When I’m at conventions, or approached by other would-be comic creators of the writing persuasion, I am often asked advice on where to find an artist to work with. This is a specific kind of writer. This is the writer who cannot draw. (Or in my case, used to draw but realized that his energy would be better used elsewhere.)

It’s not a big secret. It’s not even very interesting, but it’s the truth. Even though every time I give it, it’s not the answer they want to hear. I think they believe I have some magic catchphrase or spin or awesome pitch that totally sold an artist on my idea, and then that artist agreed to pour their blood, sweat, and tears into my creation. Now, this might be true for some writers, but it wasn’t for me.

So when someone asks me how I got my book done, I lean in closely, look left and right, drop the cone of silence over us, and then . . . and ONLY THEN do I tell them the secret. The secret that is so not a secret, and yet it always seems to surprise people. Are you ready? (And remember that I already told you it was not very interesting.)

It’s money. (See, I told you.)

I saved up some money for a little while, hunted down an artist I thought I could afford and whose style I liked, and placed an order for five pages and a cover. And I’ll be damned if I didn’t start receiving concept sketches, layouts for approval, final pencils, and all sorts of goodness on a very regular basis. It was like . . . magic. I had discovered this incredible world where people would do almost anything for green little pieces of paper. It wasn’t too long before I had a complete proposal package ready to go, and I didn’t have to go through any of the sociological experiments that we commonly call collaboration.

You see, before Starkweather, “collaboration” was a ten-year long nightmare. I don’t I think I ever got anything accomplished by meeting someone over the Internet or at a con and then trying to do a project together. Things might kick off well enough, but eventually it would come apart for various reasons. And here is why: if you actually find an artist willing to collaborate on your book, and that artist is good enough to get your book published, the chances of him not having other commitments is very low. And since he’s drawing for you for free, you fall at the bottom of the scale of importance. So what would normally take a month or so takes six months (if it even gets done at all) and your dream project never sees the light of day. But if you had offered to pay that person, you would have been immediately bumped into the category of things that are important to them. It’s not a complicated problem.

I’ve seen soooo many posts on message boards where there are writers looking for an artist to draw their book and “get in on the ground floor.” There’s never any upfront pay, just a share of the backend when it gets picked up for publication. These books are always cutting edge, revolutionary, or some other such word, because they are trying to convince an artist that it is worth investing their time and hard work in. But I’m going to ask you would-be comic book writers something you might not like, and that you should consider before you make your next request:

If you’re not willing to invest anything in your project, why should anyone else?

And I’m not just talking about an artist, I’m also speaking for the publisher. You expect them to lay out money for printing and marketing, but you don’t want to spend any money on the project yourself? If you think your idea is great enough for other people to put up money for, then it should be great enough for you to save up a couple hundred bucks to put together a proposal package. (And yes it can be done.) I haven’t done the math, but I’m willing to bet that there are at least twenty to thirty writers for every artist looking for a project. And each one of those writers believes that they have the next big thing. If you want to stand out from the crowd, you can start by offering to pay them something. It doesn’t have to be a hundred dollars a page, but anything is a good start.

Now, some of you writers might be saying that you are writing the script and that is your contribution. Writing is just as important as art, and some might argue it’s even more important. I’m not going to get into that argument because we’re not talking about what’s more important, we are discussing an investment proposal. If you went to a group of private investors and tried to convince them to buy into your awesome idea, the first thing they are going to want to know is, “What is your contribution?” If your only answer is sweat equity (meaning you intend to do work for free), and you have no real track record for fulfilling the idea you are presenting (meaning you are an unpublished writer), unless you have an incredible line of B.S., you will be shown the door. You are high risk and cannot even come close to guessing how much the return will be. The same goes for any artist of quality that you would contact. They have lots of people knocking on their doors, and you are not looking like the best bet. Being willing to pay indicates a level of commitment that might increase your chances of getting a decent artist. (But never ever all up front. Write up an agreement. Do a small deposit, and then payments based on delivery. Let’s not be crazy up in here.)

“But Dave,” you may be saying, “I don’t have any money. What can I possibly do to get an artist?” I still maintain that if you are serious about getting your book published, you should be serious about getting that money put aside. But if for some reason you are unable to promise your artist money, then you need to go back to an even older system than money. A little thing we call the barter system. Trade them something. I don’t know what you have to offer, but there are lots of things an artist might jump at besides money. There’s guaranteed publication. (Notice I say guaranteed.) Personal copies printed free. Discounts at Target. Whatever. But offer them something. Because in this world you get what you pay for. And if you are willing to offer nothing, you should expect just that in return.

All right, I’ve dropped a lot of tough love on you guys, and it may seem a little mean, but I am trying to help. And to prove it, here’s a light at the end of the tunnel. It isn’t always like this, and it doesn’t always have to cost money. The catch is, you need to get something published first. Once you have something published, you have a little something I like to call “cred.” You’ve already gone through the hurdles of getting the book out and you can speak from experience, quote sales figures, and if you had a good relationship with your publisher, you might even be able to guarantee publication. You have something tangible to prove you are serious about what you are talking about and to use as a sort of résumé. These are all sorts of things that an artist likes to hear. And here’s something even better. There might be an artist out there who liked your book . . . and he or she will come to you.

Believe it.

And if an artist has come to you to collaborate or to write a book for them, you are in that position you were hoping for when this column started. But the difference is that the likelihood of it actually getting done has just skyrocketed, because you are now working on something that is meaningful to that artist. Something that means more to them than money, and that is the realization of THEIR dreams. But if an artist has nothing to judge you on except your idea, you will find it difficult to get them to trust you with their dreams. Your goal then is to try and make yourself someone trustworthy. You have to show them that you are a person that has made dreams come true and that you started with your very own.

As in all things, there are exceptions to what I have said. There might be this artist out there that will work his ass off for you for no more than a promise that something might happen. It has happened (as I’m sure many people will be kind enough to remind me). Yes, it could happen. There is also a mathematical chance that if a car hits a wall it will actually pass through it because molecules are always in motion. (Seriously.) But the chance is better that the car will actually collide with the wall and turn you into a fine red mist. In this business, you need to be stacking as many things as possible in your favor and not betting that you’ll be the one that passes through the wall on a subatomic level.

And the first step to doing that . . . is to believe enough in your work, to invest more than just sweat.

I was out visiting friends in Chicago not too long ago and at some point the conversation made its way over to video games. Obviously they all know what I do for a living and since they are big gamers themselves, they are always interested to hear the inner workings of the industry. The problem is that they eventually make their way to telling me all about the awesome game they would make if “they” were the ones making the games. This is usually how it goes for most of my conversations with game fans and even interviews with new designers. Most people who are entering the industry that I’ve spoken to manage to get their conversations around to a very similar topic. That point is ‘how they would make the game that would change the world.’ Depending on my mood, I try not to ruin their dreams. However, sometimes they get a little snotty about it and I have to bitch-smack them with a sock full of reality and attempt to make them understand how the world actually works. (Sorry Matt)

It’s like these people think that all bad games are the result of the people who make them not knowing or caring about what they are doing. While this is surely the case in some instances, it isn’t always how it goes down. I’ve been involved with or have watched other games that were on a track to possibly be a good game, slowly get churned into a giant steaming piece of crap through no fault of the people directly working on it. Developers, for the most part, all want to make a great game and will work themselves to death to get it done. But sometimes no matter how hard you work, someone more powerful than you is going to come in and stick their d!^* in your peanut butter.

This isn’t an easy thing to deal with. The people who work in games are creative by nature, and having that creativity directed, shaped, and abused by people you perceive as non-creative can be a very painful experience if you’re not prepared to withstand it. Some developers feel that in a fair world, the best idea should win out and what is obviously good should naturally go into the game. While in a fair and just world that might be true, reality is a harsh mistress.

I’ve sat through meeting after meeting with people screaming themselves hoarse trying to hammer their perfectly reasonable idea through the head of the suit sitting across from them and being deflected with practiced ease. After working on a particularly emotionally and mentally draining product of this nature for a year I thought I was going to go bat-shit. I went from loving going to work every morning to having anxiety problems, insomnia, stomach cramps, and general hatred of all things around me. I hated the game I was working on. I hated the people I was making the game for and I hated them for taking the “magic” out of my job. I didn’t feel like I was being “heard” creatively. It was a dangerous place to be in and my career could have been over right there. But then, like a bolt from the blue, it hit me.

I’m not an artist.

Sure I work in a creative field. Sure many of the things I do are creative and I get to imagine things and attempt to put them into reality. But an artist gets to do what they want, how they want, when they want. That’s not what I do. Someone comes to my company with a contract. They give us money to make something. I make it. They take it and sell it. I don’t work in art.

I work…in customer service.

And fortunately or unfortunately, the customer is always right. That means that no matter how bad I think an idea is. That means no matter how unreasonable the request or how STUPID the last thing they said was, in the end they write the check, so they get to decide. I can voice my opinion. I can tell them what I think because that’s what they are paying me for, but ultimately, if they decide that something must be in the game…then you can bet your sweet ass it’s gonna be in the game.

We’ll use a little story here to try and convey how this works. Imagine for a moment that you are an architect and I hired you to design a house for me. I come to you with some general ideas and you fleshed them out to create a full home design that you feel might be your best work to date. I tell you it’s great and to get started. So you go out with my money and hire some people to start building my house.

But the month finally comes when I call you in and tell you I’ve been going over the plans and I’ve decided that I want no right angles in my home. It’s some Feng Shui thing that will calm my very wealthy mind. Now you have already spent time and money on getting the work started on the plans you’ve already drawn, you’ve poured a foundation that has right angles all over the place and there is no room in the schedule for you to take out all of the damn right angles. Rightfully so, you attempt to talk me out of it.

“You know Mr. Rodriguez, if there aren’t any right angles in your home you might find it difficult to hang pictures.”

“I see where you’re coming from Mr. Architect. It’s a valid point. So make sure when you take out all the right angles you invent something that allows me to hang pictures.”

“But…I….”

“And I have Better Homes and Gardens scheduled to come out and photograph this house in 2 weeks. So you need to have something showable by then.”

“Two weeks! But if you want me to take out the right angles and re-pour the foundation…there’s no way…”

“Mr. Architect, it’s very important these pictures get taken. I’m not asking you to add things, I’m removing things. I’m saving you time by taking out these walls. Let’s pull together and get this done. There is no “I” in team. But there is an “m” and an “e”. And “me” is holding all of the money. If you want to get paid, get it done.”

As you leave the meeting you are maybe a little flustered and trying to work out what just happened. How could any reasonable person on the planet want to live in a giant round house? How could any reasonable person expect to have a showable home in two weeks at the same time as they request things be radically changed? How the hell are you going to invent something to hang flat pictures on curved walls?

At this point you are most likely considering quitting the job. But as you do you are thinking about the number of people working for you that are counting on you to pay their salaries. Sure if you’re a big time company you can just say “My way or the highway.” But if you don’t have that kind of clout you are spending your time driving home and trying desperately to come up with a way to meet these unreasonable demands. Because in the end, no matter how bad his ideas, it’s still his house. It’s his money; and as Eddie Murphy put it, “If they want to live in a donut, let ‘em live in a donut.” You grit your teeth and get back to work as you prepare for the next unreasonable request. It’s a pretty safe bet that more unreasonable requests are going to show up again and again until you hand over the keys. You know why? Because they’re the customer and as anyone in customer service knows, customers can be some of the worst goddamned people that ever walked the face of the earth.

Not everything that goes into games is the intention or even vision of the people directly making it. Many developers work for publishers who fund the production of the game and so they have a limited influence on how the final game is going to turn out. Sometimes you luck out and get great producers who let your team do what they do best. They offer suggestions and some feedback but they don’t attempt to live in your asshole during the fourteen months of development. Sometimes you don’t work on a game that has seven levels of approval (Yes seven. There is publisher, licensor, licensor reps, directors, and some other people I can’t remember. I just remember seven levels). Each of these seven people having different opinions and ideas as to what should go into this game, and each one of them having more direct control than the people making it.

You see this everywhere of course; video games aren’t the only victims. From movies to comic books to music, the overproduced “Poochies” of the world are anywhere there is money to be made and a place where people want to make sure they make their mark on a product.

Once I realized that this was how the world worked, I immediately became a happier person. The project from hell ended and I landed on a project that interested me and was about shooting people in the face. I attacked my work with new passion and enthusiasm and I made sure that I made the game the best I could with the constraints I had been given by publisher and licensor(s). When I started working on 50 Cent: Bulletproof-G-Unit Edition I didn’t know that it would turn out as well as it has. But I can honestly say that I am very proud of the current state of the game and how it’s being received so far (For the record this is the PSP one and not the Xbox/PS2 one that was released last year). Sure I had a few run-ins that ruffled my feathers but I kept in mind that I was hired by these people to make their game and that even if I disagreed with them I was committed to finishing it.

No matter how many times they shot me down, requested changes or asked for something that just made my eyes go wide and my bowels loosen I kept saying to myself ‘It’s nothing personal, I just serve the fries.’ It’s not even necessarily that my ideas were bad. It’s just not what they wanted. And that’s okay. Everyone has preferences and they are attempting to guess what people are going to like just like I am. So next time you’re playing a game that makes you wish the developer would go to hell, just remember it’s not always their fault…

Welcome to OEMED!, a series of monthly interviews with various creators, both writers and artists, mayhaps even an editor or two. If you’re not familiar with my work, look me up on Google, I have enough to type already.

These interviews should be fun and informative; from the POV of one artist/writer getting into the mind of another creator, helping readers get into our mindset. I won’t be asking about specific projects, but about the process behind those projects. I will try and be as honest as possible about myself, and with whom I am interviewing, and I won’t pull any punches if I have them, while at the same time, remaining respectful.

I’d like to thank MATT WAGNER for his time…

OEMING: Hey Matt, thanks for doing this. How long have we known each other? It must have been the early 90s, I think; we met during the Con circuit through mutual friends like Rich Rankin, Neil Vokes and Bryan Glass.

WAGNER: I seem to remember first meeting you at a Con in Philadelphia. This was long after I had moved away from that area and you came over to my table show me some of your work. You were pretty young at the time and I seem to remember that we BOTH had a lot more hair in those days. Well, you did anyway. I remember that I was particularly struck with your stuff and regretted that I just didn’t have any Grendel project currently on deck that I could have offered you. I also remember that your work in those days, while tight and accomplished, looked NOTHING like what you’ve since evolved into. It was more of a standard super-hero style, but it still had a lot of flair. Had none of the brevity and boldness that exemplifies your work these days. Really nice to see someone go through such a growing process like that.

O: It’s been a long slow romance with you and I! I can’t think of a specific time I was like, “Wow, Matt’s my buddy!” — meaning most pros I become friends with, it happens at a specific show or Con; some shared experience. I think with you, it was simply showing you my work, talking with mutual pals and just slowly getting to know you over the years. I think I became most familiar with you through food, though! Baltimore has a great Con every spring, and we’ve had some really nice meals together. I was surprised to find you are as much into food as you are comics and art.

W: HA! Yeah, it might surprise people to know that, amongst my “civilian” friends, I’m far better known for my culinary prowess than for my story-telling abilities. In fact, I’ve often said that if I hadn’t learned to draw first, I might’ve become a chef instead of a comic artist. Still, my first love was comics and I guess I was just destined to go down that path. I’ve told this story before but this seems a good time to tell it again…my parents had a “School Memories” album/scrapbook for me when I was young. On the back of each page for the elementary years, it had a space to fill in “What I Want To Be When I Grow Up.” One year I wrote “astronaut” but EVERY other year, I wrote “comic book writer.” I guess at that point I just assumed that whoever wrote these marvelous tales must surely draw them as well, right?

O: Now, I’ve learned through some research that your cooking goes back to when you met your wife? Did you have skills before you met?

W: Well, I had a roommate whose dad was a good cook and we took some of those initial steps towards developing those same skills together. But then, yeah, I really started to “cook”, as it were, when I realized that there are VERY few better ways to romance a woman. Guys out there, get a clue and take it from me…women fucking LOVE it when you cook for them. Even if the results aren’t so great the first several times around, they soooooo appreciate the effort. It shows you fucking care. It’s better than flowers and it’s better than a box of chocolates. The very fact that you’ve created something specifically for THEIR pleasure and enjoyment is something that, again, shows you really care about them. And don’t worry, like anything in life, if you keep at it and learn from your mistakes, you’ll only get better and better as time goes by.

O: And at this point, you were working with Diana Schutz at Comico. We’ll get more into that in a bit. At what point did you decide that comics were something you wanted to do?

W: Like I said, pretty damn young. My mother was an English teacher when she was younger and from a very young age, she’d instilled in me a need and a desire to read, read, read. She always said that if you were a good reader—if you enjoyed reading and were adept at it—then you could accomplish anything you wanted out of life. She really saw it as the key to any and all success. As a result, to this day, I’m one of the most voracious readers I know. In fact, I often feel a certain sense of loneliness over that fact. Nobody…repeat, nobody…I know reads as often or with as much relish as I do. As a result, I’m often left feeling high and dry whenever I finish a book. I just want to talk to somebody about it—somebody that’s read it as well. I suppose I could go online and find a chat room or something but, for me, that’s just not the same thing.

O: And when did you begin drawing? Was there any particular reason you began to draw? Was it a love for comics, or did that come later?

W: Well, in addition to this need to read, I was an only child and I grew up out in the country. I didn’t have a parcel of friends who lived just around the corner and I should also mention that this was in the days before there was much in the way of TV or any other video entertainment. As a result, I drew to entertain myself. The wonderful thing about comics, for me, was that they combined both reading AND drawing. What a perfect match! It’s like in the old TV ads where someone’s chocolate just HAPPENS to fall into someone else’s peanut butter…

O: What were your earliest memories? Have any of those found their way into your work? Your writing in particular?

W: Earliest memories…jeez, I suppose listening to stories. I grew up in a fairly traditional religious family. I like to describe it as being surrounded by an “active mythology”. My parents tell a tale of how a traveling bible salesman who came to our door one day (I shit you not). He was offering a lushly illustrated bible for sale and he was quite amazed that, although very young, I could look through the various pictures and identify so many of them. Jesus, Noah, Moses, Daniel in the lion’s den, etc… The funny part came when I happened upon a picture of Adam and Eve in their loinskins. “Look, Dad!”, I proclaimed. “TARZAN!” Like I said, I guess I was doomed to this life from the start…

O: How about growing up? What was your boyhood like?

W: I’d have to call it fairly happy. I surely had all the same anxieties of any kid while growing up but my home life was pretty stable. My parents had been married for nearly fourteen years before they had me. As a result, they had worked out a lot of the bugs and kinks in their relationship that often have such a devastating impact on young kids. It’s really a drag to see your parents arguing all the time (like some of my friends’ parents seemed to do) but that just wasn’t the case in our household. Like I said, they were fairly traditional in their religious beliefs but they were also fairly progressive in how they thought those beliefs applied in day-to-day living. I didn’t grow up with a lot of repression or guilt.

Here’s another funny tale…when I was in second grade, some kids on the bus had told me that “to fuck” meant “to lie”. Ergo, a “fucker” was a “liar”. Now my parents were big horseracing fans (my dad, anyway) and they used to take me to this huge county fair every year, which would always culminate in an afternoon of sulky-cart racing. So, we’re seated in these huge crowded grandstands and my mom had just finished telling me that she couldn’t deliver on something she had promised me (can’t remember what it was—only the result). Anyway, pissed off, I leapt to my feet and yelled at her, “YOU FUCKER!” Now, most parents of that time period, or even today I might add, would’ve taken their kids head off for such an infraction. Instead, she grabbed my by the arm, firmly sat me back in my seat and told me through gritted teeth, “DON’T say that again! It obviously doesn’t mean what you think it does and we will TALK about this when we get back to the car this evening.” Well, I spent the rest of the day bewildered and confused and when the day was done and we finally made it back to the car, I hopped into the back seat and promptly asked, “Okay, so what’s it mean?” My mom turned around in her seat and just told me straight out. Not angry or anything…just honestly informational. That was my birds-and-bees talk and they obviously thought it was time that I know the facts of life. So, apparently, I sat in the darkened backseat—obviously somewhat stunned—as we drove home. After twenty minutes or so, I again leaned forward and gave my parents what I thought was some darn good advice—“You know, if you guys would’ve tried that a little earlier, you wouldn’t have had to wait so long to have me!”

O: What about school? For me, it was pure torture, in every way. I knew from kindergarten that I would hate it, and I was right!

W: No, I was okay in school. Again, my mom had been a teacher so I grew up with a fairly positive image of the schooling experience. It’s the same with my wife and going to the dentist. Most people HATE going to the dentist, right? Well, my wife’s dad was a dentist so she grew up with that being a positive experience, not a negative one. She absolutely LOVES having her teeth cleaned! I was a smart kid so I always got pretty good grades and, even though I was never the most popular kid in school, I managed to get along with most of the various cliques; the jocks as well as the stoners, the “A” crowd as well as the nerds. Now, I wasn’t Ferris Bueller or anything, but I think my main conduit to fitting into those groups was the fact that I was fairly confident in myself, coupled with the (bigger) fact that I could draw. Drawing is a HUGE common denominator, I’ve found. Most everyone who can’t draw finds it to be an almost mystical ability and they get a huge kick out of watching those of us who can. Eventually, my confidence grew to the point where I even became something of a school leader. I was my senior year’s class president, in fact. Even had to deliver a graduation speech before a couple thousand people.

O: Did you go from high school into an art school or college?

W: Yeah, I actually had the best of both worlds so far as the whole collegiate experience goes, even though I ended up going to school for four and a half years and STILL never managed to graduate nor obtain a degree! I went to a big, liberal arts university in Virginia for a couple of years and so I got to experience that whole side of coin; dorm living, frat parties, beautiful tree-lined campus, the whole bit…

And then I transferred to an art college in inner-city Philadelphia and got to experience an entirely different world of academia; elite intellectualism, crazy fucking art students, urban living. Unfortunately, the art college claimed that I had “insufficient art experience” (which was utter horseshit) and made me start all over as a freshman. Now that was a decision that we definitely should have fought, but my parents (bless their hearts) really did have absolutely NO art experience and so they just went along with whatever the college asked. I now realize those fuckers were only after another two years tuition and, as a result, I was stuck taking the same classes I had already finished at my former university. In the end, I just got too fucking fed up by being in school for so long and too fucking anxious to get on with my life. I dropped out, which was a huge blow to my very supportive parents, but I actually had a unique opportunity waiting in the wings.

O: What was your first real foray into comics? Was it creator-owned or did you try your hand at other works before Mage and Grendel?

W: Well, my first experience with actual publishing came at the first University I attended. They published an on-campus newspaper twice a week that had a huge circulation—something like 15-20 thousand copies! Anyway, they regularly ran a page of student comic strips and I eventually submitted and got one in there as well. It was titled “Our Hero” and it was a super-hero spoof that starred a fat, bald little super-hero named Max whose cape was always too long and who wore something that looked like a tutu. In a bizarre precursor to the fact that I would later create one of American comics’ most enduring anti-heroes (Grendel), Max was eventually overshadowed by his main villain; a particularly garish and cruel, costumed character named Nasty Muscle. This was my first experience with meeting real deadlines and that was invaluable. Like most high-school artists, I had drawn a lot of stuff over the years but this was the first time that I absolutely HAD to draw something—on time and repeatedly, no fail and no bullshit. If you missed your deadline and your strip didn’t run for an issue, all your friends and classmates would give you total shit—a strong motivator at that age. After about a semester or so of doing that, I also became the paper’s “Graphics Editor”, which was a high-falutin’ term for “spot illustrator”. This job meant that I had to show up at the paper’s offices two nights a week (Wed and Sun) around nine o’clock in the evening—after most of the next day’s edition had already been laid out. If there was any article for which they didn’t have an accompanying photo or enough copy to fill the allotted space, I had to whip up an illo on the spot. And I had to stay there until it was all done—usually until 2 or 3 in the morning. For that, I got a one credit “A” each semester and was paid about thirty bucks a month. Believe me, at the time that seemed like heaven! I felt tested, accomplished AND I had pizza money to boot!

Anyway, several years later I found myself at the Philadelphia art school and happened to run into some guys on the elevator who were wearing comic book t-shirts. These were the guys who later formed the initial core of Comico but, at the time, they were also publishing an in-school paper called Duckwork. Although nowhere nearly as accomplished and established as the other paper I’d worked on, Duckwork had a real indy sort of vibe and, while it DID feature some cursory school news, it was mainly a venue for budding cartoonists—often, but not always, with a “duck” theme. I quickly set up a niche for myself but doing duck styled take-offs of famous movie posters; Raiders of the Lost Duck, Rollerduck, etc…

Several years later, the main guys behind Duckwork (Gerry Giovinco and Bill Cucinotta) dropped out of school to try and form an independent comic company. They named it Comico (yeah, to clear up the YEARS of controversy…it was pronounced “Co-mee-ko”) and a year or so later, I left school as well to become part of that fledgling effort.

O: I first became aware of your work through a T-Shirt that I only recently, after many holes from my cats clawing at me and such, had to throw away. It was a Mage T-Shirt that said, ” WHAT IS THE COLOR OF MAGIC?”, though everyone at school thought it said “WHAT 15 THE COLOR OF MAGIC?” So that shirt must have been close to 20 years old!

W: Almost. 2004 was Mage’s 20th anniversary and 2007 is Grendel’s 25th. Yeah, I’m an olllllld fucker!

O: It was years later that I learned about Mage through a mutual friend, Bryan Glass, whom I would team up with often as a writer on my projects. He did some photo work with you on a cover? It was you and yet another pal and Comico alumni, Bill Cucinotta.

W: Yeah, Bill, Gerry and Gerry’s high school buddy, Phil Lasorda were the initial core of Comico. I had gotten to know Gerry and “Cooch” pretty well in school and, like I said, we all worked pretty closely together in producing Duckwork. When they both dropped out of school to get Comico up and rolling, it was always understood that I would eventually, somehow, be involved. Their first publication was an anthology that basically served as a testing ground for various artistic wannabes—the old “throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks” theory. My first actual gig for them was published in the second issue of COMICO PRIMER, a ten-page story that served as the world’s (and my) first introduction to Grendel.

Soon enough, Comico decided to launch four flagship books that they saw as the basis for an eventual line that would, one day they hoped, come to dominate the freshly forming world of independent comics. Unfortunately, none of the books were very good—and, yeah, I include Grendel in that description. We all had a lot of ideas but just had nowhere near the artistic chops to back them up, production-wise. Eventually, I also dropped out of school and was hired on by the guys as the all-purpose office boy. As a result of them all having to spend more and more time involved in the actual business of running Comico, I—just by default—was the one who could spend more and more time developing as an artist. Before too long, Comico realized that to really compete in the world of commercial comic books, they’d have to move into color production (all of our initial books had been b&w, a common trait of early 80’s indy stuff). They managed to sign a deal with a fledgling writer who was all but unknown at the time, Chuck Dixon. He and his then-wife/artist collaborated on a book about a nun who was actually a covert assassin for the Vatican in the far-flung future, titled Evangeline. It had created a lot of early buzz and Comico soon realized that they’d get a lot more mileage and a much better printing rate out of “gang-printing” Evangeline with another new color book. Since they had no one else on deck, the task fell to one of we four to come up with an all-new color title to be part of Comico’s grand leap into the world of color production. Since Grendel was the only one of the initial four books that had gotten ANY sort of positive response, the job just kind of fell into my lap. I set to work and eventually came up with a story of a mythic hero reborn in modern day as an unassuming everyman. This schtick has since become somewhat commonplace in pop culture (Buffy springs to mind) but, at the time, it was perceived as fresh and unusual. That book was MAGE.

O: Come to think of it, I think it was Bryan who introduced us. He thought very highly of you, and especially of Mage. In fact, we did a book together, QUIXOTE, a sort of modern day version of the story, in which at times we had to be careful to not tread on the same ground. Now, if Mage sucked, we wouldn’t have cared, but Mage is a milestone in comics. When did you realize it would be something special to the industry?

W: Yeah, see? Even you guys had a turn at the classic-hero-in-our-times motif. The funny thing is, I’d already tried my hand at this same story at an earlier stage of my life, but ultimately shelved it for a variety of reasons—the main one being that I was just nowhere NEAR ready for the rigorous demands of producing a full length comic book series. Several years earlier, I’d tried to develop a story that would feature the return of King Arthur in the not-so-distant future. Now, I should mention here that I actually HAD produced several comic books in my life at this point, which were all pre-Grendel as well as my involvement with Comico—all very fledgling efforts, of course, and all single issues. When I was a kid I had written and drawn GRANITE MAN (about a guy who develops a pair of wristbands that make his fists hard-as-the-shit AND enabled him to fly—yeah, don’t ask me to explain THAT one now!) and then in junior high school I had done a comic book as part of a science project—CAPTAIN ECOLOGY (who had a WAY froofy 70s do and sported a…shades of Mirth…cape-like poncho). A little later my dad, via his work, had access to one of the earlier Xerox machines and so, with his help, I was able to actually produce multiple, hand-stapled copies of a book called ZACHARY STARR—VAMPIRE HUNTER. This last one actually had some early elements that eventually showed up in GRENDEL—obviously, the vampires but it was also told in a combination of traditional word balloons as well as blocks of text. Sadly, I don’t have a single remaining copy of that book and I would surely LOVE to see it again!

Anyway, back to MAGE…I’d produced two pages of something that was ostensibly gonna be about the return of an unknowing and reluctant King Arthur. Other than THAT factor, it was NOTHING like what MAGE would eventually become. It looked FAR more like a traditional super-hero/fantasy comic and, if people think my earliest published work was (kindly, at best) crude and undeveloped…well, THIS piece-of-shit made THAT stuff look like a masterpiece! Anyway, I quickly shelved the whole idea when I read that DC announced it was producing a little project they were calling CAMELOT 3000—all about the return of King Arthur in the distant future…blah, blah, blah. “Oh well,” I thought, “Fuck this. It’s being done by the big guys.” And, besides, that Brian Bolland guy could maybe draw a LITTLE bit better than me at the time! The strange thing was, though, when CAMELOT 3000 eventually hit the stands, I found it strangely unsatisfying. Sure, it looked great but I found it all just so fucking OBVIOUS. It didn’t speak to me in any way and it certainly didn’t have any of the “everyman” factor I was looking for in my own version. Aside from the twist of Tristan being reborn as a woman, I found the story was just retreading the same ground as the original legends. I felt it added nothing new to the equation and it had none of the mystery and intrigue that meant good storytelling to me. Eventually, I decided there was room in this world for more than one version of this story and that—precedent be damned—I was gonna go ahead and do my own.

You asked when I knew that MAGE was going to be important to the industry. I just don’t think like that when I’m creating. I think about whether or not it’s going to be important to ME. And that’s what I felt was missing from CAMELOT 3000—it had no sense of the personal about it and so seemed only like product, not art. I felt that, in order to make this a truly mythic story, I HAD to personalize it. I had to make this a story that related to me, that came from me, that spoke to my concerns and confusions about the world around me.

O: Okay, so when I first read Mage — and I confess, I haven’t reread it in over 15 years –but it left SUCH an impact on me. It was the first time I was introduced to the idea of setting an old story within modern times. I was also unaware of the mythological tones at the time. How aware were you of mythology really playing out in Mage at the time? I’m assuming you were already reading Joseph Campbell back then?

W: Actually, no, I had yet to really delve into much of Campbell’s writings at that point. For those who might be reading this and have no idea of what Mike’s referring to…Joseph Campbell was a scholar and author who often referred to himself as a “mythologist”. He wrote many volumes concerning the commonality of human mythology and how every culture’s stories and legends all strive to achieve the same goals but are colored differently depending on that society’s physical and environmental realities. One of his most famous books is THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES wherein he discusses what he refers to as “The Hero’s Journey”, about the surprisingly identical stages of Hero myths throughout the world. Obviously, this train of thought means a lot to the structure of MAGE but, truthfully, at the beginning there…I was working out of pure instinct which, I suppose, only goes to further defend Campbell’s theories of a common human experience expressed through myth. I had been interested in myths, legends and comparative religions for quite some time but hadn’t yet discovered this brilliant man who seemed to distill all my many opinions into a cohesive whole until just AFTER I had completed the first MAGE series. I mean, listen to this…not only does he break the Hero’s Journey up into three distinct stages (MAGE is a planned trilogy and has been from the beginning), but here’s his breakdown of the narrative steps in what he terms the INITIATION stage: The Call to Adventure, Refusal of the Call, Supernatural Aid, The Crossing of the First Threshold, The Belly of the Whale. I mean, JESUS CHRIST, that’s like reading a thesis of the plot to The Hero Discovered!! I remember reading that, again after the fact, and saying to myself, “Whew! Got THAT one right, at least!”

O: Here’s an interesting argument I get into. People say that superheroes (tm Marvel/DC, please don’t sue us) are modern day mythology. I disagree. I think only a few are, but as a whole I disagree with the idea entirely. What do you think?

W: Why do you disagree with that?

O: I’m thinking only Superman and possibly early Marvel Stan Lee/Kirby/Ditko books really qualify as modern day mythology, but even those I think have stopped qualifying. I’m sure there are a few others off the radar, but as far as mainstream characters go, I think that was it, but they no longer have that standing. This is really unpopular to say and I’m going to get shit for it, but here it goes.

Mythology requires belief. Mythology and religion are hand-in-hand. In the days of Greece, not only did people really believe in these stories, but they didn’t ask those questions because it was so ingrained in their life.

Mythology is a reflection of ourselves, of our cultures, as are stories, and I think comics largely qualify in the second category. Story. I don’t feel comics qualify as mythology any more because they are a product of franchise, not as an explanation of life, who we are as a culture. Those aspects are there, but still it’s overridden by the fact that superhero comics are purely fictional and commercial. They aren’t created as mythology was, to explain why we are here, what the meaning of life is. Those early Marvel books and Superman clearly reflected and commented on what was going on at the time. The Jew coming to America, alien, must hide and reinvent himself, despite that his true self is a Superman, the chosen people of God. With Marvel it was the fear of foreigner, a reversal of Superman. Fear of mutants, Communist invasion and the Atomic Age. I just don’t see comics serving those roles anymore, especially in an era where everyone is afraid of political fallout. I think our society has in short, sucked the belief out of everything.

I think comics say a lot about society, but that doesn’t make it mythology.

W: Well, WHY doesn’t that qualify as mythology? Because there’s no shrine to Superman? Because people don’t get baptized in the name of Professor X?

I think you’re confusing mythology with organized religion. You mentioned that the ancient Greeks believed that the stories of their gods were true and factual. I don’t know that that’s necessarily so—at least not in the sense you’re describing. The priests who served at the various temples certainly WANTED their citizenry to believe that these tales were actually true because that furthered their own power in that society. But I suspect the average man on the street or on the battlefield viewed those myth cycles as a convenient belief structure that served to both quantify and qualify their everyday lives. They may have thought to themselves, “Oh, the gods do this…” and “The gods want that…” but, really, most of them realized that they had never really MET a god or seen a titan.

By the time the ILIAD was written, I think most Greeks knew that the gods who watched, wagered and dabbled in this narrative of the Trojan War were, in fact, dramatic devices used to reflect and underscore the actions of the war’s far more human participants. I think there are religious zealots the world over and that there always have been, but I think the vast majority of people hold their religions in their hearts as a metaphor, even if they don’t actively describe it to themselves in that fashion. For instance, I mentioned that my parents are very traditional in their Christianity. Still, my mother has no trouble reconciling the fact that most of the biblical stories that mean so much to her are metaphors created by a more primitive people. Thus, even though she believes God created the heavens and the Earth, she has no problem thinking of the “six days” scenario as a metaphor—a description of stages by a human mindset that couldn’t yet conceive of, much less describe, the billions and billions of years that were actually necessary for our universe to unfold. “Days” were a time frame that they understood and the description of God accomplishing all of creation in a matter of “Days” is a metaphor to describe his omnipotence. For her, creationism and evolution AREN’T mutually exclusive. Similarly, my mom clings a little more literally to the tales of Jesus’ various miracles but, whenever I challenge her on that, she admits that what is, in fact, most important to her is Christ’s message of compassion and peace and that the litany of his “magic tricks” or “miracles” (take your pick) are most likely tall tales meant to illustrate the elevating power of his philosophy.

Y’know, I proudly describe myself as an atheist and that often scares people or just downright pisses them off. Very often, I’m met with an indignant hostility about this attitude, as if my not adhering to any specific belief structure is an outright affront to those who do. Which confuses me…if I was a different religion from those objecting to my lack of faith, they’d have no complaints. It’s the fact that I don’t cling to something that’s readily and easily described by an established myth structure that deems my opinions as unworthy to many folks. And, believe me, I am sick to death of people lumping me into the category of “Atheists don’t believe in anything.” Not so. Campbell describes it thus: “Theists (mono, poly, etc..) believe that THEIR mythology is the one universal, cosmic fact. Atheists realize that ALL mythology is merely a grouping of metaphors.” Which, of course, doesn’t preclude a deep understanding of the moral lessons and realities that all religions espouse. Just because I don’t believe that Christ is my personal savior, doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate his sermons and the tale of his sacrifice. Just because I don’t believe that Yahweh spoke from a burning bush and caused the Ten Commandments to be carved into living rock, doesn’t mean I don’t believe in a common code of ethics that shape and guide human interactions. So, I see mythology as something somewhat different than religion. To me, religion is the organized power structure meant to impose its views on the populace at large while mythology is the genuine expression of a culture’s core beliefs, hopes and dreams. Religion seeks to codify all of life’s mysteries into a series of concrete and dogmatic answers. Mythology seeks to pose all those eternal questions in the form of a metaphor.

O: I think my definition of Modern Mythology would fall into categories like UFOs, GHOSTS, CONSPIRACY, ESP, and Cryptozoology. To me, mythology has to be a mixture of fantasy, reality, solid facts and the intangible, and yet carry an internal truth. Comics come close, but I don’t see them approaching that level of Mythology. I think comics at best are a reflection of ourselves.

Stories like Mage, Powers, Bone, Maus, reflect our society, they make strong bold statements about who we are and what we believe, but I still don’t think that qualifies as mythology.

W: Okay, again, so your contention that a lot of superhero stuff isn’t modern mythology is based on the fact that there isn’t a group of “followers” who hold those narratives to be absolute reality.

O: That’s my contention, yes.

W: And I don’t think that’s what’s specifically necessary to make something mythic. Campbell wrote a series of four books collectively titled THE MASKS OF GOD, wherein he examined the world’s major belief systems from the beginning of time. The first volume covers PRIMITIVE MYTHOLOGY; the second, OCCIDENTAL MYTHOLOGY; the third, ORIENTAL MYTHOLOGY; and the last explores the future of human legendry, CREATIVE MYTHOLOGY. In the latter, Campbell maintains that codified myths structures arose as a result of many factors but that geography played one of the most significant roles. Religions developed as a way of banding the people of any particular region into a societal whole, answering their fears and lending support to their emotional needs. Different versions of religion arose because of human societies evolving in different areas of the world over years and years of history. In modern times, the bonds imposed on our sense of communication don’t really exist due to any geographical limitations. Nowadays, you can easily touch a button and instantaneously establish close contact with a person literally living on the other side of the world. So, Campbell contends, maybe the need to codify and limit the face of God in order to strengthen the cultural identity of any specific tribe is no longer a viable factor in the mythic experience. Maybe we have reached a stage wherein each and every person can paint their own particular Mask of God, describing in their own fashion the mysteries of life and what they, themselves, see as the limitless potentials of eternity. Sounds a bit Utopian, I know, but I really think we’re moving in that direction. The realities of mass communication have only existed in our world for a hundred years or so and just look at all the changes that have resulted. And, believe me, a mere century is nothing so far as societal evolution is concerned, a drop in the bucket. Now, I’d agree that most of DC and MARVEL’s various continuities don’t even come close to attaining mythic resonance. But the ones you mentioned (in addition to the more indy examples you gave) do, I feel, spring from that particular well in the human soul that cries out for expression and which finds its best and boldest release in the form of myth.

You mentioned how Siegel and Shuster’s Jewish heritage played such a significant role in their creation of Superman. This even comes out in the similarities between his origin and that of Moses, both cast adrift to escape certain death only to later deliver freedom from oppression via supernatural feats. Additionally, the names of Superman’s family are derivative of the Hebrew suffix “El”, meaning “Of God”. Thus, Jor-el and Kal-el are on a par with the mightiest archangels: Gabriel, Michael, Emmanuel, etc… Now, those are the cultural roots that influenced their seemingly timeless character, but their personal realities played a huge factor as well. Did you know that Jerry Siegel’s father was shot and killed by a burglar when the son was only sixteen? That fact explains a lot as to why the young writer would later create a bulletproof hero as his modern day messiah. So, yeah, I do think some (but certainly not all) modern comic book characters do qualify as myth. But not for the effect they have on their readers (or “followers”) but more for the reasons they sprang from their storytellers’ imaginations in the first place. Thus, SUPERMAN is an American myth while BOOSTER GOLD is just yet another bit of DC product.

O: I think that last sentence is a good middle ground, or as close as we can get to it. I spoke to Diana Schutz about how she met you in those early days of Comico. It was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in 1985, right? I think it was issue 6 of Mage and there was a Grendel backup story she worked on?

W: Yeah, after Comico moved into color production (and started to finally show a profit) all the original b&w books were left in the dust. The owners finally realized that they just weren’t cut out to be professional comic book artists and settled into the roles of administrators and businessmen. Over the first handful of issues of MAGE, I was still very much finding my stride, but the response was good. MAGE was garnering a readership such as GRENDEL never had. Still, I did continue to hear from various readers who wanted the rest of Grendel’s tale. Since the b&w issues had basically stopped in the middle of what was obviously a finite storyline, I thought it might be a good idea to try and revive my earlier effort in the form of a backup feature that would run, now utterly redesigned and in color, in the remaining issues of MAGE (which was also a finite series). That premiered in MAGE: THE HERO DISCOVERED #6 and that was when Diana first came on board as an editor at Comico so, yeah, that was indeed our first experience working together. In fact, I remember her coming over to my studio one day and me showing her the first pages for the Grendel backup feature, which would eventually become GRENDEL: DEVIL BY THE DEED. I can still remember her unabashed enthusiasm over what I was doing at the time and that was a real thrill. It’s always good to be appreciated and my exposure to Di and her opinions of my work were a major motivator in the early stages of my career.

O: Diana said she first met you when she was working for Amazing Heroes. Incidentally, this is where my work was first published as a fan in the letters pages. She was out to interview a bunch of cool cats out there doing books like Love and Rockets, but she was beat to the punch by someone called Heidi Mcdonald (where have I heard that name before? Only kidding, Heidi!) So, she interviewed you, I don’t think she knew much about your work at the time. This was way early on in your career, right?

W: Yeah, that must’ve been around the fourth issue of MAGE. She later interviewed me in much greater depth for an in-store magazine that she edited when she worked at Comics & Comix in California.

O: Diana also said she had a hard time getting in touch with you; something about the Queen version of Metropolis was playing? Does that ring a bell?

W: HA! Yeah, and she’s never let me forget it! We had lined up a time to talk and when the time came I had, indeed, forgotten about the interview and gone to see the colorized re-release of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. And let’s just say I had a mighty good reason to be forgetful in those days }ahem{. Anyway, we eventually did hook up and the rest, as they say, is history. Well, my personal history, at least.

O: At the time, she had no idea that she would later not only be your editor, but your sister-in-law. What was your first impression of her; do you remember that interview at all?

W: No, I don’t remember the interview although I do remember the time we actually first met. Comico eventually became aware that they just weren’t prepared for their company to grow at the leaps and bounds that were, seemingly, just over the horizon. They knew they needed help and so they had recently hired Bob Schreck whom we had all known from his years of basically running the many shows for what was then the hottest circuit of comic Cons around, Creation Conventions. Bob was slated to start at the beginning of the new year (1985, I think) and had driven down with his girlfriend to attend Comico’s Christmas party. As most people know, that girlfriend was Diana and together they turned Comico from basically a fan press into one of the most successful and influential independent publishing houses at the time. My first impression was that Di was a gal who brooked no shit, had no fear of speaking her mind and who loved all sorts of comic books. And, over the intervening years, very little has changed. That’s still pretty much my opinion of her. I was right.

O: As Diana tells the story, it was Thanksgiving circa 86 when her sister came to Philly and needed someone to show her around the city and she volunteered you, not thinking anything more of it than someone to show her sister the city?

W: Oh, she is soooo fucking FULL of it! She had been trying to matchmake the two of us for YEARS!! YEARS, I tell ya! She was CONSTANTLY trying to convince Barb that she needed to meet this hot young comic artist she was now working with and vice versa to me. Of course, both of us resisted any such pairing just as a matter of pride. It was like, “Di, I don’t wanna meet your fucking long-haired, comic-geek buddy,” and, “Di, I don’t wanna meet your fucking weirdo, Canadian sister!” Trouble was, when we finally DID meet each other, that time you’re referring to, well…

Do you remember that scene in THE GODFATHER where Michael has gone into hiding in Sicily after having killed a cop back in the states? He’s out walking around the countryside with his two bodyguards and they happen upon a crowd of young locals. Michael locks eyes with his soon-to-be wife for the first time and–in an instant–they’re both struck mute, all but physically staggered by the immediate force of their attraction for each other. The Sicilians call it “The Thunderbolt” but it’s more commonly known in the States as “Love At First Sight”. Corny as it all sounds, that’s pretty much how it was when I finally opened the door of my apartment and there stood Diana with Barbara at her side. BOOM! Done.

O: And you’ve been married 20 years now. That’s great. How does she deal with sharing her life with an artist? Are you a workhorse; do you have trouble dividing your time between the love of your family and the love of your work?

W: Well, at this point in my career, I’m something of a well-oiled machine. Sure, there’ve been times over the years that my work has threatened to eclipse many other aspects of my life but we managed to cross those bridges unscathed. Nowadays, we share a pretty stable life together. Our kids are healthy and happy; we live in a beautiful house and each have our individual careers (Barb’s a middle school teacher). All good.

O: SO this early love of cooking started when you met your wife? You kind of took over that whole area?

W: HA! Yeah, she tried cooking for me once—and only once. We quickly decided where the division of labor lay in regards to THAT side of our relationship. Barb can literally NOT boil water. Its funny, when I used to leave town to go to Cons and such, the kids used to moan, “Daaaad! What are we gonna EAT while you’re gone?!” Now they’ve gotten old enough to realize that, when Dad’s gone, they’re most likely going OUT to dinner every night!

O: And your son, Brennan is also a “foodie”? Diana told me she took him out to see a play version of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” When he was like 8 or 9 and they had dinner; she gave him the kids menu, complete with crayons I’m sure, and he put it aside and asked if they had Chicken Marsala? Man, your kid eats better than me; I’m still all about spaghetti and meatballs. You two cook together?

W: Yeah, my son’s a foodie, but my daughter, not so much. Funny thing is, when I was a kid, I was more like my daughter–a very picky eater with a distinctly middle-American sort of palette. Eventually, I branched out and once those floodgates were open, I dove into the vast sea of culinary delights like a pig in slop (so to speak). So I have faith that she’ll come around one day. I try not to give her too much shit about it. An even funnier version of that tale about my son and his sophisticated tastes is this: when his fourteenth birthday was a few days away I asked him, “Hey, what do you want me to cook you for your birthday dinner?” Now, what would most fourteen-year old guys say? Pizza, right? Or hamburgers, etc… He thinks for a moment and then asks, “Can you make that African lamb stew? The one with the couscous, pistachios and mint?”

O: You’ve helped me a few times to order when we were out. I understand Diana would have starved to death in Hawaii if it were not for you. The thing that really impresses me about your cooking is that you cater to all tastes. I came by your place one time with Bendis, and you served the best Chicken Wings! You know, I don’t even know what Marsala is! I’m all about the Wings and or Spaghetti.

W: HA! Well, my very first job was as a short-order cook at a Howard Johnson’s. Now, while I wouldn’t exactly call that “fine-dining”, it DID give me my initial taste of cooking—how you put food to flame and let the heat do its work. Don’t worry and fuss at it so much. Additionally, it gave me, yeah, this attitude and ability to produce different things for different people all in the very same meal. I feel people oughta be able to eat whatever the fuck they want and I try to accommodate that as best I can. Admittedly, it does get to be a bit of a stretch whenever I’m with my wife’s family at holidays and such. JESUS, what a crowd! Diana won’t eat mammals while my wife does eat meat but isn’t all that crazy about it. Their dad, on the other hand, is an old-school-meat-and-potatoes sort who recently discovered he’s borderline diabetic, so he’s got to watch his starch intake. And my wife’s youngest sister and her husband USED to be super-holistic (although they have lightened up a bit in that regard). And, of course, they’ve all come to expect the absolute best outta me! Sometimes the rep of being a great cook is quite a fucking bitch to try and live up to.

And…HA…Marsala is a sweet wine that’s most often used in cooking and sometimes baking. Chicken Marsala is breast meat that’s sautéed with mushrooms and then the pan is deglazed with the Marsala wine, creating a luscious, rich brown sauce that goes over the whole shebang. Should you ever make it out here to Portland again, I PROMISE to make it for you! Believe me, you’ll love it.

O: So do you find any sort of connection between cooking and art? Cooking and writing? I mean, beyond the idea of writing or art “ingredients” and other bad puns.

W: Well, for me, its something creative I can do at the end of the workday; something to continue the energies I’ve been harnessing all day long, but something that leaves my career completely unaffected. If I fuck up dinner, no one’s gonna remember it ten or twenty years from now. But, yeah, I do think cooking is an art. It’s a highly specific medium that has many factors and appeals to many of the senses all at once. I remember Bernie Mireault used to give me shit about my love of a beautifully designed plate (Bernie gave me shit about many, many things). Anyway, his attitude was, what’s the point in food being beautiful? It’s a state that only lasts for a short period of time before being eaten. My attitude is that food is eaten with the eyes before it’s tasted by the mouth. If something LOOKS appealing on the plate, it only enhances the actual dining experience. And, besides, anyone who thinks that art has to last for any set period of time to be considered art is only kidding themselves. What’s the difference if a state of beauty lasts for five minutes or five hundred years? It’s all gonna crumble to dust in the long run. You know, Buddhist monks do these incredibly intricate paintings made of colored sand known as Mandala. They carefully pore, tap and brush these little piles of colored sand into the most beautiful designs. Then, once the (usually quite large) piece is finished, it’s consecrated by a priest and then scattered to the winds. It’s their way of acknowledging the impermanence of all worldly beauty.

O: Lets talk about stories. “Where do you get your ideas from?” Hah, only kidding, I HATE that fucking question!! Next time someone asked me that canned fucker I’m giving them a canned answer! But where do your ideas begin? At what point do you know it’s more than a passing idea, a part of something you might use one day and when you say, “I’m doing Grendel.”

W: My working experience is so instinctual at this point that it’s almost hard for me to pinpoint exactly how it happens. My entire being goes into creating comics and so I’m always gathering and distilling ideas that’ll later make their way onto the page.

O: When you are writing for yourself, what’s the first step?

W: Again, uh…I dunno. It’s all one big churn of ideation and realization. I hardly know where one ends and the other begins.

O: Do you go heavy into the pencils or are you doing more like breakdowns for yourself to go right into inks?

W: I suspect we’re much the same in this regard. I work from what most people would consider breakdowns. I feel a definite need to keep every stage of the artistic creation fresh and exciting. To do super-tight pencils and then merely, effectively, trace over them would bore the living fuck outta me.

O: What’s the most common mistake you see in your work? Both art and writing?

W: At this point, I find I’m a little less experimental than I had been earlier on in my career but I suppose that’s only natural. When you’re young, your reach should often exceed your grasp. As you get older, you realize the limits of your range and concentrate on the content of what you’re trying to express rather than how you say it.

O: The world was very different back in 1985. No Internet, and no distributor monopoly. We technically don’t have a monopoly now, but who are we kidding right? What kind of numbers did Mage sell in its first run? It was very different times, Neil Vokes and Rich Rankin had a creator owned book, Eagle, do 50k on the first issue of their black and white book. Amazing. I’m not comparing, I’m just saying it was very different times.

W: Jesus, I can’t remember those sorts of numbers that far back. I’d say MAGE probably worked its way up to that sort of circulation. If I’m remembering correctly EAGLE hit the market in the middle of the indy boom. In fact, I think MAGE had wrapped its run by that point. I will say, the cross-country tour I did to promote MAGE back in ’85 helped a lot. Me and a crew of my buds all piled into a van and hit the road to try and get the word out about this book. In the space of two months, we covered over 13,000 miles and did 26 signing appearances. Some stops were awesome and at some, the turnout was only myself, the shop owner and the crickets. Still, the effort worked and MAGE’s readership almost doubled as a result. It was certainly a hell of an experience as well, one I will never EVER forget.

O: When did you notice the Internet affecting how your work was perceived?

W: Back when the whole thing was up and running, I’d say. I used to sign in to the various AOL boards and do some chatting with fans. That’s when it was still on a smaller scale. It really is a brave new world since then!

O: When you look back on Mage and Grendel, the first runs, what comes to mind? Do you see the work objectively? Often when I look at my old work, I don’t even see the work; I see my life at the time.

W: Well, I do tend to look at my older work objectively but you’re absolutely right about seeing my own life reflected therein—especially with something like MAGE where I’m actually, consciously portraying various aspects of my life. Still, I’d say Grendel has been much the same. I created Hunter Rose when I was a too-smart snotty young brat, I moved on to Christine Spar after dating a woman who had a small child, I took on the Catholic church after marrying into a Catholic family, I conceived of Grendel-Prime after having to care and look out for my own children.

O: When I look at my Grendel story in Grendel :Red, Black and White, I see stage fright. I just tied myself up. When can I do a new Grendel story for you?

W: Oh, fuck man, relax! Your story looked great. If you wanna do another one some day, we will. But, why look back? I never do. Y’know, this ties in to the previous question a bit. There’s a popular misconception that I’ve never reprinted those early b&w issues of Grendel because I am somehow ashamed of them. No fucking way! That’d be like saying that I’m ashamed of the fact that I was once 13..or 22…or 31. I’m not. As I mentioned earlier, those issues were terminated in the middle of the story—a story that was later revamped and finished in DEVIL BY THE DEED. To me it’s all about the story and that was an incomplete story—so why reprint it? Just for the sake of a cheap buck? I’m not THAT much of a whore. I’ve always said that I have no aversion to those issues being reprinted if there was some worthy need for doing so—like a career retrospective of my stuff or something. And, actually, I AM thinking of re-issuing them in honor of Grendel’s 25th anniversary. Now, that’s a worthy milestone worth commemorating.

O: We drew Kevin Matchstick in our Powers Oni special; man that was fun! Love drawing him. When will we see more of Kevin, if ever? Will he be completely bald then? I love how he lost his hair over the years with you; it’s like some sort of revenge.

W: I gotta confess, I loved that too. And you don’t even realize what a fucking compliment that is! Now, obviously, I love to see other people’s versions of Grendel. Seeing that character reinterpreted by other artists is, to me, one of the real thrills of collaboration. But MAGE has always been more of a one-man show. Whenever I see someone else draw Kevin though, it’s just never the same. All I can think when I see another artist’s version of Kevin is, “That’s just not quite right.” All except for you. Your version nailed him. Again, I loved it. As to when we’ll see more of him…well, like I said, MAGE has always been planned as a trilogy, with the final part being subtitled THE HERO DENIED. And MAGE is a very strange creative experience for me. Very zen-like. I find I really can’t make the conscious decision about when I’ll work on MAGE. It’s almost like IT decides when I’m going to work on MAGE. Being such an allegory of my own life, its almost as if the story is sometimes writing me, rather than the other way around. And so far as the bald thing goes…Jesus, man, I’m probably the least regretful bald guy you’ll ever meet. I don’t miss having a headful of hair in the fucking least! I don’t shave my head but I’ve been sheering what hair I do have down to the nub for years and years, now—looong before it was hip and fashionable. I see all the care and fuss most people have go to with their coifs and I think to myself, “Good fucking riddance!” So, making Kevin bald…that’s not revenge. It’s just my reality…turned into myth!

O: I often think of my stories, especially Powers and Hammer, as taking place in some real world somewhere. Then I’m afraid about what I’ve done to these characters. What do you think they would say to you if they met their “God”?

W: Are you kidding? My characters speak back to me all the time!! At least the ones that are still alive…

O: Really? You should look into that. Do you think you would feel bad about what they’ve been through? I noticed in writing, I’m pretty ruthless. I objectify story to the point I can write against my own belief system. Do you write to push your world view or will you allow the story to go wherever it wants, even if it negates your own politics or beliefs?

W: Hmmm…that’s a tough one. I’d have to say I write to my belief system to a certain degree. It’s tough for me to write a character who’s a religious zealot with anything less than mockery and usually nothing less than contempt. Politically, I may be a LITTLE more flexible. Obviously, I wrote a long storyline about the world’s first worldwide dictator (Orion Assante in GRENDEL: DEVIL’S REIGN) and the approach was sympathetic. I even let him be the first Grendel to die a peaceful death (even though his life had been filled with tragedy and heartache), which is why his ripple effect in the Grendel timeline was one of the strongest.

O: I recently read your Sandman story. How did that come about?

W: Well, Neil and I had known each other for a while and he was looking for someone to do a fill-in issue of Sandman that would act as a bit of a story intermission in the SEASONS OF THE MIST storyline. It was a fun gig but I absolutely fucking HATED the ink job. It’s probably what made me swear off anyone inking my work for good. I even forget the inker’s name now…I know he passed away a few years ago. I really wanted the look of that issue to be rendered in stark blacks and whites (kinda like your stuff) to accent the ghost story nature of the tale. Passed that desire along to the inker but he just tried to ink it the way he’d inked every other issue of Sandman—lots of scratching pen hatching and shit. Trouble was, there was no place for that sort of approach in my pencils and so the results were just horrible. Ugh.

O: Clearly, you’re tight with Dark Horse and DC. How about Marvel; I don’t recall you doing much with Marvel? I would love to see you do a Daredevil Run.

W: Well, I did that first issue of ULTIMATE MARVEL TEAM-UP with Bendis and long, long ago I wrote a cute little short story for a Hulk annual. Still, I’ve just never felt appreciated over at Marvel. No one ever tries to solicit me to work for them or even says hello to me at a show. In fact, that Ultimate gig never would’ve happened without Brian. Which is fine…its not like I don’t have enough on my plate as it is.

O: We talked about doing a project together at some point. I don’t know what or where, the stars have to align and all, but lets say they do. Somehow the boards are clean and we have time, and we’re ready. You as writer, me as artist. What would we do? No boundaries, meaning no character too obscure, no project too lofty or silly. I’ll pencil it in my schedule for like 10 years from now, but lets start daydreaming…

W: Hmm… okay, you want to do an established character rather than something all new? And market potential’s not really a factor… Well, first I’d try and take you out of your Nordic comfort zone yet still try to stick to something that exemplifies your playful pacing and strong sense of shadow. And you know how I love the lone, masked vigilante sort of heroes…

Zorro.

We could do a bitchin’ Zorro together.

O: Holy shit, Batman; that would be fucking great.

W: Yeah, and to use that thought to boomerang us back to the whole “reading” thread from earlier…

There were two brand new books on the market this year that came from the pens of established, literary talents that oughta appeal to any and all comic fans. The first was written by Isabelle Allende, who’s a Spanish-American author and well known for her historical fiction. Anyway, eight or nine months ago she published a novel titled simply, ZORRO. And, yeah, there’s nothing coy or ironic about it…it’s a straight-on approach to the character, his origins and background from childhood. You could basically call it ZORRO: Year One, and its reeeeally fucking great. Very, very readable, it also has a wealth of historical accuracy. And, very similar to BATMAN BEGINS, it spends so much of its time examining the character of Don Diego de la Vega that, by the time he puts on the costume (waaay towards the end of the book) and adopts the persona of Zorro, its as a natural extension of his established history and internal motivations. She gives us strong support for his acrobatic derring-do, his sense of social justice, his mute assistant, his name, his costume, his sleight-of-hand AND his remarkable fencing skills. Again, just a great book and a really fun ride from cover to cover.

The other book is written by author Tom DeHaven, who’s best known for a series of novels set in the beginning of the 20th century and centering on the wild and wooly world of newspaper comic strip cartoonists: FUNNY PAPERS and DERBY DUGAN’S DEPRESSION FUNNIES. Anyway, DeHaven’s lastest offering is titled IT’S SUPERMAN. Officially sanctioned (and indeed copyrighted) by DC, it too is a straight-on telling of Superman’s early years and his first steps towards his later adventures in costume. The twist in this telling is that the story is firmly set in the mid 1930′s–the same time period the character originally appeared. I read this book over Xmas (in Hawaii, I might add..}ahem{) and I sucked it down like a man dying of thirst in the desert. It’s a truly awesome re-imagining of this, one of our first and most significant (yeah, I’ll say it) comic book myths. The book’s firmly set in reality so the depression is in full swing and New York is only metaphorically referred to as The Metropolis. Lois is a very spunky “modern” gal; Lex is fucking smart, evil and manipulative as shit; and Clark is, first and foremost, a total fucking farm boy. Again, this book is fun, fun, til the day is done and I especially loved where (and how) in the beginning of Clark’s career that De Haven chooses to end the book.

And, like I said, these will both appeal to any fan of comic books, the super-oriented as well as the snotty art-fucks. Now, get your asses out there and read!!

Okay, I’ll get down off the soapbox now…

O: You also do some lecturing for Diana’s class that she teaches called Understanding Comics at the Portland Community College once a year. Let’s talk a bit about that.

W: Well, I’ve done it for her class; I’ve done it for my wife’s classes AND for my kids’ classes. It’s funny, I do a bit of a lecture about my own work and then wrap it all up with a very interactive story-telling demonstration—which everybody loves. It’s a total one-size-fits-all demo that works for fifth graders as well as college-level students. But, that’s just a bit of a lark. I’m really not an educator at heart. I don’t mind speaking in front of people, which is a REAL fucking fear for some, but I just don’t have the wide-reaching patience. I think I’m too self-involved to be a very good teacher. Many creators are. Nature of the beast.

O: Nature of the beast, indeed Matt. Thanks much for your time bro.

---

Matt Wagner is best known for his epic creation, Grendel, and his other, more personal allegory, Mage. He has also worked on a variety of established characters, including his ground-breaking work on the character of Batman villain, Two-Face, in the graphic novel, Faces, as well as a five-year stint spent developing and generating the stories for the fan-favorite Vertigo title, Sandman Mystery Theater. His most recent effort was the recently completed mini-series, Batman and the Monster Men. For more information on him and his work, check out www.mattwagnercomics.com

Check out more Mike Oeming at www.mike-oeming.com. Join the Oeming newsletter for previews and announcements via email to: oeming @ aol.com

I like big monster battles as much as the next person, but, gosh darn it, the softy in me loves it when they give each other big monster hugs instead! Such is the case with TOKYOPOP and HarperCollins Publishers recently announcing their copublishing deal. This is big news. When one of the leading book publishers collaborates with one of the leading manga publishers you’ve got one big book smorgasbord!

Now I’m probably a little biased. (Okay, a lot.) This news makes me happy. One, because I really like TOKYOPOP (they gave me my start in this business, after all), but I also really like HarperCollins. In fact, my fiancé is a design manager who designs book covers at Harper. (He also brings me home lots of free Harper books.)

But perhaps the reason I’m most biased is because my fiancé and I are currently editing and producing a book called Mangaka America which will be published through HarperCollins’ Collins Design imprint. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

Now, where were we? Ah yes, HarperPOP. (I figured we should come up with a snazzy contraction, don’t you agree? I thought of some other variations, but CollinsPOP sounds too much like a medical mishap.)

All joking aside, I am looking forward to seeing what this collaboration yields. I truly feel that if it goes well, manga will reach a new audience of adults who may not have touched a comic book since they were kids.

Of course, the first products of this partnership will likely be young adult and children’s books being given the manga makeover. There’s already been talk of Meg Cabot’s successful novels being turned into manga. I wouldn’t be surprised if A Series of Unfortunate Events didn’t receive the same treatment. In fact, Harper’s children’s division has a ton of great books that would make for entertaining manga. Not only does Harper own the publishing rights to The Chronicles of Narnia, but they also have a lot of newer properties such as the successful Warriors series about clans of kitty cats that fight each other. Yeah, it’s kind of hilarious. But imagine it making the transformation into a Pom-Poko-esque manga. Sweet!

So there’s plenty of good stuff for the pickin’. (But let us not think of a manga based on The O’Reilly Factor for Kids.)

My hope is that the children’s book manga adaptations are successful because that could pave the way for adult literature making the manga transition as well, which would lead to an even broader readership of manga. I have to admit that I don’t usually like adaptations of, say, a movie into a comic. Or a movie into a novel. But, if done well, adult manga based off popular adult novels could be pretty cool.

Some titles would seem to lend themselves to the format more than others, such as the novels by Neil Gaiman or Michael Chabon—both comic book writers and fans themselves. Also, people have already been expressing interest in seeing Terry Pratchett’s books in a comic format. Or what about books Michael Crichton, Ursula K. LeGuin, or Ray Bradbury?

But if it should come to adapting adult books, I hope that they won’t just stick to the obvious titles. It would be neat to see more obscure books given a chance in the manga format. How about The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho or One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez? What if short stories and poetry were made into manga? Can you imagine a manga version of “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg? (Well, that may be a little too extreme!)

Anyway, I could speculate and daydream forever about what might be possible. The bottom line is that I hope both companies take full advantage of this collaboration and reach as many new readers as they can. Not only in what titles they choose to adapt, but in the quality of these works. If there is a dark side to this deal it’s the fear that the manga titles won’t live up to the material from which they’re based. Given that TOKYOPOP consistently puts out quality manga, I’m not too worried. But as I said before, adaptations of any kind usually make me a little nervous. The reason I usually dislike comics based on hit movies is because they often seem rushed and are rarely as enjoyable as watching the movie itself. Sometimes the same is true for the reverse. I appreciate a good novel and I hate seeing one get butchered into a lame TV series or film. Of course, if the adaptation is treated lovingly and stays true to the material, then I’m happy to have another way to enjoy a story I like, à la The Lord of the Rings.

So, with manga adaptations, there’s always a chance that it will offend the people who bought and loved the originals—either because they simply don’t like manga or, worse, the adaptation doesn’t stay true to the spirit of the book. (Speaking of which, did anyone read those manga adaptations of the Harlequin romances? Ugh. Of course, it’s not like the original material had much to offer.)

I won’t comment on the distribution agreement between TOKYOPOP and HarperCollins, since I’m not so knowledgeable about that sort of thing, but I can only hope it will bring manga out of the obscure sci-fi corner in the back of the store and into the front, with more visibility.

Maybe one day we’ll see business men and women, housewives and house-husbands reading manga based on their favorite novels while their kids do the same. If that happens, a big comic book barrier will have been smashed down by two publishing giants.

Now, I already mentioned Mangaka America, the book I’m publishing through HarperCollins. This full-color book will feature the art and tutorials of quite a few talented TOKYOPOP artists, such as Felipe Smith, Svetlana Chmakova, Rivkah, Christy Lijewsky, and more.

Despite what it may seem, Mangaka America actually has nothing to do with this recent TOKYOPOP/HarperCollins agreement—it’s purely serendipity. (But I can’t help but wonder if that impending deal is why TOKYOPOP was so nice about letting us use their artists’ images in our book.) Regardless, I would be foolish not to take advantage of this situation to promote Mangaka America a bit!

So here, for the first time ever, are a couple sneak-peeks at spreads of the book. Not only do we have never-before-seen art from talented folks such as Corey “Rey” Lewis of Sharknife fame, but the book will also feature some great tutorials on toning (by Lindsay Cibos and Jared Hodges), coloring (by Amy Kim Ganter), and many other topics, such as character design, robot-drawing, and using Corel Painter to create beautiful manga-style art.

These images, from Mangaka America, to be published by Collins Design in November 2006, are shown here with the permission of HarperCollinsPublishers. (Click for full-size image)

Furthermore, the book will feature an introduction from American manga pioneer Adam Warren! We’re hoping to have samples of the book on view at the upcoming San Diego ComiCon, but the actual release date is in November. Mark your Fruits Basket calendars!

I’d like to welcome Paul Jenkins, whom I’ve gotten to know over the years through hanging out with him at various shows, one of which involved him jumping into a pool in nothing but his tighty whities. This, my friends, is not only a brave writer, but also a brave man. You know his work from Hellblazer, The Inhumans, The Sentry, Origin, Spectacular Spider-Man, and more.

Mike: Paul, thanks for joining us this month and subjecting yourself to my whims. This isn’t a fanboy column, so I’m not going to ask you specific questions about which of the Inhumans can beat up Wolverine or how many cars Colossus can bench press… (okay, well, maybe later.) But first, for those readers who don’t know, you are a Brit who lives in the states. When did you make the move?

Paul: I have been eating your food and stealing your women since 1987. It has been a fun-packed ride. Do you know you can’t be legally deported for having sex with a mule because mules are sterile? I know… it shocked me, too.

M: And I’m sure the mule’s still recovering, too! What instigated the move and when did you become a full-on citizen?

P: I was studying drama in Southern England and one day, I just decided to get on a frigging plane and go and teach in America. It was weird… I did it just like that. I came here literally with $50 and stayed. I am still a permanent resident, not a citizen.

M: Before you began writing comics, you got a degree in English? My grammar must make you want to vomit… Anyway, did you study English because you were an aspiring writer, or did writing come out of that?

P: As a matter of fact, I went to drama school. I found that I hated the acting thing because it was so fucking fake I wanted to scream. The last thing I need to be doing is dressing up in a fucking beret, listening to poetry in a coffee shop, and calling MacBeth “The Scottish Play.” I used to whistle backstage and wish people luck just to antagonize them. Basically, then, I wanted to write and direct more than act.

M: Did you write as a kid? What kind of stories; can you remember any details about them?

P: My mum tells me she just found my first comic, Alfred and the Egg Giants. I am dying to see it again. My memory of it is that Alfred goes up into the clouds and beats the shit out of the Egg Giants for no good reason. My one issue run on Spider-Man versus Dudley Moore is pretty well documented, but I can’t talk about it much because I am thinking of bringing Dudley Moore back as a Sentry villain.

M: What was your childhood like? When I was a kid, up until my early twenties, I thought nothing happened to me. Little did I realize how much actually did, and how much of that would become the backdrop for my ambitions and psyche. The little stuff, I mean, like daydreaming. How do you find your childhood has affected your writing?

P: Just incredibly fucked up, although I remember it quite fondly. My dad was out the door and living 500 miles away when I was five and my brother was eight. Apparently, my mum just took us away one day so that when he got home there was a note. We were missing for two weeks, during which time mum didn’t even contact her parents, which was pretty bloody stupid. I remember one time, before they got divorced, my dad threw a coffee cup at her and she ducked and it went all over the wall. They never bothered to take the stain off the wall. So it was this constant reminder that our parents hated each other. I put that in Hellblazer one time.

M: Do you find much of your early past working its way into your work in specific ways?

P: Yeah, absolutely. We lived on a farm and, I swear, we didn’t have a pot to piss in. There was a timer on the electric meter — it took fifty pence pieces and when mum was out of money it just shut off. I remember these enormous storms that would come over the farm on freezing cold nights. But you have to understand… this stuff is fertile ground for me now. I lived in a magic place with fairies in the orchard and castles nearby. Lots of corn and wheat fields… farm animals. I snared rabbits with an old gypsy when I was about seven because we needed meat. I used to get up and watch the farm badger at 3AM… I mean, I have written about this before but it still amazes me to this day that any kid could be privileged with such a mad upbringing. I believed in gypsy magic and I learned seriously important things such as how to use the land around you for food when you can’t buy any. Look at it this way: my mum could never afford sweets, right? She would buy a Mars bar and put it in the fridge and cut it into slices. This would last us for a week. If you think about it, the Mars bar slices would taste better than an entire one because of the anticipation. Children would probably do well to experience a little longing for things, just to be able to appreciate things when they have them.

M: Wow, man; that is really cool, growing up like that. Take the good with the bad, but that kind of environment is really special. I teach my kid about mythology and folklore — the real magic in the world that COULD be out there. We’ll take walks in the woods and make up stories about people living under the water in the stream and such. I think that stuff is important. My mother used to tell ghost stories, stuff she experienced and one great UFO encounter she had. That stuff fueled my mind. It was also a great escape — I suspect, like you, not having the best of times around you — to lose yourself in. I know that stuff fed my imagination, the seeds of becoming an artist or writer.

I also wonder a bit about my son. He has it so much easier than I did — he certainly doesn’t have the psych trouble people like us went through; stuff that made us STRONGER. Do you think these experiences made you stronger, not just as a writer, but also as a person?

P: Absolutely. Definitely. I can easily see why hardship can help with a person’s character. On the other hand, I could have easily gone a different way. I had a few brushes with the law in my younger days… lived in shitty places; that was quite natural. But I think one day I just kind of woke up and decided not to do that.

M: What about your family; were they creative in any way, or looking back, do you see things that they did that may have pushed you in a creative direction, either by accident or on purpose?

P: God, no. My Dad was the manager of the casino where he lived. My mum became a teacher eventually, but she had to work at some funky jobs first. The weird thing is, I just always wanted to do it. I did music, art, acting, writing… I will never know why.

M: Do you think your acting, music and such might have been a reaction to your parents’ way of life? What about music; are you a musician? I find many artists/writers are frustrated musicians…

P: I am a musician, yes… Not frustrated, because I did it for a while and it was the hardest job you would ever want. I still play, record, listen a lot, etc.

M: I find a good bit of trauma creates some amazing writers and artists. Most of my creative friends come from dysfunctional homes — that doesn’t always mean unhappy, though. Do you think you had a good time growing up, and do you think those times have helped you or hindered you in your life’s direction?

P: I don’t know… sometimes I am sad to think about how messed up it was because it really affected my brother. To this day he feels terrible guilt about things that have gone wrong in his life. Our grandmother used to beat us pretty handily… she was a cruel motherfucker who used to bully us mercilessly. My brother and I are very close because of it — it’s like two guys who have gone to war together. I write about insanity a lot but I feel abuse isn’t so much physical as mental: bruises heal in a couple of days but fear stays with you a lot longer. I always dealt with it just fine, but poor old Richard still acts as though he’s scared of something that’s about to happen. Imagine sitting at a table with some vile old lady who’s yelling at you that you blink too much, and that if you don’t stop blinking you’ll get the hairbrush around your arse. You just know it’s coming and there’s nothing you can do about it. The best part was she used to take us to church every Sunday and bully us all the way there, act like a saint in front of the vicar and then bully us all the way home. It’s why I don’t trust people easily just because they SAY they are a certain way. Show, don’t tell.

M: Yeah, actions speak louder than words, man. Talk is cheap. I find that if you’ve had that kind of background, there’s usually two ways to react about it — you grow stronger from it, become a better person because of it; or if you can’t escape those moments, you’re lost in them forever and grow up either living in that shadow constantly or even emulating it.

I hate to sound like I’m rummaging around through your past, but I know this is the stuff that, if you can tap into it as a writer, it will enrich your writing. I hate to say it, but I love the horrible things in my past. How have you dealt with these things in your life? Do you think your writings helped you any in that way?

P: Well, I have completely dealt with any negative stuff that might have come out of those experiences. As I said, I look back fondly on my childhood. To me, the difficulty doesn’t seem all that difficult. I will give you a perfect example: Richard and I used to live in a farm cottage and because mum didn’t have a lot of money, she could only really afford for us to ride the bus HOME, so we had to walk to school. We went about two and a half miles, rain, snow or shine. In fact, a lot of times when it was snowing, we would be two of the only kids who made it to school! We saw foxes and deer and badgers… we found stoat pelts and weasel skins. We chucked mud at each other and stuff like that. None of the other kids would possibly be able to cope with walking… they just wouldn’t have been used to it. My brother and I still talk about the great little adventures we had on that walk. So while some would say not being able to afford a bus fare was a bad thing, I think it was a good thing. My mum did her very best for us. She is quite eccentric, so we grew up with this mad lady who thought so differently from others around her. And she wouldn’t conform to their expectations or take their shit, either. I get on great with my Dad and I curse my grandmother to burn in Hell every day. I feel I am healthy.

M: I had trouble reading books as a kid. I don’t think I ever read a book until my late teens — Hitchhiker’s Guide. I just didn’t have a push for reading, and no one introduced me to stuff I would have loved, like the Hobbit or whatever. Actually, it was my pal Adam Hughes (THUMP! Name drop.) who got me excited about Hitchhiker’s. What were some of the earliest books you remember reading; I mean really reading, really getting into?

P: Man, I used to read like a fiend. I was one of those psycho advanced kids and so I read, like, Treasure Island when I was six. The Hobbit, too. I loved that kind of stuff… I always wanted to read more complicated things because I wanted to be the best reader for my age in the world. This is a true story, believe it or not: When I was five, on my first day of school, I went up to my teacher and asked her what we were going to read. None of the other kids could read… remember, this is kindergarten in American terms. She asked me if I could read. I said yes, I was reading Doctor Faustus with my mum. She asked me, astonished, if I knew what it was about. I told her that as Faustus waits fearfully for Mephistopheles to take him back to Hell, he says, “O lente lente currite noctis equi!” Which means, “Oh, slowly, slowly run the horses of the night.” I think she probably requested I be transferred at that point.

M: Wow, I don’t know what to say to that… I wish I could travel back in time and beat you up… All I could quote in kindergarten was Gilligan’s Island “Lil’ BUDDY!!” My brain is just full of TV crap like The Brady Bunch and The Munsters. TV was another escape and I really wish I was pushed into books. But really, where did that come from, the reading thing; your mother?

P: First of all, I would have kicked the snot out of you. I was always the biggest jock in the school, captain of every team, etc. I was that fucked-up kid who spent equal time with nerds, geeks, jocks, girls, teachers and drug dealers. This lasted until I discovered LSD — I spent a year stoned on either acid or ‘shrooms (I am deathly allergic to marijuana). Then I just said, “Fuck this” and stopped.

M: Was your first work in comics really in Licensing with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

P: Yeah, pretty much. I was actually employed to do publishing stuff but that lasted just a short while because the licensing suddenly went berserk. I don’t think it is possible to describe even in one interview just how crazy that situation was. I was twenty-two years old. It was like giving a Ferrari to a snail and expecting it to learn how to drive.

M: Are you telling me you studied English, IN England, to schlock TMNT toys in the U.S.? Surely, you came to the U.S. for other reasons, right? How old were you?

P: I came here to do music and screw American girls. I taught disabled children music and drama for one Summer in the Pocono mountains. I still dabble with music but I just don’t have enough time with all the stuff I already do. I use my studio for sound design stuff for our film work, mostly.

M: This is true — my biggest writing influence was not Film, TV, Comics or books, but singer-songwriter songs of the 70s. For some reason, in my household, we listened to music all day, and night. We would go to sleep with music on. I would sit there and make stories out of the songs I heard. I’ve had that walk with James Taylor through the desert a million times, I swear. It’s a western story about a cowboy for me. I still find half of my stories come from music and lyrics I hear. I even steal Led Zeppelin lyrics on a regular basis as dialogue. Recently, I’ve been taking from the DOORS in my ARES mini because of Jim Morrison’s love of Greek Mythology. Blood and wine and all that…

Do you find that music and your writing relate much?

P: They are completely intertwined. I CANNOT work without listening to music. Mostly soundscape stuff, because if it’s bands, I start dissecting the mix and listening to the lyrics. As I have said elsewhere, I don’t feel I get ideas from other people’s work… just watching real life. But I am totally inspired by music and creatively crippled without it.

M: What did you think about the U.S. before you came over, and how did it differ once you were here? Did your accent get you laid? If I were gay, I’d give you shot.

P: God’s honest truth: British kids have the strangest impression of America. I assumed you had cops all over the place armed with, like, AK 47s, and if you stepped out of line they would blow you away. All of your cops were either physically or mentally disabled. Kojak was bald; Ironside was in a wheelchair; Columbo was a sex freak; McCloud rode a fucking horse around San Francisco, for Pete’s sake! What a wonderland. When I got here, I found America to be even weirder than I could have imagined. Things like televangelists, lobbyists and George W. Bush are illegal outside of America. I mean Bill Clinton just pardoned all of his mates on his last day of office — these were convicted felons! I’m still amazed and delighted every day by how utterly strange this place is. My mates in Massachusetts used to beg me to go out with them to bars so that I could help them pick up women. You would not believe the power a British accent holds in this country. You know exactly where you stand when a girl narrows her eyes and proclaims that she thinks your accent is so sexy that she just orgasmed.

M: Hellblazer was when I first became aware of your work, but what did you do before that? Come on, there has to be something embarrassing in your closet. I drew some porn comics and the Child’s Play adaptations for God’s sake; come on, man up.

P: Well, Hellblazer was actually my first gig. If you look hard enough, there is an issue of TMNT in there somewhere. I haven’t seen it in years but it is probably crap.

M: Hellblazer being your first gig? How did that happen? I mean, other than the English accent. :)

P: I broke in the exact opposite way of how you should: I went to San Diego, walked up to an editor (my dearly departed mate, Lou Stathis) and said, “I hear you’re looking for a new writer for Hellblazer. How about me?” After I informed Lou that I had no experience, he took the unusual step of letting me write a tryout script. He and Karen read the script, made me rework it five times, and gave me the job. That will never happen to another living soul.

M: Tell me about your writing influences; outside of comics and in.

P: Ehh… I watch and listen. I mean I hear all the time how people should read books and watch movies and that sort of thing, but I just don’t think it works that way for me. I am moved by human emotion, so if you show me a person who has loved and lost and learned from it then I get everything from there. As a writer, I want to live life, not read about how someone else lived it and then copy that.

M: What are some things you learned from them? Things you use. I don’t mean “writers write, writers read”, I mean something useful. I need a magic button, dammit, come on!

P: I have this thing I always tell aspiring writers, which is that you need to be audacious, and that often means doing not what is expected but what is RIGHT for the moment. It is not bold to write about something exploding. It is bold to take, say, Cyclops from the X-Men and sit him down on a sofa to learn about his favorite type of sandwich. None of us has blown up a building with a laser beam… all of us have eaten a sandwich, see what I mean?

M: Yeah, I love books about eating sandwiches. Some time has passed, how do you look back at your earlier work, say pre-Marvel?

P: I don’t read it that often. It seems primitive. Still don’t understand why DC has never reprinted my Hellblazers, though.

M: Do you think it has something to do with you being a Marvel guy now? I got caught the in crossfire at one point…

That whole DC/Marvel war is so stupid.

P: God, I hope it isn’t that. Even though I have been a Marvel writer for ages I still have friends at DC. There may be a feud of some kind but I am sure as hell not a part of it.

M: Has your work process changed much since then? How you actually craft a story and such…

P: The same way since I began: I think of the story, write it down. Then I do research on aspects of it. Next come the breakdowns, drawn out in booklets panel by panel. Next come the panel descriptions and finally the dialogue, which I find easy. For what it is worth, I have no idea where stories come from. I have a theory that a lot of what I write is more intelligent than I am (apart from this sentence). I will write something and read it back and be kind of astonished because it is good, and yet I don’t know how it came to me. That ever happen to you?

M: I do a lot of my writing in the outline. It’s all about the outline first for me… Do you plot out your stories first, outline and such, or do you have it in your skull and work it out as you go along?

P: I am a preparation fiend. I love researching stuff. At the same time, I don’t enjoy reading a lot of old issues when researching comic book characters. It pays to be ignorant.

M: What about your work habits? What is your day like when you’re working?

P: I get up later, around 10AM and usually go to the gym or play golf. I play soccer still, despite my broken rag doll of a body. I sometimes type in the day, but it’s usually at night. I begin around 5-7PM and type until I am exhausted. I don’t sleep well, never have. I can only sleep with sleeping pills and even then only when I am literally dropping where I stand.

M: I have sleeping troubles, too — I find with me, ideas will run around in my mind, if I write them down, it helps, but other times, the ideas are completely random and make no sense, but keep me awake. Is that what happens to you — your body is exhausted, but your brain is keeping you awake?

P: My brain wakes me up, even. I will never lack for stories and new ideas… if I live to be a hundred I will probably not even cover all the ideas I have now. Maybe my brain thinks it cannot afford to sleep.

M: When you start working on a long-established character like the Hulk or Spidey, how do you deal with all the continuity baggage?

P: I am a sneaky bastard: I completely ignore it. A lot of people have said how reverential I am to the characters but it’s all just smoke and mirrors with me. If you don’t bring up past continuity you can’t contradict it. Besides, I don’t want to write about Hulk’s last battle with the Leader. I want to write about how Bruce Banner makes it through his day.

M: Do you do a lot of research on the characters you’re working on, or do you think of them as a blank slate?

P: They are an absolute blank slate, except for established characteristics that I can use. Spidey’s Uncle died… right. Fine. His Aunt May is old… right. Fine. That’s all I need. Leave me alone for a couple of days and I will give you a good story about it as it pertains to the character. I just see this stuff in my mind’s eye, like a movie that I am completely familiar with. I can see every camera angle, understand every emotion. I know it backwards and sideways and the typing of it is just basically a matter of if I can remember what I wanted to do and/or read my own notes.

M: One problem I have is some of these books have been around for forty years, and every time I think I’m doing something new with them, I find its been done in one form or another. How do you get around that?

P: It’s been done before, maybe, but I have never put my voice to it. So I don’t care if it has been done, I don’t worry about it. When Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet it had been done. It’s just that he hadn’t done it.

M: What was the most difficult job you’ve had writing? I don’t mean with a specific company or editor, I mean story.

P: Probably the Mythos books that have just begun to come out. We took Stan Lee’s origins and matched them with the movies or TV shows, and then added our own voices and ideas to it all. That is a very hard thing to do. I think we have at least succeeded with the X-Men story.

M: Now without naming names, tell me about one of your worst working experiences. We all have those.

P: Holy shit. Well, I have a few. I have always been good about being respectful to fellow creators… even the ones I know are tanking it because they are lazy. I think I could point to some of my Tundra experiences as examples of human greed, laziness and stupidity. A favorite example is the time one asshole creator was supposed to do an intro/title page that needed to be a graveyard. This was at a time when some of these people were just raping poor Kevin Eastman and his head was spinning so fast he couldn’t work out how to react to some of the behavior. Anyway, I get the so-called “Title” page in the form of a rectangular shape with a semi circle attached to make it in the shape of a gravestone. I also receive a full-page invoice for, like, $300. When I challenge the scumbag artist who submitted it, he informs me that the construction of the graveyard is a matter for the production department and that his contract specifically states he can rip us off, etc. God, I have a million of those Tundra stories. I am so fucking bitter about it, even to this day.

M: Do you find yourself standing up for your story when there are changes to be made, or do you roll with the punches? I find the story issues I fight the hardest on, if I give in to the editor, I usually, after much painful rethinking, find I have a much better story. Have you had that kind of experience or like Warren, are editors afraid of you?

P: I am pretty sure editors are not afraid of me. I like to have my scripts remain they way I wrote them. If changes are being asked for, I want to know about it. I think it’s rude and counterproductive for an editor to write something into one of my scripts, although I do understand why it has to happen on occasion. If I stand up for something, honestly, I am usually right. I pick my battles.

M: You know who I’m afraid of? Mark Millar. He once gave me a donkey-punch so hard I almost complained. I didn’t know the Scots were like that. Speaking of true-life experiences, I read you once said, “Writing about yourself is ultimately the key to bringing your audience in.”

How do you write about yourself when you write something abstract like the Hulk or Inhumans?

P: The Hulk is about feeling angry and trying to keep that anger in check. We all do that. I also wrote about him having Lou Gehrig’s disease… how that relates to me is that after I fractured my neck I was extremely ill and fairly helpless. Inhumans is all about strangers living in a strange land… like me living in America. If it helps, by the way, I think Mark Millar is slightly afraid of me after I threatened to disembowel some dipshit internet columnist at a convention. I am pretty even-tempered but that guy was a tool and I probably would have done better just to kick his arse. Millar looked like a deer caught in headlights. His one saving grace is that he is a Celtic fan. But if you want to get a rise out of him, call him a Rangers fan. I guarantee this will make him genuinely angry.

M: When you read other comics, what is the most common mistake you see, something you see time and time again that makes you go, “Man, if he just didn’t do that, it would be so much better.” Like an ending. Too many great stories have no real endings, or worse, I find I love the characters, but the actual story lacks.

P: For me it is dialogue. I find myself cringing that a person would not speak a certain way as presented, even in an absurd situation. I think people can be quite lazy about this. Maybe it’s just that I find it easy… I dunno.

M: What about your own work needs help?

P: Action scenes, I think. I really do well with characterization and dialogue but I appreciate that in this medium, there needs to be a certain visceral display of action or power or what-have-you that some fans can just sit back and admire. I need to do better with that. I am trying. For a while I opened up the panel structure so that there were less panels on the pages with big action. I may explore doing that again.

M: For me, I love your stories — the actual story, above and beyond the character or dialogue, I think you craft great story. Not that the rest of it is so bad, you know what I mean…

What do you think you do best in your work?

P: It’s hard to assess your own work like that. I am, at best, sometimes satisfied with what I write. Occasionally, I know I have done something right; like maybe Generation M — that’s going to be a good book. I think I would say that if you gave me ten minutes and said you would like a story about table tennis, I would give you something halfway decent after ten minutes. It probably wouldn’t be about table tennis, but what can I say? I realize you can’t hit a home run every time, so fuck you, Oeming. Why must you always be critical?

M: You’ve written a screenplay or two, right? And you’ve done work for video games; do you see that as an extension of being a writer, or was that a specific move on your part?

P: A very calculated move. I am enjoying the video game work… I feel like the game industry is now the bastard child of comics and I like working for the underdog. The film stuff is great. I think I am learning screenplays pretty well. Let’s see what happens with my directing career.

M: Here’s a tricky question — do you think you can retire off of comics? I’m looking to extend myself into film and other fields because I don’t believe I can. After all, how many great artists and writers of 30 years ago are still working in comics today?

P: I can probably retire off of a combination of my three careers. I could probably retire off of video game work. And film. But not comics alone… unless they start selling more.

M: I’ve found I’ve gotten a bit too close with some of my readers. I’ve seen some breasts, had my drink spiked and have gotten the bird from people who thought they knew me and it was funny. There’s this chick, Taki, who picks me up at every show and drops me, usually on my hip, and I’m getting old, man. This one guy, Goddard, even faked being me at a show or two, so I had to push him in front of a car. Here’s a pic to prove it –

Anyway, what is your relationship with your fans like?

P: I get on great with the fans. I have a great time at conventions. I once signed a breast and the girl cheerfully informed me she was going to have my signature tattooed. That was bizarre. I think the tough thing, maybe, is that we are not trained to do this. I treat the fans with respect and expect the same. Sadly, I see some creators who treat the fans badly. I think that is extremely crappy given that they’re the people who pay our wages.

M: So, What goes on with Paul when you’re not being creative?

P: A lot of sport: soccer, golf, poker! I am always being creative, jackass.

M: What do you hope to be doing in the future, in and out of comics?

P: Got a little kid on the way — that will be different. I do a weekly column at Newsarama now, so we can all watch him gestate together. I want to do the film stuff with Good Cop/Bad Cop, obviously. I want to write a couple of novels and I want to get drunk with Neil Armstrong and talk about walking on the moon.

M: Okay, your sitting in a pub and you see some guys walk in wearing comic book shirts. They look over and think they might recognize you. Do you:

A: Make no eye contact

B: Head out the door?

C: Walk up to the bar and hope they speak to you.

D: Walk up to them and tell them who you are for free drinks.

Mark Millar will answer D when I ask him, so you can be just as honest.

P: I am with Mark on that one. Free beer just tastes better; unless it is Budweiser. That stuff is shite.

M: That reminds me, who do you like better, the Irish or the Scottish?

P: I am an honorary Scottish Anglicized Welshman, having worn a kilt to Scotland matches and even been interviewed as a Scotland fan on the BBC. My Glaswegian accent, I have been informed by no less than a Glaswegian himself, is about perfect.

For extra credit.

These 10 questions originally came from a French series, “Bouillon de Culture” hosted by Bernard Pivot, whored off by James Lipton have been improved by yours truly…

1. What is your favorite word to hear in a convention?

I like the word Byrne, because I know something interesting is about to happen.

2. What is your least favorite word to hear in an editor’s office?

“BLOWME.”

3. What turns you on sexually?

Humungous tits. The bigger the better. My wife has some big cans. She wants a boob job after we are finished having kids. I told her that would be fine as long as she added a little extra since she was getting opened up anyway. She thinks I have a breast fetish. She is right about that.

4. What turns you off sexually?

Hmm… probably women who are completely silent in the sack. I don’t know about you, Oeming, but I need some noise. Screamers are great.

5. What is your favorite curse word your mother used?

She always used Yiddish swear words for no apparent reason. I never understood anything she said beyond the word c**t.

6. What sound or noise do you love when you’re kicking someone in a dark alley?

I love it when prostitutes beg for their lives. That is always funny.

7. What sound or noise do you hate when running from the police?

The sound of fear coursing through my veins. I cover it up by yelling, “You’ll never take me alive, copper!”

8. What profession, other than urine-stained coke whore, would you like to attempt?

Teacher, probably. No, check that… I would like to be in retail. I believe I could do this. Especially selling shoes or handbags. Drug dealer, maybe… is that considered retail?

9. What person would you not like to do?

So many to choose from. I would have to say the most repulsive human being alive is probably Martha Stewart, but I would do her just to hear her scream. How about Gwen Stefani. Everyone wants to do her. I think she looks like an alien.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to say to God when he rejects you at the Pearly Gates?

“Reject me, would you? Well then… I reject YOU!” Then I would pull his beard and run away.

---

Paul and Jack Richard Jenkins

Paul: Born March 9th, 2006 at 1.34PM. 6 Pounds, 2 ounces, if you care
about that sort of thing. Melinda is doing really well… she was
amazing.

I never thought I would enjoy it so much to have someone puke on me.
Check out the gangsta punk look — he’s coming over your house to
smash it up as soon as his legs work.

---

Paul Jenkins is currently writing The Sentry, Generation M, and Mythos for Marvel Comics, and the recently completed Revelations for Dark Horse Comics.

Check out more Mike Oeming at www.mike-oeming.com. Join the Oeming newsletter for previews and announcements via email to: oeming @ aol.com.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to a big comic convention. The last one I went to was Wizard World Philly and, before that, Wizard World Chicago on a regular basis. I realize these are probably considered “small” cons compared to the majestic wonder that is Comic-Con International: San Diego, but as I have never set foot in SDCC’s gilded halls, I can not speak from experience.

I was excited about the New York Comic-Con — first of all because it was right in my own back yard and, secondly, as I mentioned, it’s been a while since I’ve been to a big con. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I knew that I wanted to write my next column about the anime and manga scene there. But I was worried… would there actually be an anime or manga scene to cover? Alright, stop laughing. I now realize how silly I was.

But given my past experiences, how was I to expect anything else? The highlight of my con experience used to be when I discovered the manga booth. Yes, the manga booth. I would wend my way through the dark crowded aisles of superheroes and spandex, wondering if I would actually manage to find something I liked.

And then… through the haze of sweat and the clutter of comic boxes on wheels I would see it: the lone manga booth with 50% off all manga titles! Score! Add points if it also sold cute plushies or chibi figurines.

I would spend most of my money at this booth and return to it often. It was my deserted island in a sea of superhero fandom. But I wasn’t always this lucky. I remember being very disappointed at the last Wizard World Philly I went to two years ago. There was hardly any manga/anime presence at all!

So I guess that’s why I didn’t have high expectations for the NY Comic-Con. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that the opposite was true. In fact, I would hazard a guess and say that anime and manga-related booths and panels took up nearly 50% of the convention! In the very spot where CrossGen would have had their monster setup years ago, TOKYOPOP now sat with its own monster setup. VIZ also had a large space that was constantly swarming with fans. And these were just the big guns. I saw a healthy number of smaller booths all hawking a variety of manga and anime. I saw yaoi! As a matter of fact, yaoi artist Youka Nitta was even listed as a guest!

I saw gorgeous displays of Japanese created figurines and glossy art books for sale. There was even a whole section devoted to trendy underground toys from Asia.

UDON Entertainment was quite busy each time I passed by. Even newcomer Lime Studios from New Jersey, who were selling doujinshi, seemed to be receiving a lot of attention, and people seemed very interested in E-Frontier’s booth as they were selling Manga Studio, a program to create professional-looking manga on your computer.

I was overwhelmed and impressed by the amount of manga and anime that was to be found at the con… almost so much that I began to pity the superhero fans who probably felt as though their interests were being taken over. But I think due to the strong manga and anime presence, there was also a much more diverse crowd than I’m used to seeing at a regular con. I saw far more women and kids than I have ever seen at any of the Wizard Worlds that I have attended. I saw teenage girls and cosplayers — and they all fit right in with the crowd.

The programming at the con was just as rich as the exhibitors’ floor. I was stunned that a panel existed called “A Nosebleed Means WHAT?: Sexuality in Japanese Manga”, and even more impressed that it was hosted by the Library Journal. There was also a panel called “Brokeback Manga” about yaoi. These are a couple things that I would never have expected to see at a regular comic convention a couple years ago.

But maybe the idea of what a “regular” comic convention is changing and I just haven’t noticed until now? Comics are becoming less of a niche market for fanboys and more expansive as they appeal to more demographics. Finally comics are being appreciated and embraced by the general public — just look at how many people showed up at the con, forcing officials to turn guests away. The atmosphere at the con was a good one — not as uncomfortable or awkward as a fanboy extraordinaire, but not as touchy-feely as an anime con. It was a good mix of both worlds and I realized that the two can, indeed, coexist and, in some cases, cross over. I’d like to think that some of the anime fans who came for their own interests may have discovered an American comic or two that they would never have noticed before. And maybe some of the hardcore superhero fans picked up some of the manga freebies that they were handing out at the TOKYOPOP and VIZ booths and found something they liked as well.

Despite some of the organizational errors that made the con suffer, I think it was an overall success. I hope that future NY Comic-Cons will continue to address and welcome both the superhero fan and the anime fan and that it will lead to an even more diverse and lively crowd in years to come. (Okay… so we may become friendlier to one another, but I still don’t like being pressed up against a sweaty Superman. So you con organizers better rent a bigger space next year! Hear that?!)

Extra: MangaCast has podcasts of the manga panels I mentioned, and then some.