Interview: Jason Pt. 2 [of 2]

In this second part of our interview with the visionary—if not especially verbose—author of Low Moon, we discuss the case for autobiography comics, Jason’s pre-comics work in a Norwegian furniture factory, and the influence of American underground cartooning on its European counterparts.

[Part One]
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Interview: Jason Pt. 1 [of 2]

Fantagraphics’ 2001 English translation of Hey, Wait… marked Jason’s American debut. It was a remarkably tight graphic novel—clean and funny and self-assured, as if the Norwegian artist had practically sprung into the world, fully-formed, sporting a cast of lean and stoic animal characters comprised of lines formed in the tradition of that much-celebrated European cartoonist, Herge.

In the past eight years, Jason has demonstrated a tremendous pace and consistency. Titles like Why Are You Doing This, The Left Bank Gang, and I Killed Adolf Hitler have helped him become one of the most popular European artists in the American indie comics scene.

The 2008 publication of Pocket Full of Rain shed some light on the artist that would become Jason, documenting his struggles to define himself visually through the collection of works from his early years as an artist.

Fittingly, in real life Jason is the quiet sort.  Seated behind a table at the end of Fantagraphics’ booth at MoCCA, he says very little, dutifully crafting ink drawings of his anthropomorphic animals in the front cover of his latest collection, Low Moon, for the long lines of fans eager to finally catch a glimpse of the mysterious Norwegian cartoonist with a single name.

When I pull him aside for a chat out in front of the Armory building, he’s a bit hesitant, not fully confident in his ability to speak English. For the record, the artist has a much firmer grasp on the language than many of the native speakers I know. His answers come slowly but thoughtfully, in spite of an admission that he really doesn’t like to talk about making comics.
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Pocket Full of Rain by Jason

Pocket Full of Rain
By Jason
Fantagraphics

To have read exclusively Jason’s stateside output up until this moment, one might have likely suspected that the Norwegian artist sprung fully-formed from his art school womb. The cartoonist has one of the most instantly recognizable and artistically infallible styles in contemporary underground comics. His surname-free moniker is irreparably tied to images of gaunt and stoic anthropomorphic dogs and cats and rabbits, oft times immersed in classically fantastic scenarios. Jason’s aesthetic is so iconic in these circles, that a satirist like Johnny Ryan can spoof his work with the same minimal exposition required to present a Peanuts or Little Lulu lampoon.

Pocket Full of Rain, however, offers a happy assurance that Jason, like all artists, spent time tossing ideas against the old drafting table. The 25-story collection should simultaneously serve to answer fans’ burning questions about the artist’s past, whilst instilling a sense of relief in budding artists by showcase the fact that Jason too spent a good deal of time wandering around, in search of his voice. But, despite the fact that the artist on display here is not the Jason we’ve come to know and love, the works included in this volume are still largely entertaining pieces from an extremely skilled cartoonist.

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