Leela Corman came on the Inkstuds to chat about her new book, Unterzakhn.

Derf returned to the Inkstuds for a conversation about his latest work, a retrospective of his time during his teens, as an aquaintance to the notorious serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer. The book is a really great character study, capturing a specific place and time, evoking some specific emotions.

Professor and editor of a multitude of comics releases, Paul Buhle came on the show to discuss a handful of his most recent work, including the Yiddishkeit anthology as well a plethora of other like the very recent Port Huron Statement with Gary Dumm.

Evan Dorkin is one of the under appreciated thinkers/writers in comics. He has a unique take on the form and speaks quite passionately about it. It was great to catch up with Evan in an attempt to talk about his latest Milk and Cheese collection, in a conversation that quickly sidestepped in a million directions. This is Evan’s third time on the Inkstuds, and he is always welcome back.

The most attended panel I moderated at Emerald City Comicon last month, was the Comics Influencing Comics panel featuring Brandon Graham, Mike Allred, Nate Powell and Moritat. I had never done anything with so many people watching. It was kind of surreal. Unfortunately, I think half of them were there to see the Jhonen Vasquez panel that was following ours.

One of my favorite moments at Emerald City Comicon 2012, was being able to do a spotlight panel with Bill Sienkiewicz. I have been a massive fan of his for years and was excited for the chance to talk to him. It was a revealing conversation that touched on a number of artistic interests.

One of the most prolific cartoonists of the underground generation, Bill Griffith, joined me to chat about his new collection, Lost and Found. It is an interesting conversation that touches on a number of different topics, ranging from his Zippy the Pinhead work, to discussing his contemporaries like Rory Hayes.

Montreal illustrator and cartoonist, Matt Forsythe  returned to the studs house for a chat about his latest books, Jinchalo and Comics Class. Matt has been doing some great work and seems to always be getting better.

I was picked up early friday morning by talented local dudes, Ed Brisson and Jason Copland. We had an epic drive down that included 3 hours in traffic before even getting to the border. I never thought Canada could be so cruel.

Shopping started quick and hard. I loved this Ernie Bushmiller original. Look at how perfect it is.

David Brothers was there in fine form, in deep conversation with Adam Warren. I really love David’s writing. I don’t read even half the stuff he writes about, but still highly appreciate his take.

The one person I wanted to see the most, was Tom Spurgeon. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the work he does. Tom set’s a standard of integrity that few in comics reporting are able to achieve. He set’s the bar and we jump to reach it. And that Eric Reynolds guy he is with here is pretty cool too. I tried talking Eric into buying us dinner and we could consider it payola. No dice.

My first panel of the weekend was with Bill Sienkiewicz. I have been a fan of his work for longer than i can remember. I am used to the small rooms of TCAF, so seeing this line was a bit of surprise. I guess I shouldn’t of been surprised, considering Bill’s importance.

The conversation was really interesting. Bill has lived a very full and storied life. I think he is one of the greats of a generation.

Seeing Tom at the back of the room is a little intimidating to a novice like me.

After I was done the panel, I swung by Randy’s Readers to get a stack of silver and bronze age tasty treats.

That night was dinner with Jason Levian, Zack Soto, Brandon, Ian Macewan and Jacq Cohen. Brandon choose the place, that was a little pricey, but excellent. He told us about how he used to meet Moritat here to draw porn comics. And when he was on a date, he would bring girls to somewhere less, ummm, extravagant.

I crashed hard that night. Brandon woke up at 6am to do a bunch of sketches for folks that asked for them at the convention. Dude has some dedication.

Saturday morning was breakfast with David Brothers, Brandon and Tom Spurgeon. It was really good to be able to have some comics shop talk. Through the convention, there is a lot of business talk. Folks yakking about pitches, publishing ideas, and a lot of shmoozing, but not to a lot of straight up comics talk. That is very different from my TCAF experience, where everyone just wants to talk about what excites them, which 9 times out of 10, is Michael Deforge.

It was back to the con floor for me. I was blown away when I saw this Bowie cosplay. She even managed to get James’ gaudy colour gradients on her costume.

My next panel was with Brandon, Mike Allred, Nate Powell and Justin Moritat Norman. I had them talking about their different influences in comics. It was a fun give and take, with some pretty funny anecdotes.

I was blown away by the amount of people there for the panel. It was a good sized group in this huge room.

About half way through the panel, the room was filled up completely, disrupting it for the other folks in the room. I wasn’t sure why all those people came in, turns out, they were all there for Jhonen Vasquez, who had a panel after us. Letting those extra people in, is my only complaint for the whole weekend.

Oh look, it’s talented Vancouver web cartoonists, Ryan Pequin and Emily Partridge. Why don’t I ever see you guys in our own city.

Scott Campbell did this sweet sketch for me.

Things were getting tough at the con, and Doug Sherwood, letterer for Glory and Hell Yeah!!!, got Brandon involved in a gang of gold tear toughies.

This guy was there, advertising for his new comic.

Dinner was a blast. I had an amazing steak with a big group of folks. Here is Joe Keatinge, the dude to buy the first copy of Inkstuds and his neighbor, cartoonist Emi Lenox.

Later that night, after a brief stop at the Sheraton Hotel lobby, Brandon, Bryan Lee O’Malley and I took off to track down Pendelton Ward. Earlier that day, he had tweeted to Brandon about wanting to meet up at some point. We found him after searching high and low through the wilds of pike street market.

The comicking never stops in this crowd.

On our walk back to the convention area, where all the hotels are, we met a fan of Bryan’s named Nick, the self-deprecating magician. It was a pretty sweet moment. He was just happy to be performing for someone’s work that he loved.

And then all of the sudden this guy shows up. Ruining everything.

I went back to the hotel after that for a very excellent sleep. Brandon went off to hunt squirrels or something. First thing the following morning, I found this sweet Tintin book.

I love the look of the earlier black and white version of Tintin.

I also picked up a smattering of TPB’s.

The Alberto Breccia sketchbook is pretty sweet. There is only like a dozen pages of his printed in English in Heavy Metal, so having some more work is great. That Esteban Maroto book is amazing. All of it is in spanish, but still pretty as hell. And don’t judge on the Elfquest. I am committed to reading it.

Remember when Matt Madden used to make comics. I do, they are great. Go read Odds Off. And that Steranko comic was my first purchase of the day.

And Alex Toth Zorro’s for only a buck? Hell Yeah!

I had two more panels on Sunday. My first was with Steve Niles. I am barely familiar with Steve’s work, but have tremendous respect for him and the work he did for Gary Friedrich. So when I was asked to do this panel, I thought why not. He has a really dedicated group of fans that was great to see. It was a smaller attendance, but gave for a chance of a lot of give and take from the folks. My recorder ran out of juice during this panel, so I did not get a recording of it. It has been lost to the ages.

My next panel was in the exact same room. This time it was with Bryan Lee O’Malley, Brandon Graham and Adam Warren. This one was packed to the gills, with 3 people in the front row recording it.

I ended the day by sitting at Brandon’s table relaxing. I was tired and did not want to deal with anything. Table neighbour Emi Lenox did this lovely drawing for me, which nicely ended the day.

I was lucky enough to moderate a panel of some comics heavy weights.  Adam Warren, Brandon Graham and Bryan Lee O’Malley. Here is a description of the panel. The panels were listed before Bryan was announced, so that’s why he doesn’t appear announced here.

ECCC Spotlight Series: Brandon Graham and Adam Warren in Conversation

The Emerald City Comicon Spotlight Series is designed to give you an intimate look into the minds of some of comics greatest creators. Brandon Graham and Adam Warren join you this hour for a conversation talking about finer points of their work. Their western takes on manga have delighted readers locally and abroad. Expect a vivid and lively discussion.

Tomorrow, I head off for Seattle for the Emerald City Comicon. I can be found hanging out at table C-05 with Brandon Graham, when I am not doing panels, which will be most of the time.

I have four panels in total. And they are going to be awesome. Just sayin’.

Friday March 30th

ECCC Spotlight Series: Bill Sienkiewicz
Room: 211
Time: 5:00 – 6:00

The Emerald City Comicon Spotlight Series is designed to give you an intimate look into the minds of some of comics greatest creators. This hour, Bill Sienkiewicz will take you through what is sure to be one of the most amazing hours of your life! Bill’s work has covered, (literally), most every major character from Marvel and DC. His work has graced the National Museum of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; galleries in Paris, Barcelona and Tuscany and Spain’s famed La Semana Negra (The Black Week) Festival. Additionally, he designed, with longtime friend and mentor Neal Adams, a multimedia stage productions for Roger Waters’ 2006 Dark Side of the Moon Tour. Come meet a legendary artist and listen to his amazing stories.

Saturday March 31st

Comics Influencing Comics
Room: 3AB
Time: 4:00 – 5:00

A look at how comics affect a cartoonists creative process. This panel will explore the idea of a personal pantheon of influence was some of the more unique voices in comics. The work of panelists Brandon Graham, Justin “Moritat” Norman, Nate Powell, Michael Allred all come from different directions and will have lots of points of discussion.

Sunday April 1st

ECCC Spotlight Series: Steve Niles
Room: 211
Time: 12:00 – 1:00

The Emerald City Comicon Spotlight Series is designed to give you an intimate look into the minds of some of comics greatest creators. This hour, modern master of horror, Steve Niles, talks about what it takes to craft a good horror story, working with artists like Sam Kieth and Ben Templesmith and how his creation of 30 Days of Night changed the face of horror comics.

ECCC Spotlight Series: Brandon Graham and Adam Warren in Conversation
Room: 211
Time: 1:00 – 2:00

The Emerald City Comicon Spotlight Series is designed to give you an intimate look into the minds of some of comics greatest creators. Brandon Graham and Adam Warren join you this hour for a conversation talking about finer points of their work. Their western takes on manga have delighted readers locally and abroad. Expect a vivid and lively discussion.

Canadian artist Gary Taxali joined me for a chat about his new books, art and coins.

Toronto cartoonist, Kagan McLeod, joined me for a discussion of his giant collection Infinite Kung Fu. It’s a massive tome that was many years in the making.

The trip started early Thursday, with a bunch of bro’s on the road listening to terrible music.

You can tell Brandon is excited to leave Vancouver at 8am, as he had been going to bed at around that time for the week previous. The drive down was pretty unexciting for the most part. 

We stopped at the Fantagraphics store, where I picked up a couple of goodies from the damaged room, and Daniel got the amazing Cabbie, and then hit up Georgetown for some tasty lunch. We got po’boys.

Brandon and Daniel judged my purchases.

From there, it was off to Portland. Our driving time wasn’t fantastic getting down there, but we did find an excellent gas station.

Our first destination in Portland, was the home of Study Group 12 editor, Zack Soto. I like Zack a lot. When I went to New York for the Brooklyn Fest, we spent a day just wandering through Manhattan with Ben Catmull. An excellent way to waste an afternoon. Zack is bred from the same cloth when it comes to talking comics as me, Brandon and Frank Santoro.

I have been wanting to interview Zack for a while, so when we were deciding on who to talk to in Portland, he was a natural choice. This was probably one of the more honest and intense interviews I have ever done. Zack was very open about some heavy personal stuff and I appreciate him taking the time with us and letting us into his home. He has a good thing going there.

After Zack’s, we rushed into town to check into the hotel, and maybe relax a little bit. I split from the group for my own illfated meeting, but caught up later. It is good to have some alone time when you are spending some intense time together.

I took this picture of the outside of what I guess was an organized homeless camp. Homelessness is a particularly important issue to me. It seems to get swept aside as the focus of the larger milieu of the occupy movement looks at book releases and records, when a fundamental need is still not being met.

I caught up with the bro’s downtown by a donut shop. Doug Sherwood and Ian MacEwan were there and eventually Joe Keatinge made his way after a whirlwind of signings in California.

I always take this same photo of Zack and Doug. Such happy boys.

Here is Zack with his very nice wife, Krista, explaining gabagool from the Sopranos to my Italian film maker Daniel. He was not impressed, and me forcing him to watch the Jersey Shore that night back at the hotel, did not help matters. While Daniel and I were at the hotel, Noel went off to the tube to watch some local music, and regaled us with a story of a goth singer getting mad because the audience wasn’t paying attention to him and his candlelit set.

Daniel had some homework to do in the morning, so Noel and I took off to Powells. I hit up Powell’s twice over the weekend, so here are photos of all my purchases there.

The Herbie book is as awesome as can be. I picked up a couple of Hunt Emerson books for really cheap. He is someone that I need to know more about. The Jordan Crane, limited silkscreen edition of the Clouds Above was a total steal. I have an incredible admiration for Jordan’s work. He is a great creator, thinker, editor and talker about comics. Tom Spurgeon just did a thing about talents more deserved of recognition, and I would put Jordan on that list. There is a David Sandlin book from a gallery show he did in New York. He is another guy that I need to know more about and eventually interview. I picked up some neat stuff by him when I was at Printed Matter a couple of years ago.

Our day started with the an interview with Jack Hayden from Snake Bomb. He is doing some really interesting stuff and getting some really great talents out there. He comes from a D.I.Y. back ground that feels like it is infused with a pragmatic sensibility.

His house was pretty great. He had this amazing Prince poster in his living room. I thought of Michael Deforge.

After interview Jack, we did a short video with his room mate, Karissa Sakumoto.

She does some hilarious drawings, and for someone who is still really new to comics, I can see her work really resonating and going far.

They had this broom standing on it’s own in the living room.

Our next stop, was the time portal known as Future Dreams. This is the type of comic store I love. Lot’s of crazy shit that had been sitting there, untouched for 20 years. It is a windowless basement bunker.

I got an amazing selection of out of print European comics. Just the kind of thing that I am looking for.

After that, it was time for interview number 4 of the weekend. Angie Wang was another person that I have wanted to talk to for a while. The really interesting thing about doing these video interviews, is that we aren’t really focusing on big named talents, we are more into talking to fascinating people with a variety of skill levels.

Interview Angie was a delight. She is a really smart focused creator that puts a lot of thought into her work. I think this is the first interview of the recent batch that Daniel is going to try and get up.

I was very exhausted after doing all the interviews that day, but we still had one more event to go to, the launch for Brandon Graham’s King City collection. This book has been a number of years in the making and has transformed Brandon from relative obscurity, to being one of the more exciting creators out there right now.

The signing itself was excellently attended, with Floating World almost selling out of a very large order, with only a handful of signed copies left. It was a great chance to catch up with with some swell comics folks.

You can tell that these guys are excited to hang out with me in Vancouver when they come up here for the VanCAF.

It was nice to Farel Dalrymple. The friendship between him and Brandon goes back a long way, so it’s exciting to see them working together for the first time on a project like Prophet.

We went out for drinks later and caught up with Emi Lenox, who had her own book launch that night at Bridge City Comics. I think Brandon was pretty of sick of me by this point

The next morning was another early start. I had somehow talked Craig Thompson into travelling down to Eugene, Oregon with us to visit Michael Allred and film them talking comics with Brandon.

The interview was amazing. I had originally planned to just have an hour of those guys and then have some one on one time with Allred. The first half of over an hour went to so good, we just wanted to keep it going.

I loved being able to see all the original art in his place. It is like a shrine to Madman, and it could easily be gaudy or ostentatious but it is the complete opposite. Madman is like a member of the Allred family. On of his sons came in at point, wearing a Madman hoodie that Michael hadn’t seen before and got his son to give it to him. It was a really funny moment that captured the role of comics in that house. Being able to see a Frazetta original  on his wall, next to some Al Columbia drawings, across from Jamie Hewlett was nothing short of impressive.

The conversation between the three of them was so good, that it is actually giving Daniel and I a lot to think about, in regards to how we approach these videos and interviews.

Michael is very proud of this chair, and it is very comfortable.

The last day was all shopping. I picked up a heap of stuff from floating world. Jason has by far, the best selection of new work in the small press that I have seen.

I went through the store during Brandon’s launch and made a stack of stuff I wanted to get and then came back on Sunday and added to that stack.

We hit up Counter Media, where Daniel bought a huge stack of European goodies, and I got a couple of treats. It was nice to see my book in the store there among other comic’s history type works.

Next door at Reading Frenzy, I saw my book again, but this time in the clearance bin. It would of stung a little, if not for finding these awesome books in there. Blanquet makes for good company.

And with that, it was time to return to Canada. Brandon was out having some business lunches while were shopping, but I think all of us were ready to leave, lest we spend more money on comics.

Sorry for the lack of reading list updates. I have been swamped with personal stuff and way behind on Inkstuds. On Thursday, I head down to Portland with Brandon Graham and Daniel Giantomaso. Daniel and I have a bunch of video interviews scheduled, that we hope to have out in the summer. I am really excited about what we have planned.

If you want to meet up with us in Portland, come to Brandon’s King City books launch on March 9th at Floating world.

And if you want some video’s to tide you over until we have some new ones posted, check out Jerry Moriarty’s Youtube page. I particularly enjoyed this one about his cat, Flesh.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been reading one of my bound books that collect’s the first 36 issues of the Sandman Mystery Theatre. I had a soft spot for Vertigo stuff back the early 2000′s. The comics are great early examples of just how strong an illustrator Guy Davis is. He draws the majority of the work in the book. The series starts out solely written by Matt Wagner, but eventually Steve Seagle comes on to co-write it, and there is a substantive improvement in quality with his addition.

I have had a real struggle with some of the work in the book, being white guy writing racial epithets to, I guess, convey the vernacular of the time. The problem is that when you use language like that, you are reintroduce something that is not ok. If the writer is trying to capture a certain period in time, everything in the writing should reflect that, not just how a black person was referred to in that particular point in time. I see this as an easy escape for the writer to seem edgy, but ultimately, it just fails in this context.

I probably wouldn’t be so fussy if when had a story line focusing on Chinatown, the colorist didn’t make the Chinese characters really yellow. The editor makes an apology for the mistake in the following issue, blaming the technical process. I can’t help but think about how could this get printed without someone pointing out how racist it looks. Is there no one on the line in production anywhere saying there is something wrong? Reminds me of David Brother’s great articles on race in comics. I am not saying the anyone in the process was malicious, just that don’t seem to know any better. Of course, any one paying attention to the modern wave of mainstream comics, can see how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Twisted Sisters co-founder Diane Noomin joined me to discuss her new book, Glitz-2-Go. We had some interference on the line, so the first 10 minutes, has warble in Diane’s voice. It is fine after that. I am really sorry about that. Technology is great and a pain at the same time.

Diane will be appearing on Monday in New York.

Come and get it, indeed! Be one of the very first people to get your hands on a copy of Glitz-2-Go – the long-awaited first-ever comix collection from the legendary Diane Noomin!

This groundbreaking artist will be making a rare appearance to celebrate the release, on Monday, March 5th at the Yeshiva University Museum in New York City.

Starting at 6:00 PM, you can view original panels of “Baby Talk”, one of Noomin’s most controversial cartoons, as part of the Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women exhibit currently running through April. And then at 6:45 PM, join this pioneering cartoonist for a reading and discussion!

The Yeshiva University Museum is located in the Center for Jewish History [ 15 West 16th Street, between 5th and 6th Ave ].

After having such a blast doing my year end review show with some fantastic critics of comics, I decided I want to try and do these more often. This episode serves as a bit of a pilot project, to see how many titles, take how much time. We came up with a relatively small list of work to discuss and ended up talking for nearly 3 hours. I really enjoyed this talk, and will be doing this again in the spring, hopefully with a couple more critics joining in.

Thanks to Joe McCulloch, Matt Seneca and Tucker Stone for all bring their best comics talk game to the table.

Books discussed

Joost Swarte – Is That All There Is?

Milo Manara – Volumes 1 and 2 of new reprint library (Indian Summer, El Gaucho, and more)

Marti – The Cabbie

Extreme Relaunch – Joe Keatinge and Ross Campbell‘s Glory and Brandon Graham and Simon Roy‘s Prophet

Ryan Cecil Smith – SF Supplementary File 2 a,b and c

George Herriman – Krazy Kat

And lastly – an odd discussion of 2000ad

Brooklyn based cartoonist and publisher, Austin English, joined me for a lively talk about his new publishing effort, Domino Books. Austin is also the editor of Windy Corner magazine and his latest work is The Disgusting Room, both out from Sparkplug comic books. Austin is always an interesting person to talk to and one of my favorite thinkers on comics.

Gay Genius editor Annie Murphy joined me to discuss her Kickstarter funded anthology that explorers the wide world of queer culture. It is a really great collection that touches on some topics that aren’t really covered in most contemporary anthologies.

Frank Santoro joined me and Brandon Graham in the studio for a lively discussion of all things comics.

Harvey James came on to chat about his new book from Blank Slate Books, A Long Day of Mr James – Teacher as well as his upcoming work, Zygote.

If you want to read his crazy thoughts on Daniel Clowes, you can check it out here.

RUB THE BLOOD editors Ian Harker and Pat Aulisio. This book is insane in all kinds of different ways. Really good companion piece to the new Prophet. We also talked about some of they projects that they are involved in, including Secret Prison, Bowman and much more. These guys have a good thing going in Philly.

Xeric grant winning Vancouver cartoonist and animator, Steve LeCouilliard came by my office to chat about his book, Much the Miller’s Son. It’s a fun and campy take on the classic Robin Hood myth.

If you want to send stuff for me read, I can be found at

Inkstuds
388-2416 Main st.
Vancouver BC
V5T 3E2
Canada

I wanted to draw attention to an amazing book I picked up today at a local book store. Martin Vaughn-James is one of those names mentioned that were creating “proto-grapic novels. The Cage has been discussed a lot and you can check out a great analysis here.

Vaughn-James artistic skill’s are pretty unparalleled in this work. Published in 1971 in an edition of 1000 by Canadian arthouse publisher, Coach House Books, The Projector is a trip into a dark surreal world that is probably home to the creations of Al Columbia.

The work loosely follows the main character, who i am weary of calling a protagonist, wandering through his world of angry piglike vengeful bosses, busy scurrying herding workers and the occasional drawing of rivers of poop flowing out of radios. The character shifts from being a regular bald human, not unlike Mr X, to a sad confused dog headed person, more like a Jason character then any idea’s of anthropomorphism that was coming out from underground contemporaries like Funny Aminal’s and Fritz the Cat. The illustration of the character show’s some kind of acknowledgement of earlier Disney work, taking this corporate symbol and thrusting him into the machine of his making, surrounded by movie projectors, and monstrous people with heads of tv’s, camera’s and other elements of communication technology. It’s conscious rejection of symbol’s in consumerism, or I guess understanding the grander idea of those elements.

There is a certain madness in this work, that makes me feel like I am in one of those Japanese subway photo’s where a guy is coming in head first through the window. Forced into this horrid existence of being lost in the machine.

The juxtaposition of these basic characters in meticulously drawn setting is amazing. I am blown away by how he renders the details, it’s like something from a Geof Darrow or Moebius comic.

Look at this!

If I try and think of some modern cartoonists to compare him with, John Hankiewicz and Anders Nilsen. He has that clinical precision of Hankiewicz’s work, formalistically playing with the movements of the characters within the page. You can feel a certain fluidity.

This looks like it takes place just down the river from the odd little world of Big Questions. I really hope someone eventually brings this work back into print. It would resonate now more than ever with readers.

I did read some other comics over the last couple of weeks.

Whores of Mensa issue 5 was a delightful read. I had read the earlier issues and remembered enjoying them a bunch. The work in this wasn’t particularly deep. The strengths in the anthology, is how the comfort I can find in the work. The cartoonists are all disarmingly honest in their story telling. My favorite was a 2 page story about folding napkins by Sarah Mcintyre about folding napkins.

I picked up the first 2 issue’s of Margaret Ashford-Trotter’s Thunder in the Building at Shortrun in Seattle last fall. I was drawn in by the skillful work in it. As you can tell, I am pretty slow at catching up to my reading pile. The first issue is a couple of short stories that show Margaret’s great skill’s as cartoonist. She has a lot of potential in this work, introducing some intelligent concepts and premises. The second issue came out 2010, three years after the first, and you can see the jump in writing. She revisits one of the stories from the first issue, following up the plot, but being a great independent piece of work in itself. I really hope she continue’s to make comics, there is a lot of potential in these books.

Everything We Miss by Luke Pearson was fantastic. This is one of the pricey books from Nobrow i was talking about on the show last week. It’s dark story that explores the regrets and pains of breakup mixed with the lost moments and things that could of been. This is really an excellent read. I will be reading the other titles he has at some point soon.

A little late, but here it is, my conversation with three cartoonists about some of their favourite works from 2011. I was joined by Aaron Costain, Dustin Harbin and John Martz. Just like the conversation with the critics, it was a lengthy talk with lots of different work covered.

Big Questions by Anders Nilsen
Forming by Jesse Moynihan
Pinocchio by Winshluss
Like a Sniper Lining Up His Shot by Jacques Tardi
Approximate Continuum Comics by Lewis Trondheim
Donald Duck Lost in the Andes by Carl Barks
Mickey Mouse by Floyd Gottfredson
Miss Don’t Touch Me 2 by Hubert et Kerascoet
Prison Pit 3 by Johnny Ryan
Mome 22 edited by Eric Reynolds
Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton
Paying For It by Chester Brown
Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists – Seth
Comics Class - Matt Forsythe
I Will Bite You - Joseph Lambert
Lose #3 – Michal DeForge

I got the Gag Rag by Jeff Lok over holidays and it almost got sucked up by the stack of comics. Its magazine made the book stick out and I pulled from the menacing towers of to read that are forming.

For the most part, it is a pretty enjoy little book of gags. I really enjoyed this one about print being dead. It made me gufah. He does some clever and nicely disturbing strips about a couple trapped on a desert island that takes some nontraditional twists. It’s not a deep book, but it is a fun book. I feel like he is on his way to do something more interesting maybe? The art is something like mix of something that I would find at a convention like the one in Brooklyn, mixed with sensibilities from guys like Doug Allen and Gary Leib.  I will read more comics by Lok and look forward to seeing where his style develops too. I presuming he’s a CCS alum, but don’t quote me on that.

To go along with the CCS theme, Andy Warner, another CCS alum sent me a couple of minis. The first that I read, was Two Stories. I found it to be somewhat forgettable. The first story at about 5 pages long, looks at the authors short relationship with an injured squirrel he had found outside of his home, and squirrel’s eventual demise. I just had a hard time connecting with it. It seemed a little handfisted. The second story, a longer one that show’s an exchange between 2 young friends whose relationship is nearing an end, and they both know, but don’t know how to verbalize. This one has some more promise and alludes to more in a nice way. I wish he had stretched out this story a little more and not bother with the other.

The other comic was a lot more fleshed out. The Man Who Built Beirut is an examination of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri and subsequent turmoil and national discord within Lebanon after the event. He did some good recounting of particular events from the fall out, but his story is really limited to length. As a mini-comic, Andy is doing some heavy lifting and glosses over some pretty important parts and points that can really add to the humanity within the situation. For the 3 dollar purchase, I think it is well worth checking out. I can see some good groundwork in this story that can be fine tuned into something grander. You can read all the stories mentioned on his blog.

My last CCSer for this week, was actually a collaboration between two grads, Betsey Swardlick and Colleen Frakes. I really enjoy Colleen’s stories and think she has some fine cartooning skills.The 12th issue Colleen’s ongoing series Tragic Relief was released as a part of Box Brown’s admirable Retrofit Comics project. Their story, Drag Bandits, is a fun little romp of gender identity play. The story follows a cross-dressing person that holds up travelers like a kind of gender ambivalent Robin Hood. The work is simple and smartly put together. I will continue to read anything that Colleen does and look forward to seeing how she continues to develop as a cartoonist and illustrator.

Continuing with the Retrofit, is Fungus by James Kochalka. I have a weird relationship with Kochalka’s work. Sometimes i think it’s amazing, other times, i get fed up with the cuteness overload and want to throw it out the window. This one was somewhere in between. I like the photocover mixed with his super minimal images. The colours are pleasing and it draws me in. The book has two stories, the first one is a quaint conversation between a couple of walking and talking mushrooms…sorry, fungus. The second story was a lot more interesting, showing Kochalka’s cunning skill with timing and humor. His work can be so good. I guess that’s why i get so mad when it fails. Ultimately, this book is a bit from column A and a bit from column B.

Aron Nels Steinke sent me his latest Big Plans, issue 5. Aron’s work is amazingly easy to read. I have said that before, and will say it again. He has developed a great style and this issue his longest yet. The one thing that strikes me as odd, is doing this as a numbered issue. The book comes in a nice perfect bound package that could probably be sold as a graphic novel, but instead he has continued his numbering from previous issues that were in a variety of sizes and forms. His work reminds me a little of that meditative quality that Porcellino is able to tap into, but only has a lot more happening than Porcellino would. I guess I should mention that he was able to fund this with Kickstarter and the same with Box Brown and Retrofit. It’s nice to see something good coming out of that. If you are one of those people that only buy “graphic novels” you can pretend this is one. I also read his Super-Duper Dog Park kids book. It looks fun, but then again, I’m not a kid. I will show it to my neighbor’s kid and get her input.

Something I did go through lately with was the Abrams release, Star Wars Art: Comics. We had very different takes on the book. I really like some of the work in there, especially when you could see the cartoonist had a personal connection with the material, like Paul Pope’s 2 page story. Some of the other work in it, was a little useless. Does the world really need any more Adam Hughes’ paintings of Princess Leia with a big rack. The kid was enthralled in this book, and that is where it really succeeds. Full page art of familiar faces done in a variety of styles. Treat this book like candy.

Meat Haus member in good standing, King Mini aka Vincent Stall’s Things You Carry is a really interesting wordless book that feels like a Fort Thunder book but without being super-metal or punk as fuck. The story weaves a faceless character through a bleak scene of futuristic crumbling hopelessness. There are some great concepts that Stall is putting out there and i would love to see more creators try and limit themselves this way, with no words and no facial expressions. It really forces Stall to draw environments that have emotions.

Motherlover is an anthology published by 2D cloud, who also released Things You Carry. They are an interesting crew out of Minneapolis that have a published some really great work. Motherlover is no exception. The comics are great. I really liked John and Luke Holden’s strip about the pubescent activities of a group of young men. They use this really visceral art style that evokes the primal emotions that the characters are feeling. The other comics are really strong too and in general, a well worth checking out book. One thing that I find confusing, is the need for a forward by Rob Clough. I think Rob does some great reviews of mini’s. I don’t agree with everything he says, but will say he is an asset in covering a huge volume of work. His forward reads like a description of the Minneapolis scene, which is filled with great talent, but serves as a distraction from the great illustrated work in the book. If you are going to have someone do an intro or forward, make sure it is actually needed. This one wasn’t. Also, I just noticed that it was funded through Kickstater too. How about that.

I read a stack of comics by Patrick Kyle and then did an interview. He’s good.

Back to the European comics. I finally sat down with the massive hardcover edition of Meobius and Jodorowsky’s classic collaboration, Incal. I read this over the week each night before going to bed. It was pretty amazing. I had the original Epic versions, but never got around to reading them. It was worth the wait. The size of the hardcover is worth it for this book. There are so many great subtle intricacies to his Moebius’ line work. He is really in top form for this book. The scope of it being done through time, show’s how he has grown as an artist over the years. The two creators make a good team on this story, you can’t really tell where one begins and the other ends. Meobius seem’s to be able to take the Jodorowsky script and run off and do something amazing. As happy as I am to see this work back in print, I do have some strong words for the Humanoids marketing plan. I don’t get why they do these staggered releases where they print over-priced hardcovers, then small cheaper editions, but do a short run of those. So essentially, anything interesting they publish, goes out of print really quick. Why not print more? or maybe step up the release schedule of new editions, if they can’t afford to do larger runs at once. I have no idea, but there must be a better way to do this that doesn’t end up with speculators buying up these limited run books and then selling them for ridiculous prices on ebay or amazon. It makes me sick to think that some guy grabbed the last copy from the comic store so he could flip it, and meanwhile, someone that wants to read a book out of general interest for the content, is left out in the dark. Great way to ostracise your audience! I really hope that future work will be more readily available and look forward to seeing more Meobius work brought back over for those that missed out on previous releases.

After reading Incal, I felt like jumping into some more Meobius, this time, it was his solo work. The first 3 Epic Collection are an odd assortment that all seem to lead into bigger work, provide a slew of openings. My favorite of the bunch is probably his classic Arzach work. Moebius takes the reader into this wonderfully lush imaginative world that feels dirty and wrong and dangerous. The work that is collected here can also be found in early issues of Heavy Metal. I think it was the  Heavy Metal work that really freaked out North American readers and made him a staple of influence. I am not going to say a lot more about Moebius, as other’s like Jog have been doing it better. Just do yourself a favor and read some work by him.

My last book, is a European release done right. Fantagraphics has been doing an amazing job with their series of Jacques Tardi reprints. I have loved them all for various reasons. The production is nice, the work is clear and not hard to find. Humanoids could learn a lot from them. I finally sat down with the first Adele Blanc-Sec book. I have had versions of these for a long time in other formats, published by Dark Horse, but not in colour. I really prefer this work in colour. The work isn’t Tardi’s deepest but still pretty enjoyable. The book collects 2 Albums, the first being Pterror Over Paris and the second, The Eiffel Tower Demon. Adele stories feel like they are a fancy french version of scooby doo, except Velma is the only member of the gang.

Wowee Zonk cofounder Patrick Kyle joined me to discuss not only the collective, but also his punk rawk solo comix work, Black Mass. Patrick is a skilled cartoonist who’s work is really coming into it’s own right now.  He also publishes work other toronto folks, under the moniker of Mother Books.

The Next Day collaborators, John Porcellino and Jason Gilmore, joined Pop SandBox publisher, Alex Jansen came together to talk about both The Next Day book and accompanying online interactive project. It is a very thoughtful piece of work delicately exploring the issue of suicide in a frank but sensitive tone.

This week’s stack is very European. That shouldn’t be too surprising. I have been on a bit of a Humanoids/Heavy Metal kick lately. Every time one of my local comic stores is having a sale, I try and buy up as much out of print European stuff as possible. This most recent post-holiday shopping season was filled with stellar goodies.

The top of my stack was the original Catalan edition of Pepe Moreno’s Rebel. I have been wanting to get this book for quite a while. there is a modern edition available, but it has an atrocious colouring job. It looks like something that Bryan Talbot photoshoped, or maybe who ever did that humanoids version of Incal.

Here is an original page(image stolen from L. Nichols’ Livejournal)

Ok, look at those great colours, you can really feel the time period. Love it. 

Ouch, what happened here. Shitty colouring mixed with an image of one of the Trade Center Tower’s blowing up. I don’t know what to say. As far as the book itself goes, I loved it. Published in the early 80′s it has a great style post-apocalypse. It follows a brief period in the life of the leader of a rebellious New York gang, with the brilliant name of Rebel. But there is more than just a name to our protagonist. He has an important and mysterious past. It is pretty much like any other half dozen post-apocalyptic concept that takes place in New York. So you know it  has to be awesome.

I had picked up a couple of those Igor Kordey Cable tpb’s on a whim. I am trying to buy as little marvel/dc stuff as possible, but I can’t resist a good bargain. They were ok, not great. I like there are some big idea’s that the creators are trying to work out, but really failing. I have a hard time with hamfisted political interventions. The first collection attempts to discuss the Shining Path in Peru. They send Cable into Peru to intervene in the political mess like some kind of colonial master that seems to know better than the locals, complete with scene where he is captured by the Shining Path and their top mutant talent is overcome with his great manliness in a completely unnecessary sexual encounter. I you can’t tell, I was just annoyed by this lack of originality.

The second collection, Cable the End, explores the messy situation in Macedonia, that figuratively stands in for the Croatian debacle that hit creators, Darko Macan and Igor Kordey on a personal level. I was a little more hopeful with this book, and over all, it was better than the previous, with a unique look at ways of combating in a battle of ethnic genocide. I like how they were able to touch on just how much of a cluster of problems the Balkan debacle was/is. Darko had previously worked on this topic in his excellent Grendel story, Devils and Deaths. Pick it up if you see it for cheap. I am sure there are many dollar bins filled with such a comic.

Back to my Euro-kick is the one and only Alejandro Jodorowsky. I picked up books 1 and 2 of the DC/Humanoid editions of collaboration with Georges Bess, Son of the Gun. Like any good Jodorowsky creative project, this book is a splendor of religious imagery. It can get a little tedious at times. I understand the idea and get it fine, but really, it’s enough. The story follows a young mafia muscle man in brazil, working his way from bottom of the rung, being found in a garbage dump as baby, left to his own devices, because of prehensile tale. He is raised by the midget prostitute that finds him, and a pack of dogs from which he suckles for milk.

As he rises in power, he eventually must go down and hits rock bottom. He goes from Sinner, to Saint, blah blah blah. Allegory runs a muck. The end. The art is great, I want to see more by Bess. But if you want the story, just go watch the Holy Mountain.

When Francois Ayroles was at TCAF a couple of years ago, I totally screwed up on not even talking to him. I have since picked up his Raymond Chandler adaptation, Playback, which takes place in my own hometown of Vancouver. He was actually able to capture a bit of the Vancouver dreariness quite nicely, for a french cartoonist adapting a 70 year old screenplay.

The wonderful gents at the Beguiling published a little book of drawings by Francois, called Key Moments from the History of Comics. It is really quite delightful. Odd little interpretations of comic history and legend.

Lastly a little old school Heavy Metal. Attila by Jose Ortiz and Antonio Segura. This is the first and I think only book that collects from the long running HM story line. Time for some more post-apocalyptic fun, only this one takes place in the middle of nowhere and reads more like a western than futuristic nightmare world. I can’t really judge the story by just reading the first book, and hope more are collected at some point, but highly unlikely. Attila is a sprawling revenge story that feels unsettled, like more should of happened or the characters should be more developed, other than the ample bosom. That seems to be more than sufficiently developed.

What to come next week, I have no idea. time to pull out a stack of mini’s.

Vancouver artist, musician, designer and more, stopped by my office for a chat about his first graphic novel, The Listener. David also performs as one half of the noted Vancouver institution, Mecca Normal.

It’s time for yearly round ups. I am trying to do two best of’s each year, the first with some Critics and second with Cartoonists. On the Critics portion, I was joined by Timothy Hodler, Matt Seneca and Joe McCulloch for a spellbinding 2 hours of talk.

Here is the list of what we discuss.

Thickness 1 and 2 Edited by Ryan Sands and Michael Deforge
Chimo – David Collier
The Heavy Handby Chris Cilla
Color Engineering by Yuichi Yokoyama
Congress of Animals by Jim Woodring
Kramers Ergot 8 edited by Sammy Harkham
2001 by Blaise Larmee
Big Questions by Anders Nilsen
Paying For It by Chester Brown
Prison Pit # 3 by Johnny Ryan

Nate Powell, joined me for a chat about his latest books, Silence of Our Friends, due out in the new year and his recent release from Top Shelf, Any Empire. This was a really interesting discussion on values and artistic representation. Nate is a very smart creator and puts together some fine books.

Geof Darrow’s work can be described as a forerunner of the Fusion that Frank Santoro and I like to talk about. His work is a mix of Moebius mixed with the frenetic energy of the finer Japanese Manga. I first got into his work, like most, with the excellent Hard boiled. He always grabs me with images that are full of the most ridiculous ideas that under most hands, would probably be a mess but Darrow is able hold it all together. The work available by Darrow is few and far between, but his impact as a cartoonist can be found in the work of many young cartoonists that would stare transfixed on a given image studying every nuance.

This interview was conduct back in February of 2011 when he was set to appear at the Emerald City Comicon and was originally aired on the Inkstuds radio show. When we did the interview, he was pretty close lipped about Shaolin Cowboy. Since then it has been recently revealed that Dark Horse will be publishing future volumes of the series.

Special thanks to Charles Bottomley for continued support in providing excellent transcriptions. Charles also did the transcription work on the Inkstuds book.

Robin McConnell: I guess to run down the comics work, Hard Boiled, Shaolin Cowboy, Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, Bourbon Thret, as well as a plethora of other goodies that came out in France that I have not been able to get my hands on.

Geof Darrow: [laughs] That’s about it, to tell you the truth. There’s a lot of fake titles I came up with that people seem to think exist but never ever…it was joke.

They’re kind of … hopes? Comics you want to do one day, you just know you’ll never have a chance?

No. It was just a joke. The first book I ever did over there…I always liked the Tintin books, because on the back they had this nice drawing of all these titles of Tintin you could buy. So on the first I did, I put all the titles of books of these books that didn’t exist, so it seemed like the character existed as long as Tintin. But you read any of the titles, I can’t believe anybody would think they actually existed. But people didn’t! People would try to order them. The bookstores were kind of annoyed that I’d done that, because they were getting orders for these things. It was funny. I thought it was funny.

Was that something you were doing with Bourbon Thret (said en francais) as well as …

Yeah yeah yeah. Bourbon, actually.

Okay. Sorry, I was trying to be all proper.

No, it’s okay. Bourbon Thret actually is The Shaolin Cowboy in England.

So it’s an earlier incarnation of it or is it the exact same character?

Yeah. It’s basically the same guy.

I want to get a little background on you, because in the time I’ve been putting together this interview, I couldn’t really find very much on you as far as info online, interviews, so I don’t know your background and what got you into comics and what excited you about comics.

Well, like anybody, I grew up reading them and I wanted to draw them because I just loved…I mean, I grew up reading, well, the beginning of Batman and Superman. I was into dinosaurs and stuff, so I used to buy anything that had a dinosaur or monster on the cover. Then I discovered … actually, it was by mistake, because I was at the dentist and next door there was a pharmacy and they only had about three comics and one was like Sugar & Spike or something … some girlie comic. The one they had was a superhero comic that was the Fantastic Four annual where Sue and Reed get married. So it was the whole Marvel universe in one book and I had no idea what that was and I bought it and I became a huge fan of Marvel comics, especially Jack Kirby. That was actually the launching part of my great passion for comics.

I think Kirby’s a good launching point.

Yes, he is and I was fortunate enough to work for him at Hanna-Barbara.

I was going to ask about that.

Gracious! He would come in and just the sweetest man. Just a really sweet guy who should have been treated way better than he was by Marvel and the industry, if you ask me… But he never seemed bitter. He never seemed bitter about it. He basically created that whole universe and y’know…

Going into animation, did you want to go into comics as well or was that something…

Yeah, I wanted to go into comics, but this was the early ‘80s. Getting into comics was like winning the lottery. It was really…you had to fit into a certain house style and…I remember showing my stuff to Archie Goodwin and he said, “Well, y’know, I really like it. I just wouldn’t know what to do with it,” because it wasn’t…in DC they just y’know…in those days, too, if you did get into comics, they would never ever put you on…some guys break in drawing on Wolverine or Batman. Back then they’d stick you on some back-up feature and you’d just have to work your way up to some top-selling book. I was never ever offered any comics for them.

Were you exposed to any of the European stuff in the ‘70s when you were…

Way in the early ‘70s, I had a book by Maurice Horn called The History of Comics, which was an amazing book at the time, because it was the first time I was exposed. I grew up in Iowa and they didn’t have anything there. This book just had images from comics from all around the world and one of them was Jean Giraud, who’s known as Moebius, and they had pages of Lieutenant Blueberry. I was like “Holy Jeepers! This guy is…” They had Tintin, they had all these guys. It wasn’t just the U.S. stuff. It was everywhere, from Spain and I was really impressed with them and Bud Plant, around ’74, he used to…in this catalog, he would sell European comics and I remember I saw that he had a couple of these Blueberry books. I couldn’t speak French, but I didn’t care. I just wanted the drawings. So I sent for them. They were like a buck and a half apiece. He stopped selling them because nobody was buying them. Later on, when I was showing him them…if they couldn’t read them, they weren’t interested in ‘em, which always boggled my mind, because the drawings are just so good and storytelling, you could sort of follow it along. So that’s how I got into European stuff. I was into that stuff way before…

Before Métal Hurlant came out? Before Heavy Metal?

Well, before Heavy Metal. I was buying Métal Hurlant from the very beginning. That was the first published comics I’d ever had was in Métal Hurlant.

Oh, okay. Was any of that work reprinted in Heavy Metal?

Yeah, one of them was. There’s one thing printed in Heavy Metal and it was a Bourbon Thret story, the first one I’d ever done. But Métal Hurlant [laughs]…it was printed in Heavy Metal, it’s like I don’t know 15 pages long. But I’d drawn it as four pages. It was four enormous pages [Robin laughs] of about 15 panels on each page. To this day, it’s my preferred version of it because it’s just so nuts. I mean, every panel is about postage stamp-sized and there’s hundreds of figures and it was really crazy. It was printed in black and white in Métal Hurlant.

So were you doing your super-detailed work pretty early on?

I think so, but I never thought of it that way. I never thought of it being that detailed. It was what I thought it was supposed to be. That was I guess probably around 1983. That’s when I also I eventually moved to Franceso…

I’m curious. You mentioned working with Jack Kirby at Hanna-Barbara. Were you also around Alex Toth at that time, too, at all?

Y’know Alex, he was there. But Alex…everybody loved his work but he…

He was miserable?

He was miserable but he made himself miserable. He’s so talented and he just kind of would shoot himself in the foot. Because I used to work with guys that worked with him way back and there was a movie that came out called How to Murder Your Wife with Jack Lemmon and he plays a cartoonist who draws this strip that looks a lot like kind of like Rip Kirby and originally Alex Toth was drawing it. During the movie, you get to see these comic strips that he was drawing. They originally were supposed to be Alex Toth. He started drawing them and then he realized he didn’t think he was getting paid enough and so he asked for more money and in Hollywood you just can’t do that. They fired him and the guy they were going to have before, that got after that. He’d done that a few times and he would do stuff like that. He would feel like he was taken advantage of. So when he was there…he had stopped drawing for Hanna Barbara and I was working on a project where they were trying to do giant robots because they were very popular, and they wanted to do stuff like the Japanese. I was the only guy there that knew about that stuff and they brought me in to sort of…and I had a lot of those toys. They brought me in and I had these toys and I showed them how to break apart and put it back together and Alex was there and he looked over, at the end of the meeting. He said, “They told me you know Moebius.” I said, “Yeah, yeah.” He said, “How much money did he get paid to work on Tron?” [Robin laughs] And I said, “Well,” I said, “I think they were paying him this…” He was “Ugh!” He was annoyed because he had never gotten that kind of money. But Moebius, he has a whole other idea. You give him something to do, he does it. He does it and y’know…he’s a lovely man. Alex, he’s so bitter and it’s just such a shame that he didn’t keep drawing. He started Torpedo and he jumped ship on that…I don’t know the whole story behind it. I always heard it was something like he didn’t like the content. He thought it was immoral or something like that…

I heard the same thing. It’s pretty much he did not like the excess nudity or whatnot.

And then so many people have had a relationship with him that have gone south because they made a comment that he didn’t like and boy! Once that door closed, it was closed forever.

I’ve heard that and that’s why I was kind of curious of your experience with him.

No, I mean, like I said, my experience was…and I spent god knows how many hours at the Xerox machine copying [Robin laughs] making copies of his model sheets and his storyboards. We’re total polar opposites drawing-wise, because he distills it down to the very essence and I had every ingredient in the book in there. But yeah, an amazing artist.

So it was Tron where you first met Moebius. What was that like for you as…

Well, Tron, I mean I was working at Hanna Barbara doing character designs and my girlfriend at the time, her best friend’s husband was an engineer who was working at Disney helping to build Epcot Center in Florida. So he was a guy who had a fairly high position at Disney. I heard through the grapevine that Moebius was at Disney. I was like “Oh my God! I just want to meet this guy,” because at this point nobody had seen him outside of Europe. He was this mysterious figure. Just I could get to meet him! So I called up my friend, and I said, “There’s this guy working there at Disney. His name is Jean Giraud. He goes by the name of Moebius. I could just get in to meet him and just shake his hand, because he was such an influence.” He said, “Well, I’ll see what I can do.” I didn’t hear anything. A day goes by. I get a call and he says, “Oh, we’re having dinner with him on Saturday night.” I was like “Are you sure?” Yeah. So we met at my apartment and I still kept thinking, this can’t be! It’s something…it’s too good to be true for somebody. It can’t be the real guy. That’s how we started our friendship was him working at Tron. He invited me to a couple of parties and we ran a 5K run with the director. I think it annoyed the director, because he was like “Who’s this guy? This guy you drug [sic] along? Who is this guy?” Movie people are like “Wait a minute, whoa! Who’s this guy?” I think the Wachowskis did that. When I was working on The Matrix, they were going over to Jennifer Tilly’s house to play poker and they said, “Do you want to come along?” Steve Skroce and I—another great artist. Steve Skroce—and we said, “Yeah!” So we didn’t know anybody and we went over there and the look on Jennifer Tilly’s face when she saw us!

A couple of cartoonists!

She was like “Oh! How nice! Strangers!” [laughs] The funny thing is, she went on to become…she plays professional poker.

Yeah, that’s what she does now. She plays poker.

I did beat her a few hands. So I felt kind of good.

I think Steve shops at the same comic store that I do.

Ah! I haven’t talked to him. He called me yesterday. I’ve got to call him back. I don’t think he goes into comic stores any more. He was telling me…

Do you still keep up with comics?

Oh, me? Oh yeah. I go in and look. I don’t buy a lot of stuff because I’m sort of…there’s so many of them and I kind of lost track. I was always ask at the shops I go into, “So what’s the deal on this?” because this whole red Hulk green Hulk thing [Robin laughs] just boggles my mind. They’re going to step into this same trap that Superman did with red kryptonite and green kryptonite. There’s going to be too many Hulks! In France, they have a saying that you don’t add water to your wine. They seem to be adding a lot of water to that Hulk wine! It’s certainly not going to be the same vintage as when Kirby started it.

I think it’s more water than wine now.

Have they explained it?

I’m probably the worst person to ask about the red Hulk.

Yeah, I don’t know. The whole Green Lantern thing, they’re all wearing mood rings or something, right? I’ve been fascinated by the fact that each week you can go in and get one of those rings.

But would you wear them?

No. I don’t think they were going to give them to me. I’m fascinated by the phenomenon of it. I’m always fascinated that there are certain characters who were always second-tier characters. If they wait long enough, they’re going to become the hottest thing since Justin Beiber. He’s Canadian, right, Justin Beiber?

Yep.

Did the whole country go into mourning when he didn’t win the Grammy?

No, because Arcade Fire won the Grammy and they’re Canadian as well.

Yeah, now that’s a good band.

It was fantastic. When you moved to France, could you speak French at all?

A little bit, a little bit, yeah. But my girlfriend who became my wife, eventually, I met her and she was very patient and would speak French with me. As soon as they hear – as soon as you hear someone struggling with the language, people would just kick in but she just was very patient with me. She speaks English very very well. Between that and watching American TV that had been translated into French, I would watch it and I knew all the shows and I would know what they were talking about, and I would “Oh! How! That’s what…” And they’d run them twice! They were so cheap, the stations at the time, the evening programming was also the morning programming the next day. So I would sometimes watch the same shows twice. That was very helpful.

See how it resonates with you.

Well, I could…I’d pick up the words I didn’t get the first night.

Moving to France, was that a huge life decision.

Yeah, it was, but I had been engaged to a girl and we were going to get married and then it kind of y’know…it was one of those things where I didn’t feel like I was quite ready. Because I couldn’t keep a steady job. I worked at Hanna Barbara but I was always laid off. I’d start work at May or June and by October I’d be gone. I’d be like on employment six months out of the year and that’s when I tried drawing comics, during that period.

That sounds like the standard for animation now.

Yeah, I and the girl I was going to marry came from a conservative family and I…and they didn’t dislike me, they just saw me as–I’m far from it—a hippy. This guy’s never gonna…you can’t depend on this guy. She wanted the house and the kids and her biological time clock was ticking and I just said, no, I can’t. And that’s when I said, “Oh, I’ve got nothing tying me down, I’ll see what it’s like to live in another country,” and I moved to France. And I had contact with Moebius and he had worked with this publisher who had liked my work a lot, said that he would print me and that’s why I went.

What was the experience like working with him as far as affecting your work as a cartoonist?

Moebius? God, he was just such a huge influence. I don’t think anybody resonated with me like him. Kirby quite a bit, but y’know Moebius is … you know who Alejandro Jodorowksy is?

Yeah, El Topo.

Yeah! Well, y’know, I know him quite well, but the first time I met him the first word—he’d seen my artwork and the first words out of his mouth to me were … What are the language restrictions, are you censored?

No, we’re in Canada.

Okay. All right. The first thing he said to me was, “Darrow! Darrow! Why do you want to fuck your father?” because we were doing this thing as City of Fire and he just saw it as y’know he’s going to—it’s incestuous working with him. “He’s going to eat you alive! He will eat you alive!” [Robin laughs] That’s what I thought was so funny. But I did these drawings and he would ink them. That’s what he did and he told me later, they were so complicated, he said, he couldn’t work on them longer than an hour or two a day. He would get these things and he’d start out his morning inking these drawings and some of them took him two or three weeks to finish and he really enjoyed it. We still talk about doing it again. Y’know, it’s like with the jackpot because he just … he didn’t take a turd and turn it into a swan. He’s just so amazing. But he put me on the map on Europe. People kept noticing me because I worked with Moebius, like later on I did with Frank Miller! I’m like an artistic remora! I attach myself to the stars and then I’m like “I’m through with you buddy!”

Oh, I’m sure you’d be happy to work with Moebius again.

Yeah, y’know. I think Frank would…we talk about it a little bit but I think for Frank it was a lot harder than Moebius, because he never knew what I was going to do. “No! You changed that!” “Yeah, wasn’t I supposed to?” “No!”

I do have a bunch of Hard Boiled-related questions which I’m going to do. I just want to finish off with the Moebius stuff. How big were the City of Fires, the original?

Oh they were, they were pretty big. I guess some of them were I don’t know, like 13 inches by 24 inches? They were like a sheet of…not quite a full sheet of Strathmore, but most of them were pretty close to it.

I’m curious how you plan out a page like that with the really complex denseness…

I don’t. I figure out the composition. I figure that geometrical, the horizon line, that this is going to be a down shot and this is the big shape, the building is here and then I just start in the corner or the middle and draw. There’s a lot of drawing that I do that ends up being erased because you overlap something over it and then [laughs] everything you draw onto that overlapping shape you’ve got to take out. That’s always kind of hard.

Is there kind of like an almost like automaticness to it where you just go and go and go and fill up the space and just kind of see what comes up?

I don’t know. It starts out really really sane and kind of simple and until I actually have drawn something where I think “Oh, this doesn’t look too bad,” I’m always very nervous. “Oh, this is another crappy job that I’ve done.” It might still be crappy then, but then I think, “Oh, this is kind of interesting.” And then I’m also like “Oh! This guy…this lady’s carrying a shopping bag. What if there’s a pig, there’s a pig in that shopping bag! This guy over here, he’s smoking a baby! This baby’s a living hookah!” And stuff like that. It’s sort of what do you call it, off the top of my head a lot of it. I don’t plan out, “Oh I’m going to draw…” Like in Hard Boiled, a lot of that stuff just kind of came. It wasn’t planned! [laughs]

Do you ever, with the pages in Hard Boiled, did you ever look at the end of it and go “Where did that come from?”

No. What happened is. I don’t remember a lot of what I draw. A lot of times I go, “Oh Jesus! Why did I draw that? Why did I draw this stuff? Look wow…look wow…look wow…look at this little thing over there. Why did I draw that at all?”

So you met Miller through Moebius.

Yeah yeah yeah. It was one of those classic Moebius moments where—he just called me up. He was living in Los Angeles and I was there. I’d talked to Frank on the phone, because I kind of…I don’t know how I got his…because he was living in L.A.and Moebius was living in Los Angeles and I would move back to France…no, no, I was there. I was living there during the summers, because I would come back in the summers from Paris and go to San Diego and I was there and I got a call, Moebius was like “Frank Miller is coming over to the house. Would you like to meet him?” I said “Yeah!” So I go out there and I get there and Frank and Lynn Varley come in, and of course, Moebius never showed up, so it was just me and Frank. And Moebius says [sic] “Why?” “That’s how you get to know each other.” with Frank, we’d talk and he never really knew what I did. I never told him. The same with Moebius when I met him. I never told him I was a cartoonist because I always figured it would make him uncomfortable, because I don’t want to meet a guy who’s going to show me his stuff and blah blah blah, and I never did. In both cases, Moebius had asked me, he said, “What do you do?” “I draw.” “Oh, can I see what you do?” And then I showed him. The same with Frank. I remember I called up Frank one night, I was back in Paris, because Dark Knight had come out and I called him just to tell him how great I thought it was. And he goes, “No, wait a minute, you drew this!” And I said, “That’s you!” I said, “Yeah!” He said, “I didn’t realize that you drew!” Then we started talking and that’s how…and later when I go back to Los Angeles, we’d go out to lunch quite a bit and he said, “Would you ever draw anybody else’s stuff?” I said, “Yeah, I guess. It depends on…” He said, “Well, how about me?” I said, “Yeah!” “So what do you want to do?” I said, “Well, I want to do something that’s got lots of action!” He said, “Okay.” That’s how…and the first thing we were actually going to do was something that John Romita Jr. was going to do, was that Daredevil story.

Oh, okay, because that was worked on for quite a long time, wasn’t it?

Well, he had the idea for it and he wanted to know if I wanted to do it. I originally said yeah, because I’d like to have drawn Daredevil. But the thing is is he’s never in costume and I thought, if I’m going to do a superhero, I want to do one in costume. [laughs] And he wasn’t, so I didn’t. Then the other thing he was going to do was a thing that he had an idea with Steve Gerber and it was kind of a Superman thing. It wasn’t Superman, but it was a character like that and y’know we were all going to do it together for some reason Steve never…it just became impossible. Then he came up with this thing. He came up with Hard Boiled. And there you go.

And it was all downhill from there? [laughs]

Yeah. Y’know, the funny thing about Hard Boiled was he was never meant to be—I mean, I drew him, but he was never meant to be a robot. [Robin laughs] But I drew this stuff and he goes, “My God! How can he still be alive? How can he still be…” Who cares? I mean, it’s just a comic book. I mean, I don’t care. Give me a glass…I mean, the first few drawings I did of him, he’s got glass sticking out of him and he’s all shot to hell and I’d watch those John Woo movies. I always liked the Chinese movies. In American movies, if you get in the gut, it’s game over. You’re dead. But in Chinese movies, the only thing slowing you down is the amount of lead that’s in your body from getting shot. They walk out together, just soaked in blood. “Oh, see you next week, Joe!” That’s was my take on it. Why not? It’s like a Chinese John Woo movie. He gets all shot up and…but Frank and me we got to make him a cyborg and then he became a robot because still there’s no way [laughter] Yeah, there you go.

How much of a lead time did you have working on it? Because I know the third issue came out well after the second…

Oh, I was working on the European—the people were telling me how late I was. I said, I wasn’t late. I never said I would finish it at that point. I said I’d do it when I did it. As it was, there was a whole lot more that I planned to draw that Frank said, “You just gotta stop! Or this thing will never come out!” Towards the end of it there’s a huge massacre—all those dead guys. I figured to draw all of that. I was going to show him killing like a gazillion guys and you’ll never get it done.

How in depth was the scripts he provided for you. Were you basically having a lot of leeway?

Well, y’know, like there are sequences in there that are not in the script because he said, “Well, he does this…” and I always had a hard time kind of well…like there’s a chase in the second issue where he was in that cop car. I don’t know if you remember. All that was stuff that I just drew. I mean, it’s not in the script. He says, “He gets in this car and it crashes into this supermarket.” Then I drew all that stuff because I used to…“Well, there’s not enough action. We’ve got to have him doing some stuff.” I just drew it, because I never showed Frank anything. He never saw anything until I was done drawing it and that kind of drove him crazy, because he really like to share stuff and I don’t like to share things until they’re done. Because I’m always afraid they’ll say “Oh, this stinks!” And I’ll, “Yeah, he’s right.” And then I’ll start it over. So the best thing to do something is just draw it and here it is, like it or hate it, that’s it, and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to print it and well …

We all like it.

Well, it’s nice for you to say. I know I’ve kind of had a recent run…[laughs] I did some for DC Comics and they didn’t run it. I did a Superman cover and they gave me—the editor was a really nice guy, but he gave me some reason why they didn’t run it and I was like “Come on!”

That was recently?

Oh yeah yeah. I liked it. I thought it was funny. It was this whole thing, Superman is on a walkabout, kind of rediscovering America. They asked a bunch of guys to do like—Kevin Nowlan was one of them and they said, you can draw whatever you want. Superman, that’s the thing. He’s rediscovering America. You just can’t show him in New York. So I thought about it. I thought, “Well, flying in front of Mount Rushmore, all this stuff…” I said, “I know!” I drew him having tea with this cat lady in this room, she’s like a little old lady and she’s serving him tea and cookies and he’s sitting on her couch having tea with her and there’s all these cats around and all these pictures of her family on the wall. I thought it was funny! That’s kind of America. They didn’t run it. The issue was supposed to run and they had to change it, it was Lois Lane-centric and they had pffft! I was like…and the editor was a really nice guy, he was very “We’re going to use it someday and blah blah blah.” But I don’t think they ever will, because I’m sure someone will say, “Wait a minute…”

[laughs] “Nothing’s getting hit!”

The other ones are pretty much what you’d thought they would be, him flying with clouds—and they’re all beautiful, I just thought mine was kind of funny. But it’ll never see the light of day.(ed. this will be actually be seeing print. found out after interview was posted)

Oh, one day they’ll throw it as a bonus feature in something. When doing the work in Hard Boiled, were you ever kind of do backgrounds and then do the characters separate?

No, I always draw the character first and then the backgrounds come in.

Because I was wondering about the scene where they were in junkyard where the…

Well, that one, that’s an exception to the rule. I did that one animation style. I drew a long pan of a junkyard and then I started and I just moved the background behind him. But I redrew it every time! I re-inked it every time. That drove me crazy. I could’ve just I suppose Xeroxed it, but I felt like it should be inked each time. So it kind of inches along. But that was a rare example. Generally I draw the characters and then I put the background on the drawing.

That’s interesting. So you never reproduce images to re-use in stuff, like with a Xerox.

No, I hate to say, I always think that’s cheating. But that’s just me.

I agree.

I’m like “Oh man!” because I’ll always see guys and they do this, I can’t, if it’s the same background and it’s just the figures that kind of change, I’ll re-ink it each time behind them, so if you put one over the other, they wouldn’t register, because I changed it a little bit. But that’s me. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. That’s just a personal thing.

There’s a certain loss in the art, I guess. I don’t know, I always felt cheated when I’d read a comic and you’d just see that the head would change a little bit, maybe an eye would go up or…

Oh, well, it depends if he’s kind of trying to make a point. If he’s got a face and he’s not smiling and all of a sudden…Some of them play with that, too, where they just have…like they did…well, I’ve never done…where you have it like the guy’s just a face, and the next panel’s the same face, and the next panel is the same face and then in the fourth panel, he’s raised his eyebrow, just like you’re kind of giving a sense of time. That doesn’t work very well in American comics. The Japanese can do it in manga, but I don’t…Americans don’t do it too much. I don’t think.

Sometimes, but not too much. It’s more of a modern thing than historical, I think, or the last 15 years, especially with Photoshop.

I would ink it each time. I wouldn’t just y’know Xerox and put it in there. [Robin laughs]

Film: Metropolis and Blade Runner. I feel like they’re both big impacts on your work, stylistically.

Ah, not as much as you’d think, because for me, it’s not Metropolisat all. Blade Runner certainly a little bit, but mostly it’s Moebius, because Blade Runner without Moebius just does not exist. I worked with Ridley Scott on a thing and he loved that guy’s stuff. If you go back to The Long Tomorrow and The Incal, that’s Blade Runner and that’s always been my big influence was that. Frankly, I didn’t like Blade Runner. I mean, I liked the way it looked, but I always thought, I thought it was awful slow. [Robin laughs] And I always wanted some action to it. I worked with Ridley Scott and we were talking about… now he’s an amazing guy. I learned this from him. Whenever he called me up, he would explain who he was. He never took for granted, “Oh, this is Ridley Scott. I’m a film director and I directed…” He gave me his resume on the phone! I’m going, “I know who you are Mr. Scott.” He goes, “yes?” I thought, Wow! Now that’s class! He just did not take for granted…and what he was talking about, he goes, “I worked on this film, it was called Blade Runner.” “Yeah! I know!” We’re talking and he’s talking about Blade Runner. He says, “What do you think?” I said, “Y’know, I thought it was a really beautiful movie…” And it is, I appreciate it more than when it first came out. I’d seen Indiana Jones and I thought it would going to be kicking ass and taking phone numbers. It’s a different kind of movie and I said to him, “I just wish there’d been more action!” He said, “Exactly! So did I! They wouldn’t let me put it in there! I wanted more action and they said, ‘No, no, you gotta do this.’” I was like “Wow!” Then he explained to me what the action was going to be and I was like “Well, I don’t know if that would’ve sped it up.” He’s an amazing guy. I mean, the stuff that he had wanted to do…well, that’s a whole another story. Yeah.

You’ve been working in film quite extensively.

Sorta. Yeah. Not as much as like … I mean, when I work in them, and there’s these guys out there that work nonstop. I don’t know how they do it. They go from working in Blade Runner to Look Who’s Talking 6 to The Fairy Godfather. It’s like how do you go from working on something that’s really cool like Blade Runner to suddenly having to do some teenage comedy, that I don’t even understand why they have to be doing these drawings for them. If you’re a director, directing a comedy, you don’t need to storyboard that. You should be able to…come on! You’re not dealing with visual effects where you have to know where all the elements are. That’s completely understandable. “Well, we’re doing these Who’s Momma … ?” Those momma movies.

Oh God, yeah.

Y’know, those! I know guys – why would you have to storyboard that? But they do.

So you’re pretty specific on what you want to work on?

Well, no, I just y’know…I get called for…I never looked to break into movies. They just called and I frankly never thought I could do it. Because the first movie thing I actually worked on was Ridley Scott and that thing never got made and I frankly didn’t enjoy it much because it was a pretty hackneyed project, but you find out that these guys all have about 50 things going and they’re hoping one of them will catch. So I always like when people go “Oh Geof! They optioned my comic!” I go, “Well, don’t go buy that mansion because y’know, they’ll option anything! You can get anything optioned! They’ll throw a couple of grand at ya! And…

Well, there’s many comics where you hear about, “Oh, there’s a movie coming out about it…” I thought I heard about that ten years ago!

Until you’re about halfway through the actual filming, anything can happen. It’ll fall apart.

Just look at Terry Gilliam’s Don Quixote thing, I think that’s the best example.

Well, y’know, you can be set to go, you can have all the actors. You can even be in wherever it is you’re going to film. It’s a week before, and you’re getting ready to go and bang! You get a call from the studio. We’re shutting it down. I was over in Australia and they were doing those Matrix sequels and the next thing coming in there was The Fountain. It was Brad Pitt was going to be in it, Darren Aronofsky was directing it. They were building the sets and they realized “Whoa! This is a $90 million independent film!” And they shut it down! I worked on one version of Superman, but the one with Nicolas Cage, they were building the sets, they were going to go. Then bang! It got shut down. It was still cheaper to shut something down and spend $5 million then to make a movie that they think is going to tank. It’s a huge investment, I mean, movies!

It’s amazing. Myself, I just look and see money going down a sink. I don’t know. It’s too bad.

I remember one time I was working on the Matrix films and they were the sequels and they were getting grief from the studio, about “Oh, you can’t do this. It’s going to cost too much” and they were going to shut it down. I said, “Well, if you want, you can cut my salary if that’ll help.” They go, “No, that’s what’s going to…that kind of cost is negligible.” They appreciated you asking but it’s just not going to do anything.

That’s been a pretty steady partnership, working with the Wachowskis?

Well, yeah, I’ve worked on up ‘til– Speed Racer was the last thing that they’ve done. They haven’t made a movie since and with the climate that’s out there, Speed Racer did not do well, so you’re only as good as your last…they’re trying to get projects going. They’re having a hard time because “Speed Racer bombed!” “Okay…”

It’s the unfortunate world of it…Tell me a little bit about the background to Shaolin because you said Bourbon Thret was the earlier version. When did he first appear to you as someone you wanted to focus on.

Well, way back when, originally I’d done it—originally, it was actually David Scroggy. It used to be Pacific Comics, which had done The Rocketeer originally. They were down in San Diego and I knew Dave Stevens. I’d met him. He was working at Filmation at the time. He said, “Oh yeah, go down and talk to them.” I went down and I showed it to them. It was this thing I wanted to do and I showed them them the drawings. They said, “Oh yeah, we’d like to do that.” Of course, the company went under before it ever came out. But I always liked—I’m a big fan of Japanese films, especially Zatoichi. I wanted to do something kind of like Zatoichi. But I also liked spaghetti westerns. He’s got to have a six gun and a sword! I really thought it out well and that’s basically y’know…I like the idea of, it’s all the way back to Yojimbo and Seven Samurai. For me, the archetype of all modern heroes is Yojimbo. I think you can’t get by that movie without…he’s just such an amazing…that’s such a great movie!

That kind of antihero?

That just kind of comes in. I love it! I think people have lost it. I just like that you don’t know what he’s done. You don’t know who he is or where he’s come from or why he’s doing what he’s doing. You get an idea just by watching the film—they give little hints—but I still to this day love the idea that you don’t know where he’s going either and you never do. I remember in those Indiana Jones movies, that third one, I hated the fact they explained why he’s got the hat, why he’s got the whip, why he’s afraid of the snakes. Who cares?! As soon as you explain it, it becomes so mundane. The amazing thing about that is all these important things happen to him in like three minutes of his life! I mean, okay!

It kind of cheapens it.

In France, they loved that! They just loved it. They thought that was just brilliant. I was like “Come on!”

“Tres bien!” [laughs]

I mean, in France, I used to argue with them. I’d say, “Your characters, if they come in the door, they come in the door and they explain to the guy why they’re going to shoot him and why they have to kill them.” Then the bad guy says, “Well, y’know, yes, but y’know…” and they’ll have this discussion and then the good guy will shoot him. I said, in America, you either bust down the door, you go in and you shoot the guy and you find out later he’s an abused kid or whatever. Or not! [laughs] That’s the difference between French and American comics.

And in the spaghetti westerns, no one would talk.

No one would talk and they made so many that they’re basically the same movie over and over, just like the Japanese. I don’t think people in America realize how many movies, samurai movies, there are that they’ve never ever seen. Some amazing ones, I mean, really amazing films that people have never seen, black and white and…they know oh I’m a big fan of Japanese films. “Really?” “Yeah, oh I’ve seen Seven Samurai and I’ve seen Yojimbo! “Yeah! What about … ?” Y’know, and then there’s these other ones. I mean, when I was in Japan, I mean, they were amazed! The Japanese don’t know these movies any more. The baby cart movies …

Yeah.

I mean, nobody knows the movies that guy, they made before that, that were just crazy yakuza films with that main actor …

Oh, what’s his name, the guy that did Battle Royale, the …

Oh yeah yeah yeah. Whatsisname.

Fukusaki?

Yeah, that’s it. Now there’s a guy that’s like man! He’s really hit and miss! He’ll do one really great one and then one really crappy one. Ever seen Message from Space?

No!

He did that! It’s the goofiest thing you’ve ever seen in your life.

Just never watch the second Battle Royale.

I’ve never even seen the first one. That kind of film doesn’t appeal to me. Like Saw. Those kind of movies. Hate them. Just can’t figure them out. It totally escapes me. I don’t like horror movies to be quite frank, with the exception of Halloween. Halloween I liked quite a bit.

Y’know, I never actually watched the Halloween movies. I don’t know why.

The first one is a really neat movie. I think. You had this woman—that’s what I liked. The woman, the Jamie Lee Curtis character, she’s not just running or she eventually eh, you’ve got to stop. She’s not a victim and most of those movies are about victims. like the Friday the 13^th movies, I just can’t watch. I’m a Dirty Harry guy. I’m waiting for him to show up and shoot Freddie and kill him! [Robin laughs] That’s what I want to see

Why are you running? Just shoot him! He’s just got a machete! What’s he going to do? Getting back to the Cowboy, so you were saying so you were going to try doing something with Pacific and then Pacific went under as many black and white—or not black and white—but small publishers during the ‘80s. After that’s when you did the album in France.

Well, the story I started and showed to them, I sent to—I remember going to France the first time, Moebius arranged for me to go to Métal Hurlant and he took me in there and I showed it to them, and they said, “Yeah, we want to print it.” Oh great! Y’know? I’m going to be in the same magazine as my idol! I mailed it to them—this is classic—it got returned! I was like “Wha?” It turned out in France, July and August, they just shut down. So there was nobody there to sign for the thing, so it just sat in the post office and they returned it to me. But at the time, I was like “Wow! That’s really messed up.” because it was a lot of money to me, to mail that thing over there. So I sent it back to them and they got it that time.

Quebec does the same thing, but just for one month, apparently. August, it just shuts down.

Oh really? It’s not like it used to be, because I lived over there for, god, 13 years and they…it’s gotten better. But rules in France, they’ve got more rules than you can shake a stick at, but nobody’s following them. Classic! I remember when I first moved there, I said, my God, you’d make a fortune here if you delivered pizza, because there was no such thing as delivery. Eventually, they got around to having to deliver pizza and they had the guarantee law. If it’s not there in 30 minutes…and I remember saying, “Well, okay, if it’s not there in 30 minutes, then what?” Well, it will be. We guarantee it will be. Yeah, but if it isn’t? They said, “Well, it will be.” I said, “But if it isn’t?” They said–there’s no teeth to back it up. At the time, Domino’s, if it didn’t show up, it’s free. I said, “Well, is it free if you don’t show up?” No no no. Well, so what? You can make any kind of claim. They tell you, there’s nothing to—I had to argue with this guy on the phone about it. Because I thought it was just so hilarious, but then nobody follows the rules. You go to the post office with a package and if they don’t feel like it, they’d go, “No, we don’t do that here.” I go, “What do you mean, you don’t do that here?” “No, you have to go to the post office in the other arondissement?” “Why?” Because they just didn’t want to do it. [Robin laughs] Sometimes I’d just go crazy. I was like “Man!”

God bless! [Robin laughs]

Japan’s a whole another story, but I mean, Japan’s just so efficient. Sometimes mind-bogglingly so. You can’t—if there’s like a grain of sand gets into their machine, it just shuts everything down.

With Shaolin Cowboy, because it’s work that you’ve written, it obviously feels a lot different. You kind of have more of a sense of humor, I feel like or more a colorful sense of humor, a less dark sense of humor, maybe…

Yeah, and I always thought, and then the drawing was always funny.

Yeah.

Because with Frank, like in Hard Boiled and The Big Guy, I mean, I think it’s funny, because it’s just so over the top. I thought I drew some funny stuff in Hard Boiled just because it was so over the top and there’s some little gags. I put gags on the billboards and stuff. There’s a lot of gags. Frank, I kept drawing bulldogs in the corner and stuff of Hard Boiled and he said “Why do you keep drawing these bulldogs?” I said, “Because they’re the dog of the future!” I just liked them! And so he said, “Well…he had to explain it.” So he added–There’s a couple of pages in the beginning he added after I was finished. You see like a little robot bulldog in a corridor and he wanted to explain it. He said “Oh…” I don’t think you have to. But he was the writer, so…

Are there any plans to continue with Shaolin Cowboy or is it kind of…?

Yeah, yeah. I want to do…  spent three years trying to do this animated film of it.

Oh really?

It’ll never get finished and that was just time that y’know…It was really funny because people would see me and say “Well, what were you doing there?” Well, I was in Japan working on a…like a year or more, and before that doing this other stuff to prepare for it. “Well, are you still doing a comic?” I go “Come on man, do you realize how much work it is making movies?” It’s like yeah, I work 12 hours at the studio and then I’m going to come home and spend another eight hours making comics!

You may be in Japan, but you don’t have the manga artist work ethic?

Yeah, but those guys, they all have like three or four assistants. But still, they still work like crazy, man. I got to visit a few guys’ studios. It’s really hard to meet…it’s not like here y’know you can, Oh can I get Duncan Fegredo’s phone number and you can write him an email and they’ll answer. Over there it’s like “No, I cannot give you his number.”

Yeah, it’s like Tezuka, he had this room that he worked in and only his wife had access to it or something.

Yeah Yeah Yeah. But I can understand. That guy, Jesus! That’s guy like the Jack Kirby of Japan. He did so much…

More so, though! Where it’s just like…this one guy was telling me a story…

The documentary they did on him is just amazing.

I haven’t watched it yet.

Oh, it’s really great.

It’s the one with the big book?

Yeah, yeah. I watched it in Japan. I was in Japan and they showed it. They did this wonderful program. Oh God, it was so amazing, because he and all these seminal—I don’t know if that’s how you say it, I’m going to mispronounce the word—artists that all started together and they’d all worked in this one house and I think they were going to tear this house down and they all met in there one more time, the guy that created Cyborg 009 and the guy who did Doraemon and they’re all there and they’re all talking about what it was like all working, doing manga and it was just so amazing. It’s a community of these guys all…

Marv Newland, he was telling me a story of hanging out in Japan with Tezuka and how they would just be walking down the street and people would be yelling to him from cars.

Yeah, because he wore that beret and you could spot him. I saw him talk, at USC he gave this long talk, he had done this film and just an amazing guy. I was a big fan of obviously Astro Boy and—my favorite—they finally translated my favorite comic by him, and that is Dororo which I think is just amazing. I love that comic.

I have a couple of volumes but I haven’t read it yet.

He actually never finished it, but it’s just such a crazy great story. It’s a warped Pinocchio.

I’ve read Apollo’s Song and that just blew me away, how much he was playing with time and just like metaphorically, so much he’s throwing in with the culture and yeah. More can be said about Tezuka than there’s time to talk.

Yeah. My guy, who I really like too and gosh! I keep trying to get people to print this guy here in America in English and that is Sanpei Shiroto who did a lot of, I don’t know if you’d call them gekiga or chanbara. They’re samurai ninja stories and Eclipse printed some of them. Kamui is one of them.

Oh, okay.

But he didn’t really draw those. He was writing them at that point. He had stopped drawing. But you go way back and he did all these great ones. The very first Kamui that he drew and it’s a little more cartoony and it’s really fantastic and actually Kojima, who drew Lone Wolf and Cub – Goseki Kojima– he was the guy that worked on it. In France, they’re printing them and I can read French and I can finally read—I’ve read these things in Japanese, I just go from panel to panel, but they’re not translated. It’s a magnificent story of the social structure and the bullshit of bushidoand all that stuff. because I do think all that stuff is kind of bullshit. They always talk about how loyalty to one’s lord. I’m like pfft! It’s like the mafia now. It’s like yeah! Unless they’re threatened and then all that goes out the window.

I have a friend who will do the same, where he can’t read Japanese, but he’ll go to this Japanese book store in Vancouver, because they have like manga there for two dollars, so he’ll just get stacks of stuff. He got this amazing Ōtomo book that has like The Wizard of Oz, but they all have like giant phalluses, but it’s amazing! And no one’s printing it.

Wow! Yeah, there’s a lot of…I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Tokyo. But my God, some of the stuff, I was like Holy Jesus! They’ve got porno comics, it’s like my God! If you were to bring that stuff to America you’d get arrested! I mean, really it’s…I mean, it’s not kiddie porn and there’s no really children involved and it’s right next to the other stuff. I mean, oh my God! It’s just rancid! They’ve been trying—they actually were trying to stop that and a lot of guys spoke out, “Oh, it’s creative freedom and this and that.” Well, on an intellectual level I understand what they’re saying, but come on, you’re just feeding some ugly taste. Nobody needs that kind of shit.

It’s nice to see you coming to the comic convention in Seattle. Do you do conventions very often or this kind of…

Yeah, I get asked. I love doing comics conventions. I like them. I’ve been to Seattle once. It’s really funny. I don’t get asked that much and this year people are asking me. Maybe because I’ve said yes. But I don’t get asked. Sometimes I think that people think—I may be wrong—you work in movies, “Oh, he’s not going to waste his time. He works in movies and blah blah blah.” I think it’s important to go out there. That’s something Frank and I always…comic conventions make Frank nervous. He’s very shy and whenever we’d do signings together it would drive him crazy because I’d do drawings. He’d go, “You’re holding up the line, Geof!” I’d go, “Well…” Y’know, he’d get up and work the line, y’know, sign, and then leave. I’d still be sitting there drawing, because he’d just y’know…but I like to meet the people. It’s important.

If Jack Kirby could do it standing until a ripe old age, it’s always nice to…

And Jack, yeah. Gosh! That guy! What a gentlemen.

But also understand, especially in situations like Frank and Alan Moore, when they came to popularity in a period of significant audience interest where it would border on kind of psychotic?

Yeah, you’d have…but y’know…yeah. There is that part of meeting people where some people are really really nice and other people are really really demanding. They basically come…They’ve got their issues and they just come to tell you how crappy you are. I love those characters. Wow! I’m glad you got that off your chest! You’re not going to be going to Wal-Mart, buying a gun and shooting somebody. That’s good! Why would you spend your 45 minutes waiting to get up here to tell me that! [laughs] “Well, I’m not going to read another comic by you again!” “Oh yeah? Why’s that?” “Because you’re always late!” “Well, I’m sorry!”

That’s how it is.

Then don’t! I’m going to throw it in. I’m going to throw in the towel now. Because of you!

[laughs] Oh!

But France is the worst, because you have to do drawings over there.

I’ve heard that.

People, you go to Angouleme and you’re sitting there, you’re eating your dinner, and they come up, “Oh I want you to …” and you have the fork halfway to your mouth and it’s like “Well, yeah, but you can see, I’m eating here.” It’s always, “My mother, she is dying and I have to go back to her.” The artists, there was a list of the excuses that people always used and you’d see the guys the next day, they’d still be there. “Hey, how’s your mom?” “Huh?” “How’s your mother? You told me!” “I know…” “Did she come out of the coma or whatever it was?” “Oh yes, she’s much better! Much better!” Some of the excuses were really good. But some of them were just like…

And y’know, it’s not just a matter of how famous you are. I have this one Quebec cartoonist was telling me, he’s not a very big name but he’s had the same experience, where everyone just wants a drawing. It doesn’t matter who you are, but they want a drawing and they’ll come with five copies of the same book for drawings or like two drawings and one book.

I always get that. The things that you have drawn, that people are like “Wow! I’ve signed more of that goofball thing I did, some pin-up of some…” And generally it’s some girl character and aye yi yi yi. Frank and I used to talk. “What’s this thing about Bettie Page? It seems like she’s so popular.” I said to Frank, “I think it’s because c’mon you’re a comic book fan and say you love Spider-Man. There is no Spider-Man, he doesn’t exist. There’s no Hulk, but Dave Stevens has drawn Bettie Page as a character in a comic book and oh! She’s a sexy…and these guys have suddenly discovered that this comic book character actually existed! So wow! Wow! I could’ve actually met this girl! She actually existed! It’s like finding out Spider-Man actually lived.” I think that’s part of the reason why Bettie Page is so popular because I think Dave really just brought her out. Wow? She really existed? Dave actually met her.

He was actually quite important as far as getting her rights back.

And he took care of her! He literally, he took care of her. When she did come out, he made money off her and he wrote her checks, unlike I’m not going to mention his name. A guy who exploited the heck out of her and never gave her a dime. But Dave, he would take her…I think she died almost the same year as Dave. But he would take her out. He would take her shopping and take her to groceries and…I remember talking to him once about, “I was driving her and y’know, we went by and there’s a store in L.A. called the Golden Apple and we stopped and she was looking in the window, because she wanted to see what it was like in there”. I said, “Why didn’t you take her in, Dave?” “Oh, I couldn’t do that.” I said, “Why not?” “Well, she would be recognized!” I started laughing. “Come on Dave,” I said, ”She can’t have the same hairdo! Who’s going to recognize her?” He said, “Yeah, she does!” I go, “Are you kidding me? She has that page … holy Jesus! She’s like 70 years old. Wow!” There was a wonderful guy, Dave. Gosh, that really…He would visit me in France. We would always come out and do stuff. He loved it there.

I’ve heard many wonderful things about him as a person from a lot of folks. It’s very sad.

Quite a character. Quite a character. But anyway…unlike myself.

Oh I’m sure you’re swell, Geof.

I am now that I’m on Inkstuds. Do you have a call thing like [sings] Inkstuds! Inkstuds!

We have a theme song that someone made.

Really?

I’ll send you a link to it. It’s about a minute long. It’s fun.

How long have you been doing this show?

Five years now. Five and a half. Yeah. Just over 300 interviews.

Has anybody been contentious with you? Is there anybody that’s been like “Oh God, I wish I hadn’t talk to that guy!” Besides me?

I’ll tell you in a couple of minutes.

Oh, you can’t say it on the air can you?

On that note, thank you for joining us today, Geof! [laughter]

Canadian artist Jason Mclean is part of an amazing well of talent out of London, Ontario. Some of his contemporaries include Marc Bell, Peter Thompson, Keith Jones and more. Jason is currently exhibiting in a show called Not Bad for London along with Marc, Peter, Amy Lockhart, James Kirkpatrick, Jamie Q and Billy Bert Young. I very fond of Jason’s work and see a lot of cross over between what he explore and larger idea of storytelling through a single image.

You can watch all Inkstuds Video’s here at the Youtube channel. This video is directed and edited by my good friend, Daniel Giantomaso.

Fellow podcaster Mike Dawson and I sat down for a chat about not only comics podcasting, but also his great book from those fine boys at Secret Acres. Troop 142 is a fine collection and shows Dawson’s growth as a cartoonist.

Mike is doing a comic book club talk at Midtown Comics in Manhattan on Fulton on tonight, Friday the 18th of November.

This week, we have two different interviews. The first is with Mark Atomos Pilon, Luc Latulippe, and Dacosta! to discuss the Moonbase Gallery art show opening tonight November 10th at the Interurban Art Gallery at 1 East Hastings in Vancouver.

Second off, I am joined by Kelly Froh, Eroyn Franklin and Jenny Gialenes in regards to Saturday’s Shortrun Small Press Festival in Seattle. The show is free and looks great. I am travelling down from Vancouver just to check it out.

Also, there are some other cool things happening in Vancouver this weekend. Jim Mahfood are in town for a convetion at Heritage Hall on Sunday, but more importantly they are also doing a fundraiser for the Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund on Friday night. Also on Sunday is Canzine West. There will be a bunch of comics folks there as well.

Blot cartoonist Tom Neely returned to the Studs to chat about his latest book The Wolf as well as his collaborative project, Henry and Glenn Forever. And don’t forget that awesome mixtape that Tom did a couple of years ago.

With the recent release of the massive Too Much Coffee Man Omnibus, Shannon Wheeler appears to not be slowing down at all with 20 plus years making funny books. His current and upcoming releases alsoinclude Oil and Water from Fantagraphics, I Thought You Would be funnier from Boom and much more. We cover a lot of ground in this conversation.

Passage is ostensibly about the wacky coming-of-age ceremony that Brunton’s parents concocted for her older brother. The book leads up to the story of his capture, transportation and rebirth (really), with several small stories about parental dorkiness, the pleasures of scary sleepover movies and a sweet two-page look at her brother as he approached teendom. She is excellent at skewering the absurdity of the trappings of hippy-dippy parenting–the section on a fertility workshop that was foisted upon her is painfully hilarious. Her facial expressions, especially shock, (and there is a ton of this in response to parental shenanigans), never fail to make me smile.

As the story builds, Brunton also explores the theme of hiding within one’s own life. It starts off fun–the thrill of playing hide and seek with friends–and moves to a much darker place. Talk of hiding segues into the exploration of shame. “Who can’t relate to the fear of being found, right?” This is what the whole comic is about,–shame and conquering shame–but her approach doesn’t quite hit home like it should. All the sweetness of her brother’s story, as well as the lighthearted jabs at living in “the kind of house where weirdness flourished,” is contrasted with the dark way she feels about it, but we never get to explore what makes her so negative. She does straight out say on the third-to-last page that molestation is the cause of this shame, so as a reader you draw in breath, waiting to hear the rest. Instead the comic wraps up and even though the writing that brings us to the final page is very good, it is too pat an ending for such a faceted story.

In the end, Passage feels like the first part in a longer series and, when looked at in the context of Brunton’s work, it is. Pick it up.

See my interview with Tessa over at try harder.

Canadian illustrator Oscar Cahen had a brief but impactful career in the 1940′s and 50′s before passing away at the young age of 40. Canadian art historian Jaleen Grove has been exploring his work and was involved in putting together a show of his work at Illustration House in New York. I was joined by Jaleen, Roger Reed from the Illustration House and Oscar’s son, Michael Cahen to discuss Oscar’s work. The illustration House is showing his work for the rest of October. I highly recommend checking it out. Really amazing work.

Last fall, the show took a step in a whole different direction, with Conundrum Books publishing the first book collection of interviews conducted on the show.

Now it’s time for a new component to the Inkstuds. I was approached by my friend Daniel this past summer asking if I had ever thought of doing video interviews, which is something that I had thought about, but just don’t have the technical know how to follow through. Well, that’s where Daniel’s skill come in handy.

Our first interview was with Brandon Graham. Since he was my neighbor at the time, it seemed like an obvious good choice of someone to test it out on.

This is very much a collaborative project between me and Daniel Giantomaso. He brings some great talents to the table in regards to really putting it together nicely. I could not do this without him.

I will still be doing the regular audio interviews, but the video format allows me to get in-depth in a different way. I have some great interviews scheduled with some fantastic cartoonists in the Pacific Northwest.

I will be posting video’s on here and on the Inkstuds Youtube channel.

Image by L. Nichols

Hey there folks, no new Studs this week. Sorry about that, but there are well over 300 interviews to take a listen to if you would like. My personal life has taken over for a couple of weeks and not allowed me to put anytime into the show recently. Over the summer I have been working a ridiculous amount and thankfully that is coming to an end. Starting next week, I will be working a job I really wanted that will allow me a lot more flexibility and time to put into the show. There is a new Inkstuds related project that I am really excited about that I will be unveiling in the next couple of weeks.

The other thing taking away from my time is that I am in the midst of moving into a new home. If you remember my shelfpr0n on Robot 6, you know it’s gonna be more than a little work. Special thanks to Brandon and Colin who have both signed up to help me this weekend.

All the while moving, I am also scheduled to be interviewed at Word on the Street in Vancouver at 11am in Author’s Tent. My good friend and colleague Sean Cranbury from Books on the Radio will be interviewing me. I expect good things. Sean does something similar to me, but he deals with book authors, while I yak with cartoonists.

Image by Jason Turner

Here is an interview I did with Dylan Williams back in April of 2008. Dylan passed away this past weekend. I really liked Dylan and the work that he published and promoted with Sparkplug comics. He did a really great strip about Alex Toth for Austin English’s Windy Corner. I highly suggest reading that. It feel especially poignant right now.

Craig Thompson and I sat down for an extended conversation about his new book Habibi, as well as a larger discussion of comics in general. We also touch on his previous works including Blankets, Good-bye Chunky Rice and Carnet De Voyage

I had a rare week this week where I could actually be in the studio and do it live. I was joined by Rebecca Dart, Robin Bougie and Brandon Graham, who are all appearing at the Comix and Stories Smallpress convention in Vancouver this weekend. Rebecca discusses her amazing Battle Kittens book, Robin has a come great filthy books out and Brandon makes terrible puns, and talks about his story in the second Thickness book. We are also joined by Brian Fukushima who makes up a song live on air about Robin Bougie and sings away with gusto.

I really enjoyed doing this interview with Igort. The conversation was full of many great insights with a lot of material covered. Like many of his contemporaries, only a handful of his work is available in English. I first got into his work with the drawn and quarterly collection, 5 is the Perfect Number. More recently, you can find him in the Ignatz series, Baobab. Igort is also the editor of the Ignatz line of comics. His latest work, is a series of books on the Ukraine and Russia. You can read what has been translated so far, here.

Here is an interview I did with Chip Kidd over the Christmas holidays and seemed to have escaped my mind. In this interview, we discuss the book on Captain Marvel memorabilia that he had put together, Shazam!

Vera Brosgol joined me for a chat about her debut book, Anya’s Ghost. It’s a great piece of work and shows a lot of promise for a creators first long form work.

Comix historian, Patrick Rosenkranz will be in Vancouver this Saturday at Lucky’s Comics for an art show and retrospective on the work of underground cartoonist, Rand Holmes. Rand’s work was a fixture of Vancouver, gracing the covers the Georgia Straight during the early years. He is also known for his Harold Hedd Comic series. Patrick joined me this week to discuss his book about Rand and a variety of other topics.

Inkstuds favorite, Anders Nilsen will be in town on Sunday July 31st for a signing and presentation at Luckys Comics. I hope to see you all there if you are local! The event will be going from 7pm until 10pm at 3972 main st. Go to Luckys for more info!

The next Bookclub will probably be our most challenging. We are set to discuss Mat Brinkman’s Multiforce. A collection of material that appeared in the Fort Thunder produced Paper Rodeo, Multiforce will bring you somewhere odd, new and hopefully uncomfortable.

For more information. I strongly suggest reading this interview by Tom Spurgeon with Frank Santoro, discussing this book and its importance.

As always, if you wish to take part, and I hope you do. Add me on Skype under the username Inkstuds and then email me at inkstudsradio @ gmail.com to let me know that you are taking part. The book club will be on Saturday July 30th at noon pacific time.

Gene Yang joined me to discuss his books and the art of collaboration. His latest book is Level Up illustrated by the infamously troubling Thien Pham. Gene’s American Born Chinese has won a plethora of awards and is just one of many great books he has done.

Black Eye editor Ryan Standfest brought Jeet Heer and Onsmith on for a chat about the anthology and other issues of dark dark humor. This is a smart bunch and a pleasure to chat with.

Sharon Rudahl was one of the founders of the great Wimmen’s Comix anthology in the 1970s. It since then, she has a produced a range of fascinating underground comix including Crystal Night, which was reprinted in full in Dan Nadel’s Art In Time Anthology. Recently, Rudahl put together Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman. Her work will also be featured in a number of upcoming political comic anthologies.

Here is the recording of Saturday’s book club where we discussed Ronin. It was a great session with 8 participants. I am really enjoying these. It’s a great chance to discuss books with a group of smart thoughtful folks.

Let us know what you thought of Ronin and we can continue the discussion here.

Our next book will be Mat Brinkman’s classic, Multiforce. We will be meeting online on July 30th at noon pacific time. Remember to add me on Skype – Inkstuds and email me that you are taking part at inkstudsradio@gmail.com.

Hey Folks, I had to cancel last weeks Book Club. We will be doing it this weekend, July 9th at noon pacific time. If you want to join us, add my username Inkstuds on skype and send me an email at inkstudsradio @ gmail.com.

Colleen Frakes Island Brat is a great little story of her time growing up in a very unique location in the Pacific Northwest. Colleen is also a member of the first graduating from the Center for Cartoon Studies in picturesque White River Junction, Vermont. Thanks to Colleen for taking the time to chat with me.

Wilfred Santiago’s comic biography of Roberto Clemente is a great look at a specific time in not only baseball, but also touching on mid century american racial and political tones. Wilfred skillfully tackles a range of issues in this great collection. It was a delight to discuss this great book with him.

Join us on Skype this Saturday, July 2nd at noon pacific time to discuss Frank Miller’s Ronin. If you want to take part, just email me at inkstudsradio @ gmail.com and add Inkstuds on skype. The last session was a blast and I think this one will be too!

Dave Mckean is on that short list of cartoonists whose work really changed how I understand comics as a young teen many years ago. He has been creating some really fascinating and forward thinking work in books like Cages, Signal to Noise, Pictures That Tick and Violent Cases.

His latest book is no exception. Celluloid, fresh out from Fantagraphics, is a remarkable work exploring pornography through a very particular lens. Needless to say, it is fantastic.

Welcome to the inaugural Inkstuds Book Club. I was joined by seven enthusiastic comics folk for a discussion of Jason’s Isle of 100,000 Graves. This is the first time we have tried it out, and I think it worked out. Thanks to Michael, Brandon, Steve, Roman, Nolan, Chris and Andrew for taking part. I would like us to be able to continue the discussion of the book here.

If you had a chance to read it, please tell us what you think.

The next Book Club will be on July 2nd at noon pacific time. We will be discussing Frank Miller’s early work, Ronin.

My buying habits demand that lovely, lush, silkscreened covers must be checked out, and this comic perfectly fits that description. The black and white, copied pages detail Talamaroo’s adventures with tiny lines and botanical decoration that seem inspired by old-timey tattoo art and create a full, if not precise, setting for the stories. Talamaroo’s body distorts as if trying to contain huge emotions, a really effective way of showing her internal world, while the rest of the characters generally remain stoic. When she meets similar creature in issue three— “Stand up Talamaroo. Don’t be too vulnerable.”— it’s fun to see how their interaction is almost entirely physical.

I’ve been checking out Alabaster’s other work, especially her color drawings, and I am really looking forward to seeing what she does next.

Young cartooning upstart Blaise Larmee sat down for an extended chat about art, comics and identity. His latest book is  Young Lions as well as publishing Gaze books. Blaise is doing some interesting and challenging work. I am really curious to see where his cartooning is going to take him.

Brandon and I got to talking one evening about discussing comics, as we are prone to do far too often, and one thing that came up, was a venue for discussion. I thought up maybe doing a book club type thing. I asked Michael Deforge, who immediately suggested Kyle Baker’s Shadow run. I squashed that and after some talk debate, we are starting out with Jason’s latest, Isle of 100,000 Graves.

If you would like to take part, email me at inkstudsradio@gmail.com and add me on Skype with the name Inkstuds. We will be talking about the book on Skype on saturday at noon pacific time. Who knows if this will work, but we are going to try. the audio will be recorded and posted to continue the discussion around each weeks book. If you are unable to make it on Skype, please join us in the online discussion.

Edie Fake’s Gaylord Phoenix is one of my favorite books of the past while. Edie is able to touch on something very personal and explore in a way that reaches far and succeeds. I think that Gaylord Phoenix is an important work on sexuality in a way that few have been able to successfully approach in an abstract way. Thanks to Edie for having such an open conversation with me about it.

Ex-pat Canadian cartoonist, Mark Kalesniko‘s latest book, Freeway explores some of the idea’s around his move to LA and working into the animation industry. Mark was on the show for the first time, many years ago when I was still getting my grips on what I was doing with Inkstuds. As with the last time Mark was on, Colin Upton joins us as well.

Julia Wertz was on the show a couple of years ago, and had since gone through some pretty important changes in her life. Since that time, her book, Drinking In the Movies came out from a big time New York book publisher, and much more. This was a really great catch up conversation with Julia that touches on some pretty important subjects.

Image stolen from Kevin Boyd and the Shuster Awards blog. http://joeshusterawards.com/2011/05/09/my-tcaf-thoughts-2011-day-1/

Here is the audio from the panel on Canadian Cartoonists Working in the Mainstream from TCAF. I have a hard time summarizing it down to a particular topic, mostly we discussed Canadian identity. The guest list was a bit of a superstar showcase. I was a lucky host. Ray Fawkes, Darwyn Cooke, Jillian Tamaki, Stuart Immonen and Kathryn Immonen are all fantastic talents, and thanks to them for taking the time to answer my questions and also thanks to Ken Steacy for allowing me to call him out in the audience.

Also, someone filmed the panel. So you have that as an option too. Part 1 of 4

This interview is a little different. Keith Jones is one of my favorite people, as I have stated several times on this blog. He is about to go move to New York to be with his new bride, the very talented Lizz Hickey. Lizz thought it would be fun to have the two of them on together, and I have to agree. It was awesome. Enjoy.

Hive editor and publisher of Grimalkin Press, Jordan Shiveley was kind enough to answer my call for interviews when I had some last minute cancellations. I was really happy to talk with Jordan, since he has been putting out some really nice books that could use some more eyes pouring over them. He is also publishing books by a couple of young guys I think the world of, Phil McAndrew and Noah Van Sciver.

Zach Worton‘s The Klondike, is the latest in the fine Canadian tradition of historical narratives. His book is a great look into a particular point in time of what can be described as the Canadian frontier.

One of the panels I moderated at TCAF, was a conversation between Paul Pope, Brandon Graham and Sam Hiti. I really like to pair up artists with contemporaries that are doing like minded work, that is still very different in a lot of ways. Last year, I had Paul on with Dash Shaw, and it was a really great talk. This year, we went in a completely different direction than last year. For the second half of the panel, I posted images and asked for comments on the images from the participants.Those images are posted below, after Hiti’s storytelling tree concept.

Day 1 – James Stokoe and Marley Zarcone had never been to TCAF, and James is unable to go to any American conventions for the foreseeable future, which means they were in for a shock, especially when compared to more mainstream experiences. I have been selling pages for James on my site, mcconnellart.com, so we have grown pretty close through this experience. I dragged James and Marley to Toronto early, to give them the full TCAF experience. As you can tell, they are very excited by this 7am flight I booked for us.

After checking into the hotel, we went to explore the fine city of Toronto. This restaurant is across the street from the Marriot, and seems very appropriately named for the creator of Orc Stain.

I dragged them across Toronto, with the first stop being the BMV books on Bloor. I had a feeling Keith Jones would be there, and my hunch was right.

Here are James and Keith locked in battle over the Wright award title of Best Emerging Talent.

I picked up these Steranko’s and various other goodies there.

After BMV, we made our way to the Beguiling, where we had a mandate with Michael Deforge. You all know who Deforge is, and if you don’t, you should. His work has grown in leap and bounds over the last year. The fact that he is only 23 means he has a while to really reach a creative peak.

Here is my Beguiling purchase.

We ran into Chester Brown there, who joined us for dinner. What a way to start out a trip to Toronto. I made James show Chester how he drew, which brought about a most excellent reaction. Chester had been exposed to James’ work in the process for the Wright Awards. Two men that are known to draw penises in one room, surprisingly, no dinks where drawn.

Outside of the restaurant, Deforge was complaining about getting ink all over his crotch, and subsequent stain. I tried to take a good photo of it, but Chester politely told me, that I probably didn’t want to be known as the guy that takes pics of men’s crotches. Strong words from the creator of Paying for It.

Michael Comeau was outside the Beguiling working on a display that would be going into the library. It looked awesome. Every TCAF year, he adds to it.

After, we went out for drinks with Vicki Nerino, Britt Wilson and Britt’s charming fellow, Aviv and the fairy godmother of the Toronto comics scene, Annie Koyama(who charmed James to the point of him hugging her. James isn’t a hugger). I love these kids. A heap full of talent at one table. Britt showed me a mini she did for Aviv that looked pretty damn amazing. She is another person to watch out for, as she takes over the world.

Robert Dayton also joined us. I miss that guy.

After, we went to meet up with Michael, who was hanging with Ryan Sands and the benevolent  king of TCAF, Christopher Butcher. Ryan and Christopher are always great to see. They went into a lovely 10 minute impression of me and my feelings about Manga that was pretty excellent. I love a good roasting. And Yes, I don’t like Manga.

Day 2 – I finally got to meet Raincoast publicist, Dan Wagstaff. Dan was my connection for interviewing Ralph Steadman many years ago. That is a mighty nice looking book he is holding.

From there, I went back to the hotel to have some down time to work on some crap. I ran into Hellen Jo and Calvin Wong. Love those guys.

I made my way down to Queen St West to hunt down some poutine with James and Marley. Mission Accomplished.

We also found where Sheldon Vella shops for clothing.

The night was pretty quiet, with a quick trip to the library to see Mawil talk. His books are very pretty and he is a charming speaker. I look forward to possibly interviewing him.

Sam Hiti was in town a day early, so he joined us for dinner with his editor Joe. The restaurant wasn’t very fabulous, but it did have a table you could draw on.

James likes nachos.

Day 3 – Keith Jones, being one of my favorite people in Toronto, seemed like an obvious choice for breakfast, while James was sitting in a hotel room drawing up a feverish storm.

Keith and I hit up the Beguiling, where I grabbed this amazing Moebius book. The price stung a little, but after going through the book later, it was obviously a good pick.

Of course, since it was the beguiling I had to run into Seth there. That man has more style than the rest of us.

Keith and I went to check out a talk between R Sikoryak and mutual buddy, Michael Deforge. It was pretty interesting.

I ran into Jason Little there, who gave me this pretty book. Jason needs to be on the Inkstuds soon.

I had to book it back to the hotel to meet up with Farel Dalrymple, who was going to be joining us in the hotel room. We went for dinner with Bart Beaty, and he showed off some recent fancy art purchases on his iPhone.

Farel and I went to the Comix talk with Chester Brown, Seth, Adrian Tomine and Chris Ware. The talk was good, nothing too revelatory. Seth owned the stage with some pretty witty comments at Chester’s expense and Ware was charismatically humble.

While I was waiting to get some books signed by Ware, I saw Pascal Girard standing in line beside me, waiting to get his copy of Paying for It signed by Chester. I thought that was pretty sweet, since they are both published by D and Q.

Chris Ware is one of my favorite cartoonists. Period.

That night brought us to the Pilot, where I would be spending most of my next day. The night was pretty crazy. I ran into a million and one people. My friend Claire describes me as moving through the crowd like an eel in a bucket of snot.

It was great to see Brandon, who I dragged around to meet some fancy comics peeps like Dan Nadel.

And Paul Pope.

The Drawn and Quarterly contingent were in attendance, including the charming Brecht Evens, seen here with Joe Ollmann.

Brecht was the bell of the ball, surrounded by some stellar folks.

Dustin Harbin was downstairs holding court with Aaron Costain and John Martz.

Hickee Buds – Gabe Miller, Graham Annable and Scott C.

Oh hai Hellen Jo, Calvin Wong and Mickey Z!

Brandon and Christopher Butcher appeared to be plotting something terrible.

I think they plotted out to get me tired, because I crashed out hard after this. To be continued.

JOHNNY RYAN INTERVIEW BY Josh Bayer with Joaquin delaPuente,

Johnny’s answers are reprinted verbatim, my questions have had to occasionally been pared down.  I was pretty nervous and Johnny put up with a lot of stammering. For a cartoonist with such vicious attitudes, he was a pretty nice guy.

I learned a lot from the interview and have referred to it often. If you have never had a chance to interview your heroes, I recommend it.

This was originally done for the unreleased Starfucker Zine 5, in Feb 2008 via speakerphone at Anthology Film archives.  The questions with political and social relevance were written by Joaquin delaPuente.  I wrote the rest.

Josh B- Everything you say from here on out is being taped.

Johnny R. -Oh shit.

Josh B. – First question, if we go back in time, to a younger more impressionable Johnny Ryan, were there any brushes with gross-out punk albums that had an influence on your cartooning? For example, The Meat Men? It seems like a lot of 80′s punk bands were tied with cartooning like The Circle Jerks and Black Flag…

Johnny R- The Meat Men, that was the first time I ever saw a real hard core gross out punk rock record.  But the album cover was really sort of adorable. If you listen to it, it was almost a novelty record as much as it was a punk record in that a lot of the songs were just funny like Tooling for Anus. I’m not sure of the other ones…

Josh B-One down three to go…

Johnny R- Crippled Children Suck, that was a good one, that was wrong. I think that was the only album of theirs I ever heard; I don’t think I ever pursued it more than that.

Josh B- It’s easy to forget how electrifying it was at that time, even to have a name that was a slang word for jerking off like in the case of The Circle jerks was so radically unpretentious…

Johnny R-When I heard that Meat Men record, it was a record that I bought for my sister who was going through a punk rock stage, I wasn’t really much of a punk rock kid, I was listening to more classic rock like Pink Floyd, it wasn’t ’til college that I branched out and encountered more of Black Flag and other bands you could list.

Josh B- At the same time it’s not everyone who can really take the message behind those bands and do their own thing with it.

Johnny R-I don’t know if I’m deliberately taking those messages to heart or if they just stuck with me naturally.

Josh B- At the time when you first came out with your comics, they were similarly against the grain. At the point in the late 90′s when you first made yourself heard from, almost everyone was doing these sort of serious navel gazing…

Johnny R-For starters, I was pretty unaware of what everybody else was up to when I first started. It wasn’t until later, when I first started in the mid 90′s I was pretty focused on the Robert Crumb comics and maybe a little Daniel Clowes, Eightball, thrown in there, but it wasn’t until much later that I started to notice everyone was doing these navel gazing, like you said, autobio comics.

Josh B- So without them to influence you, it might have seemed that the most natural reaction to seeing Crumb’s stuff was to make these comics instead of the others…

Johnny R- I just thought,” this is how they’re made, this is what people talk about in comics”, I wasn’t really exposed much to the serious stuff, or the limited amount of serious stuff didn’t resonate with me as much as the cruder humor did.

Josh B-Why do you think there was this generational shift to wards ducking from that kind of work?

Johnny R- Well if I understand your question correctly … there was this natural progression, well not a natural progression, more of just a gradual progression, starting with Maus, that comics in general wanted to be taken seriously as a viable art-form, and they had to be important and had to be about important things, and they kind of pushed humor aside and the craziness that was brought up in the 60′s. They kind of decided they had enough of that kind of stuff.

Josh B- So you mentioned Spiegleman…that reminds me of how when I was preparing to do this interview and rereading all your stuff, my friend pointed out to me that the comic you did about Loady ignoring all the signs, where he has to do the opposite of what each sign says, each sign making him do increasingly crazy things until he finally reads a sign that says “Do not slit your throat” causing him to slits his own throat. I should ask you if that’s anything like what your doing, for example, in this recent comic where you bash Crumb and Spiegleman and Chris Ware and David Heatley all these people who are in this New Yorker Cartoonist club…

Johnny R. – I never thought about it. There’s something to that. I guess I have a certain inclination to be destructive on a certain level.  Burning bridges and hurting people’s feelings is par for the course.

Josh- Have you had any fall out from any major cartoonists?

Johnny R. – No, well when I did Comic Book Holocaust, I guess I don’t think I heard from anybody I wasn’t already friendly with. Nobody ever contacted me to say, “Hey you’re an asshole”, or “Hey, that was funny” or whatever. Then there were other people I already knew who’ve said hey, “I’m disappointed you didn’t do me, what about my comics!”

Josh- Well, I know for example In one of your early comics there was a slam of Mary Fleener’s Slutburger, but then you invited her to contribute when you were a guest editor of Vice.

Johnny R- I do like Mary, I think she’s one of my favorite among people who came out of the 90′s and then’ve been forgotten. I also think I get this bad rap that I hate all serious comics or I hate all auto bio. There’s some people that can do those comics well and Mary is one of those people who is doing interesting auto bio’ comics.

Josh B- Do you read that stuff? I got the impression from Comic book Holocaust that you’d read From Hell and you seemed to be familiar with other stuff.

Johnny R-I pretty much read everything I parody. Some stuff I hadn’t read and had to, like actively seek out, like Persepolis and Epileptic

Josh B- Could you get through those?

Johnny R- Yes, I got through them, and… Persepolis was Okay, Epileptic was horrible. It was a real chore. From Hell is a book that I like. Acme Novelty Library I think number 17? …Was a real chore.

Josh B- Um. This is a techno-nerd question, I noticed in comic book holocaust, you did a couple of them where you started with a big brush and then you seemed to get your groove where you developed a way to approach each page in a pretty uniform way in terms of the grid and so on…

Johnny R-I wasn’t thinking this was gonna be a great book collection, I was just sort of fucking around. Fucking around with brush.  At first it was a wash gray tone, I even posted those online that way. It didn’t come across well in printing and it made me say, “lets just stick to line work.” the first idea wasn’t about turning it into a long term project, it was just fucking around that (laughs) kinda turned into a long term project.

Josh B – It evolved naturally.

Johnny R- Yeah. That’s the way I work usually, I follow my instincts, I don’t try to make some grand concept, that this is what I’m doing next this is what I’m going to accomplish, I just try to follow my instincts and what I should do is what I do.

Josh B – Sometimes you’d choose to emulate the artists style In Comic Book Holocaust, like with Frank king, but then other times, like with Milton Caniff, there’s no…

Johnny R-That’s sort of…I cant draw like that. I can’t do what Milton Caniff or the Marvel Comics artists like Jack Kirby do…  I mean I guess if I really tried… but that in a way would undermine the whole project where I wasn’t concerned if that art looked good, I didn’t care if It made sense, I just wanted to bomb through these stories as fast as I could. And in the cases where, like Frank King, where I did try to imitate the way they draw, it’d be something where I’d look at the way he’d draw his characters and then I’d close the book and try to sort of go with the way he drew it. For the harder ones, when it came to Mary Worth or Milton Caniff, I just said fuck it. Ha! That’d take too long.

Josh B – On the topic of your style and your choice of tools, there’s a big leap when I look at your old stuff. At some point, your approach to the page, your treatment of the word balloons, the panels, all seem to change and get upgraded drastically at some point. For an untrained artist, if I understand correctly and you’re untrained, how do you account for that?

Johnny R-I was working on my stuff every day, all the time.

Josh-If you’re gonna draw an object, a bush or a big pile of crap, this form that’s rounded off at the edges. And there’s this way that you use crow quill, and you have these feathered lines and its like you understand its gonna gain depth of you add straight lines on top of it?

Johnny R- Your question’s way too nerdy for me, and I don’t know how to answer that.

Josh- It’s nerdy but its something that people go to school to learn and it shows and ability to turn what you’re doing into an abstraction to get an effect across.

Johnny R-Maybe It’s me trying to find what looks good, and me, through trial and error, looking at and trying to emulate other artist work, and maybe its me trying to move on and grow, on an unconscious level.

Josh B – How did you end up be coming an English Major at, uh..?

Johnny R- New Mass English. Initially I went there and didn’t have any major at all, and I had to pick a major. I think there was a couple of reasons I didn’t pursue art, my sister was an Art major and she always seemed like a loser to me or something, and I didn’t want to emulate that and my parents always looked down on the art thing as not-a-viable- career-option. Not that English was any better, but there was always the idea I could get a job teaching or working at a newspaper. Towards the end, I did do a double major with Art, and I took basic drawing and figure drawing but then I just dropped it because I wanted to graduate on time. Not that there’s anything I learned from what I did in those classes, so I just decided to learn all over, to start all over again.

Josh-Moving away from the nerd-tech questions…do you think that your depictions of rape, slavery and the holocaust -do you think they desensitize people more than they already are, or do you think they don’t desensitize them and its impossible to desensitize people more than they already are?

Johnny R- Um, I’m not sure, for some reason I seem to enjoy working with angry ideas. I think also people have always worked desensitively. If you took stuff from Zap and Robert Williams in the 60′s and brought it out today, people would be even more horrified, especially with the race stuff. And the sex. Crumb is almost this god of cartooning, he’s lauded in museums for what he’s done, I think people just remember the nice drawings he’s done and forget about the Angelfood McSpades and the girls with their heads ripped off…

Josh B- I sense that there’s a lot of cynicism and outright hatred of groups and trends in your work.  For example, it’s a group assumption that Crumb’s work isn’t horrifying now.

Johnny R-Just what people want to remember, its almost like they remember selectively, we all remember the good stuff, what we want to remember. And causally forget Angel Food McSpade and other horrible stuffs he’s drawn.

Josh B- People must assume that if your spending so much time dealing with genocide, rape and the racial stuff, well, someone might look at this and think that since you’re preoccupied with these things you must care, another might think are you concerned with these things or are you just a total Nihilist?

Johnny R-I think Nihilism has a lot to do with it; I don’t know what you mean by the fact that I care about things? Does that mean…am I for it or something?

Josh B-Do you have compassion, do you have sensitive feelings on these topics?

Johnny R-On a certain level you can consider what I do to be comedy, and a comedian has to divorce himself from a lot of that I think in order to work the joke, and a lot of times the best joke comes from the most pain, y’know? (Laughs)

Josh B- Do you think that people who see themselves as the butt of the jokes have a right to feel hurt by the comics?

Johnny R-That’s up to them. That’s their call.

Josh-You don’t feel any responsibility toward them?

Johnny R-No, I’m an artist. My job is to make art and to draw and make stories that are compelling and interesting and moves me in some way and then to put it out there. How they react is how they react, my responsibility begins and ends there.

Josh-There’s some surrealistic tendencies in your work, and I read a quote where Salvador Dali said” I don’t feel any more responsibility for what I paint about than I do for what I dream about. ”

Johnny R- Right, I read a quote recently…I’m gonna paraphrase…. “Just like there’s no morality in nature there’s no morality in art. “It’s interesting that you bring it up because people always demand that artists deliver some sort of meaning and truth, and when that truth’s hideous they throw up their arms and get upset and have hurt feelings and it’s “you’re ruining people’s lives” There’s conflict; you want the art to be true, but don’t want to be shown stuff that makes you feel bad, you can’t make people feel good all the time, its not true, the object is to make people feel something. There’s no rule that it has to be something good.

Josh-How do you align yourself politically? Left Right? Liberal? Anarchist, Socialist, Capitalist, Agnostic?

Johnny R-I’m sort of more of a liberal, I’m a registered democrat. Um, I guess there’s some conservative positions that I hold, but my understanding of myself is as more of a liberal guy.

Josh-Your comics portray a lot of abject poverty and there’s a working class origin to a lot of the characters, does that reflect your own background?

Johnny R-I wasn’t in that type of home Loady McGee was in; I think I grew up lower middle class. The look of the house Loady was in was based on that show The Young Ones. That house was always so filthy and disgusting those funny things just naturally happened in it.

Josh-I was looking back at that comic “1976“, and I guess you already said in an interview I read I that was like your version of an Auto bio comic.

Johnny R-Well, yes, but its more about my father than it was about me. Though I do make a special guest star appearance.

Josh B- I like the panel where the dad lifts the 4000 dollar check that he’s gonna steal and though a lot of time you draw these rubber hose arms, in this image when he lifts it, his arm is all like a super hero arm. Almost like, as your father, he’s this icon of heroism. The part where your father collapses nude and the kids take pictures of him, was that a real thing that happened?

Johnny R-Well, I compressed a lot of things that happened into a story which only covered like three hours, but he did collapse in the bathroom and pass out, and we went in and took pictures of him, and later he went nuts trying to find the pictures and when he found one he’d destroy it.

Josh B- a lot of your stories seem to have an anti story structure, where a lot of things happen that seem random, but the structure is there, with a beginning and middle and end with a resolution. The construction sneaks up on the reader. Do you chalk this up to your background as a writing major?

Johnny R- English major, but yeah I guess if there’s anything good that came out of my college career its the ability to read a story and write a story.

Josh B -To give you credit where its merited, a lot of people struggle to even get out one story on paper, but after you hit your stride as a cartoonist, you’ve just done story after story. It’s not something that other people could do with the same background and art education.  There’s a lot of frustrated writers out there.

Johnny R-Thank you for noticing. (Laughs)

Josh B – That’s about all the questions I have written down, we can stop it here, I guess.

Johnny R- Is it gonna be online or is it something that is online or in an actual zine?

Josh B -Yeah its gonna be for Starfucker Zine, it’s gonna be an all comics issue with an interview with you and another with Gary Panter.

Johnny R- Have you talked to Gary yet?

Josh B -No I talked to him about it. I noticed that he did the art for the end papers of your most recent book. (“What Are You Looking At?“) Is that’s something that Fantagraphics set up?

Johnny R- No, I just asked him.

Josh B -Did he ask you for a drawing in exchange?

Johnny R- No, no, he asked for money in exchange!

Josh B -I know he does this thing and you do the same on your website where you take art requests?

Johnny R- He actually does a cool thing where you give him three words and he draws whatever he wants. My thing is kind of more direct whereas you tell me what you want drawn. I like his idea it sounds more fun but in my case I feel like if someone wants a drawing from me I feel obligated to give them exactly what there looking for.

Josh B -Have you gotten one really unpredictable, original request after another?

Johnny R- No, more often than not they’re a little on the dull side.” Make a picture of me walking my dog” or something, every once in a while I’ll get some crazy cool request like” can you draw Michael vs. 80′s chainsaw hookers”, and that’ll be a fun challenge, but 80 percent are a little on the dull side.

Josh B – Somebody told me you did a mural-sized Howard Stern project.

Johnny R- I made a poster, yeah, and I’ve been working on it a couple years. Every now and then I’ll think I’m done but then I’ll realize I forgot Beetlejuice or something.

Johnny R- My collaborator is here, he wants ask a question.

Johnny R- Ok.

Joaquin D- Is the Brockton Dildo Factory a real place?

Johnny R- I was working for Chadwick’s which was a women’s clothing company, unloading trucks and there was a guy who worked there saying how there was a new dildo factory in town and he was gonna go work there…. I don’t know if he was serious or it was a real place, but I thought it would be funny if they had huge spools of uncut of Ben Wa balls and dildos hanging from the ceiling and massive amount s of butt plugs and stuff.

Josh B – one more question. There’s a lot of articles being written and cultural critics writing about the new ascent of Frat culture, all these movies like Knocked Up and 40 year Old Virgin being made with these slacker idiot heroes and they’re all fat and loathsome but they’re the heroes, and its like a new niche, and with that in mind, how do you feel about your work being considered part of that Frat zeitgeist?

Johnny R- Well I don’t mind.

Josh B – You keep a balance between stuff that’s genuinely dynamic and interesting for you, even if it’s dynamically stupid, and it still seems to be balanced out with an artist’s touch, do you worry about losing the balance and having it become all stupid?

Johnny R- I guess I never think like that. I guess I just do what I do. I guess if anything, I worry about it sometimes becoming too smart. Earlier you were talking about the whole frat boy thing, people use that as a pejorative but I think there some good things that the frat culture has brought. A lot of the humor from the frat movies from the late ’70′s and early ’80s are really funny.

Josh B – It gave you something to do work about, like in your earlier comics like “Mullet.”

Johnny R- I think that, not that I was a part of a frat, but at some point in college I started hanging out with these types that certainly weren’t artistic and are more inclined toward certain things like boarding and comics and art and Dr Who and some of those things are pretty funny and I feel that I was able to start to incorporate that sort of humor into my work.

Josh B – That’s interesting, so it seems your suggesting that concern for being hip is sort of an adolescent stage that you don’t care about.

Johnny R-I guess so, its not like I was ever hip to any degree, so it’s not something I would care about.

Josh B – So you don’t go on a big ego trip about where you are in your life.

Johnny R- Especially as a teenager and until my late 20′s for the most part I tried to remain completely invisible so no one would bother me.

Josh B – then you have invited all this conflict into your life from the aggressive comics that you do.

Johnny R- I think that was the outlet, you know, I was playing the invisible role and not being noticed by anybody and not being a part of anything and it all built up this rage inside of me so now I make the comics and art …  like this, so now I’m angry.

Josh B Well, maybe that’s a good place to end it. Thanks a lot for the interview.

Johnny R- Sure let me know when it goes out.

END TAPE

J Ryan reveals his early affection for the Meat Men's "Crippled Children Suck" album

Anyways, it’s a great show and you all should go if you can. I will be conducting three panels on Saturday. On top of the panels, I will be signing at the Conundrum table #140, across from the wonderful Koyama kids, on Saturday and Sunday from noon till 1pm. If I am not there, and not in panels, you can either find me on the floor or maybe chilling near table #242 which will have Marian Churchland, Brandon Graham, James Stokoe and Marley Zarcone.

The Pilot Tavern, 22 Cumberland Street, Across the street from Toronto Reference Library

A4: Creator Roundtable: Pope, Graham, & Hiti
Panelists: Paul Pope, Brandon Graham, and Sam Hiti
Moderated by Robin McConnell
Location: The Pilot
Time: 1:00 – 2:00

Paul Pope, Sam Hiti and Brandon Graham are creating modern comics built on a wealth of influences. Joined by Inkstuds host Robin McConnell, they will be exploring the tableau of work that inspires them and how that affects the creative processes in work such as Death Day, Tiempos Finales, King City, Multiple Warheads, 100%, THB and more.

A6: Balancing a Canadian Identity w/ Working in the Mainstream
Panelists: Darwyn Cooke, Ray Fawkes, Kathryn and Stuart Immonen, and Jillian Tamaki
Moderated by Robin McConnell
Location: The Pilot
Time: 3:30 – 4:30

What part does being a Canadian play in a comic creator’s storytelling? With many of the largest comics companies being based in the United States, and publishers and an audience that have a US sensibility, how do Canadian creators retain their sense of self while working on licensed properties, or even graphic novels edited and published by people not from the same country that they are? This panel examines the Canadian identity in terms of the mainstream comics market.

Learning Center 1, Toronto Reference Library, first floor

A16: Spotlight: Lorenzo Mattotti
Moderated by Robin McConnell
Location: Learning Center 1
Time: 11:30 – 12:15

Lorenzo Mattotti is recognized today as one of the most outstanding international exponents of comics art. His books have been translated all over the world. Mattoti, a Featured Guest of TCAF, appears here to discuss his life and his work, including his most recent graphic novels Stigmata and The Raven. Mattotti will be interviewed by the host of Inkstuds, Robin McConnell.

Photo courtesy of Jen Vaughn

Here is the audio from the panel I did with Sarah Glidden at Stumptown. I really enjoyed this conversation. Sarah is a really smart creator and comics are better to have her making them. In the panel, we touch on her Cartoon Movement piece.

Jeffrey Brown and I had plans to do a panel at Stumptown, where we discuss comics we grew up reading. The three of got to talking over the weekend, and decided it would be fun to have Brandon Graham join us for a pretty fun geek out over comics with ninjas.

My time on the floor was a bit of a rush of trying to check out as much stuff as possible since I would be all booked up in panels the next day. Chris Cilla had this awesome display for his minis.

I am always happy to see these boys. Zack Soto, Kaz Strzepek and Ben Catmull.

Seattle cartooning crew of Kelly Froh, Max Clotfelter and Eroyn Franklin were also in attendance. Jason T Miles was there as well, but seemed to be running around all busy like most of the time. For being in such close proximity to Vancouver, I have had very little contact with them, which is too bad, since they are pretty fantastic. Check out Profanity Hill for more Seattle goodies.

Mare Odomo was making good use of the outlets and getting caught up on his video games. A true master never rests at his trade.

That night, I got to go for dinner with some pretty spectacular folks. This photo almost feels like Jeffrey Brown’s last supper. Featured in the photo are Craig Thompson, Joe Sacco, Jeffrey Brown, Sierra Hahn, Sarah Glidden and Thi Bui. Craig is a regular listener of the show, and even called me out for talking about how much I like Piranha 3D on the show. Thi gave me a preview of the book she is working on about her families experience immigrating to the States from Vietnam. I really liked what I read so far.

After dinner, it was off to comic art battle at the Jupiter Hotel. The Jeffrey Brown from Be a Man made an appearance on stage and owned it!

After some undocumented revelry, we got down to business in the hotel room, where Joe Keatinge displayed his manly prowess on little Brandon Graham.

I think that was enough fun for one day.

Day 4 – Oh look, it’s Patrick Rosenkranz again, this time with Fantagraphics marketing man, Mike Baehr.

I don’t have a lot of photo’s from the convention this day, because of my panel duties. My first panel was with Jeffrey Brown. Brandon Graham joined us as a last minute addition. we had some intense nerding out. Pictured below is Jeffrey’s X-Men issue 192 themed sketchbook. it is a thing of wonder. Also notice Brandon’s messy table at the convention. I would go back every couple of hours and clean it up. Messy.

I really enjoyed my panel with Sarah Glidden. I was a little nervous about how much we would have to talk about, since Sarah was just on the show not too long ago, but we had plenty to talk about and it was awesome.

Photo taken by Jen Vaughn and stolen from her post on the Comics Beat!

My last panel was with Molly Crabapple, where we discussed different facets to her work.

I will be posting the audio from all of the panels over the next couple of days.

After the convention, a large group of us stumbled our way to a restaurant in the middle of nowhere. The food was great though.

After dinner, we made our way down to the Pony Club. Here is a nice shot of Farel Dalrymple and Milo George. Milo is a smart guy and I had a great time talkin’ shop.

Is this the best that Portland has to offer?

Here’s some random Pony Club shots.

Day 5 – The return home involved a quick run through Portland so sweet Brandon could have lunch with spicy Craig.

Truer words never spoken.

Corey Lewis joined us on the train ride back. He Brandon were up to something.

I think it was this.

Up next, TCAF. Thanks for reading!

Scott Hampton was in Vancouver to give a talk at a local art school, and I took advantage of his proximity and set up an interview. It’s a pretty interesting conversation about comics vs media property that I wasn’t expecting to get in to. I was joined by Brandon, who mentioned the interview here.

The rest of the crew got up to some furious drawing battles while I dozed off to the dulcet train tones.

Sarah Glidden joined us in Seattle, which seemed to bring a renewed energy to our voyage. Sarah and I had a great talk about the panel we were preparing for at Stumptown. It was interesting hanging out with her and the rest of the crew. She comes to comics from a completely different direction from the rest of the crew, not being seeped in geek culture. I like how comics have really changed over the years and discussed on so many different levels.

I stayed at the Jupiter Hotel. It was a good room, but a little loud at night, with the bar basically outside the room. Someone marked my door.

Claire and I went downtown to hunt down good times and donuts. Claire wasn’t too into the idea of super sugary donuts, so I suggested getting one of the more basic donuts. This is what she choose.

I wanted to buy this for James Stokoe, but Voodoo Donuts was closed on Monday when we were coming back.

We met back up with Brandon at Floating World. Jason Levian runs a great shop. I launched the Inkstuds book there back in October, because of how much I feel a kindred interest with what Jason is doing. Brandon was staying with Joe Keatinge, the supreme executive commander and leader of the Popgun anthology from Image. Joe and I like to argue.

Floating World was playing host for Benjamin Marra. He gave me some fierce Blue Steel. Are you reading his books?You really should be.

It was a pretty long day, so we went for some grub, where Claire met a charming dog.

I finally found the source of Brandon’s supreme cartooning powers.

Day 2 – Friday morning, after some delightful breakfast at the hotel, we met up with Brandon and Joe at the convention center. They were joined by patron of friends, Richard Starkings. Richard and I had a good chat about how awesome Shaky Kane is. Joe was keeping it classy as always.

I ditched out on everyone to go hang out with one of my favorite people, Jen Vaughn. Jen was an amazing hostess for me when I traveled to New England last year, and is forever endeared to me.

We went on an epic journey to the Dark Horse offices. We had a bit of a snafu on the way, and Jen captured the delight in my eyes. The rain that day was something fierce.

At Dark Horse, I met Philip Simon. He told me about some amazing projects that he is working on, including a collection of Bernie Wrightson Creepy stories. That stuff is gold, I tell’s ya.

Someone had this hanging in their office.

Jen has amazing taste in books.

This was above the till at an antique store by the Dark Horse offices. They also had some sweet milkshakes. Jen sat on the same seat that JFK sat on at one point.

That night, I ended up at the Comic Reading hosted by the very fine, Guapo comics. Tom Neely was there with some nice cards promoting his Wolf book. Tom’s work really excites me.

Tom introduced me to his fellow Igloo Tornado member, Levon Jihanian. I really enjoyed his reading.

Andy Johnson, owner of Cosmic Monkey comics, snuck off to meet up with some more great folks. Here is Andy and my favorite guy in Portland.

I was stocked to see Ben Catmull there.

I caught up Brandon and Joe, who were chatting with Jeffrey Brown. I think they were in the midst of planning the future of comics.

To be continued!!!!!

My terrible pic shouldn’t stop you from ordering these.

In the tall grass 2-4 are great 20s, urban, slice-of-life comics that err on the sunny side. As the issues progress you see Brunton more from mostly three-panel jokey strips to longer stories. Though strips don’t generally give me enough room to get immersed in a story, in the issues these autobio stories build on one another to give us a picture of Brunton and her Bay Area-worldling. My favorite thing about her work is her use of fine patterns to deepen the environments in her comics. It’s this attention to visual details that make her comics repeat-readers—you’ll always find some tiny new delight in each panel.

If you’ve been following the work on her site, you know that Brunton has recently been diagnosed with Epstein Barr and is more actively dealing with the repercussions of abuse. These themes of healing and change are darker than the misadventures of maturing, but they are also inextricably linked with that earlier subject matter. By working out her struggles on the page, she bravely gives her readers the chance to reflect on the parts of our own lives that are difficult and painful.

Brecht Evens is by far, one of the most exciting young cartoonists. His debut book from Drawn and Quarterly, The Wrong Place was one of the my favorite releases of 2010, garnering much praise on our year end show. Top Shelf recently released an earlier work by Brecht, Night Animals, another whimsical gem. Brecht is another person that I am very excited about meeting at TCAF.

Inkstuds favorite’s, Joe Ollmann and Pascal Girard will be in Vancouver on Friday to promote their new books from the fine folks at Drawn and Quarterly. These are cartoonists to not miss out on meeting. I love their comics and so should you. Joe is even in the Inkstuds book. That’s how much I like him!

Where – Lucky’s Comics 3972 Main st.

When – 7pm until 9pm

Drew Weing‘s comics are among some of my favorites. Along with his wife, Eleanor Davis, they craft some amazing objects. Drew’s first book, Set to Sea is a beautifully drawn little book, garnering some well deserved praise. He also has a story in the new issue of Papercutter #15, a must have anthology.

Thought I would give you a little update from Casa Studs. Later this week I will be heading off to Portland for Stumptown. While there, I will be hosting 3 panels.

Sunday April 17, Room A105

Lorenzo Mattotti has been doing comics for a little over 30 years. Only a handful of work is available in English, but it’s a handful of excellence. His work first gained notice to North American audiences, thanks to a couple of appearances in RAW and his books, Murmur and Fires. Mattotti’s work is that of a creative giant. He breathes a life into comics that utilizes an unparalleled skill set, resulting in stunning works of art. Fantagraphics has recently released Stigmata to a new generation of readers. Mattotti is truly a cartooning master. This interview was conducted over two sessions and makes up to be my longest interview yet, at over 3 hours after I mixed the music in.

Many thanks to Lorenzo for being so generous with his time. For a man whose English is his 3rd language, he was a fantastic talker. Also, thanks to Kim Thompson for playing the connector.

Lorenzo Mattotti will be appearing at the Toronto Comics Art Festival in May. A very rare appearance that should not be missed. His collaborative work with Lou Reed, The Raven will be debuting at TCAF.

Smart comics folks, Dr Bart Beaty and Kim Thompson joined me to discuss European comics scene. It’s a pretty broad subject, but we are able to cover a lot of different points of interest. The amount of amazing comics out of Europe is really more than I can comprehend. Perhaps this will help navigate the abundance.

Darryl Cunningham‘s Psychiatric Tales is a fantastic and smart look at mental health and creating an understanding of the disease. He has also been doing some great reporting pieces on a variety of subject.

Aidan Koch is a part of that smart crew of cartoonists in Portland, putting out some thoughtful modern work. Her book, The Whale is the inaugural release from Gaze books, as well, she is also a recent addition the group of folks in the Mome anthology from Fantagraphics. Here is the correspondence project that Aidan mentions at the end.

Canadian Comics historian, Blake Bell, popped by the Inkstuds cyber studio to discuss his biography of cartoonist, Bill Everett. We also the archiving work that he and Fantagraphics have been doing, in regards to the legacies of Steve Ditko and Everett.

I don’t think Inkstuds listeners really need to be told much about Joe Sacco. His work in regards to Palestine and the Bosnian War have both been revealingly informative and touchstones in Comics Journalism. Joe and I discussed his latest book, Footnotes in Gaza in advance of his trip to Toronto next week for a talk at the University of Toronto. If you are in town, go check it out and don’t miss out on a unique chance to see him in person.

As well, Fantagraphics just released a special edition of Safe Area Gorazde.

Quebecois cartoonist, Jimmy Beaulieu came on to chat with me about his collection of translated work, Suddenly Something Happened. Jimmy has a great eye for life and relationships. His comics are strong compelling. Check out his site for some great sketchbook material.

I drove down ridiculously early with my good friends Mark Pilon and Marley Zarcone. I didn’t get a photo early in the day, so instead, look at one of Mark’s pretty paintings.

My first stop was tracking down Peter Bagge to give him a copy of Inkstuds book. Reading the first Hate collection when i was a young teen, was a pretty transformative experience. Peter and I were talking about having him on the show again at some point soon for a very interesting discussion panel. More details as the arrive.

He was talking to Elaine Mills, who had traveled all the way from Saskatchewan for Emcity. She gave me a copy of her comic. I am always happy to see more young Canadian work, especially from the prairies, which i have little knowledge of what is happening there.

My next stop was to see Geof Darrow. I had interviewed Geof a couple of weeks ago, and really enjoyed talking to him. I would be happy to interview him over and over.

Here is the art I bought off of him.

Mark and I both got a little giddy seeing Sergio. I didn’t talk to him, because I don’t really know what to say other than thanks.

Joe Keatinge has quickly developed into a good friend of mine that I like to argue comics with. He thinks I am a snob and I think he is too generous with his taste. Sitcom will be debuting in fall of 2013.

Joe was sharing his table with Nate Simpson. His debut book Nonplayer will blow your mind when it comes out. I had a chance to read it while Nate was working on it, and I think it’s pretty pretty.

Oh hai, it’s Maris Wicks and Joe Quinones.

There are two specific retailer’s that I go down to Seattle to see. the first is the folks that publish this. I usually buy a bunch of undergrounds, but this time, it was just a massive stack of Heavy Metals. I nearly finished off my run! They also had a nice selection of fantastic underground tabloids.

The other retailer is a guy called Randy’s Readers, which is a table of cheap silver and bronze age. I bought way too much stuff off of him…

I also saw some original art that left both Mark and I a little speechless and then frightened by the crazy prices.

Hicke mainstay’s and bro’s Graham Annable and Scott C. were there as well.

It was good to see the guys there as well as Farel Dalrymple and Scott Mills. Love those guys.

Frank Quitely was listed as a quest for Emerald City, but his table had his times for signings at 11am and 6pm for an hour each time. I was pretty frustrated by that, since he is a big headliner guest, you would think they would post something in advance about the minimal hours. I was only there in the middle of the day. I really wanted to ask him about doing an interview one day. C’est la vie.

I found odd book by John Thompson in stack of undergrounds. I don’t know much about it, and haven’t been able to find out much from reliable sources. Hot damn!

and here is the back cover or other front cover, since it’s a flip book.

and to end my visit to Emerald City Comicon, someone’s costume that had a padded ass!

Here is a bunch more photo’s I took with no real explanation.

Aaron Renier stopped by Casa Inkstuds for table side chat about his books, Unsinkable Walker Bean and Spiral Bound. Aaron’s work is a lot of fun to read and world to fall in to.

Geof Darrow is coming to Seattle for the Emerald City Comicon next month, March 4-6, and thanks to the kind folks there, i was able ti gave a great chat with Geof.  I have been reading his work for years. I remember how my mind was blown when first seeing Hard Boiled. Shaolin Cowboy and Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot are both fantastic reads as well. You can just spend hours focusing on all the details of a single page. The work of Darrow is also an antecedent to crop of fusion comics that Frank Santoro and I like chatting about; mixing comics history with European and Japanese influences sparkling through.

Hey Folks!

If you are in Vancouver, come out to his event on friday night at Lucky’s Comics. It would be great to see you all!

Well, I have tallied up the list of requests for Inkstuds. And you, wonderful listeners, have given me a list of nearly 200 cartoonists and comics folks that you would like to see me interview. Wow. I have had over 300 cartoonists on the show up to now, this just keeps me going forever.

My last interview with Carol Tyler was fantastic, and even ended up in the Inkstuds book. In the previous interview, we ran out of time, before we really go to have a deep discussion about You’ll Never Know. This time, we got super in-depth, and as any interview with Carol goes, it was fantastic.

In celebration of the books impending release, Robin was nice enough to ask me to write something for this site about influences on my work. Here are some images that are important to me…how they’ve influenced me I’m not sure.

I read comics and children’s books as early as I can remember. I stared at  covers like this one by Edwin John Prittie for years.

I also, like many children, loved everything the D’Aulaires drew. Trolls was genuinely horrifying to me. And that chart of Greek gods—THE chart, as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve always loved this book by Thatcher Hurd

And this beautiful, mysterious book

Wanda G’ag is someone whose books I spent a lot of time with.

Here prints, which I discovered later in life, are also very important to me.

She belonged to a group of artists loosely associated around Alfred Stieglitz 291 Gallery. Her children’s books were, if you believe what you read in her published diaries,  meant to sustain her financially so she could make more prints and drawings, some of which were exhibited at 291.

A lot of artists that exhibited there are important to me…like Marsden Hartley

Arthur Dove

and Rockwell Kent

There were always monographs of these artists laying aorund when i was a kid, but they were usually library copies. We had them for a little while, and then they were gone. When I first found comic books, the thing I couldn’t get over was that there were 22 pages of art and you could KEEP IT. I still can’t get over that in a lot of ways. My mom would always take me to museums and I loved getting the little postcards of art from the collection…collecting comics was an extension of that in a lot of ways.

At some point, comics became this thing I couldn’t turn my back on. I always loved art and the visual nature of comics really attracted me. I remember a friend at school had this card:

Somehow, after seeing that, I never went a day without being into comics. But it wasn’t like I actively sought comics out before that…comics have this weird way of choosing you. And my friend Chris Gutierrez having that Silver Surfer card in Second Grade is my shameful introduction.

These comics are pretty much printed onto my brain.

The Kindred! I remember thinking that was supposed to be a pretty quality book although the ‘plot’ was hard to decipher. The knock on those Image books was that the writing was weak but I always found that they were OVER written. I would actually draw up a diagram to figure out what was happening with those Extreme Studios books.

Those covers look great since i haven’t seen them in years…but they did begin to loose their power for me when i was surrounded by them day to day. Thankfully, that’s right when I found more underground, self published comics.

My early interest in art comics are probably boringly close to everyone else’s. So I’ll skip all that and instead talk a little bit about artists making work right now that is near and dear to me.

Sakura Maku makes comics that usually have this uniform size to them—in terms of the page border, its like a by-the-numbers comic book. But everything within those borders shows a total disregard for any set notion of how to make comics, which i find exhilirating. Sakura’s comics are also some of the best written works out there, in that they have a voice that’s very loud and personal—her characters sound completley unique.

Molly Colleen O’connell has this very round, even soft, line. I’m also impressed by how far she pushes that pleasing line into something more personal…her figures have a seed of what might be called ‘commerical appeal’ but she instead focuses on putting those figures into her narratives that take ample concentration to read.

Greg Cook’s China Guy is an older mini from one of my all time favorite cartoonists, Greg Cook. He hasnt had a ton of new work out in a while (I hear he’s at work on a long form comic?). Anyway, this is my favorite of all his work…cartoonist jesse McManus and I have spent hours talking about it.

Fiona Logusch has made a series of incredibly strong comics that have largely gone ignored by the general comics public. Shes concentrating on printmaking these days, I think. I love this etching by her

Anke Feuchtenberger is my favorite living cartoonist. Her comics seem to tower above most everything else out there…they are usually simple stories, with sparse writing, drawn in a style that isn’t neccesarily out of left field. And yet…they are completley removed from the concerns of most comics. It’s Feuchtenberger’s way of drawing the figure that I keep coming back to…it isn’t a radical approach, but her characters seem to have so much  at stake just through their movements and poses. Der Palast is my favorite of all her comics.

I have a great belief in delving as deep as one can into the incomprehensible world of images and stories that are imprinted on all of our brains. I think if the bulk of humanity did this, instead of giving up their life to toiling on mindless piecework for cynical interests, we’d all have a richer world. The way things are today, I can’t feel anything less than the highest regard for the artists listed above for bringing their art to the level that they have–for taking the time to make the things that they make.

Logicomix is a baffling yet entertaining read. It tells the story of famous British intellectual and pacifist Bertrand Russell’s life long struggle to discover the fundamental mathematical logical that supposedly, well, explains something about everything…I think. As you can imagine, explaining this to a lay person like myself who hasn’t spent years studying philosophy is a daunting task. I can’t say that after reading this book that I have any more idea of what all the fuss is about than when I began. What seems to me as mere amusing logical conundrums and paradoxical word games are to the philosophers, mathematicians and logicians that appear in these pages deadly serious business.

The story starts out with Bertrand Russell giving a lecture at an American university on the day that World War Two breaks out in Europe. He is confronted by demonstrators who demand he, as a well known pacifist intellectual, clearly support their efforts to keep America out of the war. Before he gives his answer, he recounts his life story which is the body of the graphic novel (along with interspersed scenes of the creative team behind the book debating how best to tell his story).  It’s an intriguing moment; would this ivory tower intellectual abandon his long held belief in pacifism to urge confrontation with the evil that is Nazi Germany? You’ll have to wait to find out…

Russell from a young age went on a quest for certain, mathematical truth. As the graphic novel makes clear, this is a dangerous pursuit. We meet many searchers for truth in this story who begin with logic and end in madness. Frege becomes an raving anti-Semite, Cantor is committed to an insane asylum, Hilbert turns away indifferently as his child is carried off to another insane asylum, Schlick is murdered by a nazi fanatic for his un-Aryan philosophy and Wittgenstein is a whole category of crazy on his own as he volunteers for dangerous frontline duty in World War One to further his insights into reality. At conferences, lives are destroyed over proofs as eminent thinkers get into brawls over competing esoteric philosophies. Is it any wonder Russell’s own son was schizophrenic when a trip to the seaside Russell admonishes a man for saving his young son from drowning, calling it a learning experience?

Bertrand Russell and his colleague Whitehead spent years writing a 364 page book proving conclusively that “two plus two equals four! It all seems to be a life and death search for the bleedingly obvious or the hopelessly obscure that has nothing to do with real life. (Although in a scene in the book one of the writers pleaded to explore how philosophy led to computers, which I understood were invented by the military to overcome purely practical problems of artillery ballistics. Something for Scott McCloud.).

A book like this might be dismissed as appealing to the vanity of the reader, one educated enough to flatter themselves with some passing familiarity to the characters, their philosophical theories and arguments, the egghead equivalent to pop culture referencing that passes for humour in so many films these days. What saves it is that you really don’t have to understand what they are talking about, few people do, to enjoy the story and truly bizarre characters in it. The art is “clear-line” school, but a looser and less anal line in common with other contemporary European comics. I thought they were occasionally pushing things trying to give the subject more drama than it deserves. It has the excellent European quality of placing the characters in a convincing time and place, the wider world around the characters is no mere backdrop  (for example, Russell admires Ibsen but is mystified by Dada). The team does try it’s level best to explain through comics complex ideas and succeeds to an extent but this is no textbook. It’s better than that.

Oh, and “would this ivory tower intellectual abandon his long held  belief in pacifism to urge confrontation with the evil that is Nazi Germany“? 
I’m not telling.

Fingerprint’s cartoonist, Will Dinski is crafted some amazing looking comics. I am really loving the work that I have seen by him and blown away by the care he puts into all aspects of his work. Listen carefully for a special giveaway!

When cartoonists over here talk about cartoonists over there, there being Japan, one of the first things that gets talked about, is the intense pressure a Japanese manga artists routinely works under. The output of Manga artists is insane, often working on several weekly or monthly series simultaneously, sometimes without the support of a team of assistants. Added to the heavy workload are the pressures of dealing with interfering, controlling and demanding editors. We over here can only shake our heads and wonder why these cartoonists over there don’t simply crack under the strain. At least one, Hideo Azuma, did crack and he tells his story in the award winning Disappearance Diary.

A successful manga artist of the 70’s and 80’s (he is credited with the invention of Lolicon manga, sexy drawings of underage girls, which is a whole other story he doesn‘t get into in depth). The series is about three periods in Azuma’s life when he dropped out. The first was in 1989 when he was homeless, sleeping rough in the woods through rain and snow on the outskirts of a mountain town. He was discovered by the police (some of whom are big fans of his art) and returned to his wife and job. The second takes place in 1992 when he fled to another town, eventually taking a job as a pipe fitter until his identity was once again discovered by the police and returned to his long suffering wife (who appears as a rather incidental character, who works as his art assistant. More difficult personal confrontations with his wife are glossed over as being “not funny“. She‘s also one of the few women in the book not drawn in a Lolita style). He continues working as pipe fitter until he quits and goes back to manga. The last section finds him in 1997 facing up to his dependency on booze, the delusions and suicidal thoughts that sees him entering the Alcoholic Ward of a psychiatric hospital.

As you can imagine on the surface this is pretty painful, harrowing stuff, which the artist deals with portraying himself as a “cute”, balding, manga style dwarf. His original idea was to draw his stories using funny animals to further remove himself from the trauma of the events but was convinced otherwise. At one point this mixing of cute drawing style with serious story topics may have put me off but I’m sure now we are all used to that with manga, (starting with Gen of Hiroshima about the aftermath of the nuclear bombing) so it’s no longer a problem. What is weird is that this comic is flipped to read right to left, no doubt to give us westerners a more comfortable reading experience. But now I’m so used to reading manga translated into English but unflipped, reading left to right, that switching back to my natural reading style was difficult at first!

Reading this book, you learn a lot about surviving while homeless in Japan (which despite the cold and wind he manages quite well on the cast-offs of Japan’s affluent society and makes it seem an attractive alternative to his working life), pipe-fitting, the evolution and tribulations of a working manga artist and his struggle with alcohol. He packs a lot of story into his polished, economical and sometimes beautiful artwork. What doesn’t translate is something that’s most important to Azuma; in an interview in the book he emphasizes how he wants his Disappearance Diary to be “funny”.  All things considered, it’s not funny but it is well worth reading.

I sat down for chicken and donuts with my favorite drawer of gronch, Mr James Stokoe. The interview was a blast and we have all kinds of surprise visitors that show up. Please keep in mind that the interview was done at 1230 in the morning. His Orc Stain collection is getting all kinds of love and is a wonderful read. Be sure to check out his Wonton Soup collections from Oni Press as well.

I met up with Ho Che Anderson in Toronto last year, in the days before TCAF. We had an amazing conversation about his King book, and then when I looked down at the digital recorder, I noticed it wasn’t recording. Major bummer. The interview posted here, was done immediately after. I have never had an interview not be recorded before, and I hope to never have that happen again. My apologies to Ho, he was a great to chat with and I highly recommend reading King.

Every year, I ask folks to tell me who they think I should be interviewing. 2010 was a pretty awesome year for me, with the publication of my first book, graduating from University and getting tour through some amazing locale’s and meeting some wonderful folks.

I want to try and make this year, the best year for Inkstuds programming. After 2 weeks of great best of lists by some great contributors, it’s time to get back to work.

Who should I be interviewing? Last time I requested a list, there was a good amount of cartoonists that I thought would never do an interview, that have since been on the show. So you never know who will be on.

This week, I was joined by a round table of swell critics to discuss their picks for the previous year. Christopher Butcher, Tucker Stone and Bill Kartalopoulos provided for a great hour of conversation.

The books discussed are

Bodyworld by Dash Shaw
Michael Deforge’s collective output
Love & Rockets New Stories #3 by Los Bros Hernandez
The Wrong Place by Brecht Evens
Xed Out by Charles Burns
Young Lions by Blaise Larmee
Acme 20 aka Lint by Chris Ware
Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco

© Philippe Jarry and Desert Island

We got there with lots of time to spare for set up. I was manning the table for my publisher Conundrum books. The books had been sent to a friend of my publisher’s in Queens, so all I had to do at that point, was sit and wait for the boxes to show up. My guy ended up being a little later than planned, so I had some time to bum around and check out what some of the folks had catch up with some friends. This report will be less linear, more capturing the madness of the day. The day itself was 9 hours of madness.

© Desert Island

My table was surrounded by Lizz Hickey on one side, and Sally Bloodbath and Kate Beaton on the other side. I felt like I was in some pretty good company. Next to Kate was Doug Allen, Gary Leib and one of my favorite cartoonists of all time, Charles Burns. I hit up Charles pretty quickly for a sketch when the day started. I regret not talking to Doug and Gary. They are both guys that I would like to talk to at some point in the future.

Since my publisher was unable to make it down to the festival, I enlisted the help of Zack Soto in exchange for giving him some space at the end. Having Zack was great. He is a super charismatic guy that folks are just drawn to talking to. He also seems to know everybody. I took this photo of him, talking to Vanessa Davis, Sam Gaskin and Brian Chippendale, just to show you what kind of show it was that day. Every corner you turned, there was an amazing cartoonist to talk to.

I had Johnny Ryan and Lisa Hanawalt running the Pigeon Press table behind with Julia Wertz and Ben Catmull next to them on one side and Domitille Collardey on the other side. I had enough time to be able to get Johnny’ s latest book of madness off of him but totally forgot to check out Domitille’s books, and was kicking myself for it later.

Across the aisle from me, was the Closed Caption Comics crew. I had met Zach Hazard Vaupen the night before at the Nazi Knife art show. They seem to have some great releases. Zach gave me a copy of his latest Hatred for a Human Host.

An early highlight of the day was looking up and seeing these guys standing there.

I grew up on the Simpsons and Life in Hell, so needless to say, I was super-excited to see Matt Groening in front of me. I thrusted a disc of Inkstuds interviews into his hand and gave one to Gary Panter as well. Gary was really nice to finally meet. Interviewing him, has not only been personal highlight for the show, but I also feel like it is one of my strongest and a point when I feel I really understood what I want to do with the show. Gary’s comment at the end of the interview, was surprise that I knew so much about him. Gary is like the spiritual father of the Brooklyn Comics Fest. You can feel his legacy in so much work represented there. Gary was nice enough to come behind the table and do this great sketch for me. Gary, like many more people I would be talking to that day, is in the Inkstuds book.

It was the type of day, where you would be talking to Jillian Tamaki, and suddenly Jessica Abel and Matt Madden appear to chat comics too. Sorry for the bluriness.

Matt is set to be on the show again at some point soon, so we can discuss the work of French artist, Aristophane. Jillian did an amazing sketch in the book. It seems to be along the lines of her work that has been printed in her DQ book, Indoor Voice. I really love the direction of her personal work right now. I think of her work, as coming from an artist that is technically killing it, and really getting more and more in touch with something unique as time goes on.

The worst moment of the day, had to be a visit by this guy. He calls himself Captain Zorikh, the Brooklyn Cowboy. He did a quick 3 minute interview with me, that I am sure will never surface, but count your blessings if it is. He seemed to grate on my nerves very quickly, and I made that known during the interview, by selling comics to folks, while he was asking me some pretty asinine questions. In his bio, he describes himself as an amateur grappler. What does that mean? Does that put him on some offenders list?

Michel Fiffe is a guy that I have been emailing with back and forth for the last couple of years. He even did mix for site. I really like him, and wish we could chat for more than, “Hey, good to meet you”.

CiTR alum and former station president, Becky Sandler stopped by the festival. It’s always nice to see a friendly face from home.

I forgot to get a picture, but meeting Francoise Mouly was certainly a personal highlight. RAW really formed my mind as a reader, and also a critic. It is important to know the difference between good comics and bad comics, and RAW showed what is the best in comics. Nearly everyone that has been published in RAW has had some kind of lasting legacy on the industry that can’t be understated. I am thankful for people like her.

Brian Chippendale did this insane sketch in my book. He saw Keith Jones’ two-page spread and needed to beat him at the game.

Mark Newgarden is another person I was really excited about meeting at Brooklyn. We had been talking about doing an interview before, but could never really get it organized. He is working on a book with Paul Karasik about Bushmiller’s Nancy for Fantagraphics, and we have plans to talk when that comes out.

The whole day is just one exhausting blur. I am really happy that I was able to check it out and be a part of something that felt so alive and timely. The Brooklyn Festival felt a really defined snapshot of what is happening in modern comics. There are varying types of criticism floating around about how inclusive the Brooklyn Festival was, but from my point of view, it was curated with a specific artistic taste in mind. The work featured at Brooklyn represents a specific artistic ideal. I look forward to attending next year, in whatever capacity I can muster.

That night after the Brooklyn Fest, there was an afterparty at the home of Bill Kartalopoulos, Lizz Hickey, and Jon Vermilyea. I was there for about 2 hours and had conversation with an amazing aray of cartoonists. My favorite was probably talking about Grinderman with Zak Sally. Our music tastes have some pretty broad overlaps. On a side note, check out the Kim Deitch portfolio he just published. It’s something quite handsome.

My trip ended with the excellent animation show that Mark Newgarden put on at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn. I started out my day having breakfast in a pretty cruddy diner, but crappy food was made better by running into Bill Kartalopoulos and Nadia and George from Typocrat.

The animation itself was awesome. Mark’s collection is legendary. If you ever get the chance to see one of his events, make sure you don’t miss out. After the show, I went out for the worlds runniest milkshake and swell conversation with Vanessa Davis, Tom Kaczynski, Julia Wertz, Karen Schneider, Jon Lewis and more. It was the perfect relaxing way to end the trip.

Many thanks to Andy Brown, Christopher Butcher, Peter Birkemoe, Annie Koyama, Keith Jones, Dave Cooper, Jen Vaughn and Muff Mansion, Al Columbia, Jerry Moriarty, Shannon O’Leary, Zack Soto, Ben Catmull, Gabe Fowler, Bill Kartalopoulos, Dan Nadel and many more for helping to make such an excellent trip. I really wish I had more time to spend with people and meet folks.

Michael DeForge, Zack Soto and Noah Van Sciver joined me for a look at some of the best comics of 2010. I wanted to hear from a selection of cartoonists to see what books stood out to them.The list of what we talked about is partial list put together by a selection of individual lists provided by the guests. There are an additional 30 comics that we did not talk about, that they identified.

We talked about -

Wilson by Daniel Clowes
Orc Stain by James Stokoe
Make Me a Woman by Vanessa Davis
Black Blizzard by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Wild Kingdom by Kevin Huizenga
Wally Gropius by Tim Hensley
ACME 20 by Chris Ware
Lemon Styles by David King
Bodyworld by Dash Shaw

The first time I interviewed Renee French, was very early in the Inkstuds days. Thankfully I didn’t scare her off and she agreed to come back and catch up. Her latest book, H-Day seems like a new step in her work, really taking it to a new and wonderful place. She also has new work that has been serialized in Fantagraphics anthology, Mome.

Sanctuary cartoonist, Nate Neal and I yakked about his latest book, his work and Mome and other topics of general cartooning interest. Sanctuary has a really great language all to itself, and his work in Mome utilizes a while different skill set. Good comics.

Day 4 – The journey continues after being kindly sent on my way by the wonderful Jen Vaughn. I had a lively 7 hour train ride with a couple of seats to myself and some crappy tv shows to keep me excited. Not much to say about the train. It’s long and done. When I got into Penn Station, I realized that I forgot to come planned with my hostess Shannon O’leary‘s # and thanks to some helpful folks, we got connected, and I rushed off in a fine New York taxi to the middle of nowhere in Brooklyn. We had plans to go to Lisa Hanawalt’s book launch for the second issue of her series, I Want You at the most excellent, Desert Island. Lisa’s work is really quiet amazing. With only two books out, she is already making the fool out of the competition. That’s right, I said making the fool.

The launch was a really nice affair. The first person I saw when walking in the door was Kate Beaton, who is in the Inkstuds book, but had not yet received a copy. I think the American and Canadian postal system don’t like each other. Kate is always a delight to chat with and it’s great to see a familiar face right away. Gabe Fowler quickly brought me a beer, which is a great way to get in good with a Canadian. It was a good group of familiar faces including Bill Kartalopoulos, whom I have seen in person twice including my trip to SPX in 2006. I really like that guy and like what he has got going on. Shannon and I went out to a bar that gives free pizza with each beer with MK Reed and Gabrielle Bell. We had a good drunken chat and I sent out some terrible tweets. It was a great way of saying hi to the city.

Photo Stolen from Lisa's flickr

Day 5 – My first proper day in New York was a bit of a bust. After going out for some breakfast, New York had a horrendous rain storm that had me soaking to the bone after walking for not even half a block. I’m from Vancouver, I am fine with a little rain. In fact, I am at home in the rain, but this was insane. I ended up passing out for the afternoon with an old cat with the loudest voice in the world and a gentle old dog. I managed to get a little shopping done in the evening.

I picked up a huge Harold Head comic at Roger’s Time Machine on 14th and a handful of undergrounds including one by Catherine Jones (Née Jeffrey) that I had never seen before. I am a huge fan of her work and would love to be able to interview her. Please let me ask you questions Catherine.

I also checked out Forbidden Planet and the Strand. I picked up an art book by Jose Munoz at Forbidden Planet for half off, since the dust jacket was torn. The book is interesting, as it looks more like something I would expect from Lorenzo Mattotti. I was really disappointed by Forbidden Planet. It seems like the future of comics stores is to have a selection of goods available from the Diamond back list catalogue and a handful of floppies. Not very excited for me. The Strand was great as always. I only picked up a couple of books there, but I would return for more.

Day 6 – This day was one of the highlights of my trip. A little more shopping to start the day including Jim Hanley’s, which may have a lack of back issues, but does carry my favorite book ever.

Before coming to New York, Jerry Moriarty had invited me to come visit him. I was super excited, Jerry was a blast to interview and had given me a great quote for the back of the book. Jerry has said that he has done two proper interviews in his career. One with Chris Ware for the Believer and the other, avec moi.

Jerry is very familiar with the Inkstuds and has listened to the show on numerous occasions. I spent a wonderful afternoon hanging out with him in his amazing loft and getting a private tour of his latest series of paintings. Jack Survives is a fantastic collection that shows just how far comics have come in the last 100 years, but at the same time, collecting work that is over 30 years old. Talking art with Jerry is like jumping on a roller coaster and trying to hold on. The whole conversation left my mind a little blown.

Day 7 – The Madness of the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest(BCGF) starts to set in for me. Zack Soto and I had been talking about meeting up at some point for some comicky good times. He wanted to go out and sell come copies of his most excellent Study Group 12 vol 4 anthology. It is really an amazing book. Zack is a good man with some great comics taste. Ben Catmull was also in town, crashing Sarah Glidden‘s table at BCGF, since she was off in the middle of Iraq being smart and stuff, while we went out shopping for Steve Ditko comics. Our first stop in the city, after a quick coffee and bagel in Williamsburg, was a return to Forbidden Planet, which was another bust, since the guy that does the buying was out smoking.

I suggested we kill time by going to The Strand, which is on the same block. I took a closer look at the books this time and picked up some goodies including a manga Mr. Arashi’s Amazing Freak Show, the latest BPRD and Hellboy book. I read them on the plane home and of course loved that. I wonder if anyone has done any thorough analysis of Mignola’s work in academic sense, that you would find in Comic Art magazine or Book Forum. There is something about his story telling that I can’t quite place my finger on, that is working so amazingly. It’s not just making good comics, but I do get a feel that there is something deeper in his work that hasn’t been openly tapped yet.

The Strand was great for another couple of reasons. Zack sold all the copies of Study Group 12 that he had brought for selling in the city, so screw going to Forbidden Planet again. We also ran into Michael DeForge. Zack and I both convinced him into buying Kramers Ergot 4 for a paltry $40. Michael gave me a copy of his latest book that he had done over the last week to debut at BCGF. It is printed on a Risograph. I know that Zack Soto and Ryan Sands had also recently gotten their own Risographs, so there should be some awesome crazy looking stuff coming out soon.

Our comic shopping brought us back to Roger’s Time Machine, which I had learned in the meanwhile, is the only reliable place for back issues in New York. Really New York, that’s it. I have a whole bunch of places I can go to in Vancouver. Zack was let down by the lack of Moebius books, since they had a full run of the Epic books the previous week. I got a stack of Wally Wood reprints and an old Steve Ditko collection from Eclipse books.

Our trek took us all the way up to Printed Matter, which bestowed some lovely goodies, including a David Sandlin book I had seen around, but couldn’t afford to get. The price they had it for at Printed Matter was just right. It seemed appropriate, since the previous day, Jerry Moriarty was chastising me for not having read Sandlin’s comics.

The day finished with a stop by Secret Project Robot for the Nazi Knife art show. It was a neat space not far from where I had met up with Ben and Zack earlier that day. We had since all gone our separate ways, with Zack off doing karaoke, Ben going a wandering and me, dumping my books back at Shannon’s. The Nazi Knife show was interesting. They were playing some old Throbbing Gristle, which made me pretty happy. I am still pretty bummed about the passing of Sleazy last month. I was probably most impressed by CF’s work there. He has this dynamic energy in his work that brings the figures right off of the page.

I got reconnected with Ben, and chatted  industry gossip with Heidi the Beat and Dan Nadel. I also finally met Matthew Thurber. That guy is the bees knees. He has been doing these great little mini’s with Marc Bell that I can never get enough of. I kept the night early in anticipation of the coming day and the thought of standing for 10 hours. If you didn’t know this yet, I can be a little lazy in the physical department.

To be continued in Part 3.

Howdy, True Believers! Frankie Santoro here with a guest spot over on Inkstuds. I wanted to have some crossover blog action and asked Robin if he would be kind enough to host the audio of an interview I did with Kevin Huizenga and Jim Rugg at the Pittsburgh Indy Comics Expo back in October of this year. It was a good talk with lots of laughs. Please enjoy.

Day 1 – I flew to Toronto. I was doing an event with Dave Cooper the following day at the Beguiling, so I had a night to wander and enjoy. Because my cat is a bitch, I only slept for about an hour the night before, so Toronto got to meet a very sleep deprived Inkstud.

Amazing dinner

Cartooning patron and publisher extraordinaire, Anne Koyama took me out for crazy Chinese dinner in the restaurant that was in some basement at Spadina and Bathhurst. I was joined by some of my favorite folks in Toronto, Michael DeForge, his wonderful lady and the hilarious Keith Jones.  Michael gave me a copy of Spotting Deer. His chops as a cartoonist, while starting out at the top of the game, have gotten even better and more exciting. He has a future of some great work ahead of him and I suggest buying everything you can find by him. You won’t be sorry. Michael kept talking about how he needed to have a new book ready for the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest even though he had Spotting Deer. More on that later. Keith was on the show earlier this year, for a pretty fun conversation about his latest book from Drawn and Quarterly. Keith used to live in Vancouver, but for some reason, I had never met him while he was here, but now he is my favorite person to hang with in Toronto. The night was pretty mellow, but did include some comic shopping at BMV on Bloor. I was trying to be careful and not buy too much on my first day.

Anne, Keith, Michael and Laura

Day 2 – I spent my day taking it relatively easy. I was a little stressed out about my event with Dave Cooper. I really love Dave. He is a very nice and generous guy, but I am still getting used to doing public interviews. I have only done a handful of panels. I went for breakfast with Alex Jensen, publisher of new Canadian publishing house, Pop Sandbox. Alex has a keen eye for marketing and has really done an amazing job getting people excited for his debut publication, Kenk. He mentioned that the Inkstuds book had a good little display at Chapters in their Graphic Novel section.

After that, I walked over to the Silver Snail, and they didn’t even have the Inkstuds book. A good reminder on why comic stores are failing to get new material and understand comics are more than tights, but the bookstore market has a better idea of what is new and has a broader interest base.

WALLY WOOD Y'ALL

My comic shopping continued at BMV again, only this time, Keith Jones was working up a storm to the throngs of Sunday shoppers. Keith did this amazing drawing in my book that day and I got a mean stack of comix. After marking off some comics on my check list and picking up an amazing old Wally Wood comic. I jaunted off to the Beguiling for a little pretalk shopping and then prep.

The Beguiling is really dangerous for me. I always want lots but this time, I behaved myself. The selection of great foreign work doesn’t really have an equal in my experience. I was struck by a particularly amazing selection of Lorenzo Mattotti books. I have been on a big kick of his work lately and have really only scratched the surface of what he has produced. I ended up only getting a couple of early John Pham books. The selection at the Beguiling is a slippery slope of danger on my pocketbook.

Dave, Britt and Vicki

My live interview with Dave Cooper went well. Dave’s work is really unparalelled, and he is constantly at the top of his game and only getting better. His work excites me. Many thanks to Christopher Butcher, Peter Birkemoe and Dave Cooper for allowing and making this happen. I saw lots of good friends, new and old that night, including Dave Cooper

Mr. Dayton

Day 3 – I had another night of sleeplessness, only this time I couldn’t blame my cat. I had an early flight to Boston, where Jen Vaughn would be picking me up at an ungoddly hour. I have not met Jen before, but we had yaked online a plenty. We were going on a three hour drive to the middle of nowhere with just google-maps and an iPhone to plan our way. My insomniac self needed sustenance and Jen talked me into getting a McGriddle. Wow. that was gross but amazing.

Photo courtesy of Jen Vaughn

Our target was lunch with Al Columbia, which was a success. I really like Al. I had previously met him when he was in Portland and had also interviewed him a number of years back. From there, we started the second leg of our epic journey, up to White River Junction in Vermont. I was pretty much a headcase by this point, and was on my second dose of those horrible energy shot drinks. Jen wasn’t impressed by them, but it was either the drinks or a sleepy dirtybird.

Jen and Al

Jen was an amazing hostess. She gave me a grand tour of the Center for Cartoon Studies campus and then got a whole bunch of CCSer’s to come for beers at their lone bar in downtown WRJ. I wish I was more enthusiastic for them, but I was running on fumes at that point and slept like a log in the wonderful Muff Mansion thanks to the hospitality of Jen, Nomi Kane and Betsey Swardlick. They are the best hostesses I could of hoped for.

Jen and Joe Lambert

Day 4 – Another early start. Jen took my on quick round trip of visiting as many people as we could before I had to run off to the train to New York. First we went for a breakfast with Steve Bissette. One of my earliest memories in comics, is reading an issue of the great Alan Moore Swamp Thing run that featured the Justice League. I don’t know what it was about that issue in particular that stood out in my memory. When I was a teenager, I worked in a comic store for about 3 years, and Steve’s Taboo was a source of particular interest for me. He had this one issue which featured a huge story by Moebius on bright yellow paper. This is kind of thing that Free Radicals and Kramers Ergot would be trying 15 to 20 years later, but Taboo did it first.

Me and Steve Bissette courtesy of Jen Vaughn

After breakfast, we tracked down Jason Lutes in his studio, where he was hard at work on Berlin. He showed me his progress map that Alec Longstreth had gotten him into using. Jason’s work on Berlin looks really amazing and is a really excellent work. I am really happy that Jason agreed to be in the Inkstuds book. It was a fun interview with just the right dose of nerdyness. After my quick hello’s and good-byes, it was off to the train and seven hours of sitting.

Me and Jason Lutes courtesy of Jen Vaughn

To be continued in part 2.

Photo courtesy of Jen Vaughn

]]> http://www.inkstuds.org/?feed=rss2&p=3272 1 http://www.inkstuds.org/?p=3275 http://www.inkstuds.org/?p=3275#comments Thu, 09 Dec 2010 10:26:21 +0000 Inkstuds http://www.inkstuds.org/?p=3275

Chris Cilla‘s new book, The Heavy Hand is a great surreal trip. Chris has been doing work in various anthologies including Kramers Ergot, Paper Rodeo and more.

I will be in Toronto on Sunday to do an event with Dave Cooper at my favorite comic store, the Beguiling. I am really excited about the event. Dave is super nice and those Beguiling guys know how to do things right.

After that, I will be going on a bit of a travel that will eventually take me to New York for the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. My publisher will be meeting me there with copies of David Collier’s new book and fine selection of Conundrum goodies. I am really proud to be published by Conundrum, especially when you look at the high quality work that they have been publishing.

In other news, I have done a couple of interviews lately. It’s a little weird to be on the other side of the questions. But it’s a good experience to understand what the interview process is like. I would be happy to do more interviews if any wants to ask me some questions.

First, the Sequential blog of Canadian comics news interviewed me earlier this week.

and Second, CiTR’s Arts Report interviewed me as a part of their funding drive programing. Audio here.

Come say hi at any events I will be at, and get a free disc of over 300 inkstuds interviews.

Photo courtesy of Brian Fukushima

This week was even crazier than last week’s fundraising show. I was joined by Brandon Graham, James Stokoe, Marley Zarcone, and the multi-talented Brian Fukushima. We were also had some fabulous call-ins from Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest programming director Bill Kartalopoulos, CCS librarian extraordinaire Jen Vaughn and long lost friend, Jordyn Bochon.

Brian Fukushima and Robin Konstabaris joined me for fun filled hour of talk. It was really great, we managed to raise a good amount of funds for the station and had a blast doing it. Thanks to Joe Keatinge, Jordyn Bochon and Jordan Shiveley for calling in. Brian will be back next week along with Brandon Graham. If you want to call in, the number is 604-822-2487.

Special thanks to Annie Koyama for her swell comic donations.

And, you can check out Brian’s twitter songs here.

Hey Folks! Tomorrow is the CiTR funding drive. I have a great selection of books from Conundrum Press, Drawn and Quarterly, Raincoast Books, and Top Shelf Comix.

This year, I will be doing a call in extraveganza. On Nov 18th at 2pm until 3pm PST, Brian Fukushima and Robin Konstabaris will be joining me in the studio and talking up storm with who ever calls.

Soooo, please call in and ask some questions, have something fun to say, or whatever tickles your fancy. the number is 604-822-2487. and you can listen live at www.citr.ca. Brian also hosts his own podcast called Spy Vs Pie and his awesome Twitter songs.

Check it out! I will be appearing with one of my favorite cartoonists, Dave Cooper care one of my favorite comic stores, the Beguiling. I will be interviewing Dave in front of an audience, asking only the best of questions. And to top it off, I get to sit next to him and sign my own book for whomever attends. I am really excited about this event.

This is just he beginning of my East-coast adventure. From there, I will be traveling to Vermont with the help of the fabulous Jen Vaughn for a visit to the Center for Cartoon Studies. After that, I will be heading down to NYC for a week of madness centred around the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. It looks like an amazing event and I am pleased as punch to be attending with my publisher, Conundrum Press.

If you want to meet up in New York, shoot me an email. I will be out having fun!

and in proper radio news, CiTR is doing their annual Funding Drive over the next couple of weeks, which means the show will be pretty different. It’s going to be a lot of talkin’. I am hoping that people will call in while we are doing this and have some fun Inkstuds style chats. This will be on November 18th and 25th at 2pm pacific time. Each week I will be joined by different local cartooning personalities. If you would like to call in, which i strongly suggest and promote – 604-822-2487.

More updates on that later this week.

Matt Dembicki has put together a great comic anthology collecting and adapting First Nations folklore stories called Trickster.

Comix Claptrap hostess and Bay Area cartoonist, Rina Ayuyang joins me for a chat about her new collection, Whirlwind Wonderland. Rina is a great chatter in all things comics and her book is pretty great too.

Sarah Glidden’s How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less is one of the more exciting books to come out from Vertigo in quite a while. It’s a great look at personal growth and development in the most unique of situations. and it’s a lovely book. Sarah’s work can also be found on the blog for her studio that she shares with some other talented folks.

And don’t forget about the Inkstuds book, which can be found here and in finer comic  stores.

David King’s mini comics are among my most favorite mini comics. His newest and biggest collection, Lemon Styles, continues to delight me. Go read his comics. he makes the funny.

Gary Groth,Jeet Heer and Ben Schwartz joined me for a lively roundtable discussion on The Best American Comics Criticism collection out from Fantagraphics. It’s great discussion and I wish we had way more time. It gets very lively.

Here is some info on the book -

Inkstuds
Edited by Robin McConnell
Introduction by Jeet Heer

Art / Graphic Novel
ISBN-13: 978-1-894994-49-1
ISBN-10: 1-894994-49-3
$20.00 / trade paperback / 9.5” x 8” / 296pp
many b&w illustrations / Bibliography
October 2010

Inkstuds is a collection of thirty interviews with North American alternative comic artists taken from the impressive archive that Robin McConnell has built up over the past 5 years on his radio show of the same name. The interviews focus on the creative process and influences, but the subjects discussed often branch off in surprising and interesting directions. The artists chosen cover the range from the older generation of underground cartoonists to the new generation of the comics avant garde. This book is an invaluable resource, not just for comic enthusiasts but anyone interested in the artistic process.

Featuring interviews with: Kate Beaton, Gabrielle Bell, Marc Bell, Jonathan Bennett, Chester Brown, David Collier, Jordan Crane, Rebecca Dart, Kim Deitch, Mary Fleener, Sammy Harkham, Jeet Heer, Jaime Hernandez, Jeff Lemire, Jason Lutes, Billy Mavreas, Françoise Mouly, Dan Nadel, Marv Newland, Anders Nilsen, Joe Ollmann, Gary Panter, Joe Sacco, Seth, Tom Spurgeon, Ted Stearn, Barron Storey, Jillian Tamaki, and Carol Tyler.

“It’s the closest thing to an Inside the Actor’s Studio of comics.” — Bryan Lee O’Malley

“It’s rare in the media today that people who really know and love comics, creators and connoisseurs, get the chance to express their ideas and opinions with an engaged and engaging interviewer. Robin McConnell makes this possible and helms the proceedings a pleasure to listen to and now to read.” — Paul Gravett

“It’s quite an interesting record of our times. All these comic artists that you’re talking to, they’re very heavy thinkers. It’s quite an archive of work that you’ve created.” — David Collier

“Inkstuds is the next best thing to sitting around and talking comics with your friends.” — Douglas Wolk

“Robin McConnell’s Inkstuds program ably and entertainingly brings together my two favorite dying artforms, comics and radio. Interesting, insightful, funny and informative, the show is a boon to the cartooning community.” — Evan Dorkin

“Looking for elegant conversation with polished cocktail-party-gossip names? Then you’ve come to the wrong place. The vibe here is one of charming amateurism (in the original and best sense: that of passion over profit) and deep engagement with the work of some of today’s most vibrant and idiosyncratic artists. If you have love in your heart for the neglected glories of college radio or hand-drawn comic books, then Robin McConnell’s Inkstuds is a beautiful thing.” — Timothy Hodler

“Right off the bat I felt comfortable and it was a conversational jam session. I knew Robin was a spontaneous person and was not going to ask questions on a checklist but to go with the flow to get the most out of me in a natural way. An hour and a half later we were done. It was like talking to someone I knew for years.” — Jerry Moriarty

Dave Cooper is someone that i have wanted to interview since starting the show 5 years ago. I caught up with Dave during his recent tour up the west coast. We discuss comix, cartoons and art!

And a little reminder that i am taking off for my book launch at Floating World for 6pm of Oct 14th and then I will be at table 312 at APE! See you there!

This week marks the beginning of my big push for the Inkstuds book. Folks that are able to make the launch at Floating World on thursday will join me in my first viewing of the printed book. I am super excited. I really think folks are going to get a lot out of it. It’s a great collection of interviews and I am really proud of it. I will be posting a link to buy the book directly off of me, after the Vancouver launch. If you are at APE, come by table 312 and say hi, and get a free disc of all the interviews and of course, buy a copy of the book…

I have been waiting for Vanessa Davis‘ new book, Make Me A Woman, for quite some time. Her monthly strips in Tablet Magazine have been a fantastic read, and an even better read in this collection. Vanessa has some great insights into her work and was great to chat with.

Issue #1 follows several days in the life of a fuck up named Sean, conjured by a journal Yost found under a burned couch in 1996. From there he builds the story to its sad conclusion using hate-fuck rap lyrics written on the back of an envelope and an illiterate note about money and coke scrawled on a napkin. The decisions that Sean makes feel like inevitable steps towards doom. There are some people that just can’t be saved and Yost is showing us one of the many ways to go down. The reader is dropped into the story with only the journal entries to prepare us and the details that Yost uses, like domestic bliss signaled by sprouts-buying and the sheepish face of a thief found out, make the patchwork world real.

A little girl watching TV in a dark room—from her pigtails to her delight in juice, you just know she’s going to have her innocence shattered soon. That last drop of sweet juice is what opens issue #2, a story where single moments of loyalty, cruelty and misunderstanding build to a shattering conclusion for a woman who is just trying to get by.

Check them out!

Dustin Harbin has made a couple of appearances on the studs, but this time, we talk about his favorite thing, Dustin Harbin (I don’t know for a fact that Dustin’s favorite thing is himself, infact, I am probably completely wrong). Dustin’s new book is his first Diary collection from the wonderful Koyama Press as well as a plethora of work to check out on his site.

It’s almost that time. The Inkstuds book has gone to print, and I am patiently waiting for the results. It looks Fantastic and reads quite nicely. I can’t really describe how excited I am about the book.

I will be doing a bit of touring for the book, launching in Portland on the 14th of October at Floating World. That weekend will see me in San Francisco for APE, and a table full of studs for you to buy!

The following weekend on October 23rd, I will be debuting the book to my Vancouver friends at BLIM. The staff there seem to have an excellent night planned out.

I will have pre-ordering options set up soon, allowing you to buy the book, and just pick up a copy from me at APE or BLIM, or get them shipped to your eager hands.

On Sunday at noon, I will be hosting a panel at Word On the Street in Vancouver at the main branch of the library.

“Join Dryshave and Wombat cartoonist Rod Filbrandt, Clip ‘n’ Save cartoonist Robin Konstabaris, King City creator Brandon Graham and editorial caroonist Dan Murphy, for a chat moderated by Inkstuds Radio host, Robin McConnell, about how humour works in comics, graphic novels, and more. What makes something funny and where does the funny come from?”

Please come and check it out if you can.

I sat down with David Wightman and Jacob Ciocci while they were in Vancouver on tour, to discuss their project Extreme Animals. They did a pretty great show that night and suggest checking out their work on youtube. Jacob Ciocci is also a founding member of Paper Rad, so chatting with him when he was in town, seemed like an obvious good idea.

Stuart Hample joined me for an entertaining conversation about his new collection of Woody Allen comic strips and his own personal history in cartooning, including some great stories about Al Capp.

Vancouver creative talent, Sarah Leavitt, joined me live on air, to discuss her book, Tangles. It is a heart breaking recollection of her time with her mother, as she succumbed to Alzheimers. I found the book to be very real and honest. Well worth reading.

Here’s some post Wright Awards revelry. Notice the back of Dan Clowes head! That man makes great comix.

Look, its Wright Awards organizer, Brad Mackay, and former Vancouverite performer, Robert Dayton. He interviewed Kim Deitch with me many moons ago, as well as joining in on the TCAF panel last year.

Matt Forsythe and Michael DeForge. I probably both of them money or something.

That there be Joe Ollmann. He has a book coming out from Drawn & Quarterly at some point soon. It sounds excellent, but then again, when have you heard about a book from D&Q not being excellent. You can see Petey Thompson and Keith Jones in the background. I like those guys.

This about 15 minutes after I finally met Evan Dorkin for the first time. He proceeded to spend the next hour telling me everything wrong with me. I only cried a little. Also in photo, Jim Woodring and Dave Lapp.

I interviewed Ho Che Anderson while in Toronto for TCAF. It was an amazing conversation, and then I noticed that the recorder wasn’t taping us. Thanks technology.

Inkstuds friend Jeet Heer and Drawn! contributor, Jaleen Grove check out an original Russell Patterson page. It was pretty sweet. Both of them have been very helpful with the Inkstuds book, with Jeet providing an amazing introduction and Jaleen taking a stab at some proof reading support. Thanks to both!

My first time listed as a guest at a comic convention. I think I sold one shirt, but gave away all my promo material.

Look! It’s me and Noah and John P! Don’t they look excited!

Noah wanted to take this photo at Luckys before they did their reading.

Shannon Gerard stopped by Casa-studs to talk about her comics and crocheting. Her latest book is her collaboration with Jim Munroe, Sword of My Mouth and her strip on Topshelf 2.0, Unspent Love.

This interview with Steve Lafler got pretty deep and interesting. Lots of food for thought to be had. His latest book is the self-published El Vocho and be sure to check out the fantastic Bug House trilogy from Topshelf.

See you there. Lucky’s comics, 3972 main st.

STARSHIP OF BONE AND OTHER FAVOURITES

I have compiled an assortment of (mostly) Canadian home recordings for your enjoyment. If you listen closely, you might notice that some of these “low-fi” musicians are also cartoonists. Some are not. Many do other things besides cartooning and/or music making. One is a defense lawyer. Another is a librarian. At least one of them is involved in the carpentry trade and there is a shopkeeper and a “seasonal” worker in the mix. There is one in particular I know nothing about other than the fact that he seems to enjoy watching television.

Thanks to Kip Jackson for lending me some of his archives. A few of the artists I could not reach and so I hope they don’t mind being part of this informal collection.

-Marc Bell, July 2010

1. #08 – Terry Piercey
2. #22 – Terry Piercey
3. #01 – Terry Piercey
4. #20 – Terry piercey
5. Superworm – Mouth Harp Ensemble
6. Tastebud – Untanned Hide of a Young Cow
7. Bonus Song for the First Week – Untanned Hide of a Young Cow
8. Backwards Seeds – Ambergris
9. Mountain Pony – Eyeball Hurt and the Medicine
10. Nurse April – Eyeball Hurt and the Medicine
11. Never to Return – Eyeball Hurt and the Medicine
12. Coconut – Drue Langlois
13. Path of Destruction – Drue Langlois
14. Ppop – Discombobulated Ventriloquist
15. German Child with Small Trout – Translucent Tubes
16. Singing Parkade – 40 winks
17. Paid In Foam – Ambergris
18. Dingbatters – Captain Haircut & DJ Sweatpants
19. I Thought you Said you had a Hot Tub and a Steamroom – G.K.A.
20. Hello-Goodbye/Interlude/Colour Of Green – Terraform
21. I saw a Universe in my Sock Drawer – Translucent Tubes
22. A Little Thunderstorm – Eyeball Hurt and the Medicine
23. Valet 10 [Jupiter did Walk on the Dragonfly's Grave] – Eyeball Hurt and the Medicine
24. Potion – U-Play Walkman
25. Wim-Wam – U-Play Walkman
26. In a Coma – U-Play Walkman
27. Starship Of Bone – Poseidon Council
28. Kindergarten Symphony – Mouth Harp Ensemble
29. South American Folk Song – Mouth Harp Ensemble
30. Hillside Chapel – Colin Mclaine
31. I Can’t Watch Automag (With this Fuckin’ TV) – Unknown

I really enjoyed this chat with Sonja Ahlers about her books, The Selves and Fatal Distraction which both really blew me away in regards to the level of personal work that has gone into them. I really like her work quite a lot of find the process of it equally fascinating. Be sure to check out her blog tooooo.

When I first interviewed Frank Santoro back in the winter of 2007, I was pretty excited about chatting with him, but a little nervous, since my understanding of the world that he was making my comics, was still lacking. I am a lot more comfortable with my knowledge of the Picturebox/post Fort Thunder scene now. At this point, the interviews that we were doing, were mostly one off conversations, that would be an introduction to the guest. Since then, I have had Frank on the show a number of times, and did a fascinating, if not maddening panel with him at TCAF in 2009.

Frank Santoro is one half of Cold Heat, his collaborative project with Paper Rad maestro, Ben Jones that has seem to have gone to spawn more spin off projects than the original series itself. I have a feeling it is still going to be a while yet until the series is finished, but is now a nucleus surrounded by some of my favorite creators chipping into its universe.  Storeyville had just come out when we did this chat, so is a central element to the conversation. Future conversations that I have done with Frank seem to go off into wildly different directions. Frank’s writing for ComicsComics, is filled a kind of enthusiasm that seems to get folks super excited for comic making.

Many thanks to Squally Showers for transcribing!

Robin McConnell: Inkstuds, the radio show about comics, broadcasted out of CITR 101.9 FM. It is a gross, gross Thursday afternoon. The roads are covered in just like guk. It’s just like, I don’t know.

Colin Upton: It’s disgusting out there.

RM: It’s just filthy.

CU: It’s weird when the snow comes down but it melts on contact with the ground.

RM: Today our guest is Frank Santoro. His latest book is Storeyville as well as a bunch of other things. I’m going to bring Frank on. We got you there, Frank?

Frank Santoro: Hello, is that you, Robin?

RM: Yes indeed. I should have mentioned, I am joined by my good friend Colin Upton.

CU: Hello!

FS: Hello, Colin!

RM: Your latest book Storeyville is not your latest book. It’s one of your oldest books, I guess.

FS: It is. It’s really my first book. But I want to mention, it’s raining gross here in the rust belt of Pennsylvania.

RM: Colin was asking where you’re from and that’s what I thought …

FS: I’m from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But I haven’t lived here in about 17 years. I visit or something, for summers or so, but I haven’t lived here since I graduated high school. So it’s pretty nice to be back.

RM: You’re mainly a New Yorker guy.

FS: I was actually in the Bay Area for ten years.

RM: Oh, okay.

FS: So I understand the rainy, wintery, the life that—I’ve never been to Vancouver but I can imagine …

RM: It’s pretty mild up here. We see snow and then we see it go. It comes down for a minute and then it’s gone. Maybe let’s start with a little biographical information about who Frank Santoro is and what got you into comics, because Storeyville, really ahead of its time as far as like what you’re doing with the comics. I guess, it’s from the same blood of some of the stuff that Mazzucchelli was doing and things.

FS: Mazzucchelli was a big deal for me because I was at the right age. I had a chance to speak with him about this and he said “You were the perfect age to follow me from Daredevil to Rubber Blanket”.

FS: Which I was, it was perfect. I was 18 when Rubber Blankets came out. So it was great. But definitely, there was a lot of stuff. There still is a really great comic book store in Pittsburgh that’s run by a gentleman named Bill Boichel. I always read comics when I was a kid, and I had a great collection. There was a great store here. But then when this other store moved into town near my neighborhood, he just had the greatest comics sense. His store was actually named after a Gilbert Hernandez story called “BEM.” [Laughter] So I mean, it was Love & Rockets posters were on the wall. So when I was 15, I was exposed to all this great stuff. He had long boxes that were just like “the Steranko Section,” “the Jeffrey Jones section” It was a crazy, there were couches! You could just hang out. You didn’t have to buy anything. It was the first place I saw Videodrome. Like all kinds of crazy movies. He would play movies. But it was a great store, so I had an interesting chance to get a different take on comics when I was a certain age.

RM: From what I can gather from your writing, you grew up as a superhero boy.

FS: Totally! Yeah. I mean I read everything. I read Spider-Man. I really loved all the … the Miller Daredevils were coming out when I was a kid. My grandfather had a corner store. It was a grocery slash magazine place where you got your lottery tickets, and stuff like that. My job after school was to wait on kids buying candy and comics. So I got to have whatever comics I wanted. There was Mike Zeck’s Captain America when I was a kid, and I read all that stuff and John Byrne’s Fantastic Four, whatever it was. When it moved into Dark Knight, I was again the perfect age. I was like 14 when Dark Knight and Watchmen came out, so I read all of that. Then my tastes changed and there was this comics renaissance that I was growing up in. It was really exciting, actually.

RM: Many good things have changed from the old days of cheesy fromage of comics. But then it’s gone back to that recently. But I digress.

FS: Sure. So all that stuff was in the air. It was like breathing. That’s why I still try to either write about or think about now is what I’m doing, or what is going on in alternative or avant-garde comics, and what’s really happening in the mainstream of comics and stuff. Because it seemed back then we read everything. It wasn’t as “I read this but I didn’t read that.”

RM: Well, there wasn’t as wide a selection as what we’re dealing with nowadays.

CU: Were you aware of things like the Comics Journal?

FS: For sure! I read the Journal. Everything. I was aware of the Journal. Dan Clowes came to town early on when Eightball first came out. The Hernandez Brothers came to town in ‘91. My friend brought them to do a con here. It was really great, so … We didn’t think we were special or something, it was just that’s what it was. I was totally aware of all that.

CU: I remember being one of these people who read the Comics Journal and that built up this feeling of comic geek elitism.

FS: Right! Well, the best is when Storeyville got reviewed by the Journal, my friends who don’t read a lot of Fantagraphics stuff said, “Now you know you suck because the Journal reviewed you, haha.” [Laughter]

RM: What did you have in mind when you first did it?

FS: Storeyville really had been this like.., I had been doing these crime comics.

RM: These were the Sirk?

FS: The Sirk zines and then I was doing these minicomics. This was the Bay Area. I was living in San Francisco. I dropped out of art school and I was living in San Francisco in the early ‘90s. ’91, and ’92. Something that was a huge influence on me was Cometbus. Cometbus was a zine by a guy named Aaron. It was a Bay Area thing. Everybody read Cometbus! It was like the Internet for the Bay Area or something. It was a really great political zine, music zine, writing. He was able to do everything. So I saw these different zines and I was interested in—that was what I wanted to make, instead of paintings or sculptures in art school. I chose to make zines as that was what I wanted to do. There were no color zines. Things came together and I was making these crime comics. Then that turned into this idea of trying to do more narrative stuff then maybe what I’d started doing. I got really into Ben Katchor and I got really into Captain Easy and Roy Crane and all that stuff came together. I was really young. I was 21, 22. I was trying to figure out how I wanted to tell stories or write a story.

RM: What was your interest in being so anonymous with it? Because in the hardcover it mentions how you went by the moniker Sirk.

FS: It was really a couple of things. Like Bill Boichel, again, at BEM, the comic store where I hung out, he made these zines himself on the Xerox machine. He didn’t sign them. It was a BEM publication. They were these crazy abstract comics. He never signed them. He had these different voices and every one was a different title. That’s what I did with the Sirk thing. Every one was a different title. I wanted to be able to switch styles in-between magazines and not be pinned down to one thing. That was compounded with, like, I would go into Comic Relief in San Francisco to sell my zines and feel really nervous. I didn’t want to get rejected. So I would be like, “I work for Sirk Productions. Do you want to buy some zines? Yeah, it’s this guy …” and I would make up a story or something. It was this desire to be in the background and let the work speak and watch people’s reaction. I could see people react. “I love this stuff!” Or something. It felt like an easier way of getting out there and testing the waters. It worked. Then the same with Storeyville. I was just a kid. I was putting it out myself. I didn’t want to be beating my chest. I wanted it to be about the work, as corny as it sounds. That’s what I wanted. I wasn’t actually even going to put a return address on it, to be honest. There was a lot of that with Bobby Madness. You can call him a punk cartoonist. Bobby Madness, Aaron Cometbus. There were a lot of zines and papers in the Bay Area that were never signed. You didn’t know who did them, even though you knew who did them.

RM: If you knew, you knew! I’m going to talk about Sirk a little more, because I’m looking at these great covers. How did you print them?

FS: There was a regular Xerox machine that was introduced in the early ‘90s that you could take out the toner cartridge of black and put in a red cartridge or a green or a blue or a brown. There were stores in San Francisco that had them. I found out about them through a friend. Then I realized I could make stuff like this like a silkscreen or an offset. I could make them on Xerox. It was a lot less pretentious than a silkscreened comic! I liked the feel of it better.

RM: That’s what I was wondering, because it looks to me, looking at it. It looks like silkscreen.

It’s not. It’s on regular typing paper. It’s like a zine, but in two colors or three colors.

RM: You do one copy and then go to the other machine and do the other layers.

FS: Yeah. I would do an edition of like 200 or something, as many as I could. A lot of times, I was literally walking out of the copy store with them. I was doing my best to figure out how I could afford doing it. Trying to get by and put stuff out and then sell it at Comic Relief or something. But that was expensive. Even if I was able to get away with the two copies, then that was how—actually, I was working for, do you know the poster artist Frank Kozik, who did a lot of rock ‘n’ roll posters and stuff in the ‘90s and covers for bands? I was working for him. He was a silkscreen artist and he had a studio right beneath Last Gasp in Central East, San Francisco, and I was working for him and we started talking about different ways of printing stuff and he suggested the newsprint idea. That was sort of in the air, back then, just do a newspaper. There was this one that Mats Stromberg put out called Filth, that’s mentioned in Storeyville. There was a free paper called … I can’t remember. No, Filth was the free paper and Mats’ book was San Fransicko, which was awesome.

RM: All this stuff I missed by living in Vancouver.

FS: Right!

RM: I’m out of this international loop! So Storeyville, this is your first shot at doing a really narrative story then?

FS: Aside from some other small minicomics or something, it was my first extended story.

RM: My big question after reading it is it’s the story of the guy going from Pittsburgh up to Montreal to find this other guy. Why go through Winnipeg?

FS: Actually, when I read about the train lines back then, there was no direct train that went up the East Coast. I wanted to be historically accurate. He had to go west.

RM: Oh, okay. I was wondering.

FS: There was a problem with the train line and especially for vagrants, it wasn’t possible from what I had read. I don’t know. I found this book by a former tramp and that was part of his diary and stuff. He was able to discern this stuff through these little hobo signs that were left on train doors and things like that. So he had to go to Winnipeg. Which I spelled wrong in the book. I’m so disappointed. The printer that printed Cold Heat in Winnipeg noticed it and said, “You spelled Winnipeg wrong!” [Laughter]

CU: Did you do a lot of research into hobo culture?

FS: I did actually. There was a great book called Really the Blues by Mezz Mezzrow. He was Louis Armstrong’s best friend back in the ‘20s and ‘30s. He was from Chicago. There was a lot of this stuff where jazz musicians were out of work in the Depression. They ended up riding the rails between Chicago and Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh had a big jazz scene. Just that kind of stuff. That stuff was there. Then the Wobblies. I was interested in that culture, but especially, I got this book of hobo hieroglyphics. I read this book by, he was the “nice” hobo or something. He wasn’t like a criminal or something. There were some other things I had read that were along the lines of a criminal gone straight and telling his story and a lot of crime magazines focused on stories like that. Really, Storeyville it is naively written as Chris Ware points out in the introduction. It was just a hook. It was a way of getting the reader into the story and telling the story about two characters. I didn’t set out to do a crime story when I wanted to do it. I was watching a lot of film noir. There were a lot of great movie theaters in San Francisco. I was able to … it was a way of using the story and halfway through, right at the middle point where the character Rudy is introduced, it splits. It’s a different point of view. It’s a different story. I wanted to switch it over into the humanistic side of it or something.

CU: You must have done a lot of visual research for the referencing.

FS: I did for Montreal. For Pittsburgh, that’s what it looks like. I drew it from life and from memory. For the stuff in the Midwest, I can fake that. For Montreal, there was a book of early photographs and stuff of the docks. So I wanted to be accurate but I would always draw from the photograph and then I would put the book of photographs away and then draw from my drawings. I always wanted to maintain a distance from photo referencing. I really despise photo referencing in comics.

CU: Did you use marker?

FS: Sometimes, on my separation, like the colors that are built in Cold Heat. In Storeyville there are a lot of markers and things, but the whole black line was half-toned, so there would be a grey overprinting yellow and between the three colors that were in Storeyville, there are probably 18 colors I can get through different tonalities.

RM: Your art school days, what focus did you have when you were there?

FS: I went to an arts high school and then I got a scholarship to a really conceptual school in San Francisco. It wasn’t my cup of tea after a while. I felt that it was more interesting to make comics as an artist’s statement than it was to do painting and sculpture and video and things, which is what I had been doing through high school and the first year of college before I dropped it. I liked it. At the same time I was going to school in San Francisco, there was Barry McGee. He was around and knew a lot a graffiti guys. There was a lot of different vibe in the Bay Area about what was art and what’s flowering now in terms of Paper Rad and this alternative arts scene within the art scene, that was happening a lot in the Bay Area then. You could feel it. So it felt like painting or sculpture or video was old hat in a way. Comics felt fresh. I don’t know if you guys remember, but zines, it seemed really natural in the early ‘90s to be doing that. It was this intersection of things, at least in the Bay Area.

RM: Colin’s right from that school of …

CU: Yeah, I had a very similar experience in Vancouver.

FS: Oh, that’s cool. I wanted to ask you guys, because some of the stuff that I really like in Canadian comics is like, wait, I have one here. Regal Beast and Michael, how do you pronounce his name?

RM: Michel Rabagliati?

FS: No. Michael Comeau.

RM: Probably a Montreal person. I’m not sure.

FS: Oh maybe. I don’t know. I met a few guys at TCAF that were … like Peter Thompson I met at TCAF finally. I was able to get a few things from there that were like the same things in terms of the zines I knew in the early 90′s.

It seems like that’s flowering now again, and it’s pretty nice to see.

CU: The zine scene in Canada was very regional, so people that were doing zines in Toronto or Montreal might not be familiar with what was going on in Vancouver and vice versa.

FS: I see, yeah. Well, talking to Marc Bell was interesting, because he was telling Mark Connery stories, who I got to meet in Toronto. That was really interesting.  We don’t have that scene in the States it seems. It was nice to see. It was a different kind of parallel universe that I wasn’t aware of. The regional aspect of it seems pretty interesting.

RM: I’d say in Vancouver you’ll find more crossover with Seattle than the rest of Canada. Especially like the proximity. Seattle is like, a three hour drive?

FS: Yeah, because it’s something we talk about in the Bay Area. People in the Bay Area at the time, they know exactly what I’m talking about. But then for … if you missed it, you missed it. It was before the internet, really. These were just the things that we traded and were around.

CU: So much of it depended on the mail. If you weren’t actually living in the city.

FS: Right!

RM: The Factsheet Five days, Colin?

CU: Factsheet Five. Comics F-X.

FS: Is Marc living in Vancouver still?

RM: On and off …

FS: Yeah.

RM: He is …(Marc has since moved away, but Vancouver misses him)

FS: I saw him in San Diego. Talk about a talented mofo!

RM: Oh, I know! And who in the most recent Comics Comics mag, where you have your wonderful article about Kevin Nowlan’s coloring work has a nice big old huge huge Marc Bell piece.

FS: It’s very nice.

RM: It’s very nice.

FS: The great thing about Marc is he can do that first take and it’s done and it’s beautiful.

RM: I know. You watch him do it and he just draws away.

FS: We would take requests for him at San Diego because people would come up to the table. He would get sick of waiting around and nobody would come up to the table and get a sketch when he had a signing. So he’d go have a smoke break. We would have to take orders. Like “Oh wait, give us your cell number. He’ll call you when he …” [Laughter.] But it worked! He did a couple of sketches. It was funny. San Diego is such a madhouse. Mark soldiered through it. It was awesome.

RM: I couldn’t imagine going down to it.

FS: Have you ever been?

RM: No.

FS: Oh man, I hadn’t been since like ‘98. I went this year with PictureBox and it was insane. It was so over the top insane. There was a life-sized Jabba the Hutt.

RM: Ew!

FS: Yeah, exactly. But it was just insane. It’s such a spectacle.

CU: I stopped going to San Diego sometime in the late ‘90s but I would go to APE instead.

FS: Yeah, I miss APE, actually. Because it was always just down the street.

RM: Your latest book Cold Heat, four issues out and you guys stopped putting out the separate issues in favor of an eventual collected edition, I guess.

FS: Bummer!

RM: Bummer! “I went and bought these comics and now I’ve got to go and buy it again?”

FS: I know! Thank you to all the subscribers and everybody who bought the issues. Thank you. Thank you! I’ll make it up to you with the rest of the material. I’m bummed out about it. There was just an economic—there was nothing we could do about it. The budget we had for it … Dan, really, he tried so hard and we tried so hard and we were getting great reviews and stuff, but the numbers—Diamond Distribution is just the devil!

CU: They’re not making it easier for the smaller publishers, are they?

FS: No! There’s a cutoff now. It’s like if you don’t sell 600 copies an issue, you’re done, it’s over. People say “So what? Diamond this, Diamond that.” It’s not “so what.” It’s the only way to get into comic stores and there’s a lot of people who, if you got into the comics stores, they’d check it out. So it’s like, I mean, yk …

RM: Oh, I completely agree. We’ve got two good comics stores in Vancouver. One of them only gets stuff from Diamond. But this other one mainly gets its stuff from Last Gasp and distributors like that, which makes me happy and actually directly orders from PictureBox, too. Lucky’s.

FS: It’s great. It’s changing, but it’s still, you know …

RM: Yeah, most of the comic stores will deal with Diamond, because it’s easy.

FS: And who can blame them? I mean, you can’t really blame them. But then it’s just murder for the small publishers, it’s murder. When I did Storeyville, I sold a thousand copies without even trying! There were three distributors back then. There was Capital, I think Bud Plant, Diamond  … it doesn’t matter. It was really easy to make alternative comics up until about ’98 and then it was over, and it’s just gotten worse, so …

CU: I found my copy of Storeyville in a comic shop, the newspaper one.

FS: Yeah, great. It’s exciting when I hear that people like actually did have it back in the day. It makes me really happy.

RM: Yeah, Colin’s got his here right in front of him.

FS: Alright!

RM: He’s always got to show off in front of me.

CU: I’ve just been around longer, that’s all.

Robin: We interviewed Pete Bagge and he brought in his copies of Comical Funnies.

FS: Wow!

RM:I actually did manage to get one of those, though, so I’m happy. So Cold Heat. Drawn by you, written by Ben Jones.

FS: Of Paper Rad.

RM: Of Paper Rad fame, I was going to say. What did you have in mind? What was the nucleus of “Let’s make Cold Heat?”

FS: I think for Ben it was just an old thing that was kicking around and for me it was some old images that had been kicking around. I don’t know. We had some really casual conversations about it, really just emails and stuff. We had hung out at SPX 2005 that year and Dan and I had been talking about maybe doing like something where Ben would write stuff for other people. Ben and I were kicking some ideas around but it wasn’t anything very solid. When Dan and I suggested these other people that maybe Ben would write stuff for, Ben said, “Nah!” He said to me, “Frank, let’s just you and I do something.” I said, “Cool! Alright, sounds great.” We kicked around a few ideas, but it was really, Ben just delivered the first issue after this vague concept that he’d developed and Ben just hammered it out. It was crazy. Within a month of talking about it, we were on the schedule. It started to happen. Then we put it out and then it was happening. I remember when we got the first issue back from the printer, Dan put his head back and laughed and said, “It’s the most retarded thing I’ve ever seen!” [Laughter] It really was that. It worked! Holy shit, it worked! Oh sorry …

RM: Ah, we’re in Canada. It’s ok.

FS: Okay, great! Yay! But it was like, “It worked! Oh my god, I can’t believe it.” So we just ran with it! Ben laughed. The message from Ben when he got the first issue was so encouraging. We knew what we could do, but we didn’t know if we could pull it off. Then each issue was just pulling it off.

RM: What is it you’re trying to pull off on us?

FS: Just this like take on, I mean not like … Everybody’s like, “It’s this take on a genre or something.” I don’t know if that’s what it is. For us it’s realer. I mean this is America. I mean, the crap that we had to sift through as kids, it’s atrocious. It’s part of me, it’s part of us. I feel like I’m just getting through all my influences and everything. I think Ben is too. We’re getting rid of this stuff inside us.

RM: Well, that’s something with Paper Rad. It’s very much obvious that they’re going through the whole milieu of ‘80s retard chic.

FS: Totally! But it’s real! And that’s what people don’t get. The copycats don’t get how real it is and how much it connects to people. It’s just weird. They’re just tapping into this larger consciousness and as corny as that sounds, it’s true. People flip out over Paper Rad who don’t read comics, who like come up to the table at Picturebox and are bananas over Paper Rad. It does something! It just goes over these boundaries. Whether you like it or not, whether it’s your cup of tea or not, it’s a formidable force.

RM: Is Cold Heat like you and Ben taking like ‘90s culture and compressing it and putting it through a machine?

FS: I wish it was that clear. It’s not. I’m going through all my influences and I’m trying to do something that scares me. Cold Heat is funny but it’s scary. I don’t want to say that it’s like Twin Peaks or David Lynchian or something but sometimes the best things that are terrifying, that are scary, are a little funny, too. For me, it’s all that stuff. It’s not campy. It’s a sincere statement. People used to make fun of me about that for Storeyville, too. It was too sincere. I think our take on this Cold Heat thing, whatever it is, Ben’s humor is sincere, but it takes the edge off of either what we’re referencing or what we’re trying to do. I think it makes it new. I can’t explain it. For me, it works. It feels very contemporary. It’s like Storeyville is cool, but it’s this old timey thing. It’s really fun to be doing something that’s of today and is happening now and feels right for now.

RM: And you feel like there’s a seed of something that’s left over that needs to be regurgitated? I don’t know if that’s the right terminology.

FS: Maybe. Yeah! Maybe, I don’t know. I hope people like it, but we’re not trying to really please people. We’re trying to do our thing. If you like it, great. If you don’t, that’s okay.

RM: I’m going to be honest. It’s a comic that there’s like a dialectical thing with it. You either love it or you look at it and go, “What the fuck?”

FS: Sure, yeah. I mean, there’s plenty of people who have been straight up with me, like “It’s not my cup of, I don’t really like …” I’m like, that’s cool, that’s cool.

RM: But I guess that’s something you guys are going for, doing a story that you want to be honest with?

FS: Yeah. I mean, it‘s just fun. It’s fun. Comics to me can be fun and should not have to be fun, but it’s like there’s so much of comics that’s not superheroes or whatever, but it’s this kind of vibe and I want to do that. Part of my repertoire, I want to be able to do that. I don’t necessarily want to be the guy who does Storeyville and everything I do is about freight cars and hobos and shit. Oh, sorry!

RM: It’s okay, I already swore, too. Now the artwork, a lot of influence, I guess Tezuka was a big influence for the lot of the faces in it.

FS: Yeah, totally. But unconsciously. Really from absorbing, distilling Tezuka through cartoons, Speed Racer and whatever. Those Tezuka books that are out now, weren’t out when I started doing Cold Heat. I remember when I did the first issue of Cold Heat and I showed it to Dan, he said, “Oh my God! Tezuka! Look at that!” I laughed and I thought, “I guess, you’re right.” But it wasn’t, it was so unconscious.

RM: Is that something that you developed in later issues? Because the faces develop I think a little more as it goes along …

FS: Yeah, I wish I could…I’m just not capable. I’m not like a cartoonist, I’m not capable of doing it the same thing each time. I could, but it seems boring.

CU: Actually, what came to my mind, looking at it, was Frank Stack.

Right on. That’s cool! I’m trying to take everything. It’s like if there’s something that’s in there that people like or see, I encourage that. I’m happy letting it come up or go down in terms of focus and clarity and detail. I wanted to be able to change pace. In Storeyville, there’s certain sections where I let it go because I want to speed you up as a reader and slow you down with the detail. It’s really conscious, but I’m trying to make it look offhand-ish. Some people love it, some people hate it.

CU: I’m intrigued by Chocolate Gun. It’s a noise band?

FS: Yeah, it’s a noise band.

CU: That all the kids are into?

FS: Yeah. It’s a noise band that’s like Castle’s favorite band. But it’s everybody’s favorite band, so whether you’re a jock or a Goth or whatever, everybody loves Chocolate Gun. The references are obviously there to certain bands or whatever. It’s like a noise band, but that’s the beauty of comics or whatever—you never get to hear it. The Wipers references are my way of referencing Cobain because Cobain covered it, the Melvins covered it. A bunch of people covered that song. That’s a great Pacific Northwest song.

CU: Are you a fan of noise yourself? Noise …

FS: For the most part, yeah. I don’t live in Providence or anything, but Lightning Bolt is definitely one of the greatest bands I’ve ever seen. So is Kites. I love it. But that was Ben’s … I remember when Ben said, “Oh, a noise band.” I just laughed. It felt so today.

RM: I’m a fan of noise.

FS: Right on.

RM: My first concert was the Melvins.

FS: Nice! The Melvins lived in San Francisco in the early ‘90s and they worked in Round Table Pizza on Geary and I bought t-shirts off them. [Laughter]

RM: Awesome!

CU: That’s not noise.

RM: You haven’t listened to the Melvins then.

CU: I’ve heard some.

RM: I remember the last time I saw them, “Parts of this show you’re all going to love and parts of the show you’re all going to hate.” So they did two sets. The first half was poppy whatever and the second half started with white noise and this guy …

FS: Have you seen them with the two drummers?

RM: No!

FS: Oh my God! I’ve heard it’s amazing.

RM: Well the one drummer by himself is pretty damn good, so …

FS: Yeah, Dale is incredible. Yeah, so I don’t know. Pittsburgh has a … Don Caballero is from here. I went to high school with the drummer from Don Caballero. He’s a pretty great guy and Ian is in Battles now. I’m aware of all that stuff that’s going on. When he made up Chocolate Gun it was like I think he was referencing Cobain on one hand, Providence on another hand, but Pittsburgh at the same time.

RM: Our guest last week was Brian Ralph, so …

FS: Yeah! It was a great interview, He’s amazing. They’ve known about it, but the kids that he teaches are the most amazing kids you’ve ever seen. The Closed Caption Crew. They showed up at SPX and just ruled it. It was incredible. Those kids are great.

RM: I’ve only been to SPX once. Not the most recent one, but I went last year and I’m hoping …

FS: Did you like it?

RM: I loved it! I probably spent like $600. [Laughter] It didn’t help buying the box of Ivan Brunetti artwork.

CU: I was there in 1998.

FS: Nice! Old school! It’s great. It’s nice because it’s the same people you see at every other convention but there’s a different vibe to it. TCAF is really great. I don’t know if you guys ever get a chance to check it out.

RM: The Toronto Comic Art Festival.

FS: Yeah, I’m sorry. I’ve never been to it before, but it’s just remarkable. I really must say, it’s remarkable.

RM: It looked great, like they had just everyone there. A whole panel with Joe Matt, Seth and Chester …

FS: It was fantastic! The vibe was really nice, too. I think for everybody that did the show who was at San Diego, which was right before it, it was the perfect antidote. I think Darwyn Cooke’s walking around. It’s just funny.

RMNow, we’re getting close to the end of our—well, not close. We got ten minutes, about 10-15 minutes left. So I wanted to jump into your writing for Comics Comics mag and Comics Comics blog, or ComicsComicsMag.com, which you can also check out at PictureBox, is it PictureBox.com or …

FS: PictureBoxinc.com

RM: You’re kind of exploring your early tastes with what you’re writing about.

FS: Yeah, I think so. In the last Comics Comics issue I wrote about Ronin by Frank Miller. That was a great comic. It was a seminal comic for a lot of reasons, for the direct market and everything. Kevin Nowlan, the artist, I talked to him about color and things and I wrote about that in Comics Comics 2. I think a lot of alternative cartoonists dismiss a lot of older, mainstream stuff. I think for the most part, history begins for them with Chester Brown or the early ‘90s or something. People aren’t looking at the late ‘80s and what became the ‘90s. I think a lot of the stuff that really still influences me is stuff from that time. I find myself rereading Elektra Assassin or something like that and thinking it’s great.

RM: Mm. It’s a little maddening.

FS: I just want to share that, because I don’t think it’s pretentious or weird or anything. I just want to share that, my enthusiasm for those projects.

RM: Well, I got to be honest, I love seeing an article about Kevin Nowlan because to me my roots are, I’ll be honest, they’re superhero. I got my superhero comics. Kevin Nowlan is one of those guys who stands out because it’s such a different style comparatively with everything else, but at the same time, he’s deep in the middle of the superhero genre. What was it to you that made you want to focus on doing an article about his coloring?

FS: One of my favorite comics of all time is The Outsiders Annual No. 1. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s a Batman comic, Outsiders Annual No. 1. There was a new coloring process that had happened in the ‘80s. He was really the first person to master it. He just nailed this comic in terms of the color. It was all hand separations. We spoke about it and I wrote this article. I felt like these things are overlooked in comics history. Everything’s the same for a hundred years and then it changes, whether it’s Photoshop or whatever. Then there’s people around who don’t even remember the stories anymore of the ways we used to color. They talk about it, but they forget. I wanted to write about that and explore it, because that’s what I’m dealing with right now. I learned the hard way that printers don’t want camera-ready originals anymore. They want .pdfs. I was doing that up until 2005. You can give the printers your originals and now they want you to give them .pdfs. It’s over. A certain way things are colored is over.

RM: That’s how you color Cold Heat, though, isn’t it? You do the layouts twice …

FS: If you look on the ColdHeatcomics.com website, there’s a little film where you can see the way Cold Heat is made. It’s like I draw everything on cheap Kinkos 11×17 paper and I just have, there’s about eight separations per page. It’s pretty crazy!

RM: It’s a little labor intensive.

FS: Yeah. Jon Vermilyea, who’s a fantastic cartoonist who works for PictureBox doing a lot of production stuff is the guy putting it together. He’s always cursing me under his breath. But it looks great. John does this fantastic job of getting it all right. Because it still has to be files for the printer.

RM: When can we expect to see the ending of Cold Heat?

FS: This summer. It just needs to get to the printer by a certain date. We’re finishing, putting the last touches on it and everything. Should be the summer of this year. I’m pretty excited. I’m nervous because there’s something about the pamphlets, it’s cool it gets out there. But the graphic novel, it’s a commitment. It’s like I liked issue 4! I didn’t like the other issues, but issue 4 was good. But with the graphic novel, it’s got to be really good for people to shell out 20 bucks or whatever.

RM: What else do you have coming out?

FS: I‘m really just focusing on Cold Heat right now. I have this idea about these other projects and maybe doing these parallel universe Cold Heat things for different artists with their take on Cold Heat. But not just doing a pin-up. Like people who are actually really interested in collaborating. Jon Vermilyea did a fantastic Cold Heat special. It’s great. A friend of mine, Chris Cornwell, did one that’s really awesome.  The idea that instead of doing pin-ups, everybody does a pin-up or something in the back. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted them to riff on Cold Heat and maybe bring in like … I think it’s an idea. Ben loved it. We talked about it but then it was something that just I did with Jon on my own. Ben loved it so much that we might do some other things.

RM: You wrote that one?

FS: I wrote that one, and I laid it out. But really it was just like I bookended it with layouts and then I told Jon to go nuts and do his thing. It’s all Jon. He’s fantastic.

RM: I look forward to seeing it!

FS: Yeah.

RM: And we’ll see more articles at ComicsComicsmag.com.

FS: Yeah, it’s great. It’s fun. It’s great to get response on that. It’s fun to engage the comics audience with something different than just the work.

RM: Yeah, oh totally. One of the articles I liked, you wrote the one about the Studio book.

FS: Oh right. You liked that? That’s cool!

RM: I love that stuff. You look back and yeah, it’s a little cheesy, you know, a little bit of the Dungeons & Dragons-esque warriors and stuff.

FS: But it still has this place in your heart.

RM: Oh yeah.

FS: Yeah, totally!

RM: I have this wonderful crappy old issue of Wonder Woman with this Jeff Jones cover.

FS: Oh yeah, man! That’s awesome? I love that!

RM: You know the one I’m talking about where she’s chained to the wall?

FS: I know exactly what you’re talking about! That’s the funniest thing is Dan and Tim just sort of, we all make fun of each other, the esoteric knowledge of comics that we have. But it’s pretty great. Between the three of us I think we’ve got a great mix. Tim’s a great writer and Dan, he has the chops. He’s just so busy with all these other things. We’re trying to get the next issue out.

CU: I was wondering with Comics Comics, it’s a newspaper printing. I was wondering why you chose to do that instead of just the website thing like everybody else.

FS: We just wanted it to be like a zine at first. I think we had this idea that we were going to do something like Arthur magazine, before it … it’s in a different incarnation now, but originally Arthur, we just thought it could be in comics stores and be free and then have ads. Then of course, nobody takes any ads out. We just wanted to still be in print and we liked the idea of still having, we found this printer and you can do these large things and we got Justin Green to do something, Marc Bell did … so you can have this giant page and somebody can do stuff. So it’s an extra bonus.

RM: Without shelling out however much that next Kramers Ergot is going to cost.

FS: Or the comic art. I love those things, but … we try to balance it out. We have a lot of nice high-end things and then there’s a three-dollar. You’d be surprised at how many people come up to the table, they look at everything and then they buy Comics Comics.

RM: I loved the fact that you had Sammy Harkham interviewing Guy Davis.

FS: I know! That’s cool, right? Because it like ties into Kevin Nowlan and it covers all the bases. It’s fun.

RM: All these great pseudo-mainstream, they’re so interesting and inspiring to look at their stuff, they don’t get the attention they deserve because they’re so odd for the mainstream crowd that the …

FS: Absolutely! The same kind of critical attention, you mean.

RM: Yes.

FS: Yeah, I agree. So it’s fun. I mean, we all read this stuff. I just want to acknowledge, at least for me, we’re not trying to take this arty slant on things. It’s more like a genuine “This is what we like.” We’re trying to talk about it without being too self-conscious about it or something. It’s fun!

RM: And that’s what comics should be. Fun. Well, thank you for taking the time to join us today, Frank.

FS: This is awesome. Thank you.

• Portrait of Santoro by Dustin Harbin
• Storeyville cover by Frank Santoro
• Rubber Blanket #2 cover by David Mazzucchelli
• Captain America #276 cover by Mike Zeck
• Image by Ben Katchor
• Example of Sirk zine cover
• Frank Kozik poster
• Cover to Really the Blues by Mezz Mezzbrow
• Photo of Montreal Roadwork
• Cold Heat #1 cover by Frank Santoro
• Paper Rad DVD cover
• Random Speed Racer image
• Chocolate Gun logo by Michael Deforge
• Spread from Ronin by Frank Miller
• Outsiders Annual # 1 cover by Kevin Nowlan
• Cold Heat Special silkscreened cover by Jon Vermilyea
• Wonder Woman cover by Jeffrey Catherine Jones

Wally Gropius cartoonist, Tim Hensley joined me for a chat about his comics, music and more. Wally Gropius is pretty excellent and well worth checking out for a some unique cartooning that shows a man that has been studying and implementing his craft.