In this third and final part of our discussion with The Clouds Above artist, we discuss Crane’s first venture in kids lit and how having children of his own has affected his art.
This second part of our interview delves deeply into the artist’s process–mapping out stories, sketchbooks, ten-issue arcs, and the importance of drawing noses and eyelids.
[Part One]
When all was said and done, it seemed that Jordan Crane had a good Comic-Con. He’d had his share of complaints about the show, of course—we all did. “[N]ow that it’s selling out,” he told me, as we spoke inside his booth on the final day of the show, “it’s people who have no interest in my work or they already know it. There doesn’t seem to be anything in between. There’s no new faces. It kind of takes an element of the fun out of it.”
Be that as it may, there’s no denying that the artist did brisk business, our interview interrupted several times as showgoers forked over cash. From the vantage point of the passerby, Crane’s artwork is unquestionably his strongest draw, with giant screen-printed posters of art pulled from Uptight hanging above him, alongside works by co-booth renters Johnny Ryan and Steven Weissman.
Speaking with the artist, however, it soon became clear that, in spite of possessing an unquestionable flair for graphic design, to Crane, all aspects of sequential art are secondary to his passion for the written word, a fact reflected in his recent decision to focus far more time and energy into comics making than his life as a work-for-hire cartoonist.
His passion is Uptight, one of the last few remaining serialized books in the indie comics scene. Fantagraphics released the third issue of the book earlier this year, just in time for Comic-Con. Until now, the production schedule has been sporadic at best, but Crane has promised that, with his new-found focus, we’ll be seeing a lot more of the book in the years to come.
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