WALRUS COMIX PROUDLY PRESENTS: An Exclusive Interview with JOSH NEUFELD

Josh Neufeld is a remarkable artist, whose work has helped to elevate the medium and push forward the frontiers of what can be done with comix not only in an artistic sense, but as a serious form of social commentary as well. He’s also been on the forefront of the webcomix explosion, co-founding the influential group ACT-I-VATE.

His work on American Splendor in our estimation ranks way up there amongst the great artists that have worked with Harvey. He truly has an uncanny ability to collaborate with others in a uniquely powerful way, as evidenced in what he’s done with Dean Haspiel in Keyhole, R. Walker in Titans of Finance, as well as work he’s done in The Vagabonds and 9-11: Emergency Relief.

His solo work is just as colossal. His masterwork A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge (a true story told in 12 parts about six different people — Leo & Michelle, Denise, Hamid, Kevin, and the Doctor — who escape and survive Hurricane Katrina) is part journalism, part social commentary and part magnificent artistry.

For more information on Josh and his fantastic works, please check out at www.joshcomix.com.

We here at Walrus Comix are great admirers of your work. It has tremendous clarity, and your assured lines have a powerful sense of purpose in the way you convey your stories. To us, it recalls both Herge and Joe Sacco and how they establish that incredibly clean yet complex aesthetic into their work. Were they a big influence?

For me, being compared to Hergé and Sacco is the highest praise there is. Hergé was the first cartoonist I really "studied," in the sense that from the age of eight or nine, I read every TINTIN book scores of times. Obviously, my art style is heavily influenced by Hergé's work. I also think I got my sense of humor and love of globe-spanning adventure from the TINTIN books. I discovered Sacco years later, in my twenties, but he is everything I aspire to be as a cartoonist. He does real, on-the-ground research; tackles serious, fundamental issues about the human condition; and writes & draws like a mo-fo! Books like PALESTINE and SAFE AREA GORAZDE should be required reading in every world politics course. And Sacco's art, which owes a huge debt to the European clear-line, also influenced me, in that he adapted that look to black-and-whitecomics, adding thicker brushstrokes in certain areas, and lots of pattern details.

Also -- bizarre as it may sound -- a big influence on my work was the Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson run on SUPERMAN and ACTION COMICS! Weirdly, I got a grounding in reality from those books. If you look back at them, what's so amazing is just how HUMAN they really are. Superman just looks like an (overly-muscled) 35-year-old guy. A lot of those issues were about Clark Kent and the pitfalls of normal life. Swan & Anderson loved to draw "real" people: walking along the streets, wearing regular clothes, little episodes with dogs -- whatever. Human moments. That quality of their work always appealed to me, and has stayed with me to this day.

 

Totally agree about thpse Curt Swan Supermans…  For someone who was drawing comics from such an early age, why did you choose Oberlin and their art history program instead of going with an illustration program in some established art school? 

I grew up in a very literate and political household, and always knew I needed a well-rounded education. Also, at the time I went to college in the mid-1980s, comics were not really on the cultural radar, so the chances of finding a good liberal arts school that also had a strong cartooning program was virtually nil. I made the choice to pursue my B.A. at Oberlin and continue to do comics on the side. Even though I missed out on four years of cartooning instruction, I've never regretted that choice.

You're someone that like to collaborate a lot with other artists i.e., with Pekar in American Splendor, with Dean Haspiel in Keyhole, R. Walker in Titans of Finance, etc..  Do you enjoy the creative process more intensely with a partner, or do you prefer working solo?

I’ve always been geared toward collaboration, and it’s always been part of my comics work. In high school I teamed up with classmates (like Haspiel) to make photocopied superhero comics; after college I illustrated stories for David Greenberger’s DUPLEX PLANET ILLUSTRATED; did the TITANS OF FINANCE book with R. Walker; and for years now I’ve been drawing for AMERICAN SPLENDOR. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to do comics not only with writers from the comics world, but also with playwrights, journalists, poets, family members, and children — not to mention such unusual (and sometimes unwitting) collaborators as The Beatles, an old issue of SUPERMAN, and my own mirror reflection! (I’ve also done many work-for-hire collaborations, for financial magazines, investor funds, and even a shady Y2K survivalist organization.) I love the energy of a good collaboration — the back-and-forth of ideas, words, and images — each collaborator challenging the other. The result truly is "of two minds." (In fact, the last issue of my solo title THE VAGABONDS was devoted entirely to my short collaborations.) 

Given all that, I also treasure the complete creative control of a solo project -- though I've always relied on trusted readers, such Haspiel, my wife Sari, and, currently, SMITH editor Larry Smith.

Your work with American Splendor is fantastic. We're huge fans of Harvey's, and we actually would put you up at the top of the list as far as artists that have worked with him. How did you meet, and what was the experience of working with him like?

Wow, that's quite a compliment! I actually feel that much of what I've done with Pekar is uneven -- some pieces have come out really well, and some haven't. That's the fun and challenge of working with someone with such a strong voice as Harvey's. 

I met Harvey right at the beginning of my entrée into alternative comics. This is kind of long-winded, but bear with me. When Sari and I left the States in '92, my comics references were still centered around mainstream superhero comics. I knew about Crumb and some of the undergrounds, and I knew European comics like TINTIN and ASTERIX, which I grew up reading, but I had never conceived that it was possible for ME to do comics out of the mainstream. It was when we were living in Prague, ironically, that I came across a book of interviews with alternative cartoonists. I read interviews with Scott McCloud, Dan Clowes, and Peter Bagge, among others, and that totally opened up my world. Those interviews and coming across copies of EIGHTBALL and HATE. It was like the word of God, saying, "Josh — look, there are other options out there."

Anyway, Pekar was interviewed in that book as well. I don't think I saw any issues of AMERICAN SPLENDOR in Prague, but I had seen them before. And of course I'd seen Harvey on LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN. When I finally returned to the States, one of the first things I did was buy a bunch of back issues of AMERICAN SPLENDOR. I just loved them -- the voice, the celebration of everyday life, everything. So out of the blue, I wrote to Harvey and sent him the comics doodlings I'd been doing in Prague. I don't know where I got the idea, but I thought, "Who knows? Maybe he'll work with anybody." To be honest, I wasn't that impressed with some of the artists that he'd been working with, and I thought, "Look, I can draw as well as some of these people, so give me a chance."  Basically, I just begged him to let me work with him.

Well, I don't know what exactly sparked his interest, but he actually called me. It was a great moment for me, because we were just back in the States, we had just moved to Chicago, and I was going through severe culture shock. Getting his call was really terrific. It turned out that he didn't actually give me work right away, but he did promise to give me something in the future. So I just basically pestered him. I would call him up every six months. We started to have a little rapport — we'd talk about things outside of comics — being Jewish, or politics, or what was going on in our lives. And then he came to Chicago with his wife Joyce Brabner to do a reading for their book OUR CANCER YEAR. I went to the reading, finally met Harvey in person, and said in front of everyone, "When are you gonna get me some work?"I figured he would respect the fact that I was making myself a big pain in the ass. In essence, I shamed him into giving me some work! Shortly thereafter, he gave me a one-pager to draw, and then a longer piece, and so on and so on. Ten-plus years later,and we're still working together.

Aside from being a tremendous artist, you're also a bonafide hero! Not only did you volunteer during the 9-11 clean up (chronicling this in your contribution to 9-11:Emergency Relief), you also hooked up with the Red Cross during Hurricane Katrina again documenting it all in your superb book AD: New Orleans After the Deluge. Has humanitarianism always been part of your make up?  How did those two traumatic experiences impact on you as a person and on your art?

Volunteering with the Red Cross wasn't heroic. It was just a civic gesture I did for three weeks of my life. But being an active member of society -- whether by voting, demonstrating, protesting, or volunteering -- has always been important to me; it's a value system instilled in me by my mother from a very young age. Getting back to your question about my college experience, another reason I chose Oberlin was because of its long-standing history of progressive activism. Even though I was in school during the unfortunate height of identity politics and "PC-ism," I came away from Oberlin with a strong moral sense, an idea that it is possible to change the world -- for the better. Twenty years down the line, I continue to believe that. And I think in some way, I try to convey that spirit in my comics work.

As far as 9/11 and Katrina, they were both huge historical events which happened to strike a personal chord in me. In some important way, I was more affected by the 9/11 attacks as a New Yorker than I was an American, if that makes any sense. But my 3-page contribution to 9-11: EMERGENCY RELIEF was about as much as I had to "say" on that topic. With Katrina, and my subsequent stint as a volunteer in Biloxi, Mississippi, I felt there was more to explore, stories worth telling in a large format. Also, as horrific as the attacks on the World Trade Center were, the physical effects were limited to the relatively small area of "ground zero," while Katrina cut a swatch across  thousands and thousands of square miles. Katrina also directly affected far more families than 9/11. The burden of infrastructure recovery and rebuilding is MUCH higher in Louisiana, Mississippi, and the other Gulf Coast states than in New York. And while the attacks of 9/11 were felt as an attack ON our whole country, Katrina laid bare the realities of decades of poverty, discrimination, and government corruption WITHIN our own country. All of which, of course, are themes in A.D.

At Walrus comix, we're a big believer in the power comix can have as a vehicle for  telling stories steeped in social consciousness, truth, and biting satire. However, these ideas are not always the most popular amongst the comix readership. Do you believe as an artist you have an obligation to work that stands for something other than mindless entertainment?

Well, as I talked about in the last answer, I try to live my life by certain standards. Not to get self-righteous, but let's just say I try to be aware of my impact on the world around me. And to some level I try to make art which reflects those values. In many ways, I am a proponent of novelist John Gardner's thesis that good art "attempts to test human values, not for the purpose of preaching or peddling a particular ideology, but in a truly honest and open-minded effort to find out which best promotes human fulfillment." So without being too conscious of that burden, that's probably the basis of my work. In any case, at the very least, I like to think that my comics can teach people that the comics form is wide-open to all sorts of stories, not only superheroes and funny animals, but literary fiction, biography, formal experimentation, and everything in between.

Which artists out there currently do you admire the most?

As usual, there are too many to list in any meaningful way. I've been a big fan of Alison Bechdel's work for a long time. It's slightly ironic to me that it took her recent memoir, FUN HOUSE, to catapult in her into the public eye, as she has been crafting the long-running strip DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR for over twenty years! Her writing is sharp, insightful, and dead-on politically, and her art just keeps getting better and better. My longtime buddy Dean Haspiel is an amazing creator. He has an incredibly inventive, offbeat brain, and his drawing chops are as good as anyone's in the industry, alternative or mainstream. Nick Bertozzi is another friend of mine who is constantly upending the conventions of comics. He's smart as a whip, and is another cartoonist who keeps getting better and better. Joe Sacco, who I've already talked about, amazes me with his bulldog tenacity and his incredible eye for detail. I've been a long-time fan of the Dutch cartoonist Joost Swarte, and am really looking forward to his forthcoming English-language collection. And of course, I still adore -- and read everything by -- indy icons Dan Clowes, Seth, and Chris Ware. 

Finally, Alan Moore and George Perez are two mainstream comics creators who I continue to follow. Moore is a certified genius, and when he reins in his "shamanistic" tendencies, still knows how to craft delectable, unexpected superhero stories. And I've been a fan of Perez's work since the early 80s. Talk about chops -- this is a guy who draws the heck out of a page each and every time. Whatever you think of the style, he gives it his all, never phones it in, and can draw crowd scenes and detail better than anyone.

Which instruments do you use? Nibs, pens, brushes, etc..?

I pencil with a blue Sanford Col-Erase pencil and occasionally go over detailed areas with a regular #2 pencil. I usea Sakura Sami brush for inking figure outlines and contours, and Penstix, Sharpies and architectural pens for other linework. 

I learned the Sharpies trick from Howard Chaykin. Back in high school, I worked part-time in an office next to Upstart Studios, which Chaykin shared with Walt Simonson. Sometimes I'd hang out over there with Haspiel, who at the time was Chaykin's assistant on AMERICAN FLAGG, and help out as needed. Chaykin got me out of the "materials fetish" that afflicted so many young aspiring cartoonists like myself. He reminded me that comics are a reproducible medium and that what's most important is the final printed product, not the individual page of "original art." So I learned to use the materials I most comfortable with, be they brushes, pens, nibs, etc. Eventually I gravitated to my reliable Penstix and Sharpies.

My guiding principle when inking is: less is more. My goal is to what see what lines I can TAKE AWAY to still create the effect I want. As for other tools, I use rulers and oval templates in the pencil stage, but I ink everything -- even straight lines -- freehand. That gives the work that "human touch."

You were one of the founding members of ACT-I-VATE, one of the leaders in the webcomics movement..What are your thoughts on webcomics, do you think something gets lost in the transition from page to screen? 

From a creative standpoint, I love webcomics. I love the immediacy of "publication," the cutting out of the middleman of the publisher, the printer, and the comics retailer. Feedback of any kind is really important to me, and the web has made it so much easier for creator-reader communication to happen. I also like being on the cutting-edge of a new "delivery system" for an old medium, the way we're all still figuring out the best way to present comics online. For instance, A.D.'s publisher SMITH has created a very nice interface for reading comics online, with one tier of comics presented at a time, each page clicking to the next. It's very clean, there's no scrolling required. Dean Haspiel, Dan Goldman, Leland Purvis, and some of the other ACT-I-VATErs have also adjusted the size of their panels -- making them square, essentially -- to make them more conducive to Internet reading.

On the other hand, when comics are presented like that, one tier at a time, you lose something of the gestalt experience of the comic book. I'm a bit of a formalist, so I've always enjoyed the interplay of the tiers on a page, or the way a two-page spread can work to frame the material. Even details like how you use the final panel of a right-hand page to lead into the turning of the page. Things about timing, meter, and rhythm. A lot of that gets lost -- or changed in important ways -- when looking at comics on the Internet. And of course I'll always treasure the feel and weight of a book (or pamphlet-style comic) in your hand -- the texture of the paper, the other design elements that  make the book into an art object.

So in my perfect world, comics are presented in two formats: serialized first on the Internet, and then collected in a print edition.

Is there anything new that you're currently working on you'd care to share with us for an exclusive here at WC??

Right now, A.D. is taking the bulk of my time, as I'm winding down the web portion of the strip, and thinking ahead to the additional material for the eventual book publication. Otherwise, I have a short Pekar/AMERICAN SPLENDOR piece in the works, which I believe will be in issue #4 of the forthcoming Vertigo mini-series. (I already did a 4-pager last month, which will be issue #3.)

Finally, what advice do you have for the kids out there that have dreams of growing up just like you..?

Ha! Find a real job! No, seriously, what's kept me going as an independent creator is always remembering I do this because it's my passion, not my occupation. I balance my comics work with freelance gigs as a designer and commercial illustrator. That way comics stay fresh for me because I don't have to compromise, and I work on projects that call to me, not just any ol' work-for-hire job. Not to point too fine a point on it, but I treat my comics as ART, and that keeps it special.