Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers (42 page)

Were you given free rein by the
Times
to write whatever you wanted with
Mister Wonderful
?

As far as subject matter, they never said a word, but they were very touchy about language—their little “stylebook” is very important to them. Aside from
Jesus
, for instance, I wasn’t allowed to use the word
schmuck
.
Mad
’s been using the word for fifty years! It’s not as if I were using it in the Yiddish sense: “Wow, that guy has a huge cock!” I even found an old William Safire column from
The New York Times Magazine
about
schmuck
. He wrote something like, “The original meaning of the word has long ago been forgotten, and it’s commonly accepted for general use.”

I showed this to the editors, but they told me, “No. We can’t run the word.” I could have acted like an asshole and told them I was going to end the strip halfway through, but this was a really good assignment for cartoonists. I didn’t want to be the guy who killed it for everyone else.

I suppose you have to play the game.

Sometimes that can be a good thing. I was restricted—but this restriction ultimately helped the comic. I wasn’t allowed to use the words
Jesus
or
God
, but once I was faced with having to replace them, I got more focused on what the character was actually trying to say—or not say—and I realized how much of a crutch the “Jesuses” had become. The central character was a repressed middle-aged guy who was terrible with women, so any time he was further repressed by not being allowed to fully relieve his frustration it only helped.

When I worked on the movie
Ghost World
[in 2000], there were restrictions that you wouldn’t believe. For instance, we weren’t allowed to show a painting of comedian Don Knotts—unless we had Don Knotts give us permission. It’s all about rights, clearances, lawyers. We wanted a character to sing “Happy Birthday to You”—but we couldn’t unless we paid something like ten thousand dollars, so we just cut the scene.

In comparison, not being allowed to use certain words in a comic strip became no big deal. You have to work with the situation you’re given.

In 2010, you published
Wilson
, a graphic novel that centered on a middle-aged man oblivious to social cues. He may be one of the most obnoxious characters in comic history. One panel ends with him saying out loud, on a playground: “Hey! Can you get that brat to shut up for two fucking seconds!?” And yet I read that you came up with this character as you sat next to your dying father. True?

Yeah. Around that time, I had read a quote from Charles Schulz that was something like, “A real pro cartoonist can sit down at the board for a few minutes and come up with a funny strip.” And so I was kind of testing myself to see how fast I could write a bunch of joke comics that were actually funny—at least to me. My dad was in many ways very similar to Schulz, and a big fan of
Peanuts
, and so in retrospect I guess I was trying to gain the old man’s approval.

Every story in
Wilson
is only one page. They remind me, in their rhythm, of syndicated comics or even
Mad
pieces. But the material is obviously much darker: death, failed hopes and dreams, inability to connect. It’s an interesting combination, similar to hearing canned laughter during a drama.

I’m blind to the darkness. I just genuinely thought the strips in the book were either funny or moving in some way. That format seemed to work for the character, but it’s unlikely I’d ever use anything exactly like that for another strip.

What do you think you tapped into while sitting in that hospital? Was it a meditative state?

It was more of a burst of creativity that you can have when trapped in a situation that’s both boring and anxiety-inducing. I used to think about enrolling in college courses in subjects I had no interest in so I would be able to achieve that state of restless boredom.

Early in your career, did you find that readers had a difficult time labeling you? The type of work you produced wasn’t your typical style of a traditional comic.

They still have a difficult time. I’ve been called everything from a graphic novelist to a comic-strip novelist to just a cartoonist. I’ve always preferred cartoonist, because that seems the least obnoxious.

I used to tell people I was a comic-book artist, but they’d look at me as if I’d just stepped in dog shit and walked across their Oriental rug. I never knew what to call myself, but I was always opposed to the whole “graphic novelist” label. To me it just seemed like a scam. I always felt that people would say, “Wait a minute! This is just a comic book!” But now I’ve given up. Call me whatever you want.

When you started, the graphic novel was such a new form. Growing up, where did you even find inspiration for something like this?

Well, there were a few people doing this as early as the seventies. There was a writer and illustrator named Justin Green who wrote and illustrated a comic book called
Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary
, which was published in 1972. It’s about a young boy living within the strict confines of his Catholic upbringing as he deals with his sexual awakening and severe OCD symptoms.

Art Spiegelman has claimed that
Binky Brown
influenced his
Maus
books.

The
Binky Brown
comic was out of print for many years, but it’s not as difficult to find as it used to be. It is definitely worth buying. I was around sixteen when I discovered it, and, truthfully, I didn’t understand it at first. A friend told me that it was the greatest comic ever, but I was not raised Catholic. It was kind of over my head. Then I reread it when I was in my twenties and I really connected with it.

People say that
Binky Brown
is the first autobiographical comic book. I’m not sure if that’s exactly true, but, at the very least, it is extremely personal and wonderful.

What were some of your other comic influences when you were growing up?

I have a brother who is ten years older than me, and he gave me his stack of comics from the late fifties and the early sixties—a lot of horror and sci-fi and crappy superhero comics. I never watched TV until I was older. I was obsessed with a lot of early Marvel Comics and DC Comics.

When I was about twenty-one or twenty-two, I bought
The Official Marvel Comics Try-Out Book
, which had a bunch of professionally penciled comic pages printed on good paper. Some of the pages were unfinished to give young artists a chance to ink and color a “pro” drawing. It seemed like it would be fun to test my skills on a few pages of Spider-Man swinging through 1970s New York on his webs. That lasted for about fifteen minutes and then I started giving all the characters afros and exposed tits.

Which did you prefer, Marvel or DC?

I liked DC comics, such as
Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen
and
Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane
, because they were about “real” people, with the superhero stuff in the background. I never quite got into superheroes—except on kind of a Pop Art level. I just never got into the fighting. What I found more interesting was the romance and the attempts at conveying some kind of reality in this absurd universe. Like Superboy’s dad still working at the general store, even though his son could take over the world—things like that. My friends were the exact opposite. They used to say, “God, who cares about this romance? Get to the punching!”

And, actually, you know what I liked even more? Regular people yearning to become superheroes.

And perhaps failing?

Oh, that I would have found especially fascinating.

Was it always your intention to become a cartoonist?

I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I really wanted to be a cartoonist, but there was no market for anything I was interested in doing. I just couldn’t see myself drawing newspaper strips or working for Marvel Comics. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and being petrified:
What’s going to happen to me? What am I going to do?

I mean, to this day, I have no skills beyond those within the narrow confines of what I do.

So you were laying it all on the line for this?

My parents were like, “Are you sure you want to do this?” It was a ridiculous career choice, which I should have known early on in my life. Thankfully, it took a very long time to hit me just how ridiculous it was.

At what point did you notice that people were beginning to understand what a
graphic novel
actually meant?

For me, there was a sea change by 2001 or 2002, around the time the
Ghost World
movie was released. Average citizens like my parents’ neighbors started to say things like, “Oh, you do graphic novels! I love [Art Spiegelman’s]
Maus
!” A few years earlier, they would have thought of me as the lowest pornographer.

I assume you never had any interest in creating a syndicated strip for newspapers?

No, that’s a whole different genre—an entirely different genus of cartoonist. The ones I’ve met tend to be these odd, suburban, country-club types. And just because the format worked with audiences in the 1920s doesn’t mean it’s still the greatest idea today.

It’s not very appealing. To create these four-panel increments, day in and day out, week after week, I just don’t see how you could accomplish anything of note.

Were there any syndicated cartoonists that had an influence on you?

I guess
Peanuts
would be the obvious one, though I never read it in the paper.
Nancy
was the only strip I read every day throughout my childhood, and it had quite an impact. As the
Mad
cartoonist Wally Wood said about
Nancy
, “By the time you decided not to read it, you already had.” I think that’s something I always keep in mind with my own comics—always opt for clarity and simplicity.

You grew up pre-Internet. To what degree do you think the Internet has changed comics?

I’m not really sure. There are comics now being created on the Internet, but I’m not interested in reading that sort of thing. I’d just rather wait until it’s printed. I don’t like the aesthetics of seeing something like that lit up on the screen. That’s just my personal take on it—I don’t expect anybody else to not read Internet comics for that reason.

One thing I’ve found about the Internet is that it’s very distracting to cartoonists—myself included. Most cartoonists are just looking for any excuse for a distraction. This type of work can be so lonely and tedious and frustrating at various stages of the process.

If I had had a computer in high school, I would no doubt have become obsessed and literally thrown away twenty years of my life. I would not be here talking with you. I would be sitting in front of a TV playing
Grand Theft Auto
. I would have done nothing.

You really wouldn’t have become a cartoonist?

I don’t think so; I really don’t. I would have been way too busy trying to talk to girls in chat rooms. Why would I ever have bothered with comics? I can’t imagine.

Do you work alone?

Yes.

You don’t have assistants at your disposal, like many syndicated newspaper cartoonists?

No, no. I’d love to hire an assistant, but only to do the lowest shit work. I don’t have the right temperament to have an assistant. I’d feel bad criticizing them, and I’d wind up accepting work I wasn’t happy with.

I do like the idea of having a whole studio of artists and forcing them to draw in my style and cranking out these huge books every year, but I know I’d never be happy with that. They’d never get it right, and I’d wind up doing everything myself anyway.

Who do you bounce your ideas off of?

I don’t. That’s part of the fun.

I’ve tried in the past to gauge people’s reactions, and nobody is really honest. I’m not the sort of person who would encourage somebody to be brutally honest; I may really like what I created and not want to hear anything bad. I have to just go with my own instincts. They’re not always right, but I’d rather do that than be swayed by somebody who might just be in a bad mood or have these reasons I don’t necessarily agree with.

Also, the work becomes more specific if you work alone, more singular.

I’d think that as a comic-book artist you’d have to really commit to an idea. Once you put an idea down onto paper, it would be difficult to tweak it—unless you worked on a computer.

No, I draw everything by hand. But that’s right. To change it once you start the process is literally impossible—unless you just start over from the beginning.

What I’ll usually do is start with an outline. I try to get the beats of the plot figured out, and from there I just wing it. At a certain point, a cartoonist will have a sense of how long and what rhythm a strip should be. You don’t really need to break it down further than that.

Often, when I’m halfway through a story, I realize that if I went in a more promising direction, the strip would have been a lot more interesting. When that happens, rather than starting over, I switch gears. It’s exciting to work that way. It’s one of the few things about drawing comics that actually
is
exciting.

You never stop once you start?

I’ve abandoned a few things, but most of the time I try to keep going. That’s the thing: You can’t go back and redo it over again, because that’ll just dissipate your creativity; you lose everything that’s interesting and spontaneous. I could spend the rest of my life redrawing everything I’ve done, but it would just kill everything that’s good about it. That would be a total waste of time.

Isn’t that a strong creative urge, though? To want to make a work as perfect as possible?

It’s similar to when a musician isn’t happy with the quality of their early records and wants to record again with a better band. The original work is connected to a specific moment of time; it’s never going to become “better.” Even when I do a new cover for one of my old books, they always seem sort of condescending to the material.