Dog city issue 2 by Simon Reinhardt

DOG CITY MAGAZINE

Dog City Issue #2 Box Contents Bot by Aaron Shrewsbury Sand Papel by Steve Bissette Passion Fruit by Connor Willumsen Bud Sinclairâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Death Speech by Jon Chad Launch by Luke Healy, Ben Evans, Iris Yan, Will Payne and Sara Sarmiento Dead Rappers by Simon Reinhardt Dailies by Juan Fernandez Selfies by Rachel Masilamani Trevor by Luke Howard Poster by Christina Lee Art Cards by Caitlin Rose Boyle Patches by Ian Richardson Dog City Magazine Additional Illustrations by d.w. Dog City Magazine Contents Contrubutor Information

Cartoonists from the other Anglosphere: Simon Hanselman by Eleri Harris

4-6

Hey, Wait... by Ben Smolen

6-7

C.F.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mere by Simon Reinhardt

Bob the Dog: Our Date with Bob Kane by Steve Bissette

9-11

An interview with Connor Willumsen by Simon Reinhardt

12-15

Lessons Learned from Making Dog City by Luke Healy

Acknowledgments

Contributors Steve Bissette Sand Papel, Dog City Magazine Caitlin Rose Boyle Comfort Dogs art cards

srbissette.com sadsadkiddie.com

Jon Chad Bud Sinclairâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Death Speech

fizzmont.blogspot.com

Ben Evans Launch

benkevans.tumblr.com

Juan Fernandez Dailies Eleri Harris Dog City Magazine Luke Healy Launch, Dog City Magazine

crinkledcomics.com elerimai.com lukewhealy.com

Luke Howard Trevor

luketoons.blogspot.com

Christina Lee Poster

xtinadraws.com

Rachel Masilamani Selfies

rpmcomics.com

Will Payne Launch

williamkpayne.tumblr.com

Simon Reinhardt Dead Rappers, Dog City Magazine simonmreinhardt.tumblr.com Ian Richardson Patches

ianwilliamrichardson.blogspot.com

Sara Sarmiento Launch

saraasarmiento.tumblr.com

Ben Smolen Dog City Magazine d.w. Additional Illustrations. Connor Willumsen Passion Fruit Iris Yan Launch

kidclamptown.com connorwillumsen.com pigsinmaputo.tumblr.com 3

Cartoonists from the other Anglosphere: Simon Hanselmann, Australia By Eleri Mai Harris The story of a young artist leaving their isolated small town to become a bigwig in the big smoke is a bit of a cliche - bad mouthing it when you’re on your way up even more so. But if you grew up on an island of small towns in an era before budget air travel at the southernmost tip of Australia, you can make an artform of your vitriol. Just look at Ignatz nominated cartoonist Simon Hanselmann, who is never going back. “Why would you?” he asked, “Tasmania’s too damn secluded, too small.” “Once you escape into the world, you realize how limited it is.” The Australian state has an unpleasant reputation for welfare dependency, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, bigotry, poverty and the Port Arthur Massacre - the world record headcount for a lone gunman held from 1996 to 2011. It’s also teeming with artists and environmental activists battling forestry groups to protect its natural beauty - with scenery to rival New Zealand’s Middle Earth. And Hanselmann, the son of a heroin addict and a biker, called it home until his mid 20s. Hanselmann took the Tumblr indie comics world by storm in 2012 with his tragic and hilarious stoner strip ‘Megg, Mogg and Owl’, pushing the boundaries of good taste with sex, drugs and black humour. “I drew the first Megg and Mogg strips pretty much as soon as I got to

the UK [in 2008],” Hanselmann said. “Initially they were about random stuff, but later on, when I was looking for fucked up dysfunctional things for M&M to do, I was lucky to have a treasure trove of Tasmanian anecdotes. “I’m still plumbing the depths, remembering more horrible events and odd behavior.” “There’s a very defeatist attitude in the air,” Hanselmann remarked, admitting aspects of Megg, Mogg and Owl are uniquely Tasmanian. “The joblessness, the wasted free time, the laziness, the drug use, the

depression, the hopelessness, the lack of ambition, the creepiness, the small incestuous circle of friends.” Tasmania, Hanselmann said, always felt behind the times, only decriminalising homosexuality in 1994 - “really positive stuff for a kid with gender confusion”. “In my experience there’s something very weird and creepy about Tasmania... it’s rife with petty criminals, dogfuckers, racists, moldy old white people, homophobes and scary, shirtless ‘bogans’*,” Hanselmann said. “I’ve heard numerous times that my hometown, Launceston,

statistically has one of the highest crime rates in the world**. It also has a world renowned ‘blockie route’ - small minded dickheads drive in repetitive circles around the city yelling at people and making everybody uncomfortable. “There’s always been an unemployment problem and a youth problem. There’s just fucking nothing to do there.” While other kids were too busy

“It’s rife with petty

criminals, dogfuckers, racists, moldy old white people, omophobes, and scary, shirtless bogans..” “beating the shit out of people” and participating in acts of vandalism, Hanselmann was indulging in pop culture and comics. “I’ve been obsessed with comics since I was five; it’s just literally all I’ve ever wanted to do. “If I wasn’t riding my bike around or skating or whatever, I was inside drawing comics. “I had a small group of friends in primary school and we were nerds and loved comics and TV and video games - we all had big stacks of comics. “In high school I made friends with cool older guys down the street who showed me all the undergrounds and stuff. “I hung out with them and got fucked up and talked about comics and TV and films.” Australia lacks the comics permeation of North America - in Tasmania in the 80’s and 90’s, it was impossible for kids to get their hands on anything like the wide variety of comic books their American contem-

poraries took for granted. “I used to trawl second hand bookstores from a young age for old Mad magazines and Garfield and Footrot Flats,” Hanselmann said. “The school library had lots of European ‘albums’ (Tintin, Asterix, Lucky Luke) [and] I bought Disney Ducks from the newsagents. “In 91’ or so Launceston got a real comic book shop ‘Empire comics’. I got heavily into superheroes for a while then got into alternative stuff.” While Hanselmann started self-publishing comics in primary school, living on an island with no comic conventions or zine fairs pre web 2.0 wasn’t exactly conducive to commercial success. “There were pretty much zero opportunities for artists in Tasmania when I was growing up,” Hanselmann said, “it minimizes your expectations of what you can achieve.” “There’s a lot of free time though… I just hid away and worked on comics all the time. “I started self publishing at the local newsagent when I was eight; I sold zines on the playground at lunchtime.

“There were

other comics misfits around too.” “I put stuff in the local shops, nobody really cared, it was just a weird compulsion and my early comics were pretty shitty. “There were other comics misfits around too: in 2002 I moved to Hobart [the capital] mainly because of the comics culture there. “Michael Hawkins was pounding stuff out, Leigh Rigozzi was super active, a bunch of other dabblers and curios. “There was a real scene for awhile:

small, but robust. “It’s gone now though - it was a brief, magical time. “Hawkins is in Melbourne now too, Rigozzi’s in Sydney - everyone good got out,” he said. But there may be more Rigozzis, Hawkinses or Hanselmanns yet to emerge from the Tasmanian bush, more cartoonists prepared to exploit the island’s sometimes soul crushing

“Hawkins is in Melbourne now too, Rigozzi’s in Sydney – everyone good got out..” environment. For every artist who leaves the island, a mainlander or international artist arrives - MoNA - the Museum of Old and New Art - debuted on the Australian gallery scene in 2011, bringing with it a subversive ‘adult Disneyland’ of art. But for Hanselmann, there isn’t a thing Tasmania could do to redeem itself. “I guess if I wanted to I could move back and act like some benevolent big-shot asshole, maybe open some kind of wanky modern art museum - act like the king of comics/art. “What would be the point though? “You can’t force other people to be awesome and work hard, they either ‘have it’ and will ‘do it’ or they’ll procrastinate forever or just get sucked down into non-ambition, deflated and sad. “With the internet I could actually be in Tasmania doing what I’m doing. “It doesn’t really matter where we are in the world (except for the obvious extra horrible places with all the oppression and ultra-jerks) if you make a ‘product’ of a certain quality

and ‘get a lucky break’ you’ll ‘make it’. “The only real secret is to be OBSESSED with productivity and creation - work every second. Hanselmann says leaving the island has been a revealing experience. “I’m perhaps less of an asshole? I’m no longer tolerant of bullshit ‘ironic racism’ and ‘ironic gay jokes’,” he said. “[I’ve learned] Don’t be scared of challenges, or of change - act NOW. “It’s a small backward place down there: I’ve seen diversity, I could never move back. Never ever.” And yet without Tasmania, where would Hanselmann be?

Armed with material from his days on the island, Megg, Mogg and Owl have scored him a book deal with Fantagraphics and Hanselmann’s St Owl’s Bay was nominated for a 2013 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic. “Man I want to take out that Ignatz,” Hanselmann said. “Closer to the event, I’m planning an assault of ‘Vote 1: Simon Hanselmann’ election posts. “Really need to dig up some dirt on Lale and Austin [other nominees]. Take them down. Total smear campaign. Really alienate people ‘Hobart style’.”

* “Bogan is the Australian word for ‘white trash’. Charming people. Knock your teeth out.” **Not actually true, even in Australia, Darwin tops Launceston for crime rates. Eleri Mai Harris is a journalist and cartoonist hailing from Hobart, Tasmania. She left at 17, but plans to return one day.

Hey, Wait...

By Ben Smolen When I was young, my friend and I would play a game. Each of us would be armed with a snorkel. We’d run to separate ends of the house, and, then after a minute, go hunting. I’d find him, sneak up on him, and with great sound effect, mow him down with my snorkel. Then we’d laugh and play again. At the end, I decided that no title fit this essay better than that of the book itself. I was introduced to Jason, specifically “Hey, Wait…” either my sophomore or junior year of college—I can’t remember which. I don’t read comics regularly, but that one got me pretty much right away, and I’ve probably read it somewhere around ten times by now.

In its beginning, even before “Part One,” Jason infuses the text with nostalgia’s warmth. The prologue features two children, Jon and Bjorn, playing ding-dong-ditch. They ring the doorbell and run, but instead of a person opening the door, it is a swamp monster. This prologue celebrates youth, transforming this something ordinary into something exceptional. The swamp monster injects an air of the mythical into the text, but Jason’s straight-forward drawing style helps to ground the story in the every-day. These half-steps into the unbelievable can also be seen in the arrival of the kite-eating pterodactyl and the presence of stilts instead of cars. Jason combines the simple with the whimsical seamlessly, and, in so doing, has created a vibrant image of an embracing adolescence, in which

spaghetti is fit for kings and “grampaw’s underpants” is the best punch line. My parents started their four-year divorce when I was 17. It was unpleasant, malicious, and prolonged. In fifth grade, I told a girl that I loved her, and she called me a freak. When I was five, I was at my dad’s softball game. I got tired and fell asleep in the dirt on the side of the field. Someone took a picture of me. It was my favorite picture of myself until last week. At the middle, there is tragedy. A rite of passage between the two boys goes wrong; Bjorn jumps off a cliff, trying to grab a tree branch and swing back. He misses the branch and falls. Through this moment, Jason has found a way to provide a literal representation of “The Fall.” Once more speaking to Jason’s straight-forward approach, it is an actual fall that precipitates the end of Jon’s childhood. At Bjorn’s funeral, Jon sneezes and undergoes an instantaneous physical transformation. He appears as an adult now. In a single instant, adulthood takes over. In the picture, I’m lying on my back, in between two dirt hills. I’m wearing soccer shorts and a long sleeved gray shirt. My head faces five-o-clock, and the sun is in my face. I don’t know who took the picture. Time gets harder to control. In Part One, the shifting in time is subtle and gentle, represented by months changing in calendars appearing in the background. In Part Two, years jump. Suddenly, you are 20 years in the future; suddenly, you are back in your youth. The passage is sharp and melancholy. I was in my bedroom, it must have been two in the morning, and I could hear my father crying. Jon

is an adult. He works in a factory, he drinks, and he fucks. Through the artwork, Jason makes adulthood seem heavier. Jason uses heavily checkered lines more regularly in this section—Jon’s shirt, the tennis net and racket, the thatched rooftop—creating a more oppressive air. The story has shifted from fable to reality. I always thought that I looked peaceful in the photograph. Maybe more so, though, it was a picture of me. And there weren’t too many of those around. There is no stopping progression or trauma. It exists. And at the end of the book, Jon allows himself to recognize the pain from his past. He visits it and confronts it. In a rather painful section, Jon goes to his younger self and seemingly talks him out of going to the cliff. The next page shows a young Jon and a young Bjorn playing soccer. Bjorn scores and leaps in celebration. His arms are raised joyously, as though they are reaching for the branch. Jon creates a new past for himself. But with a new history, his present ceases to exist. As the book ends, Jon boards a bus. The bus is completely full of decaying creatures—lost souls. Jon sits; the bus continues to ride. In the picture, I was alone. I was five and alone. I don’t know why I’ve held onto it for so long, a representation of youthful isolation. A small example of a larger truth. Unlike any other emotion, there is a universality to pain. Hey, Wait…speaks to this with brutal bluntness. It is the individual moments of hurt that remove youth, replacing snorkels with suits, and move us into the uncontrollable melancholic. I still hurt deeply when I read the book. There is no slowing down. Everything keeps moving.

CF’s Mere

By Simon Reinhardt

I was recently talking to another cartoonist about trust. “When a book is put together well it creates some trust,” he said, “it shows me that the author knows what they’re doing.” CF has put his together his latest book Mere, compiled from minicomics he self-published and distributed via Twitter, quite well. Nicole Rudick provides an excellent introduction, which contextualizes the comics within, a touch I’d love to see in more collections. The comics, other than a few shorter pieces in the back, are single color (usually black) line art on color paper, each section a different color. The design manages to imply both the coherence of a single book and the experience of reading a stack of different minicomics. The impeccable production and design of the book buy a lot of trust, which might go a long way with some readers, as the comics within are the sort often described as “difficult.” One thing that immediately struck me upon reading Mere is how many of the “rules” of cartooning or good storytelling CF breaks in these pages. Action frequently moves right to left, against reading order; the drawing is unusually loose (compare Mere to CF’s book of drawings Sediment, which more directly showcases his faculty for imaginative, precise drawing); and the narratives are curt and opaque.

A panel from Mere by CF

The stories within are ostensibly genre exercises, and some of the genres CF cites—action, crime—are fairly conventional and can indeed be identified easily enough. Other sections though, are billed “suicide prevention comic,” “worst comics,” and, my personal favorite “‘good luck’ variety comic.” While a lot of parodists aim to boil genre work down to its essential elements and exaggerate those elements to the point of comedy, CF seems more apt to include only the barest trappings necessary to make the genres and modes he’s citing remotely recognizable. A hint or a faint scent rather than an enveloping atmosphere. Correspondingly, any narrative in these comics functions less like anything that would immediately read as story, more like a series of movements and moments. The comics in Mere aren’t really about much other than the experience of reading them. That experience, though, if you read Mere in the way it demands, is an entirely unique one. It’s helpful to

lose any expectations of a narrative that’s satisfying in any conventional way, and heighten one’s attention to things that usually recede into the background—the textures and tonalities, the peculiar insistence on these minicomics as a series of publications, buttressed by the faux ad pages (CF’s familiar Fantasy Empire logo reappears at least once as well). Read this way, the endpapers, the photographs, and the transitions from one section to the next are as important as the comics themselves, as if CF has constructed a book almost entirely from the half-remembered detritus of old zines and comic books. CF’s work has always been evocative more than anything else, more concerned with suggesting than with actually telling you anything. Mere pushes further in that direction while still reading as comics. On my first go through I didn’t really know what to make of it. After paging through it on and off for the past few months, I still find it a pretty mysterious book, but that sort of distracted contemplation seems to me a better way of interacting with Mere, less fraught than pushing straight through with any weight of expectation. It’s a book that repays a longer term periodic engagement, built not upon repetitive reading and rereading but a more casual dipping in and out, exploring the many nooks and crannies of CF’s work

Bob the Dog

Our date with Bob Kane

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

By Steve Bissette In January 1980, Rick Veitch and I made the pilgrimage from Vermont to New York City to meet Bob Kane, creator of Batman. We were still reeling from our 1979 marathon partnership (with Allan Asherman) on the HEAVY METAL graphic novel adap-

“We’d heard stories

about Kane – and his eccentricities – for years.” tation of 1941: THE ILLUSTRATED STORY—a full-color, fully-painted/ collage monstrosity that nearly killed us before completion (Rick had done all the heavy lifting, and though we got it done, it had taken a toll). HEAVY METAL art director John Workman called me at my parents over Christmas vacation, wondering if Rick and I might be interested in jamming on another graphic novel project. This one wasn’t for HEAVY METAL: it was for Bob Kane, who was seeking someone to do the artwork on a biographical comic about racecar driver

Mario Andretti, who was huge on the Formula One circuit at the time. Rick and I had no desire to undertake such a project, but how could we pass up a meeting with Bob Kane? We’d read and heard stories about Kane—and his eccentricities—for years, including some hilarious accounts shared by our instructors at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon Art Inc., from which we’d graduated just a little short of two years before our meeting with Kane. So, what the hell: off to New York we went. I can’t recall if it was John Workman, Rick, or me who called Kane to set up the meeting—my recollection now is that it was Workman. My memory of the event begins, really, with our waiting outside of Kane’s red stone building—a very swank apartment building near the United Nations—where we’d been told to meet him. We were bundled up against the cold and toting our oversized black portfolios. His apartment had a doorman in uniform who greeted us; he told us to wait, as Mr. Kane would arrive shortly. Sure enough, a taxi pulled up to the sidewalk—and

there was Bob Kane, in the flesh. He pulled off his gloves and held out his hand to each of us. “Good to meet you, boys,” he said as we each shook that hand and introduced ourselves. “I have to apologize for being late,” Kane replied. “I’ve just come from my doctor. I’ve got some kind of a sore on my penis and had to get it checked out.” I don’t think I touched anything with my hand for the next hour or more. I certainly kept it away from my face. Glancing nervously at each other, Rick and I followed Kane up to his apartment. He chatted amiably, thanking us for making the trip. Once

“I’ve just come from

my doctor. I’ve got some kind of a sore on my penis.”

inside his apartment, he excused himself after telling us to make ourselves at home and take off our coats. The apartment was huge and decorated all in red: red furniture, red ceilings and walls, red rugs. We looked around at

the framed artwork on the walls as we did so, already wondering what we’d gotten ourselves into. Kane was a genial enough host, but he quickly decided with his initial look at our portfolios that we were NOT the men for the job. Kane was looking

“I may have used assistants now and again, but this is all my work.” for an art team to “ghost” the Mario Andretti graphic novel—working in Kane’s “style,” signing his name to it— and our underground-comix-flavored samples (which included our Creative Burnouts collaborative pages) weren’t even close. “I can remember his face screwing up when we showed him our 1941 pages,” Rick recalls. “His mind couldn’t process what he was seeing.” Reaching behind a sofa, Kane pulled out a number of sheathed Batman original pages—what looked to both Rick and I as work from the Dick Sprang era of the comic book, though again, I’ll have to defer to Rick’s memory on this point. I vividly recall Kane pointing out panels that looked crisp and absurd to me (those circular panels with criminals firing handguns that are held up to their cheek, to fit their faces and the action in a tiny spot inset panel), saying, “Now, this is the kind of thing I’d be looking for, but with race cars.” It was a relief, frankly, that we weren’t going to have to deal with the gig. At this point, Rick and I looked at each other and had the same thought: we’ve got to get out of here. But first, Rick had to ask about something. “Isn’t this a Dick Sprang

page of art?” Without missing a beat, Kane replied, “No, this is mine. I did this.” Remaining polite, Rick pointed out that just as he was asking us to “ghost” the Andretti comic—if our work had cut the mustard—just as others used to draw Batman. Without missing a beat, Kane insisted we were wrong. “I may have used assistants now and again, but all this is my work.” Um, what about Sheldon Moldoff? Jerry Robinson? Assistants. What about the Carmine Infantino? “Oh, he was a good assistant,” Kane said. But it was all Kane’s work. Kane showed us Neal Adams original art—and claimed it was his work. What could we say? It was all his, no ifs, ands, or buts. We were to understand that, absolutely. Bob showed us a lot of things during that short visit; I’ll defer to Rick’s sharper memories here. “He had presentation art for a Marx Brothers cartoon he was pitching to the networks,” Rick remembers. “He brought out what he claimed was his original sketch of Batman that he was negotiating with the Smithsonian to sell. We were suspicious of it because

“...the most apalling

ham-fisted blackand-white muckup of ... Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a staircase” imaginable.” it just didn’t look like it was done in the 1930s (or even drawn by Bob)… He told us how he got a piece of BAT-

MAN back in the day. He originally signed a contract similar to Siegel and Shuster giving everything away. But he was under 18 when he signed it. His uncle was a lawyer and used this to renegotiate a deal that gave Bob 10% of everything BATMAN plus creator credit forever. Thus the lavish lifestyle.” It was a short segue into Kane telling us that every time the BATMAN TV show was in reruns, he, Bob Kane, still received royalties. “Now, that’s what you boys should be shooting for, too,” he advised. Flummoxed, we were likely glancing at one another more than was polite by this point. Kane was unflappable: “Let me show you boys some of

Some of “Bob Kane’s” work on Batman throughout the decades. (Art by Dick Sprang, Carmine Infantino, Neal Adams)

my other work,” he said, stepping into an adjacent room and coming back with the most appalling ham-fisted black-and-white muckup of Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending A Staircase” imaginable—only the “nude” was supplanted by a BobKane-like man in a rumpled 1940s style business suit. We were gobsmacked and rendered speechless. “He had other paintings from his Pop Art period that were sound effects like ‘BLAM!’ and ‘POW!’ crudely painted on canvasses,” Rick notes. “If memory serves, these were executed in grays, not color.” That’s what I recall, too: no color at all. Poop, not Pop. We were also boring Bob Kane. Though we made appreciative noises,

“He brought out what

he claimed was an original sketch of Batman.”

he had something else on his mind. Our non-business was done. Checking his watch, Kane set aside the artwork and explained, “You know, boys, BATMAN is going to be on in a few minutes. You care to stick around and watch it with me?” I didn’t think anything could crease my Parietal lobe further, but that sure did it. We had to get out of there, immediately. Stammering something about another appointment, Rick and I made

our apologies, and began to put on our coats. Expressing his regrets, Kane remained the gentlemen, once again shaking our hands (with that hand!) and wishing us the best. “I wish it could have worked out, boys,” he cheerfully concluded, “but I just don’t see you working out as assistants.” Nor did we. As we bundled out the door, Kane bade us a fond farewell. No sooner had the apartment door closed than we heard the familiar strains of Neal Hefti’s “Batman Theme” from Kane’s TV. I pictured animated cartoon dollar signs ca-chinging in Kane’s eyes. Now, to find someplace to wash our hands…

An interview with Connor Willumsen By Simon Reinhardt & Luke Healy Connor Willumsen is one of the most exciting young cartoonists working today. Connor has self-published minicomics, been featured on Studygroup.com and contributed to numerous anthologies. He has also worked for Marvel, DC, and Casterman. Connor first came to our attention as the 2012-13 fellow at the Center for Cartoon Studies. We are thrilled to include his contribution to Dog City #2 and we’re equally excited to present some context for his unique comics in the form of this interview. So how did you get started as a cartoonist or reader? People bought me comics sometimes. Family members liked superheroes. My dad always talked about Batman. I remember him describing The Dark Knight Returns. He had only vaguely seen it, so it wasn’t accurate. I wasn’t able to find it until much later. So you were into superhero comics? Yeah, definitely. I wasn’t interested in getting sequential issues. I had certain favorites and threw out the rest. I defaced and drew on top of the issues I liked. I had Superman comics and thought the scenes where they were

just talking were really boring so I drew lasers coming out of his eyes to spice things up a little bit. What really stuck out? Well, the first one was Weapon X, by Barry Windsor Smith. It’s sort of like Alien, or a horror comic. Wolverine doesn’t talk, he’s just running around. It’s amazingly restrained. The art and coloring, which he did, are stunning. I don’t know how old I was when I got The Dark Knight Returns. I’ve probably read it hundreds of times just from driving between Alberta and BC. If I finished it quickly I would just read it again because there

“I don’t know how old

I was when I got The Dark Knight returns. I’ve probably read it hundreds or times” was nothing else to do.

At a certain point did you start finding out about other comics? Not until pretty late, maybe in college. There were Chris Ware books around. Near the end of college, Fort Thunder, stuff like that. I still lacked access at the time

Were you drawing comics from a young age? I did a comic about the 3 Ninjas when I was quite young. They were in a cabin in the woods eating pasta and an alarm went off and they jump-

“I did a comic about

the 3 Ninjas when I was quite young.”

kicked and then drove out of the place. That’s the plot of the first movie. Yeah I guess it was an adaptation. I had plans with friends to do comics but I would get three pages in and it would be bullshit. I just drew a lot. I didn’t start doing comics again until late college. What were you doing in college? I studied illustration, but I realized that I wasn’t suited to it. I had to study advertising and a lot of the things I had to learn or absorb were really repugnant to me. It made me feel really disgusted with myself. Near the end I was struggling to understand how it worked. I remember this last project was so shockingly awful I couldn’t believe I’d made it. I decided for the rest of my projects I would do comic books and convince everyone there was a reason. Did it work? It did. I was making comics that

were kind of arbitrary. We did a brochure for Amazon and the art director who came in thought it was an interesting technique, to do it as this strange comic. And it was just about nothing, it was bullshit, but at the end I put “Amazon.com.” That’s how advertising works I guess. You were doing these comics for assignments, did you do more personal projects, too? They were sort of personal projects because I disregarded what I was supposed to do. I would just slap Amazon.com on at the end. I also started to get invited into anthologies, I don’t remember how it happened. And I got hired by Casterman to do an album. How did that come about? I don’t remember but it must have been that I was putting images on message boards. The author emailed me. I drew a whole 115-page book, which I’d never done before. It was scripted, American style. I don’t know if they used Google translate or what but some of it was a little

“I had Mark New-

garden for two days and they were two of the most memorable classes I’ve had.” confusing.

What was it about? It was a supernatural story. This guy was travelling around America in the early 20th century looking for this witch, who I think had killed his brother.

Page from Mover Shaper by Connor Willumsen

I’m having trouble remembering because I’ve never actually been able to read it. It’s only available in French and Dutch. And when did that book come out? 2009 or 2010. I drew it over the course of a year and a half. It looks pretty different from beginning to end. Looking back I don’t think it was a particularly good work but I was able to complete it. Did you find Casterman good people to work with?

Yes. I thought the working relationship I had with them was average or normal but compared to business relationships I’ve had since then, they were really great. Often I wouldn’t understand what the script was saying and I would just sort of wing it and they were usually okay with it. I was only in contact with the writer and he was really generous. We planned to do another book, but I couldn’t do it because I was about to do a thing for DC Comics. Which is too bad, even though Casterman pay less, with the American companies it’s precarious.

Do you think the Casterman project was helpful for your artistic development? Was it useful or interesting to you? I became a better craftsperson. It wasn’t intellectually invigorating, it was more problem solving and figuring out, how do I get this done? It was important to know how many pages I could do in a day and to figure out sizes and supplies.

have a wife and kids. And I was just living by myself in a shitty apartment, I didn’t need a lot of money. So it was whatever. I was happy to get what money I got.

And not long after that, you started working for DC? I established the project with DC right after but it didn’t start for a long time. That was a source of frustration. It was a book called Witchlands by Kurt Busiek, a new series. I was supposed to start and maybe continue it. It wasn’t a superhero comic, it was sort of supernatural. I drew two whole issues and I was really proud of it. Kurt Busiek liked it. But they didn’t seem to think they would be able to sell my artwork. They wanted to push my issues back to issue 6 and 7 and bring in a more traditional guy. It’s too bad because I was proud of those pages and tried some new things. Everybody seemed to like them but I don’t think they thought they could sell it, which is fair enough. It’s never come out.

You’d been in New York for SVA, right? Yeah, I had a scholarship to study there for a year. I had classes with David Mazzucchelli and Keith Mayerson. I had Mark Newgarden for two days and they were two of the most memorable classes I’ve had. There was also a professional practices class with Dan Nadel. The first time I heard about Frank Santoro was when Dan brought him in. It was an amazing thing to watch. A lot of the students there were interested in working for DC, and they thought he was insane. I was impressed.

So getting shuffled around and then cancelled, was that a drawn out process? Yeah it was a long and drawn out process. I wasn’t impressed with them but I wasn’t upset either. When they canned me I remember them saying, “wow, you’re taking this very well.” But it occurs to me that people don’t necessarily know how old I am, if I

And what came next? I was moving from New York to Montreal at that point. I was doing commercial illustration, odd projects. I can’t remember most of them.

So you moved to Montreal... Yeah. Montreal was such a cheap place to live I was able to get by with the odd illustration job. And I started making zines. I got sick of working in anthologies and decided to make my own stuff. I brought them to a convention called Expozine. I took them to stores occasionally. I just handed them out to people. And when you started handing them out were you getting any feedback? Not really. I could tell people sort of liked them and I could usually tell they thought the drawings were good. But I’ve never been good at engag-

ing in that sort of discussion of my own work, finding out what someone thinks critically of it. And what sort of comics were you reading then? Not much because I was in Montreal and they were harder to get. I was getting stuff from Picturebox and a lot of European albums. Those were available. I couldn’t even read them but I’d just try to understand how they made them. I was getting a lot of Hugo Pratt, Nicolas DeCrecy, David B., Christophe Blaine. So you were making zines. Did things start to pick up from there? I kept getting invitations to do short stories. I did a story called Untitled by Mum Pittsburg for a Norwegian feminist magazine. And this whole time I started a lot of different books, often getting ten pages in just trying to figure out a working method. I really was just sort of bumming it in Montreal. I wasn’t making money but I didn’t need much, so I was just fiddling around all day drawing. I was fairly cynical about professional stuff—I couldn’t imagine pitching a book to Fantagraphics or whoever. Is that something you think about now? Not very seriously. I think I’m supposed to, but I can’t imagine what I’d pitch them would really excite them. I think I could probably draw superhero comics professionally, but it wouldn’t be very satisfying. You also worked for Marvel? Yeah I did an issue of the Punisher and a Wolverine thing, and both of

Tell me more about that. Well, I do a few test pages at the start of any given project to figure out what page sizes and tools are going to work. It’s easier to freehand cartoony stuff—classic black and white lineart, Charles Schulz type stuff. I try to do it a bit differently. I often first create a layout with a general composition and use that as a guide for the final drawing.

Page from Mooncalf by Connor Willumsen

those got published. When was this? The Punisher issue I did at the tail end of my time in Montreal. And in the Fall I moved here [to White River Junction] for the fellowship [at the Center for Cartoon Studies] and I was working on Wolverine around that time. How was the experience of working for Marvel? Well, I liked doing the Punisher. Jason Latour wrote that, he’s a pretty good storyteller. They had a pretty laissez faire attitude towards that book so I was able to work how I wanted. It got a good reception. I had to quit Wolverine because they wouldn’t let me work on it the same way as I did on the Punisher. What was the issue? Well, I didn’t want to use “widescreen” panels, which is what they like.

We made a specific agreement that I would either be allowed to control layouts and panel sequencing completely, or we would agree beforehand on a fixed and unchangeable grid system excluding the usual widescreen panels. I think layouts and sequencing are a big part of what I’m good at, so I didn’t want to give that up. They got the pages and kept pushing me to use widescreen panels. I was on this fellowship so it seemed pointless to compromise with them. So you’ve been here for the past year, what have you been working on? I’ve been trying to do longer work. I’ve been putting a lot of stuff online. I did a comic called Treasure Island, which is online. I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to get better at freehand drawing—the goal is to use no pencils, no underdrawing, no erasing preferably.

How do you use that layout drawing? I look at it like a still life, I try to copy the original drawing. Things get out of proportion but you can cheat them back by changing the size of other stuff. I suspect that’s why Kirby’s pages are so dynamic. He supposedly just started in the top left corner and worked straight down. So there’s some dynamism to it, what are the other assets of freehand drawing? Well it’s extremely hard to do, so that makes it worth pursuing. But it also lends itself to a different way for the eye to move across the page. Your eyes move in slow, steady arcs, as opposed to a more traditionally composed page, which tends to move the eyes back and forth. It’s just a more basic approach. You can use loose leaf paper because it doesn’t need to take erasing. So is this how you drew Passion Fruit? Yeah. I don’t do all this stuff all the time, it’s something I’m working up to. Cool. Looks like we’re out of time—any closing statements? Nah.

Dog City would like to thank: Our contributors, The Center for Cartoon Studies, Valerie Fleisher, Michelle Ollie, Eleri Harris, Allison Bannister, Josh Lees, Tom O’Brien, Bridget Comeau, John Carvajal, Ben Gowen, Ben Smolen, April Malig, Allie Kleber, Eli Piette, Dan VanHassel.

Lessons Learned from Making Dog City 1. Finances first.

By Luke Healy I’ve been at the Center for Cartoon Studies for a little over a year now. For those 12 months, I’ve been surrounded by people restlessly making mini comics of all shapes and sizes. I’ve put together 2 issues of Dog City, as well as drawn and produced several mini comics of my own. All together, I’ve printed, folded stapled and trimmed well over 1000 books this year. And throughout this process, I’ve learned a few things that have made my life easier, more affordable, and a whole lot more sensible. Some of these tips might seem a little hypocritical, as a part of Dog City, but remember that Dog City is produced by a team of people over the course of several months. We have the benefit of time and resources to make this a luxury mini comics item. If you’re making a mini of your own, it benefits you to make it in the cheapest, easiest and best looking way possible.

This might seem like a really cynical way to make mini comics, but at the end of the day, they are a product, and when you’re trying to sell a product, money matters. You should be thinking about money before you put pen to paper. Questions like; “Can I afford to print colour?” “Is this book too long to be stapled?” and “Will this book need to be printed on large paper?” should be asked right from the start, when you are deciding on the goals and specifications for your project.

2. Print cheap.

Firstly, print black and white if at all possible. Does your comic really need to be in colour? Does it need to be risographed? Why? If you can’t come up with a really compelling answer, then just do it in black and white. If it needs to be in colour, maybe consider only self-publishing it on the web. You will save yourself time and money. Secondly, use a cheap printer. Search online, and ask at your local print shops to see how cheap you can get copies. Then just order loose pages and assemble the books by yourself.

3. Cheap embellishments.

Why pay 50c to print a colour cover on white paper, when you can print black and white on coloured paper for 5c? Either can be just as eye catching. A needle and thread are super cheap. Why not sew the spine of your book instead of stapling?

4. Spend time designing your mini.

Good design will look good no matter how cheap your materials. Lots of people are tempted to print their covers on premium cardstock to give their books a more expensive feel. A well-designed cover will look just as good on 5c copy paper, as it will on 60c cardstock.

5. Produce small runs.

Print small runs of your minicomics, and then simply print more when you run out. You won’t have to invest a lot of money into the comics up front. Use the cash generated from selling the first, small run to print a second larger run when you run out. Don’t be impatient and run straight to indiegogo.