Persepolis

Legal | The trial resumed today, if only briefly, in Tunis for the president of a Tunisian television network accused of “insulting sacred values” when he aired the adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. Tensions were so high in the courtroom that proceedings were postponed until April. The Oct. 7 broadcast resulted in an attempted arson attack on the network’s offices and the arrest of some 50 protesters. Nessma TV President Nebil Karoui, who apologized in October, is charged with “insulting sacred values, offending decent morals and causing public unrest” because of the outrage triggered by a scene in Persepolis showing God, which is prohibited by Islam. [AFP]

Organizations | Stumptown Comics, the organization that puts on the Stumptown Comics Fest every year in Portland, Oregon, has added three new members to its board: Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Executive Director Charles Brownstein, Boilerplate co-author Anina Bennett and editor Shawna Gore. [Stumptown Comics]

Awards | The First Fictions literary festival and the publisher Myriad Editions announced the winner of its First Graphic Novel competition: Gareth Brookes, whose graphic novel The Black Project will be published next year by Myriad Editions. Blogger Richard Bruton notes that the shortlist of seven graphic novels was so strong that one judge, Bryan Talbot (Alice in Sunderland) felt they were all “worthy of publication.” [Forbidden Planet]

The Massive

Creators | Brian Wood talks about his upcoming Dark Horse series The Massive. [Biff Bam Pop!]

Creators | Shane Houghton and Matt Whitlock discuss their work on BOOM! Studios’ Peanuts comic book. [Biff Bam Pop!]

Creators | In an interview tied to the upcoming release of the George Lucas film Red Tails, Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder (who worked on the film) reflects on his life in comics and the end of Boondocks: “My issues were totally about: one, I just burnt out on the strip and the deadlines were brutal. Two, I didn’t feel like there was much of a future in print. I thought I needed to quit because I saw the newspapers slowly going away. I didn’t want to be caught off guard. I felt more comfortable being a screenwriter, and as I learned how to become a producer, it seemed like a more natural fit for me than cartooning.” [Comics Alliance]

Goliath

Creators | Tom Spurgeon talks to Scottish writer and artist Tom Gauld, whose Goliath, which retells the Biblical story of David and Goliath, is due out from Drawn & Quarterly in a few weeks. Gauld’s work is not well known in the U.S., but he deserves to be; it’s worth clicking over just to see the art. [The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Writer and editor Shaenon Garrity makes her list of the best cartoonists of her generation, by which she means cartoonists born in the 1970s. That’s a fairly broad range and includes Craig Thompson, Gene Yang, and Chris Onstad, among others. [comiXology]

Creators | Michael Cavna interviews CW Cooke, the writer of the Steve Jobs bio-comic — the Bluewater one, not The Zen of Steve Jobs — about the challenges of writing about such an iconic and polarizing figure. [Comic Riffs]

Criticism | Sexism in Tiny Titans? It’s different from the type you find in adult comics, but J.L. Bell notices that the girls do a lot of babysitting—and the boys do almost none. [Oz and Ends]

Retailing | Darrin Williams, owner of Comic Envy in Asheville, North Carolina, answers questions about comics, why he became a retailer and his approach to Free Comic Book Day: “It’s a program that started about 10 years ago, and each year it has been the biggest day of the year for me. Ostensibly, it is designed to promote comics in general and get new readers in. All the publishers put out ‘free’ books, but it still costs the shops. I try to go pretty deep, but I run out of books. I think it’s successful, and I try to do stuff above and beyond. I’m working on a puppet show and lining up a kid-friendly band. I want it to be an event.” [Asheville Citizen-Times]

Friends With Boys

Comics | Faith Erin Hicks discusses the role of “acting” in comics: “I remember when I was drawing the final episode of my old webcomic, Demonology 101 (the 5th episode). That episode ended up being something like 100 pages more than all the other episodes, because that was when I started to explore the idea of acting in comics. I wanted to spend time on characters’ emotional reactions and inner thoughts in the comics, so everything ended up being much more decompressed. I had to give space to the characters, so they could react to a cruel/funny/sad comment by another character, or silently work through their inner struggles. That episode was the first time I connected drawing comics with the idea of myself as a director: the characters were my actors and I was directing them in a performance. And it was up to me to make sure that their performance supported the story to the best of my ability.” [Friends With Boys]

Comics | The Mindless Ones annotate the gigantic last issue of the pre-New 52 Batman Incorporated. [The Mindless Ones]

Creators | Gary Mann posts an appeal for help for colorist Tom Ziuko, who is facing serious health problems with no insurance and limited financial resources. [20th Century Danny Boy]

Commentary | David Brothers recommends Giannis Milonogiannis’ Old City Blues, which is now available on comiXology. [ComicsAlliance]

Events | Floating World Comics in Portland, Oregon, will host artwork from Emi Lenox and Natalie Nourigat beginning Feb. 2. [Floating World Comics]

Eric Stephenson

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Image Comics, the company formed by a group of artists who left the security of work-for-hire comics to create and own their own comics. It’s been 20 years of ups and downs, but one thing that has remained consistent is a focus on creator-owned work.

With 2011 in the history books and their big anniversary kicking off with the first Image Expo, a new ad campaign and high-profile series by big-name creators like Brian K. Vaughan, Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, Jonathan Hickman, Nick Spencer and many more, I thought it was a good time to chat with Publisher Eric Stephenson about the state of the company, the year that was, their upcoming plans and anything else he was willing to talk about. My thanks to Eric for taking the time to answer my questions.

JK Parkin: Thanks for agreeing to do this interview, Eric. Incidentally, another feature we’re running as a part of our anniversary bash is one where we asked various comic industry folks about what they’re looking forward to in 2012. I got one back yesterday where the answer was basically “everything from Image Comics.” I find that interesting, because there’s a lot of diversity in Image’s line and although I think you guys probably publish something for every kind of taste, I wouldn’t think that every title would appeal to every comic reader. And yet I also find myself checking out at least the first issue of everything you guys have done lately. So from your perspective, what’s the unifying factor (or factors) right now among your titles, if there is one?

Stephenson: I think the main thing is that we’re moving forward and creating new things. We’re not content to just recycle the same old ideas month in and month out and then market it all as brand new. If this was another publisher, we’d be debuting our latest spin-off of The Walking Dead in March, but instead, we’re launching a new series by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, a new series by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra, a new series by Joe Keatinge and Andre Szymanowicz, and so on. For 20 years, Image has put its faith in creative people, and it’s the power of their imagination that links all our titles together, now more than ever.

Parkin: Back in 2008, when you took your current job, you told CBR that one of your goals was “to make more people aware of some of the great comics Image is putting out, getting our books in front of more eyes.” From your perspective, are you meeting this goal? And what’s changed in this regard over the last three years?

Stephenson: I don’t know if you’re familiar with the fast food chain Hardee’s, but they’re a hamburger chain out in the Midwest and thereabouts. They were bought by the company that owns Carl’s Jr. here in California toward the end of the ’90s, but in the period leading up to that sale, they were kind of horrible. They developed a really bad reputation. After the takeover, they did some amusingly blunt ads that basically said, “We don’t suck anymore,” that attracted a bit of attention, but ultimately, the thing that turned their business around–and along with Carl’s Jr., they’re one of the top fast food chains in the country today–is that they started making better burgers. They stopped sucking, basically, and I think the message there is pretty simple: Quality never goes out of style.

Hardee's old logo

Using that as kind of a point of reference, I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn by saying Image has produced its fair share of shit over the years. You win some, you lose some, right? Well, I think we got to a point a while back where the losses were outnumbering the wins, and regardless of whether it’s right or wrong, reputations are based on things like that. And that affects everything: How retailers order the books, how people perceive the books when they see them on the stands, how creators weigh their publishing options. I don’t think we were ever in as dire shape as Hardee’s, but our reputation had definitely suffered, and I think the main thing that’s changed over the last three years is that Image is perceived in a much different–and much better–light.

It’s an ongoing process, though. I don’t think the work of making readers and retailers more aware of what we do ever really ends, regardless of the level of success. For every great new series we launch, there’s always going to be someone pointing at one of our missteps from the past. It’s that old “fool me once” thing–some people, especially retailers, remain skeptical. It’s a trust issue, basically, and ultimately, the only way you earn that trust–or earn that trust back, if that’s the case–is to keep producing the best work possible. Things are looking good on that front.

Parkin: 2011 was an “up” year for you guys, in terms of overall sales, on top of an already strong 2010. Looking back, what factors do you think led to this success?

Stephenson: I don’t mean to sound repetitive, but I do think a lot of it has to do with not running on the spot. We’ve continued to move forward, you know? It hasn’t hurt that The Walking Dead is a tremendously successful television show, but let’s be clear–if we were just pushing out spin-offs of The Walking Dead and publishing a bunch of crap alongside that, our situation would be much different right now. We got a bit lucky in terms of the timing, I think. The Walking Dead show on AMC came at a time when we were actually ready to capitalize on it.

Parkin: As far as digital goes–I don’t think I can do an interview anymore without asking a “digital” question–I believe most, if not all, of your books are coming out digitally on the same day the print version hits comic shops. What kind of affect has going “same day digital” had on digital sales? Have print sales been affected? What plans do you have next year to get digital comics in particular in front of more people’s eyes?

Stephenson: Same day as print for digital has helped, definitely. There’s been no negative impact on print sales so far, at least nothing that’s particularly quantifiable anyway. Something I rail on about from time to time is that it’s not necessarily the same audience, and I think that’s kind of the beauty of it all. Having digital sales as an option broadens our reach. It broadens everybody’s reach.

I think people spend too much time hemming and hawing over format, really, and with that in mind, our plans for 2012 are less about just narrowing our focus on digital, and more on reaching out to more readers across the board. We’re going to do everything we can to raise awareness of Image in general, which serves the purpose of exposing more people to our comics, whether the format is digital or print.

One of Image's new print ads

Parkin: Speaking of raising Image’s profile, you sent over a sample from an upcoming ad campaign. Can you talk a little bit about the concept behind it? And where will it be appearing?

Stephenson: Yeah, that ad will start running online and in most of our comics this week. We’re doing one of these a week over the course of the year, each focusing on a different creator, and there will be some video components to the campaign as well.

The message is pretty simple: Our business thrives on creativity.

Everyone else throws their weight behind characters, behind IP. We put ours behind the people create those characters and develop that IP. The men and women who write and draw comics are Image’s–and this industry’s–most valuable resource. It takes a certain amount of bravery to create something of your own and share it with the world. We support those people, and we salute them.

Parkin: You guys put out a lot of new books in 2011 that shined the light on several new creators. Were there one or two projects you personally were particularly proud of in this regard?

Stephenson: The Strange Talent of Luther Strode is something I’m specifically proud of. I think Justin Jordan and Tradd Moore are doing great work with that, and it’s been a real pleasure to see that book do as well as it has. Witch Doctor is a similar story–Robert found Brandon and Lukas and they’ve done some amazing work on that book. I think it’s cool when someone kind of comes out of nowhere like that and just immediately start producing these great new comics. There’s also Kurtis Wiebe and Scott Kowalchuk on The Intrepids. That book flew a bit under the radar for a lot of people, I think, but Kurtis and Scott are both tremendous talents that I think people need to pay more attention to.

The Activity #2

Oh, and man – Nathan Edmondson! I really can’t say enough about Nathan. Nathan did a book for us with Christian Ward called Olympus a while back, but as good as that was, it didn’t quite prepare me for Who Is Jake Ellis? or The Activity. There’s more where that came from, and I really couldn’t be happier to have him here at Image.

Parkin: One Image book that had a lot of good buzz going this past year was Nonplayer #1, which came out early in the year and while initially under-ordered, seemed to do well in its second printing. Nate Simpson went on to win the Russ Manning Award at the Eisners this year. But then Simpson posted on his blog that he was involved in a bicycle accident that left him in a sling. Can you give us an update on how Nate is doing?

Stephenson: Well, Nate’s finally drawing again, which was welcome news to receive. The original plan was to get Nonplayer out twice a year, and I hope we’ll get back on that kind of schedule at some point in the future. It’s too early to say just yet, though, and really I’m just happy Nate wasn’t more seriously injured and that he’s on the mend. We should have the second issue out sometime around the middle of the year.

Parkin: It also seemed to be a good year for older Image properties as well. Witchblade hit its 150th issue, Walking Dead is on its way to issue #100 and was a constant on the New York Times bestseller list. I think you guys published, what, 15 issues of Spawn this past year? And Savage Dragon doesn’t seem to ever miss a beat. How do you keep the creative momentum going on long-running titles, and how do you get new readers to check them out?

Stephenson: It’s not always easy, especially with something like Savage Dragon. Erik and I actually talk about this a lot, because he’s been doing Savage Dragon for 20 years, and he is the sole creator. He writes it. He draws it. We can’t spike sales with a new writer. We can’t promote a new artist. It will always be Erik Larsen. No one other than Dave Sim has committed to the kind of undertaking Erik is engaged in with Savage Dragon, but longevity isn’t something that’s necessarily rewarded these days. Erik provides a unique comics reading experience with the book, though, and ultimately, I think that becomes a selling point of its own. Erik has his own sensibilities and there’s just no other comic like Savage Dragon.

Witchblade #151

On the other hand, we’ve got things like Witchblade or The Darkness, which is rapidly closing in on its 100th issue, and they do undergo changes in their creative teams. Tim Seeley is taking over Witchblade with #151 – I just got a printed copy of that today, actually – and I think people are really going to like what he’s doing with that. It’s a new beginning for the character and whether you’re a fan of Tim’s or a fan of the character, it’s great work. David Hine and Jeremy Haun take over The Darkness with issue #101 and that’s going to be a great jumping on point for that book, too. We could have relaunched that with a new number one, but you know – that’s been done before. It’s been done to death, in fact. There has never been a Darkness #101 before. There actually haven’t been a lot of #101s where independent comics are concerned. There’s like a handful and Spawn, Savage Dragon, Witchblade and The Darkness are amongst them. I think that’s something to be proud of, frankly.

And you’re right, there were 15 issues of Spawn during 2011, and that’s something to be proud of, too. Todd and his team took that book from being months behind and got it back on track, and better yet, did so not only without sacrificing quality, but by upping their game. That book is currently the best it’s been in years and years, and I think it’s really cool that with everything else he does, Todd was able to kind of regroup and infuse the book with some new energy.

Parkin: Speaking of older properties, Extreme is back, and it’s where you got your start in the industry. Now that you’re seeing new kids playing in the sandbox you helped create back in the 1990s, is there any urge on your part to jump back in on the creative side and work on any of the titles?

New Men

Stephenson: Rob and I have talked a bit about adding New Men to the line-up, so that’s kind of a possibility, but I don’t know. We’d have to find the right artist, especially given that the previous artists on that title–first Jeff Matsuda, then Todd Nauck and then Chris Sprouse–were such amazing talents. I kind of think of Todd as the definitive New Men artist, because he and I worked really closely on the book and did all but what?–nine of the issues together. But he’s busy with a new project, and I don’t think he’s sitting around thinking of ways to eliminate all his free time by taking on another series. I always liked those characters, though, and under the right circumstances, it would be fun to revisit them. I’d have to have time, too, because I have a couple projects of my own that are moving along at a dreadfully slow pace. I have the first issue of a new series sitting here that is completely drawn, colored and lettered, but no one’s going to see a page of it until I’m certain it can come out regularly, and there are a lot of other factors involved in making that happen. My absolute first priority is Image Comics and whatever creative work I do comes well behind that.

Parkin: Looking at 2012, it’s the 20th anniversary of Image, and you’ve announced several new projects by big-name creators (like Fatale and Saga), as well as the Image Expo in Oakland this spring. What else does Image have planned to celebrate the big anniversary?

Stephenson: Our primary focus over 2012 is to publish great new comics. We got a little lucky in that we have some outstanding work by some truly brilliant writers and artists on tap for our anniversary, and I think that’s the best way to celebrate 20 years of creativity. We hit the ground running this week with Ed and Sean’s Fatale #1 and we’re just going to keep going from there. Every single one of our 2012 books is going to be worth watching.

We have a couple of fun retrospective things we’re doing–there’s going to be a series of tribute cover variants by a single artist. I know some people groan at the merest mention of variants, but these are done out of fun and they’ll make a nice little set when they’re all out. There will be a couple other things like that, but really, we’re celebrating our 20th anniversary by being at our all-time best.

Parkin: Do you have specific goals set out for Image to achieve in 2012? What do you think will be the biggest challenges for Image in 2012?

Stephenson: I think the biggest challenge is pretty much the same as it’s been the last few years, because I think we all know there are segments of this industry that take almost a strange kind of pride in complacency. There’s a growing aversion to new ideas that I find really puzzling, because this entire business was built on new ideas. It’s self-sabotaging, and it gets a bit depressing, really, because it reduces this business to… Have you seen Midnight In Paris? Owen Wilson’s character in that, he’s writing this novel about a guy who owns a nostalgia shop, a shop where people can kind of wallow in the ephemera of the past. If all we’re going to do as an industry or even as a readership is cling to the past, then that’s what the direct market will become: a dwindling handful of nostalgia shops catering to the narrow interests of a greying market that collects the same thing month in and month out, out of habit or misty-eyed sentimentality. Because that’s the crossroads we’re at: We can either move forward and support the kind of unbridled imagination that has fueled this industry since it began, or we keep rummaging about in the same old bag of tricks until it’s finally empty.

Savage Dragon #177

So that’s the challenge. And it’s a big challenge, but our goal at Image, going into 2012, is to remind everyone that creativity is the lifeblood of this industry. Creativity gave us Superman. It gave us Batman. It gave us The Spirit. The Fantastic Four. Spider-Man. Cerebus. Maus. Watchmen. Sandman. Sin City. Spawn. Savage Dragon. Hellboy. Bone. Stray Bullets. The Invisibles. Transmetropolitan. Y: The Last Man. The Walking Dead. Scott Pilgrim. The Umbrella Academy. Kick Ass. Every great success this industry has ever known is the result of creativity.

And creativity doesn’t come from playing it safe, and it doesn’t come out of nowhere. It starts with people, and over the course of the next year, Image Comics is going to shine a light on all the wonderful creative people we work with, because if creativity is the lifeblood of this industry, then creators are its heart. We’ve been behind the men and women who enrich our lives with the fruits of their imaginations for 20 years, and this year, it’s our mission to make that commitment clearer than ever.

Parkin: As far as projects go, we’ve heard about comics like Fatale, Saga and Thief of Thieves by big-name folks, but Image is also really good at finding unknown or new talent. Is there a particular project coming up in 2012 by someone we may not have heard about that has you particularly excited?

Stephenson: Yes.

Parkin: What’s the status of Image United?

Stephenson: Me sobbing uncontrollably in the bathtub? (laughs)

Seriously, it’s being worked on. Slower than we would all like, for sure, but it’s coming along. The unfortunate reality of the situation is that not finishing it sooner complicated things more than it should have. With six different artists all working on almost every page, once things started to run off the rails, we began running into scheduling conflicts that became more and more unavoidable. The good news–or the better than completely fucking terrible news, really–is that the fourth issue is very close to being finished. At this point, the goal is to complete the remaining three issues and release them monthly sometime in 2012.

Parkin: DC and Marvel seem to always be under the gun to produce books with female lead and/or female creators. How is Image doing on the female lead and female creators front?

Stephenson: That’s a tricky question, because there’s a very profound difference between Image and DC/Marvel and that’s that we don’t dictate who our creators are or what they do. If female creators don’t pitch projects to us, then we don’t have projects by female creators, and we don’t receive that many pitches from women. Blair Butler brought us Heart, though, and Emi Lenox did EmiTown here. Marian Churchland won a Russ Manning award for her graphic novel Beast, and she’s done some great work on Elephantmen. Half the staff here in the Image office are women.

Saga

You just noted that Witchblade recently hit #150–it’s the longest running independent comic with a female lead. Glory, Hack/Slash, Avengelyne and Shinku all feature female leads, and while I realize the politically incorrect satire of Bomb Queen may not be for everyone, the title character is definitely a woman. One of the biggest books we’re putting out this year is Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Saga, and one of the main characters in that is female. Alpha Girl seems pretty self-explanatory. Next month, we’re publishing more work by Emi, along with a new autobio book by Natalie Nourigat. Blair is putting together another project for us, and those are just the things I’m at liberty to discuss right now. Every now and then we’ll reach out to someone specific – I’d love it if we were working with Marjorie Liu, for instance, and getting Pia Guerra to do something here would be a dream come true, and the same goes for Chynna Clugston – but ultimately, it all comes down to when people are available and whether they actually have something they want to do.

Or to put it another way: If you’re a female writer or artist with an awesome creator-owned project you’d like to get off the ground, send me an email. Even if you’re just thinking about it and you have some questions about how Image works or whatever – send me an email. If I get eight killer proposals, then that’s eight new Image books by female talent. It’s that simple.

Parkin: Speaking of pitches, how many do you receive via email in a given week? And how many of the blind ones go on to become comics?

Stephenson: Dozens. I get dozens of proposals every week, but very few are accepted. In the 10 years I’ve been on staff at Image, I think we’ve accepted fewer than 10.

Parkin: On your personal blog, where you occasionally talk about Image and the industry and what not, you also spend a lot of time talking about music. As we move into the new year, what’s on your playlist right now?

Stephenson: You know, it’s a funny thing with my blog. When I first started it, I was really reluctant to focus too much on the industry or comics at all. I was mainly doing it for my own edification, just keeping a journal about things that caught my attention, but the comics stuff slowly crept in. It’s hard not to comment on certain things, whether it’s something I’m excited about or something that rubs me the wrong way. Usually, though, I’m waxing enthusiastic about the things I love, and a great deal of the time, that’s music. I’m pretty sure I would fade from existence without music, it’s such a vital part of my life.

Future of the Left: Polymers are Forever

Playlist-wise… I listen almost exclusively to vinyl at home, and I’m always on the hunt for more – I just picked up albums by Horace Silver, the Detroit Emeralds, Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell, Fairport Convention, David Bowie and the Swingle Singers, and then there was that big Smiths box set with all the remastered albums. There’s just so much great music out there, and it’s fun to kind of connect the dots between different things.

Probably the thing I’ve been listening to most frequently over the last couple weeks, though, is this EP by Future of the Left called Polymers Are Forever. That made me go back to the band that Future of the Left grew out of, Mclusky, and start listening to those albums again, which I hadn’t done in quite a while. Both bands are so loud and angry, but not necessarily in the way you might expect. A good touchstone might be Big Black, or maybe Shellac. There’s a lot of dark humor to their lyrics and that always appeals to me. They have a full album coming fairly soon called The Plot Against Common Sense and I’m looking forward to that. I’ve really been enjoying this album by a guy called Jonathan Wilson, too. It’s called Gentle Spirit and it has a very Laurel Canyon in the early ’70s kind of vibe about it, if you know what I mean. I have the same sort of outlook to music that I have towards comics, or anything, really–I like discovering new stuff. Like everyone, I have my old favorites, but there’s nothing quite like the experience of coming across something new.

Cover design by Robert Beatty

“You can tell I’m still making sense of it myself.” So says Sammy Harkham of the eighth volume of his landmark anthology series, Kramers Ergot, at one point during our lengthy conversation about the book. And indeed, Harkham’s side conversation is characterized by strategic pauses, halves of sentences that trail off and are abandoned as Harkham retreats, rethinks, and rearticulates. Despite his ebullient cadence – Harkham’s as great a talker as he is a tweeter – it’s quite clear that the amount of thought he put into this comparatively slim and quiet volume of his once-overflowing and raucous art-comics anthology is nearly overpowering.

So is the collection itself. Despite featuring a much smaller roster than previous volumes in the series, and despite a much less “noisy” visual aesthetic than that which has characterized the series since its phone book-sized fourth volume caused a sensation upon its release at the MoCCA Festival in 2003, Kramers Ergot 8 has an intensity that’s tough to shake. Contributors like C.F. (aka Christopher Forgues) and Chris Cilla craft uncomfortable but undeniably erotic sex scenes, which sit next to grim science-fiction parables from Gary Panter and Kevin Huizenga and gruesome horror tragedies by Johnny Ryan and Harkham himself. Fine artists Robert Beatty and Takeshi Murata contribute pieces as visually vibrant as the stories of crime and desire from Gabrielle Bell and the team of Frank Santoro and Dash Shaw are bleak. A cheekily provocative introductory essay from musician Ian Svenonius and a massive selection of racy reprinted Oh, Wicked Wanda! comics from the pages of Penthouse prove perplexing – but it’s a good perplexing, because it forces the reader to consider just how fingernails-on-a-chalkboard effective the rest of the volume is at discomfiting them.

With the book on its way to stores from PictureBox Inc. in a couple of weeks, Harkham took an hour before picking his two older kids up at school to talk about this very personal project. We started off talking about our respective babies; fitting, then, that by the end of the interview a fascinating picture emerged of what Harkham wanted Kramers 8 to be that proved every pause along the way was a pregnant one.

Page from "A Husband and a Wife" by Sammy Harkham

Sean T. Collins: Kramers Ergot 8 debuted at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival in December, but your third baby debuted not long before that. That had to be a challenge.

Sammy Harkham: Knowing the baby’s coming, you work knowing that when that baby comes, things are gonna shut down. The book only got finished mid-September, and then the baby came. It was funny, because I drew my comic [for the anthology] when the book was done, basically. I thought, “I’ll do a simple issue of Kramers, I’ll do a story for it, and then I’ll get back to Crickets.” But editing, for me, is like working on my own book, as if it’s fully just me. I’m thinking about it day and night, and it’s hard for me to then think of a story within that if I don’t already have one that I’m working on. So at a certain point I decided I’m not going to be in the book. Then it was clear I needed to be in the book, because I wanted a very particular kind of story in it [laughs]. “I guess I’m gonna have to do it.” It was a flurry of activity August into September, then it was done, then the book was done, and then I was just…breathing, you know? But I felt like, “Oh man, I really should be working right now before the baby comes.” But since the baby came I’ve still been doing stuff. You know what it’s like: a lot of tricky hours, and getting used to weird working habits. You work for five minutes, but you try to make it a good five minutes. You try to break it up. And I try not to lose my temper. I get resentful of the people around me when they’re asking for my help and I’m in the middle of something. [Laughs] If I’m in the middle of writing or drawing something, I wanna finish the thought. So I’ve got to think of those Dalai Lama tweets I read earlier in the day. [Laughs] You’ve got to get into the headspace where you’re malleable in that way, you’re flexible.

But Kramers was late this year. Nadel wanted it in July, but I’ve never been able to deliver that book on time, never. This one was particularly hard because there were so few contributors, so I couldn’t lose anybody without it affecting the whole thing. Whereas in previous issues there are so many people that unless it’s a really big strip – it’s a shame to lose anything, you don’t want to lose anything, but you can. You can lose a one- or two-pager. But with this, if CF is running late, there’s nothing we can do. I told [PictureBox Publisher Dan] Nadel that up front: “I hope to get the book done on time, but if Panter’s not ready, if Christopher’s not ready, if any of these people aren’t ready, we can’t do anything.” [Laughs] We’re at the mercy of them, really.

Page from "Barbarian Bitch" by Anya Davidson

Collins: Was that something you factored in when you approached people?

Harkham: Not at all. Not at all. With this one, I was thinking of people who drew…I wanted a certain uptight energy, a certain rigidness to the work. That was a guiding principle. Then the people who don’t draw super-tight or super…I don’t know what the word is, but there’s a certain energy was going for, and the people who don’t necessarily conform to that, I thought, in a way define the book by what they aren’t. Leon Sadler, to me, almost defines the whole book by being so loose, because he really sticks out in sharp relief. Same with Anya [Davidson]. Those are the two people I think of as being kind of different stylistically, Anya and Leon.

I just wanted to get away from…I don’t know. [Pause] It’s a very hard book for me to discuss or to verbalize, because so much of it was intuitive. I wanted to do something that really felt different from what other Kramers were. It was really about thinking of a tone, and trying to think of who fits within that tone, and trying to create a vision of comics that maybe doesn’t exist, but to pretend that it does. Or to create it. Or to give the impression that it’s always there, but I really have to use spit and rubber bands to put together and give it that veneer.

Collins: The tone that emerged for me was a sad one. There was a melancholy to it. Maybe that what emerged for me from its spin on the sex and horror comics that are very much in the air right now. But beyond that, the strip I return to mentally is Kevin Huizenga’s cover version of a golden age sci-fi strip, which I found crushingly sad.

Harkham: It’s bizarre, right? It makes you really think about – tell me if you disagree, but you think of the guys who made the original strip, right? I mean, what is this? What is this strip? You’re right, I totally agree with you. It’s a really sad strip. It’s a very bizarre strip, and it’s a weird thing that someone did that comic knowing that the only people who were going to read it were children. It makes me think of Frank King working on Gasoline Alley, this idealized vision of what he wants his life to be, of him living with this son who in reality is very far away from him. Comics are often like that. Because of the nature of the work, it is often about escaping into a space and letting things live and breathe that in reality can’t exist. That’s often the impression on the last page of a Kim Deitch comic. [Laughs] I feel like he’s realizing that it’s over, and he’s like, “I kinda want to live with these pygmies forever in this miniature city that doesn’t exist.”

Collins: Now that you mention it, there’s a sense of loss to the book, too. Maybe it’s in the way the the sexy stuff sits against the horrific and angry and sad stuff, which spoils it or something. I think of Chris Cilla’s story, in which a sexual liaison is interrupted by a little kid who says, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody.” It felt like something had been ruined. I came away from the book feeling… [sighs]

Harkham: Did you like the book?

Collins: I did! Oh yeah, I did. There was stuff that I struggled with…

Harkham: I ask that honestly. I honestly have no idea what reception the book’s going to receive from people. I don’t know if they’re going to take to it. And I’m open to that, I’m fine with that. I ask that question with my eyes open, not in a defensive way.

Page from "Mining Colony X7170" by Johnny Ryan

Collins: A lot of the stuff is very much in my wheelhouse. I love the direction that Johnny Ryan continues to go in.

Harkham: That strip is beautiful. It’s an ode to commitment and love. It’s a really rich story. Including Johnny in a book like this, where I wanted things to have a certain amount of restraint and emotional coldness, not the usual flop sweat and a gag every second – with Johnny, it was all about talking to him about the slow burn. I know Johnny well enough to know he’s really well read and a really smart writer. We’ve talked a lot about story and literature. It was exciting to bring him into this, knowing that when I mentioned his name to the other contributors, they were like “Huh, he doesn’t necessarily sound like a great fit for this,” and he really delivered. That strip is amazing. He doesn’t tie up all the loose ends, he doesn’t tell you exactly what’s going on, but there’s enough ambiguity and enough focus. I think it’s a really beautiful comic.

Collins: It feels like an answer to the Huizenga strip, too.

Harkham: That’s interesting. [Pause] That’s really interesting. [Laughs] Oh my God, I hadn’t thought about that!

Collins: These explorers searching for love—

Harkham: Looking for love, yeah!

Collins: –and finding these nightmares they choose to embrace.

Harkham: Cool. My struggle with Kramers is always looking at it so intensely and never feeling like it’s good enough. You want things to be better and better. I’m really hung up on narrative, so I always want better stories, and it takes me a bit of time to stand back from it and come towards it a couple months or years later and go “Oh, that’s a good issue.”

Collins: Kramers 4 had such an atom-bomb impact, and I think what a lot of people took away from it was the non-narrative material – the Fort Thunder contributions, the collage material. But the series has had a parallel thread of full-fledged short stories all along. Were you expressly trying to point in that direction with this new format?

Harkham: I wanted each contributor to do a somewhat meaty amount of material. So when you think about that—I broke it with Leon, but again, that helps define the rest of the book by having his section be all kinds of little bits and pieces. But besides Leon, I wanted each person to do a substantial amount of pages, or if not a substantial amount of pages then something that felt substantial. Comics are funny like that: A two-page strip can live in your mind like a 500-page book. So it wasn’t necessarily page count—I just wanted it to be really strong material. And it’s always a struggle to get that out of people, but with this one it was more like seeing if people could make a serious commitment. Most of those strips are over eight pages. Gabrielle’s is shorter and Kevin’s is shorter, but they’re all around eight, and beyond that. It’s a lot to ask of people, especially these days, when all the people I was working with have other projects.

Collins: The other week I reviewed the final issue of Mome for The Comics Journal, and to open the review I listed a bunch of anthologies that had come out over the past couple years, off the top of my head. There were two dozen easy. It’s a much more heavily anthologized era right now than it was when Kramers started.

Harkham: I think there’s a real need for it.

Collins: Why? And was that something you were considering when you were putting #8 together?

Harkham: To answer the first part, there’s always a need. People need an outlet for their work, and online is one thing, but having it in print is another. Comics lend themselves to short form, so it makes sense that there are going to be a lot of anthologies. To me, doing another issue of Kramers was more about…When approaching any issue, it’s always like, “What do I want to see? What do I feel a lack of as a reader?” I do read a lot of comics. I feel like I’m so heavily engaged with comics—too much, sometimes! [Laughs] Probably to an unhealthy degree. It’s crazy. You’re a writer of comics, so you know. You’re deeply involved as well. So it comes out of [thinking of] what kind of book I’m excited to see. Sometimes I feel like “Oh, everyone’s doing the work that I want to see.” Then there’s times like this, where there’s a kind of comic I want to see and it doesn’t exist, so I’m going to make it: “I want to present people’s work in a certain way that I don’t see it presented in. I want a context that I don’t see out there.” And starting to build from there.

That’s why I wonder about how people are going to respond to it, because to me, it doesn’t feel like there are many books like it. When Kramers 4 came out, there was a lot of resistance from within comics to that! [Laughs] I was still posting on the TCJ.com message board at that time. I was 23 and commenting on that board all the time. When people started talking about that book I was really excited, until everyone started shitting on it. [Laughs] But then people started sticking up for it. I mean, I know now that that’s always a good thing, when people dislike something enough to want to talk about it. That means it’s connecting on some wavelength, and that’s important. But with this, I don’t know how people are going to take to it. They might think it’s pretentious or they might think it’s too dry or something.

Collins: I bought Kramers 4 at MoCCA when it debuted, and I was on the TCJ messboard then as well. I remember the argument was like, “Is this comics? This isn’t comics!” That book won that argument so completely that it’s not even an argument people have anymore, at least not among art comics readers.

Harkham: People are over it. At the time I didn’t think the book was that far out. I thought it was a very normal thing, coming out of all the [pioneering art-comics publisher] Highwater books at that time. Don’t forget, [Marc Bell’s] Shrimpy and Paul had already come out, and [Mat Brinkman’s] Teratoid Heights came out either around the same time or just after, but Brinkman was doing work. All those people were doing work that was available, so to do an anthology including all those people did not feel like I was necessarily bringing anything new to the table. I was just trying to make a good collection.

I never focus on showing people stuff they’ve never seen before, because I think that’s a really shallow approach. It won’t yield so much great work by focusing on what’s new, what’s hot, what are people going crazy about this month. Comics people are very fickle. You mentioned that whole thing about horror and sex right now. Ben Marra started doing his thing the last two years, Michael DeForge, obviously Jonny Negron—there’s a certain energy in the air where people are getting really into doing unironic genre-based work, and it feels fresh. But in a year from now, maybe the hot new thing will be like Peepshow. It’s not a fickleness, but because the alternative comics scene is so small, there’s a lot of turnover, a lot of moving forward about what’s exciting. I try to avoid thinking in those terms.

So to go back to what we were saying, Kramers 4 was to me a very normal anthology. It was a big anthology, but I didn’t think I was necessarily bringing that much to the table. With this one in some ways I feel the same. But just seeing the response to the last issue… When that book got announced, the way people took to it, the negative comments that people had about that book – [they were] saying things I would never have thought of if I hadn’t read someone saying these things online, about making a book that was elitist. I guess I’m used to people second-guessing Kramers and putting a lot of their own baggage and issues into the work. Which is normal. Art goes halfway, the reader goes the other half, always. So if people want to look at a book and take the most negative view of why certain decisions are made, then that’s their prerogative, and I’m comfortable with that. So with issue eight, I know I wanted this book to be a certain way, and people may not take to it, and I’m okay with that.

I listened to the roundtable conversation [about the best comics of 2011] on Inkstuds [featuring critics Robin McConnell, Tim Hodler, Joe McCulloch, and Matt Seneca] and I thought that was really interesting. I’m listening to them talk about the book…[Laughs] I respect all those writers, but at first I was like, “No, I disagree completely. That’s fine, whichever way they’re taking to the book is fine, but I don’t agree with what they’re saying.” But as I listened to it, I realized they were teaching me something about the book. In a way, I was learning about what I was thinking. I realized they’re kinda right about a lot of their opinions about the book.

Page from "Epilogue" by Robert Beatty

Collins: The reason I brought up the debate over #4 actually ties into what I got out of that roundtable myself. Looking at #8, I have no problem processing the art from Robert Beatty and Takeshi Murata. I’d compare the opening stuff from Beatty to the opening synthesizer instrumentals from 1984 by Van Halen or Music Has the Right to Children by Boards of Canada – it’s really appropriate that it’s called “Overture.” And the Murata stuff, the way it has this beautiful sensual vibrant feeling but depicts these weird, slightly sinister items of pop- and trash-culture detritus…I get what that’s doing there among these comics. The stuff I really struggled with were the intro from Ian Svenonius [Harkham laughs] and the Oh, Wicked Wanda! material at the back of the book. The Oh, Wicked Wanda! stuff looked gorgeous on that lovely paper you selected for it, but I didn’t really like them as comics. And there was just so much of it!

Harkham: [Laughs] I had a hard time cutting it down!

Collins: And the Svenonius—I just wasn’t ready for an introduction to a Kramers Ergot that ended with “ZAP! BLAM! POW!”

Harkham: [Laughs] I know – I’m with you, man, I’m with you! Have you read any of his writing?

Collins: I feel like I have, although I couldn’t tell you what it was. I have enough friends who are deep into his various bands, Nation of Ulysses or Weird War or Chain and the Gang depending on the friend, that I feel as though these things have filtered into me secondhand, though I couldn’t pinpoint exactly how or why.

Harkham: There’s a book that the record label Drag City released of his essays called Psychic Soviet that I really recommend. I’m only slightly aware of his music; I really know Svenonius as a writer. My only concern with including him was that for people who did know his music, it looked like we got some hip dude to write an intro – like getting a Morrissey to write an afterword, or Steve Albini or something. I was a little bit concerned just ‘cause it’s him. But as an aside, you should read his other essays.

Collins: Well, in that Inkstuds roundtable, Joe McCulloch made the argument that the Oh, Wicked Wanda! material at the end of the book was as if the Svenonius essay was saying “The prosecution rests!” The essay was about the way pop art nullifies and destroys art’s revolutionary potential, and here at the end of a book of underground comics you have this endlessly long, vaguely funny smut comic – choke on it. [Laughs] I wasn’t sure if I bought it, but he was able to contexualize them a lot better than I was.

Harkham: Yeah, me too. I think editing an anthology is not that different from making your own book, in that you gather bits and pieces that feel right and start making this overall thing. You don’t necessarily have a clear idea, you just know that you like these things next to each other. In the same way, when you’re writing a short story, you’re like, “Well, I’ve got this scene, and I don’t know what it means, but there’s something I’m really attracted to.” It resonates within you, something very simple – a guy barbecuing in the rain or something. [Laughs] You’re attracted to these little things and they all come together. I had some very clear ideas about why I wanted certain things, and then there are some things you’re unsure about. So listening to McCulloch talk about what he thought was very interesting. I don’t feel like it’s my place to say he’s 100% right, he’s 100% wrong – I just thought it was interesting. Once the book is done, it’s now owned as much by the readers as by me as far as what it means. I try to avoid getting in the way of that and saying “No, it’s here because of this.” I don’t necessarily want to effect how people read the book.

Page from "Oh! Wicked Wanda" by Ron Embelton and Frederic Mullally

Collins: I’ve heard that from artists; it’s really interesting to hear it from an editor.

Harkham: Well, you know, I have my own feelings and thoughts about Oh, Wicked Wanda!, and I don’t necessarily want to smother the reader with my take on it. I’d much rather they engage the work. If I wanted to, I’d run little paragraph intros before each strip to contextualize why I like them in my own editorial voice, but I don’t feel like that’s necessarily an exciting book to read. Every book, regardless of whether it’s an anthology or by a single author, should have a certain amount of ambiguity and mystery and tension. The only time those things should be lacking – and it’s debatable – is in a work of nonfiction. That’s debatable, because some of my favorite writers of nonfiction bring a lot to the table where they don’t have all the answers. To tie it into comics, Dan Raeburn’s Imp #4 about Mexican comics – he’s wrestling with stuff, and it’s interesting.

So Oh, Wicked Wanda!…It’s interesting, because I don’t think I thought it was gonna be hard for people to get through that stuff. I thought they’d have issues with it, but I didn’t think it would be hard, or intense in that way. You could make the argument that the book was almost meant to feel like you just sat through a grueling four-hour war movie, or some atonal music piece, and now here’s The Benny Hill Show as a respite. [Laughs] But it’s clear no one’s really taken it that way. Which is good, I guess.

Collins: Perhaps for this audience, the atonal stuff is our Benny Hill Show. Then you get to the T&A romp, and it’s like, “Aaaah! It’s Metal Machine Music!”

Harkham: But what is it? Is it seeing swastikas on girls’ asses? Is that a problem?

Collins: No, and that’s the thing. You said you thought people would have issues with it; I didn’t have any issues with it, I just thought it wasn’t that funny. Which is sort of the least critical criticism that anyone can ever levy at anything…

Harkham: I feel like that’s important, though. I can’t remember who wrote it – maybe you wrote it – but there was a [Comics] Journal review about the black humor anthology [Black Eye, edited by Ryan Standfest].

Collins: Yep, that was me.

Harkham: I only read one review of that book, and that was in the Journal, and you said you didn’t find it very good because it just wasn’t that funny. Remember? [Laughs] That, to me, is a very valid criticism. That’s something, as a reader, I’m curious about: How funny is a funny anthology? That’s important to me.

Collins: Okay, I feel a little better then. [Laughs]

Harkham: I know that for my own work, the most important thing is that it’s entertaining. That’s number one. Any deeper or richer intention should be behind that. The main thrust should always be “Is this scene funny? Is it good? Is it scary? Is it strong?” I want momentum, I want this thing to be moving. Any other concerns, like personal expression, honesty, truthfulness, whatever it is – all the stuff you really wrestle with when you’re in art school – should be in play in the background.

So I think jokes are important. Oh, Wicked Wanda! is a little bit trickier. It sounds like you still engaged with it, you didn’t shut down, but you didn’t find the jokes funny. I do think there are a couple other ways of reading it that make it kind of interesting. People who don’t even want to read it can just look at it and still like it without reading it. The first year I was looking at that stuff, I never read it. I was just looking at it page by page and thinking “My God, these are incredible-looking pages.”

Collins: Well, it sits so well on that paper stock that you can look at it along with the other airbrush art in the anthology literally on a surface level. You can look at the surface of the page and enjoy it.

Harkham: And I think that’s important. I do.

Page from "Warm Genetic House" by CF

Collins: You can also look at the Nazisploitation and S&M elements of the strip, and a few pages away you have CF’s strip, and you can get some resonance there. In fact, I feel as though the act of putting all the stuff that’s in here between two covers is almost like a game. I don’t mean that as a value judgment at all – or maybe I mean it as a positive one. The game is to try and puzzle out the context. “Okay, it’s a shorter, smaller volume; Sammy and Dan have said it’s the most focused one. So what is the focus? What am I not seeing?” Most of it I can make sense of, but the things that really stick out become a challenge. “What are they doing in here? What did he see?” That’s one of the pleasures of an anthology with a really strong editorial eye: trying to puzzle out the context the editor had in his mind when he put it together.

Harkham: Well, let’s see. Oh, Wicked Wanda! you had trouble with, and the Svenonius. [Long pause] Keeping in mind what we were talking about, about not wanting to smother readers with my goals or what I was trying to do…I definitely wanted to make something that got away from all the things that we take for granted when we think of anthologies, and when we think of comics, and when we think of comics within the context of the wider culture. When you pull it out of our little scene…One thing at play with Kramers 4 was that that book was, in some ways, a response to comics being embraced by the mainstream and by the wider book culture and art culture. 2003: Pantheon is releasing books, Fantagraphics and D&Q are now in bookstores, it’s becoming a regular thing, and comics are being presented more and more like literature in the way that they’re packaged, the way that the books are designed. [Kramers 4 was] my way of dealing with that, because I had no connection to that and didn’t grow up reading comics in that way. The Love and Rockets collections and the Jim Woodring collections were always 8 ½ x 11. They were just comics jammed together with covers in the back. [Laughs] They were just collections, really simple. Kramers 4, in some ways, was, “I want to get back to things being comics.” No context, no blurbs, just that energy of comics, throwing it all out there and leaving it to the reader to make sense of the work themselves.

When thinking about doing another issue of Kramers, I want to do something that’s gonna enter into that conversation of comics as literature and comics as fine art, but do it in a way that feels right where all those other books feel wrong to me. It’s a way of throwing out all the things we take as a given because that’s the way it’s done by Fanta and D&Q and First Second or whoever. You could make the argument that all previous Kramers have been about stripping context away, so let’s make one that’s all about context. So you think about having an essay to start the book. And you think about Takeshi Murata, who’s not a cartoonist, and I wouldn’t say those are comics in any form, but when you think of literary anthologies like Granta or McSweeney’s, often you’ll have somewhere in a book of prose a selection of sculptures or photography by a fine artist. Murata served that purpose. And you think about the size, and about trying to have meaty contributions and stories, and about a book you could buy at an airport bookstore and sit with for a couple days. That was really important to me.

One of the things that happens with the previous issues is that there’s a very off-handed way of giving the work: [in a singsongy voice] “Oh yeah, here’s Chris Ware, and here’s Martin Cendreda, and here’s CF…” I’m just tossing them out to the reader. With this, I wanted to present all this stuff with real respect and dignity. [Laughs] It gets a little bit tricky talking about this stuff, because I know that for everything I’m saying there’s a million arguments against it, and we could go into any one of these points and have a conversation. But I just wanted to make something that was really refined and clean and had a strong point of view. Someone mentioned that it’s an angry book, and I’m might agree with that. In a way I feel like I want to just throw everything out, and it’s a new start. [pause] Does that answer your question at all?

Collins: [Laughs] I think so! I don’t at all want to tease out of you some sort of revelation you’re not comfortable with because it proscribes reader reaction.

Harkham: I’m still figuring it out myself.

Collins: But the way you just described it makes me think that the fact that it’s a Kramers with a typewritten table of contents at the beginning is somehow the Rosetta stone of the entire project.

Harkham: Exactly. But dude, forget that. You don’t even need to go that far. Open the book, look at the endpapers: The endpapers are white. [Collins laughs] I’m serious! I am serious. Kramers has always covered every square inch of surface with content. It’s always been like “Just jam it in, as much stuff as possible, and if it’s not a good book, at least it’s a big book. [Laughs] One of these is bound to hit!” There’s a certain amount of insecurity when you’ve been working on an anthology for six months: “Fuck, I’ve got one month left. I’m gonna send out one last email to twenty people and be like ‘Who’s got something?’” With this, it was, “I’m gonna have a few people and I’m gonna give them space.” I told them all “I want your strip to start on the right-hand side, and I want it to be a certain number of pages, and I want it to be a certain kind of story.” I wanted to contextualize all this stuff, in a way that I never had before.

Cover of Crickets #3 by Sammy Harkham

With my own work, with Crickets, it’s more like those old issues of Kramers. When it comes to how I present my own work, I like it to look like shit. I like it to look dashed off and simple and vulgar, so that when you read it, if there’s anything richer, it’s almost a surprise. I want to embrace all those exterior elements of a comic book so that it’s a little bit subversive in that way. Like, [Crickets #3’s lead story] “Blood of the Virgin” is called “Blood of the Virgin.” You know? And the cover of Crickets 3…I’m really proud of that issue, but there’s no signifiers when you hold that thing that it’s anything but a dirty, gross comic.

Collins: You went out of your way to trashify it.

Harkham: Exactly. [Laughs] I didn’t go out of my way to trashify it, but all my favorite writers, if there’s one thing in common, is that they write in a very direct way, with a certain clarity of thought, just saying things. I really respond to that. So Crickets 3 works for me [because] I wanted to make something that feels like a comic book, and all the things we think of as a comic book as comic readers. You get what I mean when I say that, because you’re engaging with the medium in that way. Crickets is very much a part of that conversation.

With Kramers 8, it doesn’t make sense to do that anymore. I’m 31, I’m not 23. It doesn’t make sense anymore to have everything be loud and crazy and messy. And anyway, everyone’s doing that for me. Everything kinda looks the way Kramers 4 looked.

Collins: BCGF looked like if Kramers 4 came to life.

Harkham: [Laughs] Well, that’s nice, I guess. I mean, I’m not gonna take credit for any of that sort of thing. But there’s a certain rough texture to everything, and that doesn’t really resonate for me anymore. If I look at the fine art I’m looking at, the books I’m reading, the fashion, the graphic design, all the things I’m interested in – it doesn’t look like that. So why do the comics I buy?

Let’s see if I can say this in a clear way so you don’t have to edit the hell out of it… [Pause] There are certain things, I don’t know what I should call them, but certain tropes of indie comics that are sort of a given. It’s a pretty incestuous community, the world of comics. I realized that if I stepped out of that a little bit and think of the wider context, there’s a way of approaching this book that feels really fresh, and yet feels like it’s connecting to the wider culture. Which I feel that comics have been doing anyway, for the last couple of years. Does that make sense?

Collins: Well, as we were just saying, it’s a Kramers with white endpapers, with a table of contents, with a prose introduction, with a cover that’s restrained even by the standards of #7. The package itself is making an argument.

Harkham: Yeah. It’s a difficult book for me to talk about because I feel like I’m still in it, even though I’ve been done with since September. I haven’t really been able to make sense of it. This is why I wanted to do this interview over the phone as opposed to me writing answers, because anything I would type, I don’t know how honest it would be. Over the phone, I can say I don’t have clear-cut answers or clear-cut reasons for making the book what it is, exactly.

But hopefully, with any piece of work, there’s multiple strands that are at play. Every time I would see your name come up in my email when we were communicating, I’d think of Game of Thrones, because I know you’re a big Martin fan. I’ve only just started that series, but he’s a good example of this. When you describe that book to someone, you can say, “It’s about this,” and it’s totally true, but you can also say “It’s also about this,” and that’s totally true as well. Not to say that Kramers is anywhere near a work like what George R.R. Martin’s doing [laughs], but you try to have multiple strands at play, multiple things that you’re working towards.

Page from "Childhood Predators" by Frank Santoro and Dash Shaw

With this new issue, there is that one strand: “Okay, I want to make a book that actually looks like a book, that can sit on a bookshelf with good prose and good graphic design and good records. I want it to be part of the wider culture.” All these cartoonists are doing very, very unique work, and if there’s one connector – I don’t know if this is true, but maybe – all that work feels like it’s a little bit outside comics. Despite being totally informed by the medium, there’s something about it that looks or reads like it’s not so incestuous. They’re not responses to other comics. It feels like they’re engaging the wider culture.

So there was that element of wanting to make something that’s pushing past comics, because comics as a medium is already going there. You already have comics in every bookstore. You have mainstream coverage of cartoonists. So it’s like, okay, if we want to finally engage with that instead of avoiding it…I can avoid it with my own work, but it’s not fair to do that when representing other artists and putting together collections of other people’s work. That was an exciting challenge, to try to do that.

The next thing was, what’s the point of view? That’s where Svenonius and Oh, Wicked Wanda! obviously add a lot. Maybe they throw a wrench in things, but maybe that’s good. Obviously I don’t want anyone to dislike any of the pieces. That’s always a problem when doing an anthology. Every review of an anthology, as a given, will say, “It’s great, but like any anthology it has its problems.” [Collins laughs] There’s always those strips you don’t care about, because every editor has their own definition of what’s good.

Collins: But as a reviewer, for example, I realized a few volumes into Mome that the fact that I disliked a few strips in each issue is a big part of why I enjoyed reading the series. It helped me understand, “Okay, why does a comic work? Why does a comic not work? What are these two comics that are only a few pages away doing so differently?” I found that really helpful. So even when there’s stuff that you struggle with or dislike – I understand that as an editor, the intention is not to put in stuff and say “Oh, no one’s gonna like this – let’s see what they make of that!” But as a reader, it’s an experience that a regular book can’t reproduce. “Advantage” is a weird word for it, but it is a unique advantage of anthologies that they present different works that you may have very different reactions to, all between two covers.

Harkham: I think it’s the job of the editor to make the right decisions so that all that work creates a bigger whole. If you think of each creator’s comic as a chapter of a novel, and each person is bringing a different idea to the table, and each one is working well off the other, then a bad anthology is when all that gets muddled. They’re just running whatever, or they’re just running stuff they like, and there’s no clear tone or feeling, and it becomes a muddled mess. You engage with it not as a book but as a bunch of different strips that happen to be bound together.

Like you said, there’s a lot of anthologies, so to do Kramers isn’t so much because I’m like, “Oh I have to publish this guy because nobody’s gonna see it otherwise. It’s more about going, “I want to see a certain kind of comic book, and I want to push the reader hard, and I want to break past their barriers, the perimeters of what they expect, and give them something fun, something different.” That sort of thinking goes into play when you’re making your own book – it just so happens that you’re working with all these different bits and pieces from other people, and you’re trying to build this Voltron robot out of all these pieces. [Laughs] You can tell I’m still making sense of it myself.

Collins: You’re saying so many things that sound like you’re talking about a comic you drew from beginning to end. [Harkham laughs] To me, that says a lot about what Kramers is.

Harkham: If you’re a cartoonist and you’re editing an anthology, it’s very much an excuse to live in the skin of other people, for sure. That’s definitely at play. “Man, I love this girl’s work, she’s amazing, and I wanna be involved! I wanna present this stuff my way.” You want to get your fingerprints on it. So that’s definitely there. I think it’d be easier to have a free-for-all and say, “Okay, I have this many pages, I just need to fill it.” If I did that, I could probably get an issue of Kramers out every year.

It was a good learning experience on this one, because with only having to deal with about twelve people, I thought it would be a much easier process, but it wasn’t. It’s a huge undertaking. It feels like a lot of work. I never know why afterwards. When I’m in it, I should write myself a letter and give myself notes, so that next time I’m like “I want to do another Kramers,” I can read it and remind myself. I always forget, and it’s always the same issues that come up. “Ohhh, right.”

You’re always at the whim of your contributors. I think I never get over that, and I think I always resent that. As a cartoonist, after a while you start resenting that you’re spending so much time on other people’s work and not enough on your own work. You just become this maniac by the end, where you want it to be done, but at the same time you’re like “Fuck, I spent so much time on this, I want it to be good. I really don’t want it to be a waste of six months. Or a year!” It’s always a struggle. It’s a lot of work. I’m always surprised that it’s so much work, but it is. I’m sure that Eric Reynolds [editor of Mome] would say the same. It’s a pain in the butt.

Collins: I feel good that I went through all 40 pages of Oh, Wicked Wanda!, then. I owed it to you!

Harkham: Well, hopefully, even if you didn’t enjoy reading it, you got something out of it, or it enriched something else, at least in the context of the book. I felt like it was important to run that stuff. I don’t feel beholden enough to anything that I have to run anything. I’m a harsh editor in that way: “Do I need any of this?” I don’t feel beholden to anybody in any way. With the Oh, Wicked Wanda! stuff, the only real question mark was how people were gonna respond to it. But maybe that’s always the way, when doing anything. You never know. You just gotta go off what you want as a reader. That’s how I approach my own work, that’s how I approach Kramers: Finding out what do I feel like looking at and reading, and then trying to make that thing.

Page from "Get Your Ass to Mars" by Takeshi Murata

Images courtesy the artists and PictureBox

Adding the RSS feed for Michael DeForge’s blog to your Google Reader this year was a bit like wrapping your mouth around the business end of a firehose. Barely a day went by without DeForge posting some beautifully strange, strangely beautiful new illustration or comics page. And at the rate he was producing work, there was no telling where it would be from — his two minicomics series, the art-world satire/science fiction Open Country and the kids’-comics oddity Kid Mafia; his ongoing bug’s-life black-comedy webcomic Ant Comic; “College Girl by Night,” his gender-bending contribution to the erotic comics anthology he co-edits with Ryan Sands, Thickness; the third issue of his flagship solo anthology series, Lose, from Koyama Press; various previously published works now archived at Jordan Crane’s webcomics portal What Things Do; comic strips and illustrations for magazines like Vice, Maisonneuve, The Comics Journal and The Believer; contributions to anthologies including kus, Smoke Signal, Gang Bang Bong, Root Rot, Sundays, and probably more that I’m forgetting.

But even more astonishing than the sheer volume of his output was its quality. As I wrote in CBR’s Top 100 Comics of 2011 countdown, DeForge published his four best comics last year, and many more thrilling works besides. I focused on that killer quartet of Lose, Open Country, Ant Comic, and “College Girl by Night” for this interview with DeForge, looking back on amazing year and teasing what’s to come in 2012.

Sean T. Collins: Sexy stuff first. I have a few questions about “College Girl by Night,” the story you contributed toThickness. Since you co-created and co-edit the series with Ryan Sands, I’m wondering which came first, the idea for the story, or the idea for the anthology it eventually appeared in? Did wanting to make smut also make you want to create a publication to house it for yourself and others, or vice versa?

Michael DeForge: My idea for the story came way, way later. I think that’s why I wanted to be slotted in the second issue instead of the first – when we decided to do the anthology, I had no idea what I wanted to draw yet. “College Girl By Night” was actually my second story idea, too. My original comic was going to be a homoerotic riff on the movie Class, starring Rob Lowe and Andrew McCarthy. I did all these character designs and had all these plans on how I’d draw their outfits and the prep school the comic would take place in, but everything fell apart when I actually started to plot it out.

Collins: Seems like two common threads connected the story you ended up doing with the one you abandoned, though — school and homoeroticism. Another chicken-and-egg question: Were these issues you intended to tackle all along?

DeForge: Not exactly – I intended each comic to be about shame and repression, and the school setting works out well for that. As for the homoerotic thing – I went through a few different versions of the thumbnails for “College Girl By Night” before I really sorted everything out. At first, his transformations back to male form were cartoonier and played mostly for laughs, and separate from any of the sex in the comic. In another, I didn’t show him in male form at all, and the transformations were only referred to in narration. Then the version after that was 3/4ths gay sex. It took a while before I figured out where I actually needed to take the premise.

Collins: “College Girl by Night” combines a lot of different genre strands. There’s the genderflipping element, which is common in manga and which you’re beginning to see infiltrate nerd and fanart culture here in North America as well. But the use of the full moon, and the “by night” suffix for the title, links the story to werewolves, which obviously also have a lot of cultural currency right now. Transformation and shapeshifting have a body-horror element, especially when they’re tied to sex like they are here, and body horror has been a touchstone for you for a while. So too has been the presentation of fantastical material in a deadpan, slice-of-life narrative style. And of course there’s the porn element, in that this gives you the opportunity to draw both straight porn and gay porn. Had you made any or all of these connections before you started working on the comic, or did they emerge for you later in the process? Would you say any one of them was paramount in what appealed to you about making the comic?

DeForge: They all came out as I was working on them. The title was kind of stuck in my head for a while, I think since it sounded like a good song title, or something.  I initially envisioned the final comic as being a lot goofier. I think my idea was to use the premise to make a bunch of lame jokes about college hook-ups. It would have been terrible.
I was hung up on the challenge of making a “sexy” comic, which seemed really far out of my comfort zone. When I was actually writing the narration for the story, it immediately went off these other directions – I became more engaged with those tangents than my initial plan. It stopped feeling like some one-off divergence into porn and more like a natural progression from the other stories I’ve been drawing this year.

Collins: At a certain point, the narration sort of peels back from the actual events being depicted. This is an effective way of packing more information about the character and his/her situation into the strip, but it also has the effect of making it seem like he/she can’t quite confront the tumultuous events of the comic, instead preferring to think and talk about other things. Is that a fair characterization?

DeForge: Yeah, that was the idea. At some point when roughing everything out, it started to make much more sense for the narration to be at odds with what was happening panel to panel.

Collins: It seems important to me to note, given that this is a porno comic we’re talking about, that the College Girl is really sexy. Frankly that’s probably not a word associated with your work very often. Can you walk me through the process of drawing an attractive character? How do you settle upon certain details that make them attractive without pushing it too far over the top?

DeForge: I’m not sure I’m even able to do it that well, so I’m glad to know you think I pulled it off. Sometimes I try to look at the drawings with fresh eyes and think, “This woman I drew looks like a bug-eyed alien. Why does she have a bobble head?”

I think Gilbert Hernandez’s character designs are a big inspiration for me.  Luba is the best example of a character who’s obviously incredibly attractive but also a bit funny-looking and a bit creepy all at the same time. He always hits the perfect balance with that stuff.

Collins: The irony there is that the ostensibly erotic elements of his work are an acquired taste even for some readers who appreciate other aspects of his comics. Certainly recently, with the Fritz-based material, he’s pushed the envelope very far. Presumably this is less of an issue for people picking up an anthology explicitly billed as erotic, but did you give any thought to similarly alienating any readers?

DeForge: No. That would be such a slippery slope, and require way too much second-guessing. I know I’m always going to end up alienating somebody anyway.

Collins: Open Country is one of the best art-school/art-world satires I’ve seen from comics in quite some time, but this isn’t the first time you’ve tackled that subject–there’s the intro to Lose 3 about the internship, there’s the Justice League parody you did where the other heroes complain about Hal Jordan’s stint in art school. I’m not sure of your background in this regard, but you appear to have emerged relatively intact and achieved some success at a young age–do these issues still affect you, or is it just good fodder for comics?

DeForge: I mean, I still spend most of my day stressing out about “the creative process” or whatever – and that’s probably true of most of my social circle, too – which is why it keeps making its way into my comics. I’m afraid it’s a well I draw from a bit too much at this point, though! I hope I’m not getting repetitive.

Collins: It’s fine with me. Open Country also shares with some of your other work, such as S.M., a depiction of a hallucinatory state. But given what your “normal” worlds look like, I’m wondering how you approach that sort of thing. How do you know…I guess the best way to put this is, how do you know what weirdness to reserve for altered states versus what weirdness to put in the everyday sequences?

DeForge: I think it’s mostly intuitive. In a few cases, I don’t want there to be very clean divisions between those states. Most of my comics end up having a dream-logic to them anyway, in terms of how characters react to things. 

But yeah, I can’t think of many comics I’ve drawn that end up in “normal” settings. Even when just drawing a forest or a city or a suburb, they’re always such stylized versions of those things.

Collins: The central strip in Lose #3, “Dog 2070,” is an object lesson in this. If you just read the words without really looking at the images, you could easily see it drawn by Adrian Tomine. When you open your eyes, it’s the world’s ugliest anthropomorphized dog-flying-squirrel-things wandering through a postapocalyptic urban wasteland, and occasionally gliding. Julia Gfrörer recently told me that she introduces the fantastic into her work because rigorous realism would bore her eventually. Is it the same for you? What do you feel you can access by these unusual settings and character designs that you can’t otherwise? I realize I may be asking you to eff the ineffable here.

DeForge: That’s a hard one for me to answer, because the reasons shift from comic to comic. Sometimes I’m more concerned about establishing a tone, sometimes I’m referencing genre, sometimes I’m just trying to be funny, sometimes the symbolism is supposed to be much more overt (like in Lose 3,) and it’s usually a combination of all those things. I generally want my comics to feel like dreams.

Collins: Do you draw on dreams directly? I often find myself really enjoying dream comics up until the point where the artist adds the “Dreamt on December 23″ or whatever tagline at the end. That sucks so much of the mystery out of it. There are exceptions — Emily Carroll’s dream comics come to mind — but to me a comic that employs dream logic without coming out and saying it’s a record of a specific dream is much more effective.

DeForge: Yeah, I tend to agree. There are cases when I’ve directly pulled imagery from dreams, but I try to just use those as jumping off points. That horse head thing in Lose 2, for instance, came from a dream. But I don’t think trying to directly transcribe one of my dreams would be very interesting to anybody. Usually, it’s the logic and tone I’m trying to recreate.

Collins: Ant Comic has a similar stylistic rupture to that of “Dog 2070.” It more directly addresses the setting and nature of the characters in the text, but there’s still an odd disconnect wherein the ants, centipedes, spiders and so on don’t “really” look like those insects, but like some symbolic representation of them. I have a hard time fathoming how you make those leaps between “here’s what I want to draw” and “here’s how I want to draw it.”

DeForge: I guess it’s not a leap I’m always conscious of when I’m actually working. For Ant Comic in particular, the character designs are all coming very organically, on a week to week basis. With the Ant Queen, for instance, I had a loose outline of what I wanted the Queen to do in the story, but didn’t know how I was going to draw her. And then when I doodled a version of her having a giant, brightly colored vagina that other ants would have to line up to walk inside of, it was like “Oh, of course that’s how it’d be, that makes perfect sense.”

Collins: Ant Comic‘s color palette is really amazing to me. It’s bright and neon-y in a way that’s very fashionable right now, but it doesn’t actually look like anything else — not like Paper Rad’s colors orThe Problem Solverz‘ colors, to cite the tradition I think a lot of today’s eye-melters sprung from. I’d love to know if you were looking at any specific comics or other works for inspiration when you settled on coloring the strip the way you did.

DeForge: Thank you! I am trying to force myself to use a new palette every week for that one. I had noticed I had tend to use these sort of washed out, yellowy colors in a lot of my work, and have been making a conscious effort to shake out of that. One recent strip had a color scheme that I almost directly lifted from a Chester Brown Comics Journal cover. For the most part, the color schemes in Ant Comic are inspired by a lot of 60s poster design.

Even though it’s a web comic, I’ve been designing the pages to be sized at 11×17, so I’m imagining them as giant Sunday strips as I work on them and want the pages to be as graphically arresting as possible.

Collins: Frank Santoro has located you in the “fusion” movement of young creators who combine influences from various world traditions and genres while still making idiosyncratic, experimental, art-first alternative work. I don’t guess that you’ll say no, but do you think that’s an accurate assessment? I ask because I have a hard time seeing what it is that you’re “fusing” in international terms. It looks very much like North American art comics to me, albeit like no other specific ones.

DeForge: I think it’s an accurate assessment, but it’s of course not something I’m ever actually thinking about as I’m working, so who knows.  I think the most visible international influence on my work comes from Japanese horror comics – Hideshi Hino, Kazuo Umezu, Junji Ito, Suehiro Maruo. Hino in particular.

Collins: So it’s more of a tonal influence, or an influence of subject matter, than one of specific technique in terms of art style, layout, pacing, or what have you?

DeForge: I’d say it’s still both – I think all those artists have definitely impacted my drawing style, although maybe not my layout or pacing.

Collins: Thinking about this again, it’s not hard to see your book Kid Mafia in the context of various creepy-kids comics from those artists, although the genre idiom is different. I can, however, see the profound horror and science fiction influence on your work. Actually, that’s not at all the right way to put it — you aren’t influenced by horror and SF, you’re making horror and SF, as far as I’m concerned. Those are popular options for altcomix right now, perhaps oddly so. Are you comfortable with that characterization? Do you ever want to do something more like an Acme Novelty Library or Optic Nerve, a more straightforward form of literary fiction?

DeForge: I’ve plotted out a few comics that I might want to start drawing next year that don’t have any fantastical elements at all – just people hanging around apartments and stuff – but I don’t see them a huge departure from my regular work, really, because the tone is still there, and I’m writing about similar themes. So I guess I would like to get to those stories eventually, but they didn’t come out of any conscious desire to draw something “literary,” they just sort of worked out that way.

Collins: I get it. The tonal consistency is certainly there throughout your work. At no point do they take a TOTAL dive into genre storytelling tropes, where human concerns are abandoned in favor of hitting various marks familiar to fans. Does that make sense?

DeForge: It does! I never sit down to draw a comic and think “Okay, time to draw a horror story!” It just works out that way. Except for Thickness, I guess, which is why that contribution was such a challenge at first. I actually *did* have to think, “You are drawing a porn comic for a porn anthology.”

Collins: What are your plans for 2012? I’m guessing you have a lot, if your past couple of years are any indication.

DeForge: The projects I’ve been devoting the most time to have been Lose 4, which we’re hoping for a Summer or Fall release, and the ongoing Ant Comic strips. Every few months, I’ll also be hoping to drop Kid Mafia and Open Country issues, but I’m not keeping those two on any tight schedule. I have a mini-comic that I’ve been incredibly late on that Secret Headquarters is going to print for me that should be out shortly too, and ongoing gag strips in Mothers News, Offerings, The Believer and Frank’s TCJ column.

Art by Alexis Frederick-Frost

Libraries | The Center for Cartoon Studies has found a new home for the Schulz Library, whose previous location was damaged in a flood in August: the old post office in downtown White River Junction, Vermont. The school was able to purchase the building with the help of Bayle Drubel, a real estate developer and founding CCS board member who bought the post office in 2004. Renovations are set to begin this winter to create room for instruction space, faculty offices and the Schulz Library cartoon collection. [The Center for Cartoon Studies, via The Daily Cartoonist]

Creators | The Atlantic profiles Zippy the Pinhead creator Bill Griffith. [The Atlantic]

Creators | Artist Fabio Moon talks about teaming with Zack Whedon on the new Serenity comic that makes up one-half of one of their Free Comic Book Day offerings. [ComicsAlliance]

Creators | Paige Braddock discusses working with Charles Schulz, and her lesbian webcomic Jane’s World: “Ten years ago, I didn’t think it was important to let gender and sexual orientation show, but now I wish I’d been braver. I think it’s important for people to see lesbians of all kinds represented in every medium. So, my answer now is different than it would’ve been 10 years ago. It’s important to embody who you are, whether you’re writing gay stories or not. But the best thing that can happen to me is if a kid in Idaho says, ‘I read your comic online and I feel less alone.’ That’s better than any paycheck. I got an email once from a mother whose daughter had come out and she was really upset. But then she started reading Jane’s World and said she was much less worried about her. That’s the kind of thing I love.” [AfterEllen]

Habibi

Creators | A Milwaukee magazine interviews local-boy-made-good Craig Thompson (who moved away years ago, but, whatever) about his graphic novel, Habibi: “I see it as a fairy tale that’s drawn from all different time periods and places. People want to say the book takes place in the Middle East, because of the desert, but it is as much rooted in America as Persia as Vietnam or anywhere.” [OnMilwaukee.com]

Creators | Tom Spurgeon continues his holiday interview series with a conversation with Pope Hats creator Ethan Rilly. [The Comics Reporter]

Process | Usagi Yojimbo creator Stan Sakai shows off two stages of one of his pages for the Mouse Guard Legends anthology, inks and the colored page. [Stan Sakai]

Review | Greg McElhatton reviews Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’s Criminal: The Last of the Innocent. [Read About Comics]

Review | Philip Shropshire takes a hard look at the latest Graphic Classics anthology, African American Classics, and notes a glaring omission as well as some high and low points of the selection. [Comics Forge]

Comics | Chris Marshall pokes around on the internet and finds 14 collected editions to look forward to in the coming year. [DGTL Comics]

Opportunity | IDW is looking for a marketing/PR person. [The Beat]

Angoulême International Comics Festival

Conventions | The Angoulême International Comics Festival has announced the Official Selections for the 2012 festival, which will be held Jan. 26-29 in Angoulême, France. Eddie Campbell’s Alec, Craig Thompson’s Habibi and Daniel Clowes’ Mister Wonderful are among the almost 60 graphic novels on the list. [Angoulême]

Editorial cartoons | The Columbus Dispatch suspended political cartoonist Jeff Stahler after finding that his Monday cartoon was too similar to a New Yorker cartoon published in 2009. At The Daily Cartoonist, Alan Gardner posts several of Stahler’s cartoons alongside earlier pieces with similar punchlines. While one can debate whether Stahler lifted his ideas from the older cartoons, it’s obvious that he drew them in his own style, unlike David Simpson, who was recently accused of copying Jeff McNally’s cartoons. [Comic Riffs]

Crime | Several pieces of original artwork, among other items, were stolen from the car of AdHouse Publisher Chris Pitzer while he was in New York City last weekend for the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. Pitzer is offering a reward for any information leading to the recovery of the artwork. [AdHouse]

Creators | Congratulations to Any Empire creator Nate Powell and his wife Rachel on the new addition to their family, Harper Powell. [See My Brother Dance]

Creators | Writer Neil Gaiman talks to illustrator and filmmaker Shaun Tan. [The Guardian]

Batwing #4

Creators | Writer Judd Winick discusses his work on DC’s Batwing comic: “Bruce and Batman are these emotionless beasts who are driven by rage and seek justice and do everything they can to just stay focused on the mission: fighting crime, stopping the bad guy, finding the clues, putting the pieces together. But as we’ll learn, David Zavimbe’s a very emotional character. He’s much more self-aware in that way: He knows what he is, where he’s come from, and what he has to overcome.” [USA Today]

Creators | Artist Ben Bates talks about working on the upcoming New Crusaders digital series. [ComicsAlliance]

Creators | Felicia Day discusses The Guild comics, including the 2012 Free Comic Book Day offering from Dark Horse, as well as her work on Dragon Age: Redemption. [TFAW]

Creators | Sean Kleefeld interviews Rina Piccolo, creator of the comic strip Tina’s Groove and the webcomic Velia, Dear. [MTV Geek]

Analysis | J.L. Bell introduces the concept of a “plumber’s review,” a review that looks at the work through one narrow field of expertise: “Say, a review of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island focused entirely on details of south Pacific navigation, or an analysis of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover for its remarks on coal mining. In the academic world, it’s the comments from the professor miffed that you haven’t said more about the particular event or compound or poetic form that he or she happens to study.” This can be good or bad, he notes, and he points out a roundtable discussion where it proved useful. [Oz and Ends]

Reviews | Kristy Valenti reviews Richard Marschall’s The Sunday Funnies: 1896-1950. [comiXology]

Fashion | Don MacPherson notes the latest in robotic-insectoid couture. [Eye on Comics]

Action Comics

Publishing | DC Comics joins the Kia Soul, Goldfish, My Little Pony and several others on Advertising Age’s annual list of America’s Hottest Brands: “With decades of stories under their capes and utility belts, Superman — and other DC characters, including Aquaman and the Flash — had ossified. Though relaunching its entire cast and making their adventures available to print and electronic audiences might alienate some hard-core DC fans, it might also gain plenty of new ones. Making DC characters more popular is crucial for its parent company. While the comic-book business is way down from its heyday, its characters fuel big-ticket Hollywood movies that can generate millions of dollars in revenue and licensing. The pressure may be on DC because rival Marvel, now owned by Disney, has churned out superhero film properties on a regular basis for years.” [Advertising Age]

Broadway | Producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark have changed their tune on the $75 million musical; previously they predicted they wouldn’t make back the money invested in the show without franchising it in other cities and countries, but now they predict they’ll make it back entirely from the Broadway run. They also are considering adding in new scenes and a new musical number to the production every year, “making it akin to a new comic book edition, and then urging the show’s fans to buy tickets again.” [The New York Times]

V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask

Creators | V for Vendetta writer Alan Moore comments on the use of the book’s notorious Guy Fawkes masks by various protest groups, including the Occupy movement. “I suppose when I was writing V for Vendetta I would in my secret heart of hearts have thought: wouldn’t it be great if these ideas actually made an impact? So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world… It’s peculiar. It feels like a character I created 30 years ago has somehow escaped the realm of fiction.” [The Guardian]

Creators | Tony Millionaire comments on 10 of the musician portraits that are included in his upcoming 500 Portraits book from Fantagraphics: “I’ve always loved David Byrne. When the Talking Heads started, that’s when music totally changed for me. I had been lost with music. I was cutting my hair shorter and shorter. I was like, ‘I don’t want to be a hippie anymore.’ Music was just getting prettier and more refined – Crosby, Stills and Nash, and all that – and suddenly, it was wild again. And then the girls in the bars had big hair, and leather jackets and fishnet stockings. And I was like, ‘Wow!’ So then the Talking Heads came around and there was not only punk rock, but there was also art music – which, I felt like I could some how get more involved with it. The punk rock bouncing around and smashing in to each other thing wasn’t my idea of a good time. But art music, forget about it, I loved it.” [Rolling Stone]

Creators | ICE writer Doug Wagner discusses writing one of the Justice League comics available in various General Mills cereal boxes. [Park Record]

Chew, Vol. 3

Creators | Marc Oliver-Frisch posts an interview with Chew artist Rob Guillory conducted last year that will appear in a German collection of the popular Image series. [Comiks Debris]

Creators | Former Captain America artist Alan Bellman still gets fan mail—and still draws on commission—at the age of 87. [The Miami Herald]

Retailers | In a story on Small Business Saturday, Christopher Brady, owner of 4 Color Fantasies in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., discusses how his shop took advantage of the American Express-sponsored event. [Contra Costa Times]

Commentary | Lauren Davis looks at one of Robot 6′s perennial favorite webcomics Max Overacts, by Caanan Grall. [ComicsAlliance]

Awards | The Quebec Writers Federation’s young adult novel prize went to a graphic novel, Alan Silberberg’s Milo: Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze. [CBC News]

Fandom | IndyStar.com profiles Kevin Silva, a Batman collector who has nearly 1,600 pieces of Batman memorabilia, including a Gotham City phone book used in the 1960s television show and a Batman lunchbox he took to school as a kid. [IndyStar.com]

History | J.L. Bell chronicles the evolution of the Tin Woodman’s head. [Oz and Ends]

Cosplay | Toy enthusiasts in Jakarta, Indonesia are using the city’s many malls to host Nerf gun battles. Participants dress as movie, comic book and other pop culture characters and battle amongst the shops and food courts, with some malls even setting up designated areas for these “Mall Wars.” [Jakarta Globe]

X-23 #20

Sales charts | Responding to an iFanboy article that speculates on what titles Marvel might cancel next, Men of War and Viking writer Ivan Brandon makes the case against sales charts and the subsequent analysis of them each month: “There’s an ongoing debate, for a bunch of years now. There are numbers that circulate every month, inaccurate numbers, people track them, people use that flawed ‘data’ to comment on what they see as the progress or decline on the list. A lot of comics professionals are against this, for a lot of reasons. In my case, for my books, the books I personally share copyright on … my reason is, and no offense to anyone out there: My income is none of your business. Just as your income is none of mine.”

Tom Spurgeon offers a counterpoint: “Sales information seems to me an obvious positive, not because it reveals the bank accounts of creators, but because what sells and to what extent is basic information about a marketplace, and the shape and potency of a marketplace seems to me a primary item of interest for anyone covering that marketplace. It’s foundational to our understanding of how things work and why. Certainly this information is already manipulated to brazen effect by companies with something to put over on customers; I have to imagine this would become worse under a system of no information at all being released.” [Ivan Brandon, The Comics Reporter]

Habibi

Awards | Craig Thompson’s Habibi is one of five finalists for the French comics organization L’Association Des Critiques De Bandes Dessinées’ annual Prix De La Critique. The winner will be announced Dec. 5. [The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Mike Mignola, Bill Sienkiewicz, Walt Simonson and several other creators are selling illustrations of classic Universal Monsters on eBay to raise money for 6-year-old Aidan Reed, who was diagnosed last year with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. [Newsarama]

Creators | Laura Sneddon profiles Watchmen and V for Vendetta writer Alan Moore, who talks about creating The Ballad of Halo Jones, one of the first non-superhero women to headline her own series: “There wasn’t a single – I mean, I was annoyed – there wasn’t a single girls’ comic in Britain … I thought, well if you do more stories that are aimed at women, you’ll get more women reading the comics. It would seem fairly simple and straightforward, but there was a lot of resistance.” [The Independent]

Eduardo Risso

Creators | Artist Eduardo Risso discusses his career and craft in along interview conducted by Michal Chudolinski at the International Festival of Comics and Games in Lodz, Poland. [Comics Bulletin]

Creators | Mike Costa talks about his work on Blackhawks and G.I. Joe: Cobra. [USA Today]

Manga | Shaenon Garrity explains Chobits, the CLAMP series about a world in which humans can own robots with personalities — persocoms: “Chobits is the strangest of beasts: a difficult, complex, thought-provoking T&A manga. Ultimately it chooses to have its cheesecake and eat it too, raising a host of challenging questions only to leave them unanswered so as not to spoil the romance.” [Anime News Network]

Digital | Remember when your mom threw out all your comics? Digital comics saved the day for one reader who accidentally destroyed her cousin’s comics collection. [Teleread]

Commentary | Rich Clabaugh looks at Fantagraphics’ first Carl Barks collection, “Lost in the Andes.” [Christian Science Monitor]

Comics | Bob Temuka looks at some forgotten superhero titles from the 1980s and 1990s. [The Tearoom of Despair]

Blogosphere | The Panelists, a blog devoted to analyzing individual comics panels, is disbanding. The writers, all of them well regarded in the comics community, are simply too busy doing other things. [The Panelists]

Caryn A. Tate has been writing Red Plains for a couple of years now, and the world of her story, which is set in the Old West but is not bound by the traditions of the Western genre, is getting more and more complex. With the publication of The Ballad of Double Ott this week, she launches a new story arc and an intriguing new character. I talked to Tate two years ago, and this seemed like an opportune time to revisit Red Plains.

Red Plains is a digital comic that is carried on Graphicly and My Digital Comics. The first issue of each arc is free.

Robot 6: Is Double Ott a new character, or has he appeared in other issues of Red Plains? Who is he, and what is his backstory?

Caryn A. Tate: Double Ott is a brand new character to the series. It’s been a long time coming—he first came to me a couple of years ago, and I fleshed out the plot of The Ballad of Double Ott around the same time. But I wanted to wait for the timing to be right in the series, not just to introduce Ott, but to bring back Velasquez, who played a huge role in the Red Plains story Nice Place to Raise Your Kids Up. There had to be a good amount of time between Nice Place and The Ballad of Double Ott because I wanted there to be some anticipation for folks as to what happened to Velasquez, what was going to happen to Lupe and the other Escovidos, and there has been a whole lot of other stuff going on in town too!

Ott is a bounty hunter and an ex Buffalo Soldier who comes through the town of Red Plains hot on the trail of a white slavery ring. He’s a classic action hero badass—ready for any situation, armed to the teeth, and lives a life of adventure! Double Ott embodies my favorite action heroes that I grew up on…and in that light, he’s the one character in the Red Plains series that I take some liberties with!

Robot 6: How did Velazquez lose his nose?

Tate: He would probably make up a thrilling tall tale about it where he was the victim of some awful Mexican hating white settlers, or possibly a story of how he lost it defending the honor of a virginal young Latina, but here’s the truth. At the end of “Nice Place to Raise Your Kids Up,” Velasquez had a hair-raising run-in with Rose Templeton. And let’s just say I wouldn’t want to butt heads with Rose, and Velasquez now wishes he hadn’t either.

Now he is known throughout the countryside as “No Nose” Velasquez, but of course no one had better call him that to his face. Despite how that encounter turned out, you can bet he’s looking to even the score.

Robot 6:Velazquez seems like a bad guy—he is capturing poor people and selling them into slavery—yet in the love scenes he seems more sympathetic. How did you come up with him, and where is he going?

Tate: Well, yeah, he’s doing some not so nice things these days. But let’s be fair, he’s been dealt a tough hand! He’s doing what he can to get by and, hopefully, make himself a new life.

And seriously, if we look at it from a real world point of view—I tried to make Velasquez a three dimensional character by showing all of his actions and why he takes them. So he does this “bad” thing over here, but with the woman he loves, of course he’s a different person. I feel like that’s just real…if you look at any criminal in real life, why is it so many of them have a romantic interest? It’s because they’re different people when they’re with them. I think that’s true of any of us—we tend to act differently in certain environments, with certain people.

It’s funny, because I actually came up with Velasquez as a fully fledged character, this tortured, love struck villain, already missing his nose. It was after my original concept of him that I thought about his history and where he came from. So for Nice Place to Raise Your Kids Up, the whole point of him being in that story was to go back and show how he became this person, and how he lost his nose. How he became this notorious, hellish legend.

You’ll have to keep reading to see where he’s going. He may surprise all of us—especially Lupe!

Robot 6: Double Ott also seems to have good guy/bad guy elements to him. Usually the hallmark of Westerns is that it is very clear who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Are you deliberately subverting that tradition?

Tate: I guess you might say that, simply because to me it’s important to have all the characters come across as real people. Honestly that “white hat-black hat” stereotype is something I’ve always disliked, because it’s just not how people really are. It doesn’t ring true and hence it feels disrespectful to its audience in my opinion. I don’t like to be talked down to in my entertainment, and I write Red Plains assuming that its audience doesn’t like that either.

Robot 6: Are there other traditions you are playing with as well?

Tate: Well, the standing tradition in westerns that I’ve always said we’re playing with in Red Plains—defying, actually—is that of the fictional tropes that the genre has seen for decades that have unfortunately tainted a lot of peoples’ view of westerns. You know the ones—the gunfight in the street at high noon, cowboys who never do ranch work, dance hall girls and prostitutes being the only women in town, things like that.

In addition, I draw upon a lot of non-western influences, especially real life crime. I read a lot of these books and stories, and do a lot of research into the psyche of criminals, both modern day and historical, as well as that of cops and the other folks who hunt the perpetrators. This all plays into Red Plains as a series very strongly, because as I’ve always said, if you break it down very simply, it’s essentially a crime story that takes place in the American West in 1880. Which, to me, is actually a big part of the appeal of the Old West. When I was younger I realized that Westerns were actually crime tales in a different setting, and as I got more and more into other crime fiction and true crime, I liked that more and more, and wanted to tell more of those kinds of stories. I mean think about it—what do we all think of when we hear “western” or “Old West”? Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, the Daltons, or you can even take it to the next level and say we also think of the biggest kinds of crimes, like that of the U.S. government on Native Americans. Those are all true crime stories if I’ve ever heard them.

Robot 6: Mike’s style is very distinctive—I would say it is reminiscent of aquatint, although I¹m sure he does it on a computer. How did you find him, and what attracted you to his work?

Tate: Mike is a gloriously talented artist. We found each other online, which is how I’ve found all the artists I’ve worked with on Red Plains so far. There are lots of gifted folks out there who are looking for the type of unusual and meaty stories comics like Red Plains can give an artist.

Some of the first art of Mike’s that I saw were paintings, and they had a beautiful stylistic bent to them that really appealed to me. But at the same time, he had a few on his site that were western oriented, and those had a detailed, realistic look to them that really drew me in. It’s important to me for Red Plains that the in-your-face, accurate types of stories that I’m telling are also reflected in the art, and Mike really knocked both Mi Amor and The Ballad of Double Ott out of the park. He’s been great to work with, and every single page he sent in just took my breath away, no exaggeration.

Robot 6: You describe The Ballad of Double Ott as “explosive,” and there is a lot of action to it. There seem to be a lot of panels and splash pages with things flying all over, even breaking the panel. How do you convey that sense of motion to the artist?

Tate: Oh man, I love splash pages and most of all, I love panels that bleed out to the edges of the page, as if they can’t be contained. It’s exciting and with my background in visual art, I always love seeing art that defies convention, you know?

Most times in the script I actually ask the artist for these sorts of pages. I go into a lot of detail in the script, especially for a particular scene that carries a lot of weight for the story, and most times I see the scene very clearly in my head so I can pretty easily describe to the artist what I want this panel to look like, what the characters are feeling, or if something ties to another story thread, that sort of thing, in hopes of getting the most emotional impact on the page as we can. And, tying into that, I try to write the scripts so that the artist is truly entertained while working on the pages. As far as panels bleeding to the edge of the page, I often tell the artists I work with going into the Red Plains gig that this is something I’m looking for. This is an unconventional comic, so let’s make the end product as unconventional as we can!

Justice League #2

Comics | John Jackson Miller slices and dices the October numbers for the direct market, noting that overall dollar orders for comic books, trade paperbacks, and magazines topped $40 million for the first time since September 2009. Orders rose 6.9 percent over September, the first month of DC’s relaunch. “While that may sound counter-intuitive, it isn’t when you consider that all those first issues continued to have reorders selling through October,” Miller writes. “Retailers with an eye on the aftermarket may also have some sense that second issues are historically under-ordered — something which goes at least back to the experience of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #2 in the 1980s, which wound up being much more valuable than its first issue.” [The Comichron]

Passings | Tom Spurgeon reports that author Les Daniels has passed away. Daniels wrote horror fiction and nonfiction books on the comic industry, which include Comix: A History of the Comic Book in America, Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics and DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes. [The Comics Reporter]

Action Comics #2

Creators | Grant Morrison talks about coming back to Superman after his work on the character in All-Star Superman: “After I‘d done that story, it was kind of the end of Superman’s life, and I was interested in going back to the roots of the character, and his social and political roots, and maybe doing a take that dealt with him as a young man, but I didn’t really have any plans for that until Dan [DiDio] came over and then when he gave me the opportunity, and he said that they were willing to even change the continuity, and to let some new ideas and energy into it, it seemed perfect for that.” [CNN Geek Out]

Creators | Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang discuss their work on the relaunched Wonder Woman and her recently revealed new daddy.”If you went to the average person on the street and showed them a picture of Wonder Woman they would recognize her immediately,” Chiang said. “Ask those people her origin story and some of them might know the clay story but many, many others would not know that at all. That’s not a problem you have with Superman or Batman; everyone knows their origin. By making her the daughter of Zeus, we’ve gotten a big driving force behind our story. It gives her a motivation and it’s a key to character that we now feel is very important. She’s a child of the gods who defends us from them, in the same way that Superman is from another planet trying to save humanity and Batman is the orphan who is protecting us from the criminals who killed his parents.” [Hero Complex]

Creators | The student-run Observer reports on a lecture given by Notre Dame alum and Marvel editor Bill Rosemann: “The comic books industry is many fields coming together at once. It’s never been just about art. Instead, it’s this glorious American collision of art, commerce and history.” [Observer]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 #3

Creators | Andrew Chambliss discusses his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 and Dollhouse. [TFAW]

Creators | Ian Flynn talks about his approach to writing the New Crusaders, the Red Circle reboot due from Archie Comics due next year: “The Red Circle characters are brimming with untapped potential. We’ve seen how other super hero properties have grown and matured from their silly, sometimes zany origins into the blockbusters they are today. The Red Circle heroes are no different. They have powers, desires and stories that can be fascinating when run through today’s filter of modern sensibilities. Everything is so wild and free, it’ll be a lot of fun to make it all work in one coherent world.” [ComicsAlliance]

Conventions | Dave Roman reports in from Quai des Bulles, the second-largest comics convention in France. [The Beat]

Manga | Deb Aoki talks to Hikaru Sasahara, the CEO of Digital Manga Publishing, about his company’s acquisition of Yaoi-Con and the progress of the Digital Manga Guild, their experiment in online publication using amateur translators and editors. [About.com]

Review | Jocelyne Allen reviews Adam Hines’s Duncan the Wonder Dog: Show One, which won the Lynd Ward graphic novel prize earlier this year. [Brain Vs Book]

Awards | Irish Comics News appears to have only been around for a few months, but they have already given their first awards, which were based on a popular vote. And here’s a nice touch: The award for Best Mainstream Published Irish Writer went to Garth Ennis, who won by a single vote—and that vote was cast by another nominee, Nick Roche. [Irish Comics News]

From Gangsta Rap Posse #2

MATT SENECA: Your comics have always emphasized gridded layouts, but in your latest comic, Gangsta Rap Posse #2, you stick almost exclusively to a basic six-panel grid, with each of the frames the exact same size as all the others.  What makes that layout so appealing to you?

BENJAMIN MARRA: There are several reasons. Firstly, I think it’s the most efficient system for constructing and reading comic book pages. Many masters of comic book art and storytelling have worked off of it, like Kirby, Alan Moore (to an extent), Kyle Baker and Gary Panter. If the six-panel grid was good enough for Kirby, it’s good enough for me. It’s also a matter of time. If my page layout is pre-determined I’ve spared myself from having to solve many additional problems and can spend time focusing exclusively on what the panels contain. Additionally, I think it’s a more accessible format for new readers. A lot of comics these days focus too much on doing unnecessarily crazy page layouts (I guess stemming from Neal Adams’ response to Steranko?) with panels, instead of focusing on what’s within the panels, which is what’s really crucial. Wild panel layouts just confuse readers who aren’t already versed in comics as a language.

(Side note: Something I’ve been thinking about for a while is how comic art has divided into two ways of thinking. One camp followed the path of Jack Kirby striving for power through the abstraction of cartooning. The other followed Neal Adams, striving for classic illustration — like Alex Raymond — and naturalism or realism. Adams’ camp currently dominates superhero artwork, to its detriment. Its peak is personified in Alex Ross, during Justice and Kirby Genesis. Ross also uses weird, obtuse page layouts.)

SENECA: Yeah, Ross layouts are just bad.  It’s always based in Adams’ diagonal compositions, so bizarre looking when they incorporate such realist artwork.  And he especially goes into them when the action starts, which is right when a grid would be most useful.   No flow whatsoever.

You also stay very consistent with the framing you’re using inside your panels.  You use a few close-ups from time to time and draw long establishing shots to kick off scenes, but mostly it’s a simple combination between full figures and two-shots.  Is that for the same reasons of clarity as your six-grid, or does it have to do with the content you’re interested in depicting?

MARRA: Definitely. Clarity, or the attempt for clarity, is what all my decisions are based on. I wasn’t aware of how most of my shot selection was so consistent until you just pointed it out. I’m really into pre-Renaissance Italian painters like Giotto, Fra Angelico and Piero Della Francesca, who all used full-figure shots to tell stories. Those images are probably floating around my unconscious and informing my choices on shot-selection.

Marra's take on Marvel Comics' USAgent

SENECA: How do you approach moving the figures over the space of an entire page, and arranging them within the panels?  They’re pretty much always centered in the middle of the panels, but there’s this sense of perpetual motion, it’s never static.  Is there an approach you use to keep everything moving?

MARRA: A lot of the time it’s completely intuitive, the way I arrange the figures. Usually though I’m thinking about the reader reading left to right and use that as a basis for how to lay out the priority and secondary information in the panel. But then subsequent panels will need to follow what’s been already established in previous panels. I try to have most of the movement flow from left to right since that’s the natural flow for the reader, but that’s not etched in stone for me. Sometimes the best solution is moving the information or forces right to left. I try to keep it consistent within a scene at least. It bugs me when I read comics and the way the characters are set up, say their talking to one another, one is established to be on the left of the other, then the artist flips them arbitrarily. That takes me out of the story, and instantly the comic has failed to me. There can’t be any speed bumps in comics to jolt the reader out of the experience of the story or the comic fails. With regard to an approach to keeping everything in perpetual motion, I’m not conscious of applying a method. I do try to make the characters act. Even if they’re standing or sitting in one place they should be gesturing or just moving slightly, emoting, expressing something. I’m glad to hear that nothing seems static.

From Gangsta Rap Posse #2

SENECA: I think that striving for clarity is key, because you manage to pull off a lot of pages where every shot is an impact shot without losing the focus of the overall scene.  It’s a skill that reminds me of Kirby, who you mentioned as an influence earlier.  Can you talk a little about what you’re trying to pull from Kirby’s comics into your own?

MARRA: What Kirby did that I try to emulate, (which is really just simple, basic, foundational comic book storytelling) is establish information in a scene in one panel — it could be the entire location of the scene or an establishing shot — to set up the blocking of the characters. And then base the logic of subsequent action panels on the previous panels information.

Kirby's storytelling at its best

On Fantastic Four #99 Page 12 (one of my favorite comics ever, which was often referenced in Stan Lee and John Buscema’s How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way) where Johnny Storm is facing off against the Inhumans in the throne room of Black Bolt [above]. In the first panel we can see the positioning of all the characters who will be active on subsequent panels on the page. Johnny in the foreground, ringed by Inhumans protecting Black Bolt and Crystal in Panel One, where we also get a bit of background scenery and flavor. Panel Two is a close up of Crystal with Black Bolt to her side. Kirby hasn’t changed the camera angle much, Black Bolt is still to Cyrstal’s left. Then the same for Panel Three as Johnny evades a strike from Karnak the camera angle hasn’t changed from what’s was established for the reader in panel one. Also in panel three we’re reminded of Medusa’s presence and location in relation to Johnny so there’s the set up for Panel Four. In Panel Four there aren’t even any faces, but we know who the three characters are. Also, Kirby has progressively dropped any background scenery at this point since establishing it clearly in Panel One. Kirby brings the back of Triton’s head and hand position into the composition of Panel Four to set up for his Panel Five close up.It’s also worth noting that the word balloons in Kirby’s page, in addition to adding dialogue to advance the narrative and define character, stand as visual elements pointing to the the most relevant characters in the panels. For instance, Karnak speaking in the first panel alerts us to his presence in the composition to set up for his primary role in Panel Three. It’s all really basic stuff, but I don’t try to just stick to the basics. Sort of like really stripped down rock ‘n roll. You can make a lot of cool-sounding stuff with some attitude and three chords.

This reminds me of a favorite saying  about comic book storytelling Marcos Martin told me that he heard Javier Pulido say to some fan who’s work he was critiquing at a convention, I believe. Javier said, and I’m paraphrasing, “Every panel is both a question and an answer. It answers the question posed by the previous panel and offers a question to be answered by the subsequent panel.”

In David Mazzucchelli’s comic book workshop class he was giving a presentation where he had a slide of a Kirby page, from an early Western comic I think, Two-Gun Kid or Rawhide Kid or Kid Colt, where the hero was in a saloon with a bunch of bad guys approaching him, in the First Panel you could see a wooden chandelier hanging from the ceiling. In Panel Two the hero shoots upward. And in Panel Three the wooden chandelier established from Panel One lands on the group of villains.

Also, Jim Shooter does an excellent analysis of Jack Kirby’s storytelling powers on his blog. In particular I liked this post.

SENECA: In your recent comics you’ve really pulled back on using line weights and spotting blacks — it’s pretty much all basic linework now.  What influenced you to make that decision, and how do you find it affects your pages?

MARRA: I was looking a lot at Matthew Thurber, Matt Lock and Gary Panter stuff. All of them render to a degree and use blacks as shadow. Panter does some cross-hatching with line, too. So does Thurber sometimes, but he uses line for texture mostly, and black is usually used as a color in his drawings, or sometimes a deep shadow. I was looking at comics and drawings that I thought looked fast — 1-800-MICE, Jimbo — that looked like the artist was moving quickly, getting the drawing down decisively, confidently. When I would spot blacks I spent a lot of time filling in those blacks. Time for me is a huge element in creating comics. Actually I heard an audio from a panel Kirby did at an early San Diego comic con, I think? He said that time is always what he and every comic artist is working against. I’m always trying to streamline my process, so eliminating the shadows, using black as a color, sparingly or not at all, and relying solely on line saved me time. I was able to complete Gangsta Rap Posse #2 in a month, from conception to sending it to the printer. A lot of that was because I eliminated shadow and most of the rendering from the drawing. I tried to be very economical with my drawing and just to get across what was necessary for an idea or a narrative information. I think a lot of comic artists, myself included, get too caught up in the aesthetic quality of their drawing instead of just trying to get the information across with as much economy as possible.

How a lack of shadow or spotting blacks affects my pages aesthetically is the look lighter, more raw and less refined compared to the pages which carry shapes of shadow. From a process standpoint I can create pages faster without having to execute shadows and worry about a balance of black and white shape.

I actually like the way a lack of line weight looks. I like a sterile kind of line. But I’ve been looking a lot at Raymond Pettibon recently, particularly the flyers for Black Flag shows and I’m going to use a brush to drop shadows into the next issue of Night Business, which requires shadow as a story from a visual and content standpoint. I’d like for that issue to look like a comic illustrated by Pettibon.

From Night Business

SENECA: Oh man, that’s awesome.  Okay, last question: do you have an approach to balancing the concerns of creating a sequence that reads as clearly as possible and also making drawings that are satisfying as single units?

MARRA: I don’t have an approach trying to balance a sequence of drawings while creating a singular drawing that’s satisfying. I don’t worry about the drawings operating as independent of each other. I’m only concerned with how they function as a sequence. That’s what’s creatively satisfying to me. The construction of the sequence. And the clarity of the storytelling is the most important thing. If the drawings can succeed standing alone that’s a byproduct of my primary intent. I actually have a lot of trouble creating single drawings or illustrations now. I’m more comfortable and it’s more satisfying trying to create a story through several images rather than just one illustration.

Bulletproof thanks to Ben Marra for his time and copy.  You can buy Ben’s comics here, read his ongoing webcomic Zorion The Swordlord starting here, and check out his blog here.

Rub the Blood

One of the more interesting projects to pop up on Kickstarter lately is Rub the Blood, “an Art Comix tabloid that explores the lasting influence (for better or worse) of the Early 90′s Collector Boom comics of Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, etc. on today’s most fringe underground cartoonists.”

Co-edited by Pat Aulisio and Ian Harker, the project fittingly draws its name from a 1990s cover gimmick and features contributions from a variety of art comix pros. In addition to Aulisio and Harker, contributors include Josh Bayer, William Cardini, Victor Cayro, PB Kain, Keenan Marshall Keller, Peter Lazarski, Benjamin Marra, Jim Rugg, Thomas Toye and Mickey Z. Rub the Blood will debut at the 2011 Brooklyn Comics & Graphics Fest.

Aulisio and Harker were kind enough to share a few thoughts and details about the project and its inspiration with me; my thanks for their time.

JK: Where did the idea originate to put this anthology together?

Ian: It’s been something we’ve kicked around in various shapes and forms for a few years now. The joke was that one day Rob Liefeld will be just as adored among the art comix crowd as Fletcher Hanks is now.

Rub the Blood

Pat: Pretty much what Ian said, although I would add we were shooting around various ideas of some sort of tribute book involving “an art comic take on _____” and the idea of doing a tribute to the original Image Seven, and each person in the anthology would take on characters from each creator. It eventually ended up being just about Rob Liefeld and Extreme Studios mainly.

JK: Your Kickstarter page describes the project as “an Art Comix tabloid that explores the lasting influence (for better or worse) of the Early 90′s Collector Boom comics.” In your opinion, what are some of the “better” and “worse” elements of this particular era of comics?

Ian: Well, the collector’s boom thing inspired a lot of young artists from my generation. I was probably 12 years old when I saw the 501 Blues commercial with Rob Liefeld. The idea that a 16-year-old kid could draw comics professionally made the whole thing seem real. It was in a way the first dose of do-it-yourself ethos I ever had. These guys were all semi-naive artists creating their own characters; before that you only had the characters that were around for decades. I felt like I could be a part of it. Looking back, though, I think the boom was a net-negative for comics. It essentially killed the newsstand pipeline that brought new readers to comics and drove away a lot of skilled cartoonists who could actually tell a clear visual story. You don’t really get to choose what comics you come up on, though; I think those comics stay with you in one shape or form for the rest of your life. The first generation of underground cartoonists came up on EC and you can always see that influence in those guys. That’s what Rub the Blood is about, letting the demons run wild.

by Thomas Toye

Pat: Well, I was still in grade school at the time, and I vividly remember the X-Men Swimsuit Special, in particular the image of Psylocke with dinosaurs in the background done by Jim Lee, and me and my friends talking about having sex with all the women from X-Men in the 90s even though we had no idea how to have sex. So I guess you can say the oversexualization is a “worse” aspect of the collectors boom, but it’s true I can say those comics helped me discover sexuality and learn about the female anatomy (albeit incorrect) at a young age.

Another thing around the collector’s boom was trading cards. I collected the shit out of Marvel’s various card series of pin-ups of your favorite heroes, and learning about their history and stats on the back. I loved those and still have them all in a box rubberbanded together by series. You would get a trading card in the first issues of X-Force by Rob Liefeld and X-Men by Jim Lee.

And Wizard Magazine came out of the collector’s boom. Now they’re just a company of shitty comic conventions and no actual magazine. That’s where the infamous “Captain America with boobs” image Rob Liefeld drew was printed.

Rob Liefeld had a clothing line of oversized T-shirts with giant images of his comic covers.

Variant covers were also crazy then, too. I remember an issue of Gen13 had 13 variant covers, and the sad thing is you know there were people out there that bought 13 copies of the same comic because they thought it would be worth a ton of money in the future.

Stuff like this happened:

That original VHS was sold for like $29.95.

Swimsuit specials, trading cards, magazines based around comics, clothing lines, special edition variant covers, VHS specials … basically none of that shit would happen nowadays, which in the end is actually probably for the worst. I would take on any of those projects (we actually did make a VHS special, too!)

JK: And for those who don’t know, what’s the significance of the title, “Rub the Blood”?

Ian: It was the tagline on the cover of Bloodstrike #1. It was a gimmick cover that featured a dried-blood effect. I remember obsessing over this when I was a kid; I never really understood the damn thing.

Pat: Ian told me about this, and when we were just deciding to try to organize this, I was shopping for comics at a thrift store and found an unopened copy of it for 25 cents. The blood effect still worked! That’s when I knew we had to do this book for sure.

JK: How did you go about recruiting the creators who are working on the anthology?

Ian: Me and Pat have a lot of like-minded attitudes about comics. Pat’s philosophy on life is “Yeah Dude.” Rub the Blood is about the spirit of sitting at your mom’s kitchen table when you are 13 and drawing anatomy that you don’t understand. Like I said, there is a DIY ethos to that, and I think there is a spiritual kinship with the attitude of art-brut comix. Brian Chippendale has said in interviews that he never intended to draw like Gary Panter, he always wanted to draw like Jim Lee (I’m paraphrasing.)

Pat: Me and Ian have worked together on a variety of different things for a while now, and to have a curated anthology we do together was just a obvious step in our comic relationship. We have the same taste, and together we know enough awesome cartoonists. We came up with a dream list of people to get involved. For the most part, everyone that’s in the book we had some sort of pre-existing relationship with before. Except for Bald Eagles, I think Ian met him once, but we were both just big fans of his work and the insanity that he isn’t published more. We contacted him and since then, he’s been one of the most entertainingly insane cartoonists to work with and talk to. Love that guy!

JK: Have you guys already seen some of the contributions? If so, what can fans expect?

Ian: A lot of gnarly drawings and comics. Big boobs, pouches, big guns, shoulder pads. They just don’t look the way you’d expect.

Pat: Your new favorite comic ever.

Pat Aulisio and Josh Bayer's Conon

JK: Besides through Kickstarter, where else can folks buy the book?

Ian: People will have to wait and see. We’re kind of just working it on the convention circuit and seeing where it goes from there. If you really want one the best thing to do is pledge for a copy on Kickstarter. This thing is intended to be a one-off weirdo artifact more than anything else.

Pat: Each contributor will get a decent amount of copies, so you’ll have a variety of different artists to buy it from either on their websites or at art shows, conventions, etc. It’s almost better without wide distribution. It’s one of those things you have to go through an effort to get. But if you want to distribute our book go ahead and contact me! We can work something out!

JK: You’ve already hit your fundraising target on Kickstarter. What do you plan to do with any extra money above and beyond it?

Ian: We could go a few ways with it, but it’s definitely all going into the book itself. That could mean more copies, more pages, better format, maybe all of the above. 50 percent of our print run is going to the contributors either way. They did an awesome job.

Pat: It’s all going into making the book BETTER.

JK: What else have you been working on lately, or have planned to release over the next few months?

Bowman

Ian: Me and Pat will be co-editing the next issue of our newspaper-comic Secret Prison for the first quarter of 2012, and I’m also working in the embryonic stages of an even more preposterous project with Box Brown for late 2012 based on the groundbreaking manga Garo.

Pat: My new three-issue comic series-turn-graphic-novel, Bowman. The first issue is out in November from Retrofit Comics. I already started inking issue #2. It’s an epic life-spanning adventure of lost astronaut David Bowman. I’m also doing a long-form, snail-mail jam comic based around Conan the Barbarian and a talking duck with a Spider-Man mask with Josh Bayer titled The Unforgiving Blade of Conon. That is coming out the same time as Rub the Blood. Me and josh are doing a signing Friday, Dec. 2 from 6 to 8 p.m. at Jim Hanley’s Universe in Manhattan. I also got a Xeric Grant comic I’m applying for to try to get the last of that opportunity. It’s a 32-page collection of various anthology work I’ve done the last year and a half.

Dark Tomato

Austin English has been one of the more unique cartoonists on the indie comic scene over the past decade, someone with a definitive ideas of what comics should be and how best to achieve those goals. You can see it in the childlike grace and artfulness that’s captured in his graphic novel Christina and Charles, as well as in the three issues of Windy Corner Magazine, which he edited. After being a mainstay in the Sparkplug line-up for many years, English is now trying his hand at being a publisher with his new company, Domino Books. The line’s debut comic, Dark Tomato by Sakura Maku, is a surreal tale about an MTA subway driver who has a supernatural encounter of sorts down in the bowels of New York City. It’s available now via the Internet and finer retail outlets.

I talked to Austin over email about his new business venture, the challenges of being a small press publisher and the wisdom he gained from the late Sparkplug owner, Dylan Williams.

So let me start by asking what made you decide to become a publisher. Was this something you were always interested in doing?

I wrote about it when I started Domino and it bears repeating down, given the circumstances: Dylan Williams is the main inspiration for Domino, and not just because he was a publisher too. Dylan advocated for art that he believed in and he thought advocating for art that you liked was important — I think, for him, it was essential to do what you could for artists that moved you.

I share this feeling with Dylan. Art is very important to me — I believe in the work an artist like Sakura Maku does very strongly. I feel this intense obligation to do something with her work so that its shown with the proper dignity and intensity that it deserves.

Sequence from 'Dark Tomato'

Dylan said something once that really stuck with me. ‘Art isn’t bullshit and love isn’t bullshit.’ Well…sometimes you’re sitting, working on your own art, or looking at art by someone like Sakura and you feel so thrilled by all of it. But then there’s always that voice, right? The voice that wants you to believe its bullshit and that starting something like DOMINO is ridiculous. Well—the voice that says ‘trust that you love it’ is more true, I think.

A lot of these ideas were percolating with me, and over a longtime friednship/years of collaboration with Dylan, he really strengthed those drives in me so that I was ready to do Domino. Blaise Larmee sort of solidfied things for me when he started Gaze. Dylan may have influenced me that it was the right thing to do, but seeing Blaise start Gaze and publish Aidan Koch’s work so well showed me that it was possible for a younger person like myself to actually do this and do it well.

Another strong reason that I started Domino is that I finally had the money to do it — I was lucky enough to sell 15 pages of The Disgusting Room to a collector. I combined that with the savings I had amassed from my dishwashing job in Stockholm and immediately poured it all into starting Domino and publishing Dark Tomato. I felt like if I didn’t use that money for Domino right away, I might never have another chance!

Did you come across any unexpected challenges or obstacles in setting up Domino?

Sequence from 'Dark Tomato'

The obstacles are still ahead for Domino, I’m sure. Once we start publishing more books, I think that’s inevitable. But, for any aspiring publishers out there, I can’t emphasize enough how achievable it is to publish work. I think programs like Photoshop and InDesign make the process fairly democratic. I don’t have exhaustive knowledge of either of those programs, but the little I did know was enough. As long as you have a clear aesthetic vision of what you want, I think patience and a desire to listen to what the artist wants is really all you need. Getting the money together was an obstacle, but again, if it’s important to you, it’s more of a patience thing than an obstacle — I worked a bunch of overtime shifts dishwashing. And when I was lucky enough to sell a bunch of original art all at once, instead of buying a plane ticket to visit family or something like that, I put it all into Domino.

I worked with fellow artist Jason Overby on Dark Tomato’s design. Just having another artist who you respect look at the work as a set of second eyes was really valuable. The book was printed in Estonia, with a great company called As Ingri. There were a few language barrier problems here and there, but basically I can’t recommend them enough to anyone printing books in Europe. They are the same company that prints Kuti Kuti.

How did you come across Sakura Maku’s work and what was it about her work that made you want to take a chance on publishing it?

Sequence from 'Dark Tomato'

I’ve followed Sakura’s work for years. Back in 2005, when my first book Christina and Charles was published by Sparkplug, Sakura also had a new book out: CheebCheebShkaa. That comic had a big effect on me. I’m very drawn to things that may look like a brash visual statement on first glance but reveal themselves to have an undertone of sophisticated and experimental writing. I think of Sakura as a strong writer with a prose style that can be either taken as very heartfelt or highly unreliable. It has a welcoming tone to it but also something assaulting laced in there.

I asked Sakura to contribute a piece to my magazine Windy Corner. That story, You Turn My Lights directly influenced my work, especially on the Disgusting Room. Sakura’s work is powerful enough, to me, that I know there will be people who read this new book and find something in it that will drive them to new ways of thinking/making art/walking down the street.

How are you distributing Dark Tomato? Are you getting it in any comic stores? Beyond buying it at the Domino site, how can people pick up a copy?

Now that I’m back living in the USA, I can focus a lot more on getting Dark Tomato out there. Dark Tomato is already in a lot of stores, especially some great bookstores, including McNally Jackson, St. Mark’s Books, Desert Island, Forbidden Planet, Spoonbill and Sugartown, Jim Hanleys and Book Thug in New York. Floating World in Portland, Quimbys in Chicago, Fantastic Comics in Berkeley, Copacetic in Pittsburgh, Atomic Books in Baltimore, and Konstig Art Books and Larrys Corner in Stockholm.

Sequence from 'Dark Tomato'

But there are a lot of stores out there that would be receptive to Dark Tomato and Domino that I just haven’t gotten to yet, mainly because sending large store orders in Sweden was very expensive. But there are great adventorous sotres all over the country and it’s really a matter of approaching them.

I worked in a comic store for years, and this was during a time when everyone was talking about “the death of the pamphlet comic.” But I remember pamphlet comics doing very well, even odd ones, if they were presented to the customer with care and hand-sold. I hand sold a lot of copies of Jin and Jam when I worked at Forbidden Planet. A lot of regular comic stores have this attitude: “We ordered 5 copies of that weird comic, and now it’s sold out. Let’s not order anymore because at least we didn’t lose money on it.” But when I did the small press buying for Forbidden Planet, we would often end up selling hundreds of copies of strange mini-comics, just by reordering them and treating them with respect. There are many stores out there that have that attitude and that’s who Domino wants to work with.

Tony Shenton is great — he’s our main distributor. I ordered a lot of stuff through Tony when I worked at Forbidden Planet and I admire his operation a lot. He cares about comics and he really does the work. I wish economics were such that he had more support.

Im taping up a box today to send to John Porcellino’s Spit and a Half distro. And I’m working on Last Gasp and others. I think, with just one book so far, Domino is a hard sell to more major distros. But we’re trying to reach out to everyone.

What were you doing in Sweden?

I met Clara Bessijelle in New York a few years ago, She was visiting Brooklyn from her native Sweden. I decided to move over there to live with her. Now we both moved back together to Brooklyn. While I was over there, because I didn’t know that many people, I was able to focus on my art and cartooning to the degree that I always wanted to. I also got to learn Stone Lithography at a really great school called Kungliga konsthögskolan (Royal Academy of Fine Arts). Now that I’m back in the USA, I really feel so much more in control and disciplined with my art, and can’t wait to get to all the work I want to do.

What’s next on your publishing schedule? What books are you looking to release in the near future?

Domino has a lot of books planned for the next 6 months. Hopefully, in December we will have comics by Clara Bessijelle and Jesse McManus out. Later on, we’re hopefully working with two Closed Caption Comics members: Molly Colleen O’Connell and Mollie Goldstrom on two seperate books. Im starting work on an anthology that will feature Joanna Hellgren, Warren Craghead and EB Bethea. There is this artist called Jonathan Petersen that I’m really interested in — I want to contact him to see if he’s interested in publishing something  when I’m sure I have the finances to do something substantial with him. I also have a book of my own, The Life Problem, that I hope to put out very soon but I need to get the money in place.

There are a lot of artists within comics that I really want to do something with and that is what Domino is focused on now. But eventually I want to branch out and find people doing books with stories and art that don’t exactly belong in the comics world, or think about comics that much. The world of comics is so rich, but there’s other art out there that is close to my heart that I want to work with.

Youngblood

Creators | With the announcement that Rob Liefeld’s Extreme Studios is back in business, former Extreme Studios employee and current Image Comics publisher Eric Stephenson reflects on his time with the studio. “From 1992-1998, Extreme Studios was more or less my life. Youngblood, Supreme, Brigade, Bloodstrike, Team Youngblood, New Men, Prophet, Youngblood: Strikefile, Bloodpool, Glory… We put out a lot of comics, and for the most part everyone involved was incredibly young. Rob and I were amongst the oldest at 25. So many of the artists involved in various aspects of production were just out of their teens, and that made the work as frustrating as it was fun. But looking back, the main thing I remember about that time is Rob wanted to share his success with people who loved comics and wanted to make a living in the business as much as he had.” [It Sparkles!]

Webcomics | A Distant Soil creator Colleen Doran, who began serializing the comic online in 2009, notes “my bottom line is up significantly, and my online audience is ten times higher than when I started the five day a week online serialization of A Distant Soil 2.5 years ago.” She also shares advice she received when she started the endeavor that hasn’t worked for her. [A Distant Soil]

Tom Morello

Creators | Orchid writer and musician Tom Morello shares his thoughts on his new book, politics and social issues in comics, and the story in Action Comics #900 that featured Superman renouncing his citizenship, among other topics. [Vulture]

Creators | Speaking of politics in comics, Marzena Sowa talks to Hero Complex about her upcoming Vertigo graphic novel Marzi: “When I started to write Marzi, the first stories concerned my daily life in Poland: I wrote about my family, my neighbors. Then, progressively, political questions started to appear and I realized that the politics had so much space in my childhood life I hadn’t even imagined. Marzi is getting bigger, and her curiosity and will to understand the world is getting bigger too. She feels concerned by the world and she tries to understand it — understand why it doesn’t work correctly. At a certain point she starts to speak, she is not only a mute witness of what is happening in her country. She starts also to claim her own freedom; but for instance she is maybe too small to be heard by her parents, but she won’t give it up.” [Hero Complex]

Creators | The New York Times profiles the husband-and-wife cartooning duo Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman. [The New York Times]

Creators | Phil Hester and Jonathan Lau discuss their work on Dynamite’s Bionic Man comic book. [TFAW]

Creators | Mark Waid talks about his work on Marvel’s recent revival of the CrossGen title Ruse. [Mulholland Books]

The Death-Ray

Creators | Daniel Clowes talks about re-release of “The Death Ray” and his “drift toward more sympathetic figures” in his work: “I decided at a certain point that one of my goals is to find a way to connect with the characters no matter how awful they may seem or how hard they are to be around, to try to look at their humanity and find a way to love them by the end.” [Montreal Gazette]

Creators | Jonathan Liu catches up with Anya’s Ghost creator Vera Brosgol after sitting on a panel with her at Portland, Oregon’s Wordstock. [Wired]

Creators | Underground comics legend Robert Crumb shares his other “passion” — early 20th-century popular music. [BlogCritics]

Creators | Robin Furth discusses adapting Stephen King’s The Dark Tower to the comics medium, collaborating with Peter David, and Stephen King’s thoughts and involvement. [Biff Bam Pop! - part 1, part 2]

Comics | Saladin Ahmed looks at four of comics legend Jack Kirby’s “most ethnically adventurous creations” — The Thing, the Howling Commandos, Black Panther and The Black Racer. [tor.com]

Black Hood

Comics | The Beast Must Die at the Mindless Ones blog looks back at Mark Wheatley and Rick Burchett’s covers for Black Hood, from DC’s early 1990s !mpact line [Mindless Ones]

Commentary | Robot 6′s own Sean T. Collins reviews Brian Ralph’s Daybreak. [The Comics Journal]

Fandom | Looking for a Halloween costume? Found Item Clothing details 34 pop culture costumes you can make on your own, including Wonder Woman and Charlie Brown. [Found Item Clothing]

Robots | The Calgary Sun spotlights Phil Allen, who created a giant robot he hopes to sell to help pay for his wife’s liberation treatment for multiple sclerosis. “Science fiction has been talking about robots for 70 years and now I know why there aren’t any … It’s a huge undertaking when you decide to build one.” [Calgary Sun]

From Scott C's 'Pop Goes the Weasel'

All this week at Robot 6 we’re interviewing some of the many contributors to First Second’s new anthology, Nursery Rhyme Comics. In today’s final installment, Chris Mautner talks to cartoonist Scott C.

If anyone in this new anthology seemed like a “must-get,” it surely was the cartoonist known as Scott C., a.k.a. Scott Campbell. His charming, anthropomorphic — and frequently sardonic — work, whether found in video games made by Double Fine Studios, in comics like Hickee and the Flight anthologies, or in his new book, Amazing Everything: The Art of Scott C. seems perfectly suited to the off-kilter, frequently surreal world that nursery rhymes frequently seem to inhabit. The fact that he chose one of the most manic rhymes of the bunch — “Pop Goes the Weasel” — seems equally fitting.

How did you get involved in this particular project and what led to you selecting this particular nursery rhyme?

I’ve known Chris Duffy for awhile through Nickelodeon magazine. When he asked me to take part in the project, there were not many rhymes left. I chose Pop! Goes The Weasel because it is the most nonsensical of any of the rhymes and I thought it would be fun to pick apart.

If memory serves me well, there’s a couple different versions (or at least verses) of Pop Goes the Weasel. What led you to pick these particular verses and did you have to do any research per se?

Oh, man. I researched this rhyme like crazy. Even after Chris had tried to convince me that such a thing was futile when it came to nursery rhymes. I guess I feel that even if there are a million versions of a rhyme and no real origins, there may be some inkling something that could spur an idea. This particular rhyme had an interesting common aspect to it in which Pop! Goes The Weasel was a popular dance back in the 1700s. I think. And the variety of wacky lyrics were merely roundabout ways to get to that awesome dance. So I incorporated that into the comic a bit and chose the version that I remembered from my childhood.

Did the fact that it was such a short comic — two pages — present any challenges for you?

Well, not for pop goes the weasel. It’s a short high energy rhyme, so two pages is perfect. It would be a funny thing to see stretched to a graphic novel length though. Really explore the popping of the weasel

What led to the decision to use circle panels with this comic?

The circle panels felt like pops. Like bubbles. And the rolling around energy that the story had. If you can call it a story.

Your comics in general seem to have a fondness for anthropomorphism. Did this particular nursery rhyme seem like a good fit for you for that reason?

I use cute little faces on things all the time. In this poem, it worked nicer than other times. It matched the nonsense of the poem.

So what’s going on with that weasel anyway? Is he jumping? Having a fit? Passing gas? He seems so placid about the whole affair.

He is bursting onto the scene and pop locking, I think. He loves hiding in there, waiting for the perfect moment to knock everyone’s socks off with his moves the least everyone expects it.

All this week at Robot 6 we’re interviewing some of the many contributors to First Second’s new anthology, Nursery Rhyme Comics. Today, Michael May talks to cartoonist Aaron Renier.

Aaron Renier first came to comics fans’ attention with his childlike, but suspenseful Spiral-Bound, a Top Shelf graphic novel that earned him the Eisner for Talent Deserving Wider Recognition in 2006. Last year, he gained some of that recognition with his adventurous and spooky The Unsinkable Walker Bean from First Second. This year finds him still with First Second illustrating one of the more obscure (to me, anyway; Lewis Carroll fans will undoubtedly recognize it) nursery rhymes in their collection.

Michael May: For those who aren’t familiar with “The Lion and Unicorn,” can you explain the history behind it?

Aaron Renier: Sure. The history behind it is that in the early 17th Century, England and Scotland became unified and they needed a new coat of arms. So they took one of the two lions from the English coat of arms and one of the two unicorns from the Scottish coat of arms. One lion and one unicorn to symbolize the unity for the new British coat of arms. But when I read the poem I saw it as something much stranger, and colorful. So I tried to ignore that knowledge.

May: Did you get to pick the poem or was it assigned?

Renier: I picked it. I did because I had no interest in merely illustrating a nursery rhyme I was already familiar with. Almost all of the fun of being an illustrator is being able to add your own two cents. If I had done something I grew up with I’d have felt pretty bad derailing the meaning and visuals too much. It was something new to me and that left me able to imagine it as something fresh. If you read the poem literally, it’s immediately strange. Why give [the animals] bread? Why give them cake? It has a happy bit of nonsense I loved. It was also a very nice challenge to make a poem most people would be unfamiliar with into something relevant and new and special.

May: What hook did you find that made it fun to adapt?

Renier: The hook for me was that I was allowed to make the lion and the unicorn the steed of two evil men. It was impossible for me to villainize two animals. I love animals, and animals are animals. Imagine villainizing a unicorn or a lion. It’s impossible. Such fantastic creatures. It’s men who would care to battle over something as silly as a crown.

May: Do the riders represent anyone in particular?

Renier: The riders represent the hearts of people that would fight for the power of a crown. They are greed and corruption! Careless, cold-hearted hunger for the crown! It’s really a pity they have such beautiful beasts of burden. I feel bad for the lion and the unicorn.

May: Did you have to do any research for the story?

Renier: I did one image search online for the poem and discovered an alarming amount of images with the two animals “putting up their dukes” and often with boxing gloves on. I remember closing that search window thinking how boring that interpretation was. I never read the poem and saw them standing in the middle of town punching each other, and I realized then that I needed to quickly sketch it out as I saw it. So that’s how it came to be. As I said, I looked up the poems origin, but the poem’s background didn’t seem important to me. I didn’t want to turn a wonderful bit of nonsense into a history lesson. The poem needed to take new form, and become relevant to me.

May: Though the poem has the animals being “drummed out of town,” you depict them as being led out; almost tricked. Is that an intentional bit of subversion on your part?

Renier: I hope it comes across that way. Yes, I think the world is run by people who want power for the sake of being powerful, not caring if they ruin a few fruit markets along the way. The good thing is they get drummed out of town (animals love cake and bread!) and the crown can be used for something useful. The children at the end can use that piece of metal for make believe and a good ol’ game of “kick the crown” if they want. The future of that town is with the children. I pictured the men eventually sitting on a distant hill in some long forgotten valley, hungry and trying to get the baked goods away from the animals. Ha!

Thanks so much to Aaron for answering my questions.

TOMORROW: Brigid Alverson talks to anthology editor Chris Duffy.

Excerpt from Sala's "Three Blind Mice"

All this week at Robot 6 we’re interviewing some of the many contributors to First Second’s new anthology, Nursery Rhyme Comics. Today, J. Caleb Mozzocco talks to cartoonist Richard Sala.

Richard Sala is a prolific comics artist and illustrator often compared to Charles Addams and Edward Gorey, given his interest in visually compelling, somewhat spooky subject matter and deadpan gothic humor. He’s responsible for creating several plucky heroines who confront various mysteries and horrors, like foul-mouthed girl detective Judy Drood from Mad Night and The Grave Robber’s Daughter, monster magnet Peculia from Sala’s signature series Evil Eye and K. Westree of Cat Burglar Black.

The artist’s most recent work is last month’s original graphic novel The Hidden from Fantagraphics, about a group of people stuck in a diner during what may be the end of the world. Well, that and “Three Blind Mice” for First Second’s Nursery Rhyme Comics.

J. Caleb Mozzocco: Do you think nursery rhymes played any particularly powerful role in your childhood or development as a storyteller?

Richard Sala: My mom had old books of illustrated nursery rhymes and fairy tales from her childhood (which were old even when she was young) when I was very little and they certainly had an impact on me. Years later I found copies of some of those books and was amazed to find the roots of some of my weird fears and obsessions!

Mozzocco: Given how short your piece is—two pages, five panels—do you think creating it was more akin to the illustration work you’ve done, or to a comic?

Sala: Definitely a comic. Because I had to “fill in the blanks” that aren’t really spelled out in the rhyme. Like, why in the world would three mice (who happen to be blind!) run after the farmer’s wife? So, I decided to draw them sniffing the sweet smell of a cake she had just made, and running towards that.

I also decided that to match the simplicity and repetition of the rhyme, the strip should have the same qualities. I wanted it to work as a whole—and not look like I was trying to overpower the little rhyme with my art.

Mozzocco: I noticed your bio in the back of the book refers to your usual subject matter as unusual or spooky…do you think this falls into that unusual/spooky area, involving mice and knife-play as it does, or is this a more atypical piece from you?

Sala: Well, a lot of nursery rhymes seem to have a somewhat creepy quality—like old Victorian dolls. At least for me. But for this particular piece, since it was for kids, I made an effort to reign in some of my natural tendencies toward doing some scarier stuff.

A friend and I did joke about the fact that the strip had the potential for some really nightmarish and bloody images and we tossed around some ideas that were truly revolting! But [editor Chris Duffy] had said that the book was for kids, so those ideas stayed in my notebook.

Mozzocco: You’ve created comics and graphic novels for several seemingly distinct audiences in the past. In general, how conscious are you of audience when making a work? That is, do you think, “This comic is for a grown-up. This comic is for a young adult/teenage audience,” or do you just make books for yourself? I’m just curious if you approached this as a comic for little kids specifically.

Sala: Ideally, I am always making the things for myself. That’s why I chose to work more in comics and less in illustration to begin with.

I did a comic strip for Nickelodeon magazine ages ago that ran about eight or ten episodes. That was aimed at kids but I totally did it to please a specific part of my own brain. I mean, I always think of the individual reader, more so than a particular audience. I want my work to be able to communicate and entertain the reader—that’s my goal—but beyond that, I’m doing them for myself, in that I’m doing things that I personally want to see.

Mozzocco: Did drawing this little comic whet your appetite for illustrating nursery rhymes or adapting or illustrating public domain/shared cultural material like this in the future?

Sala: It’s actually something I’ve always been interested in. Somewhere in my piles of old notebooks there are several plans to do books of nursery rhymes and similar things. Maybe someday I’ll actually get around to it! In the meantime, I’m always very happy to be invited to be a part of cool book projects like this one.

TOMORROW: Michael May talks to Aaron Renier

Jim Gibbons and Hellboy, as drawn by Dan Hipp

Earlier this year Jim Gibbons, publicity coordinator for Dark Horse Comics, made the jump from the publicity side of the business to the creative, as he became an assistant editor for the publisher. Old habits are hard to break, though, so when he emailed me recently to suggest a few possible interview subjects he’s been working with in his new role, I thought I’d see if he’d be interested in answering a few questions about his new job.

We spoke with Gibbons, who is also a Wizard Magazine alum, about his move to Dark Horse back in 2009, so catching up with him again about his new role seems to bring everything full circle. My thanks to Jim for agreeing to answer my questions.

JK: When did you start working for Dark Horse, and what were you hired to do?

Jim: I was hired on as a publicity coordinator in 2009. In fact, Sean T. Collins interviewed me about being hired by Dark Horse for Robot 6 way back when! As a publicity coordinator, I was responsible for arranging stories (interviews, previews, artists process pieces, etc) with a number of different online outlets and just generally doing everything in my power to get coverage for Dark Horse projects both big and small. I was (Still am!) a massive comics fan, so making it my business to learn the ins and outs of numerous different comics and graphic novels in order to promote them properly was a pretty fun way to make a living. At a certain point, putting in a lot of effort to increase the amounts of online publicity Dark Horse was getting on top of my passion for these projects and comics in general gained me some recognition by folks like Dark Horse president/publisher/head honcho Mike Richardson, VP of marketing Micha Herschman, senior managing editor Scott Allie, editor Sierra Hahn and my old boss, the director of publicity, Jeremy Atkins and the prospect of moving over to editorial was put on the table. (A big, big thank you to those fine folks, by the way! Especially Scott Allie and Sierra Hahn—many, many thanks!) I excitedly confirmed I’d love to move to the editorial department and when the stars aligned, I was transitioned from one dream job to the next!

Jim Gibbons

JK: Was it always your hope to one day move from marketing/publicity to editorial?

Jim: Oh absolutely, but I didn’t really know if it’d ever be a possibility. I always thought, “If I do well in marketing, maybe I’ll get a chance to do something on the creative end at some point.” I always hoped I’d get a chance to actually work on comics instead of working around comics, I just thought it’d take a lot longer to get to that point. So, being the assistant editor on some of Dark Horse’s biggest Fall launches at age 27? Pretty excellent! I didn’t expect things to go quite this well, but I’m not complaining. Now I just have to make sure I don’t fuck it up…

JK: What are your job responsibilities in your current job, on a day-to-day basis?

Jim: My job is very much a supporting role in the comics creation process. I’m an assistant editor, so my primary job is—shockingly—to assist an editor. I work with editor Sierra Hahn (Green River Killer, Kull, co-editor on Angel & Faith and Buffy Season 9), so if she asks me to do something, I do it. To elaborate, the tasks I tackle range from reading and making notes on scripts and art; communicating deadlines to creators; passing along notes on the aforementioned scripts and art to creators; finding reference materials for artists; writing up work orders for our design department so they know what needs to be included when they construct credits pages, letter columns, logos, etc.; helping in the creation of cover art concepts; checking art and dialogue for inconsistencies/errors… the list goes on and on. I also end up writing solicit text for the books I work on. It’s a mixture of necessary paperwork and getting to participate in the creative process. In the end, though, as I mentioned, this is all done in a support capacity. I run everything I do by Ms. Hahn for final approval.

JK: Are there lessons you learned in your previous job that you’ve applied to your new position?

Jim: A lot of the attention-to-detail skills I honed during my journalism days have certainly helped me in my position as an assistant editor. I’m one of a few different sets of eyes that goes over everything I work on before its published, but I’ll notice things that other folks don’t and then have to pay attention to the things Sierra picks out that I’ve missed… growing and ever improving as an assistant, hopefully! A lot of the job is about communication with artists, writers, colorists, letterers and different departments at Dark Horse as well, so years of practice expressing and explaining myself via email and over the phone in both my time in journalism and Dark Horse PR have been hugely helpful in that regard.

JK: What’s been the biggest surprise in your new job?

Jim: How much people I work with listen to the input of the lowest man on the totem pole. Or rather, that the input of the low man gets listened to at all! Ha ha! Seriously though, I’m lucky enough to be working with an editor who encourages my input and creators who’ve been very kind about a lowly assistant adding his thoughts to the creative process. It was, and continues to be, a very pleasant surprise.

JK: What are some projects you’ve worked on (or are currently working on)?

Brain Boy

I did some work on two archival books that I’d recommend: The Savage Sword of Kull Volume 2 and Brain Boy. Kull is yet another brilliant edition in Dark Horse’s Robert E. Howard line that I was a big fan of before working at DH. It’s definitely a thrill to have my name pop up in the credits of a barbarian comic! Brain Boy is one of those amazing old comics that time forgot. It only ran for six issues, but it’s publication in regard to the nation’s political climate at the time is very interesting. It’s a book about a young telepath who works with the government to thwart the plans of mind-controlling communist dictators, crazed time travelers and telepathic dinosaurs. It was written right around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and is definitely informed by the “about to go hot” Cold War of that era. If you like comics history, or a combo of comics and history, it’s a very interesting read. I worked on those with editors Patrick Thorpe and Philip Simon, respectively.

As for the big Fall launches that I’m extremely psyched to be working on—which are all captained by editor Sierra Hahn, by the by…

Musical mastermind Tom Morello of The Nightwatchman and Rage Against The Machine fame teams with artist Scott Hepburn for Orchid, a science-fiction/fantasy epic informed by Morello’s political activism and the duo’s great appreciation for sprawling sagas. It’s a 12-issue series full of action and adventure that I think’s pretty much a no-brainer for comic fans. It’s actually out in less than two weeks and you can download a free preview in the Dark Horse Digital Store, so go check that out!

House of Night

Next, House of Night—based on and expanding upon P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast’s best-selling series of novels—comes out in November. It’s follows the series protagonist, the 16-year-old vampyre fledgling Zoey Redbird, as she delves into vampyre history to better understand her place in modern day vamp culture and her magical affinities for the elements. If you already love the novels, I think you’ll fall in love with these comics, because (and here’s the pitch for comic fans who might not be familiar with the House of Night series) Joëlle Jones (Troublemaker, Spellcheckers), Karl Kerschl (The Eisner Award-winning The Abominable Charles Christopher), Joshua Covey and a few other brilliant artists we’ve yet to announce are delivering stunning work in their interpretation of this magical world. When P.C. Cast and comic series writer Kent Dalian (a massive HoN fan) are responding to the art in almost exclusively exclamation point-laden sentences of elation, well… I think that’s certainly the sign of something special.

I’m also working on our adaptation of Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s vampire novels, starting with The Strain. The comics are being written by the Eisner Award-winning David Lapham (Stray Bullets, Silverfish, Kull) with art from Mike Huddleston (The Coffin, Butcher Baker) and, put simply, these guys are killing it. I’ve read and enjoyed the novels, but Lapham and Huddleston’s interpretation is such a new, unique, and exciting take on the story that I’ve just been falling in love more and more and all over again with this horrifying tale of a vampire virus every time I see more of their work on this book. This book is going to make your skin crawl in the best way. Guillermo has been responding to the scripts and art with f-bomb after complimentary f-bomb of praise for Lapham and Hudd’s work as well, so get excited for this one, horror fans!

Lastly, as far as stuff I can talk about goes, I’m also assisting on Brian Wood and Kristian Donaldson’s “The Massive,” which will come out in Dark Horse Presents #8, #9, and #10 in 2012. I can’t say too much about this project, but I think it’s pretty much guaranteed to knock your socks off. Mr. Wood has put out a few teasers for it already and the first look at the interior art is coming up at New York Comic Con, so keep your eyes peeled for that. Once you see those pages, I think you’ll be hooked. If you’re not, you’re crazy. It’s that simple. Great concept, interesting and moving story, melt-your-eyeballs art… it’s a complete comics package here, people! I’ve been a Brian Wood fan since my college roommate brought home DMZ #1, so getting to be a part of anything he’s created and working on is a huge thrill. Did I mention you should keep your eyes peeled for those beautiful Donaldson interiors come NYCC? I did? DO IT!

Fairy Quest: Outlaws is the first of a projected four-book series that takes the Western world’s most beloved fairy tales and sets them up in their own world — Fablewood — where they’re forced to re-enact their stories everyday like marionettes. Ramos is no stranger to creator-owned work; although he might be best known now for Amazing Spider-Man, he’s done far-ranging projects such as the vampire-epic Crimson to the Catholic thriller Revelations, amongst others. I talked with Ramos about Fairy Quest: Outlaws on the eve of the convention to find out more.

Chris Arrant: Fill us in – what is Fairy Quest: Outlaws about?

Humberto Ramos: Fairy Quest: Outlaws is the first of four books that tells the story of the Fablewood Kingdom, a place where all the fairy tale stories exist for one sole purpose: to tell their story. Every day they have to go to “work” and replay the stories every mom or dad read to their kids at bedtime. Life is quiet and simple if you follow this simple command: “Do not deviate.”

But well, things are about to get shaken up a little in Fablewood because some of the inhabitants aren’t happy anymore following the rules. Take Little Red and Mr. Woof, who both decide they wanted to stop being enemies and become friends; not a big deal, right? Everybody wants to have a true friend for like, but in Fablewood this is a problem… a big one.

So suddenly Little Red and Mr. Woof turn from the most dearest of Fablewood’s inhabitants to dangerous outlaws, and they find out the only way to keep their treasured friendship is to leave the kingdom.

That’s where their journey begins.

Arrant: Fablewood sounds like a great place to live except for all the rules. What’s it like?

Ramos: As I said, this is a place where the characters from fairy tales exist and live, allowing us to have stories to tell our kids ad bedtime. Fablewood is populated with castles, villages, dark woods and candy cottages, all together.

Arrant: But all that is brought down by this rule not to deviate from the classic stories. Who enforces that rule?

Ramos: This is the backbone that supports the kingdom, and the force that keeps it that way is the Think Police, led by Mr. Grimm, a man who has zero tolerance for fooling around.

Arrant: And Mr. Grimm is out to get Little Red and Mr. Woof. Those two are familiar to audiences no matter who they are –- Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. How are they different, or the same, than the versions people remember from storybooks?

Ramos: We want them to look a bit different from the stories we’ve read and the illustrations we’ve seen. This is an action/adventure story, and we wanted to deliver that in the looks of the characters. For example, Mr. Woof is the size of a horse and Little Red will ride him across the kingdom in pursuit of their goal.

Arrant: For people that didn’t make it to Comic-Con, how else can they get the book?

Ramos: This is a self-published edition and the print run was only for 1,000 books, so if there are any left we’ll take orders by writing to culturevandal@hotmail.com.

Arrant: Last question: since this book is about fairy tales, what was your favorite one from when you were a child?

Ramos: I love fairy tales as much as every other kid out there, but the one that stands alone is, of course, Little Red Riding Hood.

Warp #1

Yesterday we learned by way of the San Diego Comic-Con Thursday panel schedule that First Comics, a hallmark of 1980s independent comic book publishing, is returning. According to the write-up for the panel:

First Comics: The First of the Great Independents Is Back with a Fury!— Legendary ’80s independent publishing powerhouse First Comics is returning when the world needs it most, not unlike the promised return of King Arthur. And the assembled Round Table of extraordinary comics creators are here to tell you how they will once again be rocking your world with comics entertainment from the cutting edge. Panelists include Ken F. Levin (Wanted, The Boys, First Comics co-founder and director), Joe Staton and Nick Cuti (E-Man), Bill Willingham (Fables), Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition), Brian Mullens (founder of DaQRi; QR director), Alex Wald (art director then and again), Susannah Carson (A Truth Universally Acknowledged; First Comics YA editor), and Daniel Merlin Goodbrey (The Tarquin Engine, The Last Sane Cowboy). Moderated by Larry Young (The Black Diamond; First Comics director of production). Room 23ABC

As noted in the description, several on the panel were involved with First Comics back in the 1980s; others, like Willingham and Collins, were involved in making prominent independent comics at the time (Collins created Ms. Tree, published by Eclipse and other companies, while Willingham created Elementals, published by Comico). And there are new faces, like Goodbrey and Young. Goodbrey stated on his blog that his webcomic Necessary Monsters would be involved. And Young, publisher of AiT/Planet Lar, will serve as director of production for the returning company.

I caught up with Young, who answered a few questions about First’s return.

JK: When did the “band” start to get back together, so to speak? And when and how did you came to be involved?

Larry Young, right

Larry: Not sure exactly when that happened. It was casually mentioned to me confidentially at this last Wonder-Con and I asked who did I have to kill to be in – I still have an old college photo wearing a First Comics baseball hat, so I’m pretty psyched to be able to help out. Seriously, I feel like Peter Graves threw my picture on to the table with Martin Landau and Barbara Bain and Greg Morris.

JK: A lot of people remember the “first” First Comics, as the publisher of American Flagg!, Dreadstar, etc. Are you guys looking at bringing some of those titles back, or should we expect all-new stuff from First? And can you give any details on what you’ll publish and when we should expect to see stuff?

Larry: I asked the same thing. I got a question back: what did you like about First Comics the first time around? I said that First seemed to publish anything and all of it was cool. They said yup, that’s still the plan. So old stuff, new stuff, new stuff of old titles, I think all of that and more. Honestly, keeping track of when Warp and E-Man and Starslayer and Grimjack were coming out is how I learned about skip weeks.

JK: I remember First as being an alternative to the mainstream companies … very creator-focused (and publishing creator-owned comics), more mature content, direct market-only in a comics world that wasn’t just direct market-only at the time. A lot has changed since then, and these aspects are standard for many comics companies today. What will set the new First Comics apart this time around?

Larry: I don’t want to reveal too much this early in the game about what will set First apart from other companies; but look at the old days. I’m not sure I agree the playing field is all that different now than it was when First first took the field. But for now, First will have four (!) “preview” books at San Diego – but they’re using “preview” to mean that the books won’t be released to retail ’til October or November. Other than Special Convention Limited Editions, they are complete advance copies.

JK: What’s the status of AiT? Are you still planning to publish books yourself, or will First be taking up the majority of your time?

Larry: My agreement with First allows me to keep the AiT doors open; we’ll have Elvis Van Helsing (out July 6) at the AiT compound in San Diego, for example. But I’m concentrating on my own writing now; being a dad is taking up all the energy I used to use on making sure freelancers had full bottles and clean diapers.

JK: What does a director of production do?

Larry: Right now, I’m helping out with trafficking the books, compiling files, talent co-ordination, stuff like that. I just did the file to make the company San Diego banners. Throwing in my two cents on marketing and PR strategies, helping out where I can. Honestly, it’s a lot like what I do for AiT, just without the big target on my head.