Back
in June 2014 I did an interview with Jude Terror, then with The
Outhouse, a site well-known for its snark and sarcasm, but also
for really insightful pieces (such as this terrific
interview with Chris Claremont and Jude’s
commentary on comic book journalism, something that Four
Color Sinners has recently covered, too). For me, The Outhouse
was a breath of fresh air (ahem —
re-reading that does imply a certain contradiction, right?!) and I
thought Jude’s work there was great. Comic book journalism, such as
it is, sometimes as an air of pretentiousness that can get in the way
of actually good writing. Rather than trying to explain that, I’ll
use an example from the film TRADING PLACES to make my point: I do
not want my journalism to be the literary equivalent of this.
The Outhouse, but in particular Jude’s writing, avoiding a lot of
that. That, from where I sit, was and is a very good thing. Sadly it
didn’t last and The Outhouse is gone. Jude is now writing what I
call “review
snark” for Bleeding Cool, but I definitely miss the days of him
writing at the ol’ Outhouse
site. It just ain’t the
same.
With
that in mind, I did stumble across this old interview in my archives.
And with The Outhouse long gone, I decided to resurrect it here. The
context of the interview was the launch of my series METAL GODS. That
series only last four issues, but a lot of what I learned was later
developed into WOLF’S HEAD, albeit with a very different underlying
story. As you can see in the
interview, I was pretty optimistic with METAL GODS, but I was still
trying to find my way, especially after I finished the graphic novel
series STARGAZER. We learn by doing and METAL GODS was definitely a
learning experience, the first time I had ever tried an ongoing
periodical comic book series rather than a graphic novel. That
created a lot of challenges that eventually became a bit too much for
me at that point in my career, so I (regrettably) pulled the plug on
the series. That said, I did win
an award for it that came with a bit of money. That really helped
on a number of fronts.
This
interview is also a bit of a departure for me. Sometimes my
interviews are pretty serious, but given the nature of The Outhouse
and Jude’s own writing I knew that I had to step up my game. So not
only was it fun to do, I cut loose a bit more than I usually do! And
how many “silly” interviews also dive into everything from Karl
Marx to STAR TREK?! This one sure as hell did.
I’m
very pleased to resurrect this interview. Thanks to Jude for doing it
with me, too.
The Interview
Jude
Terror: Thanks for joining us, Von, and my sincere apologies
for the career hit you’re gonna take for associating with us.
Ruined!
Ruined I am! Why did I ever agree to do this? Is it because you
threatened my doggie? Or my wife?
Jude
Terror: One of the things about METAL GODS I found really charming
was that, despite nudity and cursing and demonic possession, it still
comes off as sort of…
polite. Do you think that’s a uniquely Canadian quality?
Fuck
no. I’m not even sure I’d call it polite. I think I’d call it
compassionate. I wanted to do a story where the heroes are heroes.
Not dark and angsty. Not haunted. Decent people finding themselves in
extraordinary circumstances. If you fuck with them, then the gloves
are gonna come off, but they aren’t going to murder, torture, or
maim their opponents just because they can. In other words, this is
clearly a shocking and innovative concept considering the last 20
years of increasingly violent and immoral mainstream corporate
comics.
It’s
weird; I’m doing a comic with influences of heavy metal, sex,
violence, all that glorious shit. But at the same time, I really
wanted Nick and Louella, the two protagonists, to be decent human
beings. The influences for that decision come from a variety of
different sources, but I can nail down a few. Gene Roddenberry’s
STAR TREK is a big one. I love the humanity of both THE ORIGINAL
SERIES and NEXT GENERATION, something that began to get lost after
Roddenberry died (no offence to fans of VOYAGER, ENTERPRISE, and EVEN
DEEP SPACE NINE (though DS9 is better in this regard), but something
about Roddenberry’s vision was lost the further the various shows
got from his death. Even Next Gen dropped in the Cardassians in
season 4’s “The
Wounded” and noted that they had been fighting a long war with
the Federation, a war we never saw and which was never referred to
previously. I realize that this was primarily done to set up DS9 and
the “frontier” aspects that the new show was going to focus on,
but it really marked a tonal shift from what had happened previously.
The two recent
(and
godawful) movies ram this point home even further. Compare the
spirit of those two movies to TREK episodes like “Spectre
of the Gun,” “Errand
of Mercy,” and “A
Taste of Armageddon.” Or even the new STAR
TREK CONTINUES fan series.
I
also was thinking a lot of something Alex Toth wrote
in a pin-up he did for ANYTHING GOES #1 from Fantagraphics way
the hell back in the mid-80s: Toth wrote, “A toast -- to true blue,
ethical, dashing, stylish, fun-loving, fair-playing, handsome,
stylish (sic), sentimental, romantic HEROES of the news, histories,
fables, novels, plays, movies and radio serials, and comic books of
my youth -- may they once again, in spirit and substance, reclaim
their popular stature and celebration! We do, sorely, need them!” I
was thinking of that sentiment a lot when I was brainstorming METAL
GODS.
So
no, it’s not a uniquely Canadian quality or anything like that.
It’s a deliberate choice to tell a story with decent human beings
as the main characters. One big beef I have with a lot of
contemporary pop culture is that much of this compassion has been
lost. Which is not an argument that I want to back to the
“good ol’ days” — far
from it, especially since the good old days weren’t all that good.
Rather, it’s an argument for more diversity.
Jude
Terror: Your love of the Silver Age is clear in METAL GODS. Despite
dealing with a somewhat dark plot and the elements I mentioned
earlier, the comic comes off as the antithesis of the “grim and
gritty” era that modern mainstream comics seem to have gotten stuck
in sometime around 1986 and never come out of. For our readers who
complain about the “grimdark” pretty much constantly, I highly
recommend checking METAL GODS out. What are some of your favorite
comics from that era, and how have they influenced your work?
YES!
Fuck grim and gritty. I can’t believe that we’ve had almost 30
years of this shit. This boring as hell shit. It’s so
tedious. Again, I don’t care about grim and gritty as long as
there’s balance but I hate when it (or anything) becomes the
paradigm. Then, worse, it starts to “infect” characters in ways
that destroy their essence; Spider-Man
willingly torturing Sandman is a good example. Superman
willingly killing Zod is another. In some ways I actually feel
most saddened by a character like Tony Stark; that ain’t my Iron
Man. Some grim and gritty is and always has been fine; Wolvie,
Batman, whatever. Obviously a character like Judge Dredd is built
around that (but even then there was humour). Does everyone have to
be Dredd? Does a character like Mary Marvel have to be tortured
and full of rage? Is that the best that can be done? Are you
fucking kidding me?
I
was basically a Marvel guy for that era. I never could get into much
DC stuff, though there were exceptions here and there. I was also a
big fan of non-big-two books, even back then. So I was picking up
Eclipse’s reprints of AXEL PRESSBUTTON (glorious!) and then the
latter LASER ERASER AND PRESSBUTTON series. DNAgents, though I was
never a huge fan. Dave Stevens’ truly brilliant ROCKETEER. AMERICAN
FLAGG! from First. And, though it’s a tad later, I’m still a big
fan of the pre-Unity VALIANT comics.
If I
was going to single out some titles from Marvel, then they’d be
Chris Claremont and Paul Smith’s UNCANNY X-MEN run, John Byrne’s
time on ALPHA FLIGHT, Peter David’s INCREDIBLE HULK, Frank Miller’s
DAREDEVIL, and Michelinie and Layton’s second run on IRON MAN. And,
of course, Walt Simonson’s MIGHTY THOR. To me, those comics really
brought Marvel back from a so-so 1970s era that never really floated
my boat. Claremont and Smith’s X-MEN, in particular an issue like
168, are some of my favourite comics of all time. Claremont did a
really nice job in that issue of having a strong single issue story
(Kitty Pryde’s battle for respect with Professor X), a solid action
sequence with Kitty, all the while balancing a number of subplots
that continued to drive the overall arc and dealt with other
characters, to boot. People can bitch and complain about some of the
stylistic choices that Claremont and other writers used in that era;
for instance, I’ll argue pretty hard that the use of expository
captions went too far and tended to bog down the narrative. And
Claremont did have an angsty tone that could grate at times. Sure. We
can all nitpick almost any comic, any time. That said, these issues
weren’t “written for the trade,” didn’t use so-called
decompressed storytelling techniques, and any issue in this run had
elements that stood on their own, giving a reader a satisfactory
read, while still driving the overall story. In many senses, this
type of structure has almost disappeared in contemporary “big two”
comics. I think that’s a shame because I really like a lot of
diversity when it comes to story structure; comics are a wonderful
medium and there’s a lot of room to play with structure, especially
when it comes to periodical comics. And many of these comics felt
like real, permanent change was going on. Some of that, of course,
was the illusion of change. At the same time, though, when Jim
Shooter’s run as editor-in-chief ended with his firing, it felt
that company made a concentrated effort to always return back to a
status quo, something I don’t think has ever really stopped since.
I
should also point out that John Byrne’s run on ALPHA FLIGHT (1-28)
is also a big influence. Take the Omega Flight angle that culminated
in Guardian’s “death” (sigh…) in issue 12. The initial set-up
began in issue 6; the subplot sequences in issues 10 and 11 are
terrific, partially because we see real change happening and, I’d
argue, because we’re seeing real time elements play a big role.
Again, real change and that wonderful feeling as a reader that I
wanted to know “what happens next.”
DC
did do some interesting work at the time and I think my favourite is
probably Alan Moore and Curt Swan’s “Whatever
Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” two-parter. Damn that’s a
wonderful story. And while it did tend to get a bit “wangsty,” I
enjoyed some of Wolfman and Perez’s TEEN TITANS (especially “Who
is Donna Troy?” and “Crossroads”). More deep change happening
to characters, even though the brief revival of real change was
ending; I tend to argue that one of the things that made Marvel so
strong in the 1960s was the deep change that characters went through.
That really contrasted with DC, but then Marvel stopped (for the most
part) doing it in the 1970s, with a few exceptions (Englehart’s
CAPTAIN AMERICA and Claremont’s X-MEN). There was a brief revival
of change during Jim Shooter’s run as editor-in-chief (though not
line-wide) and then it all stopped. So not only are we in an era of
grim and gritty, but we’re also in an era where the main characters
can never truly change and, the few times they do, the “reset
button” is pushed. It’s basically the argument that the
“illusion” of change rules the roost and it’s a shame. In other
words, we’re in a world of constancy. That doesn’t mean an
individual issue or arc can’t be good; rather, it means that when
you step back and look at the big picture, everything always resets
back to a baseline status quo. It’s SO boring.
Okay,
on to influences. When it comes to the art, specifically how the
story is told, the big thing for me is clarity. Comics of the silver
and bronze ages really show-cased the importance of panels and
especially the gutters. Panels make sense and further a story. Plus,
you can look at most panels in isolation and go, “yeah, I
understand what’s going on.” That approach actually requires a
fair amount of discipline; drawing a cool image or sequence is
important, sure, but it always get trumped by story. Of course,
someone is going to interpret that as meaning that I prefer six or
nine panel grids ad nauseam. Far from it and guys like Todd
McFarlane and Frank Miller showed what you can do within this
structure. The point is to tell the story clearly; if you can be
creative with panels and structure, awesome, as long as the story is
clear. I should add that it really doesn’t matter what the genre of
the story is, what the tone is, if the story is fiction or
non-fiction, or even if you like the story. The point is whether you
can understand the story, even if you don’t like it. Does the story
make sense or are you left scratching your head, trying to play
detective?
On
the writing side: First and foremost, these comics weren’t “written
for the trade.” Some people immediately assume that means that the
stories were just “done in one” and, as a consequence, nothing
mattered. I’d say that’s an utter bullshit argument. The
difference is that the aforementioned comics focused on telling a
beginning, middle, and end story in each issue while at the same
time using subplots, hooks, teasers, and other storytelling tools
to draw you into a much larger world. I’d call that continuity, but
that often leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths. Call it
world-building, call it storytelling, call it whatever the fuck you
want. I believe strongly that you can use single issues to tell
strong stories, still build a larger and more nuanced world, and
build up to future events that have a big payoff.
Does
that mean I’m completely against a decompressed story? No, of
course not. I am against it being used all the time, but
decompression is one storytelling technique and there are often quite
valid reasons for using it. It’s all tools in the tool box rather
than hard and firm rules. I don’t believe that decompression works
as an ongoing element of periodical comics, but if someone argues
that the periodical is a chapter in a larger beginning, middle, and
end story then I’m willing to listen. Hell, Charles Dickens used a
periodical format to serialize GREAT EXPECTATIONS and A TALE OF TWO
CITIES. I think that argument is stronger with creator-owned titles
like SAGA then it is with corporate comics like Spider-Man. Why? With
the former, you can structure the story so that there’s an overall
conclusion. With corporate comics, they never end. Creators change,
titles reboot, but the never-ending constancy continues. Using
decompressed storytelling techniques to explore the latest battle
between Spidey and Doc Ock is boring. Just get on with it.
Jude
Terror: How do you find a balance in paying homage to the great
comics of yesteryear without coming off as quaint or campy?
Or
even old-fashioned? I think about it quite a bit, but when I get
nervous I always fall back on trusting the fact that I fell in love
with certain comics for a reason. And when I take ’em part to try
to learn why I think they work, there’s a structure and philosophy
in many of them that I like. When in doubt, those are the guideposts
I use. Plus you realize that you don’t have to be all things to all
readers. Some people won’t (and haven’t) liked my work and that’s
just fine. Others will (and have) and that’s awesome.
You
can also avoid it just by paying attention to tone. In the case of
METAL GODS, it’s really fun to play with language, really fun to
play with character, and really, really fun to play with sex and
violence. I’ve got devil girls and weird cults and adult situations
featuring grown-ups and that’s really, really different then, say,
Claremont and Smith’s run on X-MEN. If someone were to point to
METAL GODS and go, “look, buddy there is using fairly rigid panels
and therefore it’s old-fashioned” then I say “fuck you, that’s
a ridiculous argument.” Am I using a fairly rigid grid? Yup, and
I’m doing it deliberately to tell a story. Does that make it
campy? Nah… C’mon. I’d argue that I would be being campy if I
was trying to ape both the structural techniques and the story
themes. For me, I really like the structure of older comics and I
wanted to see what I could do with that structure myself. I have no
interest in trying to riff or even rip-off the actual stories that
creators I like used. Besides, all kinds of hot current comics use
structure to better tell their story, SAGA probably being the most
prominent example.
Jude
Terror: I can tell by your beard and leather jacket that you’re a
fan of heavy metal music. What albums would you recommend someone
listen to while reading METAL GODS? Only true metal please, no poseur
stuff. I’ll know.
I’m
a big, big fan of Power Metal. And since I like clean vocals, it
means that some metal is not “my” metal. If you want the pure
METAL GODS experience, there isn’t gonna be much Doom, Stoner,
Black, or Death metal. Sorry, Electric Wizard fans, it ain’t
happening. On the other hand, The Sword’s “Warp Riders” is a
definite must. “But wait, you asshole, some people consider The
Sword Stoner, right?” Meh. I like what I like.
Toss
in “Bomber” and “Rock ’n Roll” by Motörhead. Rage Against
the Machine’s self-titled debut album. Budgie’s “Never Turn
Your Back on a Friend.” Throw in a bit of Anvil’s “Metal on
Metal.”
But
I’m gonna throw in some curve balls here, too. Mainly ’cuz I’m
a picky son of a bitch. If you want the true METAL GODS
experience, then you need to be able to break out and try some other
stuff. Mad Sin’s “Burn and Rise” is a definite must; I can’t
say enough about a band like Mad Sin. What, psychobilly in a metal
post? YES! And I’ll push it further; mix in some Pogues and even
The Tossers into that.
Seriously,
though, if it’s fast, if it’s heavy, and if the vocals are
fucking clean, you’re okay by me. And remember to stay the fuck
away from Guns ’n Rose, Motley Crue, and the like. No hair metal
bands, man.
Jude
Terror: Why do you think there aren’t more comics starring
metalheads? Is it discrimination?
Who
the fuck knows? Publishers might be afraid that too narrow a focus
might restrict the audience. There was a time that no one thought
that a zombie comic would have a broad audience so I don’t put a
lot of stock in it. But! I’ve actually experienced this
somewhat myself just recently; I contacted one academic who basically
said that since he has no interest in heavy metal, he wouldn’t have
any interest in my comic. I thought that was a remarkably
closed-minded answer; if you don’t like the series after you read
an issue or two, I’m fine with that. But judging it without
reading it? Okaaayy. Whatever, man.
I’m
hoping that longevity here may turn some people around; I know I’ll
never convince someone like that academic to try it, but someone who
is on the fence might give it a shot when they see the series hit
issues 7 or 8. We’ll see.
Do the work you believe in and hopefully the audience is going to
find it. I think it’s a helluva lot better than doing a riff on
some superhero.
Jude
Terror: You write, draw, and ink your comics, and I assume you
do the lettering too? Can you walk us through your process? Do you
script out the pages, or just kinda draw from the story outline, or
what?
I do
it all, baby. METAL GODS has actually been a challenge for me since
I’ve had to learn to make the entire process go quicker. Before,
with my other work that was planned out as graphic novels, I’d
write full script. Even go through a number of full drafts While that
approach certainly works just fine and has a number of merits
besides, it’s just way too time-consuming an approach for me with a
periodical comic. On top of it, I realized how much I’d change the
“final” script while I was drawing it, so the script really was a
“shooting script” more than something written in stone. If I’m
going to change it, then why lock it down? A dirty secret in comics,
something that Howard Chaykin has noted (here
and here),
is that visual artists really are co-writing the comic when they
collaborate with a writer. Since I am my own collaborator, I’ve
evolved a way of writing that works well for me. And that way
eliminated the need for a tight script.
So,
the basic process now is that I write a loose outline and draw from
that. I tend to put a goodly chunk of dialogue into the outline,
anyway, but this allows me to firm up the pacing while still having a
lot of flexibility for when I start to draw. The outline is more
detailed than something like a single-page Marvel Method outline, but
not so detailed that it’s rigid. My wife is actually a professional
editor and the outline gives her something to work off of, too. I
like getting feedback throughout the creative process so this really
helps me stay focused on structure.
I
should add that the outline doesn’t just pop out fully formed,
either. I go through a brainstorming process before tightening up the
various plot beats and whatnot. What needs to happen in this issue to
drive overall story beats forward. At the same time, I find one plot
that I can develop that has —
you guessed it — a strong
beginning, middle, and end arc that gives a reader what I hope is a
satisfactory reading experience. Then I start breaking all of those
plots down into various scenes, experiment with dramatic order that
those scenes occur in, before finally locking the scene order down.
The actual outline is based on the scene order. In other words, it’s
a series of building blocks, building upon one another, before the
outline is finally done.
When
I switch into drawing, I’ll start loosely thumbnailing out each
page and then just build up from there. I’ve experimented and
continue to experiment a lot with how I approach a page, even though
I always tend to work with a panel structure. I like drawing with a
nub of a pencil to help get my arm moving so I currently draw layout
pages larger than other artists I’ve come across. Then I scan the
loose page in and start tightening it up in Manga Studio EX 4. I
letter at this point since I can play around with placement, though
I’ll be thinking a lot about the lettering when I’m thumbnailing
and laying out the pages. Then I digitally ink the page, again in
Manga Studio EX 4, and I colour it digitally in Photoshop.
I
should add (again!) that there are no hard and fast rules (tools, not
rules!); sometimes I’ll draw a panel much larger on a separate
sheet of paper. Sometimes I’ll draw small. The only thing I’m
tending to do pretty regularly now is digitally inking and digitally
colouring. For the longest time I inked with a sable brush, but I
found the scan and clean-up work really time-consuming and really
frustrating. It also made the colouring process much slower due to
how hard it was to flat out the colours. Digitally inking means I can
work on different layers (contours on one layer, details on others)
and that means I can set-up my colours FAR faster; there’s no fussy
screwing around with hatching or whatnot because that’s all on a
separate layer. Very handy.
I’ll
still tweak and re-write dialogue right through the final colours,
too, another reason why locking the script down early doesn’t work
for me.
Jude
Terror: Are people who just write or just draw pussies?
Fuck
yeah! Screw those assholes!
Though
this is as good a time as any to make a plea to one of my favourite
writer/artists, namely Matt Wagner. MAGE: THE HERO DEFINED debuted in
1997, 13 years after the first series MAGE: THE HERO DISCOVERED
started. Well, it’s been 17 years since then and we still have no
MAGE: THE HERO DENIED.
What the fuck, brother?!
Jude
Terror: There’s a moment in issue #2 where one of the “bad guys,”
Frank, is explaining why he wants to bring about the end of the
world, and he says, “This world of ours is decayed. Broken. Have
you seen Detroit? Have you seen Cleveland? Camden?” All of those
are American cities. Don’t you have any dilapidated hellholes in
Canada you could pick on? If not, would you say it’s because of
your socialist healthcare system?
Canada
is a place of glory, joy, and is also a living embodiment of the
light on the hill. We’re Camelot, baby.
Well,
okay, maybe not. And yup, we do have many, many problems. Austerity
is everywhere, ordinary people struggle, and we’re not doing well
on poverty. There’s a major fight to increase Ontario’s minimum
wage to $14 dollars per hour. There’s a piece
up at Dissent Magazine that serves as a good overview.
That
said, it’s really hard to compare any Canadian city to what’s
happening in, say, the rust belt cities in the States. Downtown
East-Side Vancouver ain’t much fun. Toronto has had its fair share
of inner city violence. Not to mention a boatload of police-initiated
violence (the 2010 G20, anyone?). Still… Detroit
being urged to bulldoze 40,000 buildings is remarkable. 40,000
buildings. I can’t get my mind around that. And now we’re seeing
the city start turning
off water to some of its residents. Unbelievable.
Which
is not to say things are all red and rosy in a country like Canada;
they ain’t. We just had an election here in Ontario that was a
joke. That said, the reality is that things like health care are key
planks in making life livable for many people. Canadians and
Americans have a lot in common; we speak the same language, we have
many shared experiences, and we have a lot of culture in common. That
said, the differences are still pretty stark and one of them is, of
course, health care. What can I say? I think health care is a right.
Period. Full stop. I think that the cry in the States should not
have been Obamacare but Medicare for All. And while I think our
health care system, which does have flaws, can and should be better,
I would not trade what we have for the US system. Our health care
system is much better for ordinary people. Tommy Douglas, the father
of Canada’s health care system, said
it best, “I felt that no boy should have to depend either for
his leg or his life upon the ability of his parents to raise enough
money to bring a first-class surgeon to his bedside.”
Jude
Terror: One of your protagonists, Lou, is a black woman. Is it more
difficult, as a white guy (and, to make matters worse, from the Great
“White” North), to write a minority character?
Nah.
My goal is to write good characters. I just try to write the best
characters I can and hope readers connect with them, believe in them,
and learn to love ’em. White, black, male, female, young, old,
whatever.
Jude
Terror: METAL GODS is a fully digital comic. What are people’s
options for reading it? Any plans for a DRM-free version? And why do
you want to destroy print comics? (feel free to talk about the
industry and the impact of digital comics in general here, I love
that stuff)
Right
now, people can read METAL GODS via comiXology (through their
indy-friendly Submit program) for 99 cents an issue. The first two
issues are out now and easy to get through them. But the series is
not exclusive to them; if you don’t mind the PDF format, there a
lot of ebook retailers who are also carrying it. And the series is
priced deliberately cheaply; 99 cents US per issue. And you can read
it on a laptop, desktop, tablet, or (using comiXology’s nifty
Guided View technology), through your iPhone.
I
would love to do DRM-free versions, but I’m still working out the
easiest way to do it. Direct downloads via some shopping cart vendor?
Pay what you want models? Donation driven? Personally, I hate DRM but
there doesn’t seem to be a popular DRM-free platform for comics.
I’m watching what Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin are doing with
THE PRIVATE EYE, but I certainly don’t have that profile or pull. I
also paid attention to various attempts to try free distribution;
MISERY DEPOT by Hermes Pique and Juan Romera is a good example of a
free comic that did seem to get a lot of readers trying it out, but
it didn’t seem to lead anywhere, at least as far as I know. This is
actually something I’d love to get feedback on and have a
discussion about; how do lesser-known creators get their work known,
earn enough to live on, and build an audience?
We’re
in a really weird space with digital. On the one hand, digital comics
have clearly not harmed brick and mortar stores directly. There is
something that will always be cool about a physical comic or graphic
novel and digital doesn’t change that. In fact, I think digital
helps create an audience for a physical version of a comic and that’s
actually a really great thing. I’ve worked with Diamond and I’ve
had physical comics distributed into the direct market and it is a
fight to build awareness, connections with retailers, and everything
everyone probably knows pretty well by now. Obscurity is the enemy.
Always.
On the other hand, we’ve seen a lot of damage
to brick and mortar bookstores by competition from Amazon. Comic shop
retailers have what I think is a natural concern that now that Amazon
has purchased comiXology, a lot of key consumer data is now theirs.
They could, conceivably, use that data to begin a targeted outreach
campaign to digital comic book fans. Right now the direct market
exists in a really unique space; could Amazon offer dirt cheap
subscription offers for digital comics down the road? Could they do
the same thing for periodical comics? What if they decided to go
balls to the wall and go after that Wednesday customer base with a
really spiffy subscription model for actual physical comics? They did
similar things to books. If that happened, direct market stores would
be in one heckuva fight. We’ve been living in a one
distributor world for quite some time, but this type of stability
is typically an illusion, even if it’s relatively long lived. While
I doubt we would go back to the multiple distributor world we saw in,
say, 1983, market disruption in and of itself is not outside the
realm of possibility. Who knows.
Jude
Terror: METAL GODS isn’t your first published work. You also have
an all ages graphic novel series called STARGAZER. What’s that
about?
STARGAZER
is an all-ages story that also featured kids, three girls, as the
main protagonists. The plot in a pitch is this: Marni’s grandmother
died. And as she and her parents are going through the funeral, Marni
discovers that her grandmother left her this really weird object.
Shortly after, she and two friends are playing around with that
object and they find themselves reported somewhere else. Where they
are, how did they get there, how do they get home, is the main arc of
the story. Mixed with that is the fact that Marni keeps seeing
something she thinks is her grandmother. The mystery of who and what
that is eventually leads her to make a very bad choice, partially due
to her age, with horrible consequences.
Y’know,
there is a lot of understandable contemporary discussion about gender
issues with comics. That’s, sadly, also not new and shows like
TVOntario’s “Prisoners
of Gravity” were trying to get a handle
on this 25 years ago. We, both creators and readers, want to see
more diversity in the stories that we read. More diversity in
characters. STARGAZER was my attempt to try and tackle that. No boys
at all. Three girls rather than just one, so I could play around with
different traits and expectations.
The
problem wasn’t that people read it, didn’t like it, and it died.
The problem was that I couldn’t get many people to try it in the
first place. Which is not to say I didn’t make a boatload of
mistakes. I did. Doing a black and white comic for kids was not
smart. Breaking the story into two volumes wasn’t smart. That said,
it’s always frustrating to hear a lot and read a lot about folks
crying for more diversity and then when you present a work that tries
to change it, people won’t try it. The mistakes I just mentioned
didn’t help my cause and being an indy and small press didn’t
help, either. Oh, well. As Beckett said, “Fail. Try again. Fail
again. Fail better.” And I’m still proud of STARGAZER; I’m
proud of the story, the heart, the humanity, and the magic in it. I
hope it comes into its own one day and, who knows, anything could
happen. The people who got their hands on it, loved it; in fact, it
actually got the single
best review I’ve ever had of any of my work. Seriously.
Jude
Terror: Do you think comics will ever be as popular with kids as they
once were? How can we get more kids into comics?
First
and foremost, you gotta get comics into places where kids go. I don’t
know where that is, but anywhere kids congregate should have comics.
Good comics at good price points. Kids love comics. Shit, my
wife and I give out comics at Halloween along with candy! And there’s
a total audience for it; we actually have kids seek us out for comics
on Halloween! But expecting kids to somehow find themselves at a
comic shop…? I don’t think that’s been proven to work. And hey,
I know some stores try hard and have awesome kid and all-ages
sections. If we’re talking about comics that kids want to read as
some type of mass movement like the old days, then even if every
comic shop had a rocking kid section, it wouldn’t matter. There’s
not enough direct market venues.
Go
to where the kids are and hook ’em on good comics.
Jude
Terror: Your first graphic novel, THE ROAD TO GOD KNOWS…, got a lot
of press back in the aughts. An arch nemesis of ours, former Marvel
PR guru Arune Singh, interviewed you for CBR about it. Is that still
available? Can you tell our readers a little bit about it?
If
STARGAZER was raw, then ROAD is very raw. It’s a story about a teen
girl’s struggle with her mom’s mental illness, specifically
schizophrenia, and how she learns that despite the love she has for
her mom, she can’t solve those problems for her. So it’s a coming
of age story with mental illness as a backdrop. It’s my most
personal work, but it’s also the roughest
since I was still very new to writing and drawing. That said, it
got some very positive reviews, including one from The Library
Journal and another from the American Library Association’s
Booklist Online. Not bad for a self-published black and white graphic
novel. And it’s still available to this day.
Some stores still have copies and it’s available on places like
Amazon or through your local independent bookseller or comic book
shop, too. Same goes for STARGAZER. The links are all off my main
shop page.
Y’know,
I barely remember talking with Arune Singh, though. Ah, those were
the days, when CBR would actually talk with me.
Jude
Terror: You
won an award this past week, the Corel Endowment Fund for the Arts
Award. What would you consider a bigger honor: that, or being
featured on The Outhouse?
The
Outhouse, of course. But if Peter Honeywell from the Council for the
Arts in Ottawa is reading this, then it’s the Corel Award. Of
course!
Jude
Terror: When you’re not writing or drawing, what are you reading
these days?
Oh,
man, so many things. I’m slowly working my way through Karl Marx’s
CAPITAL
but it is a slog. Richard Wolff’s work is another big hook for me
right now. His book CLASS
THEORY AND HISTORY: CAPITALISM AND COMMUNISM IN THE USSR
(co-written with the late Stephen Resnick) is fascinating, primarily
because of the way it challenges the reader with what so-called
Soviet “communism” was and how it functioned. It, too, is a slog,
but it’s a good slog and it’s certainly opened my eyes to a
number of things. I love learning and I try to keep an open mind
about what I’m learning.
One
of my favourite things about Wolff, drawn from Marx, is that
capitalism is a method of organizing production. How you
distribute the goods and services as a result of that production is a
very different question. In other words, workers can own and run
their own enterprise, free of exploitation and far more democratic,
but still participate in a free market as one way (but not the only
way) of distributing goods and services. That insight creates a lot
of fascinating implications; for instance, workers could own their
own enterprises and not commodify the goods and services they
produce. Or a number of worker owned and controlled enterprises could
compete with one another in a market-based distribution system. This
type of worker control also does not say one word about the
government; one of the most fascinating ideas presented by Wolff and
Resnick, though they’re not alone, is that the Soviet Union was
organized on a state capitalist basis (because the state, not
workers, controlled production). This is also a major critique in
some Anarchist literature (for example, Voline’s THE
UNKNOWN REVOLUTION).
It
also means, and I think this is important, that while a workplace
could be free of exploitation (in the Marxian sense), it does not
mean that the workplace is necessarily free of discrimination. In
other words, one hundred workers could own their own company and
serve as their own board of directors. They could distribute the
goods they produce in a market or not. But if, say, 55 of those
workers are white, straight, young, and male, it’s very easy to see
that the workplace could have major problems if those 55 vote on
issues as a block. Especially if the other 45 workers are, for
example, a mix of women, Hispanic, black, gay, and/or old workers. On
top of it, how the actual jobs are organized is another key question
as other voting blocks could arise (workers who do “creative work”
versus workers who don’t). In fact, this is something that Michael
Albert has talked about in regards to actual
examples of real life worker control.
This
may shock people who haven’t read much on this or come in with
massive preconceptions, but Marx was a critic of capitalism. He only
gestured, at least as far as I know, at what a new, different, better
society would look like. And he was long dead before 20th century
revolutions in Russia and China occurred. The Marxian notion of
surplus and the critique that those who produce it should have
a say in how it’s appropriated and distributed is really neat. That
notion of class and class struggle is intriguing; we classify people
by how they relate to the surplus. That we could have a far more
democratic society is also really cool. How we practically do that is
going to take a lot of experimentation and trial and error. That’s
exciting to me.
What
else? Well, I’ve been working through Bill Walsh’s FINDING THE
WINNING EDGE, a terrific look at how he built up the San Francisco
49ers as an organization. It’s unfortunately laid out in awful font
that makes it far more tiresome to read than it should be, but such
is life. I’m also re-reading a lot of Harry Harrison’s STAINLESS
STEEL RAT series, something I do every couple of years.
The
only thing I don’t often read now is long-form fiction. I used to,
but that’s really faded as I swing into more non-fiction or
novellas.
Jude
Terror: What’s next for METAL GODS? Is this a finite story? What
can we expect in the upcoming issues?
Nope,
it’s not a finite story, though I do have a strong initial arc that
I want to explore. If there’s an audience, it would be awesome to
be able to do it for a long time. That’s actually something I’m
hoping for because I think seeing characters change and grow over
time is one of the things that periodical comics can do very well.
It’s the real time notion again; I love seeing deep change happen
in stories. Stories that feature constancy don’t interest me.
What
do I want to get into with the series? A big one is class. That’s
something I don’t see tackled in comics much (at all?) and it would
be really interesting to explore that. Nick and Lou are going to head
down to the States at some point and be able to directly experience
some of what austerity has wrought. We’ll see more of what the
antagonists are trying to do and why some of them have extraordinary
abilities. And we’ll be exploring character; who Nick and Lou are,
how they got together, and how and why they stick with one another.
Holy
crap, we’re going to have fun!
Jude
Terror: Thanks a lot for tolerating my nonsense. Any last words you
want to leave our readers with?
Find
and read good comics, not just comics from “the big two” and not
just comics from creators you know. Try new things out all the time.
Tell your retailer that you want to see more diversity on the stands
and then support that diversity with your wallet. Share the love you
have for comics you like. The biggest enemy to lesser-known creators
is obscurity. Find titles you love and champion them. Tell your
friends. Share
the love.
Jude
Terror: Please also let me know what links you want to plug in there
and at the end. :)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140822222924/http://metal-gods.vonallan.com/
https://www.vonallan.com
https://web.archive.org/web/20170718191621/https://www.comixology.com/Metal-Gods/comics-series/20279
Thanks!
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