In this third and final part of our interview, the illustrator and Scarlett Takes Manhattan author talks about working for Screw Magazine, her fascination with New York history, and maps out her graphic novel dream project.

[Part One]
[Part Two]

Did you have any inhibitions early on,  in terms of drawing more adult subject matter?

Not really. One of my mom’s favorite artists was Aubrey Beardsley. I grew up obsessed with Aubrey Beardsley and Toulouse Lautrec, as kind of counter-cultural person. It didn’t seem terribly shocking to me. I’m also from New York City. I’m not from the Midwest.

A lot of people in this industry had early jobs at adult magazines and have since tried to sweep that part of their life under the rug as much as possible. You seem to have almost embraced that.

Well, I think there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Do you know Brad Holland? He’s considered to be one of the major illustrators of the last 20 or 30 years. He’s the head of the Illustrators Partnership of America. He’s gotten Rings of Honor from the Society of Illustrators. All of his first jobs were for Screw Magazine, and he’s kind of proud of it. It’s kind of like a badge of honor, working for dirty magazines, and I like that attitude. I think that it’s silly try to pretend that, from the womb you were doing prestigious high profile ad campaigns and postage stamps for the US government. Obviously you weren’t everyone’s done some sort of job—whether it was a job for a dirty magazine or a d-level movie—something silly. I think it humanizes you to do that.

Are you interested in doing works with a wider appeal?

I’ve done lots of stuff with broad appeal. I’ve done childrens books and the poster for this year’s MoCCA.

You’ve done children’s books?

Yeah.

What was that experience like?

It was fun. I like drawing detailed things. I had a guy who was doing a bunch of children’s books who liked my work. I think one of the problems with people—and this isn’t just for sexual subject matter, but I think it goes more so for that—is that, no matter what you do—they pigeon-hole you. My boyfriend does caricatures, right? For a while he was doing caricatures of sports stars and this company wanted to hire him to do caricatures of politicians, and they asked him, “can you draw politicans, because I’ve only seen you draw sports people.” And he was like, “what’s wrong with you? Clearly I can draw human faces.” And I feel like it’s the same with sexual subject matter. Clearly I can draw things. It just depends on what things I’m being paid for.

I know it’s probably the furthest thing from your mind right now, because you just finished one, but are you thinking of doing another comic?

If the right opportunity presents itself. Even though I talk about “slavery,” I really liked doing it. I love telling stories in that visual way, I love collaborating with John, I loved researching. One of the most rewarding things for me was reading a number of historians that I like. I love Luc Sante—he’s the author of Low Life. I think he’s a great. And I love Trav S.D, he’s the author of No Applause–Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous. It’s this brilliantly scholarly and poetic history of vaudeville. I think people don’t know a lot about historians, so one of the things that was really gratifying to me was giving all of my favorite historians little cameos in Scarlett. It was something that was really fun for me.

Would you be interested in doing something more non-fiction?

I think I would, provided that it was a non-fiction subject that I was interested in. I would love to do more things about the history of New York, I think that old New York was one of the most fascinating, ludicrous, bawdy, awesome places in history, ever. Here’s a theoretical magical graphic novel dream project—a graphic novel version of Low Life. I would kill myself enjoying it, because that was the most awesome thing, ever. I would love to do some non-fiction stuff like that.

–Brian Heater

In this second part of our interview with Molly Crabapple, we talk about the Scarlett Takes Manhattan artist’s entry into the world of full-time illustration, and how the story fictional story of the vaudevillian fire eater echoes her own early struggles in New York City.

[Part One]

Even in terms of the aesthetics themselves, there’s a form of torture involved in the Victorian period

That’s what I think is so fascinating about it. Women’s bodies in the Victorian era and many other eras that I’m interested in, didn’t really look like bodies anymore. They looked like drawings. They didn’t have legs, their waists were cinched in with steel, they had horse hair on their heads, and velvet patches on their cheeks to hide their pimples. It was kind of crazy. They were like living drawings.

It seems like we still do that, only we’ve discovered more surgical means with which to accomplish it.

Oh, it’s so true. I was thinking about it as I was getting ready for a party. I was painting my face on—literally sticking paint on my face, I’ve got fake hair attached to my head. I’m wearing these shoes that make me five inches taller—I’m not disapproving of it at all. I think it’s very fascinating and a lot of beauty comes it. It’s a very rich subject.

You describe your art style as “maximalist.”

Yeah, I grew up obsessed with Where’s Waldo, and I really like art that rewards repeat viewings. That’s just something that really interests me.

That must be something that’s difficult to pull off when you’re creating panels.

It is. That’s why it was so torturous for me. Most fine of my fine art pieces are the ultimate expression of my Where’s Waldo obsession, because they’re like four feet tall. With panels, I’m not able to do quite as much, but I have a ton of crowd scenes in Scarlett Takes Manhattan, like riots at Madison Square Garden and backstage scenes at vaudeville pageants and parade scenes. These let me take out my detail obsessions.

Did you encounter any limitations, with your abilities as a storyteller? Did you figure out any specific ways to work around them?

I think the biggest limitation was that we only had 43 pages. On one hand, we’re very happy to have had that, because it means there’s an end in sight, but on the other hand, we could have so many more cool scenes. You kind of wish you had 100, but even if you did have that many, you’d probably be like, “oh, woe is my, I have 100 pages, my slavery will never end.”

Who imposed the page cap?

The publisher did.

When did you first become so fascinated with Scarlett’s time period?

I think I started getting really interested in the Victorian period when I was in college—so, around 17 or 18. There was this book called The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber, which is a book about a Victorian prostitute, but really it’s a book about Victorian class in London, from every single perspective—from the perspective of the maid, from the prospective of the rakish aristocrats, from the perspective of the poor but genteel woman who is interested doing charity work. It was class as seen by everyone in Victorian London. It’s a brutal book. It just got me hooked on that period. And I was kind of poor, living in a tenement in New York, like everyone does, when they’re young. It kind of resonated with me, and that’s when I started exploring it in my artwork.

When you were working on this book, were you actively drawing parallels to you own life, living broke in New York?

Well, we’re not broke in New York anymore [laughs]. But I think we did draw a lot of parallels to our own life. The artifice and superficiality of New York. One of the things in particular that I think fascinates me and John is the notion of poor people putting on flamboyant fronts to get into the class that they don’t naturally belong to, which is what early vaudeville was. The people who did early vaudeville were not rich. They were poor, marginalized immigrants. And yet with costume and artifice and hustle, they were able to one earn money and two, be allowed in the drawing rooms and hearts of their social betters.

And you felt like you were doing that to some degree in your own life?

Oh god yes [laughs]. I think it’s something that a lot young ambitious people do.

You went to F.I.T., right?

Yeah.

Did you move out to New York specifically to go to school?

I’m from New York—I was born in Far Rockaway.

There’s a lot of mention of your leaving the school. What prompted that?

Well, me and John actually left the school at the same time. We were best friends in college. It was just farcical. We weren’t learning anything. I was working full-time as an art model. I was also trying to get my illustration career started. And I was always getting sick and I was always tired. It was miserable. I was like, “what the hell is this doing for me?” going to the school and trying to get an art degree just felt like this farcical and silly sham. It was just better to end it quickly.

So you didn’t feel like you were learning anything that you didn’t know already?

It’s not that. I just felt like I wasn’t learning anything there that I couldn’t learn elsewhere in a better and more efficient way.

Was it too technical? Too classical?

Oh god no. If it was, then I would have stayed. There was one teacher who just played movies at us the entire time. We were spending thousands of dollars just to watch movies.

What would you consider to be your formal training, then?

Well, first of all, my mom’s an artist. And when I was young, she always gave me really good advice. We don’t actually have a lot in common, artistically—her art actually tends to be much more sweet. But we both do pen and ink stuff and neither of us are very good at perspective.

You have a lot of the same limitations.

Yeah, we do. But when you have artist as a mom, you don’t make a lot of the childish mistakes you would have. You know how when kids draw the sky, they tend to draw it as a blue band across the top? My mom looked at that and said, “Jen, seriously, look at the sky there, it’s not a blue band. It goes all the way to the top.”

This was to you as a little kid.

Yeah. She’d be like, “look at that nose. A nose does not look like an upside down seven.” So I had that and I went to art classes as a kid, pretty religiously, and then when I went to Europe, I really started developing my style. I was there for six months when I was 17. I had a lot of time, and I had this really cool leather-bound notebook that I couldn’t afford. It was like $100. It was really nice, and I really didn’t want to mess it up with crap drawings, so I really studied how to do a really cool pen and ink drawing that would be in my travel journal. I ended up filling up quite a few leather bound notebooks with my travel journal. That was really when I started developing what would become my style. I lot of it I developed by reading through art books. My boyfriend, Fred Harper, he’s also an illustrator. I learned a lot from him. I took figure drawing classes. I did what I could to learn.

At what point does it become clear that this is what you’re going to be doing for a living?

There was never any other option for me. I knew that I wasn’t going to have a dayjob. I’m just the most sullen, uncooperative person. I knew from the time that I was 17 that I would be completely unemployable in any sort of capacity, including McDonald’s. I was never going to be good at anything like that. At that time, I knew I wanted to be a writer or an artist—being a fiction writer, which is what I wanted to be in high school. But we all know that that doesn’t pay the bills. I could say, “for $25, I’ll draw a picture of your cat.” I couldn’t say, “for $25, I’ll write a short story about your cat.”

You’ve always got some form of commercial artistry to fall back on.

Exactly.

At what point did it really become a viable option? When did it become clear that it was something that you actually could live off of?

Well, my mother lived as an illustrator, so I knew you could live by drawing. I think a lot of people come from families where no one does art, so they don’t think of drawing as a viable way to support themselves. In my family, that wasn’t the case, because my mom was supporting me that way. I was working as an artist model for a while. I was making some money from my art, but not enough to live off of.

What sort of drawing jobs were you doing, early on?

Well, the first desperate thing I would do was making Xerox fliers to draw people’s cats.

Oh, so that’s a real example?

Oh yeah, oh yeah. I was a very entrepenurial thing. I would draw people’s cats. I’d try to draw people’s kids. I would put up fliers to draw people’s D&D characters at Forbidden Planet. I would troll Craigslist and see what I could get there. I would also try to get jobs at real places. My first professional job ever was doing something for the New York Press. I was so thrilled to have my work in print. I thought I was going to be famous. And then I did covers for Screw, which was kind of awesome, because so many good artists were doing covers for Screw, like Dame Darcy, Joe Coleman. It’s funny when you think of it, because Al Goldstein was kind of a patron of the arts.

Yeah, sure, sure.

In his way. He had a real softspot for underground comic art. My first job when I got out of school was doing illustrations for Playgirl. I actually got that job off of Craigslist. I was thrilled that it was Playgirl, because I thought of them as a really big deal.

[Concluded in Part Three]

–Brian Heater

Given how instantly recognizable her style has become amongst underground comics fans, it’s hard to believe that Fugu Press’s forthcoming Scarlett Take Manhattan marks Molly Crabapple’s first true graphic novel. The New York-based artist has done plenty to get herself noticed, of course—there’s her illustration work for everyone from The New York Times to Playgirl; her “anti-art school,” Dr. Sketchy’s, which now claims more than 50 franchises across the globe; and 2006’s accompanying volume, The Official Dr. Sketchy’s Rainy Day Colouring Book.

In late-2007, Crabapple, along with her frequent accomplice John Leavitt, first dipped her toes into the world of sequential art, creating Backstage for New York Webcomics collective, Act-I-Vate. The strip was dirty and chaotic and indulgent—a vaudevillian romp that represented the logical extension of her illustrated work up to that point. Scarlett Takes Manhattan, due out later this spring, is a prequel to Backstage, following the rise of New York’s Queen of the Fire Eaters, Scarlett O’Herring.

In honor of the upcoming book, we sat down with Crabapple, to discuss her journey into the unforgiving underworld of indie comics.
You’re done with the comic now, right?

Yeah. I think we finished in about mid-February.

That seems like a fairly quick turnaround time. The galleys are already out now.

Yeah, they’re sending out bound manuscripts of them to the relevant people. It was insanely fast. Though I’ve found with small presses that they always seem to work faster than a Harper-Collins does. I guess there are less people for them to go through.

Was this a self-imposed deadline?

We wanted to get it out in time for the San Diego Comic Con.

Judging for your writings online, it seems like you were ready for it to be done, towards the end there.

Oh god, yeah. I’ve never done a graphic novel before. It’s just a lot of work, and it certainly isn’t my only job. I also do a lot of illustration. I had these gallery shows, and Dr. Sketchy’s, and I was also a panelist for SXSW Interactive this year. I had a million things going on, and toward the end, I was spending like 13 hours a day doing these pages. At the end, it was like, “oh my god, free me!”

I’ve always imagined it to be a fairly monotonous process, especially when compared with straight illustrating.

It really is. It’s a little bit less monotonous for me, because I’m not doing the mainstream comics thing, where one person does the pencil, one person does the ink, and one person does the color. That’s really like a Ford factory line. I did all of that myself, so it was somewhat less monotonous. But I’d be talking on the phone with my mother all day, actually, to try to get me through it.

This is the first time you’ve really done this—were you teaching yourself how to do it, along the way?

I did have an apprenticeship doing Backstage for Act-I-vate. But I learned so much from this—for one thing, I learned how to digital color comics.

Do you think a neutral third party will notice the sort of progression that you’ve made, over the course of the book?

I think what people will really notice the difference between is my work for Backstage and my work for this. I think I learned a lot when I was working for Backstage, in terms of my art and my sequential storytelling ability. And also, John’s abilities as well, we’re both much more sophisticated.

How did the book come about? Were you aching to do morecomics?

Well, I had really loved doing Backstage, and for a while I was trying to get that published as a book. Then a friend came to me and said, “we’re starting up this press, would you like to do a standalone?” We could have done Backstage, but we decided to start fresh and take all the things that we learned on Backstage and apply them.

Was it strictly John doing the writing and you doing the illustrating?

John and I have a lot more crossover than that. We’re both very much in each other’s business than is typical in comics. We start out by hanging out and smoking a hookah, sort of bullshitting together. We decided we wanted to have Tammany Hall in there and this proto-feminism and make clear the realities of poverty. In that time we flushed out the plot together and thought of some snappy lines, and then John would go and make a script based on that. I’d look it over and suggest something things and we’d tweak some thigns and sometimes fight over it. and then John does stick figure storyboards. They’re kind of like composition guidelines.

The Harvey Pekar method.

Yeah, and I do the final thing based on that.

Really quickly, what’s the basic storyline?

Well, it’s a love story set in the 1880s vaudeville world. It’s the story of a poor young girl from the slums who becomes the fire-eating queen of Manhattan and the theater impresario who took her there. It has Tammany Hall and bad politics and early-lesbian culture and in it. And it’s very dirty.

It sounds like it was born out of a shared fascination with that time period.

Oh, definitely. It’s actually the prequel to Backstage. If you remember in Backstage, the fundamental moment is when the fire queen burns alive onstage. Two intrepid reporters have to find out who murdered her. This is is about her early life. How she became the queen of the fire eaters.

Do you have any interest in doing some sort of storytelling out of that particular Victorian period?

Um, yeah. I wouldn’t be opposed to the opportunity. Though I’d probably have to be paid a certain amount of money. Like cool Elizabethan stuff or steampunk stuff, or cool vaudevillian stuff, but I probably wouldn’t be too into trying to do sleek slick all black. I don’t think it’s all me.

Stuff that’s tangentially related to what you do.

Exactly. Stuff that’s maximalist and super-detailed where you can stick lots of thigns into it. Me and John have this steampunk thing we’d like to do some day.

We’ll see how long Boing Boing can ride out the Steampunk obsession.

Well, you know, I’ve been doing steampunk stuff sicne I was 19. I’m kind of used to it not being trendy.

But you might as well capitalize on it, while it’s big.

Yeah, yeah. The first steampunk thing I did was in college. We had this assignment to do a skateboard and I’m not into skater culture or really anything athletic. I had an idea to do a Victorian skateboard, it was called “Lady Etheldrina’s Wheeled Conveyance.” And I’m thinking, how would a Victorian woman use a skateboard. She wouldn’t use it as an athletic device. So I had her maid wheeling her around in this harness. So of wobegotten oppressed maid wheeling her around, while she’s being powdered and perfumed by all these device.

Sort of a Victorian rickshaw.

Yeah, kind of like a rickshaw. I was very interested in steampunk as a social commentary. One of the things that sort of disappoints me about steampunk now, is I feel like their appreciation of the Victorian era doesn’t take into account the brutalities and inequalities of the Victorian era. I feel like their appreciation of it is kind of ideal in its aestethics. But if you want to talk about the Victorian era, you have to talk about this era where babies were being drugged by their mothers because they had to work in sweatshops all day. You can’t just talk about the pretty dresses.

[Continued in Part Two]

–Brian Heater