Interviews Archives

I was interviewed this past week for the People You Don't Know podcast. I'm the second of two guests and I get to discuss several creative projects I'm involved in and I got to discuss the DCC for a bit. If you're SUPER curious about me, give it a listen here.

www.pydkpodcast.com is hosted by Eugene Ahn, a fellow DC guy, and he said he'll be sure to come to a future meeting because he loves comics and he'll be at SPX, too. Nice guy!

Just some quick links to DCC related areas of the web:

First up, our own Chris Piers got interviewed by the Examiner about the class on Writing Comics he teaches, his creative process, and even manages to plug the DCC.

"The most difficult part of writing comics is forcing yourself to write the first draft. There's always a temptation to edit or perfect the story as you write, but that's a mistake. You end up procrastinating and it's never perfect anyway. There are numerous short exercises you can find online or in creative writing books to help come up with ideas."

Read more at the Examiner: Comic book writing - a perspective from Chris Piers »

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Next is a review of our first Anthology book "Wonders of Science" at Indy Comic Review.

"For fans of well-written fiction of any stripe, The Wonders of Science can't help but appeal."

Read the complete (4 star!) review at Indy Comic review »

1. You have a history of involvement with DC arts and music. What have you noticed about the development or popularity of comics in the city over the years?

Comics have always been popular in DC counterculture and the 80's indy comic boom went hand in hand with the hardcore scene here. There were two really good free papers put out on a regular basis during that time; The Duckberg Times and WDC Period. Both used to write about comics and featured comic strips in each issue. Matt Feazell and John K Snyder were both frequent contributors to the Duckberg Times which had a more of a focus on comic strips, while WDC Period focused more on the music. But it was through WDC Period's articles where I learned about all the cool comics I wasn't reading at the time but later would, like "Ed the Happy Clown" and. "Love and Rockets". DC has always been an alternative comic friendly town.

I think the fact that the Small Press Expo started up here in 1994, and now looking at how big of a show it has gone on to become, is a good testament to comic's popularity in the DC area

2. Your comics, like "Skidoo" and "Down and Out on Planet Earth," often involve some pretty wild and cosmic plot lines. How do you harness and focus that creativity?

I draw my inspiration from the awe and wonder I discover in the world and how strange the world really can be. I love to draw from that strangeness in whatever form I find it and crafyt stories around it. I have a scary encyclopedia like knowledge about all kinds of weird factoids and events that needs to be constantly fed under the guise of "research".

Also, as a writer, I find motivations interesting and try to write characters from perspectives and reality tunnels more removed from my own. Basically, I am interested in how people form beliefs. "Skidoo" And "Down and Out On Planet Earth" both deal with examinations of belief systems, and in some cases lampoon them, and I definitely feel I have worked out some of my beliefs (and non beliefs too) on the pages in telling some of those stories. However, just you wait... I have lots of wilder stuff to explore in future issues of "Skidoo".

3. Are you still interested in the same artists who first attracted you to comics, or were they more like stepping stones to other influences?

Yes and yes. I still find new dimensions in the work of artists who inspired me to draw comics and as a result still buy reprints of those artists work. Lately, I adore Jim Aparo's work from the early 70's. I have been buying up those Showcase Essentials with his "Phantom Stranger" and "The Brave and the Bold" artwork and his line work is just gorgeous. I keep rediscovering my love for the artists who drew me into comics but I also get new influences all the time. I think that is essential in developing your craft and part of my evolution as an artist to remain open to new influences and different ideas of expression.

Questions by Rafer Roberts

You've worked on both solo projects and on collaborations. What is your approach working in either method, and do you prefer one over the other?

My preference is to work solo. It's very satisfying to move an idea from its initial inkling to a full blooded comic page (although, the failure to do so is particularly frustrating). I also think, in the end, that it's the solo projects that really test a cartoonist's mettle.

Collaborating can be a refreshing change, though, because of the way it divvies up the creative and technical labor. It's also fun because you don't really know what the final product will look like, so there's some healthy anticipation to see the subsequent stages, too.

That said, I do think that the ideal is the one person - one comic model, and I think collaborations require that at least one of the people be able to do a whole comic on their own. Otherwise, the division of talent and labor can be too rigidly separate, and that disjuncture affects both the fun of the process and the quality of the product.

A lot of your work could be described as happy or welcoming or friendly. I can only assume that your work is such due to you having a terrifying dark side. What lives inside your soul?

I think juxtaposition is a very interesting and rich vein to mine with comics. Visual style is one source of that contraposition, using it as a kind of foil or cutting agent against other aspects of content or writing. I've lately been trying to use style as a kind of disarming aspect for content. It had occurred to me at some point that a more overtly cartoon style would yield certain dividends, like a potentially broader range of tone as between the writing and drawing. That way, I could plausibly zigzag between extremes and keep things from ever really settling too much for the reader. By consciously playing the writing against the style, and vice versa, I get an extra layer of storytelling to play with.

What is your dream project and why haven't you worked on it yet?

Somehow disposing of the commercial notions of "graphic novels" and "original art" would be something of a dream, I guess, but in the meanwhile I'm still waiting for things to bubble up out of the brain.

And now for three questions with Rafer Roberts, the master of Plastic Farm.

Your primary project, Plastic Farm, involves some pretty dark stuff (i.e all involving "the life of a man named Chester and his slow descent into complete insanity"). What gives you inspiration for your material?

Mostly it all comes from the space between what humanity could be and my hatred and disgust of what humanity actually is. It is a wasted potential, but it is still a potential that could be reached and as such remains as an energy source that can be tapped into. This energy can be used in order to create art of many stripes, or more accurately, to fuel the kinetic shift that will carry humankind into a new reality. My hope is that art taken from, or borrowed from this Waste Space can act as a primary ignition to spark the engines of human potential and get this caravan moving forward.

I don't know what the end result of human kind should be, nor (though some would argue this point) am I egotistical to specify what this pinnacle of human reality should be. I will say though that we seem to moving further and further away from it and we have no one to blame for this but ourselves.

Making Plastic Farm keeps me from screaming at people on the street.

Since you both write and illustrate most of your stories, what's your story-making process from conception to illustration? How do you fit it all together? Is there one set formula?

There is no set formula, though looking at my recent productivity, I should probably adopt one.

I have a 30 or 40 page document that plots out the major parts of Plastic Farm from beginning to end. Some of it is highly detailed and includes dialogue and scene directions and some of it is nothing more than minor reminders of what goes where and when. It's open enough that I can add or subtract from the story with relative ease, which is great for me since I tend to allow whatever I am feeling to influence my art at the exact time of creation.

I usually start in my sketchbook, thumb-nailing out the pages which I'll then pencil out for real. I don't normally write out full scripts ahead of time so most of the dialogue is written during either the thumb-nailing process or during the pencilling stage. I am currently working on three pages where I haven't written any of the dialogue yet. I'm a little all over the place there. I ink mostly using real brushes and crow quill for detail work, though I've been moving more towards mechanical pens for backgrounds to give them a bit more contrast with the figures.

I also have my studio setup so I can watch television or listen to the 200 gigs of music on my computer. I cannot draw in silence.

If you could travel through time to any moment in history and then write a comic about it, what would it be and why?

I would go about 25 years into the future and write some sort of sci-fi murder mystery incorporating all of the future tech, politics, and future spirituality that I saw. Then I would sit back and wait for that future to happen and be heralded as one of the most prophetic writers of all time.

And one day, before my predicted future came to be, I would answer three questions about this comic I made. And lo, the name of that comic would be Plastic Farm.