A discussion related to Adventures Into Digital Comics.

1) Can you tell us about your background?

  I was born in Brooklyn NY, in 1965. I was always drawn to comics, comic strips in the papers and cartoons, and at a pretty early age knew I wanted to do something in that field. I'm largely self-taught as an artist, which is why I'm about eight years behind the curve in regards to where my art should be. I attended various schools as a kid, getting thrown out of several of them. Spent a lot of time in my room drawing, like many a cartoonist/comic reader/fan. I wrote my own stories for years so I'd have something to draw, and always considered myself an "artist who wrote". Nowadays I consider myself a "writer who draws", because my writing is stronger than my draftsmanship. Luckily, cartooning is a combination of both, so while I'm not too terrific at either discipline they add up to something some folks will pick up and read. As an older teen I gravitated towards animation and attended NYU and received a degree in film/television. I disliked the film students' general attitude (greed/pretentiousness/pomposity, etc.) so much it made me run back to comics. Somehow I fell into animation despite myself. I'll stop now because asking about my bg is soI could keep going, I have no idea what you want to know here.

2) You've been a comic book artist for years. What do you find in comics that you wouldn't find in another type of visual exercise?

  Complete control of the work, I have the freedom to do what I want when I want how I want, without budget constraints. It's all just marks on paper, all I need is a pen and some paper and I can make comics, create my own world, my own characters, situations, expressions. I like looking at paintings and illustration and sculpture and other visual media, but I just love comics, I love telling stories and making jokes and observations and expressing myself both visually and narratively with marks on paper that become 'real" to a reader or myself.

3) What was the overall mood in the industry when you began your career? What was its commercial state? How has it evolved?

  The comics industry has been basically miserable mood-wise for decades, since the '60's and the dying off of mainstream distribution and retailing. Books sold better in the mid to late '80's when I started getting some work, of course. But we're seeing better work on the whole being done these days, there's moreess to different work. Back then readers and retailers treated indy b&w books like they were contaminated (save for when they thought they would increase in value during the Turtles craze). Nowadays I never hear a reader/fan say they'd never read a b&w book, which you heard everyday in the shop I worked at. The emergence of the graphic novel and bookstore distribution are two nice advances, but so far nothing's turned around sales-wise. It peaks when we go through speculator crazes, then dips lower when direct market shops close in the bust wake. We'll always be a niche market, but I think we'll survive as one, and that's fine by me by and large.

4) Comic book stores were created during the 70's as a boosting solution for the market. But as years went by, the direct market became the major distribution channel at the expense of the "newsstand" channel. Do you think that the industry is now paying the price for what was considered as the only viable solution back then?

  Yes, but it was that or death, so you can't get too worked up over that situation. I wasn't there, but it seems to me it wasn't a boosting situation so much as a plan to save the collapsing market and deal with stores and distributors who were dropping comics. Certainly we're suffering because of this ghettoization, comics disappeared almost overnight and hid in largely dirty, dingy, out of the way shops with floating store hours and cranky owners. What does drive me nuts is how long it’s taking most retailers to wake up and evolve from that model, there are still too many Neanderthal shops around. The terrible state of most shops is one of the things I dislike most about comics, they are by and large all we've got, and they are lousy ambassadors for the medium. Most of the direct market hobby shops are run like private fan clubs that seem to want to exclude women, kids and non-afficianados. We can't afford close-minded shops like that when the medium/industry is hurting. But you can't expect much from a retailing community born from shops so backwards and cash-poor that Marvel had to have a program to get them cash registers in the '80's.

5) 1986 has been a turning point for the industry with works like Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. It seems that since then, the comic-book audience has grown up with the industry and that there is just no new readers. Has the industry at that time completely forgotten its younger target audience?

  No, they just won't cultivate it. Everyone asks "where are the new readers?", everyone agrees we need new readers, and nobody does anything of any substance or scale to grab the attention of new readers. Archie doesn't exist in the direct market really, they're aloof and practically separate and the comic know-it-alls ignore them, as well as the DC all-ages books and most kid-friendly books. Most retailers order what they like, and they don't like kiddie books. The fanboy professionals don't like kiddie books, and they make books for themselves and other 30-somethings who are like them. I've done some kid's work, but mostly for magazines, and those magazines have newsstand distribution and decent sales. Comics cannot afford newsstand distribution (Archie pays for the supermarket rack space, Marvel et al can't do that). The comics all-ages Sarah and I have done sinks like a stone, whether it’s small press or DC. No one gets behind it. The fans and retailers all watch the DC animated shows, hoard the toys and DVDs, and ignore the comics even though the staff of the shows often work on them... makes no sense to me. A book like Sonic the hedgehog outsells many superhero titles, but nobody discusses this, because Archie books aren't “cool” to discuss. We are certainly swallowing our tail, we all know it, we all bitch about it, but the industry is so hand to mouth and short term in thinking that it won't work out any real serious attempt to reverse this trend. We sell what we can to who we can as fast as we can, and that's fans selling to fans. It ensures money coming in. I do see kids in my local shop, and lots of new readers have come in through manga and tie-in books, but not all stores cultivate this, and certainly few publishers pay attention to new/younger readers. And of course, we're all terrified at the idea that most kids wouldn't read a comic even if they had the chance, with competition from cable, video games et al. Why read about Spider-Man when you can "be" Spider-Man? And Spider-Man is basically what we're pushing. The superhero publishers also love to keep obtuse character continuities that prevent new readers from finding any of this stuff comprehensible, with multiple universes, multiple imprints that split up company characters (DC's Vertigo, Marvel's MAX), "what-if" or "elsewhere" stories, future versions, past versions, etc, all of which convolute continuity further and all of which are aimed squarely at the in-the-know fan.

6) 1993 was the last profitable year for the American industry. The market has been shrinking ever since. What do you think are the causes of the industry's collapse in the 90's?

  Everyone knows the speculation boom and bust was the #1 cause. And it was really infuriating, because the industry had a boom and bust after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles craze just several years before, when retailers and fans bought reams of black and white books hoping they'd all go up in value. In the early '90's publishers, retailers, distributors, fan magazines (esp Wizard) and many mainstream creators bled the market for all it was worth. And no one got off the train before it crashed, even people who were hammered after the Turtles craze, which collapsed shops and distributors. There is a real aspect of hucksterism in comics, convention bartering, price guides, speculating on hot titles, first issues and collectors items. Most of the comics sold in 91-93 were neverd or read, just socked away -- people honestly thought they'd set up college funds by buying twenty copies of a comic -- even though everyone on line with them at the register was buying twenty copies, and the shop had a case stashed away. It was a poor man's stock market, only some creators and people in publishing seemed to take any money out of it, I never noticed any retailers upgrading their shops or profiting in the long term from all the shenanigans. Basically the wild speculation, the bloated spending from the publishers, the gimmicks used to sell and hype hacked out comics, et al led to the collapse. It was inevitable, it was just good old American greed, snake oil and stupidity. And when the smoke cleared, the speculators bailed and never really returned. After all that, I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened again sometime soon. It runs in cycles (gimmick covers, black and white, pogs, xxx books, bad girls, even pogs) and we're due for it to happen again, and if it does happen, no one will have learned anything from the early '90's, they'll take every advantage until we have another collapse.

7) For the past few years, we've seen the big companies trying to improve quality: better paper, big names from other industries, etc. Do you think that it had an impact on sales? What could be a key to solve the sales' problem?

  I think it might have an impact on selling some books to book stores, perhaps. Better production makes the material look more like "real books" as you always hear people say. I don't know if it's done anything for sales overall, I have no real idea. It can't hurt, people who wanted the book will be even happier to buy it if it’s packaged and designed well, but I don't know how effective this practice is on sales, per se. Some folks might feel it to a price increase, and not buy it. A lot of comics readers are uptight about comics pricing, because they buy so many of them, you always see their rants on line or in magazines. If the prices were lowered they'd just buy more, that's how they operate. Anyway, I also have no clue if "big names" from other media does anything overall, a sales spike on several titles doesn't make for a healthy industry. People who like Kevin Smith films, or Greg Rucka books, or the Babylon 5 guy or Buffy guy's stuff, they have to stumble onto a comic shop or a book store that carries their comics to know they make comics. There's no real promotion behind these things, a few people who don't normally read comics might buy some Kevin Smith comics, or lapsed readers who are intrigued by the fact the Buffy guy did a comic, but my gut feeling is that it doesn't make any significant difference, it just allows some people to crow about “famous” people doing comics, as if that somehow legitimizes the medium.

8) In the 90's, publishers began to create alternate covers, and made a lot of -- sometimes unnecessary -- relaunches. What do you think of those "gimmicks"?

  Sometimes specially designed covers can be a nifty addition to a comic or concept. Most of the time they're used to polish a turd. Most relaunches are unnecessary, they're stunts, or attempts to get first issues out, or make a big deal over something cosmetic like changing a character’s costume. The constant reboots just further muddy the already muddied superhero waters, along with twisted and decades long character continuities, and this helps render all these books incoherent to new readers.

9) To make more money and be able to reach different places such as bookstores, the publishers have created the trade paperback. As an example, many people have read Sandman when it was available on paperback, but not before. Do you feel that the comic book format had its days, and could be replaced by the paperback?

  I think this is very possible. I've heard the argument for this, and books are starting to make great inroads, some folks only buy the collections now. But from what I see, many publishers really count on the income from the pamphlets, so they're resistant to this. They'll have to pay a creator for months while he or she is working on the book, and unlike a monthly series, no income will be coming in until the creator is completely finished with the entire book. The trend is definitely continuing towards books and retailers, thankfully, are largely responding in their ordering practices, and many projects now come out as fully-realized books that are not collections of pamphlets. So it'll be interesting to see how this works out, I know many people would like to see this happen. (I'm on the fence about it, because I work so slow!)

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

  Obviously any new technology is going to allow creators more choices. But as with any tool, it can be used well or be used as a crutch. Most digital lettering I see is garish and static and has no life or personality. Most computer coloring is graish as all hell, some of these comics look like 70's van paintings they're so overdone and worked up with flashy gimmicks. I find a lot of artists are putting less drawing into their pages, knowing the computer colorist will fill it all in and give it substance, and in many cases it leads to threadbare storytelling. And often the coloring takes precedence over the art, which blunts storytelling. I find a lot of the computer wizardry to be distracting, or gravy thrown over bad meat. Of course computer lettering and coloring can enhance a comic, or be used in ways traditional lettering and coloring never could be, and of course this can lead to terrific comics storytelling. But it’s only as good as the person using it.

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