It’s a testament, of course, to Derek Kirk Kim’s abilities as an artist that, upon first glance, there are no immediately discernable similarities between the three short stories that make up The Eternal Style. The artist adopts a vastly different aesthetic for each of the three pieces—three styles which might easily be mistaken for the work of three different artists. It’s a testament to Gene Yang’s ability as a writer, however, that despite the works’ clear differences, its the unified nature of the three pieces that ultimately stays with the reader.

On their face, the three works could hardly be more different. Duncan’s Kingdom is a fantasy story, set upon the backdrop of a medieval kingdom under siege by an army of glowing-eyed frogmen. A hero is tasked with the destruction of said army, so that he might win the hand of a fair maiden. Kim adopts a quasi-fantasy style for the piece, at times taking cues from artists like Mike Mignola.

The artist’s style shifts abruptly for the next story. Opening with a cover page paying a less than subtle homage to Carl Barks’s Uncle Scrooge, the second story, which lends its title to the book, uses aesthetics borrowed from American and Japanese funny animal comics to tell of a covetous frog who will stop at nothing in pursuit of fame and fortune.

The third story, Urgent Request, adopts a much softer style, telling Yang’s story of a lonely secretary through various shades of purple. It’s dark and stark, and despite the cartoonishly adorable appearance of the protagonist, Janet, the visuals do an effective job painting her lonely desk-bound existence.

Upon reading through the three stories the first time, one immediate thread begins to emerge: they all share Yang’s penchant for plot twists. All three open with a basic, largely familiar premise—nearly familiar enough to their respective genres to convince the reader to abandon the story, halfway through. After some build, however, Yang happily makes an abrupt shift, calling into question the reality he spent so many pages establishing.

It soon becomes apparent, too, that these two diametrically opposed forces—the real and the fantastic—are, in fact, at battle with one and other another for the heart and mind of the stories’ protagonists. The real, in each case, is fairly bleak scenario—the fantastic a technicolored escape from reality’s dregs.  In each case, Yang offers up an ultimately redemptive outcome in the struggle between the two, imbuing his characters with good decision making skills when tasked with determining their own fate.

In the end, it’s easy to see why each of these tales was relegated to short story status. While Yang has a point to make with each, he’s careful not to let any overstate their welcome, like a set of modern day fables all more or less hitting upon the same basic truth. While none is strong enough to warrant its own book, grouped together, the stories that make up The Eternal Smile are a journey worth taking.

–Brian Heater

Emily the Strange was born on the bottom of a skateboard deck—an odd little girl created to be a one-off character for the Santa Cruz Skateboard company. Soon she appeared on t-shirts. A decade later, she became an industry—comics and books and stickers and stationary, and even a limited edition guitar, endorsed by Lil’ Wayne.

For the past 15 years, skateboard-turned-graphic designer Rob Reger has over seen Emily in her various forms, from the image of a black cat-loving 13-year-old goth girl to the fleshed out star of her own novels—an evolution that will continue on into a feature film slated for release in 2010.

We sat down with Reger at the New York Comic Con, to discuss how the girl who started life as fodder for a skateboard grew into a full-fledged phenomenon.

How many of these shows do you come out to?

It’s my second New York show. But we’ve been to Comic Con for maybe five or six years now.

Do you go to any others?

I’ve been to Wizard. We did Dragon Con. I was actually slated to really have a good time at Dragon Con, but I hurt my back last year, but hopefully I’ll go that this year.

It seems like the Emily character has a brand that spreads much further than just the comics world. Do you go to book shows or anything of that nature?

We’re represented at a lot of international book shows. Most of the book shows. We do a lot of fashion tradeshows throughout the world, like Bread and Butter, London Edge, Magic here in the United States.

You use the word “we.” It sounds like it’s become more of a company than just a creator and character.

Very much so. And it really has been that way all along. I’ve had a team that developed Emily and an art department behind me. I’m really the idea guy. In the early days, I did all of the design, of course—and I still do today, but I spend more of my time on the books, working with writers and writing myself, illustrating the covers for the books, and stuff like that. But some of the product design, I definitely have teams. I have a lot of great creative people that I work with. That’s one of the things that I really like about the company is that I spend a lot of time working with really cool, creative people.

A lot of people are very protective of their characters. Do you feel somehow less invested, running this company?

Oh no, I’m very invested. I’m very protective. Don’t get that wrong. I’ve invested 15 years of my life, with pretty much 12 hour days, most of the time on Emily and Cosmic Debris in general.

Is it clear to you when someone introduces something that the character should not do?

Yeah. Usually we just have a good laugh and put that away.

Are there any absurd scenarios that come to mind?

Well, in the olden days, I wouldn’t accept anything that wasn’t red, black, and white. That was easy—”no we’re not going to do it on pink, unless it’s a ‘welcome to my nightmare’ shirt.” I’m more accepting of color and things like that, nowadays. But really, I think anyone I work with, it’s understood what I’m going for. We have a foundation and I’m very clear about what I want for them, and usually everyone’s very on-target. We do things to kind of mess with people more to mess around than anything. I remember we turned in a galley for Chronicle Books, and just to see if they ever look at the artwork, we snuck in a little naked Emily in there. I had to point it out to them. They’re like, “it’s great Rob.” I had to tell them to look at page 13.

It sounds like they’re affording you a sense of freedom.

Oh, absolutely. That’s what it is. All of my publishers, including Dark Horse, really trust us on the art. They really trust my sense of graphic design. I really get a lot of freedom.

She originally came out as a skateboard deck.

Yeah. Originally it was a skateboard deck for Santa Cruz Skateboards.

How did it turn into something larger than that?

Well, I was doing t-shirts at the time and I had a friend who worked at store in Santa Cruz called Pipeline. I was selling tons of stuff there, and it fit in perfectly with what I was doing. It was just one of those designs that kind of lingered and turned into another design and another design and just turned into five or ten shirts. Finally I decided that I was going to kick this into gear. I hired one of my good friends, Brian Brooks, and we just put a lot of time into it, gave her her own label and stuff like that.

It’s one thing to move from skate decks to t-shirts. It’s an entirely different thing to move into storytelling—to have a character come out of an image.

Yeah, well, the interesting thing is that each shirt included a phrase—a description of Emily, like, “Emily didn’t search to be long, she searched to be lost.” So there are these little things that made you think there was something more to it. And once we had like ten of those things, we showed it to the publisher down the street from me, Chonicle Books, and said, “hey, here’s an idea for a book, about this crazy character.” They dug it was totally different for them.

It was pretty clear to you what the character was?

Yeah. It was very purposefully very mysterious for a long time, and very slow, when we would release more information about her. I had developed at that time characteristics—50 things she is and 50 things she isn’t and her cat’s name and her cat’s ancestors and her mom’s name. And people still don’t know what her mom’s name is.

[Concluded in Part Two]

–Brian Heater

11:35

Before accepting a full-time gig at Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad Magazine, Al Jaffee kicked around the comics industry, writing anything his editors would throw at him, from funny animal books, to “teenage material,” to army comics, to crime books. The artist even dabbled a bit in the superhero genre—albeit with a distinctly Jaffeean take on the subject

It was his boss at Timely—a young editor by the name of Stan Lee—who assigned Jaffee work on a title called Super Rabbit. Under the artist’s control, the superhero was transformed into something different than the rest of the books on the market. The costumed lagomorph became a hero with problems—normal, everyday problems.

It was a decision, perhaps, that would have an impact on Stan Lee’s later success (if only subconsciously), as Timely became Marvel and the editor churned out book after book of venerable heroes, decidedly real world counterparts to the supermen who dominated the industry.

In this second part of our interview with Jaffee, we delve into the artist’s pre-Mad work and discuss how the early world of comic books shaped the artist’s later successes in the industry.

[Part One]

I know it’s hard for a lot of artists to give up a sense of autonomy—to have to do work by committee. Was it ever difficult having to answer to editors?

No, it never is, because Mad has had crackerjack people. The editors that they have now are tops. They anticipate my problems. They’re not going to throw something at me that is utterly impossible, you know. They have a very good sense of what’s practical and what’s not, and we just have a terrific working relationship and have had for many years now, and I love working with them, because they’re just really good at it. And I think they like working with me because I view my role as the problem solver. Editors like to work with people who can take the thing and go with it, and I’ve been able to do that, so I solve their problems, they solve mine.

I assume it was a little different when you first started in the comics industry—when you were working with Timely ad publishers of that ilk. What was the creative pipeline like, back then?

Well, my relationships with editors with all stripes have always been very good because it’s easier to work with editors if you’re a writer/artist. If you can write, because editors have a lot of problems on their mind, because they’re not just working with me or one other guy. They’re working with a dozen other people or more, and they just want the problem solved. When I first started with Stan Lee, my first assignment—we didn’t know each other from anything, I just came in with my portfolio—he threw a script at me and said, “if you can do this, we’ll work together.” I took the script and interpreted it. It was called Swat Car Squad. I didn’t create it—somebody wrote it and I did the artwork on it. When I turned it in, he was very happy and he said, “can you write it and draw it?” I said, “sure.”

The next script I wrote and drew and handed it to him, and he said, “okay, from now on, you just do it and don’t even show me the script. Just write it and draw it.” And so, in essence, he got rid of a problem. He got rid of the problem of finding a writer to hand something to an artist who would have to interpret the writing correctly. All of that is wiped out, when the artist writes his own stuff. So, my relationship with Stan Lee continued on that way for my entire relationship with him. He never saw a script of mine. All he said was, “do a six page story, do a five page story.” And I would just write it, draw it, ink it, hand it in for lettering, and that would be the last time I heard of it. And I think it’s a mutually excellent relationship, when the editor can rely on a writer/artist, so he can pay attention to other problems that don’t solve themselves so easily. So, it’s been a good situation for me throughout my career because I just didn’t have any problems. I didn’t have any rejections, I didn’t have any editors sitting over my shoulder. Everything ran very smoothly.

Did you get the sense that with Stan Lee it was like that with the other writer/artists? Or was your relationship something of a special case?

Well, I’m not familiar with how many writer/artists he had. When I worked for him, as an associate editor, there were artist/writers like Morris Weiss, who was doing a number of comic books. He packaged the entire comic book. He would write it, he would draw it, and I think even letter it. He delivered it to me when I was the associate editor. He worked the same way that I always worked with Stan Lee. He didn’t have any editorial supervision. He just did it and turned it in. there must have been others as well, but I don’t think that that was the way it was with the superheroes.

Stan Lee really supervised the superhero scripts very closely, because Stan is a very good writer in his own right, and he knew how he wanted the stories and the characters developed, and he wasn’t going to let anyone go off course. It was easier in the humor department and the teenage material. I did Patsy Walker for many years, and the first time that Stan saw the material was when he saw the whole book. So we trusted each other and that worked very well. I’m sure he had that relationship with other people, but I didn’t work in the office. I was freelance after my associate editorship ended.

You did do a superhero book—a very unique take on the genre called Super Rabbit.

Yes.

How did that title come about? Was it an attempt to create your own superhero?

Stan Lee handed it to me as he handed a lot of things to me. I guess I had established that relationship on the first thing, Swat Car Squad, and from that point on, he would say to me, “create some characters and write it.” That’s what happened with Silly Seal and Ziggy Pig and Fertie the Fox and so many others. And then when the writer/artist who was doing Super Rabbit—I don’t exactly know who that was—he called me in and he said, “how would you like to write and draw this thing?” And I said, “sure, great.”

From the beginning, I just realized that I couldn’t do a rabbit as a superhero. It’s ridiculous. So it’s got to be a rabbit who has problems. So, right from the beginning, I just started writing stories where he was a second-rate superhero. He had just ordinary problems. That’s why I sort of tie it into what Stan started doing with superheroes, later on. Although I’m not taking any credit away from Stan Lee. He’s perfectly creative in his own right, and I have absolute faith the fact that he was not influenced by Super Rabbit. He probably didn’t even remember Super Rabbit when he did his superhero stuff. But it was just a very funny coincidence that I did have Super Rabbit have ordinary problems like human beings have, and being a superhero was not something that he was very successful at.

So when you look at Spider-man or the Fantastic Four, you see a little bit of Super Rabbit in there?

Well, in a way I do. I think it sort of makes me feel things come full circle. The writers of superhero material—Captain America and the Human Torch and the Submariner—were very straight. They took this stuff very seriously. They were fighting the war and they were fighting Nazis and fighting the Communists and all of these menaces, but they weren’t kidding around. The only jokes they’d have would be something like, “take that, you half-assed…thing…”

Taglines.

Taglines, yeah. And hitting five people with the same punch. But not much, other than these little throwaway bits of humor. and then Stan, to his credit, turned things around and he I think he turned the industry around by making superheroes more a part of our world than just from some distant planet. And he combined superheroes with human traits and I think that people could identify with that stuff more easily.

Could you see yourself having written those more serious superhero books, had things turned out differently, if you would have stayed on with Timely as it became Marvel?

Well I must confess that I think I could have written superhero material. Stan even assigned me a straight writing job on one of this detective books. I forget what the title was, but I did a sort off Bonnie and Clyde thing. I wrote it and I drew it. I felt very comfortable with it. I feel that writing is writing. If you have to do a serious thing, you do a serious thing. If you have to do something that’s funny, you do something that’s funny. I’m not going to say that I would have had a hugely successful career as a superhero writer. I really don’t know. When you get into these things, you get familiar with the problems of the craft and you start to get used to it.

I really don’t think it would have been difficult for me, but I like drawing and I can’t draw straight stuff. Even teenage drawing was difficult for me, but I did it well enough so that the books sold well. That’s all I know. The drawing might not have been so great, but it did the job. I think most of us, at the end of our lives would like to start over again and see how things would have gone if we had gone in another direction, but we don’t get that chance.

[Concluded in Part Three]

–Brian Heater

When Sean Seamus McWhinny was four, he ran down a hallway in his parents’ house, leaving a trail of red crayon on the wall as he went.  Years later, while watching Saturday morning cartoons, he practiced drawing by rapidly copying the gestures of the Warner Bros. characters on TV.

Since growing up, he began a semi-weekly, semi-autobiographical webcomic called Diary of a Catering Whore based on his experiences as a catering waiter/bartender in San Francisco. Hard copies of his work can be purchased through Prism Comics or Indy Planet.

His current projects include Rat Diva, a celebrity photo book spoof about an old Hollywood glamor diva of stage and screen, who happens to be a rat, and Bunny Man, about his experience as a mall Easter Bunny. Publishers?  Eh?  You listenin’?  Could be the next David Sedaris over here.

- Sarah Morean

For better or worse, we live in the age of the meme. In some form or other, the concept has existed since the beginning of recorded history, but, given the modern ubiquity of the Internet, culture is being disseminated at a dizzying pace, spread through blogs and Websites and e-mail, becoming ever more fragmented and ephemeral.  In fact, it should be regarded as something of a marked success for those pop-cultural Internet touchstones capable of remaining in the public conscious for longer than a week or two.

By that measure, the Lolcat is downright canonical. One of the most persuasive Internet memes of the decade, the concept is something of a critical mass the Web’s love of silly animal pictures with its devotion to forced misspellings and malapropism, marrying the two into works that seem to imply, among other things, that if cats could indeed speak, they would likely do so poorly. Love it or hate it, the Lolcat shows no sign of slowing. In fact, if one can indeed predict the meme’s downfall, it will likely be from cannibalization on the part of the many sub-memes it’s spawned.
This, however, is not a category in which I would lump Adam Koford’s Laugh-out-Loud Cats. While he strip was unquestionably born out of a riff on the popular meme, in doing so, the artist has managed create something that seems ever increasingly rare in this age of instantly disposable expression: a piece of art that possesses self-contained merits, which, arguably surpass the meme from which it was initially born.

In the creation of the strip, Koford, an artist clearly intimately familiar with the golden age of the Sunday funnies, hit upon a genuinely inspired idea, a marriage of Lolcats’ grammatical atrocities with that original misspoken feline, George Herriman’s Krazy Kat. Koford carried the conceit to its logical conclusion, constructing a false history for the popular Lolcats as the Internet-era descendent of an early 20th century syndicated strip, The Laugh-out-Loud Cats.

The strip, oft championed by the always meme-hungry weblog, Boing Boing, began to tackle Internet phenomenon on a panel-by-panel basis, grounding each concept in the constructed reality, in much the same way that the original Lolcats were, in his mind, two tongue-tied hobo cats named Kitteh and Pip. The felines play with threads, cook rams, and reboot their footwear. It’s a variety of humor often based on fairly simple puns, but Koford’s abilities as a gag writer keep the concept fresh for most of this collection’s 150-odd pages, occasionally deviating from Web-based humor, such as with one strip’s particularly inspired homage to E.C. Segar, another clear influence on Koford’s work.

The strip is also kept afloat by Koford’s clear talents as an artist, drawing with a style that simultaneously channels some of the aforementioned comics pioneers, whilst staying decidedly modern. It’s a style that lends itself particularly well to the train-hopping exploits of the strip’s hobo cats. Koford clearly derives joy from drawing adorable anthropomorphic animals sporting elbow batches and plaid bindles.

Ultimately, however, memes have inherently short shelf-lives. It’s a side effect, for better or worse, of the culture which first spawned them. With that in mind, it’s hard to imagine most of the strips contained in The Laugh-out-Loud Cats Sell Out remaining relevant—or even comprehensible—to readers too far down the line. It also begs the question of how much longer Koford will be able to utilize Kitteh and Pip, at least in their current form.

This ephemeral nature begs the same question raised by the recent spate of blogs-turned-books—is this manner of work best confined to the Web where it originated? This beautifully packaged volume, complete with an intro by the ever-hilarious comedian, John Hodgman, makes a pretty strong case for a spot on your bookshelf as well.

–Brian Heater

“I was trying shut the radio off and had type flying in the air,” Al Jaffee laughs, taking the call off of speakerphone. He’s in the middle of fold-in at the moment—“engrossed” as he happily puts it. It is, of course, exactly what one would expect the artist to be working on at 5:30 PM on a Wednesday night—or, really, any time, for that matter. Since 1964, the artist has created, by his estimation, more than 400 of the things, which have graced the back cover of all but three issues of Mad Magazine over the course of the past 45 years.

At 87, Jaffee’s speaks of himself in the same self-deprecating tones his fans have come to know and expect from his work, a sense of modesty that hardly betrays his position as one of the most beloved humor cartoonists of the past half-century.  The artist is quick with joke for nearly every topic we broach during our discussion, though the one that inadvertently kicks off the interview hits a little too close to home—the death rattle of the American publishing industry.

In late January of this year, it was announced that Mad, America’s premier humor magazine, will become a quarterly, after 55 years as a monthly publication. It is, of course, a sign of the times, if ever their were one, a sign that the magazine is continuing to struggle at the hands of newer forms of media, seven years after finally caving and including advertisements in its printed form. It’s also a sign, Jaffee adds, half jokingly, that “humor is dying.”

Pop cultural bemoaning aside (though, honestly, who can blame the guy?), Jaffee proves himself once again to be the consummate storyteller, a man with a fantastic yarn for nearly every question one might toss at him, from his days attending classes at The High School of Music & Art in New York alongside future Mad staffers Harvey Kurtzman, Al Feldstein, and Will Elder; to his time spent as an artist/writer for Stan Lee at Timely Comics; to creation of some of Mad’s most enduring features. Few have seen as much of the industry as Al Jaffee an even fewer can tell its story quite so well.

Is the fold-in that you’re working on for the next issue of Mad?

No, actually, I’m working on a fold-in for Squa Tront. That’s a publication, that I think is funded by Fantagraphics, but it’s run by Jerry Weist. That’s who I’m working with. But it’s just a special for one issue.

Have your fold-ins largely been created for Mad, or have you done a lot for other publications?

I’ve done fold-ins on the outside commercially, but not for competeing humor magazines. I haven’t done anything—if there are any other humor magazines. I don’t know if there are.

Certainly not in the traditional magazine form.

Because humor is dying [laughs].

There’s a lot of comedy on the Internet, but it’s definitely a change from the age of the humor magazine.

The Internet has changed the world. Everything is different now. Newspapers have to contend with it, magazines—as a matter of fact, I get The New York Times. I’ve been getting it every morning for years, and now more and more of the Internet is creeping into the newspaper, because they don’t see the future on newsprint alone. So, every article you read ends with, “for more news on this subject, go to NewYorkTimes.com.” And here I am paying for the newspaper, and I’m only getting part of the story, because they have to tie in with the Internet.

The “fit” part of “All the news that’s fit to print slogan” doesn’t seem so appropo.

Well, things change. Nothing stays the same. Mad is different this year, too. From 12 issues a year, we’re down to four.

How has that affected you? I imagine it’s freed up some time to work on different projects.

It does, but at the same time, the immediate effect is to practically cut out my income from Mad. Four-fifths of my income from Mad is gone, and who knows how long that will last.

Are you doing work for the site, specifically?

They haven’t quite figured out how that’s going to run, and so far there hasn’t been a budget allocated for it. I’d be interested in doing fold-ins on the ‘net, but it has to be something that pays off for them and pays off for me.

You’ve always been a pioneer in terms of the use of the page. I imagine that, had you come of age in the time of the Internet, than you’d probably be doing similarly innovative work in that format.

Yeah, you know, I’m just too old for that. I’m from another time. I think the stuff we do at Mad is pertinent and people seem to enjoy it—the fold-ins that I do and sometimes other things. But the Internet is just a different ball game. It’s more immediate. I’ve seen fold-ins done on the Internet—my fold-ins—and they actually come off better than they do in the magazine, because you fold it electronically, and it’s quicker and easier and more precise. The timing is very good. In the magazine, when you read the question, and then you have to spend ten minutes folding it to get the answer,  it works much better when you read the first part of it and then you look at the picture and with one click, you’ve got the thing folding. It’s much more interesting, really. I don’t mean to knock my own work in the magazine—I think the magazine still works very well—but I think the new technology is faster and I think young people like you today, have a lot on your plate, and you want to get to more and things, every day.

I was fairly young when I first started reading Mad. I had small, clumsy hands—it was a bit difficult to do those fold-ins, the first couple of times.

It is, it is. It’s even difficult for me. But it wouldn’t have lasted all of these years, if people didn’t enjoy the result, once they’ve fiddled around with it and got the words to work out right and all of that. I guess you’ve got a little feeling of accomplishment, so I guess there’s a reward and I think that’s what made it work. But there was a time when there was a reward for sending smoke signals, instead of the telephone. The smoke signals died out when the telephone came in. I don’t know where fold-in is going to go, as far as print is concerned, but it may continue on in the Internet.

You’re definitely considered the owner of the idea, in a sense. Whenever people talk about fold-ins, they tend to attribute the concept to you. But is it something that you enjoy seeing other people do—the ways the execute it, either online or in print?

Well, you know, I don’t worry about things that I can’t control. And if there are people out there who think they can do fold-ins better than I can, more power to them. That’s the nature of everything, whether it’s sports—If you’re a good pitcher in baseball and you’re watching a young player come along who’s better than you are, what are you gonna do, kill him [laughs]? You have to say, “hey, great.” I don’t worry about those things. I’ve always tried to do the best I could, an I always knew that there were a lot of cartoonists who were better than I was in certain areas. I mean, unquestionably in the area of drawing superheroes, almost everyone who does it is better than I am, but that’s just not my field of expertise, and I like to believe that the things that I was good at all of these years—and I hope that I’m still good at—I’m proud of my stuff and happy with what I did. But that doesn’t mean that someone isn’t going to come along who is going to be better and do even more exciting stuff, and good luck to him.

The fold-in is an especially interesting case—it was originally conceived as a one-off.

Yeah. It was just a one-shot. A lot of stuff that appeared in Mad was just a one-time gag. Even Alfred E. Newman, who I think Harvey Kurtzman picked up out of some kind of old magazine. He’d been around since the middle of the 19th century. Harvey picked him up because he fit perfectly into an idea that he had to do a satirical version of the old snake oil kind of advertising that was done in the back of old comic books. If you’ve ever seen old comic books from the 1930s and 40s, the whole back page would be advertising whoopee cushions, sneezing powder, how to develop muscles, pulling on some kind of rubber thing—

Charles Atlas—

The Atlas thing, yeah. So Harvey wanted to do a takeoff on that. He wanted to do a funny face, and this old Afred E. Newman face fit perfectly, so he picked it up. They weren’t going to do another back cover doing the same idea. That was supposed to be the end of it. But when Al Feldstein took over Mad after Harvey Kurtzman, he felt that Mad needed a mascot the way that some other magazines had done. Esquire had a character named Esky, and Playboy has the Playboy rabbit, and The New Yorker had the guy with the top hat and the butterfly. And so Feldstein, who really had a better sense of what sells magazines, was interested in that. He said, “let’s have someone make a good painting of this and let’s use it as a mascot.” He got Norman Mingo to do it, and it’s been successful ever since. It gave Mad an identity for the last 50 years or so.

But lots of things that come along are just one-shots. I did something called Hawks and Doves, which was supposed to be a one-shot. I was just having a little fun with the whole anti-war business, having Doves be a peace-lover, and he’s getting his rocks off with the major who is for the war. I was playing with that as a one-shot gag and Feldstein liked it, and he asked me to do some more. The same thing happened with the fold-in. I came up with one idea and figured it was just a one-shot gimmick. I didn’t even have an idea for another one. So Feldstein and Gaines both asked me to do some more, so I got to work on it. and it just went on and one and one for the last 45 years.

Do you know how many you’ve done in total?

Well, I’ve done over 400. Mad is celebrating it’s 500th issue anniversary. I’ve been in every one but three since 1964. I think I’ve done about 405 or something like that.

When the magazine was monthly, was that fold-in deadline ever something that you dreaded? Was it tough to get them in every issue.

No, I didn’t mind at the beginning, I did all of the ideas myself. I did that for a number of years. I came up with the idea and the sketch and showed it to them. It was not easy to get something approved, but I struggled along when I was younger and stronger and had more energy and put work into the latenight hours, until I succeeded. In later years, especially after Feldstein left, there were two editors, Nick Meglin and John Ficarra. They preferred to call in all of the associate editors and kick around ideas, so they would be on top of things, and they started coming up with stuff that was much more current, especially dealing with celebrities.

[Continued in Part Two]

–Brian Heater

At a comics convention, an early stages movie deal is something of a 300-pound gorilla—something everyone wants to discuss, but still tries hard not to jinx. In this industry we’ve seen countless optioning deals come and go, so when a creator announces that they’ve got the ball rolling on a project, it can be difficult to broach the subject.

The Goon creator, Eric Powell, while slightly apprehensive, seems fairly confident in a recent deal struck for his most famous creation. And really, the artist has every right to be. After all, he’s got David Fincher in his corner. A self-proclaimed fan of the Dark Horse  series, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button director has signed onto the project as a producer. Powell has begun working on treatments for the film, and, by all accounts, the early animation looks extremely promising.

In this second and final part of our interview with Powell, we discuss working for the Hollywood machine and what it’s like letting his creation go, ever-so-slightly, in order to explore mediums outside the insular comics world.

[Part One]

The old cliché is that the character writes itself. Is that the case with the Goon, or do you find yourself shaping him to fit what you’re interested in doing as a storyteller?

I think to a certain extent, the character writes himself. What I’m doing is coming up with a story and basically dropping the characters into it and it’s how they react to a certain scenario, that’s where the story comes from.

Have you attempted to drop them in a scenario that felt artificial? Are there ways they won’t bend?

Yeah, there are. I do a lot of weird stuff with them, put them in a lot of weird stories, but there are things that I’ve come up with, when I started writing and I’m like, “no, scratch that.” Sometimes you can play with that, too. You drop them in a scenario where they completely don’t make sense and play off of that. I have a project that we’re going to be announcing in the next month or so that’s very much that type of scenario.

Mike Mignola has a very tangible universe, but he lets other creators explore it. Is that something that interests you, or do you just want full control over your creations?

I don’t mind letting some other people come in and play, but I like it when the creator is really—kind of like when Paul Chadwick does Concrete. When Concrete comes out,  it’s always Paul Chadwick. That’s the way The Goon is going to be. I might bring other people in to help, like bringing Dave [Stewart] on to do colors. And there might be some other projects with other creators involved, but The Goon itself, I’m not going to turn that over to another artists. If The Goon book is coming out, I’ll be doing 90-percent of the work involved.

You’re working on The Goon film project right now.

Yeah.

In a sense, does it feel like you’re turning him over to other creators?

That’s such a different animal to me. They’re doing an adaptation of my comic, which I’m helping out with. But we’re adapting my comic and making it work in a different format. The comic is mine and always will be mine, so that doesn’t feel that weird to me. I actually like the idea of having a team take on the character, because I’m just so used to the idea of working in that room alone, and I’m the only one putting anything into it. I think it’s really fun and cool to have this big group of people with all of these ideas coming together and working toward making the film.

So you’re not losing any sleep over this?

No, it’s been great, so far. They’ve been really great about keeping me involved. I thought they’ve had some really great ideas. I’m working on the treatment for the story and [David] Fincher’s been very involved and had some great ideas, so I’m very happy with the way it’s been going.

Is the treatment an amalgamation of stories you’ve done in the past or an entirely different beast?

I would say it’s an amalgamation of the comic book as a whole and making it work in a movie format. Direct translation is not really possible.

There does seem to be a cinematic feel to some of your work. Is this more of an issue with storyline?

Storyline—because all of the issues of The Goon have been very episodic. Probably three-quarters of The Goon so far have been self-contained stories that have linked together to a bigger story. You can’t really take that and make a movie out of it, so we’re basically taking the material and staying very faithful to the characters and everything. We’re basically taking the whole concept of The Goon and contracting it into 90 minutes that we can make a film out of.

Ideally it’s such a strong character that it will translate to any other medium. Do you feel pretty confident in the Goon as a character?

I’m probably more confident—if we actually get the thing made, I’m probably more confident than I should be, because one, I think the characters themselves are funny and strong enough to really work. And I’ve seen the visuals—some of the test stuff that they’ve done, and I have absolutely no fear that it will look amazing. Those guys just do crazy spectacular work, and if we actually get the thing up on the screen, it’s going to look amazing. I know that. I have no doubt aobut it.

You’re still in that really tentative stage?

Yeah, they’re basically still pitching it to the studio. I don’t know how Hollywood works, but everybody talks about stuff that never ends up happening. But, all of the feedback I’m getting so far, it sounds pretty positive that we’re going to get the thing moving forward, but I like to stay cautiously optimistic.

Is the script finished?

No, I’m working on it.

How much say do you have in the script?

I’m taking input from Mike Richardson, from Dark Horse; Tim Miller, with the animation company; and David Fincher—the three producers along with myself. I’m basically laying the ideas out and taking feedback, and we’re all working together, trying to get the treatment the way we want it, and I’m working on the script at the same time.

Beyond collaboration, how different is the experience of writing a movie script.

It’s actually similar to writing a comic script, because you have to do a descriptive narrative with dialog. The major difference, really is that, when you’re writing a comic, you have to work with static panels, like still photographs. Whereas, when you’re writing a film script, you can actually have action going on that you couldn’t in a comic.

So it’s almost easier, in a sense?

Yeah, I think so.

And the collaborative aspect isn’t difficult, having worked alone for so long?

Not with these guys.  I’ve had collaborative efforts in comments, where people will throw out ideas.

But these guys are all fans.

Yeah. That’s what makes it so cool. They love the comic. They wanted to make the film from the comic. They get it. they understand that’s it’s this weird quirky thing, and we’ve got to keep it this weird, quirky thing. All of the input I’ve gotten—it goes without saying that David Fincher knows what he’s doing. So I’ve got complete trust in their judgement and their input. They’ve been pretty great to work with.

It’ll be interesting to see how these conventions change for you, as we get closer to the movie.

Yeah. It’ll be curious. Once there’s actually a timeline for the film, I think that’s when things will actually increase.

Are you excited for that inevitability?

I’m excited and kind of scared [laughs].

–Brian Heater

Unable to resist the charm of White River Junction, Forsman still lives in Vermont, and will make you a sandwich if you’re lucky.

You can look for his comics in the new Awesome 2: Awesomer anthology published by Indie Spinner Rack and Top Shelf.

You can also catch him this year at TECAF, MECAF, MoCCA, HeroesCon, and SPX.

Prevously, his mini-comic Snake Oil #1 was reviewed by the Cross Hatch HERE.

- Sarah Morean

Paul Hack is a great name for a cartoonist.  I hope he invented it for himself, but maybe he was just born lucky.

Comics on Fire #1 is full of short gag comics about outerspace, science, life and household objects.  Basically it’s mash-up of different styles and ideas with the common thread of comedy.

The humor is what makes this a cohesive book, despite the diverse subjects and artistic styles.  So whereas some first or experimental mini-comics come off as a jumble of dissimilar ideas leading you to different conclusions about the author’s intent or ability, the point of Comics on Fire #1 is always to make you laugh, and Hack hits the mark every time.

The delightful irony of Hack’s name comes from his strong voice as a writer. He picks situations and tells jokes that would be total groaners in the wrong hands, but the pace is so quick and his point so apparent, that he’s really right for…I hate to say it…”bad” comedy.  Because he’s so GOOD at it!  Like a favorite Uncle who turns all your anecdotes into puns at Thanksgiving dinner.  Hack’s comics are witty, but so plentiful (at least one per page in this book) that it might be difficult for the reader to constantly appreciate it.

His comedic timing and wordplay come across even stronger because of his childish drawings.  The words hang strong right on top of his simple art, make you laugh, and when your eye returns to the art for confirmation of the joke, you realize he’s actually pretty great at expressive communication as well.  And because the art is kind of simple, your eye doesn’t linger too long on it, which keeps up the pace and makes the jokes punchy and fun.  It’s a winning combination, and a good example of simplicity done well.

Comics on Fire #1 is a really enjoyable book.  If it’s offered to you as a trade, snap it up.  Otherwise, try getting it for $3 by contacting the author through his blog.

- Sarah Morean

“Now Boody could write funnier than Elzie Segar,” writes Craig Yoe in his intro, “create more excitement than Milton Caniff, draw more amazing than Frank Frazetta, ink slicker than Wally Wood, make sexier girls than Dean Yeagle, letter better than Artie Simek, and his comics were loonier than Fletcher Hanks’s.” One can, of course, forgive Yoe for the touch of hyperbole—after all, as the editor of Boody Rogers’s first official anthology, one would certainly hope that the author was among his biggest fans.

Anyone doubting Yoe’s initial bout of enthusiasm—or perhaps chalking his a bit of tall tale yarn spinning up to an attempt to keep with Rogers’s wild west upbringing—will, hopefully be won over a page later, when the other describes his first encounter with the artist’s work, in amongst a pile of Little Lulus and Supermans and Uncle Scrooges, spread out on his childhood bedroom floor. Such youthful memories certainly place Rogers in good company—among easily some of the most influential books of that golden age. By the end of his introduction, there’s little room for doubt. Yoe unquestionably considers the late-artist to be one of the medium’s greats, and, as the book opens, the reader is ready to play along with the premise that Rogers is, perhaps, the era’s unappreciated genius—a producer of work too far ahead of its time to be sufficiently appreciated by the huddled pulp-reading masses. After all, the Arf Forum-editor certainly knows his stuff when it comes to vintage cartooning.

Over the next 100-odd pages, Yoe presents Rogers’s work unbroken, with no editorial interruption, seemingly content to let the short stories speak for themselves. It’s a mixed blessing of sorts—while more insight into the artist’s career and personal life, and perhaps a chronological timeline of the work being presented would undoubtedly be welcomed, there’s also something to be said for the desire to let the work stand uninterrupted. Besides, this be the first—and perhaps only (depending on sales)—collection of Rogers’s work, there’s no doubt a desire on Yoe’s part to cram as much into the book as possible.

Like Paul Karasik’s Fletcher Hanks’s book before it, the clean, largely untouched reproduction goes a ways toward preserving the pulpy presentation of these pages. The large benday dots, the bleeding colors, the faded pages, the printing errors are preserved in all their glory, serve as a celebration of the inability to separate the artist from his shoebox beginnings.

The work presented in Boody largely alternates between two primary strips. The first is Babe, something of an Appalachian Amazon, a beautiful blonde superwoman, spawned by mountain people, who performs consistently amazing feats of athleticism, but who cannot escape her parents and the repulsive numbskull to whom she is betrothed. The influence of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner is unmistakable, as Yoe happily points out in his intro. Sparky Watts is the other included strip, the story of a bespectacled shrinking man; his bald-headed, giant-shoed sidekick; and a mad scientist.

For Rogers, these absurd conceits are merely the setup. In fact, by the time the artist introduces plots revolving around talking monstrous bugs and human-riding centaurs, it’s easy to accept such early character development at face value. But, where an artist like Hanks have since come to be viewed by many as a prime example of comics outsider art, there’s a certain pervasive sense of self-awareness in Rogers’s work. The artist seems fully conscious of his own absurdity and completely willing to milk it for as many laughs as possible.

Perhaps it’s also his comedic sentiments that lend a certain sense of timelessness to these pieces, making them infinitely more readable today than many of their pulpy contemporaries, which is to say that the value of the of the work collected here extends beyond mere historic curiosity to actual reading enjoyment all of these years later.

Rogers was certainly skilled as penning a fantastic humorous piece, and his imagination was clearly light years beyond many of his contemporaries. The art, too, offers a consistency and versatility absent from many other funny book artists of the time. It’s easy to see why his work has made him something of a cartoonist’s cartoonist, having been anthologized in the likes of Raw Magazine. Some of his appeal can no doubt in part be chalked up to the fact that—like Hanks—he spent many decade as a industry secret amongst cartoonists, but pinning appreciation solely on that fact is discounting his skills as an artist, storyteller, and pioneer.

For someone like Yoe, it’s no doubt difficult to divorce Rogers’s work from those early childhood experiences, but even for those of us discovering the artist for the first time, there’s a lot to love in these pages, hyperbole or no.

–Brian Heater