A discussion related to Adventures Into Digital Comics.

1) Can you tell us about your background?

  I live in Zurich, Switzerland. It's a small town with around 400,000 people, but for its small size there is a comparatively very rich and diverse cultural offer. I've been growing up in a small village outside of Zurich. there was a comics shop maybe 100 meters away from our home. I've been reading lots of comics from all around the world in my childhood.

2) What is the comic book market like in Switzerland?

  It's a small one but very rich in diversity because it is mostly based on imported comics. Most of them are coming from Germany, where they publish any kind of into-German-translated comics, from Sandman to Asterix to Akira. But there are also lots of original-language imports from America and France. This goes for the German-speaking part, the French-speaking part of Switzerland is more a part of the French comic book market.

3) What do you find in comics that you wouldn’t find in another type of visual exercise?

  I think it's the richest visual art form that one person can do alone. It's not a form of watching pictures, it's more a form of 'reading' them, an act which is giving the single picture somehow more meaning and effect, because it is connected to other pictures.

4) The early 90’s saw the first digital lettering and coloring comic-books. Do you think that itd a new world of possibilities as far as storytelling is concerned?

  No. Digital lettering and coloring have only been a small step. In some cases even a step backwards (ugly gradients, ugly much-to-average typefaces.) The industry just used the new media to replace the old one and the 'effect-loaden' slightly 'graffiti'-styled colorization (which is still used in most comics) is just a method to impress American kids.

5) Also around the same time came the internet. Did you guess at that time that the internet could become a distribution system for independent artists?

  Honestly, no. I've been in the beginnings of my graphic design apprenticeship when I first came in touch with the internet. It wasn't very widespread then (in Europe) and somehow also very slow. The first online comic I've been reading was 'club salsa' by Dave McKean, but it was more an act of waiting than one of reading...

6) When you go to comic book conventions, do you feel that people come to buy comics... or toys, busts, and whatever merchandising has to offer? What do you think of that merchandising? Can it help the sales of comics?

  The one American comic convention I've visited so far has been San Diego in 2001. I think most people there are just coming for the fun of it: costumes, computer games, merchandising, trailers. On one side, merchandising is giving comics the crap/trash/pulp-image it has in the public. But I think on the other side it's drawing a wider range of people closer to comics. And maybe merchandising will be the only way to really finance online comics in the future.

7) In the biggest comic conventions we can find paper and digital artists. Some paper artists seem to be ferociously anti-digital. Do you feel that there are now two clans of comic-book creators?

  Yes. We're at war. I'd love to kick every paper artist in his genitals. No, sorry, just a joke. I think we're in a time of changing, old media to new media, and it's only logical that some friction occurs. I, personally, respect every paper artist, in fact all my main influences are paper artists. In the past 100 years lots of wisdom about comics has been achieved by them. And every new comic artist, paper or digital, would do wisely to gain some of that knowledge and to work with it. At the same time I think it's obvious that paper comics won't disappear. I'm doing a newspaper comic myself now, and books are just too nice objects to be forgotten. There's a place for everyone... No need to be angry. Shalom.

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