Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Buy Center for Cartoon Studies Art & Comics Today:
CCS Auction Ends Today!
Joe Kimpel In Your Sox!
Links, Looks, and More...

  • The auction is here, and still has a few hours to run -- it ends today! Bid fast, bid often -- it's for a good cause, and offers unique goodies!

  • This holiday season auction offers four unique Center for Cartoon Studies posters, meaning if you win, you've got enough for your wall and amazing art to give away to loved ones as Christmas gifts.

    The two posters were silkscreened images, and hence limited run and unique; the printed Seth art is unique in that its an untrimmed and signed (by Seth!) sheet, and there's only one other way to score the Ivan Brunetti designed diploma -- two years of hard work at CCS!

    This auction is sponsored by the I Know Joe Kimpel minicomics distribution collective; as with everything from IKJK, the proceeds will go to help CCS students and alumni with collective needs: i.e., CCS group travel, convention costs, etc. This is a worthy way of supporting and sustaining the CCS community, while landing some excellent art items for yourself and/or others.

    This auction lot contains four items:

    * Signed by Seth, an uncut sheet from the 1st CCS brochure. Seth designed and drew this large 2-sided sheet, and we have it uncut, straight from the printers. It's 2-sided, full color, and has the original CCS brochure along with various postcards, bookmarks, etc, all included. It's big, 25 x 38, but this is an item that's hard to get a hold of and certainly would make any Seth fan a very happy person during the holidays.

    * Blank Center for Cartoon Studies Diploma: This Ivan Brunetti design graced the diplomas handed out to the first-ever graduating class from the Center for Cartoon Studies. This copy is minus all the official "you graduated" writing, of course. This multi-color 11 x 17 screen-print is simple yet bold in design and exclusive to CCS. Writing your own name in at the bottom is not allowed.

    * Holiday Sale Poster: A Ken Dahl (Monsters) original winter poster that he screen-printed for 2006's CCS holiday extravaganza. Shades of blue make this an elegant winter wonderland, infused with Ken Dahl's own unique perspective on life. 22 x 15. [Note: This honey of a poster is on my CCS office wall, folks!]

    * Sammy/Anders/Kevin Poster: Sammy Harkham, Anders Nilsen, and Kevin Huizenga made CCS their 2nd stop on their joint book tour in February of '06. White and red screened onto green paper creates this visually stunning poster, and includes artwork from all three of this group of amazing young cartoonists. Stands out at a uniquely sized 11.25 x 23.25. [Note: This sweet graphic is displayed in my basement studio library! It's a great poster.]

  • Here's the link to the auction -- one more time! -- but you'll have to act fast!

  • And another Christmas and seasonal gift source you best remember is the I Know Joe Kimpel site itself, where you can order many of the amazing comics, minicomics and graphic novels created by the CCS alumni, students and artists -- why not do some shopping with Joe?
  • _____________

    I'm still slithering in self-produced slime, but slept like a drugged monkey last night, so maybe I'm on the mend. Wait a minute, I took night-time cold tablets last night: I was a drugged monkey. Maybe I'm dying, but no, I think I'm on the mend -- doesn't matter, I gotta teach today, regardless.

    Sniff -- anyhoot, have a titanic Tuesday, and stay well...

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    Friday, June 01, 2007

    Gabbing with Gabby: The Livin' End!
    Part Five (and Final) of the Gabby Schulz aka Ken Dahl Interview

    Photo: You can write & draw anything you want about cats; they'll still love ya. Photo compliments of Josie Whitmore.

    Well, all good things must end -- and that includes this interview.

    I'll be jawing and drinking with Gabby next week, but you won't. It's the end of the road, folks, and I hope you enjoyed the visit. Last call.

    More on Monsters (see yesterday’s interview installment for context, if you’re just joining us today), the risks of spilling the beans in pen, brush and ink, life in 2007, The Center for Cartoon Studies scene and a wrap-up to our conversation follows.

  • If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve seen and read here, be sure to order some of Gabby's comics, here.
  • _________

    SB: You go through great pains in the text pages of Monsters #2 to distance the comics from any real persons or events in your past, or any adherence to specific people, places or events. This isn’t something I noticed in your earlier comics. Has the more intimate -- in terms of sexuality -- nature of Monsters been problematic for you, in terms of feedback from friends, etc.?

    GABBY: According to some people, I'm still making Monsters way, way too close to reality for their comfort. I really need to go back and make sure that there's no possible way anyone can mistake any of the characters in the comic for anyone they know. So the intimate stuff is a bit problematic, yeah -- mostly because my own story involves other people who might not be as much in the mood for confession as I am. Most of that is just my fault; when I was drawing the first issue of Monsters, like I said, I had no idea that anyone was going to actually read it. So I was a lot less concerned with making “all resemblances to people and places living or dead purely coincidental” than I probably should have been.

    And writing Monsters also forced me into a private debate over the strengths and risks of drawing autobio comics, too -- I worried that if a story became too fictional, it would lose the whole impact of the story. I didn't want to lose that voyeuristic, Real Story quality that makes autobio comics like I Never Liked You, Epileptic, or My New York Diary so engrossing (and gross). I wanted to make sure people reading the comic really knew that everything in Monsters was at least possible, that it could happen to them too -- that anyone could put themselves in the shoes of the characters, and not just write them off as gross or stupid or slutty. I was also afraid that, if I didn't ground it in autobio, some parts of my story might seem so over the top that people would write it off as fantasy, or metaphor.

    It's actually really frustrating to me that I couldn't write out the full story of what happened during the first two issues -- since the reality of it was so, so much worse and more awful than what I write about in the comic. I had to cut out everything about my mother's death, for example, which came immediately before finding out about the herpes, and made things exponentially harder and more insane at the time. But at some point I decided I needed to focus on just the herpes, and save the other stuff for another, even more miserable comic book.

    But I guess really what you're asking is whether it was hard for me to draw and self-publish a comic book that basically screams I have herpes!!!... yeah, it was a bit uncomfortable, even for a masochist like myself -- only because I didn't want anyone to think I was, you know, totally stoked about it or anything.

    SB: To understate the obvious -- clearly, it sucks, that comes through loud and clear. I know folks who’ve struggled with it for decades -- it usually provokes the reaction, “There but for the grace of God go I,” unless one is a moralistic prick who considers such infections punitive in nature, which is utterly stupid, but sums up the knee-jerk reaction many still harbor towards AIDS and STDs in general.

    GABBY: I guess part of my motivation for drawing and publishing the books in the first place was to force me to "get over" having this virus, and to force other people to get over it too. A couple of my friends at the time when I was first trying to cope with having herpes were really strong women who made it a point of being vocal about their having HPV, which is genital warts. Their talking about it in public seemed to have this magical effect on other people, including me; suddenly it was OK, not an issue, not anything gross or sordid or shameful. And that made me realize that the people who talk about herpes like its gross or disgusting or a big deal are the people who don't actually know much about herpes, and are still ignorant enough to assume they don't actually know anyone that has it -- when, statistically, it's more likely that they already have it themselves! So idiots create the stigma... and, from my personal experience, it seems like most of us are idiots -- about herpes, anyway.

    "Ew, grody" people, look away: Monsters #2, 2007

    But I also noticed, from watching how my friends with HPV influenced our other friends, that these same ignorant "ew grody" people all generally take their cues about STDs from people who DO have STDs. So if you act ashamed or disgusted about your virus, other people are going to follow your lead, because what the hell do they know about it anyway? So if you can get it together to just get over all that bullshit and treat it like any other innocuous disease or virus, people generally follow suit with that too. (Plus, if they keep being assholes about it anyway, you're now allowed to fuck with them by threatening to spit in their drinks.)

    I know it's fucked up that it has to work that way, and it's a lot harder than it sounds to just "get over it." It's not right that people with the disease are also forced to correct everyone else's cruel ignorance about it; but I just don't see anybody else bothering. And forcing myself to come out of the closet about herpes was literally the only thing that kept me from killing myself over the initial shame and disgust, and allowed me to see it for what it was: just a fucking skin rash.

    The irony of all this is, it turns out that I might not even have herpes myself -- but I don't want to ruin too much of the ending of Monsters.

    Good lord, I'm sorry for going off about this. I guess it's obvious by now that this has become my favorite topic of conversation. The short answer to all that is that drawing Monsters is just a way to force myself to deal with something I couldn't have dealt with otherwise. And that worked really well. Too well, actually, as people have started treating me like some kind of authority on herpes (which I'm not!). People are always asking me questions about what's contagious and what's not; what's safe to do sexually; what the different strains are about; how to talk to other people about having it. These are all things everyone in a just world would have been taught in grade school.

    Also, dozens of people have told me things about their own STDs that they've never told anyone else before. There's so many people with herpes walking around, and most of us are too embarrassed to say anything about it. So it feels good to help with that, in a way I never thought would be possible and in fact seems kind of absurd. But I guess it's a good deal for me, since as long as there's STDs there'll always be an audience for my ridiculous little comic book.

    From Monsters #2, 2007

    SB: Actually, The Comics Journal said Monsters is
  • “A must-read for anyone with genitalia,”
  • so I reckon you’ve got a species-wide guaranteed audience. You've gone from a creator of confessional comics to a Father Confessor for STDs?

    GABBY: Yeah... it's all very Catholic. I've gone from having stigma to having stigmata.

    SB: The first two issues of Monsters clearly present stages of your own process, which is almost like the stages of grieving. The excruciating exchanges between 'Ken' and his girlfriend in #2 are really agonizing reading, you perfectly captured the nuances of such dynamics: the clumsy word choices resonating with blame, maladroit verbalization of confusion and ignorance inherently skirting any culpability for the situation, and so on. This is tough stuff, Gabby.

    GABBY: Yeah... it was really hard to draw. I mean I literally spent most of the time at the drawing table not actually drawing but just sulking, paralyzed over how to plot out these miserable interactions. To draw something out well I have to mull over every little tiny part of it, every hand gesture and sweat-bead -- so when I'm drawing traumatic or depressing situations it can be just a huge bummer. I'm glad it sort of came through, and didn't just come off as ridiculous -- although part of it should be a little ridiculous too, I guess. But I think for my next comic I'm going to draw something about hugging puppies on a sunny day outside a chocolate castle. On vicodin.

    SB: Let's get into some technical storytelling and graphic decisions: there's a careful pacing in both issues I love. In #2, it's shaped by the shift from a predominate four-panel grid to the accelerated nine-panel grid (on pages 24-25) as events push 'Ken' toward dropping his guard and risking intimacy again. Was this predetermined, or did it just emerge as you drew that sequence?

    GABBY: I think I regretted the square, four-panel format just a few pages into the first issue, after I found out how restricting it is, and how hard it is to build up momentum on a mood with just four panels. I would switch to the nine-panel grid when I wanted things to flow a little faster... to suddenly hurry up the reader with the smaller panels, so they'll feel like they're being rushed a bit, in places that I thought that would be appropriate (like with the rollercoaster, or when 'Ken' is drunk and suddenly making out with someone). But from all this drawing in a square, I sure have a new appreciation for the versatility of the nice, long rectangle.
    OK, enough on herpes: Gabby, "Why Do I Care?," 2006.

    SB: Your basic drawing has evolved tremendously. Your observational skills are formidable in the day-to-day details. The body language between your characters read/feel/look true, but you bring the same chops to bear on the more fantastic elements: the herpes critters, in all their various incarnations; Herpesland; the dream landscapes. It's all of a piece. Is that flowing easily for you these days, or do you agonize over those imaginative elements, too?

    GABBY: Hey uh, thanks. I really enjoy drawing the imaginative stuff. As for getting better at drawing in general, you know what helped the most? The realization that someone other than me was actually reading my comics. After Monsters #1 got all that attention, I got scared straight about drawing -- that is, I figured that if people were actually reading it, I should actually bother to, you know, draw elbows right for once in my life. I think for most of my life it's been hard to justify going whole-hog into drawing comics because there was just no possible way I could make a living off of it. And because if it wasn't making any money, it was just a waste of time that could have been better spent doing something to make my rent. What gives me the right to draw funny widdle cartoons, when the rest of the world is busting their ass just to catch up with their credit-card debt?

    The Ignatz thing: Ken "Gabby" Dahl with his Ignatz Award -- "The Brick" -- at the Small Press Expo (SPX), October 2006 (photo from Greg Means & Tugboat Press)

    But now I guess I'm trapped, since after the Ignatz and The Comics Journal thing I would feel like if I stopped drawing, or only drew crappily, I would be an even bigger asshole and failure than ever. I don't know. I have no idea how the hell to talk about drawing cartoons. It just sorta happens and then afterwards either people like it or they don't; the truth is I have no idea what I'm doing, or what looks good or bad. I can never guess what other people are going to think about it. I keep reminding myself of that Jackie Gleason line though, that goes something like, "Talent doesn't ask, 'will they like it?' Talent says, 'I like it.'" Pretty big-headed, but it seems to work -- at least for people who don't have terrible taste in comics.

    But you know what else really helped my drawing a lot? Not having a job. The last time I worked anything over an 8-hour work week was in 2005. I've spent over a year now basically living out of a truck and spending all day and night drawing and sitting in parks thinking about drawing comics. And being unemployed freed me up to take the Fellowship at CCS, too, which couldn't have possibly hurt my drawing "skills." So I think unemployment has really done me right, even when you factor in the abject poverty and chronic periodontal disease.

    On the other hand, I'm broke as a dead-baby joke now, so I fear my days of beer and roses will soon come to an end -- as will the new comics -- as I plunge back into that big Barrel o' Shitjob.

    Babes He'll Never Have:
    another page from "Why Do I Care?," 2006

    SB: College is about providing that kind of environmental bubble environment, really. Well, I want to back up a bit and get into something else about this current body of work. Gabby, what kicked the puppy over the mountain three years ago?

    GABBY: Oh, you know: getting dumped.

    SB: Hah! That’s what prompted me to get going on Tyrant! Sorry, I guess I essentially asked about this earlier in another way. But I’ve got to ask if there’s more to it --

    GABBY: I don't know if this is true for a lot of cartoonists, but I really, really need to be totally alone to be productive. Not just physically alone but, like, "psychically" alone too. Because when it really comes down to it, there's a thousand things I'd rather be doing than laboring over comics. I suppose if I were more disciplined, I could set up some kind of regimen for drawing that still allowed me to have time for a relationship and (shudder) a full-time job. But the truth is, I am just so fucking lazy and unfocused that if I am given any reason whatsoever to step away from the drawing table, I'll probably take it. So if I'm living with someone and they're watching a cool movie in the next room, or going out with friends to a bar, or making pancakes, I'm not going to be able to resist joining them.

    It's also hard for me to be really close to anyone while I'm working on comics, since it feels like there's someone else in my brain. I'm too easily influenced by other peoples' opinions, especially people that I respect -- and that usually makes me self-conscious when I'm drawing. I need to be a brain in a jar in a dark basement while I'm working on a comic book -- free to obsess over the most stupidest, lamest, most depraved and inappropriate things I please, without the feeling that I'm being judged or put on display. The idea that someone I'm living with might come across some pencils I drew of a naked person is just abhorrent to me. There's nothing a voyeur hates more than being observed himself. That's basically why I stopped drawing comics from 2000-2004 -- I was involved with an extremely PC person, and I didn't want to freak her or any of her friends out. Not that anything I’m drawing is so reprehensible -- but the idea that it might be, to someone, is enough to shut off the tap.

    So I guess I just can't win. On one hand, the lonesome cartooning life is perfectly suited to my disposition, and I really enjoy being alone; on the other hand, drawing cartoons is really fucking lonely! I think for people like me, there's nothing noble or workmanlike about comics. Comics for me are just a cry for help. I started drawing comics to prove that I existed; to communicate with people that otherwise would never have bothered listening to my dull, petrified stammers. For whatever reason, comics-speak is the only language my brain is fluent in. It's how I think -- which is an immense fucking burden, since it's impossible to translate that into any other type of communication. But every time I'm offered a quicker, easier, less labor-intensive route to gratification or validation -- like a relationship -- I go and ditch comics again. Hopefully that's going to change someday; but most likely I'll just die unhappy and alone under a pile of inked pages, like most "indie" cartoonists -- that is, if I'm lucky!

    SB: Well, we’ve all got Jack Kirby to look to on that -- he had a full life and drew a monstrous amount of amazing comics. It’s possible to do both, but that’s not an easy path to find. You've been on the road most, if not all, of your adult life thus far. Now you're plugged into a new comics community, the new one evolving around CCS. It’s something pretty unique, really, unlike anything I’ve experienced since the Kubert School days. How did you get involved with CCS -- the Fellowship (no Tolkien reference intended) -- and has this been feeding you creatively?

    GABBY: I know that there's a legitimate selection process and everything, but I'm pretty sure that the main reason I got the CCS Fellowship was because I went skinny-dipping with Robyn Chapman at the San Diego Comics Con a couple years ago. Now I realize Robyn's rationale: White River Junction can be a pretty boring place, and we need to import as many people as we can get who have poor impulse control. I'm sure it also helps that I was able to drive my entire house here; otherwise I imagine it would be really hard to drop everything and move up into the wilds of Vermont for a year. But basically she told me to apply for the Fellowship a couple cons ago, and I did, and James Sturm liked my stuff, and so the next thing I knew I was stocking up my housetruck with rancid oil to make the cross-country trip from Oregon to Vermont.

    Now that the Fellowship's over it's becoming obvious that I was pretty lucky to have done it. Like you say, there's a real comics community up here, which is something that's really rare and special, especially for cartoonists, who spend so much of their time alone and underappreciated. It's like being at a comics convention every day... well maybe not that exciting. But I've definitely learned more about comics and cartooning life in the past year than I have in the other 33 -- primarily from you, actually! And most of it has been pretty much just by accident, because I happened to be in the same room while something cool was going on.

    I've met some really cool people here, and feel like we've got an awesome (if dysfunctional) family going on. Everyone's really eager to help each other out, share information, critique each other's work, buy each other beer, and generally make life up here more bearable. It's not like some art schools, where the students can be really antagonistic and catty and mean to each other. I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens to the new CCS students in their second year. I'm actually, against all sanity and good judgment, even thinking of sticking around for another year myself, to watch the second-year kids graduate.

    SB: Do it!

    GABBY: I might not have a choice -- I’m too broke to get my house out of the driveway!

    Being here has definitely been feeding me creatively -- there's so many other cartoonists to swipe from! I've been ripping off [student] Joe Lambert's style more than anyone realizes, and he's only like 22 years old. Everyone's gotten way better at drawing cartoons since they got to the school, and I think a big reason for that, other than the formal education, is all the time we spend together. Oh, and the ping pong. The intensive ping-pong training has been invaluable to my development as a cartoonist and a human being.

    Steven Wright's house key could start this house and drive it around... Gabby's home away from, uh, home, a biodiesel wonder!

    SB: OK, other than ripping off Joe and ping pong, let’s get to brass tacks: how has CCS affected or altered your comics work, or your orientation to it?

    GABBY: Being at CCS has definitely helped me take comics more seriously -- or at least made me feel like it's OK for me to do so, without getting laughed at. It's also nice to be around the younger cartoonists -- most of whom draw better than me. It's been really reinvigorating, like when they bring kittens to nursing homes. It feels good to have a bunch of people who care about comics collected in the same geographic location. I'm really worried about what life's going to be like back in the real world, where nobody gives a crap about my little comics.

    At the same time, traveling has really helped me make better comics. I think it's a good idea to get out in the world and force yourself to out of comfortable mindsets and habits. That sounds obvious, but I know so many comic-book people who have no idea there is anything to life beyond their sheltered little menagerie of Comics Journal flame wars and pop-culture references. And there is no better way to ensure that your comics will eternally suck than allowing yourself to remain in an exclusive, insular group that always validates your work, no matter how derivative or mediocre it is. Cartoonists need to be kicked in the ass a lot more than most people.

    So traveling has helped a lot for me in that regard -- it shows me exactly how little my private interests, concerns and beliefs really matter to the rest of the world; it reminds me that nobody outside of this clique knows or cares what the hell an "Ignatz Award" is. Most importantly, it reminds me to draw for a wider audience than just other indie-comics geeks. It's so easy to fall into a rut of ideology, not just with comics but with anything -- I've found this especially true with political activists -- where you think all that needs to happen for the whole world to be better is for everyone to shut up and be more like you. When I was vegan I totally forgot that the rest of the world gave zero shit about my dietary dogma. It was easy to forget because I surrounded myself with other vegans, or at least with people who knew what the word "vegan" even meant; and so eventually I stopped even questioning the legitimacy of our convictions. And that's how people go crazy, no matter how clever or persuasive their theories are. It's never a bad thing to keep throwing all your cherished theories and assumptions against the cold, hard wall of reality to find out what sticks.

    Crap, I don't think that had anything to do with your question. Um, yeah, CCS has been great. I'm sad to leave. The industrial paper-cutter alone made it worth the trip.

    SB: So, in the big life journey, do you feel part of a community at last? I mean, I feel you’re a big part of what CCS is right now, if nothing else --

    GABBY: Yeah, very much. Especially with "my" class, the second-year kids; a lot of us are really supportive of each other's efforts, and make a point of helping each other to do better, and everyone seems to have improved so much over the year because of it -- me included. There's a bit of healthy competition too, which is great for motivation. There's some people here who think a whole lot about comics, and I get to drink beer and talk with them like every week. I'm sure it helps that there is literally nothing else to do up here than sit around and talk and draw, at least during the winter. And now that it's summer we all get to go play kickball together. I love the kids here (including you, Steve!), and I'm really excited to see what the new class will be like.

    SB: Huh, so I'm a kid, eh? What or who are you reading these days -- in terms of book, comics?

    GABBY: Sadly, I have been reading a lot less non-comics books this year -- although I did finally get around to reading Don DeLillo's White Noise a few months ago... that would make a great comic book!

    Being at CCS has exposed me to a lot of new great foreign comics -- I really flipped over European cartoonist Christophe Blain, just for the gorgeousness of his drawings, and how easy and casual they the story reads. And when the school went up to Montreal a few weeks ago I found a ton of really incredible-looking French-language comics by cartoonists I'd never heard of before and no one in the US has ever heard of, since they've never been translated into English.

    Although I'm probably forgetting a lot of people, I am eagerly anticipating new stuff from Dan Zettwoch, Aaron Renier, Sammy Harkham and Kaz Strzepek. And I've picked up a lot of great stuff at cons lately, too -- Elanor Davis, Drew Weing, Matt Bernier, Chris Wright, and Nate Beatty are all people I wish would put out even more comics, and get more recognition (and money!) for them. And that big King-Cat Collection that just came out was a really great dose of nostalgia -- although it also made me really glad that people aren't doing so many of those "dream" comics anymore.

    And, mark my fucking words, people will be going apeshit over Laura Park once her comics start coming out.

    Photo: Gabby, CCS Guest Lecturer, May, 2007; photo by Joe Lambert.

    SB: So, about your own comics -- what's the plan with Monsters? What's the scope of this project at this point?

    GABBY: Agh, I'm not really sure yet... to be honest all I want now is to just finish it as soon as possible, before I piss too many more people off or I die or something. It should be going on for at least three more issues -- but frankly I'm not sure. Since it's going to be pretty much pure autobio from issue three on, I keep having to add on different endings and footnotes every few months, every time I get a new test or find out something new about herpes.
  • Just last week I read that having herpes might actually protect people against the bubonic plague.


  • And I want to include all this stuff that I find out about herpes, but really at this point there's so much to still be learned about it that I could just go on forever, way past any sane reader's capacity to care. So hopefully I'll rein it in to just a few more big comic books -- and then it'll be published as a book, probably by a very new comics publisher called Secret Acres. So Monsters has already got a little home, once it's all done.

    SB: Any other projects you care to discuss?

    GABBY: To procrastinate on drawing the rest of Monsters, I've been drawing a few things for some really cool anthologies coming out. Julia Wertz (of Fart Party fame) is getting a bunch of great cartoonists to illustrate Craigslist "Missed Connections" ads -- that should be out sometime in early 2008. And some CCS students are putting together an oversized anthology called Sundays, which I'm drawing my largest pages ever for -- we should have that ready for the MoCCA in just a month from now!

    Also, when my roommates aren't home I've been trying to teach myself how to play the fiddle. So if anyone out there wants to give me any pointers...

    SB: Bring ‘em on, folks, if you’ve got ‘em. Thanks, Gabby, and thanks for the considerable time you poured into this interview -- much appreciated!
    ____________________

  • You can find Gabby’s currently in-print comics and minis here, along with other excellent work from the CCS graduates and students.

  • That concludes our first marathon interview; hope you enjoyed it. There will be more to follow from other folks, including more cartoonists and fellow CCSers.

    Have a good weekend, one and all -- I’ll be posting between now and Monday, but if I don’t see you here ‘till then, have a great one.

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    Thursday, May 31, 2007

    Gabbing with Gabby:
    The Gabby Schulz aka Ken Dahl Interview, Part Four
    Here Be Monsters!

    Gabby, finger & fellow CCSer Jaci June; February 2007 (photo by Jeremiah Piersol, compliments of Emily Wieja)

    More people see movies than read mini-comics, so bear with me a moment as I offer a cinematic context for the following interview. Seeing as Gabby and I eventually go there ourselves in today’s installment, it seems appropo.

    Larry Clark
    ’s notorious debut feature Kids charted a day in the life of a cocky AIDs-infected teen lad eagerly popping as many virgin cherries as possible, while a recent ‘score’, having tested positive, listlessly tracks him down before he can infect more young women.

    Danny Boyle
    ’s 28 Days Later blighted the UK with a hyper-infectious viral ‘rage’ that decimates the island populace in two weeks, erupting from a botched animal activist raid on a biotech lab; 28 Weeks Later, the sequel, finds the ‘rage’ re-emerging and spilling beyond control.

    In Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, a misanthropic scientist deliberately spreads a contagion to fellow passengers on a commercial international air flight, thus precipitating a global apocalypse.

    As of yesterday, though, we all now know it needn’t happen this way.

    Malice, microbiological scientists and misanthropy needn’t be involved.


    All it takes is being horny, homesick, and self-centered enough to ignore the consequences for anyone else.


    Gabby
    ’s current comic series Monsters is more relevant than ever, with
  • yesterday’s news of a TB-infected American
  • enjoying a long-planned European wedding before buzzing back to the good ol’ U.S. of A. --
  • even if it meant exposing a whole shitload of people (including those whose paths he may have crossed in his drive from Montreal into the US, ending at last at Bellevue Hospital in New York City)
  • to a particularly rare, virulent and drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis.

    Image: "The biotech industry arrives in Hawai'i"; Amusement political commentary for Honolulu Weekly (and a pointed adoption of movie monster imagery) by Gabby, 1999

    Monsters
    , natch, concerns herpes, not TB (or AIDS or ‘the rage’ or cultivated bioweaponary). But few other works in any media so thoroughly explores the ethics, issues, empathy (or lack thereof) and agonies of knowing one is infected, facing the conundrum of personal will (and desire) after becoming a mobile vehicle for a contagious disease. Monsters is timely in ways Gabby never imagined when he began work on such a personal project.

    That said, there’s only
    one intro suitable for what follows: reading the previous three installments of this lengthy interview with Robert Schulz aka Gabby Schulz aka Ken Dahl. From his childhood in Hawai’i to his initial breakthrough into comics via four issues of the self-published minicomic Drenched and a healthy stint of political cartooning, it’s all there, with ample illos and links.

    If you’re stepping in to this for the first time today, you’ve got some catching up to do.
    If you’ve been with Gabby and I thus far, what are you waiting for? I’ll get out of your way -- the interview continues...
    __________

    Gabby art aka 'Ken Dahl' from No. (2005)

    SB: What was the rest of the minicomics 'scene' of the '90s like for you -- bringing us up to date with your recent move to VT and your fellowship at the Center for Cartoon Studies -- your post-Drenched, pre-Monsters work?

    GABBY: While I was drawing strips for the Honolulu Weekly, I really didn't draw anything other than that, what with all my traveling and work and codependent relationships. It took a dose of real tragedy to get me back into minicomics. By 2003 I had been going out with someone for three years, and had really sunk into a nice comfortable routine of not drawing at all. The time and effort I would have put into drawing went instead into watching DVDs on the couch, making pancakes, and generally bending over backwards to make my partner happy. But then my mother, who lived in Phoenix, got diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I spent a few months back and forth between Phoenix and Hawai'i, trying to help her fend off collections agencies and landlords and move into a hospice home. Then, when she started getting real bad, I went back again and spent a good month and a half alone in Phoenix, sleeping in a rental car on the side of the road, with very, very little support from family or friends, basically waiting for my mother to die. Apparently I was the only family she had left, so it also fell on me to take care of her funeral arrangements and remains.

    SB: Oh, man, Gabby -- I’m sorry you went through that alone --

    GABBY: Ah, that’s just what happens with parents I guess. They die.

    After my mother died, I returned to Honolulu, and me and the girlfriend promptly went through a really awful, complex, drawn-out breakup. We both started seeing other people, casually, and I moved into my father's house. Luckily cartooning, like an old cast-off ex-girlfriend, took me back again with open arms. So in 2004 I finally found my way back to the photocopier, with a tiny little minicomic called Blind Fart that I drew for one of the last Honolulu Zine Fests, which was really just like 20 kids finding a good excuse to get liquored up to loud music at a bar.

    SB: It seems like Blind Fart was a real logjam buster for you: you've since put out Taken for a Ride (2004), No (2005), Gordon Smalls Goes to Jail (2006), and your magnum opus Monsters (2006-7) -- and that's just what you've shown me.

    GABBY: Yeah. And I was surprised to find how hard it was to get back into, to even draw a tiny, simple little story like Blind Fart, after slacking off for so long. It felt really good to have a finished comic in my hands, no matter how small, after such a long hiatus from drawing.

    I worried that if I didn't keep drawing I would never start again, so I drew Taken for a Ride immediately afterwards -- it was a slightly larger minicomic about flying on a plane on the one-year anniversary of the World Trade Center blowing up.
  • Both comics, and most of my other newer stuff, are for sale at the I Know Joe Kimpel site, here.

  • Those two small efforts got a bit of kind attention from readers, and gave me the juice I needed to get back into relearning how to draw comic books well. At 32 years old, I knew that this was probably the last chance I was going to get to start over from scratch. So I went to lots of free life-drawing classes, got back into filling sketchbooks, and generally tried to avoid all manner of employment or human contact until I remembered how to draw again. I also moved away from Hawai'i again, and spent a sumer working on organic farms to get my head clear. I ended up settling back in Arizona, where some friends had offered me a couch.

    I have a whole stack of comic stories from this time that I had pencilled or thumbnailed but then abandoned; the stories that survived to the inking stage I compiled into the No minicomic (also available via I Know Joe Kimpel), which I sold at my first comic con, the Alternative Press Expo in '04.

    SB: What did that convention experience mean for you, and your sense of 'the community' at that time?

    GABBY: I only started going to cons like three years ago, and I think it was the best thing I ever did as a cartoonist. It allowed me to actually meet and get drunk with other cartoonists in person, which led to all sorts of happiness -- including landing the Fellowship at The Center for Cartoon Studies this past year. It was so great to watch Kaz Strzepek suddenly get popular too, after he'd spent his whole life in Hawai'i drawing amazing comics and getting absolutely no attention for them, even with the internet. I'm really glad we both put ourselves up to buying a table at APE.

    Swinging on a star in No. (2005)

    Going to comic cons now, I've even got to finally meet in person a few of my old pen-pals from back in the Factsheet 5/Drenched days -- like Carrie McNinch, John Porcellino, David Lasky and Dylan Williams. The funny thing about Dylan Williams was, he had actually spent a day showing me around San Francisco once over ten years ago, but at the APE in 2004 he didn't recognize me, and I was too shy to reintroduce myself -- and so for the next two years I would avoid him whenever I saw him at a con. Even after someone (re)introduced us he still didn't recognize me, especially since people know me by a different first name (Gabby) now than they did back then. And so I kept pretending I didn't know him!

  • Photo: Gabby at the Portland Zine Symposium on August 13, 2006 (photo from Greg Means & Tugboat Press)

  • I guess it was really insane of me to not just mention to Dylan that we used to know each other a decade ago. Eventually it just became a perverse game to see how long I could draw the awkwardness out.

    Then for this year's APE I needed a ride down from Portland to SF, and someone told Dylan that I was looking for a ride, and he called me saying he and Tim Goodyear were driving down and had space for me in the car. So me and Dylan were sitting in a car together for like ten hours and I still couldn't bring myself just to tell him that he already knew me!

    Sometime around four in the morning it finally came out that I used to live in Hawai'i, and he's like "hey, that's funny... do you know a cartoonist that used to live there named uh... Rob something?" And so I finally had to break it to him that that was me. He took it pretty well, although he was understandably pretty freaked out I guess. I stayed at his mom's house that night. So I guess we're friends again! As long as he keeps recognizing me at cons...

    SB: Let's get into Monsters, which deservedly won the Ignatz Award in 2006. Now you’ve got the second issue out, which is tremendous, too. What was the launch point for this project?

    GABBY: Uh, geez, I dunno... misery? boredom? When I was drawing Monsters #1 at the table of my housetruck, I took it for granted that it would meet the same fate as everything else I've drawn -- a few people would read it, a few copies would gather dust on a zine rack somewhere, and that would be the end of it. If you had told me then that in a few months I was going to have to accept an Ignatz Award for it, I would have laughed and laughed. In fact, I'm still laughing. I have no idea how that happened.

    SB: Well, congrats, man. Enjoy it!

    GABBY: OK, OK. I do have one guess about how I won the Ignatz: everyone who had herpes at the SPX voted for Monsters to win the Ignatz. That's a lot of people! According to the Centers for Disease Control, 50-80% of American adults have Type-1 herpes, and 21% have Type 2 -- and more than two-thirds of these people don’t even have symptoms.

  • Partially Herpes-infected crowd "claps" as Gabby accepts the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Minicomic (photo from Greg Means & Tugboat Press)

  • I guess that was the point of drawing a comic book about herpes, too. I had gone through so much misery and confusion about this virus, and drawing a comic book about it was a way to make sense of it, both for myself and for other people who knew as little as I did about it. I was really angry that I had heard nothing about this virus until my early 30s; and then only because my partner had an outbreak. So I wanted to make sure that other people didn't have to go through the same bullshit as me, only learning about herpes the hard way, after they got it themselves (or, worse, gave it to someone else). It seemed like a good use for comics -- I could use Monsters as a cheap, easy way of forcing people to think about something they otherwise probably wouldn't. Like Chick tracts, only not insane!

    SB: It's far more ambitious and cohesive than anything you've done before, with a most singular focus. The title is a bit deceptive, but entirely appropo -- when did you settle on that moniker?

    GABBY: That and a few other things will (hopefully) become a lot more obvious as the story progresses. I'm trying to draw this thing with an eye on the collected, finished book. But, without giving too much away, the "monsters" name has something to do with how our culture views contagious viruses, and herpes in particular. In future issues I'm going to get a lot more into the monster-movie aspects of disease -- like with vampires, which are such a perfect metaphor for STDs. And some horror-movie directors, like David Cronenberg, I am just totally convinced have herpes.

    SB: OK, let’s get into all this. Monsters embodies a real maturation of your cartooning and writing skills. There's nothing tentative about it, it's all of a whole. Were you consciously stretching and challenging yourself, or did that just manifest in the doing of it?

    GABBY: I think a great story just fell into my lap (ooo -- no pun intended) -- and when I realized this, I did everything I could to be worthy of the opportunity. In a way it's been easy to write, since it's mostly about my own life, and covers topics I've been obsessed about anyway.

    But I guess it has taken a lot of challenging myself. First of all, writing about herpes meant telling everyone who read my comic book that I had herpes! So before I could write about it, I had to force myself to get over my own embarrassment at having the virus -- which was extremely hard at first, and took a lot of research and forcing myself not to be a chickenshit. I think my history of drawing about uncomfortable subjects really helped me through this stuff.

    Page from Monsters #1 (2005)

    And in the process of doing all that, and educating myself about the disease, I found that my embarrassment and shame had been replaced by a fascination with, even an admiration for, herpes and viruses in general -- in all the weird ways they've learned to coexist with humans and other "higher" forms of life. In some ways they're a lot smarter than we are; they just multiply, and let us do all of the footwork. They've pared everything down to a streamlined simplicity. If the point of life is to propagate our DNA, then viruses are the undisputed champions of evolution. Which makes sense, as they've been around a lot longer than most anything else on this planet. So you can see, by what I'm writing here, that once a virus is in you, they not only become a part of you -- you become a part of them, too. It's a weird world.

    Anyway, I should stop talking about this before we get into bird flu and smallpox... Did you know some monkeys in a zoo in Colorado just died from the bubonic plague this week? And there's a guy in Arizona locked up in a hospital, permanently, for having a deadly new strain of TB! So these little viruses and bacteria aren't going anywhere. They're always working as hard as we are to win the evolution game.

    Photo: Suck some face, baby? Oral horrors, sexual parasites in David Cronenberg's Shivers aka They Came From Within (1976)

    SB: They’re everywhere! I won’t get into Avian Flu turf, but let’s dance. This empathy for the virus you’re discussing puts you in rare company: William Burroughs ("language is a virus"), David Cronenberg, who you’ve already mentioned, etc. Cronenberg has spoken openly in interviews since the '70s about his fascination with viral lifeforms (or whatever they are -- the 'life' thing is still a point of some scientific controversy) and empathy/admiration of their life cycles and methodology. He's still the only Western filmmaker to openly articulate that, in his films and his interviews.

    GABBY: Yeah, I guess that's what makes Cronenberg's movies so fuckin' creepy, too. And that's part of what Monsters is going to try to address... how it wouldn't kill people to have a little more sympathy for, or even just curiosity about, other lifeforms (or pseudo-lifeforms) --especially the ones that live inside us.

    Panel: Those cuddly mites from Jay Hosler's The Sandwalk Adventures

    SB: Jay Hosler has taken this to a different level with his second graphic novel The Sandwalk Adventures -- I mean, Charles Darwin’s eyebrow mites are cute li’l lovable creatures in Jay’s world. There’s no horror element whatsoever. Jay’s a biologist, so he has a very pragmatic, scientific orientation to the subject; they fascinate him, too (as they do me).

    GABBY: I think most people resist this because to accept and understand the motivations of things like leeches, or scorpions, or viruses is a big step towards legitimizing the existence of these other critters -- and this severely hampers our ability to kill them. It also makes us a lot less secure about our assumption that we're top species on the totem pole, and all our behaviors are good and right and preordained to be so -- even when we carry out or condone atrocities that no self-respecting virus would ever be psychotic enough to consider. For whatever reason, humans are really, really allergic to the idea that we're not only animals, but that we're not particularly nice animals, at that.

    But once you do start to grasp this, the audiences of all these horror movies start to boil down to so many mindless football fans rooting for the home team. Both “teams” of protagonist (human) and antagonist (monster) still have identical objectives -- winning; surviving; getting the healthiest most attractive mate. Only an idiot (or a rabid fan) could think there's an unequal morality behind the motivations of the two teams. On Earth all of us species are just trying to get along -- unfortunately, "getting along" around here usually involves some degree of killing, eating, and otherwise sucking the life out of other lifeforms. It sure is a wacky game; but, as white American humans, we do a heck lot more of this killing and life-sucking than any lamprey or cougar or face-hugger. So why do we keep rooting for the home team?

    Photo: Richard Wordsworth as the infected astronaut in the Hammer Films version of Nigel Kneale's The Quatermass Xperiment aka The Creeping Unknown (1955)

    SB: Well, that’s the genre orientation, traceable to a number of seminal 1950s science fiction classic. Nigel Kneale introduced many of these motifs in The Quatermass Experiment BBC teleplay, which was huge in the UK, but most Americans were first exposed to this archetype around the same period via novels like Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters and Jack Finney’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which was originally serialized in Collier’s magazine, a very popular weekly. The parasitic alien lifeforms -- Heinlein’s controlled nervous systems, Finney’s supplanted humans with replacement sentient vege-entities -- are a threat, and must be destroyed. Period. That’s it. It’s Cold War xenophobia gone viral. To take this one step further -- and tie in to the Japanese pop culture you were enjoying as a kid, and where it has since gone -- the contemporary Japanese ghost novels, manga and films have taken their hauntings ‘viral.’ Koji Suzuki’s trio of Ring novels -- Ring, Spiral and Loop -- specifically manifest their hauntings via disease (smallpox), genetic codes (a dead man’s altered DNA is central to Spiral) and so on.

    GABBY: Yeah, and not only Japanese movies -- movies like 28 Days Later, Children of Men, and The Host (which is from Korea and actually anti-American) play on the new terror over virus-bourne illness. I've also noticed that all the new Marvel superhero movies have updated their origins; Spiderman gets bit by a genetically engineered spider instead of a radioactive spider, and The Hulk gets engineered genes from his father instead of just getting bombarded with gamma-rays. Viruses and genetic engineering have replaced radiation as That Creepy New Threat That No One Really Trusts or Understands. I guess I'm just lucky to have gotten herpes at a time when I can jump onto that whole train.

    SB: Lucky?? You devil, you. By naming your comic series Monsters, you’ve tapped this genre pool. So, again, I ask you: why the title, Monsters?

    GABBY: Now, that takes some explaining; and, again, it will become a lot more obvious as the story progresses. But since those won't be done for a while, and I can't resist getting back up on my wingnut soapbox, I'll try to lay it all out here too:

    I just watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers again last week -- the remake with Donald Sutherland. The first time I saw it was on HBO around 1980, on the very first stormy night my family moved into this big creepy house on a hillside with lots of winding stairs and weird architecture and strange plants growing under it. Anyway this movie, partially because of my environment, and also because of all the fucked-up shit going on between my parents at the time, gave me the most sweat-drenched, wake-up-screaming nightmares on a weekly basis literally for years. It was hands-down the most traumatic piece of media that I consumed throughout my entire childhood. I think I still don't trust adults because of it.

    Photo: The original nightmare: the vege-Becky (Dana Wynter) wakes up in Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

    SB: I grew up with the original, the 1956 Don Siegel version, which induced plenty of nightmares. But keep going --

    GABBY: The other night I pulled the [1978] movie out of my roommate's DVD stack, feeling like I was in the mood for a good scare, and curious to see how the movie held up 25 years later. I was surprised to find myself not only completely unscared, but actually rooting for the pod people. I mean, everyone on the "human" side of the movie are these painfully corny and pretentious post-hippy Bay-Area fashion victims, wearing turtlenecks and using chopsticks for no reason and going to pop-psychology lectures and writing self-help books and sitting in mudbaths... just total fools. And meanwhile, you've got this amazing alien lifeform that traveled through our galaxy on the solar winds to find a new home on Earth -- and their big threat is, what? That they want everyone to get along? I mean, what exactly is the problem there? Where's the horror? You go to sleep, and when you wake up war, and disease, and hunger have been abolished, and you can communicate telepathically -- definitely not a worst-case scenario, as far as horror-movies go.

    I mean, I understand about having free-will and self-determination and blah blah... and I know that Body Snatchers was just anti-commie propaganda.

    SB: Some interpreted the novel and original film in that manner, but both cut much deeper than that. Clearly director Philip Kaufman and screenwriter W.D. Richter revamped the remake to resonate differently for the ‘70s; you’re right, the humans are narcissistic yuppies. That was a calculated decision: it’s part of why that film works so well for much of its running time.

    GABBY: But, you know, what's the big deal? So you're a plant. What's so bad about being a plant, anyway? Has a plant ever invented a machine gun, or nerve gas, or a nuclear bomb? Do plants force orphan children to do cocaine and clear minefields? Do plants dump millions of gallons of mercury and arsenic and PCBs into the groundwater? Has a plant ever forced anyone to work in a diamond mine? Show me one plant species that spends the majority of its time and resources plotting better, more efficient ways of killing and enslaving other plants. Let's give the plants a break already, Donald!

    Photo: 'Liberation' in Cronenberg's Shivers aka They Came From Within (1976)

    SB: Cronenberg always said he was on the virus’s side, too; that was his radical take with Shivers aka They Came From Within: the sexual parasites are nasty little fuckers, but they do ‘liberate’ their uptight human hosts. Part of what was -- and remains -- so perversely disturbing about that film is the way it caricatures the sexual liberation of the '60s. It presents sexuality as a non-lethal contagion, in and of itself, embodied as these fecal, transmutable parasites.

    GABBY: Yeah, that was a great movie! I saw that for the first time when you showed it to a bunch of us at CCS this year.

    But I guess if I was going to attempt to drag that rant up there back to some sort of relevant point, it would be this: thinking about what it's like to be a herpes virus has really altered my perspective on what it's like to be human. Now that this virus is a permanent part of me, I can no longer really see it as a separate life form, much less a threat, you know? And so, when I watch horror movies now, I often find myself rooting for the "away" team -- the monsters -- more than I do the polished, boring, clean and predictable Hollywood "heroes." The "monsters" in the movies just want the same thing that anyone wants -- affection, nourishment, understanding, safety, survival. Or maybe it just wants to be left the hell alone! I mean, what exactly was the big crime of the monsters in Creature from the Black Lagoon, or King Kong, or Alien? Why did they, and countless other monsters, all deserve to be hunted down and killed? What did they ever do to us? We came to their houses, for no reason other than this weird white-guy colonial impulse to fuck with other peoples' business. Why are so many of these movies rooting for the overdog? Is it because the underdogs don't look like us? Because they also find "our" women attractive? Because they also want to survive? Who's side are we on, anyway? And is picking a "side" even a good idea the first place?

    SB: Sure, exactly.

    GABBY: What’s really scary to me is that all these preconceptions make their way out of the cineplex and into our real lives. And entertainment -- not just monster movies but all media -- always comes with an agenda, packaged up in a way so that most of us never even notice it. Kind of like how a virus operates! When movies entertain us, we allow them to slip through our defenses and implant their agendas inside us, where they gestate, mature, and become a part of us (and, in some rare cases, come popping out through our ribcage).

    More from Monsters #1 (2005)

    And this is the process by which we're taught how to act, who to emulate, who to hate, what our core values should be. This is how our cultural perceptions are shaped about how we view outsiders, and strangers, and people who are different than us... including people who have diseases like, say, herpes. Monster movies teach us more about how to treat people with herpes than any amount of grade-school sex-ed classes.

    Which is kinda lame, considering that these films usually try so hard to maintain the (usually WASP, straight, middle-class, non-diseased) status quo, and I don't hardly ever see this being questioned or challenged -- certainly not by Hollywood (although Cronenberg is a rare exception).

    SB: Cronenberg always challenges. He articulates his perceptions and obsessions with greater skill, intelligence and clarity than most; he’s quite deliberately subverting narrative and cultural conventions. Most monster movies do -- consciously or unconsciously -- take the monster’s side, that’s the allure of such films. I mean, the monster is always far, far more compelling than the hero or heroine, or the cultural status quo. But that’s almost accidental. I see your point; we’re supposed to be rooting for the hero, against the monster. All this was and usually still is sublimated into a standard hero vs. menace scenario. In that mode, you’re right, most standard genre genre fare embraces a very conservative, imperialist and xenophobic imperative.

    GABBY: It's the cultural war of the bully and the popular kid against the rest of the world. And usually -- like with our real popular-kid wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Panama and so on -- the threats of these wars are entirely invented and maintained by the popular kids themselves. The popular kids need to enshroud themselves in victimhood and martyrdom before we'll allow them to invade, kill, rape, torture and enslave the rest of the world.

    SB: Ideology as virus. That’s what Burroughs was saying: language as virus, ideas as virus --

    GABBY: Right, right. And so they invent the War on Terror. They invent Satan and Christ. They invent Reefer Madness and Static Cling and Ring Around the Collar and Acid Reflux. There's always got to be a thousand daily threats pushed up in our faces, to draw our attention away from the real problems and ensure that the goalposts will always remain in a place where the winning team can always keep winning, and the losing team never has a chance.

    Gabby fights the War on Terror; from Taken for a Ride (2004)

    And any entertainment medium, even comics, plays a huge part in this war -- in their narrative point of view, in their themes, in the way the action is framed. And this is intentional -- no one, least of all artists and storytellers, is immune from it. There's no such thing as a story that doesn't have a moral (even if the moral is not to bother with morals!). I suppose that's why I'm drawing cartoons instead of making music videos or something -- cartoonists have a lot more freedom to express unpopular ideas, and have a much better chance of finding an audience for them. It's my way to fight for a world where people cry instead of cheer at the end of Creature from the Black Lagoon.

    Photo: That's it! I've held out as long as I can! Gabby mentioned my fave movie monster again -- so here he is, with Julie Adams. Go, Gillman!

    SB: Shit, I cried! Well said, Gabby -- you’ve pretty much summed up my own affinity for horror and monster films since childhood. I always sympathized more with the monsters than the humans; there’s a subversive drive to most of the genre that favors the outsider, particularly when the deck is stacked against the outsider so completely. We love our monsters. You've in fact made the Herpes virus a character in Monsters -- it's gone from a malignant presence in #1 to the sideshow carny of #2, overseeing and ballyhooing "Herpesland." What has the process of characterizing the little boogers been like?

    GABBY: It's been really fun. I wanted to make it at least a tiny bit based on reality, so first I looked at a few microscope pictures of the things on the internet, and a few interpretations of what they might look like in 3D. Luckily they looked sort of cool -- spiky gelpacks with little honecomb balls inside. Just grotesquely pretty to look at. So I used them for a starting point, and sort of let them ooze gradually into the comic, and "evolve" into more anthropomorphic shapes and characters as they made their presence more known. In the next issue they become sort of my pirate's parrot, as I go through the process of conversing and debating with this new "monster" in my body (which I hope isn't going straight over the top into ridiculousness). Anyway they're a lot of fun to draw, and not as boring as, say, an HPV virus.

    _________________

    Continued -- no, concluded! -- tomorrow!

    Be here for the scoop on Monsters #2, Gabby’s current work,
    the good life at The Center for Cartoon Studies, and more!

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