I talked to the several small press comic creators toward the end of the day on Saturday, the craziest day for any Con. I actually have no memory of these last interviews; but I know they happened because it’s all on my digital recorder. Listening to these for transcription, I was retroactively embarrassed because I sounded like I was from another planet.
I’m particularly embarrassed by my brief interview with Rob Osborne, who is an amazing artist and contributed to Pink Raygun’s gallery. If I had spoken to him earlier in the day, I could have done much better than what is printed below. Rob, will you give me another shot???
Pink Raygun: How did you get interested in working in comic books?
Rob Osborne: I have loved comic books since I started reading them. Along the way, I got a little distracted by going to school and getting a serious career. I neglected my passions, but I got back into it. I decided and made a conscientious effort to make comics and started working at it.
PRG: You wrote and drew 1000 Steps to World Domination and Sunset City. Have you ever collaborated or plan to collaborate with another artist or writer?
RO: I’m in the middle of collaborating right now with a talented artist by the name of Tony Parker. I’m writing, and we’re working on a book about alien abductions. I’m really enjoying the process.
PRG: What has been the biggest challenge in collaborating with Parker?
RO: The biggest challenge has been finding the happy medium between overwriting the script and not giving enough information. I have a great deal of respect for the artist’s ability and right to interpret the script and bring their own strengths to the story telling.
I also spoke to Daniel Bradford and Thomas Hall, the artist and writer, respectively, for King.
Pink Raygun: Could you give me a brief synopsis of your book?
Thomas Hall: King is a guy who in visual appearance looks like Elvis, so people typically think he’s something he’s actually not, and people expect him to do things that no one else wants to do. He fights monsters and kills bad guys. When the book starts, he’s trying to take a break from that, but he gets sucked back in to it when he gets a mysterious package containing a living, beating heart with legs and a propeller, which can tell the future. The heart tells King that his favorite diner is going to be attacked by zombies. He likes the diner’s burritos, so he goes and does battle with the zombies and the decapitator god they worship.
PRG: How does your collaboration process work?
TH: As a general rule, I can write anything I want and he can draw anything he wants. We collaborate on ideas, then I sit down and make it as crazy as possible. Then Daniel looks at it and takes it further. We see how far we can take things and still be accessible to people.
Daniel Bradford: When we brought up this topic for the book, we just bounced some ideas back and forth. That night he sent me a two page script, which is about an average length on one of our projects. Then I take the script and turn it into twenty-four pages of artwork. It’s pretty loose, pretty easy, a lot of compromise, a lot of give and take.
PRG: Prior to King, what other projects have you worked on?
TH: For the past three years we’ve been working on a project called “Enlightenment”. It’s a book about a woman named Nadia Green, who can see the spiritual world. She’s a homicide detective trying to find the identity of a serial killer. While she’s on this case, a demonic apparition attacks her. So she realizes that she can see things no one else can see. She’s trying to understand her gift and figure out where this apparition will strike next and stop it. It’s very dark. We’ve been working on it of a while and that’s why we took a break to do King, which is light and fun. You can’t be depressed all the time.
PRG: The Gothic Lolitas at the tea party outside might disagree with that.
DB: Is that going on right now? I used to be Goth and it sucked in the summertime. Wearing nylons and big boots and black, I just absorbed all the light. Everyone around me felt cool, because I sucked up all the heat.
PRG: From a creative standpoint, who are your influences?
TH: Grant Morrison and Alan Moore for comics. In terms of writing in general, I tend to be a poetry person. I like Walt Whitman, and people like ee cummings. People who play with words and imagery a lot. I try to build a lot of imagery into my stories, strange things that are representational rather than literal.
DB: Before I got into comics, I was a graphic designer and illustrator. At the time my influences had been children’s book artists. I got into comics when I picked up a copy of Gotham by Gaslight and fell in love with Mike Mignola’s artwork. That book changed the course of my career and I studied that book a lot. In doing so, Mignola became the biggest influence. Lately, artists like Ben Templesmith, Ashely Wood and Tim Sale are starting to have more of an impact on my style.
Darkscroll Comics and Masterpiece Comics were two small press publishers based in the Phoenix area were present in Artist’s Alley. I was able to talk briefly to Cojo Turner of Darkscroll and Ace Masters of Masterpiece.
Darkscroll Comics represents the traditional way of doing comics. Cojo Turner, and his partners Tim and Carl, do all of the production themselves and take pride in that. Turner says “We’re all around guys and we try to do the most.”
Darkscroll’s current projects include Dices, a story set in the future featuring a fifteen year old Red Sonja type of character. The studio is also working on Sodomy Chronicles, which also takes place in the distant future. In this future, mankind has used up all of Earth’s resources and leave the planet in search of a new home. However, something goes wrong, and the party winds up in the past, setting off an even more catastrophic chain of events.
Masterpiece Comics has multiple projects in the works, and although the company is considered small press, it really is an international effort. Ace Masters is the head writer at Masterpiece and he collaborates with an artist in Indonesia whom he has never met or even spoken to on the phone. The team has worked via email and instant message for three years. Masters says the collaboration works very smoothly because he writes full scripts, rather than synopsis based scripts.
Masterpiece’s current projects include Rushmore, which is part of a trilogy, and Fireblast: Adventures in the 30th Century, which is an ongoing series. Fireblast is about a 30th century private investigator and his holographic assistant traveling around the galaxy, solving crimes, and generally trying to stop people from taking over the galaxy.
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Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
