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Legal Ink - Our features from Lisa Fantino, Esq
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594 Broadway,
Suite 401
New York, NY 10012
Tel. 212-254-3511
Fax 212-254-3590
CLOSED FOR REMODELING
Reopening in May.
General Admission: $5
Group Rates - call ahead!
Questions, comments or concerns? Please e-mail us at info@moccany.org |
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...........................
KW: How are you doing these days, Harvey?
HP: I’m doing all right, I guess. I’m waiting to see how much this gives my freelance writing career a boost. I’ve got some new writing gigs, and a couple of columns. And a new contract to do some stuff with Dark Horse.
Also, I’ve been doing quite a few public speaking engagements. I’m doing one tonight. I’m going to be speaking about why I got into comics, shift into how the film came about, and take it from there. That’s what most people are interested in.
KW: How did you feel about the movie?
HP: I was pleasantly surprised by the innovativeness of the film. I knew the people I was working with were at least competent, but I had no way of knowing they were going to come up with something that was different and unusual. Innovation is rare, and is something that I prize. I thought they came up with some new ideas.
KW: Where were you when you first saw the film?
HP: The first time I really saw the film was at the Sundance Festival. There were a lot of people in the audience. They seemed to like it, I guess.
KW: How did you come up with the stories for the Illustrate a Comic project?
HP: Looking through the stuff I hadn’t had illustrated, and came up with three stories. They chose “Instant Gratification” and “Unused Energy.”
KW: Do you often write with specific artist in mind?
HP: When I write I sometimes have an artist in my head. But a lot of times I am not sure how the story is going to turn out. I haven’t been too dissatisfied with the artists who have worked on the comic book. I like most Gerry Shamray was really good. Robert Crumb of course. Frank Stack is a great artist.
Before I started doing comics I had theorized a lot about them. One thing I realized was that there a limited number of illustration styles that had been used. Most comic books used a real cartoony style, or idealized the main character. I was interested in doing realistic stuff. Realism in comic and cartoon drawing – there is no tradition of it. The strip tradition is richer, but even in strips there are not that many people who are realistic illustrators.
What Gerry Schamray did, and what I thought worked out really well, was to take photographs where the stories were set. He’d take an average of one photo per panel. He would copy it, add his own texture. For a while he wasn’t using any solid blacks. But I couldn’t convince him to stay in comics. The money I could offer him was not so good.
KW: What about Crumb? His work can be cartoony.
HP: With Crumb, when he works with me, he tends to be less cartoony than he might be otherwise. An example might be “Hypothetical Quandary,” which is set at a bakery – “ah, free bread.” But there are other times when Crumb is less cartoony, like when he draws figures from jazz history.
Frank Stack has quite a range too. He’s a really fine painter who works a lot with watercolors. He often paints landscapes or cityscapes. He’s got really excellent technique. He makes things work. He’s unpretentious. He really knows what he’s doing. He really knows what to put in the frame.
I really admire Sue Cavey’s work.. I’m glad we‘ve gotten to work together.
There are some guys don’t live up to their potential. A lot of comic book illustrators have a pretty limited outlook. They haven’t looked at a lot of different stuff. There are all kinds of styles and approaches that could be employed that aren’t being employed.
KW: What do you look for in an artist?
HP: Somebody who can relate to my stories, who has a feel for them. There are a lot of reasons why people do or don’t get stuff. I would like them to be clued in, to know for example when I’m going for a humorous effect.
KW: Do you prefer working with several artists, or with a single artist, like you did with Frank Stack on Our Cancer Year?
HP: I like both. Frank Stack did a wonderful job on Our Cancer Year. Crumb told me no one could have done as good a job, including himself. But I also like having a lot of people doing stuff. Some of the artists I’ve worked with haven’t been all that great, but by and large I’m been lucky.
KW: Do you like working with younger artists?
HP: I always get a kick from finding someone new. I was a critic long before I was writing comic books. As a critic, the thing I really enjoyed most was discovering somebody interesting who was new on the scene – recommending them before hard and fast opinions had formed. I was able to do that with Jerry Shamry and Sue Camry, for example.
KW: Do you want to mention any newer artists you particularly admire?
HP: Joe Sacco is very fine. He’s really worked at it. He wasn’t trained as an artist, but as a reporter, a journalist. He’s realy worked hard to become a distinctive, fine cartoonist. I also like Chris Ware’s stuff.
KW: What advice would you give to would-be illustrators?
HP: Get your work out there, so that people can see it. And you gotta have something worth doing. Self-publishing comics is fine, but there are other options. I started doing comics in the early 1970s, when the counterculture was evaporating. It turned out that the counterculture was mainly kids who didn’t want to be in the service. When the draft ended, the counterculture died, and comics were in a shaky position. So I published my own comics because that is what I had to do.
There are a lot of things that can be done in comic book form that aren’t being done. It’s a big, huge field. Especially when I started in this business – and even now to some extent – it was just being used to capture the adventures of talking animals and superheroes. But you can do anything
in comics.
KW: Do you find easy to write?
HP: It depends. Sometimes. If I do something right away, and I’m excited by some situation I’ve been in, sometimes I can just sit down, and the story just flows right out of me. Sometimes I need to do a story, to fill out a book or something, and I haven’t had an inspirational experience. Then the writing doesn’t come that easily.
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