the main female character, Sarah seems, at least at first, to be the more emotional and sympathy-driven character. Are you consciously exploring these gender roles in the book and if so what are you attempting to address?

As much as the book’s plot is partially driven by play, the main theme here is violence in a variety of forms. And yes, gender definitely plays a role here, but I think that we unavoidably perceive gender as more of the divide here in the story than it really is. The major differences among the characters are in what constitutes their real-life experiences with violence, how they perceive their own relationship to a formidable world, the shape fantasies take in their lives, and to what end the fantasies serve.

Lee comes from a family privileged enough to know life without domestic violence, and his father seems to’ve had an okay time in his military experience, so as a Reagan-era American child, he is able to purely enjoy the cultural glory-myth of bloodshed. At the same time, he is very aware of rumblings of much larger changes in his near future, and works his way through that with a series of epic, romantic, and fatalistic fantasies. As inevitable as it seems to adults, it’s important to note that moving to a new house or town as a child does feel quite like a kind of violence, as privileged as that statement sounds.

Purdy is essentially always waiting for the bottom to fall out, especially in relationships with any other people. I’m pretty sure that he expects new friends and strangers to respond to his true self with disappointment and laughter, and really has no idea that there’s no trick to getting people to open up to you, to sharing time together. It’s all push-pull to him, one thing constantly in reaction to something else. He has essentially woven his own self-concept into a rickety fantasy of its own, so that he can present that fantasy to the world as his core self, but he’s just not that weird or twisted or gung-ho at his core– that’s what makes him so uncomfortable about the twin brothers and their little cult. They seem to personify the things he projects about himself, and they see through his front.

Sarah’s mom is a nurse, and I feel that she’s already gained a very different exposure to violence and mortality from that relationship. Her own interest in wild animals also means that she is becoming more exposed to the brutality and chaos inherent in the wild. Real violence, the violence of hawks and field mice, beatings and heart attacks, is plenty for her, and fantasy serves a different purpose– sleuthing mysteries are another means by which she can put pieces together and make some order out of a grim world.

Do you feel like things like GI Joe and other “boy-oriented” toys are designed to encourage boys to be aggressive and violent? Lee plays extensively with his action figures, but he doesn’t take the same path Purdy does.

I mean, sure they do to an extent, but that’s really a non-issue. I was neck-deep in G.I.Joe and Cold War cultural mythology, as were most boys I grew up with, and most of us turned out just fine. It’s far more damaging to grow up thinking a boy should be punished or corrected for wanting to wear a dress or play with dolls, or grow up thinking that you inherently can’t trust people who live in shoddier homes or who aren’t white. My focus on Reagan-era toys and imaginative play was just on the ways kids always find a way to process the complicated issues in their lives, even if it’s using the only vocabulary they’ve learned thus far, the vocabulary of power games and simple fantasies.

In reading your replies, I get the feeling this was a book borne out of anger, or at least frustration, at the state. Was making the book at all cathartic for you? Did you get any sense of satisfaction or release in making this comic (beyond the pure pleasure of making comics of course).

More than anything, I’d say that anxiety and dread were the motivating feelings. Our cultural climate has reached such levels of emotion-fueled, religion-soaked reactionary rhetoric that these extremes have worked to define themselves as a new moderation. It’s disheartening for all of us to be treading water in so much mutual distrust. Amidst all these crises and transitions, as usual there is absolutely no mainstream criticism of capitalism itself, or of the dirty, dirty ways it has made room for the worst in human nature.

As people continue to grow and change, it’s also so daunting to feel that people are truly expendable to those in power. A lot of effort and action sometimes feels like it can be no more than a gesture; this is the jam that Lee, Sarah, and Purdy get into towards the end. Even if nothing is fundamentally changed from our resistance, those gestures must be made. Another theme that was on my mind a lot was the legitimacy of “I don’t know” as an answer. It’s okay to step into the unknown, and it might be horrible, but a future full of unknowns is revealing itself to us all the time, and it’s no reason to shrink away from fighting for a divergent future.

The book was certainly satisfying to work through, but more than anything I fell deeper and deeper into the connections between characters, and the unspoken conflicts tearing at them from inside. My political lean on the story tempered itself considerably while working through its multiple drafts, and I feel it only became compelling once the narrative itself overtook the pissy rants that gave birth to it. Go catharsis!

RandomVeus

Back in May Udon Entertainment announced they were launching a line of original graphic novels, starting with a book called RandomVeus. Created by Jeffrey Cruz and co-writer Leonard Bermingham, the book features a bouffant-sporting hero and a team of couriers as they “deliver mysterious packages to every corner of the wild world known as the RandomVeus! Octopus ninjas, jazz-playing demons, buxom lady-pirates, cyborg gorillas, samurai mushrooms, and one giant furry squid monster are all on tap in this zaniest of zany adventures!”

The book debuts this week in San Diego and can be found at the Udon booth, #5037. I spoke with Cruz and Bermingham about it, their backgrounds and more.

JK: Tell me a little bit about yourselves. Where do you live and how did you meet?

Leonard: OK. I have been a comic fan since I was eight since a got into comics through the awesome X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons. Been a fan ever since. I found I really got into writing when I was in university where I met Jeff. I went and did a Masters of Creative Media to try and sharpen my writing. That’s my origin story I guess.

Jeff: Well I’m from Melbourne, Australia. I enjoy my sequential art reading, which consist primarily of European and Asian books (there are American comics also) heh. Although drawing pretty much takes up a majority of my life (love it) and I’m not sure I’d want it any other way.

JK: What are some of your biggest influences?

Leonard: Biggest influences….. the Claremont/Lee X-Men series. I read different stuff than what I write. Huge fan of the Walking Dead and Grant Morrison’s Batman and Robin at the moment. WildCATS was a huge eye opener for me for comics outside Marvel and DC. Oh, and the whole Age of Apocalypse. That pretty much hooked me into buying comics.

Jeff: Ooo there’s too many to list! Currently my PRIMARY Influences consist of Mangaka’s Yusuke Murata and Eiichiro Oda, European art crew Catfish Deluxe (Bill, Gobi & Fabien. M) and the works by the anime studio’s Gainax and Madhouse. Comics and cartoons (from various places of various kinds) are what majorly inspire me.

JK: Is this your first comics work?

Leonard: I have done a couple of back-up story’s with Jeff in Vent and Monstrology (an anthology published by APE Entertainment), but this is my first major comic work.

Jeff: It is my first BIGGER creator-owned comic work. I have done a few smaller original anthology-based comics (with Leonard) as well as work for UDON’s Street Fighter II Turbo series, for which I’m primarily known.

JK: Tell me a little bit about the book. What’s it about, and what does the title, RandomVeus, refer to?

Leonard: RandomVeus is like a flashback to the old cartoons we used to watch as kids. A really fun ride with some really crazy characters.

Jeff: Well first off the title. When I first came up with the concept about four years back, I had figured it would be a basic story that would feature random situations/characters/settings as the story went along. So with that, I had originally thought it would be a story of various characters having random rendezvous. Somehow that thought birthed the title RandomVeus. A short description that Leonard and I came up with for RandomVeus is that it’s “The tripped out tales of an interdimensional courier company.”

JK: How did you guys hook up with UDON?

Leonard: Jeff got asked to create his own book and lucky for me, he chose me to help bring these characters to life. After chatting with Matt he really got on board and from there the book just kept rolling.

Jeff: How I happened to land work in UDON is by showing them my work when I attended my very first convention, SDCC back in 2006.

Just started there, I suppose. Nothing instantly, but from there. The next year I was behind the UDON booth experiencing my first convention as an exhibitor. When I was asked if I was interested in doing up my own creation, I just knew that this could be an opportunity for me to finally show my characters in their story. Knowing me mate Leonard wanted to get into comics, I figured I’d get him to assist me in the story as he managed to ‘get’ what my characters were about (and because he’s just better with the whole writing thing).

JK: I understand that in addition to the main story, the book comes with a few extras, like pin-ups. What else can folks expect in terms of extra stuff? And who contributed pin-ups?

Leonard: There is a killer extra story done by Jeff about another character called HenshinHero, which is a very slick little story … I don’t know who the other artists are hehehehe. I know their work, not their names.

Jeff: Well as Leonard has mentioned, I have an “issue” of HenshinHero as a bonus. Don’t want to speak more on it, as it would spoil what it is. But yep, there are a handful of pinups featured in the book. But unlike regular pinups, where I probably would’ve asked comic book professionals to contribute solo pieces, I instead asked a few fellow artists friends from DeviantArt to collaborate with me on a few pin-ups/chapter breaks in volume one. Something fun, as it’s not as common for me to work with other artists on singular pieces. Artists like fellow Noodle (UDON employee) Omar Dogan, Wet Moon and Shadoweyes creator Ross Campbell among a handful of others from animation, video games and comics. Variety is good!

JK: What are you guys working on next?

Jeff: Well I can’t speak for Leonard, but I’ve got another project with UDON (not at liberty to talk about yet) and after that hopefully more RandomVeus, haha.

Robot 6: Why are you so interested in murder, and how has it held your interest through so many books?

Rick Geary: I’ve been a “fan” of crime, both fiction and non-fiction, since the early 1970s. I lived in Wichita, Kansas, and a friend of mine, a former cop, gave me a copy of the complete police file on an unsolved murder in Wichita from the 1960s. It fascinated me, and I used it as the subject of my first published comic story in 1977. Since then, the exploration of the dark side of human behavior has been a continuing obsession.

Robot 6:Would you ever do a book about a modern murder story, or do you prefer to stick to stories set in the past?

Rick: I prefer dealing with cases from the past, because with them the urgency and emotionalism have dissipated, and I’m able to get the proper ironic distance in my treatment. That said, I’d love someday to do the OJ Simpson case or JonBenet Ramsey or even Casey Anthony.

Robot 6: What was there about the Sacco and Vanzetti case that made you want to do a book about it?

Rick: It has all the ingredients I look for in a classic murder case: controversy, mystery and world-wide attention—plus a political dimension that divides people to this day.

Robot 6: There seems to be a lot of ambiguity about this case. How did you research it, and was it difficult to find objective sources?

Rick: The Sacco-Vanzetti case has been studied and written about over the years by both political partisans and objective historians. I searched out all the books available and had no trouble finding sources that dealt with the story even-handedly.

Robot 6: Did your ideas about the case change as you did your research?

Rick: I usually try to pick a case about which I have very few preconceived ideas, so the research phase is one of discovery and education for me. I’m finding out new things through every phase of the book’s production, right up through the final inking, so the piece is in a constant state of flux.

Robot 6: Drawing a comic set in the past has challenges of its own. What do you do to prepare yourself not only to portray it accurately but to avoid anachronism?

Rick: In relating these cases, I try for accuracy and clarity above all, because many of them have acquired, over the decades, layers of mythology and faulty information. I always keep a photo file for the period I’m treating: clothing, interiors, automobiles, carriages, etc. Old catalogs are an especially valuable resource.

Robot 6: You favor a cool voice—the narration in Sacco and Vanzetti almost seems like the narration in a documentary. Do you ever have a strong emotional response to your subjects?

Rick: With any murder case, the horror and grimness and strong feeling are built into the material, so I figure my best approach is one of detachment. Especially with an unsolved case, I like to lay out all the elements and clues in a rational way, so readers can either solve it themselves or realize anew why it remains unsolved.

Robot 6: What are your plans for Comic-Con—and beyond?

Rick: I’ll be at my usual table (F-6) selling my new and older books, as well as postcards. I’m also working on my next book in the murder series: “Lovers’ Lane,” an account of the Hall-Mills double murder of 1922.

from The Wolf by Tom Neely

There’s not much I can say by way of an introduction to Tom Neely that the above image can’t do better. Combining the gangly, jaunty character designs of classic comic icons like E.C. Segar’s Popeye and Floyd Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse with a take on horror that’s equal parts metal album cover, ’70s horror mag, and sexualized Surrealism, Neely’s comics, paintings, and illustrations wed a high level of craft to intense imagery that often literally tears its characters apart. It’s a style Neely has deployed with surprising versatility since the high-profile release of his self-published graphic novel debut The Blot in 2007; in that time he’s riffed directly on his influences with the Popeye reinterpretation Doppelgänger and the horror-mag cover collection Neely Covers Comics to Give You the Creeps!, adapted the songs of punk mainstays the Melvins in Your Disease Spread Quick, created a series of strip-format comic poems in Brilliantly Ham-fisted, put an alternative spin on the gag comic in the anthology Bound & Gagged, and most famously helped craft an ode to the timeless love affair of hardcore legends Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig in Henry & Glenn Forever. I’ve enjoyed all these comics. But The Wolf, Neely’s new self-published full-length graphic novel, is the leader of the pack.

It’s easy to enjoy (if that’s the right word) The Wolf as a thrilling, chilling onslaught of monsters, bloody combat, and graphic sex — and indeed I do. But beneath the werewolves and zombies and tree-headed monks is a moving exploration of couplehood, as our male and female protagonists deal with the pain of the past and the threats of the present in order to build a (literally) brighter future together. As with The Blot, The Wolf‘s wordlessness emphasizes Neely’s powerful images, with a clever use of single splashes and double-page spreads propelling us through a story that at any moment can toggle between nightmare, wet dream, and peaceful reverie. It’s like life with the volume cranked up.

With The Wolf‘s release party scheduled for this Friday, July 8, at L.A.’s Secret Headquarters (although you can already purchase a copy through Neely’s website), Neely has provided Robot 6 with a selection of preview pages from throughout the book, and took the time to answer a few questions about its origins, influences, style, substance, subtext, sex scene, and more.

Tell me a little about the genesis of this project. How soon after The Blot did you know this was your next big thing? You’ve done many smaller — and in the case of Henry & Glenn Forever, sillier — projects since then; how did this come to be a full-length book rather than a mini?

The Wolf, like The Blot, grew out of some paintings I was doing. I had a solo show called Self Indulgent Werewolf at a Gallery in 2007 about 2 months after The Blot came out. So, I was already working out these ideas with wolves and sex and skeletons and stuff right after finishing The Blot. I thought I was gonna work on this other graphic novel I have written, but the wolves kept speaking to me and soon a story had grown out of these paintings and sketches that I thought could become a longer book. But the process for this book was a lot more abstract and intense and in a lot of flux, so it was taking a long time… meanwhile I needed some other “sillier” and fun projects to work on, and I kept myself entertained with Henry & Glenn and my comic strip poems and the Bound and Gagged book and other minis. I’ve always got too many ideas going.

The Wolf was originally intended to have a musical component provided by Aaron Turner, late of the metal band Isis. I see that Aaron blurbed the book, but I take it the comic element took on a life of its own?

After finishing the Melvins comic book, Your Disease Spread Quick, I got the idea of having a soundtrack for The Wolf, so I approached Aaron Turner and he loved the idea and offered to write music for a collaborative book and record co-release project. It was an interesting process to work with another artist this way, but eventually we decided that it wasn’t going to work. I think we both became personally attached to our parts in the collaboration, and we ended up on different paths, and it just didn’t make sense to release them together anymore. I think Aaron has a new House of Low Culture album out soon.

You seem to be working through your golden-age influences a bit less directly than you were in past works like The Blot. I still see Olive Oyl physiques and Floyd Gottfredson white gloves, but the links are otherwise much less direct. Instead I see a lot more continuity with the metal and horror illustrations you’ve been doing. Am I on the right track?

I don’t really consider myself a “metal” artist any more than I consider myself the “Floyd Gottfredson” cartoonist. I’m not really interested in honing a particular signature style. I’m always exploring and finding the best way to tell the story for each project I do. I’m conscious of wanting to evolve and try new things. I think the art in The Wolf is the way the story had to be told, and the same could be said for The Blot. The Blot was a book that needed to feel like an old comic strip. The Wolf is a different kind of story, and to make it comic booky wouldn’t work. I really just looked more within myself. I wanted to flush out the external influences and distance myself from my contemporaries and just get back to what’s in me. I found myself drawing more expressive and more anatomical and sometimes wanting to draw realistic, other times exaggerated… I just didn’t wanna give myself any restrictions.

As for the metal and horror, the metal world has embraced my work, and I’m very happy about that because I am one of them and it’s fun to draw those kinds of things. This freeing up of drawing ideas has crept into all my work recently. I’m just trying to get back to what I love about making art… and sometimes I think I was happiest when I was 14 years old, listening to Obituary and drawing skinny skeletal creatures and stuff.

So what were you looking at/reading/processing while working on this?

All kinds of things… I’ve spent a lot more time looking at pre-Renaissance art, German Expressionism, Japanese watercolors, more Surrealism, and a lot of horror comics. I actually haven’t been reading many new comics at all in the last couple of years. With a few exceptions, I haven’t kept up with what my contemporaries are doing. I’ve been looking more at the woodcut novelists. Otto Nuckel’s Destin was an influence on how I wanted to tell the story of The Wolf, but also movies like Vampyr and Night of the Hunter. I’ve been very interested in the art of Alfred Kubin. I’ve been devouring Prince Valliant and revisiting all my old Creepy and other ’70s horror comics. Reading lots of old werewolf books and lore. Lots of poetry – Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Blake, Yeats… a book of dirty poetry by Aleister Crowley. William Carlos Williams. Lots of old horror and B-movies. And always lots of music – metal, punk, but also a lot of experimental and a lot of jazz.

In addition, I see a rougher edge to your line, which in the past has been classically clean. The brushstrokes are more in evidence, and it makes the art both a little warmer and a little harder-edged at varying points in the narrative. I was wondering if you could talk a bit about your technique here, and how it was tailored to the project.

I was very focused on clean linework for many years, but it started to lose interest for me. I wanted to be more expressive. I don’t know how to talk about specific techniques. I’m more interested in what I can say with a line than how perfect a line is. And trying different kinds of lines to say different things. I left in a lot of pencil marks and mistakes, too. It didn’t feel right to clean it up. I wanted the whole thing to feel more painterly. Like you’re looking at a long narrative series of paintings instead of a comic book.

You also introduce color in a big way, from the spot color of the ghouls to the rhapsodic, abstract, sun-like colors of the sex scene to the full-color conclusion. At times it becomes the primary vehicle for your visual storytelling. The Blot, by contrast, was black and white, with a bit of spot color toward the end. Why did you introduce color as such a major player here? Were there any unique challenges you faced in making work for you?

I like using color when it’s necessary. Black and white is the basic structure you need to tell a story in comics. But sometimes you need color to tell it another way, or to add something to the story. In this book the colors are used symbolically represent various emotions from fear and anxiety to love and connection and peace. I flirted with some of these ideas in The Blot, but I think I took the idea to a new level in The Wolf.

You’ve never shied away from nudity in your work, but this is by far your most explicit depiction of sex yet. What’s interesting to me is that it cycles back and forth between graphically detailed, “anatomically correct” elements to big washes of color and line and movement–abstract, rather than illustrative, images. Can you tell me a bit about what you were going for with this scene?

I originally drew an entire graphic sex scene that was about 15 pages long, but when it was done it didn’t feel right. It reduced the sexual act to a pornographic illustration of sex, and I wanted to communicate something more than that. I wanted to represent the emotional feel of sex and connection in the abstract because the illustrated version seemed cheap and masturbatory. But I book-ended it with more graphic imagery to give the abstraction a context.

On a related note, frank depictions of sex are increasingly prominent in alternative and art comics right now — Powr Mastrs, Sock, Thickness, Celluloid, Brecht Evens’s work…Moreover, in very few of these cases is it presented in the sordid, squalid, or masturbatory light people might expect from alternative work. I know you really can only speak for yourself, but do you have a sense of why this might be?

I actually haven’t read any of those books you just mentioned (except the first volume Powr Mstrs and I don’t remember any sex in it?), [Tom is forgetting one of the great human/jellyfish sex scenes in comics history - STC] so I don’t know why sex may be emerging in indie comics. Maybe because the big push of the aughts in comics seemed to be towards literary and more intellectual comics. I get tired of the over-intellectualizing of comics. It’s fun and it has its place, and I overanalyze the crap out of everything, too… But when I get in the studio to work on this book I just want to make something more expressive and poetic and raw. Now I’m eager to check out those books and see what you’re talking about.

On the surface this may seem like an odd thing to say about a book involving werewolves, skinless zombies, and tree people, but there are elements in The Wolf that strike me as almost autobiographical in nature — dealing with past transgressions and reaching a state of, I dunno, healing or acceptance in the present. I don’t mean to pry, since obviously if you wanted to do straight autobio you would have, but I did at least want to point out that there’s more to this, emotionally, than horror and sex.

Yep… I believe all art is autobiographical at some level… but you know… sometimes with werewolves and skeletons and tree-headed monks and stuff.

You’ve been quite frank about the…I almost want to say “existential crisis” you went through after seeing Henry & Glenn Forever, the Rollins/Danzig slashfic gag collection you created with the Igloo Tornado collective, take off in a way that your more serious, personal, labor-intensive works had yet to do. Did that impact The Wolf in any way? Have you come to terms with it now?

Yeah… I’ve come around to being really happy about (and for) Henry & Glenn. It was a weird thing to be in the middle-to-end stages of The Wolf and see this other book, that I honestly think is the dumbest idea we ever had, become such a huge hit! But I’ve learned to just enjoy the weird ride. I always like to do different things with my art, and those things are going to appeal to different people. I had fun making Henry & Glenn, so it’s fun to see people enjoy it. I don’t expect even 10% of the Henry & Glenn fans to be fans of my other work. Maybe some of them will trickle over to The Wolf or The Blot or Bound & Gagged, but whatever… every piece of art has to find it’s own audience. I think the important thing is to not let any of this popularity influence my work. The popularity of Henry & Glenn isn’t going to make me spend the rest of my career chasing that popularity, but I won’t shy from it either.

We’re actually talking about doing a second Henry & Glenn book and I think it will be fun. Or maybe it will be a beaten-up dead horse. But as long as we’re having fun with it, why not?

What’s in store for you now that The Wolf is almost out?

Let me take off the artist hat and put on my PR hat: I’m having a book release party for The Wolf in LA at Secret Headquarters Comic Book Shop on July 8th. I won’t have a table at San Diego Comic Con, but I will be doing some Wolf signings with Decibel Magazine at the Nuclear Blast booth. And later I’ll be tabling at SPX and APE. I also hope to be doing some book tours with The Wolf in the Fall.

The plot of Garden is pure simplicity: A crowd of would-be sightseers (all wearing costumes and headgear that make them look like a lost Kinnikuman toyline) sneak into a sprawling “garden” filled with inexplicable, incredible sights and structures, from a river of rubber balls and a forest filled with disassembled cars to mountains made of glass and a massive hallway filled with floating bubbles. The endlessly chatty characters slowly walk, climb, swing, float, and otherwise make their way through the environments and obstacles, constantly narrating as they go. (“Now what could this be?” “It’s a field of boulders.” “All the boulders have ladders on them.” “Let’s climb it.”) By explaining exactly what’s happening at all times, the little explorers make following Yokoyama’s often kaleidoscopic art a breeze, freeing you to simply marvel at the sheer scale and scope of his imagination (and chuckle at the the crazy stuff the characters encounter). The overall effect is like being strapped in for a ride through some Bizarro Disney World where every single attraction is as colossal and otherworldly as the big Spaceship Earth golfball, as fast as Space Mountain, and as dizzying as the Mad Tea Party.

Courtesy of PictureBox, Robot 6 is pleased to present this exclusive eight-page preview of Garden, and an interview with Yokoyama about the book, in which the cartoonist gives us some fascinating answers — about his love for the collision between the natural and artificial, his goal in including all that dialogue, and why size matters — and raises just as many compelling questions.

(Special thanks to Dan Nadel and Yu Marooka for their help in facilitating and translating this interview respectively.)

Sean T. Collins: The biggest change in Garden from your previous books is the constant dialogue. The characters narrate their experiences in the garden, telling us exactly what they’re seeing and doing. To me, this created a sense of extreme focus: It forced me to concentrate fully on what was happening in each panel, rather than requiring me to interpret events my own way. Was that your goal in using all this dialogue?

Yuichi Yokoyama: During the events of Garden, that’s the only thing that characters can do — moving around it, taking photos, expressing their view, delivering their opinion. In Garden, I would like to draw scenes where the humor comes from how the characters talk and express their own view. Of course, such dialogue by the characters helps readers understand the story easier.

That’s true! I found it much easier to follow what was happening, thanks to the characters’ explanations; this made reading the comic much less stressful and much more enjoyable. I felt like I was going along for the ride with them. Did you have the readers’ understanding in mind when you wrote the dialogue?

In my recent stories, I always try to make dialogue and explanation as simple as possible, so that readers can understand easily. Although I am not sure if my plan is successful or not.

I think it worked perfectly. To talk about your older work for a moment, in New Engineering, you showed us man-made versions of nature — giant machines building mountains and fields and rivers and so on. You did this in Garden as well, but you also showed us the reverse: Man-made objects becoming integrated into nature, like the cars buried in the forest, or household items floating down a river. Those features of the garden seem like a different approach to the tension between the natural world and humanity’s desire to exercise control over it than, for example, the fake mountain ranges and lakes…

As you say, I can say that Garden is the story in which I showed my desire for the natural world. I enjoy seeing the natural world mixed with artificial things made by humans much more than just seeing the natural world itself.

When in your life did you first realize this? For me, seeing big treehouses for children was the moment when I realized how fascinating the mix of natural and artificial could be.

I can’t identify when, but I was impressed by seeing dams and construction sites when I was younger.

At times, Garden reminded me of going to a theme park and playing around on rides and exhibits. For example, when the characters ride up the mountain on a moving block of stone, or climb up trees and slide down poles to get from place to place, it made me think of Disney World, almost. And Disney World itself is a Garden-like environment, where people created a vast artificial playground in what was otherwise wilderness. Were amusement parks or theme parks on your mind when you created Garden?

No, I never had such idea or images when I created Garden.

In addition to the kinds of natural and artificial features we’re accustomed to seeing in large scale — mountains and bodies of water, buildings and walls — Garden also featured photographs, books, and household furniture used in such quantities that they became massive features of the landscape themselves. Why did you choose to make these intimate objects so monumental and intimidating?

I didn’t intend to choose to make them so monumental and intimidating, but I would like to enjoy such common and familiar objects by giving them other different meanings of existence. Also, I always yearn for large scales, massive spaces, and huge objects.

I can tell! Actually, the sheer size of all the places explored by the characters left me wondering who or what could possibly have constructed them all. Do you ever give any thought to the architects and builders who create these spaces within the story, or do they simply exist?

They simply exist. I don’t have any background on who created them.

Finally, I noticed that the characters ask many questions that remain unanswered. They never find out why the objects they encounter were built the way they were. They never find out about the mysterious person who seems to have arrived at some of these locations before they did. They never find out what lies along the paths they don’t take. Are there answers to these mysteries?

There never are answers to these mysteries, so I would like readers enjoy imagining by him(her)self. These objects and events seem to be artificial, but they aren’t made for human use. There are no intellectual explanations for them.

I think it’s in our nature to seek explanations in fiction, but so much of your work seems designed to be beyond explanation. What are you trying to accomplish by denying readers these answers?

I believe that it’s more natural that everything doesn’t have explanations,
and I think it’s unnatural to give readers rational explanations for everything.

—

Garden
Release Date: 5/4/2011
Writer : Yuichi Yokoyama
Artist : Yuichi Yokoyama
Manufacturer / Publisher : Picturebox
Diamond code : MAR111221
ISBN : 9780982632710

A group of friends attempts to enter a garden just beyond a wall. When they succeed, the garden they finally enter is no Eden, but rather a massive landscape of machines, geometric forms, and all manner of nonorganic objects. In Japanese comic-book artist Yuichi Yokoyama’s newest and longest work, his characters become enmeshed in a fantastic wonderland of distorted mirrors, photographic equipment, massive libraries and complex pathways, thus yielding a reflection on the myriad ways human interact with the complex mechanical world we have created.

But in his upcoming book The Cardboard Valise, due out on March 8 from Pantheon, Katchor takes a journey beyond his customary imaginary American-urban setting. This collection of strips culled from a variety of publications tells the loosely intertwined stories of two men dealing with our increasingly small world in two very different fashions: One is a literal travel addict who can’t stop visiting distant lands and cultures; the other proudly and loudly denounces the very notion of differing nations and customs, seeking to wipe out the physical and psychological borders that divide the world. Unsurprisingly, Katchor proves himself just as adept at chronicling the dislocations of travel and internationalism as he is at showing us (to use the subtitle of one of his books) the pleasures of urban decay.

As part of Robot 6’s second anniversary spectacular, Katchor allowed us to pick his brain about his new book, the allure of exoticism, the danger of nationalism, print vs. digital, and making the impossible possible.

Sean T. Collins: I’ve long associated your work with New York City, or a “New York City of the mind” at any rate, so I was surprised to see that The Cardboard Valise is largely set in the conspicuously “foreign” settings of Tensint Island and Outer Canthus. What made you decide to head abroad? Was there something you could do there that you couldn’t in a recognizably American setting like The Cardboard Valise‘s third major location, Fluxion City?

Ben Katchor: My interest in the Julius Knipl series was to invent a fictional American city that might have existed just before my birth. I began to understand that slight extrapolations of the urban texture I knew resulted in equally plausible details.  This interest led me to consider all of the exotic ideas and feelings I had about foreign locales and how much of this exotica was self-generated. I started The Cardboard Valise to examine the tension between these invented cultural artifacts and the supranational impulses of modernism.

Certainly much “exotica” is “self-generated,” as you put it, but in The Cardboard Valise, at least, it seems that the foreign locations we visit are heavily invested in perpetuating their own air of the exotic. I’ve certainly gotten the sense when traveling to popular places that tourists and their destinations almost have an unspoken agreement: The tourists come expecting a certain thing, and the destinations deliver. It sounds like you’d place the blame for this chicken-and-egg cycle on the tourists?

You’re right, it’s a vicious circle that ends up with historic places being turned into touristic gift-shop towns, but the root of this behavior lies in the 19th century movements for national identity and purity –  all based on pure fantasies. Rather than attributing a perfume to a particular perfume maker, it became French perfume and that sort of nationalistic generalization leads to trouble.

The Cardboard Valise stars two main characters: Emile Delilah, an avid traveler addicted to experiencing other lands and cultures; and Elijah Salamis, an eccentric city-dweller devoted to obliterating the very notion of separate nations and customs. How’d you come up with these two opposite numbers? Do you ultimately feel that either of their credos is a superior prescription for modern life?

As I mentioned, this conflict was at the root of The Cardboard Valise.  As the world is now a very small place, I am an internationalist. I don’t feel particularly attached to the culture in which I grew up. In fact, I attribute all of the most dangerous delusional behavior to these ancient cultural ideas being played out in pathetic displays of nationalism and religious belief. The few valuable things developed over history are the exceptions and can be attributed to a small number of people — everyone else is just riding on the coattails of rare musicians, chefs, inventors, etc.

That’s interesting, because there seems to be a fine line between delusional displays and genuine, worthwhile individual expression in your work. To me, the two stand-out “performers” in The Cardboard Valise were the ice-cream-licking artist and the bogus evangelist; the former seemed to be a statement about art being a rarefied and underappreciated commodity, and the latter is obviously one of those pathetic displays of religiosity you cite. Do you feel like you give voice to the “rare musicians, chefs, inventors, etc.” who help develop things of lasting value in your work, or do your interests lie elsewhere?

There’s an element of delusional behavior behind both types. My interest in the picture-story is to imbue all of these occupations with an entertaining poetic logic — just to demonstrate that’s it’s possible.

I’ve always been smitten with the way you construct spaces on the page. I feel like you use odd angles and dramatic body language to convey the three-dimensionality of the buildings and streets your characters visit and inhabit — I practically feel like I’m in there with them. It’s very different from the proscenium-stage panel layouts one frequently sees in comic strips. I was wondering if you could talk a bit about your approach to constructing environments — is it something you feel meshes with the stories you’re telling, as well as just being a visual flourish?

The spatial composition of my picture-stories is pre-photographic (and pre-cinemagraphic) and more closely related to the theatrical space of a stage, in that I’m always striving to described a precise spatial drama without the flattening and random cropping of photography. When comics began to emulated films and the analysis of motion, spatial description and a description of the richness of the moment became less important. My approach is to construct a palpable space. Whatever happens in that space becomes believable. I also favor the sketch aesthetic that results in a kind of drawing that’s imbued with my handwriting and is, as a result, as far from the conventional symbols of text (language) as possible. Playing with that full spectrum of meaning, eight panels, or so, is usually enough to evoke a believable fictional world.

I don’t want my readers to be lulled into a long alluring narrative dream. I prefer to throw them back into their own lives after eight, or so, panels. Therefore, the long-form picture-story doesn’t interest me.

I have this very vivid memory of going to Disney World with my family as a child and being suddenly awed when I saw that it someone’s job to clean ONE particular restroom or sell food at ONE particular stand near ONE particular attraction in ONE particular area of ONE particular theme park out of the many that comprised the whole giant complex, and that this was multiplied countless times over until every task in the whole of Disney World got done, day in and day out. That’s when I realized that for every task in every place on Earth, it’s someone’s job to do that task. This is my lengthy way of saying that that’s the feeling I get from all the imaginary, impossibly specific and picayune jobs you invent in your strips — the guy who buys a man’s lint-stained pants for a museum collection of accidental art, the guy who’s made an art form out of licking ice cream cones, the black-market uneaten-toast peddlers. Even though none of these jobs actually exist, I always feel that reading your comics gives me a sense of the boundless (and at times pointless) complexity of the world. I’m curious if that’s how you see it too.

I think that all serious investigations of how the world functions must take place on a near-microscopic level — that goes for fiction as well as science.

This response and your previous one made me realize something. Obviously your preference for the strip format and your depiction of life on the “near-microscopic level” are a natural fit–but at the same time, the strips comprising The Cardboard Valise and the detail they contain eventually accumulate into a satisfying novel-length “story,” for want of a better word, with a unified theme and effect. At least to me they did! Was this your intention from the start when developing Delilah, Salamis, and their world?

Although I wanted the reader to feel as though each weekly installment was self-contained, I knew that some vague structure was taking shape through accretion over the years. The book reader, taking it in at one sitting, probably gets a better sense of the fragility on the narrative and of how it was improvised week by week, or page by page.

Another anecdote: When I first graduated college I worked in New York as a production assistant in film and television, which mostly consisted of traveling around Manhattan running errands for the production companies. I was constantly catching glimpses of lost businesses as I roamed around–I remember one vendor of something or other had set up shop in a third story of an office building that still had antiquated pneumatic message tubes running here and there throughout the space. I found myself feeling nostalgia for something I’d never even actually experienced. With your comics–whether it’s the workers of Fluxion City or the tourist attractions of Tensint Island–I find myself feeling nostalgia and wanderlust for things I not only haven’t experienced, but couldn’t possibly ever have experienced, because they don’t exist! Am I on the right track as to what you’re up to by conjuring up these places?

Those feelings of nostalgia for things you never knew are proof that all human culture is invented and should not be accepted as being inevitable. I hope that my picture-stories make people aware of the arbitrary nature of the social and economic structures they see around them and give them an incentive to change those things that seem wrong.

I think that they did in The Cardboard Valise even more, perhaps, than your other comics, in large part because it so markedly was NOT a city that “existed in a time before my birth,” as you described your comics earlier — digital technology is mentioned, as are specific post-millennial dates, and a laptop figures prominently right at the end of the book. Why did you choose to so clearly differentiate this world from the world of the past?

In the Knipl series, I made use of so many real-world historical details that readers felt as though Knipl was their uncle leading them through a unified urban mythology. The Cardboard Valise was a reaction against this cozy world-view. I wanted to evoke a feeling of cultural senselessness and dislocation. The laptop episode is there to remind readers that print and digital technology are both high tech inventions.

Also — and this is a bit less grand of a question — in that laptop strip, which concerns the difference between printed travel brochures and their online equivalents, I couldn’t help but think of the dichotomy between print and digital comics. Do you have strong feelings in that regard?

I’m now accustomed to seeing my work on a large hi-resolution monitor. The printed image looks like a poor reduction. Regardless of how the strip is presented, all the elements of drawing, writing and composition must be functioning on a certain level to hold my interest. I like the immateriality of digital delivery — it’s like handling snowflakes.

The Devastator #2

After running a successful Kickstarter campaign, Geoffrey Golden and Amanda Meadows launched The Devastator earlier this year, a humor anthology that features a mix of prose and comics by a variety of contributors. Each issue focuses on a particular subject; the first issue lampooned cartoons like Fat Albert, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Inspector Gadget, while the second issue will take aim at science fiction when it comes out later this week.

Contributors to the anthology include a mix of humor writers, Hollywood folks and cartoonists — James Urbaniak of The Venture Bros. fame, Masterpiece Comics creator R. Sikoryak, Wondermark creator David Malki!, Antz co-writer Todd Alcott and Metalocalypse‘s Jon Schnepp, among many others. Per their site, “The Devastator publishes quarterly, which naturally means twice a year.”

I met Golden and Meadows at the Alternative Press Expo in October and caught back up with them this week to talk about the anthology.

JK: So to start off, introduce yourselves. What do you do in addition to the anthology?

Geoffrey: I’m Geoffrey Golden, co-founder and editor in chief of The Devastator. In addition, I’m a freelance writer/editor – I’ve written for Cracked, MadAtoms, National Lampoon and recently finished writing an animated movie for Lionsgate and Mondo Media (Happy Tree Friends).

Amanda: I’m Amanda Meadows, co-founder and managing editor of The Devastator. I too am a freelance writer/editor; I’ve written for College Humor, McSweeney’s, and worked at a publishing company for some time.

JK: What made you want to start publishing your own humor publication?

Geoffrey: Groupies.

Amanda: We both love the golden age of great magazine-driven parody and satire in the 60s-70s, and realized there isn’t much out there like that right now.

Geoffrey: Yes, and there are so many print humor groupies. We are swimming in tail.

Amanda: Doing the backstroke in tail.

Geoffrey: Dog paddling… in tail? That doesn’t work.

JK: What were some of the influences you guys bring to the project? I get a MAD/Cracked kind of vibe from some of the material.

Geoffrey: For Devastator, some of the influences we’re drawing upon are classic MAD, classic National Lampoon magazine, Bloom County, James Thurber, The Onion, Michael Kupperman, South Park and classic Steve Martin.

Amanda: Geoff and I were both big comedy geeks at an early age. I’m also a literary fiend, so sometimes you see some of that. In our most recent book, we spoofed those mash-up novels with “Mrs. Dalloway and the Reptillian Humanoids.”

JK: You’ve got an impressive group of creators who contributed to the first two issues. How do you go about finding material to publish and recruiting talent to work with? Do you mostly work with people you know, or is there a formal process?

Amanda: We happen to know a ton of uber-talented friends- like brilliant parody artist R. Sikoryak, screenwriter Todd Alcott, or James Urbaniak (The Venture Bros). Many times we simply approach people we love, like Metalocalypse’s Jon Schnepp, and they jump at the opportunity to do something fun and different.

Geoffrey: Fifferent.

JK: What’s the funniest thing you’ve gotten so far that you haven’t been able to publish?

Geoffrey: The Cartoons book has a piece called “A Knack For Knock-Offs,” which was a gallery of bootleg illustrations by a hack artist. The creator of the piece, Ryan Sandoval, gave us too many funny illustrations to choose from, so his “Calvin Peeing On Osama Bin Laden’s Decapitated Head T-Shirt” went cruelly unpublished.

Amanda: For the upcoming Devastator #2: Science Fiction, a hilarious comic script for “Blade Runner Bloopers” came across our desk a little too late.

JK: Is there anyone who hasn’t contributed to an issue yet who you’d like to see in a future one?

Amanda: Our wishlist is long, but we are hacking away at it… we’d love to see original work from Michael Kupperman, Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics, manga-ka Filipe Smith, and Kate Beaton would be a coup.

Geoffrey: We’d also kill to have Robert Smigel and Ben Edlund on board. Kiiiill…

JK: Some of the submissions were funny but a bit, um, disturbing? I’m particularly thinking of the Slash Fiction Throughout History feature in the first issue. Is there a line you won’t cross when selecting more risque material?

Amanda: By the way, Popeye and Bluto snuggling in bed together during WWII is easily one of our most popular images. People chuckle nervously when they first see it, then buy the print.

Geoffrey: I think we’re still figuring out the line. Our goal is to publish stuff that makes us laugh and not completely freak out our parents. So far, we’ve only just disgraced them a bit.

JK: You’ve tackled science fiction and cartoons in the two issues you’ve published so far. What themes can we expect to see in future issues?

Amanda: CBR is getting the first word! Our next book’s theme is cats! Cats in pop culture, cat-owner culture, the cat industrial complex… it’s all ripe for clawing.

Geoffrey: Cartoonist and award winning cat breeder Jeffrey Brown is contributing, among other awesome folk!

JK: Are there plans to make Devastator available online or digitally in some form? And why did you choose to publish it in print rather than, say, setting up a website?

Amanda: We sell our ebook versions through WOWIO for lulz, which you can find here. The book is the true experience, but if you’re unsure about us we suggest getting a $1.99 PDF. But really, why be unsure? We’re great.

Geoffrey: We wanted to create the kind of print humor publication we read and loved as kids. If Devastator lived solely online, it would be artistically disappointing. Sort of like shooting a movie and distributing it direct-to-DVD instead of in theaters first.

Amanda: Although we are working on some awesome video content in addition to the books. One of them is animated! Squee!

Geoffrey: Squee?

Amanda: Squee.

JK: You guys have been hitting the convention circuit and making appearances to publicize the book. What do you have coming up?

Geoffrey: At Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles this Thursday, Dec. 9, we’re signing Devastator #2 and hosting a comedy reading afterward! More details on our web-home-blog-site-page.

Amanda: Next year will be awesome. We just got word we’re exhibiting at both WonderCon and SDCC ‘11! COMIC-CON!

Geoffrey: Also, if you’re a SoCal local, we are regulars at the Rose Bowl Comics Show in Pasadena. Bring us your $2 bills!

Amanda: $2 bills are shockingly popular in Pasadena.

The Devastator #1

JK: How did the Kickstarter campaign work out? Any tips or tricks for others who might be considering it?

Geoffrey: I’m not sure it would have been possible to make The Devastator at the scale we managed to make it without Kickstarter. It’s an innovative way to organize the savage beast that is the fundraising process.

Amanda: Some tips we learned going through the process: make a realistic goal. No one wants to give you $15,000 so can quit your job to record your ironic Juggalo band. Make awesome rewards. “Special thanks” credits on a movie are not good enough – give them swag! Always update the donors, because including them in the process is more fun. Lastly, do your best to get your project out there on Facebook and the blogosphere- you never know who could be a potential backer!

JK: And finally, you guys were heavily promoting subscriptions at APE this year. How have they been doing? And how does that help your overall business plan?

Amanda: BTW- thank you JK for being a subscriber! *confetti*

Our base is growing with every show. We always recommend subscribing–you get 4 books for a price so low, it leads you to question our mental faculties and ability to perform simple arithmetic. Plus they get a piece of awesome merch. So much win.

Geoffrey: Like with any publication, subscribers are the livelihood of business. The beginning is the hardest, but thanks to the groundswell of support we got on Kickstarter, we had something substantial to build on. However, if anyone reading this is in Business Development, we’d love to talk to you!

Amanda: You will be wined and, quite possibly, dined.

So, once a month I’d like to use this space for a different kind of look at the creators of the fun kinds of comics we usually talk about here. I hope you’ll dig it as much as I do.

Kelly Sue DeConnick

First up is Kelly Sue DeConnick who got started in the biz translating manga for VIZ and Tokyopop before doing some Image anthologies (most of which featured robots) and 30 Days of Night: Eben & Stella for IDW. Nowadays, of course, you’ll find her name all over Marvel comics in anthologies like Age of Heroes and Girl Comics and one-shots like Sif and Rescue. You may have also noticed that Osborn, her first mini-series for Marvel, just launched today.

Let’s get to know her:

Q: Who’s your personal hero?

A: Man. After far more deliberation that I really should cop to, I’m going to go with Laurenn McCubbin. There are about a bazillion ways to interpret “personal hero.” I’m going with the person from whom I think I have the most to learn, the person I wish I were more like.

Laurenn’s exceptionally courageous and open-minded, two areas where I think I could be improved. More impressive still, she has the extraordinary willingness to be wrong. Do you know what I mean by that? Laurenn is one of the few people you’ll ever meet who will go into an argument with you willing to change her mind. She doesn’t seem to have her ego wrapped up in any of that. You don’t really realize how rare that is until you meet someone like her. I think it’s tremendously evolved.

I suck at being wrong. I’m embarrassed by it.

Good thing it happens so very rarely.

Wah wah.

Osborn

Q: What’s your morning routine?

A: Wake up in a panic, make coffee, pack HL’s lunch, unload the dishwasher, check email, nurse Tallulah, feed HL, dress the kids, dress me, take the kids to “school.” Come home and make a pot of coffee, go downstairs to my office.

I’m still, uh, refining it.

Q: What’s your favorite item of clothing?

A: Right now? Matt’s bespoke suit. Henry’s orange, slim cut jean. Tallulah’s black, tiered-ruffle onesie.

Oh, of mine? Tough call. There’s a white Armani Exchange trench coat that I dearly love, but I need to finish getting the baby weight off before I can wear it again. I should be back in it by Spring.

24Seven

Q: What do you always have with you?

A: My phone.

That’s so sad, isn’t it?

Q: What’s always in your refrigerator?

A: Lemons.

Q: What’s your favorite food?

A: Tabasco sauce.

Q: What’s your fitness routine?

A: My what…?

Oh, right! I used to have one of those. These days, it’s chasing the kids. I’d love to get back to running, swimming and/or Ashatanga, but making the time is difficult.

Q: What superstitions do you have?

A: Any time I back the car out I imagine getting T-boned. It’s a horrible vision, but I’m afraid that if I forget to do it it’ll actually happen.

Comic Book Tattoo

Q: What do you do to procrastinate?

A: Clean. Answer emails.

Q: What’s your biggest self-indulgence or guilty pleasure?

A: Chocolate, maybe? Coffee. Swearing. Magazines I don’t actually have time to read.

I feel guilty about all of those.

Q: What gadget can’t you live without?

A: Again with the iPhone. Though… the iPad is making its case.

Q: What’s your most prized possession?

A: Hm. I’d be very sad if anything ever happened to my pink typewriter. Or my Mason-Pearson hairbrush. Or my Walt Simonson-signed Thor #380.

Q: What kind of vehicle do you drive?

A: Black Honda Odyssey.

…shut up.

Thor #380

Q: What’s your next big purchase going to be?

A: Probably a treadmill.

I hate making big purchases. I get very stressed out by the research.

Q: What’s your favorite place in your home?

A: My office.

Q: What’s your greatest artistic strength?

A: Character.

Q: What’s your greatest artistic weakness?

A: Plot.

Sif

Q: Do you play a musical instrument?

A: Nope.

Q: What talent do you covet?

A: The ability to plot.

Q: What’s your best memento from your work?

A: I guess probably that Walt Simonson-signed Thor #380. It’s honestly the only “momento of my work” I can think of and I do love it dearly. It’s sitting right here on my desk next to me. Say hello, Thor #380.

…

It says, “Aye.”

Q: What household chore do you absolutely hate to do?

A: Checking voice mail.

The Heroic Age

Q: What obsolete item can you not part with?

A: I have several dead people still in my address book. They’re not at those numbers any more but I can’t bear to delete them.

Q: What’s the best recent gift you’ve received?

A: Laurenn sent me a little red-headed doll that she called a “Kelly Sue Action Figure.” It’s winking and holding a purse.

Oh! And Alisa bought me some Kate Spade sunglasses. She remembered that I’d liked them when we tried them on in the store and she went back for them for me when they went on sale. I love that she remembered. That was sweet.

Q: What’s your retreat?

A: Wow. That’s a good question. I have no idea.

NPR, maybe? I like to zone out and listen to the radio while I’m cleaning.

Rescue

Q: Do you collect anything?

A: Manual typewriters, I guess. But I only have two. I’ve owned three in my life, but my black one was stolen. Similarly, I have two racehorse bobbleheads, but Henry broke the head off one.

Q: Do you have any hobbies?

A: I used to knit. I loved it, but I haven’t picked up my needles since I was pregnant with Henry.

I still bake pretty frequently.

Q: What movie have you seen more than any other?

A: Hm. Probably either The Jungle Book or Footloose. The former because it’s Henry’s favorite and latter because I worked in a video store for four years or so and Footloose was one of the few movies we were allowed to play on the big screen. The Golden Child would be on that short list too.

I’m not proud, I’m just sayin’.

Eben & Stella

Q: What book have you read more than any other?

A: Easily The Sun Also Rises.

Q: What are you always asked at parties?

A: “Do you draw the pictures?”

Q: What’s your evening routine?

A: Pick up the kids, have a little adventure on the way home (sometimes this means feeding the ducks or something exciting, sometimes it means stopping at the grocery store for “Baby Coffee,” which is what we call a steamer), I make dinner, we eat together at the table, we have some family play time, then Matt takes HL to have his bath and I clean the kitchen, load the dishwasher, whatever. Henry and I brush our teeth together, then Matt reads Henry his bedtime stories while I nurse Tallulah to sleep.

Girl Comics

Q: What do you always have at your bedside?

A: Lip balm.

Q: What do you obsess over?

A: What’ve you got?

(Seriously. I’m an obsessive personality.)

Q: What’s your travel routine?

A: 1) Book trip. 2) Get excited. 3) Have something come up or someone get sick. 4) Cancel trip. 5) Mope.

Q: What’s the worst thing about traveling?

A: The canceling.

Age of Heroes

Q: Which historical figure would you most like to meet?

A: Eleanor of Aquitaine, maybe? Alice Paul… Diana Vreeland… Jackie Cochran… I’m sure I could go on.

Q: What’s the greatest misconception about your life?

A: Man, I’ve tried answering this three times and I keep coming off like a jerk. Can I answer something else instead?

Q: What are you going to work on tomorrow?

A: Osborn. And a little bit on another thing. Oh, and some insurance stuff.

Glamorous, no?

Thanks so much to Kelly Sue for indulging me with these. Next Month: Atomic Robo‘s Brian Clevinger!

Viz Media

Publishers | Viz Senior Vice President and General Manager Alvin Lu discusses the state of the company after the layoffs that occurred in May, as well as the overall manga market. “We continue to get great support from our retail partners. They do see that these very popular series continue to do well. They are getting up there in the 40s and 50s of the volume count, and there is the challenge of bringing in newer readers, to catch them up. I was looking though a calendar from several years ago when we were looking at Bleach Vol. 5 or something. That is a conversation we’ve been having with the bookstores, and they’re being very responsive on how to work with us, to continue to drive the category. They’ve been very supportive of helping us launch new series as well. So it’s a balancing act of getting the space to launch new series while nurturing the more mature series that continue to enjoy a loyal readership.” [ICv2]

Events | Brian Heater from the Daily Cross Hatch and Sarah Morean from Blog Chicka Blog Blog have declared Aug. 28 “International Read Comics in Public” Day. They’ve started a blog that features, as you might guess, people reading comics in public. [Daily Cross Hatch]

Wednesday Comics

Publishing | Ada Price talks to DC Comics art director and Wednesday Comics editor Mark Chiarello about the project, asking if there’s any word about a sequel. “There’s some talk about it. I think the only reason to do it would be to do it as good, if not better than the first series, and that’s going to be difficult,” Chiarello said. [Publishers Weekly]

Publishing | A profile of Richelle Mead, author of the Vampire Academy series of books, reveals that a graphic novel version is due in August 2011. [Kansascity.com]

Conventions | Gregory Schmidt talks to companies like Mattel and Warner Bros. about how they market to girls at Comic-Con International. [New York Times]

Digital comics | Todd Allen talks to Robert Jacobi, an example of a “lapsed comics reader that the iPad apps were supposed to connect with.” [Publishers Weekly]

Steve Englehart

Creators | Writer Steve Englehart continues to share stories from his early days as a comics writer in a new column for Tor.com. “Many people today are amazed at this. ‘They gave you an established icon like Captain America and said do whatever you want?’ Yes, they did. And when I did make the book sell and did meet my deadlines, they gave me The Hulk and The Avengers and a whole lot more. I’ve talked about how writing periodicals teaches you to write. I should add that complete freedom lets you explore anything that seems like a good idea without once looking over my shoulder or second-guessing myself. So when I wrote comics, I lived in the moment, letting my stories tell me what to write about, riffing off the zeitgeist month by month.” [Tor.com]

Creators | Jesse Blaze Snyder talks about his family, reality TV and his comic book writing. [The Beat]

Creators | Robot 6 contributor Brigid Alverson talks to Rob Worley about creating the all-ages comic Scratch9. [Publishers Weekly]

Creators | Douglas Wolk interviews Scott Snyder about his upcoming run on Detective Comics. [Techland]

Comics | David Brothers offers a detailed analysis of previous Top Cow Pilot Season winner Genius by Marc Bernardin, Adam Freeman and Afua Richardson: “Richardson’s approach to violence is both matter-of-fact and highly stylized. Richardson’s freeze frames of violence aren’t sensational or overly gory, but her just-shy-of-realistic art makes ‘Genius’ look almost like a really high quality animated movie. While the big bangs are what push the plot forward, Richardson renders lower key moments just as well. Destiny’s way of thinking is presented in an inventive visual shorthand that is instantly understandable and worthy of poring over. [ComicsAlliance]

Comics | Jeffery Klaehn names the greatest comic-book super-teams. [Pop]

The original Jinx gang, as visualized by Fernando Ruiz

One of the more intriguing pieces of news to come out of Comic-Con was that the Archie folks are bringing back the venerable cute-kid comic Li’l Jinx, but with an older Jinx and a fresh new look. Even better, the comic is being written by J. Torres (Alison Dare, Lola: A Ghost Story). The series will go direct to digital in four 22-page issues and then see print as a trade paperback.

Not only did J. take time to talk to me about the new comic, but the Archie folks provided some exclusive character sketches of the new, more grown-up versions of Jinx and her friends. Hit the jump for comics and conversation.

Brigid: First of all, since Jinx isn’t very well known, can you give our readers a quick description of who she is and why she is unique?

Jinx, who has dropped the Li'l from her name

J. Torres: Li’l Jinx is a feisty little girl who got into comical battles with her motley crew of friends and her long-suffering dad in a childhood slice-of-life type comic. Some people describe her as the female Dennis the Menace, but if I’m not mistaken she debuted before he did.

Brigid: Did you read Jinx as a child? If so, how do you remember her; if not, how did you encounter her?

J. Torres: I knew her mostly from one-page strips that appeared in the Archie digests I read as a kid, but she also had her own series for a time. I liked how she butted heads with her dad and other kids like Fat Charley. Those strips had a little more of an “edge” to them than the other material in the digests. I enjoyed that.

Brigid: How are you changing her for this updated version?

J. Torres: She’s now fifteen, starting high school, and starting to worry about the kind of things high school freshman worry about. She’s still sporty, spirited, and a bit of a troublemaker but the situations are maturing like she is.

Jinx's pal Greg

Brigid: How did you prep for this—did you read a lot of the old comics or just look over the characters and come up with a direction for them?

J. Torres: I re-read some of the old strips, but I also got a pitch of the updated concept from Archie editorial. I went with most of what they proposed, fleshed things out and also made a few contributions of my own, and basically tried to have the characters evolve in a logical fashion. They’re the same kids from the old strip, just grown up a little. Or I should say “growing up.”

Brigid: What are the challenges of reviving an older series?

J. Torres: Staying true to the spirit of the source material while “updating” it. We’ve seen that work and we’ve seen that totally fail with other properties. It’s challenging to get it right, but it’s also fun, and I’ll admit a tad scary.

Brigid: What format are you working in? I remember Li’l Jinx was always a one-page comic that sort of filled space in the Archie comics. Will you continue to do shorts, or will Jinx get longer stories?

J. Torres: It’s a four-issue miniseries, 22 pages per issue, but it’s debuting as a download first and then it will be published in print as a trade paperback. That part of it is pretty exciting for me, going digital first. I know a lot of people who do webcomics, but I don’t think I personally know anyone who’s worked on a comic as DLC first.

Brigid: Who is doing the art for this?

J. Torres: Rick Burchett! I’m a big fan and he’s one of the main reasons I took on this assignment. So far, I’ve only seen some of his designs, which look terrific, and I’m dying to see some pages. I think a lot of people will be too once they hear he’s drawing this.

Charley Hawse

Gigi

Gingerbread Girl

During their panel at Comic-Con International last month, Top Shelf Productions highlighted several projects they’ll publish next year, including Gingerbread Girl, a new graphic novel by the husband-and-wife team of writer Paul Tobin and artist Colleen Coover.

The duo, probably best known for their respective work at Marvel right now, took the time to answer a few of my questions about the new project, how they collaborate and what else they’re working on.

JK: What’s Gingerbread Girl about?

Paul: At heart, it’s a strange bird of a character study focused on the main character, Annah, with a changing group of narrators (including a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a magician, a pigeon, a thug, a store clerk, a doctor, an English bulldog, and many more) searching for the truth behind our “Gingerbread Girl,” who believes that her mad scientist father extracted a part of her brain (the Penfield Homunculus) and used it to create a sister for Annah.

Colleen: The book explores the reasons for Annah’s emotional distance, too.

JK: Did you have fun coming up with the different voices for each narrator?

Paul: Very much so. I tried to make each of them very distinct, and to vary their knowledge levels. One of the narrators, for instance, is a thug who really doesn’t care about Annah or the mystery. He just wants beer. Anything besides that is completely secondary to him… an afterthought. Another narrator is an eminent neurologist who sees things entirely in medical terms. Another narrator is a pigeon that… isn’t very smart. The whole crux of the mystery plays with these different voices, so it was very important that they be distinct.

JK: Did you come up with the idea together, or did one of you “recruit” the other to work on it?

Paul: The idea was mine, and I “recruited” Colleen to work on it. She would probably use a different word than “recruit.”

Colleen: You didn’t exactly say “Wife, Do This Thing,” though. I mean I wanted to do it, you know? We love collaborating. Gingerbread Girl is the most recent book we’ve done together that wasn’t superheroes.

JK: Speaking of which, you’ve both been pretty busy at Marvel lately. What made you decide to pursue an original graphic novel?

Paul: Certain types of stories need to be your own. This wouldn’t have worked within the context of anything but a creator-owned project. Beyond that, I started in the indy field, and I will always want to straddle the fence. Writers that choose one type of writing, or one company, always seem a bit strange to me. Be loyal to the writing… not the genre.

Colleen: And you just like to mix things up sometimes, so you don’t get bored of doing the same thing always.

JK: How do the two of you collaborate? Does Paul write a full script and then pass it to Colleen, or is it more organic than that? I’d imagine having the writer and artist under the same roof would have some advantages.

Paul: I always work with full script. I know, of course, the types of things that Colleen likes to draw, so I skewed things in the direction of her tastes.

Colleen: Although he does like to throw me a curve ball and have me draw something out of my comfort zone every once in a while, just to keep me on my toes! Which is awesome because it helps me grow as an artist and storyteller.

JK: How did this project land at Top Shelf?

Paul: We’ve always had an immense amount of respect for Top Shelf, and it was always in the back of our minds to collaborate with them some day. And Chris Staros and Brett Warnock have been longtime supporters of Colleen’s work, so they were feeling the same from their side. Then, after Colleen and I moved to Portland we ended up living just a few blocks from Brett… and our “inevitable” timeline was considerably shortened.

Colleen: This is a very Top Shelf kind of book, I think. It’s more of a “Contemporary Fiction” story than a “genre” piece, and that’s what they do best.

JK: Are there plans to serialize it online before publication?

Paul: Absolutely. We’ll be putting it on Top Shelf’s swanky website a few pages at a time over the course of several months. We’re really excited about the advantages of online serialization… there’s something about a series of bite-sized bits that makes the end result all the more savory.

JK: What else are the two of you working on, separately or together? And do you any other creator-owned projects in mind after this one?

Paul: I’m currently working on Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man, and Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes, and Conan for Dark Horse, and another soon-to-be announced project for Dark Horse, and a new ongoing title for Marvel, and two other unannounced projects for Marvel. And… uhh… I think that’s it. I’m also mulling over a new creator-owned project with Colleen. Most definitely.

Colleen: My four-issue backup in Thor & the Warriors Four, which teamed up the Power Pack with Hercules, just wrapped up. And now I’m writing and drawing another short piece for an upcoming book at Marvel, while contemplating what I want to do next for an independent project.

JK: You guys weren’t at Comic-Con. Why did you decide to stay home this year?

Paul: Because the SDCC is an enormous Godzilla-sized cat that likes to sharpen its claws on what vestiges of sanity we have left. Also, deadlines just weren’t permitting this year. With all of our various projects we couldn’t take the week off before the con (necessary for preparation) or the week of the con (necessary because, duh, the con) or the week after the con, necessary for recuperation and settling bar tabs.

Make Me A Woman

One of the more notable indie books debuting at the San Diego show this week is Vanessa Davis‘ latest book, Make Me A Woman, published by Drawn & Quarterly.

Ever since she made made her debut in anthologies like True Porn and Kramer’s Ergot, Davis’ work has exuded a warmth, humor, and sense of style that few of her compatriots can match, a fact only underscored by her 2005 book, Spaniel Rage, published by the late, lamented Buenaventura Press.

It’s been far too long since we’ve had a new book from her, but Make Me A Woman is thankfully worth the wait. Lest the title fool you into thinking the book is some saucy romp, let me be quick to dash some cold water on your overheated imagination. Mostly containing stories originally serialized in Tablet magazine, as well as some sketchbook strips and other material, the book explores how her relationship towards her family, friends, religion and self-image has changed as she’s matured. Along the way she talks about her experiences at fat camp, her feelings towards Robert Crumb’s Genesis adaptation and why she’d still like a present for Hanukkah.

I chatted with Davis over email last week about her new book and how she broke into comics. It was a genuine pleasure and I hope I don’t have to wait another five years for the opportunity to talk about her work with her again.

First of all, I was wondering if you could give me a bit of a truncated biography. I realized I don’t know much about your background beyond the work that’s appeared in Spaniel Rage and your new book. When were you first introduced to comics? What were your primary influences? And what made you want to be a cartoonist?

From 'Make Me A Woman'

As a kid I read Archie, and my mom actually tried to get me into comics more seriously as I got older, but we went to a normal comics shop when I was about 11, and really couldn’t find anything I wanted to read. I got one issue of Amethyst because I liked gems, but abandoned it after that. I liked Archie because of the everyday teenage drama, and I loved the vintage styles of the older illustrations, and the clothes.

I went to an arts middle- and high school in South Florida, where I grew up, and they really dissuaded kids from normal youth-directed forms of art, so I forgot about comics and illustration and focused a lot more on worldly painters, fashionable bohemians, and feminist sculptors when I was a teen. I still loved artists with a more narrative/figurative bent, though, like Alice Neel, David Hockney, and Ana Mendieta.

I think my parents are big influences, too: my dad was a funny photojournalist and my mom a writer; both of them with a major curiosity about the world and a passion for observing people and places. I learned about comics way before I ever thought I would ever want to make any, though. I got into Julie Doucet from Sassy magazine, and found a few of her comics at a local record store, and my aunt sent me a copy of Twisted Sisters 2 that I pored over obsessively for years. And my mom got this huge, comprehensive book of Charlotte Salomon paintings, which made a big impact on me as a teenage girl: they were so free-flowing and diaristic and documentary.

In college I learned about Harvey Pekar, and then about Dan Clowes and Chris Ware and the Highwater cartoonists, which was exciting. I still thought I was a painter at the time, though I was doing autobio paintings and drawings. I thought I shouldn’t write — that the strength of my artwork was in its “mystery.” It wasn’t until I moved to NY in my 20s where I had no room to paint, and had internet for the first time and could see more comics going on, that I thought I’d give it a try. And then I got sucked in!

I wanted to ask you about your art style. Thought it’s gotten a bit looser and more relaxed it hasn’t changed that much from when I first encountered your work (which was either in Kramer’s or another anthology). That struck me as interesting since usually you see an artist’s line change dramatically from their early work on up. Your comics seem to have sprung from the ground fully formed, which I’m sure isn’t the case. How conscious are you of your art style and developing it over time? What informs it? Where were you first published? How did you get from deciding to make comics to appearing in Kramer’s and getting your first book, Spaniel Rage?

From "Make Me A Woman"

Oh, I definitely don’t think my comics have sprung from the ground fully formed! Wouldn’t that be nice! I think that I did begin doing comics with and maintain a particular style that was how I naturally drew, for the most part, after many years of drawing and art school. I started drawing comics relatively late, compared to people who’ve deliberately been in a comics frame of mind — in my early 20s. So hopefully I’ve still got a lot of comics development to do!

I’d struggled with drawing, and often got criticism in school for having such an illustrative, “flat” style, since to draw well, you’re supposed to be open and looking, not have a style at all. It was hard because all of my favorite artists had this emphasis on flatness, line, and pattern. It changed in college, somewhat arbitrarily in my opinion, but all of a sudden my teachers were telling me how I was good at drawing — that I was finally processing my ability to draw into a confident, symbolic type of line; that my lazy approach towards perspective was actually “defiant.” I was dubious but also relieved!

Anyways I’ve always kept a sketchbook, and my personal drawings were always a mix of cartoony and trying to draw in earnest. When I decided to start drawing comics, it was a challenge to know how to do it. It seemed like real cartoonists were much more polished, had a visual language that flowed out of them like speech. So for me, I felt like I needed to tighten up and get to that point. I was overwhelmed  by not knowing how to start, or what I wanted my comics to look like, so I decided to keep a sketchbook diary, where I could teach myself these things as I went along, make those decisions as they came up. I still keep one, especially when I feel disconnected from comics, either after a period of writers’ block or laziness or whatever.

From "Make Me A Woman"

Now as I’ve become more experienced, taken on different challenges, and I’ve also been exposed to a TON more comics, I think I can’t help but make changes and be influenced by others’ work. You see things that other cartoonists do that you like or you don’t like, seems like it might work for you, etc. I’d always worked in pencil, but I’d never had the means to publish in color. So for Kramers I inked and colored, and I liked it so much, I did comics that way much more often. I always liked avoiding panels, because I wanted to be open to filling up space with as much visual information as seemed necessary. When I started doing some more commercial work, for Tablet, and I needed to be a bit more concise and direct (and fast), panels finally became just what I needed. I tried to adapt that way, and be purposeful. I drew the story about this guy I dated, and he had a pretty distinctive upper lip, so the way I’d shorthandedly drawn guys didn’t work. I had to draw it different, and I realized it looked much better. So I figure out what can be cartoonified and what should be represented as I go.

I decided to draw comics for real when I turned 23. It was my birthday and after eating Thai food with my friend I went home and started drawing scenes from a comic that eventually ended up in my story “Framed!?” that I did last year for Tablet. That never went anywhere but then another friend was telling me about a makeout session gone awry, and I thought it’d be a great story to try to turn into a comic, since all of my own stories seemed really overwhelming, I didn’t know how to start. So I used hers. Then I saw the call for entries to that anthology True Porn, online. So I submitted my story for fun. It got in, and through that project I met Robyn Chapman, who had just moved to New York, and she introduced me to a lot of cartoonists who eventually became good friends and we’d get together weekly to draw. I remember first hanging out with Robyn and being like, “So what ink do I need?” Stuff like that. I learned a lot from meeting other cartoonists and seeing their work. I began doing my sketchbook comics, and made my first Spaniel Rage mini to hand out at MoCCA. I gave one to Sammy Harkham and he liked it. Then at another show Sammy showed my work to Alvin Buenaventura’s wife, who liked it. So a little time went by and I kept making my minis and doing a few other things here and there, and first the book happened, and then Kramers.

One of the things I noticed about your art style is that you avoid gutters and often just let the images flow one into the next without any panel borders at all. Is that a conscious decision and if so, how did it come about?

From "Make Me A Woman"

I avoided panels and gutters from the beginning as part of my diary format. That’s also why I didn’t ink — I just wanted to be spontaneous, I wanted to feel out the process or something. Also, I found panels intimidating, as I had to pre-plan things too much to structure the comic that way. And I liked how the open space left room for details, and improvisational visual connections. I wanted to have as much page space as possible.

Since working on the Tablet strips, which DID need to be pre-planned and organized, and clear and coherent, most of all, I started using them more. I had to do one page with a lot of individual incidents shown, and coming up with whimsical, amorphous visual borders seemed schticky and arbitrary, so I gridded out the page. I really liked how the panels looked and I liked how my writing adapted to using them. So now I’ve been using panels more often.

I also wanted to ask you about your interest in autobiography, which makes up the bulk of both your new book and Spaniel Rage. What is it about this genre that appeals to you?

It’s something that has just always come naturally for me, it was there for me even before I started drawing comics. I always kept a sketchbook diary, so my drawing subject matter was always linked to what was going on in my life. If something exciting happened to me, I’d draw it in my sketchbook, etc. I think, too, that much of what I connected to while in art school, about making art, was inextricably linked with autobiography. I had one painting teacher who painted one painting a day every day, as a diary entry, and when I saw the hundreds of paintings up in his studio that were this documentation of several years of his life, I was extremely affected. I think, also, since my parents were journalists, their own lives were so interesting, as their work took them to lots of cool places and into weird situations, and then of course, the people they were writing about/photographing. It just has always been there, the focus on experiences, it’s always fascinated me. The autobio comics I read as I got into comics inspired me to start working in comic form, I’m sure. Those were always my favorite ones to read.

Your new book, Make Me A Woman, includes a lot of stories you did for Tablet magazine. How did that relationship come about? Did you have a specific goal in mind with those stories (ie. exploring your Jewish heritage) or did they flow out more or less organically?

I started working for Tablet doing spot illustrations. Then a few years ago, they had a concept for a punky, feminist comics version of the story of Purim, and suggested I put it together. They liked how it came out, and we discussed having a more regular comics feature. Since I normally do autobio, we decided it might be cool for me to explore Jewish and not-so-Jewish themes in my life. I grew up in a Jewish community, attended Jewish day school, and have pretty much taken Jewishness as a given for most of my life. As I get older and move different places, I’ve found that my relationship to Judaism changes.

The book’s title, obviously, not only refers specifically to one of the stories, but also the the book’s general theme of self-discovery and maturation. Was this a conscious effort on your part or was it something you realized about the collection after the fact?

No, I hadn’t imagined using “Make Me a Woman” as the entire book’s title until way after the fact. When I titled my bat mitzvah-themed strip, it just popped into my head and seemed funny and strange and maybe a little daring. I definitely didn’t plan on the book’s theme being self-discovery and maturation. I think because of the nature of the autobiographical content and where I am in my life, it just naturally reflected that.

Most of your work to this point has been short stories. Are you interested in attempting something longer or are you more or less happy with working with a shorter page count?

I like doing short stories. My whole life, I’ve been encouraged to “keep it brief.” I am finding the short comic form to be just right for me, at least right now.

From "Make Me A Woman"

Elvis Van Helsing

Elvis Yang’s life couldn’t be lamer. He’s in his sixth year of college, doesn’t have a girlfriend, lives in his parents’ basement, he’s flat broke and worst of all, his best friend Randy just kicked his ass in Wii Bowling. But everything for Elvis is about to change, including his last name.

Debuting at Comic-Con International next week is Elvis Van Helsing, written by Steve Kriozere and Mark A. Altman, with art by Jason Baroody and Zach Matheny. You can check out a trailer here. The book will hit comic shops later this fall.

Kriozere and Altman have previously worked together on a comic called The Unknowns and the television show Castle. Between them they’ve also worked on several other TV shows and movies, including Sliders, V.I.P., NCIS, DOA: Dead or Alive, The Specials and the William Shatner comedy Free Enterprise. Both were kind enough to share some more details on the book with me.

In addition, you can meet them next week at the AiT/PlanetLar booth (#2001) in San Diego to sign the book at the following times:

• Thursday 1-2 p.m.
• Friday 1-2 p.m.
• Saturday 11 a.m.-noon
• Sunday 1-2 p.m.

My thanks for their time, and to Larry Young for setting it up.

JK: When I first heard the title Elvis Van Helsing, the image that immediately sprang to mind was one of Elvis Presley fighting vampires. Can you talk a little bit about your “Elvis,” who he is and how he ends up fighting creatures of the night?

Steve: Our Elvis is a clueless slacker who’s decided to stay in college well past his graduation expiration date. He’s not dumb, he’s actually very, very smart, he just hasn’t found his true calling in life and finds things easier if he just stays in college to avoid taking on any sort of responsibility. So when Elvis finally does find out his true calling and secret family lineage — that he’s the sole surviving heir to the Van Helsing monster hunting family and, like it or not, must battle creatures of the night — it’s a bit much for him.

Mark: What he said…

JK: Where did the idea for the book come from?

Steve: It all started with the title. I combined the greatest first name in rock’n'roll with one of the most famous (and public domain) surnames in literary history — Elvis Van Helsing. How can you go wrong with a title like that? You’re either laughing at that name or dying to find out who the hell that is. Titles are very important. Look no further than the classic 80s show Manimal. What a title! Okay, maybe it wasn’t so classic.

Mark: It sort of wrote itself from there. Maybe we can get the comic book rights to Manimal, now that’d be cool. Manimal Van Helsing? Not so much. But it’s true, we feel that to stand out at the comic book store, if you’re not Mark Waid or Batman, you need a title that’s going to catch people’s interest and, hopefully, this does. We think Elvis has a really original voice, and I heard a rumor vampires are hot right now, apparently.

JK: There are a number of literary/historical references in the book, and even “guest appearances” by Bram Stoker, Stephen King and Bob Woodward. Were you guys fans of all these guys before writing the book?

Steve: I have always been a fan of Stephen King’s work. The guy’s imagination is twisted and endless. As for Bram Stoker, I remember reading Dracula while traveling on a train through Europe while in college on a semester abroad. Reading it while on the train at night only enhanced the creepiness of the book. I also visited Highgate Cemetery in London, which is an amazing Victorian era cemetery. Rumor has it, Stoker visited Highgate and that is where he became inspired to write his most famous work. There are also stories of a vampire lurking in the cemetery. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I didn’t see any when I was there. I guess I ate too much garlic the night before?

Mark: I love King’s Danse Macabre, which is one of the great non-fiction books about horror. And I’ve always been a poli sci junkie, so I knew a lot about Bob Woodward, and it just seemed to fit in really well to what we were trying to do, and I think it’s a lot of fun. It sort of reminds me of Spicoli ordering the pizza in “Fast Times,” but less stoner, more smart.

JK: How did you end up working with the artist, Jason Baroody?

Steve: I am an avid collector of original comic art and am also a member of www.comicartfans.com. Jason is a member, too. That’s where I was first exposed to his art. I had bought several pieces of art by Jason, and we became friendly. When Mark and I started looking for an artist to draw the book, I hit up Jason right away. He read the script and loved it. Jason kicked all sorts of butt and worked super-fast on the book. You rock, Jason! Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention our colorist and production superstar, Zach Matheny. Zach’s tones brought the book up to a whole different level of awesomeness.

Mark: Yeah, Kro found Baroody, who hopefully is going to get a lot of work after this. I knew Zach from another book we did, The Unknowns, and think he’s immensely talented, and they both conspired to make us look really good since we don’t do a very good job of that ourselves.

JK: How did the two of you meet and start working together?

Steve: Mark and I met several years ago through mutual friends. Mark’s background was predominantly in writing and producing features while mine was in television. Our first official team-up as writers was on the SciFi Channel (it wasn’t called SyFy yet) original movie Dead & Deader, a ‘zomedy’ (zombie-comedy) starring Dean Cain as a half-human half-zombie hero, which Mark produced and we co-wrote together. We had such a blast working together; we knew there was a lot of creativity left in the tank. Elvis Van Helsing is just one of those ideas we yanked from the tank and knew we had to do something with. We’re like Reece’s Peanut Butter cups — the perfect combination of creamy peanut butter in a rich milk chocolate cup that no one can resist. So which one of us is the peanut butter and which one is the milk chocolate? I’m afraid that’s top secret.

Mark: It’s true, we had so much fun writing a dumb zombie movie that we thought what if we try and write a smart zombie movie, and it went on from there. We’ve done some TV, survived a year on Castle, and sold a pilot to USA and have just been having such a great time together. It’s such a fertile creative partnership between films, TV and now comics, I think my wife is getting jealous. We’re also available for video games and Bar Mitzvahs.

JK: What made you both want to start writing comics?

Steve: I have been a huge comics fan since I could read. Elvis Van Helsing is my first published work, so I’m way psyched. The majority of my comics collection is still in my parents’ basement, so getting Elvis Van Helsing made into a graphic novel and published is not only a big deal for me, but for them as well.

Mark: I used to write Star Trek comics for both Malibu and DC, and I loved doing it. I’ve been trying to do some stuff for IDW, but they keep blowing me off which pisses me off especially since I know and like those guys, so when Larry said he was big fan of my first film, Free Enterprise, I said anything you want. Flattery will get you everywhere. I even worked in one or two Trek references for good measure. It was great. Larry was really supportive and I’m thrilled to have the chance to debut it at Comic-Con. All kidding aside, Steve and I are very proud of this book and looking forward to spreading the gospel of Elvis.

JK: How did you hook up with Larry and AiT?

Steve: My good buddy Adam Beechen has published several excellent graphic novels through AiT. Adam introduced me to Larry many years ago at WonderCon in San Francisco, and we quickly became good buds. When Mark and I decided to do Elvis Van Helsing as a graphic novel, we went straight to Larry.

Mark: I don’t know, Larry kept muttering something about what does God need with a starship, and I figured we were kinda kindred spirits. I guess Sybok could be considered an Astronaut in Trouble.

JK: Do you have any other comic projects in the works?

Steve: Mark and I wrote a comic called The Unknowns through our “Femme Fatales” comics line, which has stirred up some serious Hollywood interest. Two issues have been published so far and two more will be coming out soon. We also have a top secret new project in the works called Captain Greenland, which you should be hearing about soon.

Mark: The Unknowns is a great little book that no one knows about. It “stars” Monica Olsen, who is the femme fatale we based the book on and serves as the template for the lead character. She’s terrific, sexy and it’s a really fun, high-concept book that turns the familiar superhero action tropes on their head. We’ve gotten some great fan mail and Hollywood was all over it, but I want the fans to show us the love. Femme Fatales is a brand you’ll be hearing a lot more about in the next few months. In addition to the comic book line, the magazine’s coming back and we have our first TV show debuting next year as well.

JK: And are you guys going to be in San Diego? What else are you looking forward to at the con, besides the release of your book?

Steve: Yes, I will be in San Diego for the whole run of the convention The release of Elvis Van Helsing is clearly the thing I am most looking forward to at SDCC. A close second is Anna Kendrick.

Mark: Well, this will be like my 17th year going to San Diego and every year I swear it’s my last and every year I’m back, but this will be fun. We’re signing EVH and I’ll be doing Starship Smackdown and a few other panels so it’s always fun to see old friends and make new ones…and heckle at the Masquerade. Wait, did I just say that?

JK: And finally, the book ends on a bit of cliffhanger, or at least leaves the possibility of a second volume open. Are you already working on it?

Steve: Absolutely! You have not seen the last of Elvis Van Helsing!

Mark: True that.

Pin-up by Katya Tal

Hellboy: Start at the beginning for just a buck

Dark Horse’s dollar comics, debuting in August, are a wallet-friendly way to kill some time while you wait for the recession to end. The comics are first issues of established series (or story arcs within series), including Hellboy, Usagi Yojimbo, Umbrella Academy and The Goon.

The idea piqued my curiosity, so I fired off some questions to editor Dave Land about the new/old line. Here’s our mini-chat:

Brigid: Is this the first time you have tried something like this — low-priced introductory issues?

Dave: We’ve done low-priced first issues before, but we’ve never done a whole line of low-priced reprints before.

Brigid: How did you select the comics to be reprinted?

Dave: Mainly it was based on finding popular titles that played an important part in helping to define Dark Horse. There’s a good mix of different types of material covered by the 1 for 1 program — from creator owned titles like Sin City to licensed properties like Star Wars and even to classic reprint comics like Magnus, Robot Fighter.

Brigid: Are the subsequent issues still available, or are these gateways to the trades?

Dave: All the books featured in the program have supporting trades that are available.

Brigid: In this digital era, it seems almost quaint to be using print comics like this. Why did you choose to do this in print rather than, say, through comiXology or Dark Horse Presents?

Dave: At this point, print is our main avenue for reaching readers. Not everyone has or can afford digital reader of some sort or other. So this is a low cost way to give people a taste of what Dark Horse does.

Brigid: Will there be digital editions?

Dave: At this time there aren’t plans to make these titles available digitally.

Brigid: It looks like some of these are the first issues of the series while others are the beginnings of more recent story arcs. How did you decide on a good jumping-in point for each story?

Dave: First issues generally serve as good entry points for any story. On properties like Star Wars we wanted to keep things more contemporary to show where we’ve taken the property, so we didn’t go all the way back to the very first issue. Hopefully those issues will still pique reader’s curiosity and they’ll check out the other story arcs we’ve published.

Some good news — according to Clifford Meth, artist Gene Colan has recovered from his injuries, though he’s still living at a hospital/recovery facility in New York because “going home means his wife will have to leave.”

But he’s well enough to leave the facility, as you’ll see in the above video, where his son Erik takes him back to the area where he grew up and talks to him about his early life.

Art in Time

Having introduced the comics-reading public to such obscure or long-forgotten creators as Herbert Crowley, Fletcher Hanks and Walter Quermann in his seminal book Art Out of Time, editor and publisher Dan Nadel opted to try something a little different for his sequel, the recently published Art in Time.

While the new book, like its predecessor, does feature a number of barely-known or long-forgotten golden age and underground cartoonists (Sam Glanzman, John Thompson), it also offers a new look at some familiar and in some cases already well regarded figures, in the hopes of either giving scholars and fans a chance to reconsider their artistic abilities (as in the case of Mort Meskin and Pat Boyette) or re-examine their work in a new light via previously unregarded material (John Stanley, Archie artist Harry Lucey, Wonder Woman artist H.G. Peter)

I had the opportunity to talk with Nadel over email about the book and its rather specific goals recently. Though he was in the midst of celebrating all things Jack Kirbyish at the Fumetto Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland, he was kind enough to take the time to offer some thoughtful, considered responses to my flailing questions, for which I am ever grateful.

How did Art in Time develop and did it change at all in conception as you worked on it?

The first idea was actually to take well known artists like Kirby, Ditko, Everett, et al and show their lesser known work. This became a little less interesting as the  reprint boom took hold. By less interesting I mean not necessary. I tend to think of books as being necessary or not necessary. And then, when necessary, as being well done and useful, or badly done and destructive. Anyhow, as an outgrowth of my publishing activities, and as a kind of strategy of moving away from any perceptions about Art Out of Time, I began to look at adventure comics a lot, particularly crime stuff like Pete Morisi and Harry Lucey. And then I thought of the underground stuff I like and realized (again — maybe I’d forgotten? I don’t know.) that what drives my “scholarly” (or whatever) interests was pretty much the same as what drives my publishing interest, i.e. in my head CF and Bill Everett are pretty much on the same playing field. So I latched onto the broad idea of “genre” comics and then went a little micro and focused on an idea of “adventure” that can include gumshoes and psychonauts and utopians. Then I really dug in and had some fun.

H. G. Peter, “Man O’Metal,” from Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics no. 13 (1942)

Did you first have the notion to do a sequel to Art Out of Time right upon finishing that book or did it come later on after much persuading?

Well, I started thinking about it about 6 months after AOOT came out. I hadn’t initially intended to do one, really, but somehow in 2006 it seemed like a cool idea. One motivation was that I hadn’t been able to include Jesse Marsh or Harry Lucey in AOOT and I wanted to do something about both artists. So no one was twisting my arm or anything, but AOOT seemed to be on its way to doing well enough to justify a sequal of sorts.

Can you talk a little about the differences between the two book and what made you try a different tack this time around?

Both books were guided by my own interests. I’m selfish that way. The big difference is that in 2004, when I began work on Art Out of Time, the stuff I was interested in (Boody Rogers, Fletcher Hanks and other recent “giants”) were nowhere to be found. They seemed to be written out of history. So AOOT was a recovery mission in part. And secondarily, as with the new one, I was looking for a way to understand and contextualize the work I was publishing and enjoying. It seemed (and still does seem) to me that comics history was very conservative, and that the many byways and blind alleys and etc. that existed had been kind of smudged out or something — I was looking to demonstrate that there were ton of different approaches possible and that the supposed “weirdness” of, say, Paper Rodeo, had precedents (though sometimes unknown to  the artists themselves) in  comics history.

So I did that, I guess. And then AIT is more about casting a smaller net to look for specific examples of artists who successfully navigated genres and came through with individual visions. Given that most of the comics I publish can broadly fall under the “adventure” category, you can see why I’d be intrigued. Plus, since AOOT came out in 2006 comics history has changed radically as my generation and my slightly older contemporaries basically define and invent our own artistic past. From Chris Ware’s brilliant work on Frank King to Frank Santoro’s championing of Thriller. Obviously these are different works qualitatively (yes, smart ass, I think King is in another league)  but the basic “act” is the same: An artist laying claim to an ignored part of comics and saying “see: this is where I come from. This is my history.” This is crucial. I didn’t feel like I needed to be quite as hardcore with Art in Time. I wanted to show some precedents, I wanted to bring certain artists (Marsh, Lucey, Boyette, Rudahl, Glanzman, for example) intro focus, and once again advocate for looking harder and longer at artists we’ve passed over and for looking hard at the connections between mainstream and underground comics. The commonalities of purpose.

Sam J. Glanzman, “Cave of Mutations,” from Kona no. 3 (1962)

While you were putting the book together, were there any last minute “discoveries” that you felt you had to include? How aware were you of these particular artists before you started the book and did you learn anything new while putting AiT together?

There was nothing super last minute, no. There were latecomers, like Sam Glanzman, but not last minute crams. When I started the book I was aware of about 75% of the artists. The ones I wasn’t, like Glanzman, Peter, Rudahl, and Fox, were suggestions by trusted peers. I learned a bunch new-ish things while putting AIT together. I learned that I have an endless appetite for comic book drama: for the emotional hysteria of Glanzman’s Kona, for example. I learned that Bill Everett is a far better, far more interesting artist than I ever knew, both personally and professionally. In terms of elegant, visceral drawings in the traditional of Alex Raymond, he’s unequaled. And I would take him over Raymond any day. His drawings comprised a unique world, even when drawing “naturally”. I learned that, as far as I can tell, it’s mostly only other artists can understand how an artist like McMillan might flow naturally from Everett, or how Thompson is related to H.G. Peter.

Can you talk a little bit about the research involved in finding these old stories and, in some cases, locating the still alive creators and their families? I would imagine, for example, that it took a bit of work to locate John Thompson or Willy Mendes.

Best case scenario: Finding the stories was a matter of deciding on the artists, the cross checking what had been written about them, then gathering samples from various places, then checking those against various interviews, etc., to find what either the artist or his peers considered his finest work. Then choosing my favorite from that pool. Worst case: Deciding on the artist: Gathering everything they did. Then making my own choice from that pool. I worked in both modes. Of the still-living artists I suppose Mendes and Thompson were in fact the trickiest. Rudahl, McMillan, and Glanzman were, I think, in the phone book. Thompson I found via some old correspondence he’d had with a collector friend of mine and Mendes through a variety of different google searches. Persistence, basically.

You cover a wide swath of time in the book and include a lot of  visually different authors with different artistic styles and goals. What, do you think, connects them together, apart from what you said earlier about “adventure” stories.

I would think that the common goal of all is to tell the story that’s in their head. Different sub-goals spring from there like: get paid; buy groceries; get laid; exorcise a demon; etc. I’m going to be kind of a dick about this and say: Why do we even have to ask what connects them? They’re arists; they worked in genres with defined boundaries; they each had a unique voice that pierced those boundaries. And, frankly, they all have me in common. I’m not out in front like an asshole, and I’m not about “owning” it, but let’s be honest: It’s me. I am confident and maniacal enough about my sensibility that I  am willing to demonstrate it and thrust it on people, backed up by good writing and good art direction. That’s what it is.

Pat Boyette, “Children of Doom,” Charlton Premiere no. 2 (1967)

Along those same lines, what is it specifically about the “adventure” genre (at least as it’s represented here) that you find so fascinating, as opposed to the humor or superhero comics of the same period?

Superhero comics are very interesting and the best were done by Kirby, Ditko, Colan, Everett and others for mainstream companies. That stuff has been well covered elsewhere. I would love to put together a book on that stuff, but publishing realities are what they are. That said, to me adventure seemed to have less baggage, offered artists a little more freedom in the sense that they could be auteurs a bit more easily, as there was perhaps less riding on it? Superhero comics are bound by certain rules as well (uh, except when Kirby was involved) while the others are a bit more free to go to psychologically  and physically more complex places.

The release of Art Out of Time preceded a slew of reprint projects, many of them based off of artists that appeared in that book and the book was seen by many online pundits as being one of the more influential books about comics in recent years. Do you agree with that assessment or do you think you were just on the crest of an already forming wave (if you don’t mind my making a horrible analogy)? Were you surprised by the book’s reception and the critical success it endured?

I tentatively and humbly agree with that assessment. For the record: Paul Karasik was hard at work on his Fletcher Hanks book at exactly the same time as I was working on AOOT. But, and this is a big “but”, I would never take credit or assert ownership over the stuff. I think more than anything AOOT simply made it clear that (a) there was a lot of open territory out there (b) there was an appetite for the exploration (i.e. purchase) of said territory and (c) the “canon”, such as it was, was kinda irrelevant. But sure, I was/am surprised by the amount of books that have come after it. I had no idea that people were interested.

As a historian I’m thrilled when they’re done well (see any of Jeet Heer’s books and the announcement of an upcoming Greg Sadowski/John Benson team up) and disappointed when they’re done badly. And I’m disappointed when they’re done badly not because I have any proprietary interest in the stuff — even if there was money involved, which, FYI, there isn’t  — but because (a) comics history is young and we need ethical and thorough scholarship to make it grow and (b) there is a small market for books on even popular cartoonists, let alone obscure ones, and one bad book on a cartoonist makes it very difficult for another publisher to wish to release a good one. To think otherwise is naive. Quality does not trump market share. No way. I wish we lived in a world where comics scholarship was not attached to the market, but it most certainly is.

One of the things you talk about in your introduction is how you wanted people to be able to take a fresh look at artists people already thought they “knew,” and certainly I was taken aback by how fresh and airy H.G. Peter’s work was when shorn of Marston’s prose. And I was stunned by John Stanley’s “Crazy Quilt,” not just because he was doing horror, but that he did it all as a one-person monologue, whereas EC or a more traditional horror comic would have inserted a clumsy flashback. Can you talk a little bit more about how important it was for you to present these artists in a new light and what, if anything, it means to our general perception of comics and its history to have these long-forgotten tales brought into the light? (beyond just having a new appreciation for H.G. Peters I mean)

Well, iconic characters like Wonder Woman and Little Lulu often obscure the actual auteur behind the work. It’s a natural thing: You’re looking at the icon, not the linework. So I think it’s important to look at people who work on such familiar properties — to allow non-obsessives to see the quality in their work without the confusion of the character. Even I prefer, for example, looking at Jack Kirby’s work on non-Marvel stuff. It’s easier for me to appreciate without having to see past the baggage.

You stop just shy of the (for want of a better word) modern era in both books, as I recall because you felt that everything past 1970 was pretty well covered by fans and historians and the opportunity to find a book’s worth of “undiscovered” artists was pretty slim. Are there cartoonists from the bronze age and beyond that you feel have been ignored to the point where you could justify including them in a book of this nature? And if so, who and why?

A few years back I would have probably shrugged, but these days I gotta answer strongly “yes”. But it’s an entirely different kind of book. With AOOT I stopped in 1969 because to me that was the year of the paradigm shift: When would-be Fletcher Hanks simply did underground comics rather than corporate stuff — when the idea of cartoonist-as-auteur was revived and enacted in North America in a sophisticated way. This one stops in 1980 because I was less focused on people operating outside the mainstream and instead stopped before the real burst of 80s publishing.

So … another anthology would have a lot of explaining to do. For one thing, the cultural context is much less clear, as we don’t have the benefit of real hindsight yet. For another, we’re talking about primarily a couple generations of cartoonists who came into the medium as fans, reading fanzines, with a certain amount of knowledge about what they were entering into. It’s a more insular sensibility. To me, what Frank Santoro does at MoCCA and SPX, etc., is kind of like the third volume: He’s hocking Slash Maraud and Thriller and Barry Blair comics next to a Mazzucchelli Marvel Fanfare issue next to a Brendan McCarthy comic. I think if there was another volume (and I don’t think there will be) it would need to include a bunch of funky stuff that DC and Marvel published in the confused 1980s, various Marshall Rogers comics, Real Deal, etc. In other words, it’s a very difficult book to pull off on a purely logistical level. On the other hand, a totally amazing all indy “black and white glut” anthology assembled by Frank himself would be relatively easy and mind-blowing. Publishers: Call Frank Santoro. He is a great American resource. Also, the dismissal of so much of the above work indicates to me that there’s stuff to be mined there — but would have to be well framed and understood for what it was — not dissimilar to the 1940s comic book glut: accidental masterpieces and beautiful turds amid the acknowledged classics.

How is Picturebox doing these days? You talked a little bit at MoCCA about Brian Chippendale’s new book and what you have planned for the future. Can you talk a little bit on the record about what you’ve got lined up?

PictureBox is good these days. I’ve just co-published with FAMILY our first prose book, I Was Looking for a Street, by Charles Willeford. It’s a memoir by the great crime writer. We’re redesigning the web site as well, in order to offer you, the consumer, yet more stuff.

Let’s see…

In a few weeks I’ll have a new and very limited edition book by Yuichi Yokoyama for sale only online. It’s a $100, signed, and, well, you’ll see…

Curating an exhibition at Portugal Arte 10 in July.

Chippendale and CF’s books are both (finally, I know!) coming out in September.

They will be joined by:

-A 216-page graphic novel by Renee French called “H Day”.
-A collaborative book and DVD by Julie Doucet and Michel Gondry called “My New New York Diary”.
-A new 96-page book by Ben Jones entitled “Men’s Group/Black Math”.

It’s nice working with geniuses.

You might ask why I’m not just publishing history books myself? I like to keep things separate and let my brain be somewhere else when doing the history thing. Need to keep things vaguely clean. Or at least somewhat tidy. Etc.

There are some other things coming down the pike but I’ll keep a lid on those for now.

FYI, Dan is doing a couple of Art in Time-related events and signings. Below is a short listing of his upcoming schedule

Friday, May 21st at 7PM
Talk/Signing at Desert Island
540 metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211

Sunday, May 30th at 5PM
Afternoon of book signings and conversations with notable cartoonists and filmmakers
Cinefamily
611 N. Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90036

Sunday, June 26th at 6PM
Talk/Signing
Politics & Prose
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20008