Jessica Abel
"It's a mystery to me why comics have been so despised for so long." Cartoonist and writer Jessica Abel, the author of La Perdida, talks about her influences, her style and why comics get no respect. | Go »
Daniel Clowes
"Surely comics requires more effort on the part of the reader than movies or television." Daniel Clowes, the author of Ghost World, discusses what it's like to adapt his comics to the movie screen, and what happens to his characters after he closes the comic book. | Go »
Phoebe Gloeckner
"I essentially spent two years locked in my garage, hidden from the world, and living the interior life of a teenage girl." Phoebe Gloeckner, author of Diary of a Teenage Girl, talks about the genius of Hergé and about her own work. | Go »
Jason Lutes
"Hergé has been perhaps the greatest single visual influence on my own work, but my approach to making comics is quite different." Jason Lutes, author of Berlin, talks about reading The Adventures of Tintin as a kid. | Go »
Seth
"If I was talking to a young cartoonist I would certainly tell him/her not to worry about style. It will take care of itself." Comic artist Seth talks about how he developed his unique visual style. | 
Chris Ware
"Tintin was fundamentally too sexless to really catch on in America." Chris Ware, author of Jimmy Corrigan — The Smartest Kid on Earth, talks about why Tintin is antithetical to the American character. | 
POV: Hergé is famous for the ligne claire ("clear line") style he employed when drawing the iconic characters of Tintin, a style that contrasts with the unusually realistic landscapes and backgrounds of the worlds Tintin visits and inhabits. As Scott McCloud pointed out in Understanding Comics, this contrast gives the effect of allowing the reader to "mask themselves in a character and safely enter a stimulating world." "One set of line," he writes, "allows readers to see; the other to be."
In Diary of a Teenage Girl, when Minnie visits a comic book publisher in San Francisco, the publisher tells her if she wants to draw comics, she has to learn to draw fire hydrants, cars, animals, everything. Your style has evolved over the years: you can see its transformation in A Child's Life, which collects comics of yours published in places like Weirdo, Twisted Sisters, Wimmin's Comix. Describe your illustrative strategy or style as you see it. How did you arrive at it — did you struggle to find it? How did your study and work in medical illustration factor in?
Seth: Style is a funny word — we all think we know what it means because we look at a cartoonist's work and we see the evidence of it there. It is right on the surface. However, the funny thing about style is that it is a misleading concept. Many young artists (myself included when I was younger) have the mistaken idea that you pick a style and draw in that style. Some people manage to do it this way. However, in my own experience it seems more likely that the style picks you. It is something that grows out of a series of choices when you are learning to cartoon. If, for example, you decide to simplify the drawings down to their most basic shapes (to aid in clear storytelling), then those choices in simplification decide your style. Perhaps you chose circles for heads and blank backgrounds — there is your style. Maybe you preferred a more atmospheric approach and you used a lot of crosshatching to define your figures — another style. Ultimately, a million choices are made in trying to figure out how to tell a comic story and these little choices (e.g., How do I draw a nose simply?) add up to a style.
This is the process that evolved my style. I certainly didn't realize it at the time, but the way I draw now is the result of thousands of such choices over the years. When I was in my early twenties I didn't really have a clear drawing style and I was worried about acquiring one. I drew one strip in an Edward Gorey style and another in a clean line approach. I didn't know what I was doing. A few years later I was surprised to discover that I had developed some sort of style of my own by simply trying to learn to draw a comic book. It happened while I wasn't paying attention. If I was talking to a young cartoonist I would certainly tell him/her not to worry about style. It will take care of itself. Instead pay attention to the details of your craft.
On the matter of "masking" — I'm not so sure I accept that idea. I don't think I experience this effect when I'm reading a comic myself. I simply enter into the reality of it in the same way I would a prose novel. I don't need an iconic representation in a novel to enter into the world of the story. I merely need to decode the words and have them unfold in my mind into pictures. I believe a comic does exactly the same thing, except with the comic book you must decode both the words and the pictures and combine them in your mind into a single unit. I believe this is why Hergé's clear line approach is so effective. The drawings are really a series of simplified picture symbols that are as easy for your reading brain to decode as the words are. They are remarkably clear. He is never deliberately trying to create any ambiguity in the drawings. If you had to pause to figure out the drawings in a Tintin comic, I would be surprised. Hergé has done a masterful job at making the storytelling clear. This straightforward approach to storytelling is exactly what I am aiming at myself in my own work and Hergé was a large influence on my thinking back when I was young and trying to figure out how to tell a story.
POV: Among your most well-known characters are traveling salesmen and comic book collectors. How do you feel about your recurring characters? How real do they become to you as you work and live with
them over the years? Do you imagine them having a life independent of the comic?
Chris Ware
Copyright ©2006 C. Ware
POV: The ligne claire ("clear line") style Hergé employed when drawing the iconic characters of Tintin contrasts with the unusually realistic landscapes and backgrounds of the worlds Tintin visits and inhabits. As Scott McCloud pointed out in his Understanding Comics, this contrast gives the effect of allowing the comic reader to "mask themselves in a character and safely enter a stimulating world." "One set of line," he writes, "allows readers to see; the other to be."
Your own work is graphically striking, the layout meticulously rendered, incorporating elements like toy cutouts. Describe your illustrative strategy or style as you see it. How did you arrive at it? How do you feel it's been most effective? Did you struggle to find it or did it come naturally? When has it not worked for you?
Introduction
"It's a mystery to me why comics have been so despised for so long." Cartoonist and writer Jessica Abel, the author of La Perdida, talks about her influences, her style and why comics get no respect. | Go »
"Surely comics requires more effort on the part of the reader than movies or television." Daniel Clowes, the author of Ghost World, discusses what it's like to adapt his comics to the movie screen, and what happens to his characters after he closes the comic book. | Go »
"I essentially spent two years locked in my garage, hidden from the world, and living the interior life of a teenage girl." Phoebe Gloeckner, author of Diary of a Teenage Girl, talks about the genius of Hergé and about her own work. | Go »
"Hergé has been perhaps the greatest single visual influence on my own work, but my approach to making comics is quite different." Jason Lutes, author of Berlin, talks about reading The Adventures of Tintin as a kid. | Go »
"If I was talking to a young cartoonist I would certainly tell him/her not to worry about style. It will take care of itself." Comic artist Seth talks about how he developed his unique visual style. | Go »
"Tintin was fundamentally too sexless to really catch on in America." Chris Ware, author of Jimmy Corrigan -- The Smartest Kid on Earth, talks about why Tintin is antithetical to the American character. | Go »
Jessica Abel
Jessica Abel: The epigraph was a bit of a last-minute decision, but now that I chose it, it feels exactly right.
"¿Le gusta este jardín
que es suyo?
¡Evite que sus hijos lo destruyan!"
I loved Under the Volcano, which I read while living in Mexico, and the flashback structure of La Perdida is inspired by that book. In Lowry's book, we know that something terrible happened to the Consul from the first chapter, and we spend the rest of the book finding out what and why. I was attracted to that structure, to the idea that you can tell readers what's coming, and they will still be lulled into a sense of comfort and security with a character in a work. When the predicted horrible events do occur, readers still feel all the shock of them, and even forget that they were warned.
The epigraph is a sign in a park in Cuernavaca that the Consul sees repeatedly, and translates in various ways, always misunderstanding the sign's meaning -- his Spanish isn't up to par. The true meaning of the sign: "Do you like this park, which is yours? Make sure your children don't destroy it!" seems a perfect veiled warning to Carla if only she could understand it, which in turn seems a perfect metaphor for the book as a whole.
POV: The ligne claire ("clear line") style Hergé employed when drawing the iconic characters of Tintin contrasts with the unusually realistic landscapes and backgrounds of the worlds Tintin visits and inhabits. As Scott McCloud pointed out in his book Understanding Comics, this contrast gives the effect of allowing the comic reader to "mask themselves in a character and safely enter a stimulating world." "One set of line," he writes, "allows readers to see; the other to be."
Describe your own illustrative strategy or style. How did you arrive at it? How do you feel it's been most effective? Did you struggle to find it? When does it not work?
Jessica: I'm not sure I really buy Scott's theory, but if "masking" (Scott's term) ever works, it's with Tintin. The world he occupies is incredibly rich.
In my earlier short stories (in Artbabe, now reprinted in Soundtrack and Mirror, Window), I was deeply interested in getting it right -- all the details. But after a number of years of getting better at that technique, I hit a wall. Among other things, I realized that, when you draw in such a tight, controlled style, you open yourself up to (in my case, my own) criticism that things aren't quite right. If room is drawn so carefully, when a detail is wrong or missing, it's wrong or missing. The reader's imagination doesn't add the detail in [because there are already so many other details]. The reader is restricted to seeing the elements that are right there in front of him/her.
Then, of course, there's the time issue. Those pages took me forever, and gave me major hand/arm pain.
So when I was living in Mexico, I started reassessing my drawing style, and plunged into a period of doing exercises and research to develop a new way to draw. The result was a style that implies more than it shows, and so, ironically, feels more "true" to the scene I want to draw than a style that is more specific. It seems to me that the reader's imagination is able to fill in the gaps more effectively than I ever could. Plus it's a lot faster and more fun to do. Of course, I preserved my interest in facial and body gesture in this style as well, it's just a bit more fluid.
POV:How do you feel about your recurring characters? How real do they become to you as you work and live with them over the years? Do you imagine them having a life independent of the comic?
Jessica: I don't use recurring characters. I do get very interested my characters while I'm working with them, and I find the process of fitting them into a story, and allowing them to create the story around themselves, fascinating. But no, I don't imagine they have a life outside of what I make for them.
POV: Describe your working process. Do you work daily? When you begin a comic, do you start with image, or with text? What are the raw materials of a story? Do you always know what is going to happen, or does the story take turns that surprise you?
Jessica: I work daily, but not always on comics. I'm doing quite a bit of writing now, and I teach as well.
When I'm working on comics, I have to give myself a million deadlines, or I'd never get anything done. Comics are just so hard to make -- I find it very difficult to motivate myself.
I start with plot and character, thinking about those elements and working with them for quite a while before I get to the actual writing. I have the story arc and the main plot points worked out before I write. Then I usually just start at the beginning and work straight through, writing dialogue first, then thumbnailing (i.e. making sketch versions of the pages), penciling and inking.
I can certainly be surprised by turns a story takes, but usually not once I'm actually in the writing/drawing stage. In the plotting stage, anything can happen. That's why I try to finish that part before I start writing. I may be exaggerating here -- I'm sure there are times when I think of something part-way through that changes the story, but the ultimate outcome doesn't change. Or not yet. It could always happen.
POV: Marshall McLuhan, author of the 1967 book The Medium Is the Massage, wrote about the differences between what he called "hot" media versus "cool" media. Hot media, like movies and radio, he said, were dense with data and therefore demanded only a passive audience, whereas "cool" media, lo-fi and utilizing iconic forms, required active, involved audience participation. His examples of "cool" media are television and comics. Do you agree with McLuhan's assessment?
Jessica: I don't think comics use iconic forms -- or they don't have to. But that makes them even more "cool," if I understand the idea. One has to be quite involved to make comics work. Signals have to be decoded on both the verbal and visual level, simultaneously, and, to refer back to Scott McCloud again, his "closure" theory states that the reader must do a lot of cognitive work between panels as well. Comics definitely need an engaged reader.
POV: What were some of the first comics you read? How do you think they found their way into your work, consciously or perhaps unintentionally? Who are some of your other influences, in comics and in other forms, such as art, literature and pop culture?
Jessica: I had a collection of Wonder Woman comics from the 1940s that my stepmother had given me. The collection was a Ms. Magazine publication from the early 70s, with several essays, sort of revisionist-history approaches to women in comics. It also had an introduction by Gloria Steinem. I don't really think it's had a lot of influence on me, however. I still like it, though.
Love and Rockets, and in particular, Jaime Hernandez's work, has had a profound influence on my work, and other cartoonists who had an impact on me early in my artistic life are Gary Panter, Jose Muñoz, David Mazzucchelli, Julie Doucet, Milt Caniff and Blutch.
I love novels, but I really have no idea if any writers influenced me -- probably I'm a mash-up of all of them. Jane Austen plus Günter Grass plus Cormac McCarthy.
POV:Although some have approached its widespread popularity, there is no exact parallel to Tintin in American comics. Why do you think this is so? What in American comics comes closest to Tintin and approximating the cult of Tintin? In other media?
Jessica: I don't know -- maybe because we had so many kids comics at the time, the interest in any one was dispersed?
Superman, Disney and Peanuts are probably our closest analogues in terms of cultural saturation. Content-wise, Tintin is more along the lines of Terry and the Pirates. But unfortunately that was a newspaper strip and didn't have a life beyond that medium.
POV: Graphic novels and comics have become popular even among mainstream audiences right now, especially with movie adaptations of non-superhero comics like V for Vendetta, Sin City, American Splendor, Ghost World, A History of Violence and, just out at the time of this interview, Art School Confidential. In the United States, graphic novel sales have more than tripled to $245 million in recent years. Yet bookstores still often have a hard time deciding where to shelve them: some finally have been given their own section, but often you have to look in Humor. Nearly every review or article written about them still includes a definition of the genre, as if a reader would have no preconceived idea of what a comic or graphic novel is, implying that the form is largely misunderstood. Why do you think it's taken so long for comics and graphic novels to become as popular as they are now? Why do you think this implied need to define comics still exists? Do you have your own definition?
Jessica: It's a mystery to me why comics have been so despised for so long. Obviously, it has to do with the history of the medium -- arising out of cheaply-reprinted booklets of newspaper strips, just out to make a quick buck, followed by mostly-crappy original work. It took a while for really talented artists to move into the comic-book world from the newspapers. Then Wertham's witchhunt [Dr. Fredric Wertham was a psychologist who promoted the idea that comic books were bad for kids in the 1940s] did a lot of damage, and he certainly helped to define comics as specifically for children, and brain-rotting to boot. But it really is strange that even TV commercials got respect before comics did. I have never been able to figure it out.
And why does the need to explain comics still exist? Because that prejudice still exists. It's fading, but it's still very strong. It's important to keep pushing the boundaries of what people know comics to be so that they are receptive to the whole world of comics, not just one or two genres of work.
POV: How is cartooning different for you than working in other genres, as a creative process?
Jessica: It's completely different from other media: it is closely related to film and prose, other narrative forms, but the skills needed to realize a story are very different, and include not only drawing and writing dialogue and narration, but graphic design and the ability to depict time passing visually. It's a whole suite of skills that has to go into making a comics page, skills that are quite distinct from those that go into writing a page of prose, or making a film.
POV: Hergé underwent a period of despair and anxiety during which he suffered recurring nightmares filled with whiteness -- certainly iconic dreams for a cartoonist! Eventually, after psychoanalysis, he emerged with a new direction: Tintin in Tibet, with its stark alpine landscapes and minimalist cast and story, was a major departure for Hergé. Do you have periods when you lose faith in your work? How have you handled them? What do you feel is your greatest creative or artistic accomplishment?
Jessica: I haven't really lost faith in my work (other than for quite short periods when the work is harder than usual), but I have hit points where I want to quit because it's just too hard, too demanding an art form. Basically, there's nothing to be done about that but to keep going (if you're in the middle of something), or stop for a while and do other things while you wait for your motivation to return.
POV: How does politics influence or impact your work in comics (or not)? Has it had a lesser or greater effect over the years?
Jessica: The influence is organic -- i.e., my political ideas come out in the context of characters' behavior, not overtly.
POV: What are you working on now?
Jessica: I'm working on a textbook about making comics in collaboration with my husband, cartoonist Matt Madden, I'm overseeing the art on a comics script that I wrote with Gabe Soria, and I'm working on a novel for teenagers, which will be illustrated, but it's not a comic.
Rebecca Bengal conducted this interview via email for POV
Related Links:
Jessica Abel
The artist's personal website.
NPR: Summer's Most Magical Form of Transport: Books
NPR's book reviewer Alan Cheuse placed Jessica Abel's graphic novel La Perdida (Pantheon, 2006) on All Things Considered's 2006 summer reading list. View excerpts from the novel.
Daniel Clowes
Describe your own illustrative strategy or style. How did you arrive at it? How do you feel it's been most effective? Did you struggle to find it? When does it not work?
Daniel Clowes: I try to employ a different strategy for each story. Often, I'll have a specific look in mind before I even have the story to go with it. I'm not so much interested in forcing the issue of reader identification through various graphic tricks. I'm more interested in creating specific characters that resonate with my own particular inner struggles.
POV: Having read your comics for years, I find myself in situations where I feel like I'm "in a Daniel Clowes comic," which is a huge testament to your ability to draw out character in particular. Your characters are so iconic, they blur the lines between what are in fact real-life universal characters (the middle-aged mom art student, for example) and what has become known as a "Daniel Clowes" character, which is your heightened rendering of them. There's say, the guy in Art School Confidential who shows up on move-in day storing his drug paraphernalia in a guitar case; there are the "Satanists" lunching in the diner, the obsessive nostalgic collector in Ghost World. How do you feel about your recurring characters? How real do they become to you as you work and live with them over the years? Do you imagine them having a life independent of the comic?
POV: Describe your working process. Do you work daily? When you begin a comic, do you start with image, or with text? What are the raw materials of a story? Do you always know what is going to happen, or does the story take turns that surprise you?
Daniel: It usually begins with a character and a situation, though, as I say, sometimes I envision the style, or even the completed object. Few of them end up as they began. Ghost World, as I recall, was going to be set in the future, and The Death-Ray was going to be about the older present-day version of the character rather than focusing on his teenage years.
POV: Marshall McLuhan, author of the 1967 book The Medium Is the Massage, wrote about the differences between what he called "hot" media versus "cool" media. Hot media, like movies and radio, he said, were dense with data and therefore demanded only a passive audience, whereas "cool" media, lo-fi and utilizing iconic forms, required active, involved audience participation. His examples of "cool" media are television and comics. Do you agree with McLuhan's assessment?
POV: What were some of the first comics you read? How do you think they found their way into your work, consciously or perhaps unintentionally? Who are some of your other influences, in comics and in other forms, such as art, literature and pop culture?
Daniel: I'm always looking at the work of my peers -- people like Chester Brown, Julie Doucet, Chris Ware, the Hernandez brothers, Rick Altergott, etc. -- and that of the early masters, from McKay to Crumb. I'm always looking for things I imagine must exist, but don't -- this is usually the impetus to create that thing myself.
POV: Although some have approached its widespread popularity, there is no exact parallel to Tintin in American comics. Why do you think this is so? What in American comics comes closest to Tintin and approximating the cult of Tintin? In other media?
Daniel: Probably Peanuts, at least in terms of popularity and respectability, comes closest to Tintin. I don't know -- I've always been mystified by the intensity of love for Tintin in Europe. I like the books very much, and admire Hergé's work, but having never seen a Tintin volume until I was a teenager, I have no visceral pop culture nostalgia inflecting my appreciation.
POV: Is it also fair to say that a division or tension exists within the world of American comics, between the mainstream daily syndicated comic strip world or, say, the New Yorker cartoon world, and the comics underground/graphic novel world?
Daniel: I don't know about tension -- I feel like the New Yorker cartoonist has as much to do with what I do as a stand-up comic or a cinematographer, tangential at best. The daily strip and political cartoon guys seem to be from another planet -- I have no connection to that world at all.
POV: How is cartooning different for you as a creative process than films, and in particular adapting your own comics into films like Ghost World and Art School Confidential? I imagine it's similar to translating languages. What elements of the comics work on the page but not in film, and vice versa? When working with Terry Zwigoff, how involved were you in working with the actors? At what point, as the creator and writer, did you have to let go?
Daniel: Terry allows me on the set and encourages me to offer advice, but he rarely listens to me, and once the film is in the editing room, I make only the tiniest of suggestions. It's a director's medium, and a film set is a complicated military structure -- I have to keep reminding myself to stay in my place, or all will burst into chaos.
POV: How is that process of adaptation creatively different from directly writing a script, like the movie you're working on about the group of kids who make a shot-by-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Daniel: In some ways it's easier, since you know the basic story and the characters before you begin, but it's a challenge to express real life in dramatic terms. In an entirely "made-up" story, you are sometimes overwhelmed by the infinite possibilities.
POV: Hergé underwent a period of despair and anxiety during which he suffered recurring nightmares filled with whiteness -- certainly iconic dreams for a cartoonist! Eventually, after psychoanalysis, he emerged with a new direction: Tintin in Tibet, with its stark alpine landscapes and minimalist cast and story, was a major departure for Hergé. Do you have periods when you lose faith in your work? How have you handled them? What do you feel is your greatest creative or artistic accomplishment?
Daniel: I lose faith in everything else, but rarely in my work. If I start to get bored, I change it to make it more interesting. I try not to take it too seriously, but I also try to never cheat or hurry things along.
POV: How does politics influence or impact your work in comics (or not)? Has it had a lesser or greater effect over the years?
Daniel: I think politics has an influence on my work now, perhaps more so than when I was a childless young man, but I hope never to deal with these kinds of issues in anything more than a covert manner. I'm more interested in figuring out what I think than in pronouncing my views to the world.
POV: What are you working on now?
Daniel: I'm working on several short comic stories all at once. Not sure what I'll do with them.
Rebecca Bengal conducted this interview via email for POV
Related Links
Fantagraphics: Daniel Clowes
The artist's page on publisher Fantagraphics Books's website.
BBC Collective: Daniel Clowes
Listen to an interview with Clowes and see an image gallery of Clowes's work. (July 2005)
Phoebe Gloeckner
POV: Hergé is famous for the ligne claire ("clear line") style he employed when drawing the iconic characters of Tintin, a style that contrasts with the unusually realistic landscapes and backgrounds of the worlds Tintin visits and inhabits. As Scott McCloud pointed out in Understanding Comics, this contrast gives the effect of allowing the reader to "mask themselves in a character and safely enter a stimulating world." "One set of line," he writes, "allows readers to see; the other to be."
In Diary of a Teenage Girl, when Minnie visits a comic book publisher in San Francisco, the publisher tells her if she wants to draw comics, she has to learn to draw fire hydrants, cars, animals, everything. Your style has evolved over the years: you can see its transformation in A Child's Life, which collects comics of yours published in places like Weirdo, Twisted Sisters, Wimmin's Comix. Describe your illustrative strategy or style as you see it. How did you arrive at it -- did you struggle to find it? How did your study and work in medical illustration factor in?
Phoebe Gloeckner: I look at Hergé's work a bit differently. I don't perceive a significant difference in the quality of line between figure and ground -- Hergé's characters are drawn with realistic proportion and form, and refer to their counterparts in nature as faithfully as his landscapes. His line is la ligne claire, and as it extends throughout each panel, it is nearly unvarying, always of similar weight and defining the objects it describes with the same threshold of detail.
The very consistency of his drawing, and the skill with which Hergé simplifies a scene without leaving us feeling cheated of detail are the hallmarks of his genius, and when combined with his brilliant story-telling and his sense of timing -- from frame to frame and throughout the arc of the narrative -- Hergé seduces reader after reader to happily enter the world of Tintin.
His 72-page plots are somewhat formulaic, his characters are predictable and change little over time. But we don't grow bored of Tintin or Snowy or Captain Haddock. Their consistency is as comforting as that of many popular television characters -- like Fred Sanford, Gregory House, or The Three Stooges.
Oddly enough, I suppose, I don't give much thought to my style, and I don't attempt to be consistent -- except within a story. You ask if I struggled to find my style. It seems to me that style (in other words, a way of thinking and doing things) is innate. You can try to will it to be different, but it's like a signature -- you can't change its fundamental nature.
My interest in medicine, biology and other aspects of science led me to focus on medical illustration in graduate school. I was quite sure I didn't want to be a scientist or a doctor, but I wanted to cultivate my understanding of what it is to be human, corporeal, in a way that was natural to me -- by observing. I also had always admired old medical art, having been exposed to it via my grandfather, a junk dealer who loved old books and clocks, and my grandmother on the other side, who was a doctor.
POV: What about moving into books like Diary of a Teenage Girl -- your novel written in the form of a diary, heavily illustrated with exquisite, intricate drawings and comics? The comics are like filmic interludes from the inner narrative; they're also used to tell the more dramatic parts of the story -- when Minnie's mother discovers her diary, for instance. How did you find that form for the book?
At first the diaries seemed precious: I was afraid to change them in any way. But I wanted to write a novel, not to compile a collection of my juvenilia. I knew that my challenge would be to preserve the girl-ness of the teenager, whether I was using her actual words or not, and whether she was indulging in precocious or regressive behavior. I essentially spent two years locked in my garage, hidden from the world, and living the interior life of a teenage girl.
Initially I was drawing single images to illustrate the book, sort of like an illustrated Victorian novel. This became frustrating, as the pictures were not serving to propel the narrative -- they were redundant interpretations of it. They offered no real relief from the self-centered voice of the teenage person who is writing for no one but herself. I began doing certain scenes as "comics" because that way, I had the opportunity to offer a window looking out at Minnie's life from a perspective that was not her own.
I couldn't think of a precedent for what I hoped to achieve, which made it harder to visualize myself. I couldn't describe it to others, either. This is usually how I work, though -- I'm not at all a linear thinker. I know the feeling I want to convey, but the form is what I struggle to find. I'm sure I'd fail if I tried to write a grant proposal or a book proposal.
POV: You told Gary Groth in a Comics Journal interview, "I think my last book [Diary of a Teen-Age Girl] is probably more what I was headed for. And now I feel like I'm headed for something else." What something else is that?
Phoebe: I meant that I don't like to be constrained to any one medium. I like to surprise and amuse (and indeed, torture) myself by weaving back and forth between images and words of all sorts, and trying to create work in the end that feels "of a piece." This is why I resist calling myself a "cartoonist." It doesn't seem to describe what I do. I talked with Gary after finishing The Diary of a Teenage Girl, and at the time, I felt I had succeeded as best I could in creating a book that was a hybrid of several forms. And, to the best of my ability, I had managed to do it in a way that did not seem "choppy." At least, that was my hope.
When I said I felt I was headed for something else, I suppose I meant that I didn't intend to follow that book with another of the same form. I wanted to work with media that were more plastic and dynamic than ink and paper.
POV: You told Nerve.com in an interview: "It always seems to people that I'm avoiding saying, 'It's autobiographical,' but I really do believe that human beings make stories and they make themselves. If I told you the same story twelve years ago, I could have emphasized something different. The importance changes, the meaning of things shifts over time. Also, I think all art is autobiographical. Every endeavor is full of impressions of ourselves."
How do you feel about your recurring characters? How real do they become to you as you work and live with them over the years? Do you imagine them having a life independent of the comic?
Phoebe: The characters that have recurred in my work have changed from one appearance to the next. A character does seem to have a life of its own, but I have what I'd describe as a very fluid relationship with them -- as I'm thinking of what they will be like, they shift in and out of focus -- they are a projection of some idea inside of me, even if a character is inspired by an actual person, I'm well aware that it is not that person. My job is to identify the essence of the character, and to bring them to life long enough to commit the acts, say the words or simply "be" in a way that allows them to affect and be affected by other elements and events in the imaginary world of a story.
And I don't confound my character, Minnie, with me. She is, I hope, like Tintin, not real, but believable.
POV: You started reading and drawing comics in the 70s in San Francisco, and were especially influenced by the first Twisted Sisters by Aline Kominsky and Diane Noomin. What were some of the other first comics you read and how do you think they found their way into your work, consciously or perhaps unintentionally?
Phoebe: Aline Kominsky and Diane Noomin are both obsessed with visual detail -- minute patterns, strands of hair. Each artist has an acute ear for idiosyncrasies of dialogue and gesture, yet their work is quite different. Aline's characters are physically and psychologically ungainly, engaged in incessant interior dialogue. Diane's temperamentally twitchy central character, Didi Glitz, is camouflaged in the graphically effervescent environment she perpetually redecorates. Their book, Twisted Sisters, which I read in mid-70s at the age of 14, led me to consider trying to make comics myself.
This genre of book was already familiar to me -- I had been surreptitiously reading my parents' copies of Zap Comix from the age of ten. Underground comics were produced by individuals -- they were the auteur variety, rather than the production-line sort of comic book aimed at pleasing a vast general audience. Mainstream comics never appealed to me: they seemed sterile in their stylistic consistency, and were quickly consumed, the stories interesting only for so long as you were reading them.
Underground comics were striking in that they seemed largely unedited -- in a typical book, with stories by five to ten creators, some stories would be shockingly bad, and others would be startlingly brilliant. This was a lively and exciting combination. The artwork and stories, good and bad, were all so different -- I'd stare at the pages and lose track of time. I loved The Checkered Demon and Star-Eyed Stella (S. Clay Wilson), Big Bitch (Spain Rodriguez), and all of Robert Crumb's stories, especially Pete the Plumber and The Adventures of Whiteman. This was a world where anything could happen, and I wanted to go there.
I didn't read Tintin until my late teens -- I read it in French because I thought that would be a good way to learn the language. Because I had a goal other than pure entertainment, I spent much longer with these books than I otherwise might have, and came to recognize the beauty of their apparent simplicity, realizing that such easy perfection was an achievement of genius.
POV: Who are some of your other influences, in comics and art and literature?
Phoebe: All sorts of things can find their way into your work unconsciously. I'm guessing that by "influences" you mean by those creators I admired and whose work I loved, whether their influence is clearly evident in my work or not.
-- Jiri Trnka: his earlier work, particularly the work-for-hire public service films.
-- Ray Harryhausen: early work as well: Little Red Riding Hood stands out.
-- Janis Joplin: watching footage of her performances seems to equalize the amplitude of my brain waves, her music makes me feel loved and understood. Like she died for me. She's my Jesus.
-- Ilona Staller (La Cicciolina): I'm fascinated by creators who use themselves as the raw material for their work. I once met her at an opening of an exhibit of Jeff Koons' work -- she was tiny, and her hand was smooth and dry. She had a real smile. Jeff Koons' hand was smooth too, but damp and friendly.
-- Kurt Schwitters performing his "opera," the Ursonate.
But certainly, an artist's work is a synthesis of much more than the work of other creators. I guess your question might be asked to try to establish an artist's creative lineage. It's funny to think of myself in that way. As someone who makes things, those who contributed most directly to producing the artist of the sort that I am were my father (an artist), my grandmother (a doctor), and my grandfather (a junk dealer), each one a Philadelphian. I am Phoebe, daughter of David, grandchild of Louise and Ed.
POV: Can you talk a little about one of your favorite writers, Dr. Ira Lunan Ferguson?
Phoebe: He was an extremely prolific self-published writer, a black psychologist who bore a chip on his shoulder after falling short of being admitted to Howard University's College of Medicine. He compensated by earning several masters degrees and maintaining active membership in countless professional organizations. He wrote nearly 30 books, all but one or two published under his own imprint, The Lunan Ferguson Library.
Most of his books were wordy chronicles of his own history and achievements. His prose is repetitious and his anecdotes are recounted with little self-reflection. He was, it seems to me, a judgmental and moralizing person, narcissistic and self-aggrandizing. I've often wondered what it might have been like to be his patient.
His persistence is what fascinates me. He died 10 or 15 years ago at nearly 90 years old. He was dictating manuscripts for new books up until his death. The oeuvre he left behind is the voice of the human spirit in giddy recognition that it has life. It is the poignant wailing of a soul yearning to be heard in its desperate attempt to escape the ethereal and find immortality in substance. And for all his struggles, he found little acclaim or award beyond his own circle of friends and acquaintances. Luckily for him, he was undaunted. I believe he was convinced of his own superiority and regarded those unable to appreciate his brilliance with indulgent pity.
A few of his titles:
83 Practical Observations by an Octogenarian Psychologist
Fantastic Experiences of a Half-Blind, and His Interracial Marriage
I Dug Graves at Night, to Attend College by Day (3 volumes)
POV: Art Spiegelman really struck a nerve with a literary and a mainstream audience with Maus. In the last few years, a number of literary journals have been devoting space to comics; the New York Times magazine began serializing comics in 2005, beginning with Chris Ware's. Although for years comics have been denigrated as a so-called "low art" category -- in Diary, Monroe scoffs at them and says "head comics" are something he read in college, wonders if "Art Crumb" is even still alive -- it appears they're becoming more widely accepted and perhaps even validated as a form of art and a long literary narrative. Would you agree with this?
Phoebe: Yes. I do agree that they are becoming more accepted as an art form, but as such, comics are a "young" art form, and there is much confusion as to how to treat them. Images have more immediate impact than words, and it is not every reader who can be convinced to relax into experiencing the work for what it is -- not words and pictures, but a different form, where the narrative is propelled by the blending of image, word and sequence, and where no element can be extricated and have the same meaning by itself. When this art is shown in a gallery, its "thingness" is called to attention, it is no longer experienced as "story," but rather as an artifact of the artist's process.
Whatever they are, can Comics be "Art"? Of course they can. The "Art" in a piece is something independent of genre, form, or material. My feeling is that most paintings, most films, most music, most literature and, indeed, most comics fail as "Art." A masterpiece in any genre, form or material is equally "good." It's ridiculous to impose a hierarchy of value on art. The division between high and low art is one that cannot be defended because it has no correlation to aesthetic response.
I do think that comics are being more widely accepted, and even validated as an art form, and as a long literary narrative.
POV: Do you think this kind of validation is inhibiting in any way, that comics are in danger of becoming less rebellious or creatively free because they're more accepted, and being published in the mainstream?
Phoebe: Most comics are NOT truly rebellious or creatively free. Most comics, paintings, music, etc., are derivative of other, more successful works. And it's quite often that those without much rebellious spirit are the ones to imitate it. Genuine radical expression is hard to come by, but it usually crops up when money is not a motivating factor. You can take all the liberties you want when someone else's dime is not at stake. The "validation" you describe is not a threat to comics. A far greater threat to the creative freedom of artists working in any medium is self-consciousness and self-censorship.
POV: You teach art at the University of Michigan: what do you teach? What do you tell your students? Do you enjoy it?
Phoebe: Yes, I teach in the School of Art and Design at the U of M. I finished my second year of teaching in May, and it's been, well -- my mind stutters as I try to find an adjective adequate to describe the experience. I- I- I- I- I cannot think of one.
A bit of history might help you to understand.
I was expelled from three high schools, and "not invited to return" one year in middle school. I won't take the time to explain why, and it doesn't really matter. What I do want you to know is that one of the aims of recent faculty meetings at the U of M was to define the sort of student we'd like to attract. The consensus identified this person as "a high achiever, involved in extra-curricular activities not limited to sports, but including community service, ranked academically in the top 5th percentile of graduating seniors."
How does that make me feel? I sit in those meetings with a weepy heart, knowing full well that I never would have been accepted to the University of Michigan.
But I'm here now. I spend quite a bit of time thinking about my students. I look at them, at their work, I listen to what they tell me, and try to figure out who they might become in the best of all possible worlds. This is not easy. Students try to give you clues; sometimes they look at you as if imploring you [to] understand something about them that they don't yet have the means to articulate. How can one succeed at this? And how can one do it 20 times over for all the students in a class? It's impossible, of course. I know this, but I try anyway. It's tiring. I have been known to take naps on the linoleum floor of my office when I have a break.
Another little problem I have is that I don't think it's possible to teach a person to be an artist. But yet, I'm here, and I suppose this is what I'm expected to do. I teach a course called graphic narrative and one called digital studios -- the classes change from semester to semester, but no matter the topic, the basic principle underlying my "method" of teaching (developed in just two years) is that a properly prepared artist/creator must simply know everything. Not just how to draw, but how to see. Not just how to use a computer program, but what the word "penultimate" means. And the shape and orientation of a goat's pupil. And where Kentucky and Chile are, at least approximately. The only way to know everything is to learn how to think, how to ask questions, how to navigate the world. Students must learn how to teach themselves to use new tools, how to talk to unfamiliar people, and basically how to be brave.
It's much better for an artist to know everything than to be limited by ignorance, don't you think?
POV: Hergé underwent a period of despair and anxiety during which he suffered recurring nightmares filled with whiteness -- certainly iconic dreams for a cartoonist. Eventually, after psychoanalysis, he emerged with a new direction: Tintin in Tibet, with its stark alpine landscapes and minimalist cast and story, was a major departure for Hergé. Do you have periods when you lose faith in your work? How have you handled them?
Phoebe: I didn't know this about Hergé. I remember being in Angouleme, France last year at the International Comics Festival -- there was a huge bust of Hergé's head in the middle of an open square. He's smiling, but he doesn't look genuinely happy. He seems too exposed. It was raining when I looked at him, but I'm sure he wouldn't have seemed any happier if it had been a warm and sunny day. I wish they had given him a body. Maybe they will one day, and he'll be as big as the Colossus of Rhodes. At that size, anyone would be happy.
I am aware of existing in a nearly constant state of inner turmoil and argument. I become frustrated with my work when the solution to a creative impasse seems like a secret I don't want to tell myself. It's not that I lose faith in my work -- I'm fairly certain the answers are there, but much of my energy is spent beating my psyche into revealing them. I'd describe my inner life as constantly vigilant, always ready to flee or respond with violence. I've felt this way since I was a small child. Although it's often quite amusing, it's exhausting at times to live with myself, and when I'm tired and overwhelmed, I do become very depressed. If I'm unable to work for too long, I start questioning my purpose on this earth and whether or not I deserve to live. When I look at other people, I get the sense that they live with themselves much more gracefully.
I try to handle these periods with psychotherapy, long walks, crying, petting my purring three-legged cat, playing computer games and looking at my children as they sleep.
Rebecca Bengal conducted this interview via email for POV
Related Links
Phoebe Gloeckner
The artist's personal website.
Jason Lutes
Describe your illustrative strategy or style as you see it. How did you arrive at it? How do you feel it's been most effective? Did it come naturally or did you struggle to find it? When does it not work?
Jason Lutes: I agree somewhat with Scott's analysis of the relationship between the reader, Tintin, and Tintin's world, and Hergé has been perhaps the greatest single visual influence on my own work, but my approach to making comics is quite different. I'm not trying to create a stand-in or avatar with whom the reader can identify, but separate, believable characters with distinct personalities; I'm trying to place the reader more in the role of observer [rather] than that of participant.
I think this approach comes out of my own personal desire and struggle to understand our world, and the complex interactions of people with one another and their environment. My work is an improvised exploration of this complexity, as opposed to a structured, plot-driven narrative. Although my earlier work had a more internal focus, my current approach has evolved naturally from it. The challenge I face now is to keep this non-traditional approach engaging and accessible without compromising its exploratory nature.
POV: You've become best known for Berlin, a comic series that has been described as historical fiction: it is Germany seen through the lives of characters living in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the years prior to fascism and World War II. You've said you are a fan of Tintin, in which Hergé traveled vicariously through his hero to foreign places he'd never visited. I wonder if you could talk about your own connection to Tintin, and how that might relate to the drawing of Berlin.
Jason: Another thing Scott McCloud says about Hergé is that he created a world with "an equal democracy of form." That is, regardless of whether it was Marlinspike Hall, a Chinese steam engine, or a Peruvian blanket, Hergé drew everything at the same level of detail. As an adult, I realize now that the way he rendered the world on the page has had an enormous effect on my own development as a cartoonist, beginning when I first read Cigars of the Pharaohs at age six.
Through mastering the physical characteristics of every thing that might fill a given panel, and rendering each with restraint and only a little inflection, Hergé created a convincing reality for his characters and readers to inhabit. There is a kind of knowledge gained through drawing from close observation -- an understanding of the physical world, its separate components, their interconnectedness -- that the reader can see growing in Hergé when his body of work is examined in chronological order. In my attempt to recreate the look and feel of Berlin in the 1920s, I strive for a similar level of coherence and believability, but am (alas) much more prone to stylistic indulgences than Hergé ever was.
POV: How have you researched the material in Berlin? Where do you take liberties with the history -- or are you even conscious of taking liberties? What inspired you to create the series?
Jason: After completing my first comics novel, Jar of Fools, I knew I wanted to do something that would really challenge my ability as a cartoonist. I was leafing through a magazine one day and saw an advertisement for a book called Bertolt Brecht's Berlin: A Scrapbook of the Twenties, accompanied by a short blurb that sparked my interest. Without really knowing much more about the period than what I had seen in Cabaret and inferred through Threepenny Opera, I decided right then that my next book would be about Berlin in the '20s and '30s, that it would be broad in scope and substantial in length.
Between making that decision and drawing the first panel of the story, I spent about two years collecting reference materials and reading everything I could about Weimar Germany, German culture, European history and the city of Berlin. Tacked up on the wall over my drawing table are several maps of the city from 1928, which help me envision the geographic relationships of landmarks and neighborhoods. Since comics is a visual medium, photographs, paintings, and drawings from the period are of particular interest, and the more mundane the better -- it's easy to find images of the Brandenburg Gate or the Reichstag, but things like doorknobs and kitchen utensils are of much greater interest to me.
I try to be as faithful as possible to the facts as I understand them, but any story is at least partly a product of the imagination. I can comprehend a lot by immersing myself in all of the information I've collected, but my imagination is what brings it to life, and the bridging of that gap -- between the received history and the conceived fiction -- is both the most difficult and most enjoyable part of the process for me.
POV: How do you feel about your recurring characters? How real do they become to you as you work and live with them over the years? Do you imagine them having a life independent of the comic?
Jason: I care very much about all of my characters, recurring or not. All of the primary and secondary characters in Berlin have lives that extend past what I show on the page, and every time I draw someone's face, even if he or she just appears for a panel or two, I try to imagine something about that person beyond his or her physical appearance. After creating them, part of my job is to inhabit them and try to see their world from their perspective.
POV: Describe your working process. Do you work daily? When you begin a comic, do you start with image, or with text? What are the raw materials of a story? Do you always know what is going to happen, or does the story take turns that surprise you?
Jason: I work five days a week, Monday through Friday, from about 7:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. with a few short breaks. The process starts with the writing in coffee shops around town, which is more like story-boarding than writing in the usual sense; for each page of a comic I make a little thumbnail diagram to work out panel divisions and the placement of visual elements (characters, word balloons, etc.) within them, writing out the dialogue alongside. I try to make comics that integrate words and pictures thoroughly, so I need to see how the dialogue is going to fit into the page layout. Also, since an important formal unit of the medium is the page, and the turning of the page is a built-in pacing mechanism, I need to consider carefully what comes before and after each page break. This consideration of the page as a narrative measure, along with sustained left-to-right movement throughout a given story, is something I picked up from studying Hergé. Working from and remaining largely faithful to that thumbnail script, I then move on to penciling and then inking the full pages.
Storytelling for me evolves intuitively from the interaction of various elements -- things I've put down on the page, formal constraints and everything I have in my head. The basic structure of Berlin is defined by a handful of key historical events, and my job is to get from one to another in a way that makes sense and feels more or less "true." At practically every level, the way I make comics is an act of improvising within structural boundaries. There's a rough plan, with a beginning, middle and an end, but how I get from one point to another is unknown at the outset, and a large part of what keeps me engaged. It's an exploration for me, and hopefully for the reader as well.
POV: Marshall McLuhan, author of the 1967 book The Medium is the Massage, wrote about the differences between what he called "hot" media versus "cool" media. Hot media, like movies and radio, he said, were dense with data and therefore demanded only a passive audience, whereas "cool" media, lo-fi and utilizing iconic forms, required active, involved audience participation. His examples of "cool" media are television and comics. Do you agree with McLuhan's assessment?
Jason: Absolutely. I love and admire McLuhan's work. The first time I read The Medium is the Massage, I experienced it as an affirmation of things I had long felt but would have never been able to articulate. While we can generalize when describing a given medium as hot or cool, all media can be said to possess both hot and cool aspects to varying degrees, and part of what I try to do with comics is figure out when and how the temperature needs raising or lowering.
POV: What were some of the first comics you read? How do you think they found their way into your work, consciously or perhaps unintentionally? Who are some of your other influences, in comics and in other forms, such as art, literature and pop culture?
Jason:The first comics I read were Marvel comics in the early 70s, most memorably westerns like The Rawhide Kid and superhero comics like The Avengers and Captain America. Some Tintin albums found their way into my hands a little later, and of all of the influences present in my work, I am most conscious of Hergé.
I am constantly absorbing things that then come out in my work, mostly from the great wide world outside my front door, but over the years, some specific artistic influences have become apparent to me. The late 1980s were particularly inspiring as far as comics go: Art Spiegelman's RAW Magazine expanded my understanding of the expressive potential of the medium; the work of Chester Brown showed me how to slow things down; and the great Ben Katchor helped me see comics as a kind of poetry.
Film has had an enormous effect on me, but more in my general development of a visual and sequential vocabulary than through the work of specific directors (although I am currently enamored of the stratum of filmmakers that includes David O. Russell, Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola). In terms of writing, I love Haruki Murakami, William Faulkner and Anton Chekhov, but I'd be hard-pressed to demonstrate how any of them has influenced my work.
POV: Although some have approached its widespread popularity, there is no exact parallel to Tintin in American comics. Why do you think this is so? What in American comics comes closest to Tintin and approximating the cult of Tintin? In other media?
Jason: That's a hard one to answer. It seems to me that any popular fictional character's appeal is idiosyncratic in nature, so finding anything "like Tintin" is likely impossible. Characters with large followings -- Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, the crew of the Starship Enterprise -- seem to embody something very particular even as they speak to something within a huge number of people. When I think of the most time-tested examples, the common thread appears to be an author who feels deeply for what he is creating, and even though Tintin might not be considered "deep," Hergé's discipline and devotion to his chosen protagonist is anchored somewhere in the vicinity of the Lost Unicorn.
POV: Graphic novels and comics have become popular even among mainstream audiences right now, especially with movie adaptations of non-superhero comics like V for Vendetta, Sin City, American Splendor, Ghost World, A History of Violence, and, just out at the time of this interview, Art School Confidential. In the United States, graphic novel sales have more than tripled to $245 million in recent years. Yet bookstores still often have a hard time deciding where to shelve them: some finally have been given their own section, but often you have to look in the Humor section. Nearly every review or article written about them still includes a definition of the genre, as if a reader would have no preconceived idea of what a comic or graphic novel is, implying that the form is largely misunderstood. Why do you think it's taken so long for comics and graphic novels to become as popular as they are now? Why do you think this implied need to define comics still exists? Do you have your own definition?
Jason: I personally have no need to make a strict definition of the medium. I am more interested in what can be done with comics than how it can be described, and if I want to remain truly open to the creative possibilities, the less I define the medium, the better.
The ongoing effort to broaden the public perception of comics has been long and slow for two reasons that I can see: the preceding cultural definition in America became entrenched over the course of a century, and we still have only a handful of works that can be cited as examples of comics outside of that definition. If there were a volume and variety of comics equivalent to that found in any other medium, the question would be moot; the disappointing truth is that it would take you a week (maybe a month, tops) to read every single non-superhero comics novel currently in print in America. The simple fact is that public opinion changes incrementally because exemplary comics get produced incrementally, regardless of how much their validity is promoted.
POV: Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Lichtenstein, and other artists like Raymond Pettibon have certainly been influenced by comics and have incorporated elements of them into their paintings. (Warhol was particularly influenced by Hergé.) And of course, Art Spiegelman really struck a nerve with a literary and a mainstream audience with Maus. In the last few years, a number of literary journals have been devoting space to comics; the New York Times magazine began serializing comics in 2005, beginning with Chris Ware's. Although for years comics have been denigrated as a so-called "low art" category, it appears they're becoming more widely accepted and perhaps even validated as a form of art and a long literary narrative. Would you agree with this? Is "form" the right word here? Do you think that this kind of validation is inhibiting in any way, that comics are in danger of becoming less rebellious or creatively free because they're more accepted and being published in the mainstream?
Jason: I think more mainstream visibility is great, and I don't see any danger of it watering down the medium. Wider public validation is just another restraint that rebellious practitioners can (and hopefully will) chafe against.
I loathe high/low art distinctions in any case, so the crossing and re-crossing of that line is an act to be savored and celebrated, regardless of how it turns out. I consider that transgressive aspect of the medium one of its great strengths. In the way comics is both words and pictures while being neither, comics is the Trickster's medium, and as such I would be happy if no one ever knew what to do with it.
POV: How is cartooning different for you as a creative process than working in other artistic or literary genres and forms?
Jason: I love writing and the little filmmaking I have attempted, but comics is the means of artistic expression that feels most comfortable to me. It's also still a largely uncharted medium with enormous unrealized potential. I like finding new ways to communicate an idea or a feeling, ways that can't be duplicated in other media, so I take great pleasure in the invention and exploration that comics necessitates.
POV: Hergé underwent a period of despair and anxiety during which he suffered recurring nightmares filled with whiteness -- certainly iconic dreams for a cartoonist! Eventually, after psychoanalysis, he emerged with a new direction: Tintin in Tibet, with its stark alpine landscapes and minimalist cast and story, was a major departure for Hergé. Do you have periods when you lose faith in your work? How have you handled them? What do you feel is your greatest creative or artistic accomplishment?
Jason: In the course of working on Berlin, I have often questioned the wisdom of my decision to take on the project, and have faltered on more than one occasion. Along with financial concerns, this occasional wavering of commitment is part of the reason it's taken me ten years to write and draw up to the halfway point of the story -- 300 out of 600 pages. I usually cope with the difficult times by switching gears and doing other work, like short stories or illustration, but currently I am working on Berlin full time and am feeling content and optimistic about it. No doubt more struggle awaits ahead.
Hopefully when it is complete, I will be happy with Berlin and regard it as a worthwhile accomplishment. Aside from that, the piece I like most is a short story called "Rules to Live By," which appeared in a little-seen anthology called Autobiographix. It's the only directly autobiographical work I've ever done, and documents a difficult and transformative period of my life.
POV: How does politics influence or impact your work in comics (or not)? Has it had a lesser or greater effect over the years?
Jason: The specifics of day-to-day politics don't have much of an effect on my work, but I'm drawn to larger questions of human nature and how it has informed politics throughout history. Although my decision to write and draw Berlin was not consciously motivated by American politics, and came instead out of a desire to "read history and know my place in time," relating present-day politics to those of Germany in the 1920s is inevitable, and brings with it a host of parallels and contradictions.
POV:What are you working on now?
Jason: I recently completed writing a comics novella about Harry Houdini (illustrated by Nick Bertozzi), for Hyperion Books and am currently at work on chapter 14 of Berlin: City of Smoke, the second book in my Berlin trilogy.
Rebecca Bengal conducted this interview via email for POV
Related Links
Drawn and Quarterly: Jason Lutes
The artist's page on his publisher's website.
Seth
POV: The ligne claire ("clear line") style Hergé employed when drawing the iconic characters of Tintin contrasts with the unusually realistic landscapes and backgrounds of the worlds Tintin visits and inhabits. As Scott McCloud pointed out in his book Understanding Comics, this contrast gives the effect of allowing the comic reader to "mask themselves in a character and safely enter a stimulating world." "One set of line," he writes, "allows readers to see; the other to be."
Your style is extremely distinctive: evocative and impressionistic in its use of light and shadow, with a compelling urgency of movement through the story. Describe your own illustrative strategy as you see it. How did you arrive at it? How do you feel it's been most effective? Did you struggle to find it or did it come naturally? When does it not work?
This is the process that evolved my style. I certainly didn't realize it at the time, but the way I draw now is the result of thousands of such choices over the years. When I was in my early twenties I didn't really have a clear drawing style and I was worried about acquiring one. I drew one strip in an Edward Gorey style and another in a clean line approach. I didn't know what I was doing. A few years later I was surprised to discover that I had developed some sort of style of my own by simply trying to learn to draw a comic book. It happened while I wasn't paying attention. If I was talking to a young cartoonist I would certainly tell him/her not to worry about style. It will take care of itself. Instead pay attention to the details of your craft.
On the matter of "masking" -- I'm not so sure I accept that idea. I don't think I experience this effect when I'm reading a comic myself. I simply enter into the reality of it in the same way I would a prose novel. I don't need an iconic representation in a novel to enter into the world of the story. I merely need to decode the words and have them unfold in my mind into pictures. I believe a comic does exactly the same thing, except with the comic book you must decode both the words and the pictures and combine them in your mind into a single unit. I believe this is why Hergé's clear line approach is so effective. The drawings are really a series of simplified picture symbols that are as easy for your reading brain to decode as the words are. They are remarkably clear. He is never deliberately trying to create any ambiguity in the drawings. If you had to pause to figure out the drawings in a Tintin comic, I would be surprised. Hergé has done a masterful job at making the storytelling clear. This straightforward approach to storytelling is exactly what I am aiming at myself in my own work and Hergé was a large influence on my thinking back when I was young and trying to figure out how to tell a story.
POV: Among your most well-known characters are traveling salesmen and comic book collectors. How do you feel about your recurring characters? How real do they become to you as you work and live with
them over the years? Do you imagine them having a life independent of the comic?
The Clyde Fans Company's neglected storefront -- closed after 44 years of continuous business. From Clyde Fans: Book One, p. 11. Copyright Seth. Courtesy Drawn & Quarterly.
Seth: Writers often say that the characters come to life for them but sadly, that has not fully been my experience with them. Perhaps if, like Charles Schulz, you have drawn them for 50 years they come to life for you. I find that I have a good understanding of my characters and I know how they would "act" in a certain situation, but they are too fully made up out of bits and pieces for me to think of them as real. They are stitched together from parts of myself and other people and things I have read in books or imagined; Frankenstein monsters more than real people.
I suppose, in a vague sense, they live outside of me. I do feel that with a character like Wimbledon Green, that he carries on somehow after the book is finished. If I wanted to, I could sort of squint and take a look and see what he is "up to" and then write another comic story about him. But that all seems to be happening in some dark, rarely visited back corner of my brain.
Generally, I am not much interested in continuing characters (for my own work). I like to come up with a story that has a beginning and an end. However, I don't impose that restriction on others. Sometimes a continuing character works. As a reader, I often want more of a character after I finish a book -- so I am no different than any other reader. The temptation to return to a character who has been well received is a difficult one for a cartoonist -- and it is easy to make a mistake and return to that well one too many times and find it has run dry. The history of cartooning is mostly the history of famous cartoon "characters" -- not powerful or meaningful stories. As an artist -- I am not overly concerned with creating characters. Mostly I am trying to capture something about life itself and convey it through the person who the story is about. Hopefully they become interesting people rather than great cartoon characters.
POV: Describe your working process. Do you work daily? When you begin a comic, do you start with image, or with text? What are the raw materials of a story? Do you always know what is going to happen, or does the story take turns that surprise you?
Simon Matchcard makes a sales call at the Dominion General Store. From Clyde Fans: Book One, p. 99. Copyright Seth. Courtesy Drawn & Quarterly.
Seth: I work everyday. Though I work on a wide variety of projects and some days I don't get to do any cartooning -- I may just be drawing or designing for a commercial project. I find that the longer the period is between actually working on a comic strip, the more likely I am to be depressed. Something about cartooning is just more satisfying to me than any other artistic pursuit (though it is also more difficult).
Usually my ideas come to me in a vague form -- just a feeling or a situation or a setting -- and then as I develop the idea it constitutes itself into a comic form in my brain. Not that it becomes anything complete, merely that I start to see it with a kind of structure or rhythm. In other words, much like a writer might start to put together sentences in his mind to describe the scene he is imagining, I start to imagine comic panels and the sequences they may flow in. When I actually sit down and start drawing little thumbnail sketches of the strip, it may take on an entirely separate narrative flow, but it usually starts with at least one simple sequence -- say, a character rising from his bed while recalling a dream. It never starts as a series of words that then have pictures added to them. I would imagine a filmmaker thinks in a somewhat similar way -- imagining scenes with movement rather than just characters' dialogue which will then need some visuals.
A lot of my story ideas take years to develop, usually starting with something very nebulous, like an interesting building I might see on a drive somewhere, and then over time other little odd bits and pieces will be added to it. Perhaps I will read a book and it will mention some occupation that interests me (a trainspotter for example) and I might then imagine that this fellow lives in that house. Eventually these things come together into some sort of an empty skeleton. I often have many of these skeletons rattling around in my brain. What changes them into real material for me is if something human from my own life gets added to them to make them vital. Perhaps this guy will become the vehicle to discuss the relationship I have with my father (or some such thing). When this alchemy happens I am often surprised. The stories themselves are always a bit of a surprise to me because I never really try to come up with "plots" for them and so I don't really know what they are about (in some ways) until they are up and running.
POV: You've said that comic writing is much like poetry because so much depends on rhythm; you also said you believe comics are closer to being like a combination of poetry and design than drawings and literature, or film and literature. Can you talk a little more about what you mean by that -- and how cartooning is different for you as a creative process than working in other genres like illustration and design?
Clyde Fans: Book One. Copyright Seth. Courtesy Drawn & Quarterly.
Seth: Illustration and design are almost purely visual activities while comics is mostly a storytelling medium. That makes them very different right from the start. While working on those activities I am merely thinking of trying to create something aesthetically pleasing that treats the viewer with some kind of respect. I try to get some sort of sense of humor into it too -- and some beauty. All of my art has a real hand-done feeling to it so I want it to be beautiful in some fundamental way -- it should look human and warm.
Now comics -- that is a lot more complicated. In comics I am trying to be an "artist" in the bigger sense, and I'm trying to convey something of real life experience. Every day I go down into my studio and I feel a real variety of human emotions -- the whole experience of spending so much time alone (which a cartoonist must do simply to do the work) engaged in introspection and memory really fires my entire purpose as an artist. It is very frustrating to me that this deepest [level] of feeling is the hardest thing to get down on the page. I don't feel I have ever managed to get even a tenth of it into anything I do. I think as a human being there is a strong desire to communicate to others all that turmoil of emotion that is locked up inside of us. The experience of inside and outside is so profound -- we live in this exterior world but everything is understood from inside our minds. We really live in here and not out there. That interior landscape is so difficult to portray -- but that seems to be the thing most important to try to share.
As for comics and poetry: The connection between the two is fairly obvious if you've ever sat down to write a one-page comic. The entire process is concerned with rhythm and condensed language. In many ways, the restrictions placed on a cartoonist when he writes (amount of text that will fit in a wood balloon or caption) and the very nature of how reading panels creates a rhythm, a cadence, in the reader's mind makes a pretty good case for comparing the two disciplines.
POV: Marshall McLuhan, author of the 1967 book The Medium is the Massage, wrote about the differences between what he called "hot" media versus "cool" media. Hot media, like movies and radio, he said, were dense with data and therefore demanded only a passive audience, whereas "cool" media, lo-fi and utilizing iconic forms, required active, involved audience participation. His examples of "cool" media are television and comics. Do you agree with McLuhan's assessment?
From Wimbledon Green, p. 14. Copyright Seth. Courtesy Drawn & Quarterly.
Seth: Being a fellow Canadian, I agree with McLuhan on nationalistic terms alone. Seriously, though, I think McLuhan is dead right. It could be simply self-interest but I do think that comics (like prose) require a more active involvement of the reader. As I mentioned earlier, simply reading a comic book is a process of deciphering the words and images simultaneously. That sounds rather impressive, but of course, if you've read any comic (even Garfield, for example) you realize that it is a rather natural process and doesn't require any study. Whenever I hear someone say they met someone who doesn't know how to read a comic book I am always perplexed. It seems pretty easy to me. If you are having too much trouble reading a comic I suspect the cartoonist has done a poor job of his storytelling.
Simple or not, I do believe comics are an inherently fascinating art medium. In the hands of a talented and ambitious cartoonist the work can be an extremely layered reading experience, and can involve as much analysis from the reader as they wish to put into it. I think the electronic media of film and television can be as richly layered -- but I would agree with McLuhan that the viewer is mostly in a passive state while taking it in. They are both more clearly group experiences, too. Reading remains a more intimate process -- one to one. That one to one relationship between artist and reader appeals to me.
POV: You're redesigning The Complete Peanuts as a 25-book series for Fantagraphics; you've also said that you were significantly influenced by Tintin. How have these comics found their way into your work, consciously or perhaps unintentionally? What about other influences of yours, like the short stories of Alice Munro?
Seth: Personally I am a sponge when it comes to influences. I have been influenced by an endless stream of other artists and writers and filmmakers. At some point the word "influence" seems to be a poor choice, because after a certain age you are less being influenced than simply outright stealing from your peers (which I have certainly done). Generally, when I consider my influences. I tend to go back to the "seminal" -- the ones I was drawn to at a young age and had tried my best to absorb whatever I could from them. Schulz was the most powerful. His work interested me at an early age and has continued all of my life. I didn't understand as a child why I was drawn to his work (I just thought it was funny) but later, in my early twenties, I began to go back and reread all of those Peanuts books I had loved as a kid. I came to really see and appreciate the sensitive genius he was. Unlike any other cartoonist working in that commercial venue, Schulz managed to infuse a very personal and idiosyncratic vision into what was essentially a kiddie gag strip. The work had a lot of black humor, and it was sad, poignant and dark, but not in a calculated way. Schulz was simply fusing his own inner life with the characters. It touched people even if they never understood why they were responding to it. He really was one of a kind. Funny, smart, subtle, mean and emotional. A rare type to find working in newspaper strips in those days.
Later, I discovered Robert Crumb. Crumb is surprisingly like Schulz in that he used comics as a natural outlet for his own inner life. Unlike Schulz, he was not restrained by the conventional media, nor was he from the same generation as Schulz. Crumb's self-expression was markedly bolder and more startling, but essentially, these two artists are not that different from each other. Both of them are amazing examples for a young cartoonist -- neither compromised their vision in any way. They both took what was a straightforward commercial art medium and used it as a very personal method of self-expression. These men were great pointers for a young artist to follow.
When I was about 19 or 20 I began to be interested in the three artists that would hold my interest in that first half of my twenties: Crumb, J. D. Salinger and Woody Allen. The last two have slipped somewhat from my radar over the last decade, but in those years these men were very influential in my thinking. In retrospect, it tells me a lot about myself that I was drawn to these three artists and not others. All of them were somewhat introspective and backward-looking and none of them were artists with a capital "A." I certainly wouldn't put myself in a list with these men, but these are the qualities that I was clearly looking for in them.
There are many artists who have been important to me since them, and out of those a good number of artists I am most drawn to are oddball loner types -- somehow I really admire these characters who produced art for such personal reasons (often getting little positive feedback from the outside world). That purity is very appealing. And certainly in the last decade I have found myself responding heavily to a handful of Japanese writers from the early 20th century (Tanizaki, Kawabata, Mishima, etc.) whose slow and patient interior storytelling appeals to me greatly. Alice Munro is definitely among my very favorite writers simply because she has such a deep, deep understanding of the inner life. I would never list her as an influence because what she does is mysterious and is something beyond my ability to incorporate or even outright steal.
As for Tintin: Hergé came along at just the right time for me. I started studying his work in my early twenties, and this was when I really needed some examples of how to tell a story clearly and cleanly. That brilliant clarity of line and design in Tintin was the object lesson I needed.
POV: Although some have approached its widespread popularity, there is no exact parallel to Tintin in American comics. Why do you think this is so? What in American comics comes closest to Tintin and approximating the cult of Tintin? In other media?
Seth: It probably has something to do with national character. America and France/Belgium are such different places and I think the popular media of these two cultures reflects something on the character of the countries themselves. America adopted the superhero as its model (eventually) and this seems to have filled the same role for young children that Tintin filled for much of the rest of the world. The difference between a Tintin and a Superman is an interesting comparison, and I think it says an awful lot about how Americans view themselves vs. how Europeans do. I don't think it is a coincidence that both of these iconic figures rose to popularity during the thirties and WWII. I won't bore you with an essay about what these two characters represent. I think it is pretty obvious right on the surface.
Certainly Hergé's example was a better model for producing lasting cartooning. The very format of the hardcover Tintin albums vs. the disposable pamplets of the American comic books meant that the North American artists would naturally be viewed differently than their European counterparts. It has made for a longer steeper climb for cartoons to find an adult audience over here in America.
POV: Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Lichtenstein, and other artists like Raymond Pettibo, have certainly been influenced by comics and have incorporated elements of them into their paintings. (Warhol was particularly influenced by Hergé.) And of course, Art Spiegelman really struck a nerve with a literary and a mainstream audience with Maus. In the last few years, a number of literary journals have been devoting space to comics; the New York Times magazine began serializing comics in 2005, beginning with Chris Ware's. Although for years comics have been denigrated as a so-called "low art" category, it appears they're becoming not only more popular and
widely accepted, but perhaps even validated as a form of art and a long literary narrative. Would you agree with this? Is "form" the right word here? Do you think that this kind of validation is
inhibiting in any way, that comics are in danger of becoming less rebellious or creatively free because they're more accepted and being published in the mainstream?
Seth: It has been a long uphill climb for the lowly comic artist. Lately, it seems as if we have finally gotten our heads out of the water and have made some important steps to get out onto the beach. Personally, I think this is great. I have no desire to hang onto any kind of outsider status. I would like the comic book (or "graphic novel") to be a perfectly legitimate medium for artistic pursuit. We are much closer to people perceiving it that way. I think there are currently a handful of cartoonists working today at a level that is equal to any other group of artists in any of the other mediums. I can't control how the work will be perceived or labeled -- I simply know that the comic medium is like any other medium. It has its own strengths and weaknesses and it is only as good an artistic tool as the artists who practice it. It has a lot of negative baggage as a junk medium -- but film and photography were once in this camp also. I have faith in it.
However, the outside attention that comics has been receiving in the last few years has been very gratifying. I've noticed a large change in how my own work is being received. Things have changed significantly in a pretty short time period. I have no worries about the rebelliousness of the medium being squashed -- already a new generation of cartoonists has risen up behind me that seems to be rebelling against all the directions we took. It appears to me that this new generation wants to get some "fun" back into the medium and that they aren't all that interested in producing "long and complex" narratives like the "old farts" of my cartooning generation. The comic book has real roots in the junk culture and no matter how much highfalutin acceptance it gets there will always be a contingent of cartoonists waiting to remind us of its origins. Which is also a good thing.
POV: Do you think it's also fair to say that a division or tension exists within the world of American comics, between the mainstream daily syndicated comic strip world or, say the New Yorker cartoon world, of which you are a part, and the comics underground/graphic novel world, of which you are also a part?
Seth: They are all part of some kind of a continuum because they are all forms of cartooning. But -- the intentions of the artists in these various camps are quite different. I can respect and enjoy cartooning that strives for more traditional goals (e.g., simply going for a laugh) but I don't feel a great affinity necessarily with these cartoonists. I would probably feel more of a connection with another artist (of any medium really) simply based on what their artistic intentions are. For me it is a desire to communicate something of the inner life. In some ways this is probably closer to a contemporary fiction writer than a newspaper comic strip artist or a New Yorker gag cartoonist. That doesn't mean I don't feel any connection to these artists -- I do. But it is often based more on a shared cartooning history rather than where we are heading.
POV: Hergé underwent a period of despair and anxiety during which he suffered recurring nightmares filled with whiteness -- certainly iconic dreams for a cartoonist! Eventually, after psychoanalysis, he emerged with a new direction: Tintin in Tibet, with its stark alpine landscapes and minimalist cast and story, was a major departure for Hergé. Do you have periods when you lose faith in your work? How have you handled them? What do you feel is your greatest creative or artistic accomplishment?
Seth: "Do you have periods where you lose faith in your work?" Yes -- those periods are called "every day."
I find the process of cartooning a genuine struggle. You must have the confidence in yourself to pursue your work and publish it (you've got to have some faith in it to send it out into the world) but you must also have enough doubt about what you are doing to constantly try to tear it apart and try to make it better. It is a tightrope walk that is never very pleasant.
A cartoonist has a very isolated job. You sit in a room with yourself everyday, all day. You have to come to some sort of truce with yourself. It is difficult to do, and easy to become depressed or melancholic. When I first read of Hergé's troubles, years ago, I was not surprised. It seems an archetypal cartoonist story. The fact that this depression became fodder for his work strikes me as just what I would expect. You work it out at the drawing board -- I could relate to that.
As for my greatest creative accomplishment -- that is the work yet to come. I like some of what I have produced and others, not so much. The work that most holds my interest is the work-to-be.
POV: How does politics influence or impact your work in comics (or not)? Has it had a lesser or greater effect over the years?
Seth: I am really not much of a political person. I have political beliefs, but they don't occupy a large part of my daily life. I am so utterly self-obsessed that my main artistic concerns are generally informed more by my inner world than the political realities of the outer world. Clearly I am a typical product of this pampered North American affluence in that I can afford to be complacent and contemplate my own navel. When the end of the world hits (any day now) I am sure I will suddenly find out what a sheltered cry-baby I was. But it will be too late then to have made any effort to prevent what I am currently ignoring.
POV: What are you working on now?
Seth: I am plowing ahead with the second part of my book Clyde Fans. I hope to have a good chunk of it done by the end of this year and the whole book hopefully finished up in another year after that (with luck). Look for the next issue of Comic Art Magazine (no. 8) for a small 100-page book (titled: 40 Cartoon Books of Interest) that is shrink-wrapped in with it. This is a little book I recently produced that explores some of my collecting interests over the last twenty years.
It looks like there may be a strip in the works for a high profile magazine -- but the negotiations have just begun on this so I am not naming any names just in case it doesn't happen.
Rebecca Bengal conducted this interview via email for POV
Related Links:
Drawn and Quarterly: Seth
The artist's page on his publisher's website
Fantagraphics Books: The Complete Peanuts
Seth designed this 25-volume set of Charles Schulz's classic Peanuts.
Chris Ware
Chris Ware
Copyright ©2006 C. Ware
POV: The ligne claire ("clear line") style Hergé employed when drawing the iconic characters of Tintin contrasts with the unusually realistic landscapes and backgrounds of the worlds Tintin visits and inhabits. As Scott McCloud pointed out in his Understanding Comics, this contrast gives the effect of allowing the comic reader to "mask themselves in a character and safely enter a stimulating world." "One set of line," he writes, "allows readers to see; the other to be."
Your own work is graphically striking, the layout meticulously rendered, incorporating elements like toy cutouts. Describe your illustrative strategy or style as you see it. How did you arrive at it? How do you feel it's been most effective? Did you struggle to find it or did it come naturally? When has it not worked for you?
Chris Ware: I'd agree with McCloud, though I think Hergé employed the same so-called "clear line" to create his backgrounds as he did his characters; he simply didn't present the people quite as inertly as the settings, for the reasons you articulate. (There's something very strange and wrong-seeming about drawing realistic eyeballs in comics, at least in the mode of comics where action is carried more by the movement of the characters rather than where narration links disparately framed selected images.)
Joanna. Copyright ©2006 C. Ware
I arrived at my way of "working" as a way of visually approximating what I feel the tone of fiction to be in prose versus the tone one might use to write biography; I would never do a biographical story using the deliberately synthetic way of cartooning I use to write fiction. I try to use the rules of typography to govern the way that I "draw," which keeps me at a sensible distance from the story as well as being a visual analog to the way we remember and conceptualize the world. I figured out this way of working by learning from and looking at artists I admired and whom I thought came closest to getting at what seemed to me to be the "essence" of comics, which is fundamentally the weird process of reading pictures, not just looking at them. I see the black outlines of cartoons as visual approximations of the way we remember general ideas, and I try to use naturalistic color underneath them to simultaneously suggest a perceptual experience, which I think is more or less the way we actually experience the world as adults; we don't really "see" anymore after a certain age, we spend our time naming and categorizing and identifying and figuring how everything all fits together. Unfortunately, as a result, I guess sometimes readers get a chilled or antiseptic sensation from it, which is certainly not intentional, and is something I admit as a failure, but is also something I can't completely change at the moment.
Incidentally, I stole this idea of using very carefully composed naturalistic color under a platonic black line more or less directly from Hergé, as there's a certain lushness and jewel-like quality to his pages that also seems to hint at the way we gift-wrap our experiences as memories.
I realize that this is all a rather over-thought, dogmatic and somewhat limiting way of approaching comics, especially if one tries to look at my strips as "good" drawings, because they're not, but it's also allowed me to finally arrive at a point where I'm able to write with pictures without worrying about how I'm drawing something, instead permitting me to concentrate on how the characters "feel." I wouldn't recommend this method to anyone, though; it's just the way I work, though I certainly don't think it's the only way to work in comics at all.
POV: You often return to the same characters: how do you feel about your recurring characters -- especially those who've been called semi-autobiographical like Quimby and Jimmy -- or others like the Super-man: how real do they become to you as you work and live with them over the years? Do you imagine them having a life independent of the comic?
Asleep. Copyright ©2006 C. Ware
Chris: I went through a period of dealing with characters which were essentially regurgitations of American icons, and I've only in the past five years tried to write "real" people into my stories. My single goal is to create people with whom, for better or for worse (and regardless of how embarrassing it sounds) I can "fall in love" and somehow feel something deeply about, and through. All of the earlier characters, like the ones you mention, started out as gag strips and sort of naturally blossomed into more fleshed-out figures, but then dried up and stopped suggesting anything to me. More recent characters like those in the two stories I'm working on now feel like real people to me. I don't think this way of developing as a cartoonist is at all unusual to someone sort of feeling their way as a writer; if I'd been more careful or surgical in my approach, or trained as a writer, maybe I would have arrived at this point much earlier. And of course there's always the possibility that it's an utterly wrongheaded way to think about it all, too.
POV: Describe your working process. Do you work daily? When you begin a comic, do you start with image, or with text? What are the raw materials of a story? Do you always know what is going to happen, or does the story take turns that surprise you?
Chris: As I get older I find myself thinking about stories more and more before I work so that by the time I eventually sit down to write them, I know more or less how it's going to look, start or feel. Once I do actually set pencil to paper, though, everything changes and I end up erasing, redrawing and rewriting more than I keep. Once a picture is on the page I think of about ten things that never would have occurred to me otherwise. Then when I think of the strip at other odd times during the day, it's a completely different thing than it was before I started.
As for my workday, I used to sit down and fritter away my time, but now I work within a more compressed schedule because I spend most of the day looking after my daughter. I've also given up my weekly deadline to allow the work to happen at a more natural pace, and I think I can say that for these two reasons I'm genuinely happy for the first time in my adult life. I'm glad I put myself through the true misery of deadlines for 20 years, but if I can't do it now for its own sake, then I shouldn't be doing it at all.
POV: Marshall McLuhan, author of the 1967 book The Medium is the Massage, wrote about the differences between what he called "hot" media versus "cool" media. Hot media, like movies and radio, he said, were dense with data and therefore demanded only a passive audience, whereas "cool" media, lo-fi and utilizing iconic forms, required active, involved audience participation. His examples of "cool" media are television and comics.
Do you agree with McLuhan? Does that connect with what you wrote about cartooning in the intro to the McSweeney's comics issue you edited? You said: "Cartooning isn't really drawing, any more than talking is singing... The possible vocabulary of comics is by definition unlimited, the tactility of an experience told in pictures outside the boundaries of words, and the rhythm of how these drawings 'feel' when read is where the real art resides."
Chris: Sounds good to me. In fact, I read that book as an impressionable college freshman and it's obvious I completely internalized it and have been spitting it back out uncredited ever since. But I wouldn't classify television as "cool," because to me anything that involves the reader's consciousness to drive and carry a story is an "active" medium, and anything that sort of just pours into the eyeballs and ears is the opposite. (Personally, I'm most moved by music, so my mentioning this is not a value judgment.)
What I was trying to peck out and articulate in the McSweeney's introduction was the difference between seeing and reading in terms of the mechanics of comics, and to find where the real "feeling" is in the medium, because I don't necessarily think it's in the drawing.
POV: Graphic novels and comics have become popular even among mainstream audiences right now, especially with movie adaptations of non-superhero comics like V for Vendetta, Sin City, American Splendor, Ghost World, A History of Violence, and, just out at the time of this interview, Art School Confidential. In the United States, graphic novel sales have more than tripled to $245 million in recent years. Yet bookstores still often have a hard time deciding where to shelve them: some finally have been given their own section, but often you have to look in Humor. Nearly every review or article written about them still includes a definition, as if a reader would have no preconceived idea of what a comic or graphic novel is, implying that comics are largely misunderstood. Why do you think it's taken so long for comics and graphic novels to become as popular as they are now, and why are they still so misunderstood? In your McSweeney's introduction, you wrote: "Comics are not a genre, but a developing language." I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that.
Lunchroom. Copyright ©2006 C. Ware
Chris: Is that really true, though? I don't think that people are necessarily going to films simply because they were adapted from comics, though I could be wrong. Comics aren't really misunderstood either, they've just been mostly silly for the past century, and those genre-centered stories have found their way into the movie theaters over the past couple of decades because a generation who grew up reading them has, well, grown up. Yet there are more artists doing good work now in comics than ever before, and I think some readers sense that there's something about the disposition of the person who wants to grow up to be a cartoonist that somehow allows him or her to be able to see and comment on our world in a way that's maybe a little more clear-seeming (or, in its most immature but still valuable form, judgmental). Also, it's a way of literally experiencing someone else's vision with a purity that I don't think any other medium offers; there are no technical, electronic or financial limitations; one only has to work harder to improve. Lately I think a new attitude has prevailed that comics aren't inherently an Art form, but that some cartoonists are genuinely artists.
As for the shelving problem, it's due partly to a slow erosion of the content that's filled comics for decades now in favor of more self-motivated work, because, I think, such work is simply more interesting; the kids who grew up reading Mad magazine drew the undergrounds, and the kids who read the undergrounds drew "alternative" comics and the kids who read alternative comics are likely drawing something like manga. This generation will get jobs at the New Yorker and NBC and Random House and start to hire manga artists rather than the cartoonists of my generation.
POV: Although some have approached its widespread popularity, there is no exact parallel to Tintin in American comics. Why do you think this is so? What in American comics comes closest to Tintin and approximating the cult of Tintin? In other media?
Chris: Tintin was fundamentally too sexless to really catch on in America. There are hardly any girls in Hergé's stories, and there's also a peculiar sense of responsibility and respect in Tintin that is antithetical to the American character, or at least that of the budding individualist nine-year-old boy who just wants to set things on fire and has been weaned on much more outrageous stories. I'm not even sure if it's fair to say that there is an analog in American culture to Tintin, actually. I read a few serialized episodes in a magazine my mom subscribed to for me when I was a kid and it made me feel really, really weird; I didn't like it at all. I could tell that it was "approved" and "safe" and it immediately bored me, because it didn't seem to have anything to do with what I thought of as the "real" adult world, which was for me at that time superpowers and crimefighting. (I like Tintin now, of course.)
POV: Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Lichtenstein, and other artists like Raymond Pettibon, have certainly been influenced by comics and have incorporated elements of them into their paintings. (Warhol was particularly influenced by Hergé.) And of course, Art Spiegelman really struck a nerve with a literary and a mainstream audience with Maus; your book Jimmy Corrigan -- The Smartest Kid on Earth was received, and sold very well. In the last few years, a number of literary journals have been devoting space to comics; the New York Times magazine began serializing comics in 2005, beginning with your own.
Although for years comics have been denigrated as a so-called "low art" category, it appears they're becoming more widely accepted and perhaps even validated as a form of art and a long literary narrative. Would you agree with this? Is "form" the right word here? Do you think that this kind of validation is inhibiting in any way, that comics are in danger of becoming less rebellious or creatively free because they're more accepted and being published in the mainstream?
Chris: "Form" seems fine, and sometimes I use the word "language," and while I am genuinely happy that I don't have to explain that I'm not an animator anymore when someone asks me what it is I do, I do worry that beginning cartoonists could feel somewhat strangled by the increasing critical seriousness comics has received of late and feel, like younger writers, that they have to have something to "say" before they set pen to paper. Many cartoonists feel even more passionate about this idea than I do, vehemently insisting that comics are inherently "non-art" and poop humor or whatever it is they think it is, but that attitude is a little like insisting that all modern writing should always take the form of The Canterbury Tales.
I'm all for anything and everything in comics; I started drawing them with the specific goal of finding out whether or not they were capable of expressing things other than jokes and contempt. To me, Robert Crumb is a perfect artist because he's one of the most visually sensitive people alive yet he's widely also known as one of the world's great curmudgeons, simply because his emotional range is so wide and his ability to see the world so perspicacious; all artists should hope to be so pluralistic. I do worry that museum shows and literary magazine appearances might start to cloud the general readership's ability to see comics clearly, as anything that's presented as high art immediately blurs a viewer's perceptions with thinking and theory, but I think it also means that more talented and thoughtful people will be attracted to it as a medium. With McSweeney's, which you've mentioned already, it wasn't my intention to elevate anything; all I wanted to do was show what I think of as good comics to people who might not otherwise have seen them, and demonstrate that cartooning could be a serious, involving, moving medium.
POV: Do you think it's also fair to say that a division or tension exists within the world of American comics, between the mainstream daily syndicated comic strip world or, say the New Yorker cartoon world, and the comics underground/graphic novel world?
Chris: Maybe there used to be, but I think pretty singularly due to the efforts of Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly (and David Remnick and Ted Genoways) that that distinction is largely eroding, at least between the New Yorker and alternative comics. If there is any separation between all of these various so-called outlets, however, it only has to do with each outlet's relative artistic freedom and whether something was done to please an editor and/or perceived readership, which hasn't been my experience with either alternative comics or the New Yorker.
If I could, I would like to mention here that comics are NOT illustration, any more than fiction is copywriting. Illustration is essentially the application of artistic technique or style to suit a commercial or ancillary purpose; not that cartooning can't be this (see any restaurant giveaway comic book or superhero media property as an example), but comics written and produced by a cartoonist sitting alone by him- or herself are not illustrations. They don't illustrate anything at all, they literally tell a story.
POV: How is cartooning different for you than working in other genres, as a creative process? Do you consider yourself a storyteller or an artist, or a hybrid of both? Do you think it's difficult for a comic artist to find serious acceptance for work in other artistic and literary genres or in film? What has your own experience been?
Chris: Not to be obtuse, but I guess I consider myself a cartoonist first, though I was "trained" as a painter/printmaker/sculptor. If there's still any resistance to cartooning in the nuts-and-bolts world of acquiring the means of survival, it's probably mostly on the pay scale. If graphic novels are selling really well and are "growing the book market" or whatever it is a businessman would say about them, I don't see it in the remuneration offered by some of the publishers. My prose-writing friends have amazed me with the figures they've quoted being offered for first books, easily double or triple that for what I've heard for newer cartoonists. A good portion of all of the various comic books and so-called graphic novels that are appearing right now are probably assembled, scanned and delivered as printable files by the cartoonists themselves, and this is in addition to the painstaking, difficult and self-worth-challenging task of drawing (and learning to draw) them all in the first place. In short, cartoonists are all paid more poorly than a prose author would ever be, and this isn't even factoring in all of this extra work. How many prose authors have to set their own type, do their own covers and learn production for offset printing so that the ink traps properly? Cartooning is an artistic commitment that requires the full attention and passion of the artist on every level; one should not get into it if one expects to do anything more than produce a book or a story that is exactly as one wants it to be.
As for "storytelling," I think this is one of comics' esthetic hurdles at the moment, which was the novelist's problem 150 years ago: namely, to take comics from storytelling into that of "writing," the major distinction between the two to me being that the former gives one the facts, but the latter tries to recreate the sensation and complexities of life within the fluidity of consciousness and experience. As far as I'm concerned, that's really all I've been trying to do formally for the past decade or more with comics, and it's certainly time-consuming, since it has to be done with drawings, not words. Hergé actually was one of the first to try this, I think.
POV: Hergé underwent a period of despair and anxiety during which he suffered recurring nightmares filled with whiteness -- certainly iconic dreams for a cartoonist! Eventually, after psychoanalysis, he emerged with a new direction: Tintin in Tibet, with its stark alpine landscapes and minimalist cast and story, was a major departure for Hergé. Do you have periods when you lose faith in your work? How have you handled them? What do you feel is your greatest creative or artistic accomplishment?
Chris: I lose faith every time I have to start a new page, and this is no joke. I'm really glad you're bringing this up because I've occasionally been criticized over the past couple of years for publicly "complaining" about how difficult drawing comics is, yet I've only mentioned it so that the younger cartoonists who are trying it out and finding it difficult and painful realize that they're not alone. There's not really any set way of learning how to do this, and it's always a struggle to improve, and, more importantly, see accurately whether or not one's work is communicating any shred of feeling or truth at all.
POV: How does politics influence or impact your work in comics (or not)? Has it had a lesser or greater effect over the years?
Chris: Drawing the kind of comics that I do takes so long that to specifically address something as transitory as a political matter in it would be about as effective as composing a symphony with hopes that it would depose a despot. On top of that, I personally don't think that my version of art is the best way to deal with political issues at all, or, more specifically, the place to make a point. Not that art can't, but it's the rare art that still creates something lasting if its main aim was purely to change a particular unfair social structure. (For example, I'd hate to have been a cartoonist in the 1970s and be only able to claim a body of anti-Nixon comics.) I admit that this is an entirely arguable point, however, and I defer to anyone who takes issue with me about it, because I change my mind about it often and I'll agree with anyone just so I don't have to talk about it.
Besides, it's not like there aren't enough political cartoonists out there already who are much smarter and more clear-headed than I am. About the only times I've allowed myself to be topical and opinionated have been in the fake ads in my comics, as I consider that to be the "throwaway" parts of what I do; I know that I'm living in a country where all needs and comforts for a large part of the population have been met frequently at great cost to other parts of the world, however, so writing stories about its inhabitants takes on a sort of responsibility in and of itself. Fundamentally, I have no idea how the world works, though I am trying to figure it out.
POV: What are you working on now?
Chris: Two long stories, "Rusty Brown" and "Building Stories," which I'm serializing in my regular comic book, "The ACME Novelty Libary," and which I'm now self-publishing.
Rebecca Bengal conducted this interview via email for POV
Related Links:
Chris Ware
The artist's website, from publisher Fantagraphic Books.