Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Mark Askwith: It's funny 'cause that's almost describing RASL. He just described RASL for
you. [chuckle]
Jeff Smith: Also, drawing creepy stuff is really fun.
Gabriel Bá: Yes, yeah.
JS: There's an element in The Fantastic that is special to it and that it acknowledges
that there's more than we can see, that there's something beyond the veil, so to speak. Like,
"What is that?" And you can play it up in any way you want as something supernatural
or twilight zone or... You know what I mean? I think The Fantastic has a lot to say or
at least allows you to say a lot.
MA: By the way, I didn't acknowledge this at the top but we're here at a very interesting
time in Jeff's work on RASL. Last week, you delivered the penultimate episode.
JS: Yeah, one more.
MA: You got one more issue to go. So unfortunately, the latest issue isn't gonna be for sale at
TCAF 'cause you just sent it off to the printer.
JS: Oh no, I mean, I sent it off yesterday.
[chuckle]
MA: How did that feel?
JS: Really good, because at the end of the story it's very complicated. You've got this
gigantic 500-page story you've been working on and...
MA: Gonna tell the end of the story?
JS: Yeah? No, not here, not here, I'm not gonna...
[laughter]
JS: RASL kills the dog.
[laughter]
JS: And I'm chicken... I'm about to chicken out. No, I'm not gonna tell you the end of
the story. But you know, you're pulling all the story threads together. You've laid out
all these tales and somehow you've gotta pull them all together and in just the right order,
it's gotta make sense and not feel phony or set up too fake-y. I mean, you must've run
into that at the end of the Daytripper for sure.
GB: Yeah.
JS: Were you struggling there? Were you like tearing your hair out?
GB: We never pictured Daytripper to be, I don't know... It came out a lot better than
we'd planned.
[laughter]
GB: I don't know. The things were clicking. We had the idea and then we planned very simply
like, every chapter. So chapter one, it'll be about this and this will happen in two
and three, and three and four. And we kind of freaked out when we finished issue nine.
It's the issue where he dreams, and our editors read it and said, "That's it? That's how the
story ends? What are you going to do for issue 10?" And we were kind of worried that people
wouldn't like issue 10, because issue 10 was after issue issue nine.
MA: No. Issue 10, it's... You have to have issue 10. That's the story.
GB: Yeah, that's what we have. That's...
MA: The whole... Everything back through the first... All 10 issues suddenly make sense.
That's the end.
GB: Yeah. Well, it was the only time that we thought, "Oh, this better work. This better
work. Come on, come on." Also, the only time that we worked away from home, which we never
do, with the... Some people can work on travel and take pages or write scripts while their
travelling. We never do that. When we travel, we look to people, we talk, we go out and
drink and...
[laughter]
GB: We meet people, we get inspired for next stories, and Daytripper was the only one that
we had to finish away from home.
JS: You guys, have you met Sergio Aragones?
GB: Yes.
Fábio Moon: Yeah, we did.
JS: He's awesome, isn't he? That dude also goes out in parties and yet, he always goes
back to his room and does like three pages. And he just is amazing. He's always working.
GB: Well, he was the first guy that made me think that comics should be drawn with a brush,
because he would draw himself on his comics and Groo, on the Mad magazine corners. He
would be holding a brush and drawing. "Ah! That's how comic artists draw. They hold a
brush!"
FM: They all have big moustache.
GB: Yes.
[laughter]
MA: So speaking of brush, I think we're in an interesting transition right now, where
comics are going from the traditional medium, a lot of which is gonna be celebrated at TCAF
this weekend, which is done with pen, pencil, paper and ink. And now a lot of stuff is being
done digitally and I look to you, Fabio, I mean, you did Sugar Shock with... That was
done on the web and one acclaim. What do you prefer, do you work traditionally?
GB: I work very traditionally, yes. I need the paper. I need to feel the paper. Now,
it's very hard to see these changes happening because you discover that there's a new readership
and there's a new wave of artists that are creating this new readership, or supporting
this new readership. So it's very strange to do a comic in an old-fashioned way and
draw on paper and see the pages, and put online and see stuff...
FM: Print the books and...
GB: And see online how they react to it because it's like you're showing to much more... You
have this sensation that you show to much more people because much more people react
and so I'm still adapting to this an online universe but I'm still very much confound.
JS: Old school.
GB: Yeah. Yeah.
S?: Old school.
[laughter]
GB: Yeah, very much old school. Even like the latest stories that we've done we are
even colouring with water colours.
S?: Yeah.
GB: We used to colour lots in the computer because it was faster and easy to correct
the mistakes.
FM: In 10 years we'll be lettering, hand lettering.
[laughter]
GB: Yeah. Our plan to is to start hand lettering. We are going the other way around.
S?: Yeah.
GB: Yeah.
MA: Good, good. And what about you Jeff 'cause you do the colour with Steve Hamaker and that
seems to be very gears towards the...
JS: Yeah, I find a great deal of pleasure in pushing puddles of black ink around on
the white paper. I really, really love that. I can't really imagine not doing it but, I
do work with Steve Hamaker who's very much into digital colouring and he's always trying
to show me, "C'mon, ink on this antique. This is like a computer where you actually put
your... You can rest your hand on it and draw just like a board." And very quickly I was
able to ink and almost indistinguishable from my own ink line, just doing the exact same
pressure, pressure glide and everything I could get my own ink line but still it just...
I don't know. I just might be old school.
[chuckle]
JS: But I actually just noticed out in the audience is one of my fellow Scholastic graphics
guys. I see Kazu out here. Hi, Kazu. Kazu is like the king. Kazu Kibuishi everybody.
Amulet.
[applause]
JS: Kazu is actually if I was gonna point to anybody who is really just embracing drawing
comics digitally it's Kazu 'cause I mean it's... It's...
S?: Does he draw on paper?
JS: He actually draw the first things on paper.
S?: We draw on paper. We just...
JS: Do you ink on paper?
S?: Yeah.
JS: Or do you just pencil on paper?
S?: Well actually no.
JS: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. So first you draw it, then you scan it and enlarge it,
and then you print it out and ink it.
S?: Like a computer.
JS: Oh!
GB: So it's just a big expensive eraser.
[laughter]
S?: Yeah, it's a big expensive eraser.
[laughter]
MA: Well I find that fascinating because I do what I... I interview a lot of people in
the comic book world but I see this movement towards the digital which seems very real,
very tactile and younger cartoonists are really gravitating towards it. On the other side,
I've just been picking up these wonderful IDW press books which are these reprinting
from the pencils and inks of the creators. So you know you get this wonderful Thor work
by Walt Simonson, Will Eisner's book is coming out in a few weeks. And I'm looking at the
old-fashioned pages and going, "This really sings to me. I can feel the artist working
on the paper. I can see where he had the cup of coffee."
S?: Old school.
MA: Am I old school yet?
S?: No.
S?: No.
S?: You're old.
[laughter]
MA: But I wonder if it's a generational thing because I also look at the art being created
digitally and now I can see the...
JS: I don't know. Kazu has drawn everything with the pencil first then that's... Maybe
three's... Maybe this is not gonna be just a complete snap, you know a complete break.
Maybe it'll, just like everything, digital comics didn't replace comic book stores they
just... Or just a new incremental way to distribute comics.
MA: Well before we open it up to questions from the audience and if there's something
that you guys... You have a podium and then a soapbox. Is there you something you wanna
sound off about today? On the eve of TCAF? Something like, do you have a bone to pick
with the industry? Do you have a... No?
[laughter]
S?: Ton-ton.
[laughter]
JS: Why do you say that?
MA: Well, okay. We're taking it up to the audience and if you're... Anybody wanna come
to the microphone and... Sitting right there, go up to the mic. Yeah, go back there.
[pause]
S?: Jeff Smith, what was the inspiration for Bone?
JS: Let's see.
[laughter]
S?: The kids always make the first question.
JS: I love cartons and comics but on the time I was your age I used to read them in the
Sunday newspaper and I'll have MAD Magazine, and so I guess the Bones were kind of a cross
between like Snoopy and Don Martin.
S?: Don Martin?
GB: Don Martin. Yeah, yeah.
[laughter]
S?: I love Don Martin. Yes.
[laughter]
MA: That's a MAD Magazine reference for all of you.
JS: So it was, I guess the real answer is I loved comics so much that I just wanted
to make my own and that's how I got started.
MA: How old were you when you created Bone?
JS: I was about five. Five years old. I mean the very first drawing I did of Bone he was
like really angry. He had like his mouth was really open, he was screaming, he was like,
"Aah!" And my first thought was, "I wonder how... " And I'd drawn this like ridiculous
thing that looked almost like a telephone which is sort of how the name started. And
I was starting to figure out what does he looked like with his mouth closed. And so
like that was my first struggle with a construction of the drawing. Like how do you... And then
I... I made his mouth closed and then that became Fone Bone and then the angry one kind
of resurfaced again later as Phoney Bone came back like that.
MA: In interviews I've done with Jeff, he said he's surprised the more young cartoonists
don't continue with those characters. Did you guys have characters that you created
when you were five or six years old?
GB: No. Not really.
JS: They were drawing naked girls at five.
[laughter]
GB: No, we started copying everything we liked. We didn't create characters and stick with
them. We used to copy Garfield and Don Martin, and Spy versus Spy.
S?: Yeah nice.
MA: To build on that question, tell me what this sort of second level of Bone. What were
the influences in terms of themes and the territory that you wanted to cover?
JS: Well I guess I was... When I really started Bone, I was much older, obviously. I drew
the characters on my math papers, so they stayed with me the whole time I was growing
up and I never forgot about them. But it wasn't till college when... Actually, it was my senior
year in high school, I was 17 years old, the year was 1977 and I read the Lord of the Rings
for the first time. I'd read Moby *** for the third time. Star Wars came out and what
was the third thing? Oh yeah, heavy metal.
[laughter]
JS: Heavy metal came out and all the accouterments that went with that. [laughter]
MA: You guys must of been heavily influenced by heavy metal as well, you can see it in
your work.
GB: Well in Brazil it was much like the Brazilian comics when we were growing up, they looked
a lot like...
S?: European comics.
GB: European comics and there was much more craziness going on. Much more nakedness going
on.
[laughter]
JS: Yeah.
GB: It was much... And it wasn't... There was not a lot of censorship in terms of what
kids could read. This was comics.
FM: Yeah, we had just came out from a 20-year dictatorship.
GB: It was comics. Yeah, who cares about what's in the comics after dictatorship? So we could
read anything. We discovered from Tarzan, Burne Hogarth drawing Tarzan to Mad Magazine
at the same time to a Brazilian author who was drawing these crazy two priests who were
these pornographer priests.
FM: And one of them was gay and the other was very politically incorrect. He was hitting
on everything. Everything that was wrong was in that comic. It was amazing.
[laughter]
MA: That was a good question. Look what you got. Good question, thanks.
S?: My question isn't as good as that.
[laughter]
S?: What sets you guys apart from other creators is that this is your own work, there's a lot
of yourselves in that work. That is very evident as artists. You're putting a lot of yourselves
into that work. And you're talking about killing the dog. When those moments come in the story
where you have to kill the dog, how do you... Where do you draw the line on what to do for
the characters, for the stories and for yourselves because there is a part of you in that story.
How do you do that? Do you refer to an editor? What's the defining factor in those decisions?
JS: Let me just answer that real quick. Well despite my joke earlier about not liking editors,
I obviously have a very close group of people that I trust very much and I bounce ideas
off of and you've gotta be willing to listen to them and trust them. I've had that group
around me for over 10 years. Group of small people plus all my people at Scholastic, but
ultimately the bottomline is it's for the story. The story is the bottomline and even
if it's something I'm chickening out a little bit on, when Charles questioned me on it,
I knew he was right. And that was the story. That had to be it, it was hard to do but it
was what was true for the story and it was the bottomline.
GB: Yeah, I think if you... The hard part sometimes it's realizing that the story is
the most important thing because sometimes you want to draw something really bad or sometimes
you want to tell a story that needs to be... You have expectations for the story in terms
of what you can or you cannot tell. And sometimes you don't even know how to be... How to face
that part of the story. You don't have the maturity to deal with some stuff, and that's
where other people help because they are your bouncing boards.
JS: And you two have each other. That sounds like a major thing...
GB: Yeah. I think for us it was a huge...
JS: Can I have his phone number?
GB: Yeah. It was a huge difference to have each other and to be straight with each other
about how we could always do better in terms of the story.
JS: We can Skype and I can say, "Is this picture lazy?"
[laughter]
MA: Well I... Very early on, Jeff, I used to... After every issue of Bone came out a
number of people including myself would call you up and we would critique...
JS: You were one of my trusted people that I believed. In fact I made changes that you
suggested, a couple of big ones. One was I don't even know if I even ever told you that
you made me do this. But I originally packaged the Bone books into... We didn't call them
graphic novels back then 'cause they weren't really called that. They were called trade
paperbacks but I was doing the first Bone graphic novels basically. But I was just doing
'em chronologically, just whatever six issues I did that last year I put it together in
that book.
JS: Well the third one came out and it kinda followed like the story. There was clearly
a moment where the story ended but it wasn't the one that was the last story in the third
book, it was the first story in the next book and you were livid. You were like, "What are
you thinking? That story belonged in the last book. That should have been the end." And
you were right and that's actually why I... I don't know if you remember what it was,
it was like they... The last...
MA: It was the crossing the threshold.
JS: Yes, this is the moment, it's like the end of the first act of Bone. The funny stuff
is kind of over, the serious stuff has kicked in and they pack up and leave the farm. And
the last panel is then literally walking over the threshold of the barn door. The shadow
of the barn door is cutting them right down the middle. And you said, "That was the end
of the last storybook!" And I actually went back and I trashed all my trade books, completely
re-dressed them so they had a new trade dress so that they became instead of The Complete
Bone adventures volume one, two or three, they started to be calling Out from Boneville
or The Great Cow Race or Eyes of the Storm, they had names. But that was a huge shift
because at that time graphic novels were only the Complete Crazy Cat or something like that.