The Factual Opinion

Tony Salmons Interview Pt. 3

by Michel Fiffe

In the previous two installments, Tony Salmons discussed his early years, his artistic philosophy, and his role as a cartoonist on the fringes of the mainstream field. We finalize this interview by going over Salmons' reconciliation between his uneasy relationship with the comics business while maintaining passion for the form.

Here is Part One

Here is Part Two

Here Are Some Interview & Art Extras

PART 3

Michel Fiffe: You got back into comics full time with Vigilante, written by James Robinson. How did that project come about?

Tony Salmons: That was a full script. I met James in New York in '91. I contacted him later and he had a few projects that were taking forever to get out to the readers. He offered Vigilante to me. I was already sick of Hollywood so I jumped in. Again, this was in a marriage with kids where I was a stay at home dad in charge of 3 kids, 2 were infants, everything in the house and working on comics. I don't know how I did it.

Vigilante #2, written by James Robinson, December, 1995, DC.

Fiffe: Did your Legends of the Dark Knight story with Robinson come before or after Vigilante? A page of that Batman story was published years before the actual issue came out. 

Salmons: The Batman story, “Citadel”, was before Vigilante. Vigil-Uncle, as Bob Camp called it. It was after I got my ass fired from WB but before the script for Vigilante was finalized.  I was marooned in LA with a wife and 3 kids. Great planning. I allowed for the expected funk and fiddle of writer/editor dither for some weeks with my rent creeping and finally said to James that I had this other idea why don't we just make it Batman and do this. He acceded, and we were off.  I cannibalized my previous story with another character in another time. I had a bunch of booby trap gags for the Batman version but limitations of the pamphlet format foiled them. We trimmed them down to what you see. James did a great job collaborating and changed the title to “Citadel.”     

"Citadel" written by James Robinson, Legends Of The Dark Knight #85, August, 1996, DC.

Fiffe: Robinson has mentioned that deadlines were a bit of a problem during the tail end of the Vigilante mini-series. Is that a fair assessment from Robinson?

 Salmons: James has taken it on himself to say a lot over the years. The shock to me was that his private conversations with me years after Vigilante were diametrically opposite to his public position. By that time, it was a familiar rusty metal taste on my tongue confirming what I know of people in the “biz”. It is indeed more than fair to say I was late.

Fiffe: This was your first major work for DC. How were your relationships over there?

Salmons: DC began to dock my pay for back payments on the insurance I'd subscribed to with them. It was never available, resulting in some non-lethal lengthy health problems of my own but the point is they were docking me a grand out of every paycheck. I was on the phone with everyone I could reach, including James and Archie [Goodwin] who by then was ailing again. Nowadays, I'd handle it very differently. I would’ve caught the first plane and been back there up their asses until I was paid. Again, I took the position of a guy who wanted to work again. I kept turning in pages and they kept docking me. I told them that if I really owed them the money, we could work it out but they couldn't keep gouging my family's income. I couldn't keep working for their bookkeeping mistake. We were evicted and my wife took the kids to a friend’s house. I went to live in my studio and I told them to go fuck themselves, but not in so many words.

Fiffe: How did you guys manage through all of this?

Salmons: The Penthouse Comix gig came in just in time for my divorce, but only because George Caragonne dumped his fat ass into the atrium of the Times Square Marriot from the 45th floor. Funny story that. It was after he let me pitch stories and characters to him repeatedly, never hired me and then did very pallid versions of them with his own artists. My great pal and all around lovely fellow Dave Elliott took me on for work and treated me exceptionally. I managed to move back to LA as Penthouse folded and wound up at the Dreamworks TV animation division. 

"Kodiak" written by CJ Henderson, Penthouse Comix #23, 1997, Penthouse.

Fiffe: Your next big comics project was a Kirby-Era Avengers story for Marvel.

Salmons: Yeah, it was Kirby's Avengers. It was part of the main line. A real superhero book! Finally!

Fiffe: I could be remembering it wrong, but were you writing it as well as drawing it?

Salmons: I thumb-nailed most of the Avengers very tightly, which is how I write, lots of character redesign but restrained toward the original flavor of them, fully plotted it out and scripted much of it. I was completely jazzed, the money was fine but I really just wanted to do something meaty, fun and lasting. I roughly penciled about 5 pages. This was a couple of months of work around shit commission work. Or should I say, shit pay for commission work. And then it was all gone with Bill Jemas.

Fiffe: How did you land that huge project, especially after having so much trouble getting work?

Salmons: I cold called Bill Jemas' office and got right in. He gave me the short story in 411 and was very interested in my pitch. Made a point of shaking my hand and said it was going to be a pleasure. He was great for me but apparently had other people's interest. These led to his departure from Marvel and with him any chance of my Avengers.

"Seeds" written by David Rees, 411 #1, June, 2003, Marvel.

Fiffe: No other editor wanted to pick it up where it left off? 

Salmons: Funny aside, an editor up there who promised me work for years – years – got wind I was there and had me ushered into his office. I didn't know Marvel's new digs and I thought I was on my way out of the building and there I was. He ran on about all the people he was up against in meetings and a bunch of stuff that honestly, I don't remember and don't give a shit about. Meanwhile I'm thinking, no wonder these guys don't get anything done. He ended by poking his finger at the wall of his office toward another office down the hall and when he finished barbequing that guy, he settled in to tell me how I could improve my game, how I should fix the panel borders, how he could sell this figure but not that figure. He held them up to me from a sketchbook I'd left in all offices on a previous visit. I just listened like a good freelance troll. He began to describe how he couldn't possibly walk into Jemas' office with this, when I told him I just came from there. He stopped like I just threw his baby out the window. He asked what Jemas said, which was that it was going to be a pleasure working with me. Another silent mental reacquisition by him of what's happening. Then, he starts jumping around his office like a circus monkey dragging out everything he's been doing in the last year. As usual, in the presence of this kind of exposed mind criminal, I just wanted to get out of there because Avengers or no Avengers I didn't want any of this to get on me. I let him wind down and I just left. Later I thought about how this guy had encouraged me to submit ideas, spec art, call, email, endlessly listen to his jabber about comics, media and bullshit, all that he loved about my work. Years of it, and I wondered why after everything I'd extended to him, he just never walked down the hall to Jemas' office like I did and ask for a job for me. 

Fiffe: He must’ve been swamped with work, I’m sure. What led you to take up to your most recent comic, the H. P. Lovecraft story?

Salmons: I took it up because I had no other paying work. Mac Carter and Adam Byrne were friendly and committed to the idea they had and the working situation was very generous. Consistent is not a word Mac, Adam or myself would use to describe the process. It was one long haul over about two years.  It didn't see print for about 2 years after that.  I was already deep in a hole financially when I took Lovecraft for a quarter of my standard pay. Fine, it was my deal and Mac came up with the cash like he said. Way better than the Big Two had done for me in a while. Instead of a quick jab and oblivion it was a long slow sink onto the blade as I lost financial ground or hope of it for the whole length of the project. They never knew my true circumstances. 

Fiffe: They were just happy to get Tony Salmons!

The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft # 1, written by Mac Carter, April, 2009, Image.

Salmons: To them it was great that I had a paying job! Sort of. It was for 100 pages.  The situation was liberal, the way I like to work so at the end of it I'd handed back around 160 pages.

Fiffe: That’s a pretty huge jump considering the estimated page count per issue.

Salmons: The pamphlet period of comics is over. Paper will remain a niche, like radio, vinyl, movie theaters, television. But it will never command the medium again. So page count, gutters, allowances for stapled spines, et al will never govern again.

Fiffe: The Lovecraft creators were pretty open about their desire for the story to be optioned and eventually succeeded in making that happen. What's your take on comics making such a shift in its focus on being drawn screenplays?

Salmons: The movie sale was always the design for Lovecraft. I didn't have a problem with that. I was pleased that I was allowed to contribute significantly to the pacing and reach of the book. I never wanted part of the movie deal. I work better and faster on bigger pieces and stories where I'm not restrained by shot-for-shot, full script and page counts. Downside is that there's no way to calculate the value of that contribution and most are happy with that.

Fiffe: Yeah, it’s not the easiest to quantify.

Salmons: Regarding the movie connection, it's really the only game in town. Anything that gets over is going to head that way. It only makes sense to plan on it and get the best version you can. I do regard with disdain that comics is stuffed to the gunnels with Hollywood slummers who can't sell their chum-bucket scripts any other way. And it goes to the top. There are offices at Marvel and DC where I can't get work for years after a lifetime of discipline and study for comic work but if you wrote a shit action movie in the '80s, you're golden!

The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft # 4, written by Mac Carter, October 2009, Image.

Fiffe: Do you think it’s exclusive to comics? The reason I ask is because most of these experiences are rooted in the current structure of the industry. Like you said, it’s the only game in town.

Salmons: If you don't make abeyance with this insidious, this fratricidal closed circle of marionettes you don't get the chance to create something and make a living. Like Three Billy Goats Gruff, you pay the bridge troll or you don't get across. The real sickness is that you don't pay them just once. No one gets off that easily. The relationship these guys say they build with talent, from their perspective, is to have their egos massaged and their buttocks warmed at every word and appointment with your servile ass. Meanwhile, months and years go by before you draw a nickel with their permission.

Fiffe: And really, that’s business as usual?

Salmons: What drives people crazy, me anyway, was trying for hours at a time while I was doing a job is wondering what makes someone do these pointless, mean and stupid things. The truth is there's no answer. Every one is a different recipe of basically the same motivations but different experiences in different proportions and there's no time or meaning to solve each one's damages. “Why” they do these things is ultimately an occulted process, personally theirs. Eddie Murphy's joke in 48 hours is “I'm your worst fuckin’ nightmare… with a badge.” A fan with a badge… in comics, that's a job title and an office in the Big Two.

Fiffe: The industry had been driven by fans-turned-pros for a long time now.

Salmons: Editors at Marvel and DC are unencumbered by talent. No talent. Zip. Zero. So they have endless energies and time on their hands for meddling with my shit. The weight of their day is talking on the phone and plotting against each other in the form of stopping talent and sandbagging projects by other editors and people they don't like. They have nothing else to do all day, everyday. Their direct deposit shows up every Friday. What's your freelancer’s problem?

"Art Rage" written by Ann Nocenti, Doctor Strange #64, April, 1984, Marvel.

Fiffe: Do you think there’s a difference in treatment from editors who used to be artists?

Salmons: George Pratt said it.  He said it wasn't just me. As soon as Mark Chiarello got his position at DC, work dried up for several of those Chapel Hill guys. Himself and Scott Hampton are two. He said, “I love him like a brother, but it happened to us, too.”  Chiarello’s explanation to George was that he didn't want to be known for favoring his friends. What the fuck? That's the only way any one gets work in any company!  I told George that if Chiarello's your brother, your mother got him from the milkman because he's not like us, if he ever was. He's like them. He's a photo-tracer as an “artist” with a rote pallet as a “colorist” that he applies with the subtlety of a 32 oz. roofing hammer to every situation.

Fiffe: You don’t have to hold back, you know.

Salmons: I went to the San Diego Con in 2001, I believe, to confront him about calling me an “idiot savant.” Like he could say and repeat something like that in our circle and not hear back in some fashion. These guys walk between the raindrops because of their position and job titles. Mind you, at this point, I'm still a hapless aspirant to work in the open pit holes of this cultural land mine. So I'm delicate in approach, supplicant in the juncture, and then I back out bowing, just to let him know I heard it. I let him talk in the usual circles of dodges that his type call “good meeting” and left without further challenge. After this, I heard from a mutual friend what was officially, let me emphasize, “officially” in Chiarello's “office” going on in regards to me. This friend told me, “Look, I know he's been encouraging you and you've been knocking your brains out trying to get work at DC. I don't want to get in the middle of you two but I'm going to tell you not to waste your spit, and go somewhere else because this is what's happening here.”  

Fiffe: You weren’t able to get work even if you were willing to play the game.

Salmons: A young editor, while my friend also fruitlessly sought work in a visit to this place, stepped into Chiarello's office to say he was going to put me on a mini-series. I know this editor's name and also his verification of this incident, but I still don't know him. This was in the couple of years where I first went bust. I was sleeping in studios and on couches, drawing and submitting things furiously, ghosting storyboards in LA. Also in this time, I wrote two of the most humiliating missives of my life to Mr. Chiarello and Mr. Axel Alonso at Marvel, laying out in un-sparing detail my miserable circumstances. Dot com bust, 9/11, inexplicably Hollywood cowers in its horizon pools, humanitarian causes, goat fuck orgies and closes it's legs to new projects. On the personal side I had divorce, child custody suit, loss of property and true physical and ongoing hunger, the usual results of black balling. This goes on for a good couple of years. Minor health issues ensue.  In the middle of all this I supplicate once again, with ideas and art, this is what the sonar ping brings back.

Fiffe: So the young editor was proposing to Chiarello that you draw a mini and…? 

Salmons: My name went up like a clay pigeon in Chi's office and didn't hit the ground until after lunch, shot full of holes in an energetic and lengthy debauch of invective. Again, I stayed nice for a couple of more years. I continued e-mails, phone calls and empty exchanges for years. Also with Scott Dunbier. Meanwhile, no one believes I have a job, let alone a career.

Fiffe: It seems like you’re still keeping busy, though. You’ve posted a few things on your site.

Salmons: I'm working on a '20s crime story set in the West that I'm sworn not to talk about. What I will talk about is the projects I'm dragging out of my files for publishing online. I have a metaphysical character that I've written. I'm reaching for the itchy edge of murder, psychosis and maybe something genuinely supernatural but all in good fun. I have a Science Fiction property I really want to get to. It's based on classic SF fetish and tough guy stories. I've done lots of development on that. I'm also restarting my animation work that will involve some of these properties in short bits. I've only ever done rough animation but damned if I'm not a natural at it. It's equipment intensive and requires careful file trafficking for someone with my transience but I can manage it now. I still have a pent up steaming chamber of superhero material, characters, designs and stories that I never had the opportunity to excise. They're there and I can still vaguely remember the motivation to do it so I'll probably posit some of those.

Fiffe: There’s one thing I’d like for you to shed some light on before we wrap up. By your reckoning, and despite your frustrations with the industry, what is it about comics that always bring you back?

Salmons: Comics used to be, and in some places still is, a place to prove your ideas, to hear and see everyone else's and to do something worthwhile. It's been mollified, diluted, fixed and shaved by corporate feint in the figure, in the-shape-of so-called progressive editors, and in Shooter's own words, "the little fucks" lap it up. Gary Groth, the finest comic publisher in America in the last 30 years -- yes, he's pissed me off, too -- opined in the '80s that American comics were eating its own young. I didn't think it would be me, but it wasn't only me. Everyone who can, gets out of comics. Fans pined after Frazetta and I've defended Steranko and others for getting out over the years. Some jabbed Steranko for weighing in on modern comics when he doesn't do any. Guys like him made the statements they could make in a great medium run by backwater business types and then they moved on. Most of those works are still unmatched by anyone I know of today. Steranko can say whatever he wants and you'll take it.

--Michel Fiffe, 2012

Tony Salmons Interview Pt. 2

 

by Michel Fiffe

In part one, we covered Tony Salmon's cartooning theories and muses, his breaking in and struggling through his early years at Marvel Comics. Today we cover his work on the short lived Dakota North, his minor fling with the independent scene, and his branching outside the world of comics.

Dakota North promotional image, Marvel Age Annual #2, 1986, Marvel.

Here is Part One

PART TWO

Michel Fiffe: Let’s get into the next project you worked on, Dakota North. I was under the impression that it was supposed to be an ongoing series, and when it started getting momentum, it suddenly ended. Were the sales not enough to support it?

Tony Salmons: The book and characters were full blown and Martha Thomases was as green at writing something like a regular series as I was at drawing one. It was a rough ride. It was published every 2 months. In those days, direct sales were just coming in and were only partial of the circulation. The numbers on a book were not in from retail and rack sales, the most important then, for 12 months. We did 5 issues which is just 10 months short of the numbers coming in and Dakota was canceled because they were trimming the line to make circulation sexier as Marvel itself went on sale. That's the word I had on it.

Dakota North #3, October, 1986, Marvel.

Fiffe: How did the title originally come about?

Salmons: It was totally Larry Hama's idea. He hired me cold at the offices one day. We were zipping up at the urinals appropriately enough, and he told me to bring my stuff into his office. He told me I could draw better than most of the guys working there, the first and only editor to ever say anything of the like, but was emphatic that my storytelling “sucked.”  In the year plus we worked on Dakota North he showed me why and what's better, how to fix it if I would take the advice. For me it was the beginning of the lengthiest, troubled and most rewarding working experiences in comics.

Fiffe: What do you mean by troubled and rewarding?

Salmons: I redrew more work under his editorship than any other place I've worked but he always showed me why. It was never arbitrary or just because he didn't like it. It was what I'd wanted, to find my way through stories. He could speed up the pacing or slow it down, focus on a character versus an action and always make the image serve the story. That is, keeping in mind the continuity before the image in question and it's relationship to the images after to form a coherent whole; keeping this in mind both within the scene and the longer continuity of the story itself. It's not rocket science but it is fully the art of storytelling. It dove tailed perfectly with my own ambitions, for craft, not for fame, and sent me spinning on a whole new course of personal studies. It also kept me out of mainstream comics for good.

Dakota North #2, written by Martha Thomases, August, 1986, Marvel.

Fiffe: Which was around the time your stint over at Dark Horse began, back when it was still a very young company. Were you getting a clearer idea as to what you wanted to achieve as a cartoonist? Was there more artistic leeway in this environment?

Salmons: Before Dark Horse there was First Comics. I was scheduled for a three issue stint on Jon Sable, Freelance. Mike Grell is one of my favorite writers in comics. One of the few I would ever choose to work with. He wrote a terrific, tight story. It was my first job after Marvel. I was stunned that after the 56 pages I did for them they asked me to redraw not a single figure or panel. Not what I was used to. While there are some rough spots I made some real headway in those 2 issues. I'd moved home to Arizona for some months, staying at my parent's again with my tail between my legs. I landed Sable and thought it was something great.  I moved back to NY to a loft full of hippie artists, including the great Bob Camp and erstwhile Vincent Waller. As Bob said at this farewell speech after Ren & Stimpy production: It sucked great. We were young with a future and the traffic through that loft was insane and truly New York.

 

Jon Sable, Freelance #54, written by Mike Grell, December 1987, First Comics.

Fiffe: What was the working situation during this period?

Salmons: I turned in pages continually that summer of '87 but the pay was always a problem. I got the run around every time I called the First offices.  People weren't “in,” where's the invoice, talk to accounting, sorry they're not in, either.  This went on for over three months of sweltering Summer in NY, if you've ever known one.  I was doing short jobs and commissions but Sable was my main feed.  Flat broke in NY again, with a full time job. I'd finished 2 issues of Sable and hadn't even been paid in full for one. By now, my back was coming up over, “turn off the lights, hide behind the couch until he stops knocking” office hi-jinks.  I guess the telling point is that when I informed them I wasn't doing the 3rd issue without payment for already finished work, they didn't argue. Sable was over and somehow they got another sucker to finish the third issue. They were tits up in the next year and good riddance.

"Fossil", written & drawn by Salmons, Dark Horse Presents #9, July, 1987, Dark Horse.

Fiffe: Then you went to Dark Horse? How did that go?

Salmons: Dark Horse was fun. They weren’t nuisances, editorially speaking.  They let me do what I wanted and even write. We did have a few sticky places over paper and pay. Right after the Sable job I was home again and broke. This was tiresome for folks at the farm, if you've ever tried something everybody thought you were nuts to do in the first place.

"Monq: Message From Earth" written & drawn by Salmons, Dark Horse Presents #7, May, 1987, Dark Horse.

Fiffe: You did okay at Dark Horse, though, right?

Salmons: I did a couple of short jobs for Dark Horse Presents and then they bounced a check on me. I'm probably the only guy you'll hear that from. In those days, if you had a bank account in NY, it was inaccessible from the West without a costly and untimely money transfer. My sister cashed the check from Dark Horse against her own checking account. When it bounced, it in turn bounced 12-13 of her small household checks. The fees were hundreds of dollars. When I called DH, they explained the whole thing to me. I knew a bit about business accounts because my family runs a couple. I understood it was an error but they would only make good on the original amount. Randy Stradley said I “cashed it wrong.”  You wrote me a check, how did I cash it wrong? Still being a lucky-to-be-working freelancer I zipped it and went ahead. I did an issue of the Mark for DH after that which I'm still proud of and I think I could've done some very similar stuff quickly after that but it was just too hard to get paid from indies, already even at that point. I couldn't convince my parents or anybody that I had a job! Jeez. DH was paying me in quarters: two halves in pencils and two halves in inks.  I had half the job in and the other half nearing finish when again my rent was due. I tell them I have no money for half a comic I've drawn; I don't want everything, just $300 to pay my rent. Stradley blazes back that they have half a comic they can't print!  It was maddening. I seethed for about a week and then just sent in the finishes. That was the end of my DH tenure.

Mark #4, written by Jerry Prosser, September 1988, Dark Horse.

Fiffe: Sounds like the tipping point for you. Was this common for Dark Horse or any other minor publishers of the time? I can’t imagine this happening on a continual basis.

Salmons: I must stress that these are not unique stories. They're not even personal to me, except that I got the full Jimi Hendrix experience in corporate comics! And I'm not going back again. I might be crazy, really. But I'm not stupid. Not by that much.

Fiffe: Was self publishing or contributing to more alternative publications ever a consideration for you in order to branch out from the mainstream?

Salmons: First and Dark Horse were my only experiments in the indie press. I couldn't get paid by the more mainstream indie publishers. Lots of people went broke self publishing from their kitchen tables. It was a full conspiracy, knowingly or unknowingly, by the companies and talent, the distributors and even the retailers. Why display Neil the Horse or Itchy Planet when X-Wads are outselling them 300 to 1? The circle of idiots was complete. When they started to go broke, beginning with mom and pops, they all deserved it. A few didn't. Some of them are still around. But it was a conspiracy of dunces. They strip-mined the speculator and collector market for all time with fake collectibles, foil covers, multiple covers, cards, and glittery crap. Well, they're all broke now and it ain't never coming back. Now there's this artificial movie connection. Feh. It'll blow up soon, too and most of you guys crowding in now are too late. I've already stated how long it takes to get a comic on paper. Wait'll you get to “turn-around hell” in movie land. Hey, I'd love movie money. It's just never come along. 

Saturday Morning Comic #1, written by Ralph Sall with Mike Lackey, March, 1996, Marvel.

Fiffe: Well, after this period you did less and less comic book work anyway, and now I can understand why. What kind of work were you doing in the early 90s?

Salmons: I did lots of things. Commissions, spot illos, there's a bar in Wickenburg, AZ that’s decorated with my work. Used to be, anyway. Wall art, western. Not much money in any of it. Then I was married and had kids. Extra distractions and stresses. I went to Los Angeles alone in '90 and was hired at WB for the new Batman Animated series and brought my family over. It was the best job I ever screwed up. But by then I was a full casualty of politics and office wankery. This new corporate scene and seeing it every day walking past my cubicle was too much. The next 10 years in and out and around animation and comics showed no evidence I was mistaken.

Foot Soldiers #2 pin-up, November, 1997, Image Comics.

Fiffe: Can you get into your experience in animation?

Salmons: In animation, draw-ers are the bottom of the food chain. Rightly so. I used to have to sit with the board and character artists while they endlessly discussed that The Rock with Nick Cage was the greatest movie ever made. Ever made. They would run scenes from the disc over and over on the video equipment. Every time was like the first time they'd seen it. One reviewer said that Cage went through the film with his eyes at eternal half mast as if to show that there's nothing more boring than being excited all of the time. Any wonder the audience of the media we produce isn't any brighter than this?

Fiffe: They’re responding to the superficial elements of what they’re experiencing. Maybe digging a little deeper into something like The Rock is pointless.

Salmons: Well, on Batman, I wheeled my chair into Kevin Altieri's office where Brad Rader and Dan Riba worked. We'd discuss art, history, culture, Science, applied and theoretical, our own craft. Then I'd wheel my chair back to the storyboard artists where they were discussing how to draw cool hands or Bernie Wrightson trees or something. I'd walk in on them while they were saying, “Why didn't they just kill Gilligan?  Then they'd' gotten off the island.” It was one of many Edward Hopper moments in studios of surface thinking draw-ers.

Fiffe: A sort of conflict of interests.

Salmons: I'm shooting for the eggheads and they're not all Ivy League. Good sense and depth of internal experience is common, even without education.  Exerting, especially in American media, to connect with that in a network of others is not.

Batman commission.

Fiffe: You've considered yourself to be a non-mainstream artist and more of an "underground" artist. Did you feel as if though your sensibility wasn’t embraced by fans on top of your editorial  troubles?

Salmons: I don't think there's much of a question. Richard Corben's done more Marvel comics than me.  But then he's done more comics than I will probably ever do! And I add, better. As for fans, they absolutely get what I'm doing. But corporations and corporate handmaids, called editors, have another agenda for the audience. Why sell them just a triple-espresso when they can run an entire city, state, nation on heroin, coke and crack. Money-shot, money-shot, money-shot. Why not just take money-shots forever? Excitement, excitement, excitement.

Fiffe: I always saw your style as being too bizarre for the typical mainstream comics audience, yet because of the genres you work in, your work may be lumped with typical mainstream artists and ignored by those who may actually appreciate what your work represents. It seems like a frustrating position to be in.

Salmons: I know. I hear people shocked at certain work or statements by me because they think of me as a Kirby artist or a superhero guy. Amazing, after all of this! I just had this conversation with a young artist. He liked how my work is idiosyncratic in spite of occasional obvious apes that I pull. I replied that I succeeded too well. I never wanted to be pigeonholed as a superhero or horror or war or sci-fi artist, etc. I wanted to be like an all-purpose tool that could be fitted with new purposes and do anything. I knew early on that trends and audiences changed fairly often in comics and media. I can carry off some acceptable version of any genre I take an interest in. As a result, the simple minds in editorial don't know where to put me in their thinking or work line up. At this point, I'm their monster. I know a lot about them. I don't need them and I never want in again. I didn't insult or burn any bridges, I just walked away but the work I did makes them jaw and now I have to say something.

Savage Sword of Conan #146 pin-up, March 1988, Marvel.

Fiffe: I’m a little surprised that nothing had been said prior to this.

Salmons: At any point in this inanity I could've sold out and done what every one else did. I chose not to. I could pencil a shit superhero book in a week; and ink it the next.  People who've worked with me in studios know it. It would've exhausted me for anything else. If I had sold out, nothing I've done would exist. If I'd listened to editors, writers, or even other artists and corporate fulfillment house wienies, nothing I've done would’ve existed. There would certainly be something else but not what I've done. I would be in a “higher,” monied and therefore better and accepted society. I just won't do it.

Fiffe: That would require that editors actually call you back.

Salmons: After years of meetings in the office, on the phone, ping-pong emails, pitches, and spec art, I couldn't get an action project through at [this one particular] company. They had plenty of money at a still swell point in the Image afterglow. Finally, another editor took me into his confidence. He told me it wasn't me, it was the editor in charge. He said he had a stack of approved projects on his desk right now, the moneys were allotted, the teams idling in the hinterlands with house payments and kids to raise, everything ready to go. This other guy just wouldn't waddle his fat ass down the hall and sign off on them. Dangling people because he could. There're other stories on this clown and they're well known but people want to work again so they don't say anything. I wrote him a pretty tough e-mail and fired him. He didn't do his job, and isn't doing it. 

Fiffe: There’s a part of me that wants freelancers to share their horror stories with editorial in order to at least start a dialogue about it in hopes of bettering the situation. But I know it’s a naïve wish, that it won’t really solve anything.

Salmons: If the readers only knew who was blackballed at certain places they wouldn't believe it. There are top people blackballed right now. Not me. I'm out, of my own choice. Kirby was blackballed at DC in the '60s. Then he was sabotaged at DC in the '70s by people at DC and never allowed to finish his Fourth World series. Comics business was not a safe or fun place for Jack. It's not all it's cracked up to be when you're the prettiest girl in the room. If they can do it to Jack and they can do it to Alex Ross, who am I?

Fiffe: The way they’d see it, it wouldn’t be their loss.

Salmons: I won't draw their corporate properties ever again, even for commissions, of which I have only one outstanding. Why should I shine up Spider-Man or fatten up Batman when they don't hire me or pay me for turning out the best stuff I could do for them? Enough. As in comics or any show business, Dorothy Parker observed long ago that Hollywood is the only city in the world where you can die from encouragement. I would add comics, too.

Savage Tales #3 pin-up, February, 1986, Marvel.

To be concluded in Part Three...

Tony Salmons Interview Pt. 1

by Michel Fiffe 

Tony Salmons sees shapes in terms of inkblots and frantic streaks, all pulled into his clipped yet subtle narrative pace. It’s a rarity, such a confident mixture of natural grace and kinetic brushwork. Not a single line goes to waste, no bit of detail is devoid of life, and every drawing has a fighting spirit that refuses to give in to the confines of the page, the story, and even the industry.

Salmons’ infamous reputation as a professional cartoonist has been developed by decades of being at odds with editors and peers and publishers, freelance battles that were traditionally relegated to behind the scenes. It would be easy to single him out as the one with the problem in today’s age of “company first, creator die”, so it’s only fair that Salmons takes a turn in denouncing the pitfalls and treacheries of the business. Tony’s experiences are his own of course, but that doesn’t mean they’re not wholly indicative of a common editorial attitude that’s inherited by every passing generation of overseers.

As harsh as Salmons is about the industry, he’s just as quick to champion the many things he draws inspiration from, as well as expressing his creative excitement all throughout his career. Here is a rare look at an artist whose brilliance, for better or for worse, has set him above and beyond – definitely apart – from the rest of the pack. Readers may sometimes reach the conclusion that comics are an art form dressed as a business of diminishing returns, but if one looks further into the matter the way Tony Salmons has, one may find that it can easily be the other way around.

PART ONE

Michel Fiffe: I'd like to jump right into your basic philosophies in regards to the art of comics, the way you think about comics.

Tony Salmons: First of all, passion. Mere fascination and intellectual pursuit, deep and informed appreciation, association with like minded sorts, walls full of books are not enough, though they are helpful and may aid an artist. They may also detract and hinder by the smugness of just holding the images on paper. What is indispensable is a singular pursuit of ecstasies that separate you from nearly every one because that's what ecstasies do, and that's what we're selling. Personal narrative. Art has been called a magnificent obsession, so it is for me. This is going to sound pot-headed but art isn't even the word. Story fantails artistic effort into a beautiful horizon, better than any single image.

Fiffe: Can you describe your approach for me? 

Salmons: I can describe my approach as noted by other pros. Most of them never think of the story behind a drawing. They only think of drawing a collection of physical surfaces in a contrived arrangement that fills the order of the script. Some guys said they'd never thought of the motivation of certain characters except to keep their balance, show an emotion, to escape a burning elevator, whatever the mechanical aspect of the scene is.

"Siege" written by John Arcudi, The Savage Sword Of Conan #165, October, 1989, Marvel.

Fiffe: So you’re interested in comics-making on a deeper, more involved level.

Salmons: My problem with writers is that I'm a writer. I've co-written everything I've ever done. For no money and no credit. I didn't get into this to draw cool punches and baggy pants, flexing extremities and cleavage. At a certain point of proficiency these are routine and insipid. The purpose, idea and the motivation of the characters that make the scene are my purpose for drawing it. Guys like Paul Pope and Adam Hughes fully demonstrate this. They can be imitated but their sensibilities are subtle and fully expressed. The stories in their single images are cute and fitting to the subject. The full stories they do satisfy and are involving.

Fiffe: Being cute doesn’t necessarily interest you then.

Salmons: I have a liberal dose of anxiety and creepiness that keeps things from getting very cute but I continue to study Pope and Hughes. So, short answer to my personal philosophy is passion for a singular vision. And be nice while you're doing it. We're all bozos on this bus.

Fiffe: I understand that you’re a self-taught artist. What were your influences while you were developing your art?

Salmons: A better question than “who are your influences” is “who do you like and who are your influences?” Many artists don't even know the difference. They list the same people often: Frazetta, Kirby, etc. But none of that stuff is evident in their own stuff. These are artists they like, not artists they take influence from and have taken the time to reverse engineer. Often as not what is evident in their work is the last half-dozen people who drew Iron Man or X-Men for the editors they're targeting for work. 

Fiffe: I get the difference between “liking” and “being influenced by”. Can you give me an example of how you differentiate the two?

 

 

Scarlet Witch commission.

Salmons: I'm enthralled by Robert Crumb and Basil Wolverton but I don't try to draw like them. I like them. I love them! But they're not what I would call influences except for their relentless pursuit of singular visions. Evidenced in some pieces of my work but not all, are Kirby, Toth and Michelluzi but I don't drag them out for every shot or every job. Owning an artist's book or retrospective does not make you one of his. Only full study, taking apart his figures, line work, volumes, and compositions -- if you can reach his impulses -- can move the needle. It's the cauldron of your own soul, all by yourself. Anything else is good honest work. It can pay well and is respectable and it may even get you lines of autograph hounds crowding for smooches, but it's mostly not art. The evidence is standard and all around us. There's not that much genius out there. I'll go further and say the word is bastardized and overrated and near meaningless except from very particular persons.

 Fiffe: It’s used pretty loosely, the term “genius”.

 Salmons: The main failure with comic artists, as I observe it, is that they become located around one school or worse, one artist. Neal Adams and Michael Golden have so many unwashed bastards out there I wonder how it affects the way they see their own stuff, whose face they're shaving in the morning. Most of the guys in comics, animation and such are like the guy who paints portraits of his dog over and over again and tries to sell them at tag sales and flea markets every month. I mean, he bought the materials and put in the work and you can't stop him, you have to respect that, but jeez … 

Fiffe: You just described a comics convention.

Salmons: What never surprises but always amazes me is the change in seemingly perfectly innocent souls who come into this discipline earnestly and honestly, some with great promise, and only one mini-series later… hot-cha! Genius! And they'll hold you to it.

Fiffe: Speaking of schools of style, I can never trace anyone else's style in yours. Occasionally I’ll see a tiny bit of Kirby, but that's really only in a sense of weight and power. And maybe even a bit of Kyle Baker, except it's reversed; I think you may have influenced him. Maybe you just shared the same sensibilities.

Salmons: Hah! The Kyle Baker thing! It's funny because he and I've talked about that. We both run into the comparison. Maybe he would say something else but I know I collected and studied his stuff from the first time I found it. His vernacular extends way beyond anything he could be asked to do in mainstream comics. He was really different but goddammit he kept getting work! But he's also a workhorse! Part of his success is very quick finish. It served him well. And he has a very smart, New Yorker, classic Kurtzman smartness that is at once elegant and impressive and disarmingly finger-in-your-ribs. He's also a very appealing personality. Great guy. I'm also compared to Miller. Frank must've gotten some of it, too. I'll just say that from the first, Miller taught us all how to do comics again. Not too many true creators can make the claim, or should. While I don't love everything he does, Frank deserves his laurels.

The Savage Sword Of Conan #109 pin-up, February, 1985, Marvel.

Fiffe: There's a Defenders comic where you’re listed as the inker, and I’m almost positive that it was your first published work.  It was years before you were a regular pro, though, so I’m left to wonder… was that you?

Salmons: The Clea story! That was me. That was the wonderful Sandy Plunkett! I seem to remember completely ruining his fantastic pencils. Poor guy. I was out of my depth. It was also after my first horrible expedition to NY and pro comics in '76. I was desolate. I considered myself finished in mainstream comics. I was right!

Fiffe: Then how did you break into the comics business the second time around?

Salmons: [The Defenders issue] was the only real work I got in '76 besides some background work from Howard Chaykin who did his best to take me in and keep me encouraged. I didn't really “break” into the business. It was more like sneaking in or wedding crashing. It stayed that way for many years. My reviews were always shaky at best and even if positive, were left-handed. I got only a few pieces of fan mail at Marvel, all bad. I never knew what an editor thought of my work until sometimes a year or two after I lost the gig. “Minimalist”, “scratchy”, “unfinished”, “bad”, and just “wrong” weren’t uncommon. The storytelling was excoriated and often enough, rightly so but not for any reason that they could explain. Editors just didn't like it. Dr. Strange [#64] in '83 was the first noticeable book for me. 

"Art Rage" written by Ann Nocenti, Doctor Strange #64, April, 1984, Marvel.

Fiffe: You worked with Ann Nocenti on that one. This was around the same time she started out coming out of editing and into writing. How was your work dynamic with her?

Salmons: Annie is a sweetheart and a pleasure to work with. She's a very different thinker and storyteller and not always appreciated for it in comics. We were sympatico in that respect. Wish we could've done more together but the distance between corporate comics and myself was growing and I lost faith in the idea of continuing.

Fiffe: How was your Dr. Strange story received?

Salmons: An editor told me he'd just been in a meeting where Jim Shooter held it up to the staff and warned them that “this is not what a Marvel comic should look like.” I mentally hi-fived myself and then the editor said it meant I was getting no more work. Shooter was notifying the editors from the top down that if they used me, their books would be bounced, which they were. Virginia Romita is a lovely person and all the Romitas are great folks but she made those books run on time. Editors recounted a drop of piss running down their leg when she showed up in their doorway! Hah!

Fiffe: But you were still used pretty regularly for a couple of years after that… on New Universe titles, at that. Did you just slip under Shooter’s radar?

Salmons: The only reason I got much work at Marvel thereafter was because Larry Hama's books were outside of the Superhero Gulag of the Marvel Universe. Like Epic Magazine, it was where ideas and people ended up after being shit-canned from the regular line up, especially if editorial didn't want them around but also didn't want the evidence that they were cutting off undesirable new talent outright. All through this time Marvel was increasingly stringent about enforcing their house style, even while they adamantly, even indignantly maintained that there was none. But the hyper-steroid escapee Image-virus bubble a few years later announced the result and proof of it. Bret Blevins was under contract at Marvel all throughout this time. He noted that marketing's, and so, editorial's, fiat went from “do more comics like this” to “do more comics like this or else.”

Fiffe: That explains a lot.

Doctor Strange Classics #2 pin-up, April, 1984, Marvel.

Salmons: Remember the “little fucks” memo? A leaked copy from Shooter's office was printed by The Journal. This vernacular, and worse, was common and disheartening for me.

Fiffe: Yeah, I read that in an old issue of The Comics Journal. I thought it had to have been a joke. That was the common attitude in the offices?

Salmons: It was worse than that. Much worse. Was and is. Important as it is in the story, that's a mere trace of evidence. What was observable in the offices was revolting and demoralizing. People react to demoralizing and debasement mostly in two ways, they kneel and start licking boots or they opt out. You know my choice, even though it took a number of experiences and some time. Common parlance in meetings was, "Let's put this out next. They'll lap it up!" Marvel at that time was on two floors; 9th floor was bullpen/editorial, 10th floor was executive/marketing and whatever the fuck those guys call work. 10th floor referred to 9th floor as, "the animals."  When some one was looking for paperwork or something and it wasn't around they would be told, with casual indifference, "It's down stairs with the animals." The Romitas were down there, Romita's Raiders in the Bullpen, so was beloved Sea-Devil Jack Abel. I was incensed but I didn't and couldn't react to it because I made a practice of not doing so. I wanted to work.

Fiffe: And this must’ve been your first year of working.

Salmons: Someone gave me a short stack of Roy Thomas' Alter Ego mags recently. He thought I'd snuggle warmly into revisiting those Halcyon days. That rag is the penultimate smothering wall of what I was personally and professionally swimming uphill against my entire life: off-center, bloated, static, recombinant, self-referencing superhero drek… and from a whole field of putative creators over all those years. Shinier and shinier titties on the women and the men, shinier and shinier grew they! And so it continues today! Shinier titties, cool punches and a pose-in-costume on every page. Don't get me wrong, a few of those artists have enviable chops and nearly dignify the phenomenon, but the writing is even worse! Primetime cop-soap rehashes and sweepings from Hollywood star vehicle turd advisories. Flash and dash but no substance beyond vacuous borrowed dramaturgy.

Fiffe: So even on the most general, technical terms, you don’t think the basic standard of writing in mainstream comics has improved since the 80s? I admit to having some difficulty maintaining that notion, but for the sake of argument…

Salmons: The case may be made for that. I personally believe that comics are in a renaissance at every level. I feel very lucky to be anywhere in this line up. No false modesty. The examples of the strength of the medium are sterling, Alan Moore, Miller, Al Columbia, Jim Woodring, the continual infusion of stuff new and old, from Fantagraphics and Gary Groth. Beyond that, the proof is still emerging in the virility of new hands: Matthew Southworth, Dave Johnson, Dan Clowes for Christ's sake. We used to have to hunt this stuff up in dusty corners of second hand shops. I had no measurable amount of Caniff or Sickles or Eisner 'til the middle '80s. Now the stuff is everywhere. But the highest always exists with the lowest. Best of times, worst of times. There're the fetishist superhero guys who're inducted by the corporations to suck along the brain-dead and make them think they're entertained, praises to Brad Rader for the phrase. Then there's the guy making a comic book on a sheet of masonite-drawing board at his kitchen table and trying to make up 3 months of back rent. This is not new. Read the Steranko History of Comics to know what Siegel and Shuster, young Jacob, the wonderful Jack Cole and others went through.

Conan Saga #12 pin-up, April, 1988, Marvel.

Fiffe: I don’t mean to make strict camps out of mainstream and non-mainstream comics. They aren’t mutually exclusive even though there are substantial differences, but when I ask about comics writing, I want to put what you’re saying into context.

Salmons: They used to be camps. It was better when they were camps. The two will never meet except when Wallace is betrayed. It only seems that the distinction is irrelevant because corporate wonks – editors – are subverting the revolution in this very medium we're discussing in order to televise it and turn a buck for the boards of directors, basically like everywhere else on the planet. John Lennon said in the '70s that the same people are in charge, they just have longer hair. It's gentrification. I lived in Tribeca in the '80s. It was changing then but it was still fish markets and minor living spaces. I was just there again last year and I couldn't find my way around. Everything from before and during my life there is gone. It has, like the rest of New York, been turned into a yuppie mall. Used to be you were taking your ass in your hands when you went into some of those areas. Not glorifying it, but now the worst you can get is a ticket for your car alarm.

Unused and final cover for Marvel Fanfare #27, July, 1986, Marvel.

Fiffe: I want to get back to your drawing for a bit. What’s interesting about your early years is that you were allowed to ink your own material, something that wasn’t the norm back during that time, especially for a young new artist. Did you insist on having complete control of the work?

Salmons: It wasn't so much that I was allowed to ink it, but that no one else wanted the job! One top slick, house style inker was offered one of my books and declined. “Too much drawing in it.”  This from guys who inked everything with one dead line without meaningful weight that amounted to really nothing more than a nervous twitch and jab over and over again. They reduced the anatomy and articulation of any well-drawn form to a string of sausages flexed like a human limb. These guys were making money hand over fist. I have some embarrassing examples of house style I attempted. They found no favor. They're not bad, looking back over them, but I'm glad none of them got out.

Unused cover for Web Of Spider-Man Annual #1, 1985, Marvel.

Fiffe: Would your Web of Spider-Man Annual be one of those jobs? Some of it looks like other inkers. Some heads look completely redrawn.

Salmons: Oh god. That was another inventory job. It was supposed to be an issue of Iron Man, then an issue of Spider-Man, then it was an Iron Man/Spider-Man team up. Didn't even know it was still going then. Then it was decided that it should be an annual, which added 18 pages to it. Pages I was told to come up with. And because it was now an annual it went from an inventory job to scheduled and it got later, of course. They pulled it from me but every time I went into the offices for weeks after that the pages were circulating with crusty layers of white out and many things redrawn. I believe Vinnie Colletta inked, a typical public punishment for lateness. He subbed it out to Frank Giacoia which would've been great but Giacoia subbed it out to unknown assistants and then the bullpen guys backed over it a few times. Oy.

Fiffe: That doesn’t sound like deadline art, it sounds like torture.

Salmons: I had taken the precaution of only taking inventory jobs, jobs without deadlines, pointless it turned out. It seemed perfect for some one like me who didn't know what he was doing yet. But uniformly, at a certain point of finish, they would be suddenly scheduled. Two of them were called in over two different weekends! I had to pull all nighters to finish the inks. Monday morning I was in there with the finished jobs, bleary eyed with fatigue toxins. But they were not late. All the stuff I did in Marvel Fanfare was inventory but again they would be called in. On the inside cover of the Cloak & Dagger Fanfare issue [#19], Al Milgrom's regular “Editori-Al” commentary made me a cutsie problem freelancer turning in late pages. I was not late on inventories, but Al was a continually late part time editor. He's remembered as being in the offices a couple hours a day and not on business, mostly lounging in other offices. There was never anything near finished in his file drawers. When the heat came on to fill an issue he called in the one closest to finish. That I didn't mind, so much as I minded him hanging the late thing around my neck when I was a new guy and it was one of my best jobs and turned in as fast as anybody working then.  

Al Milgrom's "Editori-AL", Marvel Fanfare #19, March, 1985, Marvel.

Fiffe: Those “Editori-Als” themselves look pretty rushed. That one Hulk job of yours looks really good.

Salmons: That's what killed him, I think. He bounced the splash page to that job. I redrew it 3 more times and he bounced those. Then he patched the original with his own work. Literally defacing the job. 

Fiffe: That splash isn’t you?

Salmons: No one's ever seen the splash. It went from this huge explosive figure blasting off the page in one of my first successful Kirby experiments, to a Macy's day balloon, dead in the air. Al's one of the few guys in comics that never learned his basic Bridgman of reversing the arms and legs of a figure in motion to increase dynamism. He had the misfortune of following Miller onto Wolverine. He was making plenty of money but seeing a whole batch of young hotshots sweep in around him. I was not one of those, but that's how it was explained to me by others at the offices. Everyone's had those feelings but it takes a diminutive nature piqued in a special place to do something like that to a new kid. 

"A Day In The Life..." written by David Anthony Kraft, Marvel Fanfare #17, November, 1984, Marvel.

Fiffe: That’s unfortunate. Out of all of your Fanfare work, that one’s the best. It has the most energy.

Salmons: I penciled that 12 page Hulk job in 3 days at Bret Blevins' house and inked it in around a week.  I didn't get an “Editori-Al” for that. Nor did I work in that office again. And here's another note on comic book deadlines: they're bullshit. They're all late. All late. L-A-T-E!  Every motherfucking one of them. The average monthly comic comes out 9 maybe 10 times a year; do the math. Many of them even less. A few years ago, Marvel lost a class action suit brought by retailers for late releases and -- get this -- substitutions of one book for another that was solicited but unavailable. They settled. The whole business is l-a-t-e. But, like the old “continuity and creative team” vice-grip on a title, they use it to squeeze out people they don't like or don't think they can sell.

Fiffe: What about the last minute pushes, the freelance all-nighters. Those comics are made right before going to press.

Salmons: Half of schedule fuck ups aren’t freelancers, it's slack and malfeasant editorial. See the Bill Mumy opine in Comic Buyer's Guide some years ago. He'd seen whole music projects go from idea/conception to marketing and sale in less time than it takes to get something just approved at the Big Two. You may remember the Avengers/JLA crossover that never happened but hung dazzling loyal readers for some years. It seemed to never go away but never happen at the time. I was there. DC was on board. This was nothing but purposeful sandbagging by top egos at Marvel editorial. They played zero-sum that some one might get something they wouldn't. The wonderful George Perez worked continuously on it, working on spec and working to make it happen, as did many others. It wasn't my kind of project but it was too much to let the “little fucks” enjoy, even if it would’ve made tons of money for everyone.

"Siege" written by John Arcudi, The Savage Sword Of Conan #165, October, 1989, Marvel.

To be continued in Part Two. 

WASTELAND: The John Ostrander Interview

By Michel Fiffe

Originally pitched as a modern horror comic anthology for the 80s, the tone of Wasteland was quickly established as morbidly absurd and existentially frustrated. Wasteland pushed the levels of comfort by examining murder, memoir, and Krishna, by questioning the validity of romance, black magic, and cole slaw, and by unnervingly tackling topics such as suicide, child abuse and apartheid. Even guys like H.P. Lovecraft and L. Ron Hubbard make respective appearances. Anything and everything was fair game to writers John Ostrander and Del Close, who used the real estate of an eight page comic story to test these boundaries.

Up to that point, Ostrander had been writing DC’s own Suicide Squad and Firestorm comics, but was also working on his co-creator owned futuristic noir, Grimjack. Del Close was already an icon of comedy and improv, having been the House Director for the Committee and Second City and the teacher of many accomplished comedian/actors. Wasteland was the one time Ostrander and Close were given the opportunity to take control of an entire title and do whatever they saw fit. In the process, they managed to intrigue, amuse and offend in equal parts, all in the service of telling a good, modern horror story.

John Ostrander was kind enough to shed some light on Wasteland’s origin, its process, the way the title was perceived in light of a company re-imagining itself, and his collaboration with Del Close.

   

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

JOHN OSTRANDER: I’d known of Del for a number of years (who in Chicago didn’t?) but I’d never actually met him until we were cast in A Christmas Carol together at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. We were given a dressing room together and, to be honest, I was more than a little intimidated. Del had this wild rep and was said to be a witch or Satanist or some such and I was this Recovering Catholic boyo. However, Del was a big fan of Science Fiction and of comic books, extremely knowledgeable, and already knew of my work so he was actually very easy to get along with. He then invited me to attend his Improv classes that he taught at Second City. Improv wasn’t my strong point and at first I demurred, telling Del I wasn’t really interested in being in Second City or Saturday Night Live. Del said that was perfect – he was sick of people looking at the classes as a stepping stone to Saturday Night Live. He wanted people who could get into the art form of Improv – he wanted writers, lawyers, accountants, doctors, plumbers and so on. So I took the classes and they were the most liberating experience I had as a writer.  

JOHN OSTRANDER: Del and I began our collaboration in the Munden’s Bar back-up stories that appeared in Grimjack and, in many ways, were the precursors to Wasteland. In fact, getting Del as a co-writer helped sell the concept of an anthology of eight page stories to my editor, Mike Gold. Munden’s Bar is the place that the title character worked out of, his base. I knew there was going to be a series of back-up stories and I wanted to keep it all related to the title character. Mike wasn’t sure; anthologies were more work and a difficult sell. Then I mentioned the possibility I could get Del to co-write some of them with me. Mike’s eyes gleamed. That excited him – having Del Close writing comics. I put it to Del and he was really interested. That’s how our writing collaboration began.

I was cool to it at the start. It was Mike’s concept. He had moved over to DC and had brought me and a few others with him and he wanted to get Del in on the mix as well. I went to visit him in Connecticut and we had a walk around a duck pond in a drizzle and Mike gave me the basic concept – horror but for our time. More psychological horror than zombies and such. I wasn’t real sold on the idea at first – despite everything, I’m not a real horror fan – but we got Del on board and then the thing took on a life of its own. Specifically – it developed it’s own sense of humor. Not every story was “funny” but there was a thick streak of black humor running through the book. Mike called it “black hole humor” – so dark no laughs escaped.

OSTRANDER: It was a difficult book to write. With the exception of Del in his autobiographical pieces (the only place that I know of that Del ever set down any part of his biography) and The Dead Detective, there were no continuing characters or stories. Every eight pages we were starting all over and every issue had three stories. That’s tough, especially on a monthly schedule.

We also upped the ante is story after story. How far could we push it? Did we get away with things in this story? Well, let’s see if we can push it farther on the next one.

AMERICAN SQUALOR

“Insofar as I can determine, the events in this story are true.” –Del Close

A substantial portion of Wasteland is made up of Del Close’s stab at autobiographical comics. These stories never explicitly state that they’re cut from the honest-to-god fabric of confession comix, a credit box decision that undermines the main tenet of autobio: truth telling. By claiming that these yarns were half true -- and a screw it, figure it out for yourselves attitude -- Close was hilariously and somewhat inadvertently criticizing the genre. Taking a grain of salt when reading a “true story” is par for the course because after all, if perception is the driving force of autobio, readers have to make allowance for any discrepancy between being honest and bullshittin’. True or not, Close crafted some great stories.

OSTRANDER: Del was always interested in stories and the facts were adaptable. If changing the facts on a true story made it a better story, so be it. I added percentages of what was true in each of those stories but Del wasn’t crazy about those. He felt they should just be allowed to stand as they were and, in retrospect, I think he was right. That said, each story had something that was “real”; I felt they were all “true” but not all of them were real.

We actually did a story about us trying to write a story and aside from the fantastical elements, it’s pretty close. We had several ways of working. We might spitball an idea back and forth or Del would come in with something of a script written on a yellow lined pad. I’d then do an “adaptation”, working it into a comic’s script form. He might come in with a list of ideas or concepts, which I would then develop. Sometimes I had to go ahead without Del. We had no one way of working.

MURDERERS’ ROW

Taking no small part in the distinctiveness of Wasteland were the artists. For the first half of the run, there was a set of four cartoonists who would play musical chairs per issue (1 for the cover, 3 for each story). This method took disparate art styles and made them seem cohesive while giving order to a potentially chaotic schedule.

Among the first roster of cartoonists you had David Lloyd, who was almost a year away from completing the resurrected V For Vendetta series. Another artist, and Alan Moore collaborator, was Megaton Man creator Donald Simpson, who was also one of the few who lasted to the very last issue. George Freeman found the most consistent post-Captain Canuck stint of his career (as an artist firing on all cylinders) within the pages of Wasteland. And somewhere between ending his run on Journey and writing the Flash for several years, William Messner-Loebs became an integral part of the creative team.

Not to be forgotten is Lovern Kindzierski and his fantastic color palette. It was one of the few times a colorist used the advantage of the Deluxe Format to make unusually bold decisions. Other cameos, fill ins, or tail end additions to the art team include Grimjack co-creator Timothy Truman, Ty Templeton (artist on the controversial “Dissecting Mister Fleming”), Joe Orlando, Tom Artis, Michael Davis, Rick Magyar, and Bill Wray (with assist from Tony Salmons, as seen below).

THIS TIME WE WIN!

Wasteland, in its defiance of neat classification, is easily one of the riskier things DC Comics has ever published. Trying to sell product while remaining true to a personal vision is a time-honored struggle, but the truth is that Wasteland was a non-commercial commodity that wouldn’t have existed without a commercial company to produce it. The talent involved, coupled with the production value, monthly output and distribution would require the overhead that only a company of Warner Bros.' stature can provide. A book like this would never be made today under such conditions. The ultra conservative sameness of mainstream comics would dare not allow for Wasteland-level work, as the bottlenecked work force struggles to maintain mere employment; there’s simply no room, or interest, for experimentation.

 

It’s worth mentioning that Wasteland has never been collected and may very well remain out of print. I’m not sure if the world of comics would be any more inviting to such a series today than it was back in 1987, but don’t let public taste deprive you of these great comics. Every page is worth seeking out and with minimal effort, you’ll discover that I’m not wrong.

I’m still fascinated by the fact that this comic was made on Company Time. It’s a far cry from a vanity project, but it’s so off model that the idea must’ve been accepted based on the sheer talent involved. Getting the concept approved is the obvious victory, but sustaining the green light for 18 issues is a feat unto itself. I got the sense that everyone  worked on each issue as if it was the last.

OSTRANDER: Mike used to tell me that other editors or artists would read what we did and then come up and demand, “How did you get away with that?” As for the fan base – I think that was pretty well represented by the letter columns, which for my money were some of the best letter cols being published at the time.  

OSTRANDER: My biggest problem was coming up with each issue on a monthly basis. Mike has noted elsewhere that it probably took me as long to do one story in Wasteland as it took me to write a full issue of something else. Towards the end, I was just giving out. Mike has told me that we could have gotten another six issues out of Wasteland before the numbers demanded we stop but he didn’t think I could keep doing it that long. I am surprised that they let us keep doing the book as long as we did it.

I’ll note for the record that we weren’t trying to make each story more disturbing than the last – at least, that wasn’t our only goal. We wanted to test the parameters of what could be done in the format.

FINAL ISSUE

OSTRANDER: By that point, Del was experimenting with a long form improv concept, which was known as the Harold over at the Improv Olympics (Del and Second City had parted ways). Part of the format was, at the end, to find ways to re-incorporate all the scenes that went on before and our final issue of Wasteland became, by design, a Harold. We wanted to work in as many aspects of the different stories as we could in what would be a book-length issue. We knew it was the last issue but that was alright — it was time.

I think Wasteland was of its time but also stands up to time. I think they’re still readable and still have a jolt, an impact. And I’m very, very proud of it.

It’s not a stretch to suggest that John Ostrander and Del Close applied elements of improv thinking to comic book storytelling. As it stands, Wasteland is compelling not only because of its portrayal of violence, drug use, and sexual lucidity, but because it dealt with adult psychological concerns in subversive shots of fiction - under a corporate umbrella yet. Wasteland remains solid in its identity, and while it struggles with itself at times, it’s an unforgiving read that reached transcendent fruition.

--Michel Fiffe 2012

 

Stunt Casting: Jog and Matt Seneca Burn Tucker's Face With A Lighter Made Of Intelligence

This past weekend saw some of this blog's favorite individuals in attendance at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, a trip that included a stopover at the fabled 2nd Avenue Warehouse (also known as Koch's place). Following the purchasing of comics, two of the individuals--Matthew Seneca and Joseph McCulloch--hung around for an improptu discussion regarding both locations, the comics they contained, Jerry Sandusky, the thing Tucker thought was crazy racist but turned out to be a practiced work of satire (which is something you can hear Joe figure out the second he opens the comic), and various other sundries.

Q: How's the audio quality?
A: It isn't that spectacular.

Q: Are you sorry about that?
A: Absolutely!

Q: Do you think this makes up for the woeful lack of interesting content over the last...jesus, the whole year! You basically did nothing!
A: I know, I know, but December should be a great month. For stuff!

Q: Fine, where is the stupid thing?
A: It's after the break.

Q: Is it crazy long?
A: It's about 90 minutes.

SECOND CITY: the Paul Duncan & Phil Elliott Interview

by Michel Fiffe

In comics, it’s the quick bursts of brilliance that can be found in the most peculiar of places; a fly by night one shot here, a back up story in a random annual there or even a short run in an anthology. These newsprint vehicles contain some gems from creators that didn’t have the interest or mileage or opportunity to be thrown into the spotlight by the hands of fate (or editors).

Another reliable delivery system for these kind of unsung comics is the mini series, specifically the ones from the independent press. Many examples can prove me wrong, but the mini series isn’t conducive to dragging out a story. It forces it to be told efficiently while still giving it enough breathing room to develop substantially. 

Second City is the perfect example of a layered and ambitious comic book that rewards the reader beyond the brief commitment to four issues. Written by Paul Duncan and drawn by Phil Elliott in 1986, Second City was released by the short-lived publisher, Harrier Comics. I first came across a random issue of that title a couple of years ago. Upon reading it, I was taken by how eloquent and visually striking it was. Even when I found the remainder of the mini series at a local back issue shop, it wasn’t enough. I had to know more about it, how it came to be and who was responsible.

Phil Elliott is a longstanding staple of the indie UK comics scene. His projects include Tales From Gimbley, Tupelo, and several other comics for Escape and Strip Magazine. Paul Duncan was the founder of comics magazine Arken Sword and after a brief stint in writing comics, he focused on writing, editing, archiving all things crime stories. When I contacted both gentlemen to investigate further, they graciously mapped out their collaboration and looked back to examine their work on Second City.

 

SON OF ORIGIN

PHIL ELLIOTT: I’d known Paul Duncan for a few years due to his editorship of the comics magazine, Arken Sword. Paul was helpful in promoting my work and that of other British artists working on the fringes of the comics industry and we often discussed collaborating on something together. Our “big break” came in the form of Harrier Comics, a UK publisher who was taking advantage of the growing direct sales market. This was an opportunity to have our work published and also reach a wider audience… and we might even make some money from it! We weren’t the only ones thinking this. My old mate, Eddie Campbell had the same idea and he and I had a friendly competition at the time to see who could get their comic released by Harrier first. Second City pipped Eddie’s Deadface by about six months. Actually, if I remember correctly, the first chapter of Second City was originally going to be a stand-alone story which we thought could be expanded, and that’s when we approached Harrier.

PAUL DUNCAN: Phil and I knew each other from the London Comic Marts, where everybody from the Fast Fiction (i.e. self-published comics) scene, comics fandom, and the emergent 2000AD/Warrior creators met every couple of months for a chat and gossip and news, as well as to buy the latest comics.

I'd always admired Phil's clear-line style of art, and the great work he'd done on Doc Chaos and Gimbley, and had included some of his work in my magazine Arken Sword (later Ark) as well as interviewing him for the mag. In fall 1985 he rang me up, saying that he wanted to work on something a bit more commercial for the burgeoning American market, and could I recommend some writers for him to collaborate with. I gave him some names, and also, uncharacteristically, suggested myself. He looked through the scripts he received and decided to illustrate my short 6-page SF strip, which was fashioned along the lines of Blade Runner, film noir, and his own self-reflective comics.

Although Phil had worked on pro comics before, I had not, so it was a little nerve-wracking for me. Phil quickly put together the first story, “Contact”, and he even finished it off with a lovely wash finish. We sent copies to David Lloyd and Steve Bissette to get their reactions, which were favourable. Dave suggested changes, mainly to make it more linear, but both Phil and I resisted this because we felt that its air of mystery was one of its strongest points.

At the beginning of 1986, Phil sent a copy to Eclipse Monthly, who sort of liked it, but wouldn't commit to anything solid. While we were waiting, Phil and I were starting to think in terms of doing a series of 6-page stories that gradually revealed the background and a larger story. We showed the strip and explained the idea to Martin Lock of Harrier Comics, who had a stall at the London Comic Mart, and was easily accessible. Although we weren't particularly keen on some of his comics, we liked him, he was a solid dependable person, and he was willing to give us complete creative control of every aspect of the 4-part mini-series.

THEMATIC INSPIRATION

DUNCAN: The first story is a kind of “a day in the life of a government killer” which introduced the reader to the world, the technology, the characters, and the idea that people spent so much time in their room video-conferencing (what we call Skyping today) that they lost all sense of physical or emotional contact. This was written in 1985, before I had had any experience of e-mail and the Internet, and I was even using a card-punch system at Polytechnic to run and compile my programs. I had just read Isaac Asimov's SF mysteries The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, and this idea of a lack of real connection between people was the impetus of the whole thing. Also, at the time I was a student living at home with my parents, and we were all living in different 8-hour shifts, and I was very much struck by the fact that I was living in the same space as my parents but none of us saw the other for any appreciable period of time, yet we were all interdependent. To this idea of the rigorous control and fracturing of time was another idea added to the melting pot.

Once Martin gave us the go-ahead, we decided to do a total of 16 independent chapters, but with each of them feeding into the other chapters, so that a whole was created. I loved Will Eisner's The Spirit, and wanted to get his sense of completeness for each chapter. Also, I love hardboiled and noir fiction, and I used Paul Cain's Seven Slayers as the model for economy and thrift in direct storytelling. I dived in with absolutely no idea of what the overall arc of the story was. The only thing we knew for certain was that the title was Second City.

 COLLABORATIVE PROCESS

ELLIOTT: I’d some experience of drawing longer comics like Doc Chaos but was more used to creating short stories, often single-page vignettes. Paul was conscious that I might freak out if I was presented with a full 96-page script so he broke the story down into chapters and I received the script in short bursts. This of course meant I wasn’t entirely sure how the story would develop, but I never found this a hindrance.

Paul’s scripts were quite detailed, with very specific notes about the staging of certain panels and the positioning of characters, especially where scenes mirrored each other. This didn’t mean Paul wasn’t open to adaptations or suggestions and we were in regular contact about the comic, discussing different approaches. This was before e-mails and we would often be on the phone for an hour or more, almost every day, much to my wife’s horror when the phone bills came in!

DUNCAN: We worked on a chapter-by-chapter basis. The reason for this was initially because we didn't know if we could produce the work in bulk, and also because giving ourselves short-term objectives made our progress seem quick.

This is how it worked. I wrote, by hand, a six-page script, with a thumbnail of the panel grids, and a full description and dialogue for each panel. I'd post it to Phil and he'd get it the next morning, read through it, ask questions if he needed to, then get to work on the artwork, producing a page or more a day. The following week, I got photocopies of the chapter first thing in the morning, read through it, and then telephoned Phil with notes on specific panels. Usually, the changes were to do with clarity of storytelling. Having seen what Phil had drawn - and he added a tremendous amount of additional detail and subtlety into the work - I reacted to it and incorporated elements into future chapters.

So, on the day I received the photocopies, Phil would be making changes whilst I wrote the next six pages quick enough to get them into the post that afternoon, so that the process could be repeated until the book was finished. Inevitably, I messed up. On one chapter, Phil delivered the pages as written and I was desperately unhappy about it. It just didn't work - I had broken up the timeline to such a degree that it was as clear as mud. So I rewrote it using as many of the existing panels as possible. I'm sure that Phil curses me to this day for that chapter because although it was my mistake he was the one who had to pay for it.

The design of the comics, including the covers (which were hand separated colours) and the title pages, were all done by Phil, and these are really, really superb.

ELLIOTT: As I say, Paul and I discussed the comic at great length and the creative process was quite fluid, with me being able to offer suggestions with impunity.  Not all were greeted with enthusiasm but none were dismissed out of hand and there was always a mutual agreement of how the comic developed.  It’s inevitable that an artist will want to inject some of their ideas and feelings into the story and as long as it doesn’t disrupt the writer’s vision that’s how it should be.  There’s a scene where Jack persuades the girl to leave her apartment and they have their backs to each other, barely touching hands and when Eddie Campbell saw that panel, he commented on the hands, saying, “That was your idea, wasn’t it?”

CONTACT CULTURE

 

Given the nature of their collaboration, it’s not surprising that Duncan’s words and Elliott’s pictures are as tightly locked as if they came from one hand. The execution from one chapter to the next is quite skillful for a first time team.

I couldn’t pinpoint whether Elliott's style was a result of aesthetic epiphany or just a change of pace, but it stands apart from what he did before and after. His work became more stark, even a bit less fussy, but it never lost any sign of subtle expression.

ELLIOTT: Second City was my first attempt at drawing a conventional US-style comic book and it was always in my mind that if it were do well commercially I needed to adapt my existing drawing style. The main change was that I used a brush and more black ink – Paul had interviewed Will Eisner for Arken Sword and he kept reminding me what Eisner said about the use of black ink, which was something along the lines of you can never use enough of it. I also used a dry brush and stippling as the comic progressed making the art rougher, in keeping with the tone of the story. There are still elements of the European ligne-claire and it’s still quite cartoonish and stylized in places – Jack’s hair for instance, with its reference to one of my own characters, Gimbley – but it’s probably more grounded in a traditional US comic book style than my previous work, owing as much to Caniff, Eisner and Toth as to Hergé, Benoit or Hernandez.  This fresh approach would become more apparent in subsequent books like Illegal Alien and Bluebeard and it’s only recently, with Contraband and the new Tupelo book that I’ve returned to my more obvious clear-line influences. 

The only other comic from the same era with shared sensibilities as Second City is Mr. X. They’re minor details: the city as a character, the lone protagonist trying to save it all, the futuristic landscape. When asked about the similarities between Second City and Mr. X, the creators’ difference of opinion reflects the fact that those similarities are strictly surface level.

ELLIOTT: We were trying something different in Second City but there were definite nods to Mr X. It’s fair to say that the style and design of the original 4 issue mini series owed a lot to Mr. X and Watchmen. I liked the way that those comics, and others, used design in such an effective way and I still remember the thrill of seeing each issue of Watchmen – Alan’s elegant prose, Dave’s artwork, John’s colours and the overall design. We never got so close with Second City, but we tried. Harrier gave us a pretty free rein but I wish now that I’d been more positive and refused to have any advertising in the comic and extended the designs onto the back covers.

DUNCAN: Not really. Mr. X, the character, was an enigma and we don't really get inside his head, whereas the whole point about Second City is that we know and feel what's happening to Jack. In fact, I met Mr. X creators Dean Motter and Seth at a convention in 1986 and they immediately saw that Second City was a completely different beast. And you have to remember that Phil was drawing these sort of landscapes a long time before Mr. X was first published in 1984.

If any comic influenced me at the time, other than Phil's Gimbley comics, I'd probably say it was Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta, not only for its tone and message, but for its 9 panel grid system. Second City was published bimonthly from November 1986, just two months after Watchmen started coming out, so readers may think think that the grid system came from that, but it's definitely from V for Vendetta, which was first published in Warrior in 1982.

BLACK AND WHITE

Duncan’s writing is structurally strong and carefully executed, its voice far from precious, but it is the story’s warm tone that balances the comic’s initial coldness. Whatever well of inspiration Duncan drew from, it didn’t strike me as the same one used by comic book writers of the time.

DUNCAN: The theme of the series was how a man finds and maintains his humanity in the face of a cold and uncaring environment. Since Jack, the central character was a morose and laconic individual, he wasn't going to explain much through dialogue, so I opted for a voiceover. This also linked it stylistically to film noir, so it all worked out for the best.

As for rhythm of the text, it really comes from music. I was listening to a lot of Talking Heads, Joy Division, Velvet Underground, The Doors, Iggy Pop, etc. and I was picking tracks and words from the lyrics to get the flow of the text on the page. So, for me, there was a soundtrack for the book as I was writing it, but now, 25 years later, I couldn't for the life of me tell you what the tracks were now.

The rhythm of the chapters was interesting because the 6-page format forced me to jump to a particular moment or turning point in the overall narrative without adhering to a linear story structure. So I could begin a chapter a day, month, or year after the previous chapter, and then fill in pertinent information as I went along. We played with this a lot. In the second issue you can guess at the passage of time by Jack's broken arm going from cast to sling to bandage over the chapters - an idea borrowed from Jack Nicholson's slit nose in Chinatown. Also, the references and remarks about previous events change complexion in the light of Jack's emotional state. This playing with time and memory gives the series an unusual feel, I think.

I cannot speak for Phil, but I was definitely going through the 'alienated and alone' period of angst that I guess a lot of young adults go through as they are growing up. In childhood, the world is comforting and safe. Everything is done for you. Then, when you have to go out into the wide world, you begin to see it in a different light, as a place of possible danger and despair.  You realize that people are not as straight-forward and honest as you would assume - that people can be hypocrites and self-serving. And also that dreams and life plans don't always turn out as you may wish. So, for me - and I can only say this now in hindsight since it was purely unconscious on my part at the time - the arc of the story was a realization that the world was so, and how do you deal with it as an individual.  

EPICENTRE

In every chapter, meaning every six comic book pages, Paul Duncan looked to reach profound human truths through his stories and he achieved that. It's rare for a comic to hit that note once, let alone by a young writer/cartoonist, but he and Phil Elliott sustained it without any posturing. 

Second City transcended the genre it was using; the noir trappings worked in their favor as Paul and Phil created something unique. The fact that the issue I found had been shuffled about between hundreds and thousands of deservedly forgettable comics is depressing. That’s just the way things are given the attention span of popular culture and the arbitrary gloss of popularity. However, distinguished works such as Second City deserve to be re-evaluated and put in front of a newer, sharper audience. Slave Labor Graphics released a now out of print collected edition back in ’92, but at least the individual issues can still be found pretty easily. It’s a work that should still be in print. It's a work that's too viable and interesting and beautiful not to be. 

                     
ELLIOTT: I’m still very pleased with how the comic turned out. I enjoyed drawing it and take great pride in the fact that someone like you wants to know more about the comic, 25 years after the original mini-series appeared. It’s appeared in book form twice with talk of it being reprinted again - there are issues we dealt with in the comic that are almost more relevant now than they were then and I like to think it has stood the test of time well. 

DUNCAN: Rereading Second City after 25 years, and despite seeing many faults in the writing, I'm still immensely proud of it, and think that it makes for an interesting read. There is complexity in its arrangement and themes, as well as in its style of storytelling. At the time I dreamed of writing many comics for many people, but all my efforts were in vain, and it just didn't happen. I'm now living a completely different life than the one I planned, so I guess the theme of the comic managed to prophesy what would happen to me in real life. 

--Michel Fiffe, 2011

Stunt Casting: Michel Fiffe On The Best Jaime Hernandez Comic Of All Time

What follows is a conversation between The Factual Opinion and Michel Fiffe, the cartoonist responsible for Zegas, Fut Miso & Panoroma, the interviewer responsible for The Beat's Fiffe Files, and the editor responsible for Savage Dragon's Twisted Funnies. Michel is also responsible for two "Master Posts" focusing on the work of The Hernandez Brothers. (One, Two)

The impetus for this conversation came about due to the shared belief between Fiffe and Tucker Stone that the most recent issue of Love and Rockets contains the greatest work of Jaime Hernandez' already legendary career.

The comics contained in Love and Rockets New Stories # 3 are heavily spoiled below.

The Factual Opinion: It struck me when you and I were talking about volume 3 (before you read it) that you weren't as excited for it, after having read volumes 1 and 2. Am I correct on that?

Michel Fiffe: I may have been playing it cool or something, but I doubt it because I'm pretty unabashed about my love for the series. You're probably thinking about Cav. I sold him on the first 2, and he was pretty much done with Jaime's superhero wrap up.

TFO: How'd you feel going into this one then? I hadn't really enjoyed some of Gilbert's stuff in the last two volumes, and I kind of felt like what they were doing wasn't working for the format. Jamie's super-hero stuff felt like something that needed to come out more frequently, that it was more of a serialized pleasure. The first two collections felt like the Brothers were atonally mashed against one another--but with volume three, all of those complaints were out of the window. All of their contributions complemented the other so well. I didn't dislike the first two volumes, and I wouldn't say I was disappointed in them either. They were a great way to check in, but I just felt that the wait...if I'm going to wait a year for them, and I really don't mind waiting a year for them, the same way I don't mind waiting on Woodring, Ware, Clowes & Ryan--I just would prefer to read something that doesn't leave it hanging, the way the super-hero stuff in Volume 1 did.

Fiffe: Oh, yeah, the superhero stuff... maybe Jaime wanted to have a cliffhanger and make you come back for more. It's a serialization mentality. Or maybe the story grew out of proportion? I assume that they both work on whatever type of stories they feel like, regardless of format. Meaning that the format isn't going to dictate the story no matter what. However, I think that for this 3rd installment, this third issue, they may have been aware of the restrictions of new schedule and presentation. Ultimately, I think it's a minor issue for them. I could be wrong.

TFO: The cover for volume 3 really breaks me up, now that i've read it. Whereas the cover for New Stories Volume 1 feels like a pretty simple "let's crack this open and see what's inside" and the cover for Volume 2 seems like a colored page from "Hypnotwist", the cover for number three is just incredibly painful--the adults (authority? safety?) looking off at the distance at a puckered blue anus (maybe, probably not, sorry) while Perla looks right at the reader and Calvin looks off to the side, seemingly unaware of what's coming (and that's probably true, because Perla's rainbow shirt indicates that they just moved in)--this cover is way more involved in what's behind the pages than the first two volumes were.

Fiffe: You see that as an anus?

TFO: I said I was sorry.

Fiffe: Huh. Well, I see your point and agree completely. I don't think every cover has to signify anything too deep. It depends on the story.

TFO: Oh, it doesn't have to at all.

 

Fiffe: Speaking of the impact of the #3 cover reminds me of the cover of # 29, with Beto's rooster, which is one of my favorite covers of all time. It's both iconic and makes more sense after you've read the story. The first "New Stories" cover was pretty and interesting, an iconic first issue cover.

TFO: Fantagraphics really should put together a fancy collection of all of the old Love and Rockets covers. Look, I don't disagree that New Stories #1 has a good cover. But this one here, for #3...that's a GREAT cover.

Fiffe: Yeah, it's completely heartbreaking and expertly composed. Calvin off to the side.... Esther just... standing there with this gaze... it's beautiful. The first two covers were solid and eye catching, but my reading the story didn't enhance my feelings for them, not the way this one does. #3's cover is... is... is perfect too strong a term?

TFO: I don't think perfect is too strong. Look at everything--that background color versus the black line that has the red letters on it, forming the title and then compare it to the covers for volume 1 and 2...This new one pops. It's so strong, it feels fresh.

Fiffe: #2 pops really well I think, especially in today's "stands" so to speak, but #3 really did it for me.

TFO: Yeah, I'm kind of being a little silly. This is a great vs. awesome vs. perfect debate. You want to talk about these stories in order? Or should we jump right to Jamie?

Fiffe: Yes, let's move on. But let's do it in order. It's only fair.

TFO: Okay: "Scarlet by Starlight". This might have my favorite last couple of panels of any Gilbert story I've read since Heartbreak Soup. When the guy says "not any more!" I actually laughed out loud, which is a statement I think I hate more than anything when people use it as a description of praise. But that's what happened!

Fiffe: Yeah, it was good, that line. I thought the whole thing was pretty solid, I don't know... I liked it fine. Beto has this thing, this ability to make his dialogue seem so brisk and natural yet it tells you just enough.

TFO: Pardon me for being uneducated in all of the various strands of history, but this is a Fritz movie they haven't mentioned before, right?

Fiffe: I don't believe so. I honestly lose track of all of the B-movies within the story. And pardon ME, but was that even Fritz? I thought she only appeared in the one pager movie scene in the second story.

TFO: I think it's Fritz, isn't it? That isn't her at the start of "Killer*SadGirl*Star", when all the guys are trying to convince Killer to do a sequel/remake to a Scarlet movie they just watched a clip of?

Fiffe: Yeah, it may be Fritz, but I don't recall her being mentioned or shown without fur on her face. Who knows? Let's not get tangled up in this.

TFO: Of course. There's a lot in "Scarlet by Starlight" that's just straight up funny, which I think is so far getting ignored because of how nasty it gets--I guess kiddie-rape is something that just never works for some people--but when the guy blows his brains out while screaming (with a laser pistol) or when the other guy says "I told the truth about him" after giving a speech praising the molester's "love of all children"--it's a black humor school, to the extreme. When you get near the end, and the main guy is laying on the ground holding himself in the fetal position while the girl drives/flies the two of them home--there's so much here that I thought was hilarious.

Fiffe: Oh, yeah... it's funny as shit. And Beto made me care a little about these characters I've never seen before. Which begs the question, is this issue SO GOOD to us because we're familiar with the characters? I don't think so, but a case could be made.

TFO: Not for me. Calvin was able to break my heart in about 15 ways, and I don't remember him at all. I'm jumping ahead, but that's my feeling on it.

Fiffe: Good point. I didn't remember him either. I also didn't feel the need to rifle through my own back issue to find out so I guess I answered my own question.

TFO: But if we're going to speak of people we're familiar with, maybe it's time to talk about "Love Bunglers Part One"?

Fiffe: Could I say that I really hate dream sequences?

TFO: Go right ahead! I'm no friend of dream sequences.

Fiffe: I hate them, they're cheap plot devices. Having said that, I totally bought into this one. Jaime really captured the horror of that kind of dream.

TFO: I've re-read this volume four times now, and I felt like that dream sequence was a kind of synthesis of the experimental comics that Gilbert is more well-known for. Specifically, reading it again reminded me of "Hypnotwist", Sloth, but not in a way that felt like Jamie was "pulling a Beto", more that he was utilizing a tactic he doesn't resort to as often as Gilbert does. When he wants to go fantastic, he usually does super-heroes and sci-fi, right?

Fiffe: Sure, sure. But Jaime has pulled this kind of thing off recently, with Maggie's nightmares? Those were genuinely creepy. But yeah, it's a sensibility that Jaime doesn't usually apply to his stories.

TFO: Yeah, I don't mean to imply it's his first time or anything like that. But the nudity, the fear on her face when she's sliding--there's something in there that strikes me as a Beto comic.

Fiffe: Oh, yeah, yeah. For me, I just noticed that he rarely pulls this kinda thing. When Maggie gets to the bottom of the stem and realizes she's just as high as she was when she started, that's the kind of detail that you can only find in that kind of nightmare. It's nice to see Jaime pull it off alongside the stuff he's known for... and make it all work well together.

TFO: Oh god, and he totally nails the way it feels to be sinking into something when you're trying to float, like if you're on an inner tube that deflates in the middle of a lake. When she sinks into the middle of the leaf and says "i finally make it over to my stomach"--i'm not scared of heights, but that panel made me feel a little sick. What about the Calvin appearances in Part One? Did you have any inkling of who he was and what he was doing when you read this the first time?

Fiffe: Ha! No way. At that point, I had no idea what to expect from the story. I was surprised at how many points of views Jaime juggled and it never seemed forced.

TFO: I was a little bit lost the first time reading through it--I couldn't remember where Maggie was at with the guys in the course of All Love and Rockets Stories Ever--but I really wanted to know what was going on with that guy, why he was skulking around like that, bugging the tenants, hiding his face. The first time through, I thought he must be another wanna-be suitor, just one of a nastier variety. I liked it fine, but I think it gets most of its power (outside of the dream sequence) from when you've finished the whole book and gone back to it. How about you?

Fiffe: Well, yeah, that's the thing. Calvin isn't even called out by name until the end. I thought he was just a creep or a stalker, like bad news was definitely gonna happen. But there's NO WAY we could've known who he was, and Jaime played that up perfectly. And then when Maggie confronts him at the end of Part 1, that was so telling... but we didn't know WHY. All we knew is that Maggie knew SOMEBODY was there. Was he a regular stalker, was he just a homeless person she felt bad for?

TFO: Yeah, the way he hides his face could go a bunch of different ways when you read it the first time. There's no specific indication of who he is, how he knows her. He could just be the regular homeless guy that she's tasked with running off the property. It's genius, makes the part where his identity is revealed in "Part Two" that much more painful. It's just a throwaway moment where his idea of what life is like for Maggie is presented as a sad little fantasy (because he assumes she's dating the one guy who "treated her right"). That part hurts so fucking bad.

Fiffe: I gotta say, Jaime has the same mastery over dialogue as his brother. That old argument of "Jamie draws better and Beto is the better writer" is a bunch of horsheshit that exposes the cretins that don't really "get" "comics" "storytelling".

TFO: I have zero patience or interest in the lets-compare-the-Brothers game. Self-indulgence is a lot of fun when you're talking about shitty comics, but when you're talking about these two guys, you should probably get out of your own fucking way and just look at the panels for a while. They're brilliant, I wouldn't ask them to change a thing. Sorry, I'm ranting.

Fiffe: Rant away. No, don't! Let's no waste any more time on that shitty, archaic, ass backwards argument. Those people probably hate comics.

TFO: Let's get "Killer*Sad Girl*Star" out of the way. I kind of didn't care that much about it? I felt like it was a bit of Speak of the Devil (murder in the sand dunes!). It was just okay.

Fiffe: Beto has this weird expression that he gives his characters, like a glossed over look. Almost like models in a jeans commercial or something, one of those "pensive in the wind" looks. So that "pensive" look made me misread the murder scenes in the story, which was purposeful, I think. I haven't fallen for Killer the way I have for Fritz, Petra, or especially Pipo. They're such great characters.

TFO: Your pensive weirdness really shows up in the beach cop's face. Such a strange looking character. Is it weird that I couldn't tell if the cop was a girl or a guy?

Fiffe: It had boobs! They call her "she"!

TFO: I just keep waiting on Killer to WANT something. She seems to bounce around like a pinball, no real personality beyond an affected disinterest.

Fiffe: Killer's a kid. That's no excuse AT ALL (especially considering "Browntown"), but I dunno...Maybe she's that kind of character, like an open kind of thing. Lots of people are like that, aloof with a lot of mystery and promise. Usually, their act fails. I hope Killer's doesn't. In this case, I think Beto's material may work best once read all at once. As opposed to his NEW LOVE stuff, these broader human dramas should be read as a whole, not as chapters.

Man, I barely recognized Hector! He didn't age well.

TFO: I think my favorite panel in this one is the part where the ugly school girl says "Few actors win awards for playing retards any more." The looks on their faces are so fucking strange.

Fiffe: I take that back, Hector aged fine. He looks good. Usually frizzy hair and stubble means moral bankruptcy. Hector's always had stubble. Why am I talking about this?

TFO: Because Hector is awesome and fun to think about.

Fiffe: Or it's just a weird drawing. You know, Beto's new art kinda reminds me of late 70s/80s Ditko. He's locked into this strict language of showing things. It's VERY strict.

TFO: Is that the Creeper stuff? I can't place what you're connecting there. Shade the Changing Man?

Fiffe: No, further. Sorta like Shade... more like all the horror stuff he did for DC, his Captain Universe stuff, his Renegade Press stuff...It's not stiff at all, I don't believe. But there's this really "set in their ways" kind of approach to drawing.

TFO: Okay, I don't know that stuff that well. The most Ditko-y thing I've seen recently is that DJ Bryant guy in MOME. That panel where the guy is screaming about hating his wife and there's all those half-faces and angles drawn into it.

Fiffe: Yeah, that's more like 70's Warren, even Charlton Ditko.

TFO: I'll trust you on this one. It does seem like Gilbert is really locked in when he's drawing Killer. Almost every drawing of her has her posing, which could go both ways--she could just be doing that because she's a vain kid, a wanna-be model/actress who is imitating what she believes she's supposed to look like. Or it could just be that locked-in language is something Gilbert wants to use for this story.

Fiffe: I usually notice that trait in Beto's work when he draws his Palomar material. His other stuff can be very fluid and bizarre and experimental. I know that a "wonky" style wouldn't work for Palomar, but that's not what I mean. "Duck Feet" was much looser than say... the High Soft Lisp material.

TFO: Are we ready for this thing? This "Browntown"?

Fiffe: You mean the Best Story in the Universe? Sure.

TFO: Here's me on my mountain: this is my favorite thing I've ever read by Jamie Hernandez, and when I read it together with "Love Bunglers", I think it's the best thing I've read by Jamie Hernandez. At the same time, there's some serious gaps in my reading experience with Jamie Hernandez, so I'm kind of dependent on you to make an argument for why that's true--I can only back it up by pointing at things like "Death of Speedy" (which I love) and saying that this had more panels that made my jaw drop, and that I felt a more keen sense of emotional pain and unbearable sadness in this than his prior stuff.

Fiffe: OK, let's see... He's had some exemplary stories out there. Recently, too. "Browntown" does have panel after panel of heartbreak. I think the level of remorse and sympathy we may feel during this story, we may have felt in varying degrees in reading his other highlights. "Flies on the Ceiling" is one. "Everybody Loves Me, Baby" is another [Penny Century #7]. Those were my top 2. "Browntown" is just more complex, more involved, more ambitious, and structurally tighter. This is not to say that those previous works AREN'T, I'm just saying that Jaime's just gotten better at it. Here's an artist at the top of his form, telling some of the most mature and compelling stories in ANY medium... and the thing is, I could've said that 5 years ago, I could have said that 10 years ago. This new one is a masterpiece, and although I feel biased saying that because I like the Bros.' work so much, I think it will hold up as a work of art forever. I hate to sound like I'm a soapbox or something, but this medium is tremendously lucky to have this kind of story in existence. It's an example of not only "Pure" comics, but "Perfect" comics. Let's deconstruct it further! I have a few things to say about drawing, but it can wait. Have at it...

TFO: My favorite panels are the one where Maggie is finishing her first letter while her little brother is showing her his toy car and the panel where Calvin is crawling out of the cave and crying, and--well. There's other ones, but those are the two that I fell in love with the most. Those panels reached up and grabbed me by the throat. My only concern when going through this is that I think it's going to be easy for some readers to get trapped in treating it as a story about rape, when I think it's a lot more nuanced in the way it handles the situation. I mainly feel that nuance in the way Calvin, because he's a little boy, honestly believes that he has to keep suffering the way he does so that he can "protect" his sister from the same kind of assault. It isn't until the very end of the story that he finally snaps and does something completely for himself--killing his rapist--that the magnitude of what he's suffered is made totally clear. It's built up for a while, slowly, in the two panels where we see his age change during between assaults, or when we see how the kids are all at a movie and he's the only one not looking at the screen (that's a fucking drawing right there, how difficult it must be to have that kind of distinction between what the eyes of four black and white characters are focused on), and it all builds to the violence. And that violence is horrifying, it's not a satisfying moment in the slightest. And it shouldn't be, because this isn't a rape/revenge story about a kid who gets justice. It takes one panel transition for him to start crying. There's no satisfaction to be had.

Fiffe: Yeah, the handling of his point of view is done very respectfully, and in a very sobering way. There's is nothing romantic about his revenge at all. I didn't get off at his revenge. It was a really moving scene, totally unpredictable and yet, it made perfect sense.

TFO: I don't want to ignore the stuff with Maggie either, but it's hard not to go right to the Calvin story. I think there's something kind of magnificent about that part where she starts to climb on her dad's lap, only for him to respond with such venom--he may be cheating on his wife, but he has an ideal of purity for his children. It makes it that much worse, him having that, while being completely ignorant of what's happening to his son. And yet, when he shows up at the end and says "You have to come right now"--I can't help but forgive him immediately. Calvin could've come back from what he'd suffered so far, but it's impossible to be optimistic about him coming back from the kind of violence he unleashes on his tormentor, no matter how young he is.

Fiffe: Maggie's father was awesomely portrayed. Everyone was, even the bus driver in the one panel picking Maggie up for school. But I don't think anyone could've noticed Calvin's predicament. He bottled it up completely. I predict that you're right, and that some people, even die hard L&R fans, won't be able to see past a rape story, no matter how it's handled. Which is a shame becasue it's SO NOT about that. It's a major part of the story, but it's not in After School Special mode either, which most comics seems to fall into.

TFO: That's exactly what i'd worry about with it. We're so inured at this point to expect stories dealing with this subject matter to be either rape/revenge exploitation or to be an after-school-special sort of warning stories. The expectation for this subject matter to be handled poorly is totally understandable, especially when you're talking about comic books. But this isn't one of those at all! It's not a story about rape motivating some kind of badass vengeance, it's not a story for perverts to get off on, it's not a story that pretends that sexual violence of this sort will somehow result in a codified response shared by all victims--I finish reading "Browntown" and don't have feel any sense of surety of where Calvin's life will go next. I feel confused about his future, and that's far more mature an outcome than I'd ever have if someone said "this story has a bunch of molestation at the core".

Fiffe: The Bros. really handle that kind of stuff well. Things that everyone else exploits to further whatever agenda they may have, such as suicide, date rape, spousal abuse, the Bros. handle all of it extremely well. That's hardly the case for any sort of media, y'know? It's all taglines and topic of the week. Look at Jaime and Beto's respective contributions to the STRIP AIDS benefit anthology from the 80s--they're the only ones that don't even mention AIDS. As a result, their stories make a much stronger impact that the others. It may seem petty to nitpick that particular anthology, but I'm just referencing it as an example.

TFO: I'd attribute some of his success here to the fact that it's a one-man-show--when you're dealing with this kind of subject matter for television, film, even mainstream-y comics, you've got more people in the room, and everybody is going to have some kind of point of view on it, and they're all going to feel the need to make it something they're comfortable with. Jamie only has to achieve his own goals, and he's not trying to tell a story "about rape", he's trying to tell a story about one specific character: Calvin. This isn't a story about what happens to boys who suffer this kind of violence. It's about ONE BOY, his family. It doesn't have an agenda beyond that. I think that's part of why it isn't "offensive" in the way that it is whenever a super-heroes girlfriend gets assaulted.

Fiffe: Even when a super hero's girlfriend gets assaulted, it's not to make a point, it's to titillate the audience. But this comic isn't for that audience anyway. It's almost a moot point. It's kind of like when presumably adult comic book readers dismiss Love & Rockets as "that lesbian" comic. No amount of great storytelling is gonna burst that moronic bubble.

TFO: Can you talk a little bit more about what you meant by "pure" and "perfect" comics?

Fiffe: Sure. "Pure" comics use the elements inherent in comics, right? That's not an easy thing to pull off, being that most comics don't really utilize the advantages of the form. "Pure" comics don't necessarily mean good comics, either; there are plenty of "pure" comics that can have thin stories, idiotic stories, artwork that falls against the story, and yet they still appropriate the things that make comics unique... and even if "pure" is difficult to achieve, that's not enough. However, If you have a story that's mature and compelling, funny, heartbreaking--all the things we've been talking about here--and it's all handled in a masterful way that never talks down to the reader or disrespects the reader's intelligence, AND it utilizes "pure" comics trait? That's "perfect".

TFO: Can you nail down for me what it is that makes this one "pure"?

Fiffe: Ok, what makes this "pure" is the timing of it, the specific "beats" of the story and the way it leads the reader. It's deceptively simple, you don't notice it, but you're not supposed to. A lot of it has to do with the drawing. The kind of emotion you can't get from an actor, or prose, or any other cartoonist whether it be "cartoony" or "photo-realistic". Jaime's drawings aren't just pretty pictures, they're components of the comic. Of comics. It's in the page design, it's the shift between styles within a scene or even a panel, it's freezing the perfect moments to amplify what he's trying to say. He draws that. He draws those perfect moments, even with all the imperfections they sometimes imply.

TFO: What you're describing reminds me of how I felt reading Weathercraft, that sense that Jim Woodring is concerned with the rate at which the reader moves through the page. There's a definite sense that he must have thought about how the eye is going to move, and since he didn't use dialog as a crutch to dictate how much time you spend on the panel, he had to determine pacing with the layouts, with the parts of the action he's stopping to capture. Sorry to interrupt.

Fiffe: S'cool. You don't get that "pure" kind of involved mastery anywhere else, I mean in any other form. And a large part of this achievement is in Jaime's drawing, in his actual skill as an artist. If this were drawn any differently, it would be completely different, obviously. It's all in his skill, his old school loyalty to "Good" drawing. I don't want to define "good", so maybe let's use another word without watering down my meaning. How's "well crafted"?

TFO: That works, and acknowledging the fact that Jamie is committed to being a great craftsman is always worth the time. I'm sure he has to rush stuff at times, but his line never really seems to suffer. I can't think of "unfinished" work that he's put out before its time.

Fiffe: I was fortunate enough to chat a little bit with Jaime at the last Mocca. He thought it was funny that it's always the guys that can't draw that rail against good drawing. Sorry... "well crafted" drawing.

TFO: My general anecdote about that was when my dad looked at some of JH Williams work in Detective, read an issue, and then said that the story was pretty predictable and not very interesting. I waited for him to mention the art, and when he didn't, I told him that the art was the big draw on this one. He said "isn't it the artist's job to draw it well? Why would you read one of these things that wasn't drawn well?"

Fiffe: HA! Yeah, seriously. But "drawing it well" ...I dunno, it's gonna get ugly defining that. I define good drawing by the specific strengths of the artists, generally.

TFO: I just define "good art" as what I like. I know that's not at all the right way to do it, but I've got other hobbies that interest me more than figuring out some codified rules of aesthetic "bestness". Plenty of other people are more interested in that than I am, they're better at it too. They can have it.

Fiffe: Here's the rub: "Browntown" would NOT be as effective with an artist of lesser caliber. With Jaime...look, there are artists that are undeniable. You can't say SHIT about them. Toth is another one. But Jaime tells relevant, poignant, and hilarious stories. He's left, as you noted, to create on his own, without being held back by a committee. He's the best example of a true modern artist creating on his own terms and benefiting from such freedom. What it comes down to is this: there's a subtlety and naturalism to every single line that defines every single character in his stories. Calvin looking off while the movie plays, the little brother's hand while Perla is writing a letter, Maggie's face when she discovers her dad cheating... it all exists because of Jaime's unparalleled draftsmanship. I tell you, nothing has humbled me and inspired me as much as this story. It aims high and we all gotta catch up.

TFO: I totally agree. Jamie's always been a giant talent, and I think it's worth noting how much of what we consider "comics" to be seems tied up in the kind of work he's produced. It's incredible to see him still accelerating to a higher level, considering how great he's been already.

Fiffe: Yeah, it's actually kind of unbelievable. People at Mocca kept saying how humble he is, how nice... "what a nice, humble guy". Sure he's nice, but he knows he's good. He knows he can run circles around all of us. That's besides the point here, I know... but he ain't humble, and why should he be? He's the best.

TFO: Humility is just a personality trait. It doesn't have anything to do with being an artist. It's nice if you just want to talk to somebody, I guess. But the current popularity in comics of figuring out "who the nice guys are" is a fucking joke. It's supposed to be an artform, not a social club. Know your role.

Fiffe: No, it doesn't, you're right, but I'm putting it in the context of the conversations I had with folks that met him. They've probably met legendary artists who were total dicks, so they equate good manners with being artistically humble. Jaime may feel humbled at times, I'm sure...Wait, it's not a social club? I've been going to the wrong parties. Anyway, how about that ending, huh?

TFO: The ending is just another level of pain in a lot of ways--besides the thing that came up above, where Calvin is still worried about Maggie after all these years, there's also the bludgeoning gut-punch when you find out that Maggie never found out what happened to Calvin, that he didn't really grow up with her, that his life fell apart before he could have a chance to really have one. But it's also another mash-up of brilliant, subtle art--the way that Jamie uses the narration to tell you what Maggie & Ray talked about (and they talk about a bunch of important stuff, stuff like "i don't want to date you" and "my life is a trainwreck") while just showing all these coy little facial tics that degenerate into Maggie looking hollowed out by life--that's a brilliant ending. So amazing, like she's accessed all the pain she has for Calvin without knowing why, without even knowing that he's right outside, watching over her in his own sad little way.

Fiffe: Right, we're wrapped up with Maggie and Ray's relationship and all of its complexities, but it's signed off with Calvin's presence. I have to say, the last page made me cry. I wasn't bawling, but I had to stand up and open my eyes really wide and pace around my living room for a few minutes. It took me a while to really absorb what was happening. When was the last time a comic made you do that? If ever?

TFO: Don't Go Where I Can't Follow tore me apart. I didn't really go to that place when this ended, but I'll own up to a disconnect on my part, as I was caught up in thinking "what a perfect ending".

Fiffe: Well, it was the reveal that got me. I totally didn't see it coming.

TFO: Oh, I didn't see it coming either!

Fiffe: Calvin's slouch alone is telling. Such a life he's had. I read it in one shot. And only once with a few scenes that I re-read. I was completely immersed. Kat thought I was reading porn from the other room.

TFO: I envy you a bit for going into it so deeply. I feel like I was reading this a bit analytically the first time through. Oh, I've got something to say, but let me put in perspective first: I trust Jamie to do the right thing by his art, his creations, characters, completely. But I really hope that he doesn't unleash a bunch of "untold Calvin stories" the next time one of these books comes out. This was just so perfect.

Fiffe: I don't think he will. He never really does that. I think the characters couldn't be in better hands.

TFO: I'm thinking we're reaching a good endpoint ourselves. Would you be willing to tell me what kind of impact you think this comic might have on your own work?

Fiffe: Well, I'm at this weird point in trying to tell the stories I want to tell. I can't think in slick high concept terms, and that's just the way the culture is right now, no matter where you go. So I just create the comics that I'd like to read. I want to tell stories that ring true, that aren't cliched log lines. Jaime is the best example of doing just that, of just creating his own thing... have you read his Art of Book?

TFO: No, I haven't.

Fiffe: The part that resonated with me was around the time period right before he started Love & Rockets. He felt like he was trying to fit into the comics biz, trying to belong, and trying to find his place in the comics world...and he just couldn't fit in. Reading about this Master of Comics going through that was a little heartbreaking. But he then went on to create his own thing, on his own terms, and he hasn't looked back since. It's THAT kind of drive that made "Browntown" possible, and I truly believe this story has raised the bar. I'm actually going through a creatively frustrating period, and reading this story, reading how good comics can be, how brilliant and beautiful they can be, really cuts through all of the bullshit and all of the nonsense.

TFO: The quickest way to forget about mediocrity is to experience the form at its best. That's what this was. It's a gift.

Fiffe: Yeah, and I don't mean to sound as if I have difficulty in talking about my work, it's just that... I'm up against THAT story. We're ALL up against it. So what I meant when I said I'm not good at high concepts, well then, that's gonna have to be fine! There are far more important concerns at work here. I can't reduce my output to a quick pitch--so what? I don't think Jaime does. None of the artists I profoundly respect and admire have to do that. That's not their business as artists, as comic book storytellers.

They just create, and that's all I want to do. And Jaime always reminds me of that.

-Michel Fiffe & Tucker Stone, 2010

Ditko image one from Marvel Spotlight #11, March, 1981. Property of Steve Ditko

Ditko image two from Unexpected # 189, Feb.1979. Property of Steve Ditko

DJ Bryant image from Mome #19. Property of DJ Bryant
All other art from Love & Rockets New Stories #3. Property of Jaime & Gilbert Hernandez

 

 

 

 

 

Stunt Casting: Cliff Chiang Talks About The Things He Likes

During the conversations that ended up producing the Cliff Chiang interview at comiXology, Cliff Chiang and Tucker had a couple of "what's your favorite piece of work" regarding a laundry list of artists. While some of that conversation ended up in the comiXology article, quite a bit of it was left behind. After that article's publication, Cliff was willing to take a break from drawing (literally) and add a few more responses. What follows is a transcription of those two discussions.

The Factual Opinion: Okay, let’s start this off. What’s your favorite thing by Steve Rude? 

Cliff Chiang: That’s a tough one for me, he's worked on a lot of crap. 

TFO: Vanguard Illustrated? The encyclopedia salesman? 

Chiang: I don't know that one. 

TFO: It's great. 

Chiang: Nexus, probably. The Next Nexus, you know that one?

TFO: Yep.

Chiang: It's everything about the Nexus that you really liked. You had the moral quandry, you had him running around, Sundra got involved in a meaningful way. 

TFO: And Judah hit something. 

Chiang: Oh yeah. 

TFO: Actually I think I liked Judah most when he would drink. 

Chiang: Yeah. 

TFO: Jamie Hernandez?

Chiang: I'm trying to think of what...well, the go-to is Death of Speedy, right? Hmm. I've been reading Wigwam Bam a lot.

TFO: That's a good answer. Gilbert. 

Chiang: I really liked Sloth. A lot. There's something--as different as it was for people, I liked that he was breaking away from the Palomar stuff so much. And that bizarro split halfway through, where you get a different story...I liked that a lot. 

TFO: What about Speak of the Devil? 

Chiang: I haven't read that one yet. 

TFO: How about Troublemakers? I loved that one. Ridiculous packaging, stupid titties all over it.
Okay, David Mazzuchelli. 

Chiang: Ahhh. 

TFO: Say Star Wars, we'll leave it there. 

Chiang: X-Factor.  

TFO: The Angel story? 

Chiang: No, that's Marvel Fanfare. No, this is just regular X-Factor, one of the earlier things he did, it was fairly old school. 

TFO: With Louise Simonson? 

Chiang: Wait, that's not a real answer!

TFO: That Fanfare story is pretty great. 

Chiang: It's great. The art is way more sophisticated than the writing. That's why I couldn't say that as a real answer. Year One is the super-hero book that I love the most, and the non-super-hero book is probably Rates of Exchange. That felt like when he finally nailed that connection of between that Rubber Blanket ethos and his kind of cartoony--it wasn't aggressively stylized in one way or another. Natural. 

TFO: What did you think of City of Glass? 

Chiang: City of Glass. I like it, but it's cold. 

TFO: Cold. I can get that. Okay: Alex Toth. 

Chiang: Toth. God. When he died, I had a really hard time figuring out how to feel about it, because the guy was so fucking--he hated everything he'd ever done. And yet, if you left him to his own devices, he would do shit like Bravo For Adventure. And you know, that's not a good story. There's some really great drawing in it, but it's not a good story. Artistically, I loved the Zorro stuff, but I think what I liked the most with him was the fucking 'Ooh La La" story. 

TFO: "Ooh La La"? I don't know that one. 

Chiang: It's like two or three pages! This fucking kid makes his own flying machine, and they fly to this country called "Ooh la la" and he and his dumbass friend leave with the two princesses. It's great because it's him with a flair pen, and it's great because--it's not abstract so that the drawing falls apart. I'm giving too many two titles answers, I gotta stick with something. 

TFO: Mignola. 

Chiang: The Hellboy story with the baby. The one where the baby gets replaced with a goblin. The reason why I love that story is that one panel where they say "you don't understand, at night he says horrible things to me." And then it's just a picture of a baby. And it's great. The other thing I always remember from Mignola is The Wolves of Saint August. But that baby story is the one I like the best. 

TFO: The right answer is the monkey with a gun. 

Chiang: I do like the one with the Homunculus and the giant. 

TFO: Where he kills his brother. Art Adams! 

Chiang: Art Adams. Yeah, that's a definite sentimental favorite. It's not Longshot though. I don't have the same feeling for that. It's the Asgardian Wars. Storm with the Thor feathered helmet. 

TFO: Kevin Nowlan. 

Chiang: Nowlan would be...I think, for the writing, that Legends of the DCU issue with Robin and Superman. Kelly Puckett can really pull out a great story. 

TFO: I don't think I know that comic. 

Chiang: It's great. Batman is out of town, and Superman has tracked a bunch of gangsters to Gotham, but Batman is...just not around. He's in LA. He's in the Watchtower. Superman's in Gotham, and out of deference to Batman, he meets Gordon and Robin on a rooftop. He's like "I know this is your city, I want your permission to follow these guys." And Robin's like "Permission? You looking at me? Sure, whatever!" And so they team up, and Robin just worships Superman as a--like he's Robin's hero. But in the course of the story, he realizes how alien Superman is, with his powers and all that shit that's just out of his realm of possibility. And he realizes that the way he and Batman work together- -that works. There's a flashback to the Batcave, with him reading a comic, or watching tv, seeing this thing about Superman and saying "Did you see him? Did you meet him?" and Batman's like "Just remember. He's not human." And it's a great moment. By the end of the story, Superman is trying so hard, doing what he does, and then he realizes that when a bullet bounces off of him, that its going to blow Robin's mind...you gotta read it. It's great. 

TFO: Goran Parlov. 

Chiang: Goran! Yeah Goran's great. I feel pretty good about Goran. I feel like I sort of helped introduce him to Marvel, because I loved the stuff he was doing on this Terminator book. That was the first time I'd seen his stuff, and Jenny was looking for somebody to work with Bill Sienkiewicz on a Black Widow mini- series. Bill was going to do the first issue by himself, but after that they needed somebody really solid, and I knew that Goran's drafting was so good that he could do it and then Bill could do whatever he needed on top of it and it would be no problem. So they ended up working together, and he's been working with Axel ever since on all that Punisher stuff. Favorite thing would be...I really liked Barraccuda, for the personality, but I really liked Valley Forge, Valley Forge. 

TFO: Valley Forge is the shit. Incredible art in that one. 

Chiang: That's it. Valley Forge. 

TFO: When Frank puts on that mask, the stuff in the cemetary... 

Chiang: You know what puts it over for me is those photos that he did. They weren't referenced, you never got the sense that it was an actual photo he was taking it from, but they FELT like photos. They were composed like photos. They felt real, but they clearly weren't from anything that existed. That fucking blew my mind. And the story--it's so brutal. It's like what Tom Clancy should be. 

TFO: Guy Davis. 

Chiang: It's funny, I didn't appreciate Guy Davis for a long time. But when I was working on Human Target, Javier Pulido mentioned " i see a lot of Guy Davis in this stuff", which was weird to me, because I didn't read much Guy Davis stuff. But I understand it now. I haven't read that much BPRD stuff where I feel like he's really letting loose. But there's some really great Sandman Mystery Theater--but I know there's something else that I really like. I never read Baker Street. 

TFO: Okay, I got a guy for you: Jim Aparo. 

Chiang: As Flavor Flav said, "I got nothing for you, man." I'm familiar with his work, but nothing really springs to mind, especially since my main reference point for him is A Death In The Family. Didn't he draw some of those crazy Spectre stories? I heard those were nuts. 

TFO: Oh shit yeah, some of those Spectre stories are bone-crunching.  Okay here's a different kind of question for you: who best represents Batman for you? When you think of what he looks like, who is it that's drawing him? 

Chiang: It's weird because I would have said Mazzuchelli a few years ago, but I've come to really appreciate the larger history and the different kinds of stories. Are you telling me a JLA story? Then I see 70's Garcia Lopez. What about a moody modern piece? Maybe Kevin Nowlan. He did a Man-Bat Secret Origins stories with Jan Strnad that's pretty striking. All these takes are great and they all come to mind now. I'd say the Batman that I draw has a Year One feel, but with some modern flourishes. I always thought of Year One as being an early, cheapie Scorcese movie. What would that story look like now, with a bigger budget? 

If you say Batman Begins, I'm gonna punch you in the dick. 

TFO: Nah, my first response was Gangs of New York, which probably means Mignola. Nowlan's an interesting choice. I mostly associate him with covers (striking images, icon-play) nowadays. I can't think of a storytelling example by him off the top of my head, and that's what strikes me most when i look at Year One again. I was showing it to somebody who had never seen it at the store, and Mazz doesn't have a lot of Big Boom panels in it. It's mostly the gorgeous little vignettes, with splashes devoted to Gordon sitting on the bed, that kind of thing. 

Chiang: Yes, Year One is really best for its quiet moments. You remeber scenes being quite large in your head, and then you see it's only a third of the page. 

TFO: I tried to show a newcomer that "you're the one who shot at the cat" part, but the impact was muted. I think that's a good thing, though. It means you can't just cut and paste a panel and recreate a story. i think that's what it means. 

Chiang: No, it's true. One of the things that I find fascinating about comics is how most drawing usually falls apart a little bit if you stare at it too closely, but while you're reading it you're caught up in the flow and it's magic. It's like playing music live. You can flub a note, but as long as you don't stop and call attention to it, no one really cares. 

TFO: Let’s talk about Jack Kirby. 

Chiang: It's funny. I never really connected with Kirby the way a lot of artists do. I recognize that it's great work, but it doesn't grab me. Same thing with Eisner. I read a lot of the Fourth World stuff when I was working with Walt Simonson, and I think it's cool but I don't have a soft spot for it. 

TFO: Frank Miller? 

Chiang: Ronin. It was one of the first Frank Miller books I read. I love Dark Knight Returns, but I just loved that Miller was following his muse, doing Moebius style drawings. It's not a perfect book by any means, but i think it symbolizes a lot for me. Plus, boobs. 

TFO: Joe Kubert! 

Chiang: I thought his Silver Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl was really great, but I also love the Sgt Rock book he did with Azzarello. It's beautiful storytelling. 

TFO: Bill Sienkiewicz! 

Chiang: I think Elektra Assassin is pretty brilliant, but my sentimental favorite is the New Mutants slumber party issue. I loved that the teenagers looked and acted like kids. And on top of that you got all those crazy, powerful drawings of Warlock and his dad. It was a good mix of things. 

TFO: Kyle Baker! 

Chiang: Why I Hate Saturn. It's got such fluid cartooning combined with that ear for dialogue. It's one of the books I used to give to people who didn't read comics, but at the same time, it's not a simple work. It's just easy to read and accessible. 

TFO: Throw me an underrated artist, somebody you think doesn't get enough attention.

Cliff Chiang: That would probably be Tony Salmons. I remember seeing those great Dakota North ads when I first started reading comics, but never found those at the local 7-11, so I didn't see any more of his work until I was an adult. He's able to combine great storytelling and powerful drawing in a way that always surprises me. He's a giant, and I hope I can be that fearless someday.

TFO: Those Dakota North comics actually hold up. I bought them off of Frank Santoro at Mocca. Great dialog, best side characters ever.

Chiang: That's really interesting. Look, I don't want to be a dick, but I've got...stuff. To do. Can we wrap this up?

TFO: Oh, yeah. Uh. Let’s hit a writer and call it quits. You can't answer with Doctor 13 unless you really just hate everything else he's done. Brian Azzarello? 

Chiang: 100 Bullets is a phenomenal work and achievement, so it's hard for me to talk about it quickly. For a single issue, I think the story that really captures Brian's gifts as a writer to me is the Tangled Web issue with Crusher Hogan. He was able to find a new interesting angle on this bit character and it was just so compelling and heartbreaking.

TFO: Oh yeah, I love that comic. There's that part where he's in the kitchen with his wife

Chiang: Yeah, I read it. Are we done?

TFO: Yeah, totally.

Chiang: I'm going to hang up then, it's really late.

TFO: Oh I guess it is. I can stay up pretty late, reading comics and blogging and stuff. One time I fell asleep at my desk!

Chiang: [hangs up]

TFO: I woke up and my back really hurt, like one of those guys who is always "my back hurts". Pretty crazy. I need to make friends with one of those people who always have muscle relaxants. You know what I'm talking about? So crazy.

-Cliff Chiang, Tucker Stone, 2010

The conversation may or may not have ended the way it is described above.