You’ve recently put online We All Got it Coming, a sequel to your novel Lockpick Pornography. You say that it’s a sequel in the sense that it’s about the same things even while it’s about different people. While both feature gay characters, sex, and some righteous anger, Lockpick Pornography seemed to have a lot more about gender and We All Got it Coming seems to have a lot more about jobs and sexual harassment and discrimination at work. What are the two books about to you?
I’m not sure what I mean when I say that they’re both about the same things, just in different ways, because, on the surface, they are about very different things. But they’re both about homophobia, and they’re both about violence. I mean, at the end of the day, you can put those two things together, can’t you? These are two books that are about violence. I don’t know if violence is ever acceptable. It is something that I get upset about.
These are two characters who feel very differently about violence. The guy in Lockpick is almost always being violent somehow, and the guy in We All Got it Coming would on the surface rather do anything than have to be violent.
It feels a bit simple to say these are both books about violence, though. We All Got it Coming is a book about Arthur and Clay being in love, primarily. It’s hard to describe what books are ABOUT. I mean, if they could be summed up in a few sentences they wouldn’t have to be whole books. I don’t sit down to make a book about violence. I sit down and think, “Oh man, I want to write a sex scene where rape-play is somehow the sweetest and gentlest thing ever.” Which to me makes sense, because you’re talking about two people who are in love. Of course it’s going to be sweet. But I guess I’ve never read a sex scene like that.
Your work frequently touches on sexual orientation and gender identity. How do you identify, who are you into, and what’s your relationship status?
I’m queer. That’s the easy part of the question. The other parts seem too personal to me. Also, I don’t know how useful they’d be to your interview. Who I’m into changes all the time. Also, what could I say here? Bookish types. Punks and queers. Sure! But not ONLY. I don’t think an exhaustive list is possible. I find the weirdest things sexy, and the most common things. My relationship status is way better when I don’t talk about it in a public forum.
Ideas and stories seem to reappear often in different pieces of your work. Something from a Softer World comic will show up in your fiction. One Overqualified letter will turn into a story and a bunch will become part of a novel. Do you return to the same things just because they continue to interest you? Do you come back to them because you have something new to add?
Sometimes I don’t use an idea as well as I could. Or I’ll think, “This old thing would be amazing as part of this other thing I am working on.” But I have rules I guess. Not absolute, but guidelines. I don’t really want to use something that’s already in print in another project. But if it’s an old thing that not many people have seen, and I really think it’ll work better in a new form, sure, why not? A good example of this is Halt!, a funny essay I wrote about being a security guard. I wrote this years ago and never really did anything particularly exciting with it. I printed a few zines. Put it up online. But when I was working on We All Got it Coming, it occurred to me that it’d be perfect for the character of Arthur. So it went in. And this way, instead of just being a bunch of funny one liners, it contributes to characterization, and the overall plot of a bigger story, and I think it’s reasonable to assume that more people will read it in this form.
It’s easy for someone to stop by a website each week to read a quick comic. It’s also easy to share comics with your friends. And once you know you like someone’s work, you might be willing to invest more time in reading it. How useful do you think doing a web comic has been building an audience for your other work?
Oh, yeah for sure. There’s not much to say about it that isn’t right there in the question, but people who love the comic are more likely to check out a novel by the same writer. That makes sense to me. It’s like that with everything. I bought Hugh Laurie’s novel, because I liked his acting. I bought Greg Rucka’s novels, because I love his comics. It makes perfect sense to me.
A while ago you posted a series of four interviews online. It was interesting that you didn’t follow a regular update schedule, included an interview with your brother, and were happy to spend substantial portions of the interviews doing the talking yourself. Do you think your way of doing interviews is better, or is it just the kind of interviews you wanted to do?
I’ve been working on new interviews for that series. It was something I wanted to do—talk to these people who were very important to me, but talk to them about things that were important to me too. I didn’t want to ask Helen DeWitt, “Where do you get your ideas?” because, well, for one I don’t care where she gets her ideas. That doesn’t affect me in any way. But her ideas themselves do. Her writing about suicide. I connected with it, and I wanted to know more. I wanted to talk to her about it, too, not just hear more. I wanted to have a conversation about it.
What’s an average day for you like? (Do you keep a regularly schedule for getting creative work done? What else do you do with you time?)
I don’t have really average days. I write the comic a few times a week, working with Emily, usually over MSN. When I am working on a book, I will work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I become obnoxious to talk to, because I don’t want to think about anything else. When I am not working on a project like that, I’ll do whatever seem the most fun that day. Chess has been a big part of my days lately. Video games. Watching Television (Criminal Minds lately. Dr. Reid! Dreamy! Hotch! Smoldering! How do they make a crime show that dreamboaty?). I love to go to the movies and read comic books. I like to hang out with friends. I try to have a pretty good time, is what I’m saying.
John Campbell draws comics, including the web comic Pictures For Sad Children and hourly comics he’s drawn each January for five years. John Campbell answered my questions (I’m Dan Copulsky) in April 2010. John Campbell is a swell guy.
Your hourly comics originally seemed to be a response to daily journal comics, an attempt to create something that more fully, as you put it the first morning you tested the idea, “captures the rhythm of everyday life.” Was the experiment a success?
I think “yes and no” would be the most reasonable response. The 2-panel format my hourly comics settled into can approximate some sense of time and place, in some ways more than the standard daily journal comic. In exchange I lose a lot of the contemplative nature of journal comics I think. I get stuck trying to make a little 2-panel comic “interesting” or “funny” and lose a lot of the sense of what it feels like to actually be alive. These fall flat in a particularly distressing way when they don’t work, because if they are not “entertaining” and they also do not really capture some element of living then it becomes obvious that they are just another goddamn waste of time on the internet.
Doing hourly comics affects my life and my comics about my life, which makes it not a real objective account of living, of course. I try not to project a version of myself onto the comics but it happens, of course of course. I have friends who read my hourlies and my friends have friends who read them, so I have to filter what I choose to make a comic out of and what I don’t. If some private drama goes on throughout a day a daily journal comic could concentrate on something else for a moment but my hourlies have to be about something else for hours and hours and that gets stupid.
Your motivations must have changed over the years, but you’ve kept doing hourly comics each January. Why did you do it this year?
I began this year’s purely out of obligation. In previous years I’ve been waiting to do them. It feels good to take on a big project and get it done. But I was busy in December shipping my first book and I did not really have the time to start pining for some big task. I think my most consistent motivation has been knowing that I will appreciate having the hourly comics around later, so I can get some sense of where my life has been and where I am going. In the short-term I feel an obligation to make them for other people and in the long-term I use them as a substitute for my terrible memory.
Sometimes I tell myself that if I want to be a writer, I’ve got to make myself write. But lots of times there’s just nothing I particularly want to write, so sometimes I tell myself that it’s okay to not bother writing, that it’s actually better not to write just to write, that I should wait until I actually have something I want to write. It might not be the same for you, but it does sounds like creating comics can be a struggle for you, so why do you bother?
It is different every time I make a comic. Sometimes I have a story I want to tell and I mash my hands into the paper screaming trying to get it out and even if it works it can turn out to be a “bad” story to begin with that does not resonate with myself or anyone else. Sometimes I think that it is about time to make a comic and I make whatever I can until something, anything at all, comes out of me that has some redeemable aspect to it. So the answer to “should i force myself to write” is “sometimes” and as a side note it is a miracle that anything of any value has ever come out of this unfocused and angry “artistic process.”
Do you draw the best you can? Do you push yourself to become a better artist? Do you feel at all limited in doing those things by expectations of an audience to continue seeing work in the somewhat stick-figurey style they know as yours?
I’ve recently felt “stagnant” artistically, maybe “bored with my aesthetic” but it is hard to say for sure. I just know that I feel like I have made more mediocre than good comics recently. The relationship between art and writing in comics is tangled and I think when the art gets boring the writing gets boring and vice versa. It is not like one in particular is to blame. I’ve tried a few different things, played with crayons, made a collage comic inspired by Souther Salazar. I’m not sure where it’s going but I hope that a few decent comics come out of it. I feel zero obligation to my current style but it came from honing my very few artistic abilities and it is the natural way now that I attempt to convey a story so I doubt it will go by the wayside any time soon. If it does though I am not afraid of audience expectations. The mysterious forces that have made some of my comics appeal to other people will probably not stop if the shape of my characters change a little or I start using colors.
Despite your work generally using fairly simplistic illustrations, there is a visual element distinct to comics, panel layout, that you sometimes make sophisticated use of. Is that something you’re consciously aware of?
I try to convey a story in the best possible way and that can mean making the layout plain and unnoticeable or that can mean making some element stand out. Sometimes I don’t want to think about it very much and the layout does not relate to the content in any way not as a conscious decision but as some kind of “default” which is probably part of what leads to boring comics. Like any reader of comics I see something like Chris Ware’s complex layouts and feel both awe and annoyance. But I want to “learn from it.” Sometimes I feel like I am mining “alternative” comics and culture for ideas and presenting watered-down and inconsequential versions of interesting concepts for people with low attention spans bored at work.
Ira Marcks is involved in many artistic projects, but this interview focuses on his Illustrative Score, a scrolling piece of art set to music. As he told me, it’s something like a “45 minute music video” and a “graphic novel told in a single, 50 foot long panel.” Ira answered my questions by email in March and April 2010 (I’m Dan Copulsky).
How did you get the idea to do an Illustrative Score?
The original idea was Jake Lodwick’s. He had commissioned an album from The Few Moments for his record label, Normative (no longer active). Somewhere along the way he had the idea to have me do “one long drawing” to accompany the music. The term Illustrative Score came about from the process. I had the lyrics and the finished album in my hands before I did anything. The story progresses in a mythical way that made me think of the different ways ancient cultures preserved their stories through sequential wall paintings. This combined with the cropping effect of the screen made me think of it as a visual score to the music. Put simply, it’s kind of like Mario Paint Composer.
Could you describe the process of putting this together a bit?
I used Photoshop to build a gridded template where 6.5 inches was equal to 30 seconds of music. I had to be very careful to abide by these rules since it was going to be over 50 feet of illustration. All the little cheats would add up and the images and music wouldn’t sync up. I did a simple sketch of each song using loose geometric shapes to mark the feel and density of the music. Then I traced over that with the content I felt suited the lyrics. Next I inked and water colored the parts in 6.5 inch segments making sure they would lock together when I scanned them. After all of it was digitalized I used After Effects to bump the images up against each other like a slow moving train. Jake helped me out with the render settings and optimizing it for the web.
I was curious what you could say about the relationship of your Illustrative Score to what’s more typically called comics. In what ways are they similar for you? How do you see them working differently?
The only important difference between comics and this Illustrative Score is the automation of the visual. Genres and categorization only serve to organize items, not to accurately describe the experience of the art. I would say the differences between the “score” and a comic is the same as the difference between reading a book and having it read out loud to you.
Would you consider making the art from the score available in a format where the person viewing it has control over the speed they see the images at?
As a whole work, it wasn’t designed to be looked at in any other format than the one it was presented in. As a study of the process or in the context of a lecture on the project, I would display the raw image. If only for the opportunity to see what is lost in the digitization of hand-rendered art. For those people with minimal interest in the work, I would rather they didn’t have a second option than that of the published video.
What do you think the role of experimentation in art is? Is it more about finding the right form for one particular project or more about creating new ways of expressing things that others can use and adapt?
The things I find inspiring are often designed around a very specific set of guidelines. I am inspired by process and the concepts that generates it. I think many artists are. But experimentation is a difficult thing for a patron of the arts to invest in. It can overshadow the resulting art. I’m surprised at the overwhelmingly positive response this Illustrative Score has generated. I suppose, in this case, the art prevailed. The experimentation it was born from can now be addressed as a method worthy of a term. In my vocabulary at least. Early in my career, I thought the ultimate challenge was to indulge in experimentation with minimal regard for an audience. Now, I’m finding the biggest challenge is to create something new, but still accessible and worthy of a viewer. The relationship of art and craft is something I reassess from project to project.
What are you working on now?
I’m preparing a print collection of my comic strip, WITCH KNOTS, collaborating on an experimental radio drama and illustrating a wordless sci-fi children’s book. I’m also in a band and teach art full-time.
Joey Alison Sayers recently stopped creating her weekly webcomic, Thingpart, but she’s still busy creating comics, as you’re about to read in the actual interview below. Joey was kind enough to answer Dan Copulsky’s questions (by email) in March 2010.
A few months ago you stopped doing your weekly webcomic, Thingpart, in order to work on other comics projects. Has stopping Thingpart given you more time and energy for other things? What have you been working on?
Quitting Thingpart was a really hard decision. I had been doing it for about four and a half years and in a lot of ways I still enjoyed it. But, yeah, it just took up so much of my available drawing time each week, and I had been wanting to focus on some other things. Mostly, I wanted to work on Just So You Know #2. JSYK is just a different kind of focus for me. It’s so much more personal and complicated than a four panel Thingpart. And I need more solid chunks of time to work on it. That said, I’m fairly certain I’ll do another weekly strip in the future. It’s a lot of fun. Hopefully newspapers will still be in business then!
You recently published Just So You Know #1, a collection of autobiographical comics about coming out as transsexual and transiting to living as a women. Those can often be some pretty personal subjects. Do you feel like putting them out there invites people to ask more about your experiences, or is writing things down a way to minimize how much energy you have to spend answering people’s questions?
Well, I really worried about putting out a comic that was so personal. It stressed me out and made me feel kind of vulnerable. Like people would know too much about me and want to push deeper into my personal life. But people typically don’t ask me more about my experiences than I feel comfortable sharing. Part of that might be because I’m a really open person and there isn’t a whole lot I won’t talk about with people. But part of it I think is because the book is already pretty personal and shares a lot about my trans experience. More than I think many trans people choose to talk about. One thing I’m hoping that this series does is help non-trans people learn a little bit more about what it’s like to be trans. Granted, I’m only one woman, and I don’t pretend to speak for every trans person out there. Hopefully, though, I can be part of peoples’ greater understanding about trans folks. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about us, and with virtually any emerging group of people, familiarity and understanding lead toward greater tolerance and acceptance.
Is Just So You Know #2 focused on a different theme or time period than #1, or does it just collect more assorted stories that weren’t covered in #1?
Just So You Know #2 does overlap somewhat with #1. Mostly it’s stories that happened after the first one was printed, but there are some pieces that do overlap. I also have a few short pieces that are from much earlier. So you can see what I was thinking when I was twelve. Number three (not to give anything away) will probably have an even bigger scope of time. Or less (honestly I don’t know, which is why I really can’t give anything away).
Before transitioning, the name on your work and website was Joey Sayers. Now it’s Joey Alison Sayers. I was curious about the choice to both keep Joey and add Alison. What are people calling you in person? Is keeping Joey motivated by making sure that people who know you by just Joey Sayers can still find your work?
Actually, I started doing comics as “Joe Sayers” and then moved to “Joey Sayers” and now “Joey Alison Sayers”. I’m never going to change it again, I swear. When I legally changed my name, deciding what it was going to be was a big choice. A big consideration for me was maintaining some continuity with my former self and my burgeoning comics career. I use all three names for comics, because it sounds the best. Say it out loud a few times. It’s gorgeous. But in person, people either call me Joey or Josephine. I like them both.
Religious characters and settings come up somewhat often in your comics. Is religion just a goldmine for comedy that you make good use of, or does your use come from something more particular, like your own religious beliefs, nonbeliefs, or religious upbringing?
I grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Which, if you don’t know, is one of the most religiously and socially conservative places in the country. (At least it was when I was growing up. Maybe now it’s magically changed into a wonderland of civil rights and personal tolerance.) So growing up, I had a lot of exposure to that freaky ultra-right-wing Christian world. I used to go to a Baptist youth group with a friend of mine where they actually tried to convince us that dinosaur fossils were put in the ground by Satan to test our faith (because obviously the Earth is only a few thousand years old). Really ridiculous shit. Fortunately, even as a middle schooler, I was savvy enough to see through their lies. During this time I was actually a pretty devout Christian myself. But I was in a fairly open-minded Episcopalian church. They taught me to be a nice person who was tolerant of other peoples’ beliefs. But ultimately, religion didn’t have what I needed and I moved away from it. Now I like to make fun of certain aspects of it in my comics. But only the parts that I think deserve being made fun of. Like the idea of a capricious or vengeful god, or people who are blindly dogmatic, or that heaven is a bunch of clouds and harps and stuff. You know, the funny parts.
Nearly all (if not all) of your work is funny. Why are you drawn to humor? Do you have any interest in creating work with a different tone?
I’m not sure why I’m drawn to humor. I guess it’s just kind of my language. I like telling stories that are funny.
I tried doing some more serious stories when I first started drawing comics. But I was never really happy with those. Just So You Know has been my most recent experiment with telling some more serious stories. And even those are actually darkly humorous or bittersweet. I don’t think I’ll ever stop doing humor but I’ve been thinking about writing a story that is more serious. I want a comic that people will cry all over. That would make me laugh.
The multi-talented Lucy Knisley creates comics (available in print and online), makes music, and has designed a shirt depicting the different styles of hot dogs from twelve cities and states. Dan Copulsky was delighted to have her answer his questions in March 2010.
You create primarily autobiographical work. What’s the appeal of autobiography for you? Is the work you enjoy reading similar to your own work, or are other things that appeal to you as a reader?
Making autobiographical work is vital to me—it allows me to order my thoughts and experiences so I can process them for myself and share them with others who might relate, which gives me great relief and satisfaction. I think doing this allows me to feel less alone in the world, when someone feels a connection to my work. I love the experience of having this disjointed jumble of thoughts in my head, rambling around in there for weeks (sometimes longer), and then making sense of it through ordered panels of words and images. As someone who frequently feels confused and isolated by the world outside my own head, making comics about my inner life feels like a way to communicate myself that is clearer than what I’m able to express otherwise. I feel similarly about making autobiographical comics as I do about talk therapy, that ordering and expressing your inner thoughts allows you to better understand the world outside yourself. Maybe once I feel more comfortable outside my own head, I’ll stumble onto a yearning to write more fiction. That said, I adore reading other autobio comics! I get this glimpse into the thought processes of other people, and find it fascinating and endearing. But I think I nearly equally love fictional and journalistic work. In comics, I’m not impressed by fancy art without a readable story; the writing has to be good, autobio or not.
What’s an average day for you like? Do you have set goals or schedules? Do you have a routine?
I have a list of things I need to complete by the end of the week that I make on Sunday night (frequently it’s a set # of pages for my book, plus various ideas I had for projects, commission or freelance work, and miscellaneous bank/post office/grocery chores). I usually divvy up the list throughout the week, but I like to keep my schedule flexible. I’m a “do a lotta stuff in short bursts” kind of person, and get a lot of things done quickly, followed by a great deal of staring into space or eating. I often wish I could be one of those industrious cartoonists that work at their desks from 9 to 5, but I’m more likely to wander away if I try to keep to that schedule. I’ll go for a walk if I’m feeling antsy, or move the drawing out onto the porch. A nice/awful thing about not having a set schedule is that I usually end up working much later and getting more done in a day than I would if I chained myself to my desk for a rigid eight hours.
How does a comic strip come together for you? Do you write first and then work out the visual design, or is the creation of the text and art more intertwined?
It varies from comic to comic, but generally I write out a script while doing little thumbnail pages in the margins. I used to be a lot more off-the-cuff about my comics, just starting to draw and seeing where it led, but in the last year or so I’ve been a little more about having a plan—a beginning, middle, and end that I know from the start. I think this change came from finally being out of school. I spent so long in school making comics that were “wrong” in the established sense of “how to make a good comic.” I wouldn’t script it, I’d go straight to ink, I’d use crappy copy paper and cheap pens, and I’d draw way too small to be good for my hand or the finished product. When a teacher would suggest that my methods were, perhaps, not completely correct, I’d balk. I spent a lot of time worried that, were I to give in and make comics the way someone else suggested, I would be conforming to a method that would make my comics too similar to others. Now that I’m on my own, for the most part, I’m better able to put to practice the things I learned in school and have it be my own impetus, and in my own way, rather than fulfilling an assignment or conforming to the standard of practice. I guess I’m just stubborn.
In a comic a few months ago, you expressed frustration with older artists who couldn’t see the potential in the growing predominance of digital media. In the comic, you mentioned a few benefits of digital work for readers, like cheaper costs and convenience. I wondered if you could say any more about what potential you see in digital media for creators, what is is that these artists ought to be optimistic about.
I think the main point that I was trying to get across in that comic was that it’s wasteful to spend energy and time worrying about something that is happening, when you could spend that energy learning about it and embracing it! The digital transition of media is no new thing. The internet has already revolutionized comic-making, self-employment, and the interconnectivity of art. I can only hope for similar great things from the continuation of digital media (as in portable digital reading/publishing)! It’s totally upset the traditional publishing world, but I’m optimistic that creators and writers can use this transition to their benefit, and create a new publisher/author (and reader/author) relationship, if we would just open ourselves up to it. And as someone who fetishizes books as beloved objects as much as any child raised by a English professor father, I’m curious to see how this might make books more singular and precious as treasured object; Smaller print runs (save trees!), higher production quality to compete with digital color and definition, potentially fewer middlemen between artist/authors and readers (which possibly means more $ for the creators), and a greater widespread respect for small press or self-publishers. I know there are a lot of downsides, but I prefer to look on the bright side and remain confident that we’ll figure this out for the best.
What do you look for in a comic book store? What places do you love?
I’m a fan of stores that have a variety of stuff—not just comics. My favorite comic shop is Quimby’s, here in Chicago, which has gorgeous art books, hand-picked selections from prose books, indie magazines and a huge wall of self-published minis and zines, along with a great selection of straight-up comics. I frequently judge places by their appreciation for all things that go into comics—art and writing and culture and ink, which can be browsed either combined or separated at places like Quimby’s that get that concept, and don’t just stock comics and nothing but comics.
Since I’ve got a food enthusiast who lives in Chicago answering my questions, there’s one more thing I’ve got to ask, for totally self-serving purposes. Do you have any Chicagoland pizza recommendations?
Oh, this is a very sensitive subject. You might end up sorry you asked… When I moved here to go to college, I was really excited to try deep dish Chicago-style pizza (more cheese? Who wouldn’t love that?), but I was actually kind of horrified by the reality of it. I’m from New York, where our pizza is thin with a cornstarch belly, light on the top and folded floppily into a roll in order not to burn your mouth on the top. Chicago, even when they do “thin crust” has this totally different consistency—the crust reminds me of damp matzo, actually—like you can break it off, rather than having to rip, like you do with New York pizza. The round pie is frequently cut into squares, which makes absolutely no sense to me, and while there is little better than cold leftover NY pizza, Chicago style seems to congeal, crust, cheese and tomato, into one spongy consistency when left overnight in the fridge. I’m really not a picky eater, and I LOVE so many wonderful Chicago eating habits, but any suggestions for pizza places are going to be the ones I’ve found that can approximate NON-Chicago style! My best suggestion? Go for a Chicago-style hot dog, instead. They’re absolutely one of the best things this city has brought to cheap food, and people don’t seem to tout it as much as the pizza, for some completely bizarre reason. Hit up Hot Dougs or The Wiener Circle for good ones. Ask for a char-dog (or double-char-dog, when they put two dogs on one bun!), Chicago style. You’ll get this great hot dog with crazy fluted ends, on a poppy-seed bun, nearly invisible beneath a pickle, tomatoes, bright-green relish, onions, sport peppers, celery salt and mustard (never ketchup! NEVER!). An added bonus—you can usually take a swim in the lake after one of these! Not so with the pizza—you’ll sink right to the bottom of the Lake Michigan sludge.
