Hopefully this column that I’m launching here with this interview will grow into a regular feature and become like those old style, beautiful comics that used to run in the regular newspapers.
Well, you know, it is possible. I mean, this might actually be one of the escape routes to something wonderful . . . You know, it’s just that — this is one of those things that happened when the web became more ubiquitous. Print suddenly became visible. And in the ’90s as more and more people were using the Web to communicate, sort of in the quickest and most efficient way possible, these people who were doing paper comics, suddenly they became interested in paper. Paper and ink — you know, the physicality of it — I think became very attractive and interesting and they began to experiment with just that. And that’s how you got things like the mini-comics of the ’90s where people would use all these wild paper stocks and silk-screened covers and bound with draw strings and twine and tight strings. It’s just like, “Well here’s something we can do that you’ll never find on the web.” You know? But that’s what happens when you have an alternative. Suddenly the original becomes visible. You become aware of it.
Towards the end of Reinventing Comics, you talked a bit about the high-tech side of things. What’s going on with the development of electronic paper?
It’s kind of like digital watches. It’s not one of those earth-shaking developments. It’s just like, “Oh, that’s useful.” But I don’t need paper, you know? It’s like alcohol-free beer. It’s like, “Now you can have your computer — now you can have all of the possibilities of digital media — but you can hold it in your hand!” This is how I feel about Unitarianism too. Like all those religions where, “Don’t worry — there’s not a lot about God in there! All the wonderful things about Church without a lot of dogmatism.” You know my whole attitude about that is just the lite Beer phenomenom. It’s just, “But I don’t like the taste of beer.” Who cares? It wasn’t important to me in the first place! I’m not looking for the Church experience!
Say you’re 18 years old and you want to be a cartoonist in 2006. What are the options and what are economic realities?
The economic realities are no matter what kind of comic you pick – it’s still a shot in the dark. You have to be very, very, very good. Because the talent pool has gotten better and better and better. Just in the last three years it seems like the skill of those entering the field of comics has grown tremendously.
It helps that there’s been an influx of female comics creators who balanced out the ticket tremendously. And so we have more range and variety in the offering.
There are more markets now, twice as many as there were, say, seven years ago. Three things have completely reshaped comics in the last seven years. One is the growing graphic novel scene. Another is the influx of Japanese comics which have inspired a lot of creators to move in that direction in terms of format and style. And the other of course is the web. And any one of those would have turned comics on its head. The three of those combined have randomized the scene to the degree where any of us can’t predict what will happen next.
