In this second part of our MoCCA-based interview with the Bizarro artist, we discuss the influence of Gary Larson, the horrors of writing a funny strip during a year-long divorce, and how one turns a syndicated comic into a successful one-man entertainment revue.

[Part One]
Did the publication of The Far Side suggest to you the possibility that you too might be able to make it into nation syndication some day?

Yeah. People often ask me if [Gary] Larson influenced me. His humor didn’t influence me, because I was already doing that kind of work, and that kind of work was also appearing in magazines since I was a kid—it’s more of a magazine-style humor. What did influence me about his strip was that he was being published in newspapers, and I didn’t think that was previously possible, to get surreal, one-off magazine-style comics in the paper. At that time, the strangest stuff in there was Dennis The Menace—maybe Herman. That was as weird as it got.

Once Larson got published—and it took Chronicle several years to get him off the ground—it really started taking off. He jumped into the syndicate, which was unfortunate for Chronicle, but it really opened the door. Those two editors opened the doors for the rest of us.

Was Zippy the Pinhead around when you were first starting out?

Yeah, Zippy was around.

That seems like a precursor to a lot of weirdness.

Yeah, that was a really strange strip—way stranger than mine. Griffith had been an underground cartoonist since the 60s, and somebody at King Features decided to give that a shot—see how he would do in the papers. In fact, Bill Griffith and I had lunch one time, and we had an almost identical client list. The newspapers that would buy Bizarro were the ones that would buy Zippy. There was almost no difference between our client lists at all.

Newspapers aren’t often artists end goals anymore. There seems to be a very specific style of humor—

Or non-humor, in many cases.

Or non-humor. How did syndication become your ultimate goal?

Because it was easier. I’m not the kind of person who is brave or ambitious enough to hit magazine editors one at a time, over and over again, week after week, year after year, to cobble together a career. I had to depend on somebody signing me to a contract and doing all of the sales work, while I just stayed home and draw. And since The Far Side was taking off, I just figured there was a chance I could get that kind of gig. Which I did, in the long run, though I haven’t made a tenth of the money he did.

By the same token, it seems like the hardest thing in the world to do that, day after day.

It’s miserable [laughs].

Everybody I talk to says that.

It is. It’s a fucking creative gun to your head. It’s like somebody knocking you down every day, putting a gun to your head, and saying, “make me laugh,” and you’re just not in the mood [laughs]. When I’m in a good mood, it’s actually not that bad. I always appreciate the job, because it’s way better than an office job. It’s better than a lot of the things I could be doing. I’m not complaining about the job, when I’m in a good mood, it’s not that big of a deal, but I went through a divorce in ’96. That was a year of absolute hell throughout the house, and I had to write a joke everyday.

Did it turn a little darker during that period?

It did a little bit, yeah. There were a lot of dark relationship jokes. Marital stuff. Or even in the short term, you get the flu and you’re really flat on you back for a week, too bad. You’ve got to draw a funny comic and you’ve got to get that stuff in on deadline. There are 250 clients out there who are all gonna be pissed if you don’t get it in. It’s just unrelenting. You want to take a vacation? Screw you. You’ve got to write, draw, and color twice as much material before you go, so you’re exhausted by the time you get there, and then the moment you get home, you’ve got to hit the ground running, the second you sit down.

How long does it take to make a strip?

Well, it depends. A simply daily panel, in terms of sketching and inking it, it’s an hour. It’s not that much time. Then I’ve got to color it, which takes, maybe, 30 minutes to an hour—I work pretty fast. There’s always a million other things you have to do as well. But writing it—coming up with a joke a day—that’s the hard part. It’s not really the physical labor as much as the mental labor of coming up with a new idea every day, without any characters or storylines to build on. Next January is my 25th anniversary. I’ve written a joke a day for 24-and-a-half years. Doesn’t seem right.

Does it involve your sitting around, wracking your brain? Do you walk around and let jokes come to you?

At the beginning it was just staring at a blank piece of paper. Now it’s surfing the Web. I’ll surf the Web and images and stories will occur to me if I do that. It’s like anything else, if you practice, you really find a groove and get better at it. It’s probably actually easier now to find jokes than it was 15 years ago.

You mentioned earlier that you had written some prose books. Do you do that as something of a reprieve from having to do the comic all the time?

I just really love it. I love to write. I get bored really easily, so I like to switch around. I do fine art every once in a while and do standup shows about my cartoon strip, and that’s really fun, especially if I don’t have to travel for it. though I have travelled for it. I’ve done that show all over the country, practically. So yeah, all of that stuff creatively refills the jar—I don’t know where I’m going with this metaphor. It fills me up creatively, but then it makes me really tired. So I’ll go for months on these spurts where I work on different projects and get really jiggy with it, and then for a few months I stay home and just do Bizarro, because I get really tired.

What does the standup entail? If I went to a show, what would I see?

It’s a variety of things. I do songs and standup.

You play music?

Yeah, I play guitar. And I show cartoons, a slideshow and some video, and I tell anecdotes behind them. I do a little onstage drawing. But it’s much more like a comedy show than a lecture. When you say you’re showing slides and drawing onstage, it sounds like an infomercial, but it’s much more of a comedy show. It works well. People love it. It’s very popular with my readers.

So it’s mostly fans of the strip?

Yeah. I do it in San Francisco quite a bit. I always sell out in San Francisco. There’s a huge fanbase there. I’ve had a prominent spot in their newspaper for 25 years. Even if they don’t read it all the time, they know about. I have a decent turnout in LA. And Dallas, where I lived for many years. It’s primarily fans who have been before, or hear about it on my blog or Facebook and come out to see me.

–Brian Heater

For the past quarter century, something strange has been unfolding in the comic pages of newspapers across the country—something called Bizarro. Dan Piraro began the single-paneled semi-absurdist strip nearly 25 five years ago, when the landscape of syndicated comics was largely dominated by unfunny animals—a motif, which, sadly, has largely gone unchanged.

All these years later, Bizarro remains one of the last bastions for interesting and genuinely hilarious comics in the funny pages. The strip is syndicated to more than 350 papers, though, as Piraro will be the first to admit, is a bit hard to come by in his home town of New York. That said, the artist has no trouble drawing fans out during signings at MoCCA, or while performing his one-man music/comedy piece, “The Bizarro Baloney Show.”

We sat down with Piraro this weekend to talk about conventions, editors, and why Kansas City doesn’t always appreciate a good abortion joke.

Do you go to MoCCA every year?

Yeah—well, I wasn’t here last year, because there was something I had to be out of town for.

Do you do most of the New York-area conventions? Were you at New York Comic Con?

I have done that, yeah. But this show is way better than any of the comic cons, only because it’s all of the best stuff and none of the nonsense—none of the Hollywood or Japanese stuff. It’s none of that other stuff that I’m not interested. There’s no better people watching in the world than those big comic cons, but there’s so much junk that you don’t really get to see any of the stuff you like, because it’s so spread out.

So you’re still a pretty active comic reader, then?

Yes and no. I have a handful of favorite things that I read, but I don’t follow the industry as closely as you might think I would. It’s funny, at these kinds of events, people always come up to me and throw names around, like, “did you hear that so and so is working with so and so for such and such they’re going to do a sequel to such and such?” and I’ve never heard of any of these things. I just smile and nod even though I have no idea what they’re talking about.

Is it just people engaging you in small talk?

It’s just hardcore fans. They go to these things and they’re excited to talk comics and they’re excited to talk to cartoonists and they just start throwing names around, and I’m not a hardcore fan like they are, so half the time I don’t even know what they’re talking about [laughs].

I spoke to you earlier at your table and you said that hadn’t walked around yet. When you go to these shows, do you set aside the time to check out other booths?

I’m actually about to do that in a few minutes. I do it kind of quick. The problem is I end up spending all of my money. The thing I love about  these comics is the art. I don’t personally feel like the writing is as strong in alternative comics. The writing doesn’t interest me as much as the art. A lot of it is great art, but to me a lot of the writing is inconsequential. Some of these people are great writers. But I buy a lot of stuff because of the way it looks, and I get inspired by the art. I’ll read the first couple of pages, and if they don’t grab me, I won’t read the rest. Still, a lot of my favorite books are ones that I don’t even read.

Do you consider yourself an artist first, when it comes to your own work?

I actually really like to write. I’ve written and published a couple of books.

Prose?

Yeah. And I write a monthly column for a magazine. I love to write. And of course my cartoons aren’t really stories. They’re just glimpses. And of course to me it’s gotta be funny first and look good second, in terms of being successful. For instance, Dilbert is a cartoon that’s really well written, if you’re a person who works in an office. It’s clever and funny, but it’s horribly drawn, and Scott Adams is the first to admit that. But imagine if it was incredibly well drawn and badly written—nobody would know what Dilbert was. So the writing is a more important thing, when it comes to audience. A great looking book that doesn’t do anything for anybody, whether it’s a graphic novel or a comic strip, you’re not going to build an audience—well, you might. Frank Frazetta was a great artist who wasn’t know for writing.

He wasn’t much of a conversationalist, either.

Yeah. So it does happen. But when we’re talking about graphic novels, it makes sense to have great writing. Put something into it, or get someone who can write, I think.

It’s funny, it seems to be that in the case of indie comics, if you’re a good storyteller, you don’t necessarily have to be a great artist.  A lot of the successful artists out there, you wouldn’t necessarily point to them as great draftsmen.

Yeah, and also I think the whole online comics and self-publishing thing is great for people who want to get their work seen, but the bad side is that you don’t have an editor. So it’s very easy for someone who likes to draw to just do these draws and throw up a story that isn’t coherent or isn’t interesting. And that’s one of the great things about being published. They say, “look, we’re not going to spend any money to publish this, until the story piques our interest. Let’s work on it.” It’s one of the downsides of self-publishing online. There’s a lot of great stuff, but there’s a lot of bad stuff, too. People can draw and they think they can write, but a lot of them can’t.

It seems like doing newspaper strip is sort of the ultimate form of being edited. You’ve probably got countless people who have to approve your stuff at any one time.

Yeah. The thing is, you hit your stride at some point fairly quickly, because it’s a lot of work. You have to draw every single day, 365 days a year, year after year, after year. So once you hit your stride, editors tend to leave you alone. At this point, after 25 years, they figure I know my audience, I know what I’m doing. Sometimes if I push the envelope too much, my editor may call and say, “this may cause some trouble in middle America. Is this abortion joke really funny enough to risk losing Kansas City?” That sort of thing. But at this point, it doesn’t happen to me much. If I’m not good at it now, I never will be.

How long did it take you to hit that stride?

I’d say a couple of years. It took a couple of years of my editors basically reviewing everything I wrote and giving me pointers about what could make the joke clearer or what doesn’t read at all or asking me to re-write stuff.  Just various things that editors do. But once you get a little professional advice and you practice a lot, you get better at it.

You must have had some good editors in the beginning. Your strip is very much unlike anything that came in the papers before it.

Thank you. That’s a great compliment.

Was it hard to find editors who were on the same wavelength, or at least appreciated what you were doing?

Well, my first editor, the guy who picked my stuff out of the mail and started training me on the path to getting published, was the same guy who discovered Gary Larson, so he’s of a similar mindset. It was a couple of guys in San Francisco named Stan Arnold and Stuart Dodds. They worked together for Chronicle Features. A few years later, Larson jumped to another syndicate and at that point I was sending my work out and they picked me out of the mail pile and brought me along. It was the same kind of a mindset that was able to spot me. Andnce you have a career going, all editors tend to “get” you.

Once you’re a clear money making opportunity.

Yeah. Who knows whether they do or not. But the people I have now at King Features are terrific. They totally understand what I’m doing, and they’re very much in my corner about it.

[Concluded 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

A skilled craftsman by any measure, Eric Powell has put in his time all over the industry, from more independent works to superhero franchises like Batman and Superman. The Lebanon, Tennessee-based artist is, however, most content to do things on his own terms, reveling in the rare manner of freedom afforded to him by his own Dark Horse series, The Goon, the ever-evolving tale of a classically-styled pipe wrench-wielding ruffian doing battle with whatever manner of strange and fantastic villianry the artist’s mind can concoct.

After nearly a decade, the series has become Powell’s major creative outlet, and the hard work has paid off in spades. The book has become one of Dark Horse’s most popular creator-owned works and has garnered Powell numerous awards, including a handful of Eisners. It’s also recently been optioned by David Fincher in hopes of being transformed into an animated feature.

We sat down with Powell at this year’s New York Comic Con to talk about his work in the industry and why all roads lead back to The Goon.

How many conventions do you come out to a year?

About four or five a year.

Any favorites, or do they all tend to blend together?

They all kind of blend together. I know lots of people don’t like San Diego because it’s so big, but I have to say, I love San Diego because it’s the one show, because it’s so big, that you feel like you’re doing something. You don’t feel like you’re stuck in a closet. There’s so much other media.

It’s the non-comic people who come by the booth. The ones who aren’t as familiar with the medium.

Yeah. It’s just cool to be there. And I love San Diego, the town.

Is it more difficult in the superhero shows—shows like Wizard World—to get people to pay attention to what you’re doing?

Yeah, it is. But that’s the case in the industry as a whole. It’s hard to get anyone to pay attention to you when you don’t have a superhero title coming out from Marvel or DC. But things have changed. I feel that, because more bookstores are getting involved and carrying comics and manga is making such a big impact, that the superhero genre is kind of losing its stranglehold and other types of material are getting looked it. It’s really exciting.

I read an interview with you some time ago, in which someone asked you what The Goon was about. You seemed to have a hard time describing it. Is that still difficult?

It is, but I have my standard answer now: “It’s a dark comedy about a street thug, in a world of monsters,” which doesn’t even begin to describe what the book is all about, but that’s my standard answer now, when people ask that question. Because it’s so all over the place and just any weird thing that comes out of my head, it’s hard to describe exactly what it is. It’s really something you have to read to really get, I think.

When you come to a show like this, you’re really selling yourself to passersby. That’s got to be difficult when you don’t have a straight ahead pitch—“it’s Superman meets Aquaman, meets Love & Rockets.”

Exactly. It doesn’t have that automatic hook, like, “I’m doing this book and it’s Spider-man versus zombies.” Everyone automatically understands that. I can’t really say The Goon is like The Matrix meets Indiana Jones. That’s how everyone tries to categorize what they’re doing, and with The Goon, I can’t really make those comparisons.

How did it evolve when you were putting the pieces together?

It still evolves. Because the one goal I had was that I was going to play to my strengths and do exactly what I wanted to do. And if you look at the book, for better or worse, that’s what I’ve done. The art is always changing and evolving, because I love playing with the medium and experimenting. And the stories go anywhere from completely absurd to, with Chinatown, overly dramatic and serious. I don’t plan on changing that. If I want to do Goon fighting giant robots, I’m gonna do that. If I want to do a serious love story, I’ll do that. I’m going to do whatever I want to do, and if people like it, that’s awesome.

I know you’ve done some stuff with the Marvels and DCs of the world, specifically the Bizarro book. Does that sort of thing appeal to you at all? Or are you surrendering too much creative control?

Yeah, I’ve been offered quite a few jobs in superhero books, but, for the most part, I turn them down, just because they’d take my away from doing The Goon. The amount of creative control I have in doing The Goon is the main reason. Because this is my job and I’m making a living off of it, but also, not to sound pretentious about it, I feel that I am an artist, so if I want to draw a big guy punching shit, I get more fulfillment out of that than I do working in the constraints of a superhero universe, where, if I want to do something completely off-the-wall, they tell me that it doesn’t fit with the rest of the universe.

It’s all by committee, basically.

Yeah. That’s their system, and that’s fine, but for me, that doesn’t work. I want to be able to do what I want to do. I want to tell the stories that I want to tell, and if I was working on a superhero book, I wouldn’t be able to do that.

[Concluded in Part Two]

–Brian Heater