comicfoundry.com » 2005» June

Learn From the Fisher King

When you think of Gotham City, you think dark, gloomy and murky, right? Holy incorrect answer, Batman! Not always is the Batman world darker than a midnight with no moon. Take Seth Fisher’s art in the latest arc of Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (June 8), for instance. Fisher is no stranger to the DC Universe, as he’s worked on the critically acclaimed books Green Lantern: Willworld and Flash: Time Flies. Fisher talked with Comic Foundry about his latest installment, what it means for him to be a comic artist and more importantly, what it takes for you to get published.

What do you think the advantage is for you since you’re a self-taught artist?

I dunno. I mean, the advantage to me is that I did what I wanted to do. That’s all I think. I think self-taught artists tend to be a little more unique style-wise, while school taught artists tend to be a bit more technical. But it’s not a question of which is better, just which is right for you.

Since the readers here are mostly artists looking to improve their work, I want to stress that my career path is unique and trying to follow what I do will like trying to fit a square shaped sandwich into a round shaped lunchbox. Teaching yourself is good for some people. I like to study on my own, so this was a good route for me.

Here is more important question maybe: How much time do you spend thinking about your art?

When you get into a space where everything you see is translated into something to do with your art, then you are always making progress no matter if you are at your desk or not. For example, you are taking a dump and you think: “Oh, this is the way that underpants wrinkle when they are wrapped around my ankles.” Or you standing in line at the bank and you think: “Jesus, that teller there has a huge nose…maybe the range of human variation is much bigger than what I’m representing in my art.”

You are always in school. And life is your homework assignment. Ha, ha…that’s really deep.

How has being a mathematics major affected the way you deal with visual problem solving?

I was a Math Major. So, I think in a mathematical way. I use perspective as mathematics. I think of colors mathematically. I think of composition mathematically. It’s just the way I am.

Will mathematics improve your art? It will if you let it, but that goes for everything.
Start with what you ENJOY and build from there. It will keep you coming back to your art again and again.

The key is to use your own experience to find a unique vision for yourself. Suppose you are a gardener in your spare time. You are going to have a vast knowledge of different flowers, and you should be using that in your art. Just make sure that on every panel there is a potted plant and you work will start to shine. Suppose you are a guy that works at Burger King. That’s cool too. You start to draw your customers. There is always a connection between your interests and your art. Sometimes you really have to work to make the connection, but when it finally comes your work will really explode.

You’ve spent a lot of time in Italy and Japan - how have their cultures affected your style and storytelling?

I like the architecture. I try to pull that into my work as much as I can. I like the Japanese aesthetic of cute. I have tried to merge that with my own western sensibility. I just let the aesthetic sensibilities of the people around me shape my art naturally. But draw what you know. It’ll be pretty hard for a person who doesn’t know Tokyo to really draw Tokyo.

I like to get many different experiences under my belt so that my art is more complex.

What was your art process for your Batman books? How is your approach on covers different than your interior work?

Batman was cool. I drew it mostly on a coffee table while sitting on the floor in a tiny Japanese apartment I shared with my girlfriend. You know if you can draw a whole book sitting crossed legged in a 12-foot by 12-foot room then you get a lot of confidence in your flexibility.

For covers, I spend a lot more time on than interiors. These covers I did about 25 sketches and sent them DC and let them pick their favorite ones. Then I worked up the finished pieces. For covers its important to do a LOT of different approaches. At this point I am trying to do covers that are really simple but still fresh compositions. I’m finally sort of getting the hang of it. A simple cover is actually a heck of a lot harder than something that just relies on a lot of detail to keep your interest.

Keep in mind that this book has been in the machine for a long time…I finished it like almost two years ago…so my work has progressed a lot since this book, even though its just now coming out. The covers are fresh though.

You have a pretty unique style. How has that helped/hurt you in the industry so far?

It was hard as hell to break in. A lot of the editors said: “We love what you are doing, but it’s not like anything we have seen before so we don’t want to take the chance.”

Here is the reality: When I had my first book Happydale completely finished (but unpublished), I showed it around, but got luke warm responses. BUT after the book was published, all these people who had passed on Happydale in the first place wanted me to do work for them on the basis of seeing the published work. So the same book unpublished is like less valuable in terms of showing off your work. Publishing is a like a validation of your art. It’s bullshit, but it’s the way people see things.

To get published you are going to have to get a someone, a PERSON, to stand behind you and say that they believe in what you are doing, and this person will be taking a big risk because you are unproven.

So this is what you need to make this person appear and help you out.

• A really strong portfolio. Really strong. You have to be better than people who are currently being published. Set your goals very high.
• A friendly personality. Like a normal well-rounded person, you gotta be able to hold a conversation and be genuine. Don’t underestimate the power of just being cool and friendly. Not that cheesy schmoozing stuff…forget all that…it doesn’t work. I have never gotten good work from a schmoozer. Don’t talk about people behind their backs. Only say constructive things…that sort of thing. Common sense. Just be like what a normal human being ought to be like.

• A good work ethic. You are going to have to do the work once you get it.

• Persistence. It will take a while even if you are really good, so you gotta have a lot of heart and believe in yourself. If you get turned down you gotta take that as a reason to work harder and do better and better work… You just gotta get better to the point where no one can ignore your art.

How have you evolved as an artist over the years? Have there been turning points?

Well my work sort of speaks to the question of evolution. Line up the books in order of publication and you will see kind a map of how I have changed artistically.

I guess the turning points would have been Willworld, then Tokyo. Those were the two books that I really put everything into. I can honestly say that I put out the best books that I possibly could have. Every panel was 100 percent. If you can do a whole story like that as a sample script then you will have some nice samples.

I am on the verge of combining everything I know into a mega-style. Its kinda the Holy Grail for me - books where the style of the art shifts like dream from panel to panel, doing whatever is necessary to tell the story at that particular point in time. My next book will be closer to this. My Spider-Man Unlimited No. 8 story was kinda like that too.

The word on the street is that you work pretty quickly. What pointers might you offer to aspiring artists to speed up their work?

Ha, ha. I have done fast work and I have done slow work. Don’t hold your breath, but if you TELL ME and I will try to hurry up a bit. I have no advice for speed except coffee, and get rid of the video games and the TV.

In some of your past work you haven’t used a lot of black in your pages. How did that affect the visual contrast? What was the thought process there? What impact does color have on your particular style?

That is to say, I don’t ever use any black at all (almost). Yeah, some people use shadows. I always just found it easier to just draw everything than to try and figure out where all the shadows would fall. The colorists seem to like it though. Again it’s just a matter of what seemed to groove for me, rather than some kind of crazy strategy to do things differently. You know, for a while, everyone told me you had to ink with these crow quills…then I realized there were a few guys that inked with markers, and I thought: “Yeah! I can ink how ever I want to….” And that’s what I did.

In the same vein, how did you deal with that in adapting Gotham City - typically a very dark setting?

Yeah, well, I didn’t really have to draw Gotham that much. Lot of brick buildings, a bit of dirt and dust…I dunno, honestly. I kind of imagine Chicago, with a bit more gothic themes. You know, I didn’t do that much research for this book…I did a lot of problem solving on the fly. Not much deep thinking about this aspect.

With Batman being such a central character for DC, how much liberty did you have on the project?

They let me do a lot of stuff. Other stuff they don’t let me do. If you want to be edgy then expect to kind of make people a bit uncomfortable. They let me do mostly whatever I want.

You’ve done comics, CD covers, video game design (Myst III)…How do you challenge yourself as an artist - or even as a creative person?

To me, creativity is about being flexible and seeing everything as a chance to make something unique. Be true to yourself. There is a style that fits together all your hates and loves, wants and desires. There is a drawing that you want to be drawing right at this very moment more than anything else. You just have to figure out what it is, then you will be totally inspired.

I am always searching for ways to find the stuff that I really want to be drawing. Sometimes I find that I want to be drawing naked women, other times I want to be drawing exploding ninjas… Just ride the wave…what flips your switch one minute might bore you the next, so don’t fight your wandering mind…use it to take you new place…that’s how I challenge I myself…I go with the flow.

— Interview by Tim Leong

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight No. 192 is out today, June 8. For more information on Seth Fisher, visit his Web site at www.floweringnose.com
Posted by Tim Leong on June 21st, 2005 filed in Story Archive | Comment now »
Be a Superstar, SuperF*cker

Well, no one’s ever faulted James Kochalka for being not being colorful — and you can take that literally or figuratively. That certainly won’t change with his latest series from Top Shelf Comix, SuperF*ckers, about a teenage superhero group. James talked to CF about what went into his new title and what it means to be a superstar.

How do you decide what your daily strip is going to be about? What’s the thought process?

I could decide to draw the most “important” event of the day, or I could draw the least important event of the day or something somewhere in between. Sometimes the same event (or similar events) have to occur several times before I will draw about it.

I try and make all the strips add up to some kind of complete emotional picture of my life. I can’t capture everything in one strip, but as the days go by I try and cover everything, bit by bit.

How has your perception of the world changed since you started doing your daily strips?

My life seems more connected. Everything feels like it’s part of a greater whole now, my life, my art, my thoughts, the people and things around me … it’s all one thing. Drawing the daily diary strips makes and cements the connections between all my experiences.

How have you grown as an artist?

I’ve grown more confident in my abilities. I’ve lost almost all my artistic fear.

How does working in a 4-panel grid affect you as an artist and storyteller? Is it confining? Repetitive?

It’s not that confining, for several reasons. One, although I only draw about four panels of the diary a day, the work as a whole is thousands upon thousands of panels and growing. Two, I don’t stick very strictly even to the four panel a day format. Many strips are three panels, a few are only two, and some are only one. Very, very rarely a diary entry might be more than four panels. Three, there’s an infinite variety to what I could choose to put in the panels.

What do you do differently in terms of pacing for your daily strips versus bigger projects like SuperF*uckers?

The scenes in SuperF*ckers are longer. The diary strips are more like poetry; SuperF*ckers is more frantic. But SuperF*ckers has a lot more in common with the diary strips, also. It too is made up of a collection of short, interconnected scenes.

What is your thought process in page design of your bigger books and graphic novels that have grids of nine or more? Are you more conscious of the visual aesthetic of the overall page?

I am always conscious of the overall page, but that has to be secondary to the flow from panel to panel. Comics is all about the flow; pure visual beauty is comparably inconsequential to the feeling and the flow.

In the diary comics, I don’t think of the page as unit, I think of the individual strip as a unit. I don’t really know which strips will all be on the same page together. However, in the graphic novels I am aware of what the page as a whole will look like. I just don’t think it’s ultimately as important as other aspects of the comic.

What should every young, aspiring artist/writer know, but probably doesn’t?

They probably don’t realize how deeply they misunderstand themselves.

You have the nickname “James Kochalka Superstar.” For you, what is the highest level of success? What do you need to do to do become a “superstar”?

In my mind, I’ve always been a superstar. What level of success would satisfy me? Always just a little bit more. It’s nice out here on the cultural fringe, but I would love to enter the hearts and minds of the public at large. The prospect of doing that is very exciting and energizing.

Both music and comics so intertwined to your everyday life — is there a difference between the two in how you creatively output them?

The main difference is that I need collaborators to make the music sound the way I want it since I really can’t play any instruments. I sing the songs to my band and they figure out how to play them. Actually, with time I can figure out how to play them myself, but I just don’t have the chops to play them well enough. If I have to, I can figure out the notes and chords on a keyboard, but I can’t really play the things. But yes, I write and draw comics every day, and I compose and sing songs every day. Thematically they have a lot in common.

I’ve read in a lot of interviews that you haven’t had the best luck pitching projects. What advice might you have for amateurs?

Get an agent, and let them make pitches for you.

With your strips being a real simplification of life experience, do you ever feel like you’re not able to tell the whole story? Does it matter?

As the days and weeks and months and years of daily diary strips add up, collectively they are not that simple anymore, and the “whole story” emerges.

—Interview by Tim Leong

You can visit James’ daily strip at www.AmericanElf.com
Posted by Tim Leong on June 21st, 2005 filed in Story Archive | Comment now »
How to be The Hulk’s Cover Artist

Dick Ayers. John Romita. Sal Buscema. Frank Miller. What do these guys all have in common? They all had the duties of creating the covers for the Incredible Hulk series. Next in line after Jae Lee’s run is Andy Brase, who picks up with issue No. 83. Andy talked with CF about his cover process and what it took for him to get here.

How did you com to create this style of art?
Practice… my art was mainly self-taught. I grew up in Iowa and spent a lot of time in my room drawing and working on creative projects.

You do a lot of gaming art — how is it applicable to what you do on comics?
I really like game art because it’s based in the fantasy/horror/sci-fi genres and that’s the stuff I really love to draw. When I was breaking into freelance work I found it was easier to get work in RPG (role-playing game) art. The pay is not great, though it helped me build a strong portfolio. When I first showed my portfolio to Marvel last year, I had already been working in game art for a couple years and had a strong portfolio. That lead to my first comic cover work about a month later on Identity Disc No. 4 for Marvel

How do you go about achieving such realism in your art?
When I first started freelancing I already had very stylized pen and ink work, though it was more cartoony and the anatomy was pretty bad, or off in many areas. So I cracked down on learning anatomy — I studied from life, anatomy books and photos, etc. I also looked in the mirror a lot to see how shadows fall over a face, arm, hands, etc. At the same time I discovered artists like Bernie Wrightson, Frank Frazetta and Brom. I was inspired by their works and I think that lead to more realism in my work.

Do you use reference/models?
Sometimes…it depends on what I’m drawing and the look I want. I don’t use very much reference on the comic covers I’ve done (for Marvel and Devil’s Due). The figures are all done from my head and checking lighting in a mirror on myself. When I drew some pinups of The Victorian (for Penny Farthing Press) I used photo reference and tried a little more photo-real style. The model was myself, though I did alter things to fit the character.

In working with all that detail, how do you go about coloring it?
On my covers for Marvel, someone else colors it…so I don’t have too much say in that. Some of my detail gets lost in the saturated colors that comics use. Personally, I would use less saturated colors, just because I think it would fit my work better. It’s still great to see what the colorist comes up with. Overall they have been good, though.

Most of my game work is published black and white. I add monochrome tones when I post things in my web gallery (http://www.pen-paper.net/gallery.php?artist=AndyBrase). I would love to see some more of my art published with the monochrome tones, though most publishers want full color. I sometimes color my work and use Photoshop or traditional medium.

What tools do you use to draw/ink with?
A mechanical pencil, kneaded eraser and Sakura Pigma Micron pens. Sometimes a blush (WinsorNewton Series 7) and India ink.

What’s your process in approaching a comic cover?
The editor usually gives me a short description of what they think would look good on the cover or what the comic is about. I do some rough sketches to get some compositions. Usually one has some design elements to it and another is more of an action scene or event from the story. I get one approved by the editor then I light-box the composition of the sketch to Bristol board and do a tight pencil drawing. I make sure most of the anatomy problems are worked out at this stage. I ink the drawing next. Then I go over it lightly with a clean eraser to get rid of extra pencil marks. Finally, I scan and send a file to the comic company via e-mail.

It seems that you use your backgrounds and environments to frame the main art a lot — why is that?
Design and atmosphere have always been important elements to me. I think this is partly something that just happens when I do my work. A lot of times I’ll just start with some main characters and when I add the background I try to have it flow around them or be very balanced with the characters.

What affect does that have?
I think it can help create a piece that draws the viewer’s eye in to the design more. It puts the characters in an environment, gives an atmosphere to the drawing while at the same time having it be a balanced, interesting design to look at.

Why is symmetry important as a design element?
It gives a piece balance and order — it keeps the viewer’s eye from falling off the piece and interested in the design.

What’s your process for including texture in your work?
Many of the textures are just inked in by hand. I have also used black or white ink splatters to add a different type of shading to some pieces. I sometimes leave backgrounds fairly empty and add some textures in Photoshop. I have scanned in photos I have taken with interesting textures, then manipulated them in Photoshop a little and add them in backgrounds.

What’s the best way for young artists to approach gaming art?
For RPG art, put together a portfolio of your best work. Quality is more important than quantity. Go to a game convention, such as Gen con, to show your work around. You can also send submissions to companies. Look at what the publishers print to see what type of work they may be interested in. Osually fantasy/horror/sci-fi is more important than superheroes in gaming. They also are looking for fully finished illustrations, not just pencilers or inkers. The work can be fully shaded pencils, detailed ink drawings, ink wash, paint, watercolor — and digital painting is also a very popular choice of medium in the field right now. Video game concept illustration is, for the most part, a different game industry, and I don’t have experience with that yet.

Best Photoshop tip?
Save your work often, so if the computer freezes/crashes you don’t have to start over.

You do a lot of duo-tone work - what advantage does that give you?
I’ve never used duo shade board and only used zip-a-tone once a long time ago. So most of my duo-tone is done by hand or pen and ink. It gives the work a unique look doing it all by hand, which is what I like. A lot of comic and game art these days is being shaded on computer, which gives things a different more digitally painted look. This isn’t bad, it’s just rare to see art shaded with ink, and I like to ink, so I do it. It’s definitely not a time-saver to shade this way — I get many comments from other artists like “you are crazy.”

What’s one thing every amateur artist should know, but doesn’t?
When a small publisher says they will give you work “for exposure” or for a “percentage of profits,” that usually means little or no exposure and no money. Be careful…

Andy begins his Incredible Hulk cover run with issue No. 83, which hits stands July 6. Also, be sure to check out Andy’s image gallery at http://www.pen-paper.net/gallery.php?artist=AndyBrase
Posted by Tim Leong on June 21st, 2005 filed in Story Archive | Comment now »
Create High-Flying Art With Gravity

On the last series Mike Norton and Sean McKeever worked on together, The Waiting Place, they received massive critical acclaim and it was well-received throughout the industry. Marvel’s looking for a repeat. With their latest project, Norton and McKeever have created Gravity (June 8), about a teen from the rural Midwest who moves to New York for a job, college and to become a superhero. Norton talked with CF about what went into creating the visual aspect of Gravity.

What have you learned as art director at Devil’s Due Publishing to help you become a better comic artist and better storyteller?

Wow … lots of things, I guess. When you’re looking at page after page of artwork coming in from various freelancers for the various books, I guess you can’t help but “study” and hope to absorb some of what you see. I got to do layouts for books and covers often and really think that it helped sturdy up my storytelling. So, I guess I’d answer “yes” to your question to a certain extent.

You’ve done a lot of covers at Devil’s Due. What makes a good cover? What should it do from a sales/artistic perspective?

Well, I’m always surprised at the various opinions at what makes a good cover. I’m actually kinda surprised at a lot of covers in recent years because they don’t seem to do much other than show the main character of the book just standing there. Now, I’m not saying that a cover like this CAN’T work, but to do it EVERY month seems to be a little uncreative to me. However, it’s done industry-wide right now, so obviously it works somehow … I mean, every Vogue or Cosmo cover will tell you that a straight-on shot of a beautiful woman sells copies.

So basically, a good cover should make you want to buy the comic. For me, that means to tease the audience into thinking, “Wow, THAT happens in the book????” prodding them to grab it as soon as they see it. That’s usually the first thing I think about before I start. From there I try to think of something as iconic as I can that will encapsulate what that issue is about. The concept/layout stage is usually the hardest part of drawing anything, I find.

You’ve been around the block. What does it take to interest you in a project?

That’s weird to think about. I really think of myself as just starting out. What gets me interested? It’s pretty easy, I think. Usually just a tight story will get me. I’ve read so many stories that I see in my head and think, “Man, this would make an AWESOME movie!” and I just get into it and want to put my stamp on it. It happens a lot, which is why I’ve had to learn to not go, “Hey, I’ll draw that!!”

Tell us about Gravity. It’s a brand new title from the ground up. What’s your process for creating new characters and costumes?

Gravity is a book that I’m EXTREMELY excited about for many reasons. First, I get to work with my buddy, Sean McKeever on a character that we both helped create. Also, he’s a new character that hearkens back to the early days while still being fresh, I think. When creating the characters, I usually work close with Sean to try to think of who and what the character is. A lot of the time when I’m designing a character, a lot of my thought goes into “How would this guy make his costume?” Seriously. One of the things I never got about Spider-Man was how he managed to make his own costume. That’s some serious sewing!

What type of research and reference was involved when you were crafting the look of Gravity?

Well, I don’t want to say too much as not to give away the story, but like I said, I looked a lot at stuff that people could use in the real world to create a cool-looking superhero uniform. I really like the way that motorcycle-racing gear and scuba equipment looks, and it’s very practical for risking your life … very protected.

What kind of role did Marvel take as far as oversight for the look of new costumes and characters?

MacKenzie Cadenhead (the editor) put in her opinions as far as what Gravity and his cast of characters looked like. She thought of a lot of stuff that I didn’t.

Obviously you had to create the “look” of Gravity, but how did you go about setting a visual tone and pacing for the story?

My method for the “visual tone” was pretty much what I usually do … I’ve always been a “servant to the story” kind of artist… So my first goal is always to make the story easy to understand. After that, I try to make it look as fun and engaging as possible. I tried to make it look as fun and fresh as possible while keeping ties to the classic comics that influenced me so much growing up.

How do you go about analyzing your own work? How do you step away and see your work objectively?

HA. That’s a good question. I’m not the best fan of my own work. I can step back and tell you why I may or may not like my pages, but I can’t say that I’m objective about it.

Your work has great storytelling elements in it. What’s your process when you start a book?

After reading a script, I really sit there and try to absorb it. I sit there and picture it in my mind as a movie. Then (usually the next day) I break down each page into what is hopefully a balanced composition that flows well and is clear to the reader. And speaking of that, I bother everybody I know with my layouts and quiz them with the old “Hey, what do you see happening on this page?” If they can tell, then I’m happy.

I’ve read that you draw a lot faster now than you used to. What can young artists do to speed things up?

Draw every day. Nothing helped me get faster than having to produce finished work by a deadline. It was really surprising how much easier it became. It’s like exercise.

What would you say are the tenets of good visual storytelling?

A variety “camera shots,” a good compositional balance on every page. And really try to go out of your way to visually “explain” things to the reader.

You work a lot on the business side. What do amateurs need to know about it, specifically, before getting into the game?

It’s tough, tough work. It’s easy to think that drawing for a living is nothing but laughs (because it is actually very fun and rewarding), but it’s also a JOB. Prepare yourself for lots of work.

I would also say all amateurs need to know that in order to impress people, you probably should go out of your way to meet your deadlines and do the most you can do to produce the best possible work you can.

—Interview by Tim Leong
Posted by Tim Leong on June 8th, 2005 filed in Story Archive | Comment now »
Freelance? How to Get Insured

The inviting possibility of self-employment often comes to a screeching halt by a lack of insurance, but don’t give up yet. A little research can go a long way.

Best Scenario: Take Advantage of Others
SEEK SPOUSAL SUPPORT The best alternative to coverage from an employer is coverage from someone else’s. If you are married and your spouse is covered by an employer, you likely can be too. Although premiums will probably increase, this cost will likely be much less than a premium for coverage of your own. Also worth investigating is “significant other” coverage, in which companies extend coverage to unmarried couples living together, provided they have a notarized statement claiming they plan to continue cohabitation.

PLAN FOR PARENTAL PROTECTION Try dear old Mom and Dad. Insurance companies have different rules regarding age, student status and other variables. Although you may not fit the profile, it’s an option worth examining.

LOOK BEHIND YOU Try your soon-to-be-former employer. If you have coverage and are leaving your job, you could be eligible for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985. Under COBRA, most employees are eligible to temporarily keep their health insurance plans after they leave. There are catches: First, you will be responsible for paying your entire insurance premium (most employers usually split this cost with their employees during employment) plus administrative fees, but this is usually a better deal than any alternative.

Finding it Yourself
None of the above apply? More options remain.

GET A GROUP EFFORT Keep in mind while investigating that larger groups have more buying power and get better deals. Seek out applicable trade or professional groups that offer coverage to their members (National Writers Union or Authors Guild). Organizations for the self-employed usually offer some coverage for members, including the National Association for the Self-Employed and the Freelancers’ Union. Also, look into local and state programs. New York state offers a program called Healthy New York that offers reduced-cost health insurance to certain working uninsured individuals.

LEAD THE WAY Find your own plan. Insurance quotes are accessible online, either from third-party sites that compare plans (eHealthInsurance.com) or directly from insurance companies. Although these premiums are usually high and plans aren’t always ideal, shop around.

Tips
RESEARCH YOUR OPTIONS. Because there are so many variables, investigate carefully. If you are unfamiliar with companies you come across, contact the Better Business Bureau. Don’t let insurance stand in the way of your career plans.

— Story by Ashley White
Posted by Tim Leong on June 6th, 2005 filed in Story Archive | Comment now »
Pt. 2 - The Passion of the Bendis

This is Part 2 of Comic Foundry’s interview with famed comic scribe, Brian Bendis. Brian leads Marvel’s event of the year with House of M, which debuts in stores today. Part 1 of the interview is available here.

What advice would you give to aspiring comic writers?

My big life lesson that I try to bestow on anyone who will listen is: Write for yourself, do not write for other people. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a big movie or TV show or video game, write something you’d really like to see come to life, be it with art or with actors or whatever. Don’t try to guess what other people want.

I think the example I was given was, let’s say orange is all the rage this summer. Everybody loves orange. So you go, “I’d like to be liked. I’ll do an orange thing too.” By the time you’re finished with your orange thing and get it out in the fall, everybody likes pink now. Now you’re stuck with this orange thing that even you didn’t want.

So, you’re best off writing something you’d really like to read. Or, something that you feel, “If I don’t write this, I’m going to stick a gun in my mouth, so I better write this down instead.” That’s what you do, not to be too morbid. It’s not like I’m sitting here with a gun typing The Pulse… But as far as comics go, I really am making comics I’d really like to buy, and I only work with artists whose comics I would buy. I never work with anybody who I would go, “Ehhhh…”

What about dialogue? I think this is one area where most people really stand behind you.

It’s very nice because it’s the very passion of my life. All I think about all day long is the music of language and applying it to comics and gutting the dead fish of exposition out of our comic-book pages forever and ever and ever. Everyone hears the world differently. Write characters that talk to each other – not at each other, but to further the plot along for the reader. It’s so easy to have one of the characters look at the readers and tell them everything. It’s so unclever. Anyone can do it, as we’ve seen. What you want to do is find a way to get that information you need for your story across in a unique way, and at the same time, create characters that are contradictory, that will say one thing one day and say something else later — like life.

You come home, your girlfriend says something nice to you, the next day she says something mean to you. It’s the same person, it’s just contradictory behavior. It’s a tough thing to pull off in comics – people get impatient – but I think there’s a payoff, and it’s worth exploring, and I hope more people do. The cool thing is, there are a lot of people doing it right now: (Brian K.) Vaughan, (Warren) Ellis. There are a lot of people who are not lowering the bar. They’re all working hard to push it up.

Do you have a sounding board for anything like that?

I’m blessed with a very large sounding board with people at Marvel and in my private life who will tell me if something isn’t a good idea. My wife is an outstanding sounding board too. There have been many times where they said not to do something, and I did it anyhow and then it turns out they’re right. I appreciate my relationship with Marvel because I can count on them to tell me if something sucks.

Do you write your dialogue knowing that it will be read and not spoken? Or knowing that something reads better than it sounds, or vice versa?

In the past, people have come and acted out the dialogue, and I’ve been lucky enough to have actors act out my dialogue when I was doing the Spider-Man cartoon. There’s a gigantic difference between the two. I’m also obsessed with how it looks on the page. Sometimes I wrangle a page that has almost 60 balloons on it. I really design the balloon placement myself because the timing of it is so important, and how they’re arranged and touching and not touching … So I spend an enormous amount of time on every issue of every book doing do a dialogue polish on the lettering as well. I write it out full-script, and then I do another polish after I see the pencils. Then on the pencils I do the balloon placement. Then I give it to the letterer and the letterer letters it. And then my editor gives me the lettered version and I do another polish. Sometimes that polish is just four or five little fixes, but sometimes I yank balloons right off the page – I don’t need them because the face says everything. That happens with Bagley a lot. We just finished a story line where there’s a very emotional scene between MJ and Peter, and there were 15 lines of dialogue, but I yanked them all because the whole page said everything. I’m very conscious of how it’s read as opposed to it’s said aloud.

Do you think the dialogue should sound realistic?

It’s very hard to say what people consider realistic and what they don’t. People swear a lot. Ultimate Spider-Man should be wall-to-wall swearing – that’s how kids talk. I like to read them. I get a real charge out of reading naturalistic dialogue in playwriting or fiction or anything. There are guys before me who did naturalistic dialogue in comics. Guys like Howard Chaykin and Alan Moore did it on certain projects — and I don’t think he (Moore) gets enough credit for that, actually. It’s something that gives me a legitimate thrill.

But in superhero books, though, there’s a certain suspension of reality. How does that play into the mix?

There are two things going on: One – and I was faced with this really hard when I first came to Marvel – old school guys were really annoyed by me. And I was like, “Listen, it’s OK. You’re trained one way to read a comic and if a page has 50 balloons on it and it’s all exposition with ‘Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice …’ that’s how you’ve been trained to read a comic, but it doesn’t mean they all have to be produced that way.” It’s OK to make them, and great comics were made that way, but I’m just trying to do something else. People to this day get very angry if Captain America stutters on a word. Somehow that shows a weakened character or something, but that’s not the case. Even the most powerful person stops mid-sentence and starts again.

Right, even David Mamet has stuttered at one point.

Yeah!

How do you think comics as an industry is doing right now?

Well, it’s in a transition stage right now and it’s a very exciting one. Not enough attention is paid to online about the massive audience of trade paperbacks. Trade paperbacks are selling so much more than they ever did before, to the point that some of my books doubled the audience with the inclusion of my trade paperback readers. Powers – we just got the numbers for our new trade – I was shocked. And it’s exciting that those are readers. Sometimes people only count the monthlies as readers, but we’ve got a whole other audience buying them in trades. I don’t think the monthly comics are going away, but there’s certainly a transition going on about how people buy their comics. The audience is split down the middle, even, about how they want their comics read and how they want to purchase their stories.

I’ll tell you what’s healthy about it: Both competing companies are producing high-quality material using very talented people. And so far the audience has set the bar very, very high as to what they’ll consider good. They don’t seem to want to take any shit at all, and I’m really happy about that. People always put up with shitty comics for nothing, and now even if you feel angry about the direction of your book, you can’t help but say, “Well, that’s certainly being well-crafted.” At least they’re trying to. I think it’s very nice there are so many writers working hard to make good comics and working with better artists than comics has ever had. I think there are guys working in mainstream comics that are so much better than their forefathers as far as craft of illustration. It has never been better. And sometimes you’ll see someone bitching about Astonishing X-Men and they’ll say, “I don’t like it!” And I say, “It’s never been better in the entire world of mutants. X-Men has never been better crafted than it is right now.”

Yeah, I was at this Joe Quesada panel at MoCCA and he was saying that if today’s creators had existed in the ’80s with Watchmen and The Dark Knight, it would’ve completely changed the dynamic of comics.

Well, what I like about it, and sometimes we joke about it privately, is that in the ’90s, that money-ruined-everything type of thing. I know it’s a generalization, but it seemed to happen a lot. But everyone that was only here for money left when there was no more money. What you were left with was a lot of comic-book people who absolutely don’t care if they make money making comics. And a lot of people who do make money, it’s a total accident. There’s no way to know it’s going to happen. I include myself in that category. That is the kind of person you want making comics. They were going to stay, no matter what, even if we had to go to Kinko’s and staple them ourselves – that’s who you want making your comics. And our audience seems to be a very grateful group of comic readers who are very happy to get through comics every week. From there, you can build comics up again. I’m very happy to be making comics at this time.

Do you ever get to see any amateur books?

Every week I get stuff sent to me in the mail. It’s a lot of fun, and I go through all of them. I’ve called people with such enthusiasm when I saw something unique or new. That is what I like the most – if you made a comic, send it out to anyone you think can help you. It’s a business. Even if you’re making your own little indie book, you’ve got to treat it like a business. You’ve got to really hustle your ass to get people to read your book. Some people think just creating the book is enough – it really isn’t. You need to get out there and hustle.

When I was doing indie comics I spent more time hustling and banging my head against the wall than I did making comics. That’s what you have to do just to afford to make the next issue. To anyone who asks me what to do when they make their comic, I say, you send that comic to anyone who you think would say something nice to someone else about it that’d do you good. I sent my comic to people who I work with right now who never called me back. I sent my comics every month to Ralph Macchio (Marvel editor) and I never heard a word from him. And now I’m working with him every day, which is funny. I sent my comics out to everyone and who calls me out of the blue? Todd McFarlane. He gives me a book. Who would’ve thought that’d happen?

Not Ralph Macchio. Is there anything in those amateur books that sets the good and the bad apart? What makes the difference?

Usually it’s passion. I know I sound like “Inside the Actor’s Studio” bullshit, but it’s passion and some people – and I’m not included on this list – are very good at looking at the work and accessing it themselves and artistically looking at it and saying, “Is this what it looks like in my head?” And some people aren’t. The guys that are really good at that are capable of producing some really fine comics. Sometimes you just open it up and you go, “This is a really special, special thing.” Sometimes you open it and go, “Oh, that’s sad.” I get a lot of really bad comics too, and not everyone’s effort is golden.

And I guess learning from that, if you
don’t learn from history you’re bound to repeat it…

You know what? The biggest lesson I ever learned was producing my first comic. When I saw it printed I almost vomited on it, I was so disgusted. The whole time I thought it looked like something else. And then when I saw what it actually was, I was disgusted.

And what would you change?

Everything! Everything! I can’t even relate to you what an eye-opener that was. Really printing and really showing it to other people – that was a bad day. My inking style changed, my writing style changed, everything changed.

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned since coming into the industry?

Don’t be full of shit. Really. I’m never more happy with myself then when I’m not full of crap. I’m never more sickened by myself or other people when I see they’re full of crap. Even if you’re writing and you’re writing and you’re kind of fooling yourself and you’re writing something you think you can do. And not to be all full circle with you, but when I was writing the X-Men, I really tried to make that gig work the first time I had it, but I was full of shit. That went on for three months before I finally said, “No, I can’t do it.” But those were three months of tricking myself or trying to convince myself I’m not who I am. The lesson I learned there was, Don’t be full of shit. And don’t make other people pay for your shit, too. It’s a trickledown thing. If you’re full of shit – it’s like I said before about emotions – you’re going to make your collaborators full of shit, then the readers are going think it’s full of shit, and they’re full of shit for buying it and it’s not nice!

Let me just add that I know it’s very frustrating when someone says to you there’s magic and things you can’t control about how people read your work, but it’s the truth. And that’s why people keep making it up. That’s why we didn’t stop making comics after The Dark Knight Returns came out.

Here’s another thing I’ll leave you with that’ll drive you nuts: You can’t control the environment in which your work is read. Someone eats bad clams and reads an issue of one of my books and goes, “Ahh!” And they’re not in a good mood and they hate it. You can’t control that. So put that in the your pipe and smoke it. All that hard work you did and they’re pooping while they’re reading and they hate it. So they’re associating you with their tummy ache.

Down the drain, literally.

There you go, there’s my little lesson for you.

—Interview by Tim Leong

For more information on Brian and House of M, check out Jinx World at http://www.jinxworld.com/
Posted by Tim Leong on June 3rd, 2005 filed in Story Archive | Comment now »
The Passion of the Bendis

Few writers in comics have reached the critical, financial and writing success (and hatred) of Brian Bendis. He currently pens Powers, Ultimate Spider-Man, the Pullse, New Avengers and Brian is now adding House of M, Marvel’s crossover event of the year, to the load. Brian talked with CF late one night about the book, his dialogue and everything else he’s learned over the years.

This is Part One of Two. The second half will be available one week later, June 1.

I remember reading an interview with you when you first got offered X-Men and you were saying that it wasn’t a great fit for you because you were better working on a one- or two-person lead instead of a group. How did you overcome that?

It wasn’t so much “overcome” – I felt that, here I was in mainstream comics, and I was hired to do a couple of books that I groomed myself, unknowingly, to write perfectly for, (those being Spider-Man and Daredevil), both of which lead to the strengths that I built up over the years. Whereas X-Men, I hadn’t practiced enough at that specific kind of comic book, and I really felt that at this level of play, with X-Men being the gold ring of mainstream comics, I shouldn’t be practicing on the job. I knew I would get there, but I shouldn’t be doing it publicly just because I got offered it. Maybe no one would’ve noticed but me, maybe I was the only one, but I didn’t get the same “Oooohhhh” that you get when you’re writing something you are at least confident enough to hand in. With X-Men I was writing my little heart out, but I said, “You know what? I feel like I’m practicing, and I don’t feel like I’m actually writing X-Men.” So I waited until I thought I wasn’t practicing anymore and gave it what I got. I’m very happy with that decision, by the way, because it was the right thing to do.

What have you learned since then?

There were other arcs and other projects that I’d done where there were multiple leads carrying the story and you say, “OK, there are six leads in this scene, whose point of view is most interesting? Who’s learning the most? Who’s got the most agenda?” You take it from there, and it’s a lesson you have to learn yourself and figure out what it is you want to do with a group book. And I was happy that I learned that lesson enough that I was confident enough to go into these things, and it’s certainly been building even more in my New Avengers work.

And in writing a big, sweeping crossover where you have not one, but two, groups at once, maybe even more …

Yeah, more.

What changes in the way you write when you have so many characters?

First of all, you have to have a point. A lot of the time I see books, and I read them, and I’m not exactly sure what the point was. It doesn’t even have to be a deep point – it could be “I love kung fu movies.” But I can’t find any point, and I really look at something and say: “What is the point of this?” Like, House of M has a very specific point and so does New Avengers. With Spider-Man you’re handed a book that already has a great point: “With power comes with responsibility.” What a great point – it’ll never get old analyzing that idea. So with these other things you create or you put together you really have to sit there and go, “What is the point of this?” And once you have that, most of the time you’ll be able to judge whose point of view the story should be told from.

So would you say House of M is more character-based than plot-based?

It’s very heavily plotted in that big things happen, but my proudest moments in the series are the ones I’ve been getting the most feedback on from my collaborators: the character moments that I did not shy away from. In fact, I really thought about the big, giant books I loved in the past and the ones that kinda held over the years are the ones that didn’t shy away from getting emotional. You read Crisis on Infinite Earth and there are a lot of emotional beats in that, and it’s a big story and there are a lot of times they just stop it and have a moment and go, “Oh, shit” and deal with a loss.

Do you find that the characters get lost because there are so many?

It’s like those big action movies that suck. Everything gets lost in the explosions, and the ones that are better movies are the ones that don’t forget the characters. Anything from Die Hard to The Matrix, you really care about the characters and really feel like you want to follow them. Just really think about that. That goes with any character for any book I write. If no one cares about the characters, no one’s going to care what’s going on. I know sometimes I take it to the extreme and people say, “Let’s get a move on!” But I’d rather spend the time. Anyone can blow shit up. It’s more interesting to see the “before” and the “after.”

And I guess that’s how even though you have so many people in the book and so much going on that you’re still able to create new people like Layla Miller.

Haha, nice try.

In the grand tradition of event comics, a new character will burst forth and follow herself into the Marvel Universe, so hopefully people like her. I like her.

For you, what makes a good story?

It’s an old “This is Spinal Tap” joke: It’s a fine line between clever and stupid. I really do tend to enjoy someone who rolls up their sleeves and shows me something I haven’t seen before or thought of myself. I’m the most non-genre snob I know. I don’t care what genre it’s in – good superhero, good crime, good indie, autobiographical – if someone being clever or if someone telling a story that’s just…“goddamn, they have to tell it” – you know what I mean? When someone surpasses from their story from their story then in translates all the way to the printed page onto your fingers that are holding the book – and you can feel it on the book — that’s amazing.

It’s that passion …

Yeah, and really you could get it reading Superman because goddamn, this guy wanted to tell this story so bad I’m getting chills. It’s so hard to do. You can do everything right and it’s not working. You see comics and movies and TV shows where so many good people are involved and then you just go, “Wow, that didn’t work at all.” Everyone tried, but it just didn’t work. And all of a sudden, magic hits. It’s really ethereal.

I guess if people really knew, they’d be selling them like crazy.

Yeah, there’s no magic formula, but I do know that if I’m really passionate to the point that I’m emotional while I’m writing something, even if it’s a scene between MJ and Peter and I’m getting emotional while I’m writing it, 99 percent of the time (Mark) Bagley will get emotional penciling it, the inker will get emotional inking it and the editor will get emotional putting it together, and it goes all the way out the door and we get the same response from the reader. But, as a writer I can’t control everyone’s emotions – I could get emotional but Bagley could just be “Whatever,” but most of the time we’re on the same page. Does that make sense?

I guess it starts with you, and if you don’t have it in you to tell the story, then the reader won’t have it in them to read it.

You know what doesn’t make a good story? Trying to make a comic book so you can sell it to Hollywood. Don’t do it. It’s never worked in the history of comics, that someone’s purposely gone to make a comic book so that Hollywood will look at it and make it into a big movie, and you can retire. It never happens, so stop doing it. If you make a comic because you want to make a comic, and be happy if Hollywood comes. Or it’s “Get out of here, no one wants you here.”

I was reading somewhere, and David Mamet said, “Nothing artistic has ever come from the conscious mind.” Do you think that’s true?

I think everything he says is true. I have a book of Mamet interviews on my nightstand that I go through like the Bible. If I’m having a doubt of spirits I just open it up and somewhere on the page he’ll say something and I’ll go, “Oh, that’s so true” and I feel better and go back to sleep.

He’s just so smart, it’s ridiculous.

Yeah, he’s so goddamn smart. There’s also something about the way he works because he’s such a Talmudic scholar, as a Jew. And I was raised by Talmudic scholars, so there’s something about the way he talks, even though he doesn’t talk the way I talk, it just soothes me. The thing he says that’s so fucking true is that the key to great dialogue is letting the voices in your head talk to each other instead of talking to you. And then you sit there and transcribe it.

And, for all the laymen out there, what do you mean by that?

Everyone has voices in their head – when you’re talking to yourself about little stuff: “I don’t know, should I have a cheeseburger or should I have spaghetti?” You’re talking to yourself. Instead of that, you let the voices talk to each other and then you’ll get good dialogue. You’ve got to be open to the experience, though. I believe there’s bipolarism involved, and there’s levels of bipolarism, and you need the perfect amount to be creative and function in society. A little too much and you’re not functioning in society; a too little and you’re not being very creative. But everyone I know that’s truly inspired, creatively, they seem to be a little nuts. It’s a pleasure to be around.

Robert McKee’s “Story” – What’s the best lesson learned from that book?

That the three-act structure works. And it’s funny because people think if you read it you have to follow it like the Bible. No, but you have to know what works and why it works before you can start fucking around with it. Everyone wants to write their thing – “When Quentin Tarantino did ‘Pulp Fiction’ the first act was the third act and…” Yeah, fine, but he can do it. It doesn’t mean he didn’t learn how to do it first. Picasso learned how to paint like a master before he started going cubist. You have to read it and go, “What works? Why does it work?” I’ve done many, many three-act structured stories and then afterward you start going, “OK, well what happens if I don’t do a second act? What happens if the third act’s the fifth act?” You start picking around, and you find new language for yourself as a storyteller, but first you have to know what works. Does that make sense?

Yeah, you have to know the rules before you can break them.

Thank you. You said it so…And learn how to talk succinctly instead of babbling on.

Well, I guess that’s what happens when it’s late at night.

I haven’t learned that one yet…

And, you’re probably one of the highest-regarded people in comics today…

Yuh-huh … Well, I think it depends on the day. It’s nice to be regarded at all.

How do you improve as a writer when you’re already so accomplished?

First of all, regard has nothing to do with craft. At all. That’s one of those things that drives me nuts is when people think that just because someone says something nice about you yesterday means you know all the answers to everything. If I knew all the answers I would write the perfect story and retire. I don’t. It’s a constant battle of self-will, and just trying to do this thing that’s impossible to describe to people. Every day you try harder and try new things and push this way and that way and sometimes it makes your audience uncomfortable, but nine out of 10 times, I think, you’ll feel much more fulfilled than if you just say, “The book’s selling, so I guess I’ll just go on doing that over and over again the same exact way.” One has nothing to do with the other. I don’t know why people say nice things about me, and I don’t know why people say mean things about me, because it’s equal amounts. You can’t control it, so you just go on, so you just go and worry about what your job is. There’s no difference between how I produce a page now then when I was doing Goldfish.

So there hasn’t been an evolution?

There’s an evolution in craft, hopefully. Hopefully I’m a better storyteller than I was, but the actual sit-down and mind-set – with the sweaty brow, “Is this going to work?” – it’s still the same. I just threw out an entire two issues of New Avengers because I just looked at it and said, “That is not good,” and I started again. Marvel approved them and I just went: “Eh, I don’t like it.”

Do you have a litmus test for that sort of thing? What’s the standard? How do you know?

I hope the fact that I don’t know shows people what I’m talking about. It has absolutely nothing to do with monetary success or getting an award. You never know. But what you do know is: It’s never finished, it’s just done. That’s the only good lesson that I learned in art school. My art teacher once said: “If you finish an illustration and you think it’s perfect, there’s something wrong with you. There’s no such thing! All it is, is done. You finished it, now go make another one. Hopefully it’ll be better than the last one.” Now that was a good lesson.

What about the best writing lesson you learned?

I think the same lesson applies. I’ve never written a perfect script. It’s just that the script was done, and we’ll try another one and we’ll see how that one does.

What advice would you give to aspiring comic writers?

My big life lesson that I try to bestow on anyone who will listen is: Write for yourself, do not write for other people. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a big movie or TV show or video game, write something you’d really like to see come to life, be it with art or with actors or whatever. Don’t try to guess what other people want.

I think the example I was given was, let’s say orange is all the rage this summer. Everybody loves orange. So you go, “I’d like to be liked. I’ll do an orange thing too.” By the time you’re finished with your orange thing and get it out in the fall, everybody likes pink now. Now you’re stuck with this orange thing that even you didn’t want.

So, you’re best off writing something you’d really like to read. Or, something that you feel, “If I don’t write this, I’m going to stick a gun in my mouth, so I better write this down instead.” That’s what you do, not to be too morbid. It’s not like I’m sitting here with a gun typing The Pulse… But as far as comics go, I really am making comics I’d really like to buy, and I only work with artists whose comics I would buy. I never work with anybody who I would go, “Ehhhh…”

What about dialogue? I think this is one area where most people really stand behind you.

It’s very nice because it’s the very passion of my life. All I think about all day long is the music of language and applying it to comics and gutting the dead fish of exposition out of our comic-book pages forever and ever and ever. Everyone hears the world differently. Write characters that talk to each other – not at each other, but to further the plot along for the reader. It’s so easy to have one of the characters look at the readers and tell them everything. It’s so unclever. Anyone can do it, as we’ve seen. What you want to do is find a way to get that information you need for your story across in a unique way, and at the same time, create characters that are contradictory, that will say one thing one day and say something else later — like life.

You come home, your girlfriend says something nice to you, the next day she says something mean to you. It’s the same person, it’s just contradictory behavior. It’s a tough thing to pull off in comics – people get impatient – but I think there’s a payoff, and it’s worth exploring, and I hope more people do. The cool thing is, there are a lot of people doing it right now: (Brian K.) Vaughan, (Warren) Ellis. There are a lot of people who are not lowering the bar. They’re all working hard to push it up.

Do you have a sounding board for anything like that?

I’m blessed with a very large sounding board with people at Marvel and in my private life who will tell me if something isn’t a good idea. My wife is an outstanding sounding board too. There have been many times where they said not to do something, and I did it anyhow and then it turns out they’re right. I appreciate my relationship with Marvel because I can count on them to tell me if something sucks.

Do you write your dialogue knowing that it will be read and not spoken? Or knowing that something reads better than it sounds, or vice versa?

In the past, people have come and acted out the dialogue, and I’ve been lucky enough to have actors act out my dialogue when I was doing the Spider-Man cartoon. There’s a gigantic difference between the two. I’m also obsessed with how it looks on the page. Sometimes I wrangle a page that has almost 60 balloons on it. I really design the balloon placement myself because the timing of it is so important, and how they’re arranged and touching and not touching … So I spend an enormous amount of time on every issue of every book doing do a dialogue polish on the lettering as well. I write it out full-script, and then I do another polish after I see the pencils. Then on the pencils I do the balloon placement. Then I give it to the letterer and the letterer letters it. And then my editor gives me the lettered version and I do another polish. Sometimes that polish is just four or five little fixes, but sometimes I yank balloons right off the page – I don’t need them because the face says everything. That happens with Bagley a lot. We just finished a story line where there’s a very emotional scene between MJ and Peter, and there were 15 lines of dialogue, but I yanked them all because the whole page said everything. I’m very conscious of how it’s read as opposed to it’s said aloud.

Do you think the dialogue should sound realistic?

It’s very hard to say what people consider realistic and what they don’t. People swear a lot. Ultimate Spider-Man should be wall-to-wall swearing – that’s how kids talk. I like to read them. I get a real charge out of reading naturalistic dialogue in playwriting or fiction or anything. There are guys before me who did naturalistic dialogue in comics. Guys like Howard Chaykin and Alan Moore did it on certain projects — and I don’t think he (Moore) gets enough credit for that, actually. It’s something that gives me a legitimate thrill.

But in superhero books, though, there’s a certain suspension of reality. How does that play into the mix?

There are two things going on: One – and I was faced with this really hard when I first came to Marvel – old school guys were really annoyed by me. And I was like, “Listen, it’s OK. You’re trained one way to read a comic and if a page has 50 balloons on it and it’s all exposition with ‘Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice …’ that’s how you’ve been trained to read a comic, but it doesn’t mean they all have to be produced that way.” It’s OK to make them, and great comics were made that way, but I’m just trying to do something else. People to this day get very angry if Captain America stutters on a word. Somehow that shows a weakened character or something, but that’s not the case. Even the most powerful person stops mid-sentence and starts again.

Right, even David Mamet has stuttered at one point.

Yeah!

How do you think comics as an industry is doing right now?

Well, it’s in a transition stage right now and it’s a very exciting one. Not enough attention is paid to online about the massive audience of trade paperbacks. Trade paperbacks are selling so much more than they ever did before, to the point that some of my books doubled the audience with the inclusion of my trade paperback readers. Powers – we just got the numbers for our new trade – I was shocked. And it’s exciting that those are readers. Sometimes people only count the monthlies as readers, but we’ve got a whole other audience buying them in trades. I don’t think the monthly comics are going away, but there’s certainly a transition going on about how people buy their comics. The audience is split down the middle, even, about how they want their comics read and how they want to purchase their stories.

I’ll tell you what’s healthy about it: Both competing companies are producing high-quality material using very talented people. And so far the audience has set the bar very, very high as to what they’ll consider good. They don’t seem to want to take any shit at all, and I’m really happy about that. People always put up with shitty comics for nothing, and now even if you feel angry about the direction of your book, you can’t help but say, “Well, that’s certainly being well-crafted.” At least they’re trying to. I think it’s very nice there are so many writers working hard to make good comics and working with better artists than comics has ever had. I think there are guys working in mainstream comics that are so much better than their forefathers as far as craft of illustration. It has never been better. And sometimes you’ll see someone bitching about Astonishing X-Men and they’ll say, “I don’t like it!” And I say, “It’s never been better in the entire world of mutants. X-Men has never been better crafted than it is right now.”

Yeah, I was at this Joe Quesada panel at MoCCA and he was saying that if today’s creators had existed in the ’80s with Watchmen and The Dark Knight, it would’ve completely changed the dynamic of comics.

Well, what I like about it, and sometimes we joke about it privately, is that in the ’90s, that money-ruined-everything type of thing. I know it’s a generalization, but it seemed to happen a lot. But everyone that was only here for money left when there was no more money. What you were left with was a lot of comic-book people who absolutely don’t care if they make money making comics. And a lot of people who do make money, it’s a total accident. There’s no way to know it’s going to happen. I include myself in that category. That is the kind of person you want making comics. They were going to stay, no matter what, even if we had to go to Kinko’s and staple them ourselves – that’s who you want making your comics. And our audience seems to be a very grateful group of comic readers who are very happy to get through comics every week. From there, you can build comics up again. I’m very happy to be making comics at this time.

Do you ever get to see any amateur books?

Every week I get stuff sent to me in the mail. It’s a lot of fun, and I go through all of them. I’ve called people with such enthusiasm when I saw something unique or new. That is what I like the most – if you made a comic, send it out to anyone you think can help you. It’s a business. Even if you’re making your own little indie book, you’ve got to treat it like a business. You’ve got to really hustle your ass to get people to read your book. Some people think just creating the book is enough – it really isn’t. You need to get out there and hustle.

When I was doing indie comics I spent more time hustling and banging my head against the wall than I did making comics. That’s what you have to do just to afford to make the next issue. To anyone who asks me what to do when they make their comic, I say, you send that comic to anyone who you think would say something nice to someone else about it that’d do you good. I sent my comic to people who I work with right now who never called me back. I sent my comics every month to Ralph Macchio (Marvel editor) and I never heard a word from him. And now I’m working with him every day, which is funny. I sent my comics out to everyone and who calls me out of the blue? Todd McFarlane. He gives me a book. Who would’ve thought that’d happen?

Not Ralph Macchio. Is there anything in those amateur books that sets the good and the bad apart? What makes the difference?

Usually it’s passion. I know I sound like “Inside the Actor’s Studio” bullshit, but it’s passion and some people – and I’m not included on this list – are very good at looking at the work and accessing it themselves and artistically looking at it and saying, “Is this what it looks like in my head?” And some people aren’t. The guys that are really good at that are capable of producing some really fine comics. Sometimes you just open it up and you go, “This is a really special, special thing.” Sometimes you open it and go, “Oh, that’s sad.” I get a lot of really bad comics too, and not everyone’s effort is golden.

And I guess learning from that, if you
don’t learn from history you’re bound to repeat it…

You know what? The biggest lesson I ever learned was producing my first comic. When I saw it printed I almost vomited on it, I was so disgusted. The whole time I thought it looked like something else. And then when I saw what it actually was, I was disgusted.

And what would you change?

Everything! Everything! I can’t even relate to you what an eye-opener that was. Really printing and really showing it to other people – that was a bad day. My inking style changed, my writing style changed, everything changed.

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned since coming into the industry?

Don’t be full of shit. Really. I’m never more happy with myself then when I’m not full of crap. I’m never more sickened by myself or other people when I see they’re full of crap. Even if you’re writing and you’re writing and you’re kind of fooling yourself and you’re writing something you think you can do. And not to be all full circle with you, but when I was writing the X-Men, I really tried to make that gig work the first time I had it, but I was full of shit. That went on for three months before I finally said, “No, I can’t do it.” But those were three months of tricking myself or trying to convince myself I’m not who I am. The lesson I learned there was, Don’t be full of shit. And don’t make other people pay for your shit, too. It’s a trickledown thing. If you’re full of shit – it’s like I said before about emotions – you’re going to make your collaborators full of shit, then the readers are going think it’s full of shit, and they’re full of shit for buying it and it’s not nice!

Let me just add that I know it’s very frustrating when someone says to you there’s magic and things you can’t control about how people read your work, but it’s the truth. And that’s why people keep making it up. That’s why we didn’t stop making comics after The Dark Knight Returns came out.

Here’s another thing I’ll leave you with that’ll drive you nuts: You can’t control the environment in which your work is read. Someone eats bad clams and reads an issue of one of my books and goes, “Ahh!” And they’re not in a good mood and they hate it. You can’t control that. So put that in the your pipe and smoke it. All that hard work you did and they’re pooping while they’re reading and they hate it. So they’re associating you with their tummy ache.

Down the drain, literally.

There you go, there’s my little lesson for you.

—Interview by Tim Leong

For more information on Brian and House of M, check out Jinx World at http://www.jinxworld.com/
Posted by Tim Leong on June 1st, 2005 filed in Story Archive | Comment now »

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Archive for June, 2005

Learn From the Fisher King

Be a Superstar, SuperF*cker

How to be The Hulk’s Cover Artist

Create High-Flying Art With Gravity

Freelance? How to Get Insured

Pt. 2 - The Passion of the Bendis

The Passion of the Bendis