Graphic Language

Danica Novgorodoff

2006-07-19T10:00:00.000-04:00

Danica Novgorodoff is a painter, writer, comic book artist and cowgirl from Kentucky. She is the author of A Late Freeze, Neck of the Moon and, with Oana Sanziana Marian, Circus Song. She works as a designer of graphic novels for First Second in New York City, where she currently lives. You can buy her books and see more of her art at her website.

When, where, how did you become a comics reader?

I'm a little embarrassed to say that I didn't become a serious comic book reader until, say, this year, mostly because I now have a much greater resource; I can pick whatever I want off the shelf at my office, whereas previously I couldn’t really afford to buy the kinds of books I was interested in. But my interest in reading comics really started near the end of college when some of my peers in the art major were making comics.

At what point did you decide that you might be interested in creating your own work in this medium? Was that before you'd spent a lot of time as a reader?

I wasn’t at all well read when I started my own work. I spent the year after graduating college living and traveling in South America, and I wanted to have a project that would make me feel like my life wasn’t completely aimless, even if I was a vagabond. So I worked in the two visual media I felt were portable and suited to that lifestyle: photography and comics. The first comic book I made took me two years to complete and is a story about cowboys and gypsies and aimless American youths in the southern U.S. and northern South America, the land of volcanoes. I had no idea what I was doing when I started this book, so it was a fun way to get involved in the medium without having preconceptions of what a comic book should be.

You have experience in a number of different media. How does this one compare to some of the others you've worked in, in terms of the potential for expression? Are there any unique opportunities afforded here, or any particular liabilities?

Comics are compelling for me because I’ve always been interested in narrative art, even in painting and photography. Also, my writing has always been very visual, so combining the two media seems the natural way to get at what I’ve always tried to do with art—tell a story. Within a comic book, you’ve got more time to tell the story than in a painting, and more to look at than in a novel. I think the liabilities lie in relying to heavily on either the words or the pictures; for example, you don’t want to allow the art to be weak because the text will explain it. It’s hard to achieve a good balance between the story and the art.

What about the culture of comics? This community can be challenging; it tends not to be very forgiving of those without sense of history and unfortunately, its unfriendliness towards women, both creators and consumers, is a recurrent problem. What's your impression of the culture? And how do you feel about the way it has responded to your work so far?

No, it’s not the most female-friendly industry, but I think (hope) that’s changing, if slowly. I didn’t grow up reading comics, and like a lot of people, became familiar with the medium through Maus and through seeing Jimmy Corrigan in the Whitney Museum of Art. So in my own work, I’m motivated to make the kind of comics that I, as a non-expert in the field and as a girl, would be interested in seeing on the shelf and reading—work that has a literary and artistic appeal to people who aren’t necessarily immersed in the comics culture. I think through women’s participation in the medium, comics will become a much richer art form (in other words, in my opinion, more people making comics that do not feature spandex-clad women with excessive pectoral amplitude would be a boon to the medium). I also think that the increasing popularity of graphic novels among the general reading public will create more interest in and demand for more literary works that require no deep understanding of the culture of comics, and can stand alone as works of art.

Focusing on your newest book, what was the seed from which the rest of A Late Freeze grew, the first element you had from which you thought you could extrapolate the rest?

It started with the love affair between a robot and a bear, a sad robot and a female bear. It’s the kind of premise that could turn out very clichéd but I wanted to see if it could be strange and surprising and also somehow emotionally touching. I didn’t come up with the idea, though; when I was living in Ecuador a few years ago, I heard a story about a local man who lived in the mountains with a bear. The bear was very jealous and wouldn’t let the man come down into town to visit his wife and kids. I’ve always wanted to write a story based on that.

Despite the curiosity of the premise, the story quickly loses its sense of weirdness. It becomes very easy very fast to understand these characters. Was that something you tried to develop, or was that a natural product of your approach?

I just thought of them as having very human emotions. Anyway, a little weirdness is good in any relationship, right? Or I could say, “Love makes the unlikely and impossible happen.”

…Um. I can’t believe I just said that.

The idea of love is definitely important to the book, with a greater focus, maybe, on the familial over the romantic. How did that theme develop, the idea of different sorts of love and how they come from, respond to, one another?

These characters are all initially strangers who try to help each other out in a rough world, and become close through their shared experiences. Along with caring comes loneliness and worry. I just think these are things that everyone feels at some point or another, from the initial attraction between lovers to the loyalty of friendship to caring for a child. Not that I would know anything about that last one.

Was it a conscious decision to write about relationships of a sort, like parent/child, with which you had no first-hand experience?

No. I mean, I know what it’s like to care about someone, or to be part of a family, even if I’ve never been a parent. I’ve never been a bear or a robot either. But it doesn’t hurt to imagine.

Why did you choose to tell the story (mostly) wordlessly?

It somehow just made sense with these characters, to show how a relationship can develop between individuals who aren’t at all similar to one another; I suppose they wouldn’t speak the same language if they did speak. I wanted to make a story that shows everything, from action to emotion, without telling too much.

A Late Freeze has a very particular visual sensibility to it, fitting given your day job. How much did wanting to maintain the aesthetic affect the storytelling, or even the content of the story?

Oh, it really did affect the story—[it] was not entirely formulated in my mind before I started drawing, and often the plot would take a certain turn primarily because I really wanted to draw a circus tent with a giant bird-woman face coming over it, or a view looking up at the surface of a river from the underwater riverbed polluted with bicycles and shopping carts and trash, or a robot driving an ox-drawn covered wagon like in the Oregon Trail. So I would wrap the story around those images, and I think those scenes—where the imagery came before the plot—are my favorites. The story is, after all, visually dictated rather than driven by text or dialogue.

Are there any specific touchstones, either within comics or without, that influenced the book?

I think the Kentucky landscape influenced it quite a bit—I was living in Kentucky for most of the time I was working on the book, so a lot of the state’s features appear, from the Cracker Barrel to the rolling hills to the highway rest-stop towns. It seems like every month there are more fields and forests being razed for parking lots and suburbs and Banana Republics. A Late Freeze was largely about a changing landscape, and yet extends beyond the present time: the strip malls and motels in the book are mostly deserted and feel almost like artifacts or ruins—the covered wagon rolls through a modern ghost town of sorts.

In terms of color, I was inspired by Chris Ware, and there’s a single panel Frank Miller rip-off: I thought it would be funny to depict the robot in place of some big, tough, scar-faced guy chained to one of Miller’s signature brick-wall-under-spotlight images.

The factory assembly lines and unemployment lines were inspired by those old depression-era WPA photos. And the amusement park—I’ve just always liked drawing roller coasters and Ferris wheels.

What are you reading right now?

Annie Proulx’s Wyoming stories, Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s Cat, Sam Shepard’s plays, Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark, David Foster Wallace’s essays, Chip Kidd’s Work: 1986-2006, and Of Mice and Men.

I’m having trouble concentrating on one thing at the moment.

You've got a lot of "How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us" stuff on that list, a lot about the myth of America. Any particular reason for that, or are you just in that mood?

I’m interested in the myth of the American dream, especially now with the immigration debate so hot, and the rising doubts about the war in Iraq. I think it’s important to look at what America means to Americans, both those who have and have not achieved something of that dream, and to people outside of America, both those who are attracted to and those who hate American ideology. It’s complicated; there are people who simultaneously are attracted to it and hate it. And obviously, American ideals are not always ideal. The book I’m working on now is about that, in part: coming to this country for all its incredible opportunities and trying to "make it" and being disappointed, being poorly treated, being homesick, and still knowing that this is the best chance you’ve got.

A Late Freeze isn't overtly political, but there's a fair amount of politicism to be found if examined in the right context (identity persecution, industrial development versus naturalism). Did you intentionally develop this a framework for the hook of robot-loves-bear, or was this something that came about incidentally?

It developed naturally with the relationship of the robot and bear, and again, I think living in Kentucky in the aftermath of Bush’s re-election influenced my feelings about environmentalism. In my town, I began seeing more and more Hummers, and I really started thinking of the yellow Hummer as a symbol of evil, of complete disregard for the environment, of reckless consumerism, and of war paraphernalia-turned-commercial.

Also, the persecution of the little guy by the Man and the struggle for freedom (from slavery and to love whom one will, regardless of race or gender, etc.) seems an essential part of a classic American tale.

You've been able to develop a healthy context for such a point of view through your travels, both within the United States (Kentucky, Virginia, New Haven, New York) and without (Ecuador, Mexico). What influence have these places had on your work? Were there any new ideas of significance introduced, or preconceptions reconfirmed?

These places have had a greater influence on my work than anything else. In the very first book I made, a big theme was being in love with a place; landscape is a big factor in my art and writing. Also, I find that I can write best while traveling because there are always new ideas being introduced by a changing environment, and the significance of those ideas is more apparent because they’re not hidden by familiarity and routine.

I think it’s so important to put yourself outside your realm of comfort (especially by leaving this country) in order to challenge yourself to think more unexpectedly, to have perspective on your own world, and to be able to make something other than comic books about comic book artists making comics.

Can you say anything more about what you're working on now?

I’m working on a full-length book set in Kentucky and involving a tornado, a firefighter named Ursa, and a Mexican immigrant named Rafi who works on horse farms. It’ll be done in a year or two. Just you wait.

This interview was conducted by Chris Tamarri.

Chris Pitzer

2006-06-21T08:40:00.000-04:00

Chris Pitzer, Lisa Pitzer and Josh Cotter. Photo by Kevin Church.

Chris Pitzer's AdHouse Books debuted in 2002, when it published Joel Priddy's Pulpatoon Pilgrimage. Since then, AdHouse has released a steady slate of books, including the popular Project anthologies, Hope Larson's Salamander Dream, and Josh Cotter's Skyscrapers of the Midwest. This Fall, AdHouse is set to publish Paul Pope's Pulphope, as well as the third and final Project anthology, Project: Romantic.

So, this year's MoCCA Art Festival has come and gone. How did the show go for you this year?

I thought the show was great as usual. As I think I might have mentioned at the show, we ran out of a few books (Salamander Dream) and comics (Superior Showcase 1) a bit earlier than I had hoped, but that's still a good thing. In addition, Skyscrapers of the Midwest sold the best it has sold at any show we've attended. MoCCA rocks!

The show does rock. I feel like I missed out on something by working through most of it—it hadn't really occurred to me that working the show was actually, you know, working. What goes into that side of it, from your end? I mean, aside from selling books, do you look at submissions, or seek out new artists, or anything like that?

Yeah. I even made the comment to Josh Cotter that I'm going to go to MoCCA next year and just walk around! Because, as you know, when you're behind the table, you kind of miss what's going on at the other 98 percent of tables.

Doing the shows can be a whole lot of work, or just a little. You kind of decide how far you want to take it. For instance, with this show, AdHouse had to register, figure out what artists might be attending/sitting with AdHouse, submit an advertisement, ship our books, receive those nice new serigraphs from Paul Pope, do our sales and marketing (preview books!), have some quick meetings with artists, and receive submissions.

To go into a few details: I took the cover proofs of Debbie Huey's new Bumperboy book for her to review. I also had a quick conversation with Farel Dalrymple about his interest in doing Superior Showcase 2. Then, as you might have noticed, Mike Dawson had a preview copy of his Freddie & Me book sitting on the AdHouse table, so we kind of finalized our intentions of publishing it while at MoCCA.

I try not to look at submissions at the show, as that usually takes more brainpower than I can pull together. If people want to leave me things, I'll usually take them to hopefully review later. And by "seeking out new artists" I usually try and walk the floor a few times to see what might be neat. It's tough, though, since the more I'm away from the table, the more gets placed on either the helpers or artists that are there instead.

Now, you’ve also set up at other (and there really isn’t a good way to put this) more mainstream shows. I know the vibe is somewhat different, but how does the experience change for you, as a publisher, from something like an SPX or a MoCCA to something like Heroes Convention?

Well, I don't know if Heroes is a fair example of a mainstream show. They (Dustin and Shelton, as well as all their help) have really gotten behind the Indie Island push. As you can kind of tell by the amount of professionals going into their show, they really know how to treat people right. But I understand where you're coming from; it is a different environment. I guess I'd have to say that I spend more time trying to educate the consumer base to what AdHouse is about at the more mainstream shows. For instance, I recall James Jean signing at Heroes last year, and the line formed down the side of our booth, the side which had all the AdHouse stock displayed. While there might have been a few people who picked up a book and took a look, I don't think anyone made any purchases (I can't blame them since I’ve done the same thing). I'm just saying that I guess I have more of a "brand" at the alternative shows, and people will take more of a chance at those types of shows.

And then you have a place like San Diego, and it's like four or five different types of shows going on at once!

A while back, I was talking to Danielle Corsetto at the Pittsburgh show, and she mentioned something about how at a more superhero-oriented show, small press people can do pretty well, as there's less competition in terms of getting that "independent reader" market share. I'd imagine, though, that something like Project: Telstar or project: Superior would do pretty well at that kind of show. What made you want to publish those anthologies (as well as the upcoming Project: Romantic)? I mean, what is it about those themes in particular?

Yeah, I have to agree with Danielle. There is something to being the different fish in the big pond of the mainstream.

The themes of Telstar (robots and space), Superior (superheroes) and Romantic (love) follow my ego-centric take on life. Basically, my growing up watching Ultraman and Johnny Socko on channel 20 out of Washington, D.C., my finding comics during my middle school years and really collecting them, and then having the ol' hormones kick in around those high school years.

Other themes like "big monsters" or "the wild west" have been floated around or suggested, but I guess those were never really part of me growing up, so I kind of decided against them.

Granted, graphic design has been a pretty big part of my life, and something I still find fascinating. So, for a while there, Romantic was going to have a design theme, but I felt that was kind of too narrow.

Maybe narratively narrow, but I can see where that might get a little strange. At the same time, that might have turned out neat, like your own version of 99 Ways To Tell a Story, or something like that.

I had something else to ask, but since you've brought the design thing up, that's how you got started working in comics, right?

Yep. Back in 1990 I got hired at Eclipse Comics as their production/designer guy. I lasted around a year before I had to get out of there. However, I made some good friends out of my stint, and some great contacts. After I left, I did some comic freelance here and there and eventually helped Jeff Mason with putting together the 9-11: Emergency Relief book that Alternative published. The next year I started AdHouse with Joel Priddy’s Pulpatoon Pilgrimage.

That book put AdHouse on the map in a big way—it was nominated for an Eisner, and won an Ignatz. That's actually one of the things that interested me most in AdHouse from a publishing standpoint—it seems that the trend in the last six years or so is for a new publisher to get a buzz going, and then they start to publish so many books that they end up going under. AdHouse, though—the expansion seems very deliberately measured, which I think helps keep the quality of the line at a higher average. Is it a gut thing, this pacing, or was it more from studying the market?

Finances?

Seriously, the market kind of dictates what I can publish. I'll take a loan here and there for the big books, but I don't want to dig a deep whole that I'll never get out of, y'know? So, I try and balance the moneymakers with the not-so-moneymakers. But before all of that, I guess I have to love the book. I think Jeff Mason told me that once, and it's really true. Because even with some financial gains, each book is a lot of work.

There have been a few books that I've had to pass on at the time due to finances, but they've gone on to find good homes.

Outside of the things you solicit, like the anthologies, what makes you love something already completed? I mean, is there a certain type of work that you look at and say, "Hey, this looks like an AdHouse book!" I mean, I imagine there's a difference between loving something as a reader, and loving something as a publisher.

Well, I think I have to love something as a reader first. After that, yeah, I start to look at the publishing side of things. For instance, let's look at Salamander Dream. Things it had going for it in regards to the publishing side: it was finished, it was accomplished, it is unique in the whole graphic-iconic-narrative that only a few people seem to be doing, it was two color, it had an online fanbase, it has a young adult content, it was a "debut" work, and Hope is a female comic creator. All of those things are assets in my mind.

That said, I have been a publisher before a reader on a few projects, but those were books that were being created by a creator who had a proven track record.

And I don't know if I can define an "AdHouse" book or feel anymore. The output seems to be all over the place! Someone used "whimsical" once and I guess that might work.

Well, going back to something you said earlier, I'd say "designed," but that probably has less to do with the work itself, and more to do with you and your background. I mean, every AdHouse book turns out really well-designed; I think there are some publishers and self-publishers that treat design as almost an afterthought. What, in your opinion, makes for a well-designed book?

The design should compliment the work, and if possible take it to the next level. I favor certain formats a bit more than others. I tend to like the smaller books that seem a bit more intimate, as opposed to magazine size formats. A cover that makes someone pick a book/comic up is a must. Borders and gutters of pages have to be at least a quarter of an inch! I hate when I have to crack a book's spine to see what got swallowed by the gutter.

All of that said, I guess it comes down to knowing your market and your message. If you want to resemble a certain movement in comics or publishing, you should be able to emulate that. If you want to march to your own drum, you should be able to emulate that.

There's a vast history of book design out there, and I think only a few actually check that out and use that information. I feel like I'm kind of rambling.

Communication! That's the answer!

So, who do you like and look up to in terms of design? I'm going to guess that Chip Kidd is one…

Jeez. Is that a loaded question?

So, are we talking comics or total design? And you know that as soon as I finish this list I'll think of others!

Let's say total.

Chip Kidd is cool. Charles Anderson (CSA) is a huge favorite of mine. I tried to get both of them into Romantic, but they had other irons in other fires. Speaking of Romantic, Brian Flynn of Super7 fame has some big design chops. I did a mini-comic on Lester Beall, so he's one of my favorite old school guys.

Comical-wise, Jacob Covey of Fantagraphics is putting out some simply beautiful work. He needs to win some awards if he hasn't. Chris Ware, natch. Brian Wood does good stuff. Paul Hornschemeier has a good eye. J Chris Campbell knows his way around a t-square. Tom Gauld of Cabanon produces some consitently good work. Jordan Crane is out there. His Non 5 is one of the most interesting publications ever produced. And I'll end with Tom Devlin at Drawn & Quarterly. I guess they've set the standard for what comic publishing and design can and should be. And Tom always made beautiful objects in his Highwater days.

The list could go on and on....

Hell, maybe it should go on and on. It's one of those parts of the publishing side of the industry that I think most fans—including myself—never really give much thought to. But it's such an integral part to getting people to pick up a book. It's like a safety net for marketing, in a way, particularly in terms of cover design.

Does that kind of thing happen to you a lot? I mean, have you noticed if people have a lot of misconceptions about what goes on at the publisher end of things?

Sure. Heck, I had misconceptions to a degree. Until you get knee deep into it, you really won't know all the details. And even then, I'm sure it's not all the details. I think Larry Young did a great job in creating his True Facts book. Unfortunately, I still haven't read it, but I'm sure it's full of all types of information that is useful. Along the way, I've picked up knowledge from Larry, Jeff Mason, Ted Adams and a whole bunch of others that I'm sure I'm forgetting.

Essentially, there are two worlds for us sequential publishers: the direct market and the book market. They both play with different rules and expectations. It can boggle the mind sometimes.

Navigating those can be tough, I'm sure. Have you noticed any kinds of upswing in demand from the book market now that the (again, I'm not sure how to phrase this) the traditional book publishers have started graphic novel lines?

I don't think so. Or at least I'm not aware of it yet. I'm hoping a more direct connection might make a few of our titles make a bounce. For instance, Joel Priddy has the first story in Houghton Mifflin's new Best American Comics anthology. And then Hope Larson has that two-book deal with the Simon & Schuster imprint. So, here's hoping people might make the connection back to some of their earlier work with AdHouse.

But in regards to the book market, I think it currently comes down to the book and its availability. For instance, James Jean’s Process Recess has sold gangbusters through the book market. I have to believe those are Amazon or other online orders. Then again, that book just sells wherever it is.

I wonder if the people buying something like that are buying it as a comics-related thing, or as an art book. I kind of have the same curiosity regarding Pulphope, the upcoming Paul Pope book. (I’m sure you're thinking, "Hey, when's he going to get to our books?" at this point!)

Thanks for having the preview copy on hand for that at MoCCA, by the way--it looks like it's going to be absolutely stunning. How did you go about acquiring that book--was it something Pope had already been working on, or was it something you suggested?

Oh, I have to agree. When I was talking to one retailer at MoCCA about the Recess, he mentioned how a couple will come into his store and the man will go and buy his latest new comics off the rack, and the girl will look around, eventually pick up Recess, and end up purchasing it. So, many purchases of Recess are made by people who don't even know James Jean as a comic cover artist.

In regards to Pope, as you might recall, he did the introduction for Recess, and he was in Superior. What you might not know is that I've been writing Paul for around 15 years or so. Picking up his weird comics and stuff. Well, I guess he liked what AdHouse did with Recess and James, so he threw out the idea of doing his "monograph." So, my impression is that he had been thinking about doing it for a while, and some recent non-comic related projects really got the juices flowing to pull this book together.

With the changing political landscape, and the reaction to the Gordon Lee case and Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's Lost Girls, are you worried at all about the reaction to the erotica content in the book, or do you think the "monograph" nature of the book might limit that kind of reaction?

Well, the book is labeled mature readers, and as you mentioned, it should be consider more of a monograph, and thus only for adults. That said, sure, you have to worry about stuff like that, since every locale will dictate what they find to be pornography. Paul, my wife and I had a rather lengthy discussion on the matter on Monday afternoon in New York City. We weren't really talking about his book, but more about Lost Girls. Anyway, Paul brought up his belief that drawings cannot be considered pornographic. But, I don't want to put words in his mouth or anything, so I'll just leave it at that. My understanding of why he created the erotic section of the book was his trying to decipher what is erotic versus pornographic.

That'll be an interesting thing to read. People debate that kind of thing quite often, and I'd like to see Paul's take on it. You said there will be essays on all sorts of comics-related things. How much of the book is text, would you say?

Maybe a sixth to an eighth? I'm just guessing here, since we're just starting to lay the book out. I just received the discs in the mail, and Paul told me that there were at least five essays on the disc. I seem to recall the subject matter of the essays might be manga, sci-fi, comics, erotica and rock? I've read the manga essay, and I found it very entertaining.

Let's move on to your other big project for the fall, Project: Romantic. What can readers expect from the new anthology?

All types of love wrapped in 4-color goodness. New voices jumping in and showing what they can do. Some familiar faces coming back to finish up their run on the "projects." I'm still juggling the roster of talent for the book, so there will even be some last minute surprises. But all in all, it's a very colorful and exciting book. We have traditional stories, some adventure pages (those type of stories that give you different endings depending on what page you turn to), some top-notch illustrations, and even some of my comical-crap. People seem to dig the Project anthologies, and that makes me happy.

I think part of that may be because in the average consumer's mind, there's more of a reason to buy themed anthologies than non-themed ones. I know that my wife would be more likely to buy a horror anthology than I would because she gravitates towards that type of material, whereas something like Project: Romantic hits a very specific chord with me.

When you put something like Project: Romantic together, what's the editing process like? Are you more critical and hands-on when you're soliciting work to meet a specific theme than when you're buying an independent, finished book, or do you let the artists do their own thing?

I'm pretty open in regards to the restrictions of the theme. Some creators take a very literal view of what romance means to them, and then others use it as an ingredient in creating the comics they want to create. Also, I'm pretty loose with the editing, too. I kind of edit in regards to who I invite to participate in the book. And then along the way, I ask for their story ideas, so I'm not getting something completely out in left field—although that might be a good thing! Then, as the stories come in, I'll read them over and get back to the artists if I think there are some glaring errors or confusion.

Case in point, originally Scott Morse had 28 pages. Granted, that may seem like a lot, but he's doing the one illustration per page type of story (and it is quite beautiful). But, as he got closer to finishing it, he realized that there was a two-page sequence that wasn't really working. After I received the art from him, I went to lay the story out, and since I had already started the book, I was going to put the original 28 pages in there. But after reading the story, and looking at those two pages, I really had to agree with him, those two pages didn't work, so they got axed. So now I either rearrange for a two-page drop-in, or move everything after Scott's story ahead two pages.

Fascinating stuff, no?

Actually, yeah, in a way, it is. The business side of things gets talked about so rarely that even the most dry stuff seems fresh, new and exciting. At least it does to me; we may be boring the snot out of anyone who reads it.

Kind of in the same general territory, how do you decide to group stories? Is there a specific rhythm to story placement?

Oh yeah, there's a method to the madness. I look for a rhythm in tone, page count, style, all those types of things. It gets tricky at times, given things like the adventure strip, or someone sending in an odd-page count, instead of even, but it all seems to be working out. Also, those artists who get me their stories earlier, tend to get placed towards the front of the book.

Too bad you're sharing that now. Didn't you say that this would be the last of the Project series? Why did you decide to end it here?

Three is the magic number. I feel a bit burnt out on the ol' antho-workings (this will be my seventh anthology in the last five years). And, wow, the market seems to be very full of anthologies of late. Today, I just saw a new one that I've never heard of before. I still might do our floppy-antho, called Superior Showcase, when we can fill an issue. At only 32 black-and-white pages, the cost is lower, and easier to manage.

That's not your only superhero-related comic, though. You're also publishing Zack Soto's The Secret Voice. I like the way that while you publish some superhero comics, they don't feel like "hey, we're trying to be Marvel or DC," like other superhero-centered comics in the back half of the Previews catalogue. What do you think AdHouse brings to the superhero table, so to speak, even if you can't actually print those words in the comic?

I don't know if Zack really thinks of The Secret Voice as a superhero comic, though. Or maybe he does. I don't know. I always felt it was more adventure than superhero. Anyway, what AdHouse brings to the superhero niche is allowing these creators to pursue their own voice within the genre. The way I look at it, most of us have either been through the ol' superhero machine at some point of our lives, or not at all. I like mixing those types of creators up. That's why I got Hope Larson to do the cover of Superior Showcase 1. I kind of figured she had never drawn a superhero, and I wanted to see her take on it. It was fantastic!

Speaking of Soto, you've found a few artists through minicomics; Josh Cotter comes to mind, too. At MoCCA, I was amazed by how tight the originals of his skyscrapers of the Midwest pages were. I don't think I've ever seen comics drawn to scale before. What was it about Skyscrapers that made you want to translate it from minicomics to its current form?

Well, it's a damn good comic. He was an accomplished comic creator that, to my knowledge, came out of nowhere. His stuff was just that damn good. If he wanted to keep making the minis, I'd be happy as a clam, but I really wanted to help him spread the word, and get him into as many comic shops as possible. So, while there are a few comic shops that will carry the minis, I thought making a traditional formatted comic was the way to go. But we didn't even do that, since the comic is fifty-plus pages, and printed on tinted paper. But yeah, Josh's originals are crazy. I showed you how he does his cover paintings smaller than what they'll be printed at, right? Crazy…

At this point, though, is that traditional issue format itself still as immutable as it once was? Do you think that differing formats for periodical comics (like Fantagraphics' Ignatz line, the Or Else books) is something we'll see in the future?

I think formats are an interesting answer in part of the equation of creating a book or comic. That said, you really have to step back at times, and not get "format tunnel-vision," not letting the cart lead the horse, so to speak. Content should lead.

If a format is going to be very different or "weird," a publisher should try and convey as much information as possible to the public in the beginning so that they're not surprised. Having been a pre-ordering fanboy at one time, I've been upset at a few comics that have come out that might have been a bit less than what I thought they were going to be.

The future? Sure, I think publishers will still be experimenting with formats. However, you have to keep an eye to the retailer, too. If you make something that isn't retailer friendly, you might be cutting off sales.

How do you maintain "retailer friendliness"? I know you've said in previous interviews that AdHouse has a small penetration into the direct market—or, rather, a smaller percentage in terms of what Marvel and DC get—but the ones who do buy your product seem to like you guys a whole lot. I guess what I'm asking is, what are you doing right (which, I suppose, is nicer than asking "so what is Publisher X doing wrong," or something like that)?

Oh, yeah—the consumer! Sure, I think format is an issue with the consumer. I know it is with me. You always have to wonder where you're going to put that huge book that won't fit on the shelf, or that mini that is the size of a postage stamp. I tend to think the traditional 6x10 standard format is the one that people most relate to, but that shouldn't stop us from pushing the boundaries every now and again.

Retailer friendliness… I imagine it comes down to certain actions that they hold in high regard. Ship your items on time. Don't sell a book before they have a chance to sell it. Give them distribution options. Market a book to the best of your abilities. Offer the right percentage discounts. Create product that consumers will want to purchase. I know that last one is kind of a given, but I have to believe it's an issue, to some degree.

Well, I think that's a good, bare-bones strategy.

So, is there anything else you want to draw attention to before we close this?

Skyscrapers of the Midwest 3 just came out a few weeks ago. If you haven't given Skyscrapers a chance, you can get a taste over at Josh Cotter's site. Also, Debbie Huey's Bumperboy and the Loud, Loud Mountain comes out next month, and you can find Debbie attending the San Diego Comicon, so please stop by and tell her "howdy."

And speaking of shows, AdHouse plans to have a presence at the following shows for the rest of the year: Heroescon, Baltimore Comicon, SPX and the Stumptown Comic Fest. These are some of the best shows run by the best people. If you have the time and money, you should really come out to check out what these shows are doing, and what AdHouse is doing. Otherwise, I guess that's it. That's all I can think of, anyways.

This interview was conducted by Ed Cunard.

Brian Wood

2006-06-07T00:00:00.000-04:00

Brian Wood's career is a decade-long overnight success story. You can find out more about him at his website if you don't already know who he is.

You've suddenly exploded in the last 18 months or so, thanks to the success of Demo and launching a high-profile Vertigo series, DMZ, concurrently with Local. Do you find that your target audience has changed or are you still doing what you've done before, just to a larger audience?

I wish I could say for certain... I wish I could point to hard numbers that prove this is true, but I can't. I can say that more people are buying and reading my books, from DMZ on down to Local and Supermarket. In late 2004 I made a deliberate move to increase my readership, to break out of the comfy little box I had constructed for myself, to work with as many publishers as I could, to get something going at Vertigo, because I really thought I could do better than I was. Demo was a big hit for me and for Becky and AiT, but I wanted to move to the next level. I was pretty sure my work had more mass appeal than I was getting at the time.

I still feel like I'm doing what I've always done, stylistically and thematically, just progressing naturally. There's not a lot of money in comics, but there is a lot of freedom, so I figure that if I'm going to commit to this medium, to this industry, I should stick to my guns and do what I want, on my own terms, as much as possible. Not to be overly dramatic, but when I'm an old man, I'd like to be able to look back on my books on the shelf and feel as proud about it all as possible.

I'm sure DMZ has got me a bunch of new readers. Its monthly orders quickly stabilized at a modest level for a Vertigo title but still double what Local (my next highest selling book) is doing. And with some luck, my next round of projects will build on that success.

This "deliberate move"—what prompted it? Were you just restless with your niche, the whole "near future not-quite-cyberpunk thing?" I remember the first "big" thing I saw you doing after Channel Zero, that whole Counter X/Generation X thing with Ellis back in '98-'99, but then, you know, X-Fans… did that push you back a bit, as it were?

I think I just outgrew the niche, the little box I was in. I did a whole series of projects that were fun, mostly one-dimensional action romps that, while I love them dearly and they sold well for what they were, just weren't going to keep me interested in the long run. I had to move forward, ya know?

Some of the later Gen X issues I did were strangely progressive. I had a chance recently to go back and read the last story arc I wrote solo, the one called "Four Days", which was #71-74, and they were very Demo. Single issue, day-in-the-life stories, each one about how one of the kids spends his or her day off from the academy. The one with Chamber hooking up with a deaf girl was probably the best of the bunch, but all of them, in retrospect, really serve as an indicator of things to come. And it was fun. I introduced bubble tea to the Marvel Universe in #72.

I followed up Gen X with Couscous Express and then The Couriers and Pounded. Fight for Tomorrow came around that time, and I think that was me testing my own boundaries, trying something different. Fight For Tomorrow, despite being a kung fu book, was actually very complex and human and really downbeat, about abuse and lost relationships. I don't think my writing chops were up to the challenge at the time, though.

I don't think Gen X pushed me back at all. Gen X is what got me to be a writer, as opposed to a writer-artist. I'm not sure I would have made that move otherwise. I wrote 13 issues of that book—most of it bad, but it was good training, and working with Warren Ellis and learning how to script from him was invaluable. I was still so oblivious to fandom at that point I don't think I was set back in any way. Still very much learning my way around.

I wasn't referring to the actual content, I was referring to the whole "Working with Big Editorial" mandate, or did Ellis's name and presence help keep you away from writing "Mutant solves problems with punching" stories? Speaking of, Ellis is probably the most obvious touchstone for you, since he works in the medium and all, but what other writers showed you the way?

Well, I think most of my stories did end up in at least a little bit of punching. But being hand-picked by Warren did seem to shield me from a lot of the editorial nonsense that other writers seem to struggle with, thankfully. I don't recall a lot of revisions, or editorial interference. Some of my dialogue was tweaked, though, I remember, to make it sound more "Warren" and less me. But the whole job was really just a diversion. I never seriously wanted to keep writing work for hire books as a regular, ongoing thing.

I think Warren was the only writer that showed me the way. Other people in comics helped me, got me crucial deals, like Heidi MacDonald, Jim Valentino, Larry Young... but Warren was the only person who helped me directly with the craft of writing comics.

Ellis has certainly become quite the teacher and mentor, especially with The Engine. Is that something you've had a good experience with?

I think Warren gets a bad rap. I know when he opened The Engine people accused him of just creating a venue for his supposed massive ego, but he spends as much of his time and energy fostering new talent and helping people out as he spends on his own promotion. It's not just me, it's a lot of people he helps, and I love him for it. Who else in comics does that?

He's been there for me from day one, providing me a cover quote for Channel Zero #2, helping me with my old Delphi forum, writing an intro for Channel Zero, showing me how to self-promote, writing a web comic for me to draw (which never came to fruition), setting me up on Gen X, giving me the Global Frequency cover job, and hyping virtually all my projects on his mailing list and replying to any career-related question I have. He's never asked for anything in return, although I try and return the favor any chance I get.

Speaking of the Global Frequency covers, let's get into the whole design and art aspect. You're big on creating an individual look for your own titles that still follow the modality you've established—you're not afraid of white space, for instance. What process goes on in your mind when you're putting something together? What elements do you think catch a potential reader's eye?

I don't have a very clever answer for that. Basically, I do what looks good to me. I go on instinct. And I try and envision whatever I'm doing as sitting on a bookshelf—not a comic shop shelf, but a real bookstore. I aim for that level of sophistication and clarity. And I find the most crucial skill in cover design is knowing when to stop before it becomes overworked and cluttered beyond repair.

My single issue comics, like Local and Demo and DMZ, are very traditional, very deliberate. Huge bold logo, consistent from month to month and visible from 20 feet. Designed solely for the direct market.

Going into more detail on the direct market, you do material that Larry Young’s called "the true mainstream," but with the big two taking up more and more space with superhero crossovers, do you find yourself ever feeling marginalized?

That's the inherent nuttiness of this industry - anything that's mainstream to the rest of the world is completely dominated by the sub-sub-genre that is superhero fiction. Warren Ellis said famously that walking into a typical comic book shop and gazing at the shelves of capes and spandex is like walking into a Borders and seeing virtually nothing but nurse romance books. Or Civil War-specific historical fiction. Or football hooligan pulp novels. Or anything else that's super, super niche. It's impossible to imagine. But here we are.

I don't think I ever feel marginalized. At times I feel vaguely embarrassed. Often frustrated. But I don't really aspire to be a Wizard Top Ten creator, so most times I never think about it. I'm happy to have my audience and to have publishers willing to spend time on me, so I'll keep doing what I do and slowly increasing my readership. I pay my bills and I have some money left over, so it’s working out for me.

Does the impulse to whip up a story where, I dunno, Thor, beats the crap out of someone or something strike you on occasion now that you’re in a more thoughtful mode?

Of course. Funny you should say Thor because I am working on a pitch for a Viking book. But in the past when that impulse does strike me it tends to result in something like The Couriers or Pounded.

I have the Demo scriptbook, where we see your techniques vary from issue to issue and that you trust the artist quite a bit. What can you tell me about your scripting process for others versus yourself? Do you actually fully-script your own works prior to doing the art or work Marvel-style?

Well, I don't write for myself much at all, so it's a difficult question to answer. On Demo, Becky [Cloonan] and I quickly attained a comfort level with each other so I didn't sweat the scripts so much, and if you look at the Scriptbook, you can see how "Bad Blood", the first one I wrote, has a level of panel direction that virtually none of the others have. I was very nervous going into Demo, not really know what it was going to be like, but after seeing Becky bring that first story to life, I relaxed a lot.

Ryan [Kelly, artist on Local,] is a little different, as he's spent years on Lucifer for Vertigo, so I knew he'd probably be able to make sense of my scripts however I presented them, so I just wrote them as I would write for Becky: relaxed, conversational, giving him control over the direction. No worries whatsoever.

I am getting ready to start writing the script to DMZ #12, the issue where I am my own fill-in artist, so it'll be interesting to see how it goes, writing for myself for the first time in a great many years. DC'll no doubt require a full script out of me, whereas my "script" for Channel Zero was a jumble of notes on pieces of scrap paper. At best.

You craft dialogue that I'd say is certainly strong without being overly flashy or idiosyncratic. Are there any specific models or techniques that you follow with this or do you just type until it "sounds" good?

It's mostly on instinct, but there are a few tricks I use. I sometimes "cast" friends of mine into the roles of the characters. For example, if I think that Zee in DMZ might talk like one of my friends, I'll imagine how that friend would speak the words, and write that down. So a lot of my characters speak with less-than-textbook-perfect grammar, using words like "gonna" and the word "like" too much, as well as talking in run-on sentences, etc. which is how I feel most people speak. I also read all my dialogue aloud to myself afterwards.

I also really study writers like Garth Ennis, who have such a mastery of dialogue.

Ennis's dialogue always manages to capture a character more than the writer himself. Not everyone speaks the same and I see that in your work. Did you take any formal classes in screenwriting or the like?

Nothing at all, just a lot of observation and practice. My first published writing, Channel Zero, was all done as an afterthought, just words I put in to support the art, basically. I didn't consider myself a writer. The next writing job was working with Warren Ellis on Generation X, and that was a great education, because I got to look at his scripts and see how he did it. After that it was all trial and error. Nothing makes you a better writer faster than having books published and subsequently picked apart on the internet!

Back to The Internet. You've got a very forthright homepage design where your product is at the front and center, so it's obvious you've thought of its importance. Do you think that it's improved discourse and discussion among comics fans and creators?

In general, yeah, sure. I actually wasn't at all involved in comics, as a reader or professionally, pre-internet, so I don't have anything to compare it to. But as someone trying to make a career in creator-owned comics, I can't think of a more important tool. That's its primary use as far as I'm concerned.

Outside of comics, you're well-regarded as a graphic designer. You've worked with Rockstar on Manhunt and the GTA series as well as doing covers for some of the AiT books. Have you looked at doing a design book besides the Channel Zero one? I'm not just asking because I'm addicted to design books or anything...

I'd love to do one, but I always tell myself to wait for a few years down the road when I have newer, better, and more work to put into such a book. I'd also like this book to be mostly new material, and that takes time to produce. Time is something I tend to have very little of these days.

And yeah, Rockstar Games. I was miserable there, but it was like design boot camp. Or I should say, design special forces. I was there 3 and a half years and worked on something like fifteen titles, as well as a lot of corporate identity for the parent company, Take-Two Interactive. I designed their annual report one year, of all things (not fun). It was good in some ways, mostly in that I was able on a few occasions to give freelance work to some comic professionals. Jacen Burrows did a lot of illustrations for Oni and GTA: Vice City, one example. After I went freelance, I also did all the print and packaging design for Eidos Interactive's Backyard Wrestling 2 video game. I actually art directed a photo shoot for that with Insane Clown Posse and Sunrise Adams, noted porn star. It's that sort of moment where you step outside yourself and think, "Am I actually doing this right now? Me??"

I've done a lot of covers for AiT books, and was actually on staff at the company for a little under a year. Working with Ryan Yount (ex-production guy for AiT) on some of their books was a lot of fun - we made a good team. My favorite designs were for Bad Mojo, 1000 Steps to World Domination, Tales from Fish Camp, and the covers for Steven Grant's Badlands books. I also fully designed the logo and corporate identity that AiT uses currently.

The video game industry is notorious for chewing people up. Talk about a burnout rate. Who're your favorite designers in or out of comics right now?

I actually don't pay a lot of attention to design, not in the last year or so. I've been focusing almost exclusively on writing, mine and others. But I do have a tendency to buy a lot of Jason Munn's screenprints, which I think are beautifully done.

Thanks so much for your time, Brian. This is where I tell everyone that the first DMZ trade hits shelves this week and you should totally buy it!

This interview was conducted by Kevin Church.

Alex Cox

2006-05-24T08:45:00.000-04:00

In July of 2005, Alex Cox (with his partner, Mary Gibbons) opened Rocketship, a comics bookstore at 208 Smith Street in Brooklyn. Their store has received write ups from the comics press, and from mainstream press periodicals like The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and New York. Cox lives in Brooklyn with his girlfriend and their cats.

Before you had a shop of your own, you worked at another New York City comic book shop. Why did you initially want to work in that side of the comics industry?

I never did. It was a college job, and after working freelance in television for a year or two, I went back to comics retail while I decided what to do with myself. I traveled for a few years, and then came back to New York and, again, went back to selling comics while I figured out my next move. It was never a life goal to open a store. My only life goals have been to see the Pixies live and other useless and meaningless achievements. So I came into comics retailing repeatedly over several years, and it finally stuck.

What prompted you to start your own shop?

A variety of things, mostly involving needing some self-reliance and autonomy in my life. I decided that if I was going to be in a slow, depressing decline until I died, it would be on my own terms. (laughs)

It seems like some of the people who want to start comics shops start by asking fans on message boards for advice. What kind of research went into Rocketship?

Oh heavens. Years and years of working in the largest, busiest market on the East Coast. Knowing the neighborhoods and the demographics of Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. Visiting shops all over the country, comic or otherwise, that might have good and new ideas. Crunching numbers on what exactly we would be carrying, how much volume we would need to move, etc. It was a couple of years in the planning stages before we started building in earnest.

It seems like a lot of people say, "I like comics! I have some ideas! Every other store around here sucks!" and the next thing you know, they're either writing articles on-line in their spare time about how everyone else should run their shops, or heaven forbid, they scratch together some capitol and go feet first into it without any idea what they're doing. "How hard can it be?"

I've been managing comic shops most of my adult life, and I still mostly have no idea what I'm doing.

What ideas came from non-comics stores?

Racking, certain displays, cleanliness. Nothing that I can point to and say "That came from something I saw at Borders!" Just general vibes we got from certain record stores, or indie booksellers.

What kinds of things did you see in comics shops that you liked and wanted to implement? What were some of the things you didn't like?

I would rather not go into the negatives, they get hashed and re-hashed on-line ad nauseum. Anyone with a modem has no doubt seen endless screeds against comic shops and the Direct Market.

I genuinely love comic shops, and visit the local shop whenever I'm visiting a new place. I try and absorb whatever ideas catch my eye and, if not implement them, figure out what works behind the idea and use that initial motivation.

Why did you choose your current location (inside what used to be Johnnie's Bootery)?

Location, location, location. It is close to a train station (pirate gold in NYC), it's on a street with ample foot traffic, it's easy walking distance for my partner and myself, and it's in a great neighborhood, surrounded by great restaurants, bars, and a wide variety of other stores.

It was also pretty well ready to go without us doing any heavy remodeling. The shelves were in, the tile was perfect, slatwall, nice front windows.... it was a ready-made comic shop. The only really heavy work went into the backyard.

You've said that you had to jump in pretty quickly to secure the location you wanted for Rocketship. How did that affect your planning for the store?

It jumpstarted us by six to eight months, which was both good and bad in hindsight. Good because it forced us to play our hand and get moving and get it done and rolling. Bad because a few extra months planning and figuring out some finances is never a bad thing. Although now that we're six months in, I wish we had opened even sooner.

How would you describe the layout of your store for someone who hasn't been in it, and why did you lay it out the way that you did?

The front end is mostly gallery; an empty space facing a large wall that is typically showing comic art of some sort or another. We wanted this right at the front, because it's inviting from the outside. It's a nice, wide, clean space, with interesting things in frames.

The back end is walls of shelves, full of books, categorized by genre and author. There is a waist high shelf of new releases, with the last month's weekly comics below. it runs the two-thirds the length of the store, and on a Wednesday, it is easy for folks to browse and walk by as they pick up their new books.

There is a table in the middle with staff picks and gift books and other things we want on more prominent display, for whatever reason. And that's it. It's a pretty straightforward layout.

Your store has had an aggressive series of signing and release party events. How did you start making the connections you needed to start these things?

We went to MoCCA and started introducing ourselves, and begging people. Often it's just as easy as sending someone an e-mail. After the first event or so, I guess people started realizing that we were actually ready to work our booties off producing a good turnout and a fun event. It helps that we've had a series of top-notch creators willing to participate. If we've had good events, it's a testament to the talent and appeal of the folks that have signed here.

What goes into planning an event, and how long does it typically take?

Oh, golly. Weeks of planning and promotion. If it's also a gallery show, framing and prepping the art is very time-consuming. It's all a ton of work and stress, but ultimately one of the most rewarding parts of the job.

What have been some of the high points of the events you've had?

The Comix Jam with Jessica Abel and Matt Madden was a total blast, but every event is fun in its own way. Any time we have new art on the wall, I'm happy. Seeing Anders Nilsen's original paintings was totally amazing.

Do you have any events for the next couple of months finalized yet?

You bet. We just had the launch party for the Hotwire Comix & Capers (an awesome new anthology from Fantagraphics) on May 19th, and June 9th is a MoCCA Festival launch party, with several big names from L.A. I don't want to spoil the surprise on that one, but it will be huge.

Most of your events focus on the art comix/independent side of the comics publishing industry. What's the reasoning behind that?

Superhero events are pretty well represented here in NYC. It seems like every week one of the larger stores is hosting a Marvel or DC creator-du-jour.

We also have a philosophy that despite the persistent use of "mainstream" to describe Thunderbolts or Nightwing, superhero books actually only represent a slim portion of the potential audience for comics. Someone like Kevin Huizenga is actually far more "mainstream", and his books, will appeal to far more people than your average copy of Exiles. That's not to disparage superhero books, but I've found that superhero-centric events tend to be far more insular and limited, while someone like Michael Kupperman (who has appeared in The Believer and The New Yorker) will attract a crowd with a much wider range of people. In the end, that's why we opened the shop- to get people excited about comics, and by "people", I mean "Everyone in the World". So while having the guy who wrote House of Infinite Megacrossovers might be fun and might attract a lot of fans, we try to keep the appeal broader than just a single genre.

Like you said, there's an increased awareness of comics outside of the direct market. How do you think the increased presence of the Pantheon books and other non-superhero books in mass market affecting the direct market in general, and your store in particular?

What's the saying? "A rising tide lifts all boats"? That's pretty much it. Anything that legitimizes comics-as-literature is okay by me. I think of us as a bookstore that specializes in comics, so anything that raises the profile of bookstore-friendly material is great for us.

That said, though, not all comics are art, or even aspiring to be art. Or are you using "comics-as-literature" more as the medium's viability to consumers as a valid entertainment/artistic format?

Yes. I mean increased awareness, among people who enjoy reading, of comics that offer more than breasts and explosions. Although those can be fun.

For most of my lifetime, comics have been widely seen as a juvenile medium filled with idiotic characters in tights. That hasn't been the case, but that has been the perception. I think we're seeing a slow revolution to a point where comics are seen as a medium for auteurs who want to do stories about growing up as a girl in Iran, or lonely people in Chicago, or French fantasy stories about cats. Whatever the case, I think that slowly more people are associating comics with Chris Ware and Adrian Tomine, as opposed to Wolverine and Sabretooth.

Or Osamu Tezuka? Where do you see manga in the equation of comics today, from both a publishing and retail perspective?

I think that the market for manga will be look very different in five years

How so?

Different. It's already shifting in New York, and I think you can see winds of change in the Bookscan numbers.

It will still be a strong factor, but I think the days of seeing MANGA as a genre will die out, and popular manga will mix in with the rest of the western books, and it will all just be seen as "comics", but with more Japanese material on the racks.

The current bookstore boom is interesting to watch. I observe and pay attention and nod my head slowly. I've been in this business a while, and I've seen backrooms fill with unsold manga. But the good material is evergreen. As always, we will continue to sell interesting comics that have an audience in our market, Japanese or otherwise.

Some retailers and fans have expressed concerns on the viability of independent comics in today’s direct market. What informs your purchases from a publishing standpoint? I mean, what is it that makes you decide to carry or not to carry a new book or slate of books from a publisher?

My partner and I have worked in Comic Shop Land for a long time. We know our market pretty well. It's mostly a guessing game, but not always a hard one. It is mostly a mix of faith and experience. Mouse Guard is a good example. The solicit looked really cool. We do well with sophisticated all-ages books. The publisher has a history of high quality material. So we ordered heavy, and re-ordered heavy. The first issue has outsold the last four issues of X-Men: The End combined. You have to handle each book like a melon at the fruit-stand. Thump it, squeeze it, cut it open. If it's good, go get more.

So, at the time of this interview, you guys have been open for about nine months, give or take. What mistakes have you made along the way, and how have you learned from them?

You know Ed, the entire process of ordering for a comic shop is just a series of mistakes and surprises. You learn as you go, and things can change on a dime. So it's a never-ending learning process. The key is that you never stop learning, or being open to suggestions, new ideas, etc.

What kind of incentives do you do for your store? I know you’re not a fan of the deep discounting thing.

Well, we do this rebate thing, but it's not an incentive as much as a "thanks" to regulars. We don't live or die by subscriptions, they're just a nice service to provide and I don't mind doing it. Typically, the people you hold books for are your solid regulars, and I like to provide a way to thank them, by giving back credit here and there. Brian Hibbs did the math on deep discounting a while back in a "Tilting at Windmills" column, and showed what a bad idea it is. I tend to listen to Hibbs on most matters. If it's math-related, doubly so.

What about the whole "variant cover" issue? What do you think about it, and how do you address it at Rocketship?

Here's the deal. I don't care either way about variant covers. I don't really want to mess with them, so I don't. If they show up, they go out on the shelf with the rest of the books, cover price.

We certainly don't order to get incentive covers, down that path lies madness. If we order enough to get some, we sometimes take them, and have them available (cover price) if anyone wants them. Our customers don't really care either, so the whole thing is a big moot point.

I think if you create the demand by marking them up, making them a special item, and all that stuff, you are feeding a speculator monster that will consume you. The next thing you know, those variants and how much to charge for them, and how many books to order so you get variants... the whole thing takes over your brain and you're suddenly in the middle of the collectors' market. And that's not why we opened our store. I never wanted to be in a position where I had to flip through Overstreet to give somebody a price on something.

We just want to get comics to as many people as possible. Variant covers don't really cross our minds much, and it works out fine that way.

I never really understood the whole speculator thing, myself. Some stores cater pretty well to that set, though, so it's cool that you're going a different direction with things. Do you ever get the "no, really, where are your back issues" types of questions, or anything like that?

Every once in a while, we get the "don't you have a wall with expensive books on it?" I guess this is a standard in most shops. We get some people looking for back issues, but they're often not looking for a specific back issue from 1992 or whatever, they just want to know if we have them. I think it's a safety net for some folks. "If I miss the Hulk one month, there still may be a chance to get it... in the Back Issues!" I know the feeling.

I love stores with extensive back issue collections. We just don't have the room or the inclination.

Space certainly is a concern, especially in areas where retail space comes at a premium. Since you don't have a back issue section, what do you do with the comics that are a few months old?

We leave books out that have some shelf life (All Star Superman, for example, never stops selling, so we will leave out the issues as long as they are available), and as books seem to stagnate, we slowly slip them off to never-never land.

We actually have an incredibly high sell-through after two months or so on most titles, so it's not really an issue. We donate what we have left over to 826NYC (if it's age appropriate) or make grab bags, or other myriad ways of liquidating stock. But it's not a huge deal.

What is 826NYC?

826NYC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6-18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

Ah, great--thanks. That's a pretty cool place to donate things to, and it reminds me--I think it's great that you have a client base that draws from all types of customers, including younger kids. I remember being kind of shocked when, at the Huizenga/Harkham/Nilsen gig a few months back, that there was a younger kid (maybe ten-years-old?) seeking those artists out by name. What kinds of stuff are they gravitating towards in your store?

We do incredibly well with Bone, Tintin, Asterix, Courtney Crumrin... it's a wide mix of material. Recently, a title called Fashion Kitty was our best seller among the younger girls that shop here. A lot of kids love Amazing Joy Buzzards.

Another retailer concern I've heard is things that ship late, or don't ship as solicited. In what ways does this affect your store, and what do you do to counteract it?

Late books are a bummer. Sometimes a book is so good that lateness doesn't affect sales. But books that need to build an audience, and come out rarely if ever, that's a bummer.

It's hard to support books (no matter how much you may like them) that have no promise of being around with any regularity.

As a retailer, what things about the publishing side of comics concern you or cause you grief?

Lack of mainstream advertising, I guess. I dunno. Most publishers are great.

Small publishers tend to expect a lot of retailers. Some guy with a day job starts self-publishing his book, or writing one through Image (or wherever), and suddenly every store is supposed to promote his book for him, order big piles, and make it a success. Robert Scott calls it the "build-it-they-will-come" mentality, and he's very right.

Just because you make a comic, it does not mean that retailers suddenly are obligated to stock it deep and promote it heavily—especially if there's no promise that it will be a) good or b) shipping on time, if ever.

This interview was conducted by Ed Cunard.

Douglas Wolk

2006-05-17T23:08:00.000-04:00

Douglas Wolk writes about comics and pop music for Salon, Blender, The Believer, The Washington Post and elsewhere, and blogs about the DC Comics series 52 at 52 Pickup and other subjects at lacunae.com. His book Reading Comics will be published by Da Capo in 2007. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Is there an audience for comic book criticism outside of those already a part of this culture?

This is a really huge question, and it's a question I'm tussling with as I'm writing the book I'm working on. Part of the problem, actually, is built into the question: What's "this culture"? If you asked, say, if there was an audience for film criticism outside of those already a part of this culture, the answer would be "what, outside of Western culture?"

But a lot of the people who read comics think of comics as a culture—or as a subculture; something with its own private codes that mark its members as belonging, and everybody else as not belonging. (This is why people who don't read a lot of comics and walk into a comic book store are terrified, and rightly so: Everything about most comics stores says "you mean you don't know?") This is a stupid and destructive mindset for any number of reasons, the biggest one being that if you agree with it, you have to buy into a whole subculture, or at least come up with a reason that you're not really buying into the subculture, to enjoy a comic book. (There was a pretty amazing review of, I think, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis in The Nation a while back, in which the reviewer painstakingly explained that she had no interest in comic books, but had liked Persepolis, which wasn't really a comic book, it just looked like one…)

I'm a fiend for good writing of any kind, and I read lots of criticism of things I don't have very much interest in, just because I find the criticism itself interesting; sometimes it makes me interested in the things the critic is writing about. The critics I admire most are probably Pauline Kael and Susan Sontag, and to some extent Alex Ross, Robert Christgau and Greil Marcus. I'll read them on anything. (Kael's especially interesting to me because she's always trying to pick a fight—not a nasty fight, but a "come on, really think about this" fight.)

The trick to writing comics criticism meant for an audience beyond the cult, I think—and, really, if the criticism is good enough and is in any kind of a general-interest venue, the audience will come—is subtle exposition: I try to write for a general audience, and give them everything they need to know, without making it look like I'm explaining something esoteric. In a lot of ways, the long comics reviews I write are just book reviews; I figure out a hook or some kind of engaging way of addressing the subject, I assess the thing in question, and I don't make a big deal out of the fact that it's a comic, any more than Kael would hem and haw over the fact that what she was reviewing was a motion picture.

At the same time, it's very hard for me to write decent general-audience criticism about a lot of Marvel/DC comics, because the "comics-as-culture" mentality is thoroughly baked into them. Infinite Crisis and House of M and Marvel Zombies and "One Year Later" and a whole lot of other mainstream comics I could name have meaning only within the comics subculture—their entire dramatic impact is based on their deviation from the familiar scenarios involving their characters, and if those scenarios (or even characters: Sue Dibny!) aren't familiar to my readers, there's no way to get them to care one way or the other about that deviation.

(The litmus test for this is the question: what is this comic about? The Bendis/Maleev run on Daredevil was mostly about a well-intentioned lie that gradually turns toxic, and to a lesser extent about surveillance and information-flow and the distance between the law and reality. Easy enough to write a general-audience piece on it. Infinite Crisis is about the relationship between Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, and the darkening tone of the last 20 years' worth of mainstream comics; that's not, y'know, a universal theme.)

Then why hasn’t a self-supporting culture of criticism ever developed from within this culture (however you define it)? We’ve got a Comics Journal, but why haven’t there been more magazines, or even just individual writers, devoted to establishing and extending a cohesive point of view? Where are our Kaels or Christgaus?

One word: money. American comics are just barely a mass medium, by any other mass medium's standards; it's not financially feasible to publish more critical magazines than there already are, I suspect, and writing for The Comics Journal (or Comic Art) isn't going to be a living for anyone. The last time a new medium developed a serious criticism, it was movies via Cahiers du Cinema—and people who go to movies greatly outnumber people who read comics.

Another reason is that, until relatively recently, there hasn't been a lot of comics work published in America that could stand up to any kind of critical examination. That's partly because there really weren't a lot of comics—in 1983, when I started working in a comic book store, the weekly releases were usually seven or eight titles apiece from DC and Marvel, and maybe one or two indies. Books meant to stay in print? Two or three a year, maybe. Art-comics? Oh, you mean like undergrounds? Sure, we carry the Freak Brothers stuff, under the counter, and a few times a year there's a new issue of Raw… even five years ago, I don't think I'd have been able to do a monthly column for Salon about comics, because there simply wouldn't have been a book a month I could write about for a general audience. Now, it's no problem. I just got asked by an editor if I thought there were any interesting graphic novels in the next few months, and rattled off a list of books by Hope Larson, Renee French, Gary Panter, Joann Sfar, Eddie Campbell, Alison Bechdel, Rick Veitch, Anders Nilsen, Moore & Gebbie, Colleen Coover, Bendis & Maleev, Bendis & Gaydos, Englehart & Rogers, Megan Kelso, Ron Rege Jr., Seven Soldiers, blah blah blah.

Which means that now it's possible, in a way it hasn't been before, for Kaels and Christgaus of comics to appear. I hope so, anyway.

If we’re now spoiled for choice in terms of what we’re talking about when we talk about comics, is it worth thinking about how we’re talking about it? Does comics criticism do itself a disservice by co-opting the vocabulary of, say, film (how the “camera” moves, the composition of shots, illustrators’ “acting”), or is that the nature of the beast?

It's a problem, absolutely—using the language of film suggests that comics are somehow subordinate to film as a discipline: a movie that doesn't move. (Ditto for using lit-crit terms.) I think "composition" is a perfectly fair term to use—it's used for all of the visual arts. "Shots," though—maybe not. For "camera" you can say "perspective" or something similar... It's something worth paying attention to, anyway. On the other hand, borrowed language is, as Hedwig said to Tommy Gnosis, what we've got to work with: It's sometimes a fair trade-off for clarity. It's probably more important to pay attention to, say, the arrangement of panels on a page than to be too nitpicky about not using language from other kinds of criticism. The occasional "mise-en-scène" is a good thing.

Is there a difference between criticism and review?

To my mind, yeah, but they overlap a lot. As far as I'm concerned, reviews are useful to people who want to know whether or not they should spend their limited resources (of money or time or whatever) to experience something; criticism is (ideally) useful to people who've already experienced the thing at hand, or who are generally interested in its medium or meaning or cultural context. Note that r. and c. are not mutually exclusive. Things that are more review-like are often shorter than things that are more criticism-like, though.

What are the criteria for what gets covered in the Salon column? Who decides, and how?

Around the middle of the month, I write to my editor and say, "Hey, we should think about the next column, shouldn't we? How about thus-and-such a topic? What's my deadline?" So far, that's been the procedure. The idea of the column is that it's generally about the art-comics side of things, but I try to vary what I cover: so far it's been (in order) Steve Ditko, Promethea, Finder, Acme Novelty Library, The Quitter, Black Hole, Little Nemo, Daredevil, Ghost of Hoppers, the Belle & Sebastian anthology, Grey Horses, and the state of the superhero. A pretty broad range, I think.

In terms of what’s going on creatively, what do these books have in common, if anything? What is it that you’re responding to, both/either as a critic and/or, simply, as a reader?

They don't really have much of anything in common, aside from their medium and the fact that I had something to say about them, although the ones I like to write about most all have a very strong aesthetic, a specific look-and-feel, to the point where a sliver of a panel or a couple of randomly selected lines of dialogue would be enough to tell who they were by. (A lot of comics I don't like still have a strong aesthetic, but I can't think of many comics without one that I do like...) I guess one thing I tend to respond to is comics that have something entertaining going on at the surface level, but also lots of stuff happening in a deeper, more resonant way. On the other hand, something like Little Nemo is almost all surface, but what a surface!

Obviously, a big part of being a writer is being a reader, so I wanted to ask about what you’re reading, first with regards to criticism. You mentioned above some of those critics you’ve enjoyed. Why them? What is it in their writing (or in others’) that you enjoy as a reader of critical analysis?

The criticism I like best tends to have two particular virtues. It's really good writing on its own (clear, elegant, witty, enjoyable on its own merits even if I don't care about the thing it's ostensibly about), and it's got insight into its subject—I come away from it understanding its subject more than I would have otherwise, even if I've already seen/read/heard its subject. Also, very often, it has some kind of specific idea or argument about its subject. Of the people I've mentioned above, Sontag and (at his best) Christgau are magnificently precise with their language—Christgau's Consumer Guide to albums of the '70s has some of the tightest critical writing I've ever seen, and it's really funny, too. (It had a big effect on me when I first encountered it at the age of 19 or so.) Marcus's specialty is the unexpected perspective, the way of looking at something that nobody's figured out before. Kael, like I said, is a great arguer, and Ross is just a great explainer—when he writes about classical music, which is almost as insular a world as comics, he somehow makes the reader feel casually familiar with it, and when he writes about pop, he's very precise and very unjaded about it.

What’s on your pull list now?

I don't really have a "pull list," since I get promotional copies of some stuff and buy other things at a bunch of different stores, but if I did have one—a list of floppies I'd buy without flipping through them first—it'd probably be something like… DC: Seven Soldiers (all), All Star Superman, Infinite Crisis, (Supergirl and the) Legion of Super-Heroes, Birds of Prey, 52, The Spirit (jumping the gun a little here), Superman/Action Comics (for the Busiek storyline, anyhow), Catwoman, Villains United/Secret Six, Y: The Last Man, Lucifer, Ex Machina. Marvel: Daredevil, New Avengers, Civil War (I'm curious to see the beginning, anyway), Ultimates 2, The Pulse (R.I.P.). Others: Love & Rockets (and anything else the Hernandez brothers do), Following Cerebus (sigh), Big Questions, The Acme Novelty Library (okay, not "floppies" any more), Queen & Country, Or Else, Ganges, Babel, Ed the Happy Clown, Tales Designed To Thrizzle, Uncle Scrooge when it's got Don Rosa stories in it, Finder (well, if it's going to be coming out once a year now…), Age of Bronze.

Now, there's also the graphic novel list…

Feel free.

Recently read: Showcase Presents House of Mystery, Brian Fies's Mom's Cancer, Renee French's The Ticking, Mome 3, Alison Bechdel's Fun Home (I am raving to everyone about how good this is, so I might as well rave here too), Anders Nilsen's Monologues for the Coming Plague, Eddie Campbell's Fate of the Artist, Joann Sfar's A.L.I.E.E.E.N. Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie's Lost Girls.

Looking forward to: Gilbert Hernandez's Luba: The Book of Ofelia, Gary Panter's Jimbo's Inferno, Neil Kleid & Jake Allen's Brownsville, Joann Sfar's Vampire Loves, Rick Veitch's Can't Get No, Ex Machina: Fact v. Fiction, Batman: Dark Detective, The Spirit Archives vol. 18, Andi Watson's Little Star, Ron Rege, Jr.'s The Awake Field, Megan Kelso's Squirrel Mother, Gabrielle Bell's Collected Lucky, Gotham Central: Unresolved Targets.

…and of course the Frank King and Charles Schulz and George Herriman reprint books.

Going back to your “pull list”, a bunch of stuff comes to mind (that I’ll now ill-advisedly try to compress into one question). You spoke earlier about tending to respond to well-defined individual aesthetic. I’d say that that’s something most of the books you’ve named—the ones I’m familiar with, anyway—certainly have. But you’ve named quite a few books from the Big Two heavily enmeshed in their respective crossovers. Shouldn’t a creatively individual point of view be mutually exclusive with the type of editorial-driven world-building that’s currently going on? How is it possible that something like, say, Infinite Crisis is both a summary of the last twenty years’ worth of DC publications and very much Geoff Johns’s baby?

Well, I do like big crossovers, especially if they involve a lot of creators taking on the same idea—if they're good. (I thought House of M was really promising, and didn't live up to a lot of that promise.) I mean, generally I do gravitate more toward stuff by auteurs, but that's not how Arrested Development or Six Feet Under or The Simpsons are made, and I love those too. Infinite Crisis I have a real love-hate relationship with, and probably more hate than love, but I do like the way it's pulling out ALL the stops. 52 just sounds like a hell of a lot of fun, and what convinced me about it was seeing (at WonderCon) how excited everyone involved with it seems to be.

I've seen some creators talk about feeling frustrated by having to work within arbitrary editorial mandates that come down every few months and derail whatever big storylines they're working on, and I totally understand that. On the other hand, a lot of the best mainstream creators seem to be the ones who can take an editorial mandate and spin it into something that's very much their own thing. I thought the Gotham Central crossover with Infinite Crisis was one of the best issues of the series, for instance, and I really like how New Avengers plays off whatever else is going on in Marvel continuity. And Seven Soldiers: Zatanna riffs off the whole Crisis/mindwiping business in a way that enriches the story if you know about it and is basically invisible if you don't know about it.

And speaking of Seven Soldiers: I know you’re planning on taking a look at the series for the mainstream media. How do you plan to approach the piece? Without yet being able to look at the series as a whole, what stands out about this series as being worthwhile discussion points for that audience?

What I think is interesting about 7S for a lit-mag audience is that it's formally incredibly complicated, in a way that you usually only see in densely packed prose fiction or some kinds of poetry—it's a very rich source of subtext, it keeps a whole lot of narrative balls in the air at once, its language is precise, there's plenty to say about it in terms of interpretation (I'm reading its main idea as something like "how can something that's been stuck in childhood for a very long time grow up without succumbing to despair?"), it's loaded with resonant details, it thematically critiques a lot of the problems of its genre—but it's also unbelievably fun and entertaining, page-for-page, as a piece of escapist fiction. (And it's no coincidence that one of its big themes is escape: Mister Miracle's raison d'etre and the "life trap," Zatanna's attempted escape from her 2-D context, Klarion's from Croatoan, the "breakouts" on the covers of the fourth issues, etc.) In some ways, it reminds me a little of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, one of my favorite books—Wallace figured out that if you're going to be writing a huge, complicated novel about addiction and entertainment, it had damn well better be a page-turner. 7S also does a cool thing vis-a-vis the auteurism problem you mention above (which Morrison also did in The Invisibles): it's set up so that it's supposed to have a lot of different visual perspectives & no visual consistency overall—even the 3-artists-in-4-issues thing with Mister Miracle worked just fine in the context of the story.

One more, this one re: The Pulse. How 'bout that Jessica Jones?

She really is awesome. Somebody was asking recently if there'd been any first-rate super-type characters created since the Endless, who are pushing it anyway, and I think Jessica qualifies. She's a character type I can't believe didn't show up at Marvel in the '60s: the hero who's self-loathing to the point where she can't even grasp her own heroism a lot of the time. (She's actually kind of the inverse of Arsenal the way Devin Grayson wrote him, as someone who genuinely means well and will work overtime to make things right, but makes one horrible missing-the-forest-for-the-trees error in judgment after another.) I also love the fact that after all this time, we still don't know what Jessica's powers are, and it doesn't matter.

Finally, what’s going on with the book?

It's going. Pretty much the same problem I faced with my previous book, Live at the Apollo: lots of research, lots of inchoate notes, not as much neat and clean prose as I'd like at this stage. But I never write anything start-to-finish anyway. Parts have turned out to be incredibly easy, things that have just been waiting for ages in my head to be spilled out, but some days I feel like the words are coming at Swamp Thing speed. Or Black Bolt speed.

This interview was conducted by Chris Tamarri.

Interviews

2006-04-03T23:17:00.000-04:00

Alex Cox
(24 May 2006)

Danica Novgorodoff
(19 July 2006)

Chris Pitzer
(21 June 2006)

Douglas Wolk
(17 May 2006)

Brian Wood
(7 June 2006)

Contributors

2006-04-03T23:13:00.000-04:00

Kevin Church

Ed Cunard

Chris Tamarri

What is Graphic Language?

2006-04-03T23:09:00.000-04:00

"Graphic Language" is a blog dedicated to interviews on the subject of comics. It was founded in May of 2006 by Kevin Church, Ed Cunard, and Chris Tamarri.

The topic is a broad one, so the site's content will try to reflect that. Other than the focus and the format, the interviews will have few restrictions. The participants will vary greatly, as will the specific focus of any individual discussion.

Anyone who wants to contribute is encouraged to do so, and should send an email here.