Canadian born cartoonist, Seth, is hands down one of the best comic book creators ever. Its been over ten years since he started his personal comic book tales in his book Palookaville. I call them personal tales because they are not always strictly autobiographical and sometimes not at all. His first Palooka-Ville arc was collected into the trade paperback, It's A Good Life if You Don't Weaken, and was about his search for more information about an obscures New Yorker cartoonist. His latest arc, Clyde Fans was started three years ago and is not finished yet. But that hasnt stopped his publisher, Drawn & Quarterly, from collecting what has come out into a TPB called Clyde Fans which will be out in July. Clyde Fans is a look at the life of two electric fan salesman who are brothers.
But all of this independent work has not stopped Seth from doing work for hire but that doesnt mean he has been hacking out work for Marvel Comics or Entertainment Weekly. He has designed, The Complete Peanuts which will be collecting all of Charles Schulzs strips over the next 12 and a half years. He also did the interior book for Aimee Manns CD, LOST IN SPACE.
I have been such a fan of his work so it was a real pleasure to get to talk to him. Also its a personal milestone because I have now talked to the last cartoonist of what I [and no one else] call, The Canadian triumvirate. It consisted of Chester Brown, Joe Matt and Seth. While Seth and Chester are native Canadians, Matt moved there a while ago but has since left for Hollywood. All three of them included each other in their autobiographical work, either in person or in spirit , and their influence on one another was very apparent.
Please after reading this, click on this link and buy Seths books. They are amazing.
Daniel Robert Epstein: Was there a specific inspiration for Clyde Fans?
Seth: Yes there is. There is an actual old storefront in Toronto called The Clyde Fans Company, It looks exactly like the one you see when I draw it. It was still in business when I first used to walk by it and I always noticed it because it was a nice old storefront. I used to look in even though it was a dimly lit place. On the far wall I could see photographs of two men. The place was very old-fashioned. I used to always wonder who they were and bit by bit I started putting together a story.
Coincidentally when I put out the first issue they put a sign in the window that said they were out of business. Then it turned into an art gallery.
DRE: Did you ever do any real research into who they were?
S: No. though I had opportunities to find things out about them but I didnt want it to interfere with what I was making up. When it turned into a gallery I had some connection to the guy who owned the building and he actually gave me some photos of the interior before they changed it all. But I had already designed the interior already. He also offered to give me some information but I resisted hearing any of it. Maybe when I finish the whole story I will look into it more carefully.
DRE: Is the end far off?
S: No just part one is finished. Ive still got a couple of years worth of work ahead of me.
DRE: What makes you so sad about seeing this fan company going away?
S: Basically I have an aesthetic attachment to the past. Were used to living in this time and Im used to it too, just like everyone else. But as you go back to the earlier 20th century, certainly the turn of the century, things were quite different. Not to get too nostalgic, but it does strike me that those were times I feel a closer affinity to when it comes to a slower quality of life. Even the urban environment seems a bit more civilized but certainly not under social conditions. Im thinking more of the absence of machinery.
DRE: Medicine nowadays is a good thing though.
S: There are lots of things I would consider good. Ultimately Im happy to be in this time but I do feel a real aesthetic connection to earlier time periods. I dont think they are better times but I can see a level of craftsmanship and quality that has vanished from our time.
DRE: I know you collect things. Certainly things of that nature were better made in earlier times.
S: Totally. Its very obvious in the modern world that everything is cheap and crummy. You see it in almost every object you pick up or buy.
DRE: Unless you want to pay the money for something.
S: Exactly. Thats the difference. There was always high quality but it was more available to the common man in the past. If you went into a dime store and bought a toaster it was not the same as buying a cheap toaster now. I bought a flashlight for a dollar a couple of years ago. So you get what you pay for but when I got home it didnt even work for one second. I thought, Thats what you get for a dollar. But even for a dollar it should work for at least an hour. The standards have gotten so low you just think that you were stupid to buy something for a dollar in the first place.
DRE: At first the story is the businessman brother telling a monologue to the audience. I didnt expect it to change into the actual story of the brother. Was it always meant to be like that?
S: Yep. It takes a couple of turns and I assume that as people read on it will go places they dont expect it to. Its been very tightly structured from the beginning. Before I even started page one I knew exactly what every element of the story was and where it was going. Its not all scripted out but its all very carefully planned. I know where I will be in part three around page 50. When I get to that page I will tighten it up and figure out what people are actually going to say. Little details change but the overall structure of the story has been unchanged since it began. I know exactly where it goes and where it ends.
DRE: In the beginning its almost like a theatre piece. Do you see that structure?
S: I do but its not really planned that way. I think comics and theatre have a lot in common. A lot of times people compare it to film but I probably think more in a theatrical sense than I do in a cinematic sense. I do think its almost unavoidable to draw a narrative story without moving things around as if there is a camera. You can avoid that by always drawing the figure from a certain angle but that doesnt appeal to me that much. I do think about monologues and theatre pieces. I see how it could be transferred to a stage play. In the same way a play might stick to a room, Im keeping things really contained.
DRE: Thats something comics dont need to do. Was that restriction you put on yourself as an experiment?
S: To some degree. Its the kind of story I wanted to read and I like the idea of things being restricted like that. Its certainly not the kind of thing I like to draw. Drawing those first 70 pages within the house was tiresome. Part three has the same problem because it all takes place in the same house and that gets pretty boring after awhile as the artist. But as the writer its something Im interested in. I like the idea of characters that are constrained within spaces like that. Thats probably because a cartoonists life is sitting in a basement all day.
DRE: How about the Death of a Salesman aspect?
S: Oh yeah sure. If you write about salesmen its kind of unavoidable, especially if there is a tragic quality to it.
DRE: This is more like, Death of the Sale.
S: Yeah. In my mind its kind of Death of a Cartoonist. Even though they are salesmen it relates so close to my life. I see these characters as anachronistic people that have been passed by, by the progress of the 20th century. They also have a great deal of trouble interacting in the world. They are stand-ins for myself.
DRE: One critic wrote that this is you reconciling yourself with the digital age.
S: I think thats very true. I think Im a lot more reconciled with things now than when I started writing this.
DRE: What frightens you so much about the digital age?
S: Change. I dont like things to change. Its a big hassle. If you talked to me two years ago I probably would have been a lot angrier. The Internet does not excite me. I dont like the direction that computers have taken and to some degree theyve brought another drop in quality. Some printing has gotten better and others have gotten worse so its hard to say. Also for a lot of artists its brought more personal control into their lives but I find the internet is just another 20th or 21st century element that doesnt appeal to me aesthetically or personally. It just seems like another vulgar thing like television but 20 degrees higher.
DRE: You're not even interested in ebay?
S: Im on ebay of course. After I got married my wife brought a computer into the house and it took me about two days to discover ebay. All I really use the computer for is ebay and email. Also its nice to have pornography piped into your home. I am grateful that I didnt have the Internet as a teenaged boy because I probably wouldnt have wasted my time drawing comic books if I had that much pornography.
DRE: I think homework would have been a lot easier if we had the Internet.
S: I guess. Certainly plagiarism would be more rampant. I think as a teenager I would have had a hard time telling what was fact and what was junk, but I still have that same problem.
DRE: How much do you use the Internet for your work?
S: Almost nothing. Once in a while I will get on the Internet when I need an emergency photograph of something like if I have to draw a poodle. It saves me from having to run down the street to the library.
I havent gotten a real art computer in the house yet. I resisted it for such a long time that I now dread to learn.
DRE: What about your commercial work? Dont you have to email your work in?
S: No I can still use Federal Express. Surprisingly most old art methods I use can still be done, but not everything, like using overlays to put in color. The art directors dont seem to want to deal with that anymore. It depends, if you're just someone they hired to draw a hamburger they are not that interested in you but if it is someone who wants your comics then they will usually cut you some slack.
DRE: Many talk about your fear of change but thats not the only theme in Clyde Fans. There is sense of melancholy about family and ambition.
S: Basically Im the typical kind of person who would end up in this job which is the kind of person who enjoys spending time by himself but also has some problems. I dont feel like I have any mental problems but Im the kind of person who is naturally introspective. When you spent a lot of time alone at a drawing table you kind of mentally pick at memory and there are things you seem to unrelentingly return to over and over again.
DRE: Does the introspection ever hurt?
S: Yeah, I think memory is one of the most painful things in human existence. Life just seems to be filled with an endless series of regrets. Childhood seems to be the main source of this sadness.
DRE: You also try to recapture childhood with collecting.
S: Oh yeah. I think my whole life is about trying to recapture childhood. Although not necessarily in the way most collectors do because I find that many collectors try to recapture childhood by buying back the stuff they had as a child. That doesnt really work for me. It will give me a five second buzz to get some toy but mostly what I am trying to do is recreate the feelings of being a child by continuing to occupy myself the same ways I did as a kid. What I do everyday is sit at my drawing table trying to recapture that feeling I had as a child when I sat around drawing which is what I spent most of my childhood doing.
DRE: Does it work?
S: It does work to some degree. Im not trying to recapture it by sitting down and drawing the same kind of comics I did as kid. But something about the process does get me back to that state. I do a fair amount of art related fooling around at home which is very related to trying to recapture that childhood feeling.
DRE: Do you ever use oaktag?
S: I dont recognize that term.
DRE: Its something I used to do a lot of school projects with.
S: Maybe its not a Canadian thing.
DRE: Do you revert at all?
S: Its more like a sense of comfort that Im looking for. Some days I need more than others. There are days when I try more seriously to recreate that feeling. Its sort of, to use a modern buzzword, a cocoon kind of thing. Im trying to recreate a space that I mentally get inside. When I am in that space working I dont feel any necessity to return to the mind of a child. Its almost all about feeling.
DRE: I read It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken when it first came out in book form. Its an amazing book but I was crushed when I found out it wasnt real.
S: [laughs] Most of it is true in a way. Just the plot isnt true.
DRE: It felt so real. What were trying to recreate with that?
S: I had written a story a couple of years earlier in my mind and jotted down notes that were similar but it was pretty clearly fiction. When the time got around to work on that story a couple of things had changed. I had realized that the autobiographical work I had done before had boiled down to being anecdotes. Anecdotes are poor stories and they are good for telling somebody over a drink. The best autobiographical stuff is mostly about people, how they feel and what they think. The more nebulous qualities of regular life. I wanted to write about that but I also wanted to tell the story of this cartoonist so I figured I would just combine them. Originally I was going to make up a famous cartoonist and talk about who he palled around with. But I decided to go in the other direction and make him someone quite obscure because it would be more interesting to explore that kind of a life. As it came together I thought it would be a lot more meaningful to an audience if they thought it was true. It wasnt that I wanted to pull a hoax on anyone, I just thought that if you come to it thinking that its true youll have a different response. I wasnt giving it too much conscious thought about trying to fool the audience.
DRE: I spoke with asked Chester Brown recently and he said he wasnt going to be serializing his comics anymore.
S: I knew he was thinking about doing that.
DRE: What about you?
S: Im going to keep doing serial issues. I like the format and its the only way Ill ever be able to get anything done. Ive got too much stuff Im working on so I need that process of putting it out in a smaller chunk or it just wont happen. If I wanted to do a 200 page graphic novel I would have to change my whole way of thinking.
DRE: I read in the back of one of your issues of Palooka-Ville where you wrote that you wish someone would put out Peanuts sequentially.
S: There you go.
DRE: Were you alluding?
S: No I was just hoping. Ive always been a huge Peanuts fan. In the past I was desperate to get my hands on that material. Some of it I would see on microfilm but its a big task to go through 50 years of it on that format to find the ones you havent read. It seemed like a natural project but I didnt have much hope it would ever happen.
DRE: Are you planning on doing all 25 books?
S: Yes. I designed a system for it so it wont be too complicated to do them all. Basically even if I had all the time in the world I would still do this system because I think a series of books like this should all be the same. With a simple setup they will all look the same but the elements will evolve over the 50 years of content. Each book has one character per cover so its not that hard to plug in one character for each book. The end pages are based around the backgrounds of the script so they will only change each decade of the strips. So that means when you get to the last decade the backgrounds are so sparse that you are dealing with things that are almost abstract designs. The same goes for every element in the book. Even though its about a months work on each book thats not so bad as starting from scratch for each one.
DRE: It must be nice to see the ones you never saw before as part of the work.
S: Yeah, its funny to work on something you wanted so bad because you kind of wish you could have given yourself it at the right time. I wish I could have gotten these books when I was about 25. Ill be as happy as anyone else to put them on the shelf.
DRE: I dont know exactly how this stuff works but were you in competition with anyone else to design the books?
S: Not exactly. [Fantagraphics Publisher] Gary Groth had told me that he was working on doing the books and if it ever came about, would I be available. He knew I liked Peanuts and I had done a cover for The Comics Journal once. There was some level of competition because I went down and presented designs to Jeannie Schulz and had she said that she couldnt stand it that probably would have been the end for me.
DRE: Is it weird working on something that Charles Schulz may not have wanted to happen?
S: Kind of, but I do totally negate that idea. I do understand why he wouldnt want it because I wouldnt want people publishing my early work either. But once you're dead you lose the right to your own work. I love a lot of artists early work that they hate. I heard that [Shrek author] William Stieg had burned up a lot of his work from the 20s and 30s before he died. I loved that stuff, so it just goes to show that artists cant be trusted with their own work.
DRE: Do you have a favorite Peanuts time period?
S: Thats a tough call but I probably liked Peanuts best from the mid-50s to the late 60s. But truthfully I like every period.
DRE: How about the last 15 years or so?
S: I do like it. I can understand why people find it unsatisfying compared to the earlier work. I think of it as a different strip. Its an old mans strip and the characters even became old people. If you look at Lucy shes drawn with the body of an old woman during those years. Shes even walking around in a pair of old sweatpants all the time.
DRE: Have you been collecting anything lately?
S: Ive been building a lot of fake trophies for myself. I buy trophies on ebay, take them apart then reassemble them into other trophies.
DRE: Where did that idea come from?
S: Its sort of a spin-off idea from a book I read about the caricaturist Max Beerbohm. He did a lot of projects for himself. He liked to take books and make fake inscriptions in them. He would pretend the author would write to him and copy their writing style for a flattering inscription like To Max, the most talented writer in England. Then he would sign it George Bernard Shaw. I thought that was so funny and it just morphed into the idea of making trophies. The funny part is that I planned for the trophies to be all self-aggrandizing but they actually turned the other way around and are now mocking.
DRE: What do they say?
S: I just did one that was for Self Interest Masquerading as Introspection. Its all really dry and not for much else than my own amusement.
DRE: I asked Chester if he missed Joe Matt and he said no.
S: Thats a Chester answer. I miss Joe and I wish he was here.
DRE: When I spoke to him a while ago he seemed to happy to get away from you and Chester.
S: Oh yes, hes having a much happier and nicer life now.
DRE: Do you now feel bad about ripping on him all the time?
S: Joe and I always had a very adversarial relationship. To some degree I think we were taking out unhappiness on each other. Now he seems to have friends that put up with him. Hes got a girlfriend and things are going well.
DRE: Have you gotten an update from him?
S: We dont talk that much on the phone because hes too cheap to call. But I call him once a month.
DRE: How is the Peepshow pilot going?
S: I gather its going well. They have writers and contracts have been signed. I dont know how quick things happen in television but maybe it will be done in a year.
DRE: Who is playing you?
S: I have no idea [laughs]. That should be a shocking experience. I am one of the characters but I havent given Joe permission to use my name. Im sure there will be some nostalgia guy in a hat. God only knows.
DRE: How about seeing your work in TV or movies?
S: I see no future in Hollywood for me. I couldnt even imagine it. I could see someone doing a play but I couldnt imagine anyone asking to turn my work into a movie. I dont think my work has that kind of quality to it.
DRE: How was it doing the interiors on Aimee Manns CD, LOST IN SPACE?
S: That was easy. You rarely get such pleasurable experiences working with people. Basically she let me do what I do and was easygoing and supportive.
DRE: Do you see the connection between your work and hers?
S: I did after I got to know it. I was unfamiliar with her when she first called because I dont know anything about anybody who does modern music. It became pretty clear to me as time went on why she was interested in my work. I could see the similarities. Ive heard people say they dont understand the connection between us because I think they see me purely as a retro sort of guy or something. I dont think of my work that way. I dont think I am trying to create work that would have existed in 1940. I can see the emotional connection between us.
DRE: There has been so much more interest in your work in the past three years or so. How has that changed things for you?
S: Things have changed. Ive been on a steady climb in the last few years where things have been getting better. I got a rep in New York and I started getting more illustration work. Whats mostly better is that Ive been doing more work that I actually like doing. A few years ago I was doing mostly stuff I couldnt stand like illustrations for magazines I didnt care for. Like right now I am doing a continuing strip for Toronto Magazine. The stuff I am doing now might be more work but its stuff I dont mind putting my time into. It makes me feel more like a real artist than I did ten years ago.
DRE: Where did you grow up exactly?
S: I grew up in a variety of small towns around Windsor, Ontario.
DRE: What comics did you start out reading?
S: Superheroes and newspaper strips.
DRE: When did you start drawing?
S: Ive always drawn for as long as I can remember.
DRE: When you were a kid what did you draw?
S: I vaguely remember drawing a lot of underwater scenes for some reason. But then luckily I started drawing adventure related stuff and I had a period of Planet of The Apes. But then it was all superheroes.
DRE: When did you discover underground comics?
S: It was the early 80s. Really it was Love & Rockets that changed everything for me. I had stopped reading comic books a few years before Love & Rockets started, though I was still drawing comics. But they were Heavy Metalish kind of crap. When I came across Love & Rockets that really opened my eyes to a new approach.
DRE: What are you reading now?
S: I love Eightball, everything Chris Ware does and Im a big fan of Ben Katchor. The usual names.
DRE: Do you have kids?
S: No and no kids coming either.
DRE: How come?
S: It isnt that I dont like kids. Theyre fine. If I had had children it would have been part of an urge to get back my own childhood but fortunately I am old enough now to be able to see that Im not looking to recreate childhood with another child. I am only interested in myself as a child, which doesnt necessarily make for a good parent. The key thing was that I married a woman who doesnt want children and that opened the door for me to say that I dont want children either. Often it depends on the woman because I think men are somewhat ambivalent about children until they have them. You rarely meet guys who say they desperately want children.
DRE: What are you going to do with all your stuff when you die?
S: It will probably go into a dumpster. I could see my wifes foot crunching it down into the trash.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
But all of this independent work has not stopped Seth from doing work for hire but that doesnt mean he has been hacking out work for Marvel Comics or Entertainment Weekly. He has designed, The Complete Peanuts which will be collecting all of Charles Schulzs strips over the next 12 and a half years. He also did the interior book for Aimee Manns CD, LOST IN SPACE.
I have been such a fan of his work so it was a real pleasure to get to talk to him. Also its a personal milestone because I have now talked to the last cartoonist of what I [and no one else] call, The Canadian triumvirate. It consisted of Chester Brown, Joe Matt and Seth. While Seth and Chester are native Canadians, Matt moved there a while ago but has since left for Hollywood. All three of them included each other in their autobiographical work, either in person or in spirit , and their influence on one another was very apparent.
Please after reading this, click on this link and buy Seths books. They are amazing.
Daniel Robert Epstein: Was there a specific inspiration for Clyde Fans?
Seth: Yes there is. There is an actual old storefront in Toronto called The Clyde Fans Company, It looks exactly like the one you see when I draw it. It was still in business when I first used to walk by it and I always noticed it because it was a nice old storefront. I used to look in even though it was a dimly lit place. On the far wall I could see photographs of two men. The place was very old-fashioned. I used to always wonder who they were and bit by bit I started putting together a story.
Coincidentally when I put out the first issue they put a sign in the window that said they were out of business. Then it turned into an art gallery.
DRE: Did you ever do any real research into who they were?
S: No. though I had opportunities to find things out about them but I didnt want it to interfere with what I was making up. When it turned into a gallery I had some connection to the guy who owned the building and he actually gave me some photos of the interior before they changed it all. But I had already designed the interior already. He also offered to give me some information but I resisted hearing any of it. Maybe when I finish the whole story I will look into it more carefully.
DRE: Is the end far off?
S: No just part one is finished. Ive still got a couple of years worth of work ahead of me.
DRE: What makes you so sad about seeing this fan company going away?
S: Basically I have an aesthetic attachment to the past. Were used to living in this time and Im used to it too, just like everyone else. But as you go back to the earlier 20th century, certainly the turn of the century, things were quite different. Not to get too nostalgic, but it does strike me that those were times I feel a closer affinity to when it comes to a slower quality of life. Even the urban environment seems a bit more civilized but certainly not under social conditions. Im thinking more of the absence of machinery.
DRE: Medicine nowadays is a good thing though.
S: There are lots of things I would consider good. Ultimately Im happy to be in this time but I do feel a real aesthetic connection to earlier time periods. I dont think they are better times but I can see a level of craftsmanship and quality that has vanished from our time.
DRE: I know you collect things. Certainly things of that nature were better made in earlier times.
S: Totally. Its very obvious in the modern world that everything is cheap and crummy. You see it in almost every object you pick up or buy.
DRE: Unless you want to pay the money for something.
S: Exactly. Thats the difference. There was always high quality but it was more available to the common man in the past. If you went into a dime store and bought a toaster it was not the same as buying a cheap toaster now. I bought a flashlight for a dollar a couple of years ago. So you get what you pay for but when I got home it didnt even work for one second. I thought, Thats what you get for a dollar. But even for a dollar it should work for at least an hour. The standards have gotten so low you just think that you were stupid to buy something for a dollar in the first place.
DRE: At first the story is the businessman brother telling a monologue to the audience. I didnt expect it to change into the actual story of the brother. Was it always meant to be like that?
S: Yep. It takes a couple of turns and I assume that as people read on it will go places they dont expect it to. Its been very tightly structured from the beginning. Before I even started page one I knew exactly what every element of the story was and where it was going. Its not all scripted out but its all very carefully planned. I know where I will be in part three around page 50. When I get to that page I will tighten it up and figure out what people are actually going to say. Little details change but the overall structure of the story has been unchanged since it began. I know exactly where it goes and where it ends.
DRE: In the beginning its almost like a theatre piece. Do you see that structure?
S: I do but its not really planned that way. I think comics and theatre have a lot in common. A lot of times people compare it to film but I probably think more in a theatrical sense than I do in a cinematic sense. I do think its almost unavoidable to draw a narrative story without moving things around as if there is a camera. You can avoid that by always drawing the figure from a certain angle but that doesnt appeal to me that much. I do think about monologues and theatre pieces. I see how it could be transferred to a stage play. In the same way a play might stick to a room, Im keeping things really contained.
DRE: Thats something comics dont need to do. Was that restriction you put on yourself as an experiment?
S: To some degree. Its the kind of story I wanted to read and I like the idea of things being restricted like that. Its certainly not the kind of thing I like to draw. Drawing those first 70 pages within the house was tiresome. Part three has the same problem because it all takes place in the same house and that gets pretty boring after awhile as the artist. But as the writer its something Im interested in. I like the idea of characters that are constrained within spaces like that. Thats probably because a cartoonists life is sitting in a basement all day.
DRE: How about the Death of a Salesman aspect?
S: Oh yeah sure. If you write about salesmen its kind of unavoidable, especially if there is a tragic quality to it.
DRE: This is more like, Death of the Sale.
S: Yeah. In my mind its kind of Death of a Cartoonist. Even though they are salesmen it relates so close to my life. I see these characters as anachronistic people that have been passed by, by the progress of the 20th century. They also have a great deal of trouble interacting in the world. They are stand-ins for myself.
DRE: One critic wrote that this is you reconciling yourself with the digital age.
S: I think thats very true. I think Im a lot more reconciled with things now than when I started writing this.
DRE: What frightens you so much about the digital age?
S: Change. I dont like things to change. Its a big hassle. If you talked to me two years ago I probably would have been a lot angrier. The Internet does not excite me. I dont like the direction that computers have taken and to some degree theyve brought another drop in quality. Some printing has gotten better and others have gotten worse so its hard to say. Also for a lot of artists its brought more personal control into their lives but I find the internet is just another 20th or 21st century element that doesnt appeal to me aesthetically or personally. It just seems like another vulgar thing like television but 20 degrees higher.
DRE: You're not even interested in ebay?
S: Im on ebay of course. After I got married my wife brought a computer into the house and it took me about two days to discover ebay. All I really use the computer for is ebay and email. Also its nice to have pornography piped into your home. I am grateful that I didnt have the Internet as a teenaged boy because I probably wouldnt have wasted my time drawing comic books if I had that much pornography.
DRE: I think homework would have been a lot easier if we had the Internet.
S: I guess. Certainly plagiarism would be more rampant. I think as a teenager I would have had a hard time telling what was fact and what was junk, but I still have that same problem.
DRE: How much do you use the Internet for your work?
S: Almost nothing. Once in a while I will get on the Internet when I need an emergency photograph of something like if I have to draw a poodle. It saves me from having to run down the street to the library.
I havent gotten a real art computer in the house yet. I resisted it for such a long time that I now dread to learn.
DRE: What about your commercial work? Dont you have to email your work in?
S: No I can still use Federal Express. Surprisingly most old art methods I use can still be done, but not everything, like using overlays to put in color. The art directors dont seem to want to deal with that anymore. It depends, if you're just someone they hired to draw a hamburger they are not that interested in you but if it is someone who wants your comics then they will usually cut you some slack.
DRE: Many talk about your fear of change but thats not the only theme in Clyde Fans. There is sense of melancholy about family and ambition.
S: Basically Im the typical kind of person who would end up in this job which is the kind of person who enjoys spending time by himself but also has some problems. I dont feel like I have any mental problems but Im the kind of person who is naturally introspective. When you spent a lot of time alone at a drawing table you kind of mentally pick at memory and there are things you seem to unrelentingly return to over and over again.
DRE: Does the introspection ever hurt?
S: Yeah, I think memory is one of the most painful things in human existence. Life just seems to be filled with an endless series of regrets. Childhood seems to be the main source of this sadness.
DRE: You also try to recapture childhood with collecting.
S: Oh yeah. I think my whole life is about trying to recapture childhood. Although not necessarily in the way most collectors do because I find that many collectors try to recapture childhood by buying back the stuff they had as a child. That doesnt really work for me. It will give me a five second buzz to get some toy but mostly what I am trying to do is recreate the feelings of being a child by continuing to occupy myself the same ways I did as a kid. What I do everyday is sit at my drawing table trying to recapture that feeling I had as a child when I sat around drawing which is what I spent most of my childhood doing.
DRE: Does it work?
S: It does work to some degree. Im not trying to recapture it by sitting down and drawing the same kind of comics I did as kid. But something about the process does get me back to that state. I do a fair amount of art related fooling around at home which is very related to trying to recapture that childhood feeling.
DRE: Do you ever use oaktag?
S: I dont recognize that term.
DRE: Its something I used to do a lot of school projects with.
S: Maybe its not a Canadian thing.
DRE: Do you revert at all?
S: Its more like a sense of comfort that Im looking for. Some days I need more than others. There are days when I try more seriously to recreate that feeling. Its sort of, to use a modern buzzword, a cocoon kind of thing. Im trying to recreate a space that I mentally get inside. When I am in that space working I dont feel any necessity to return to the mind of a child. Its almost all about feeling.
DRE: I read It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken when it first came out in book form. Its an amazing book but I was crushed when I found out it wasnt real.
S: [laughs] Most of it is true in a way. Just the plot isnt true.
DRE: It felt so real. What were trying to recreate with that?
S: I had written a story a couple of years earlier in my mind and jotted down notes that were similar but it was pretty clearly fiction. When the time got around to work on that story a couple of things had changed. I had realized that the autobiographical work I had done before had boiled down to being anecdotes. Anecdotes are poor stories and they are good for telling somebody over a drink. The best autobiographical stuff is mostly about people, how they feel and what they think. The more nebulous qualities of regular life. I wanted to write about that but I also wanted to tell the story of this cartoonist so I figured I would just combine them. Originally I was going to make up a famous cartoonist and talk about who he palled around with. But I decided to go in the other direction and make him someone quite obscure because it would be more interesting to explore that kind of a life. As it came together I thought it would be a lot more meaningful to an audience if they thought it was true. It wasnt that I wanted to pull a hoax on anyone, I just thought that if you come to it thinking that its true youll have a different response. I wasnt giving it too much conscious thought about trying to fool the audience.
DRE: I spoke with asked Chester Brown recently and he said he wasnt going to be serializing his comics anymore.
S: I knew he was thinking about doing that.
DRE: What about you?
S: Im going to keep doing serial issues. I like the format and its the only way Ill ever be able to get anything done. Ive got too much stuff Im working on so I need that process of putting it out in a smaller chunk or it just wont happen. If I wanted to do a 200 page graphic novel I would have to change my whole way of thinking.
DRE: I read in the back of one of your issues of Palooka-Ville where you wrote that you wish someone would put out Peanuts sequentially.
S: There you go.
DRE: Were you alluding?
S: No I was just hoping. Ive always been a huge Peanuts fan. In the past I was desperate to get my hands on that material. Some of it I would see on microfilm but its a big task to go through 50 years of it on that format to find the ones you havent read. It seemed like a natural project but I didnt have much hope it would ever happen.
DRE: Are you planning on doing all 25 books?
S: Yes. I designed a system for it so it wont be too complicated to do them all. Basically even if I had all the time in the world I would still do this system because I think a series of books like this should all be the same. With a simple setup they will all look the same but the elements will evolve over the 50 years of content. Each book has one character per cover so its not that hard to plug in one character for each book. The end pages are based around the backgrounds of the script so they will only change each decade of the strips. So that means when you get to the last decade the backgrounds are so sparse that you are dealing with things that are almost abstract designs. The same goes for every element in the book. Even though its about a months work on each book thats not so bad as starting from scratch for each one.
DRE: It must be nice to see the ones you never saw before as part of the work.
S: Yeah, its funny to work on something you wanted so bad because you kind of wish you could have given yourself it at the right time. I wish I could have gotten these books when I was about 25. Ill be as happy as anyone else to put them on the shelf.
DRE: I dont know exactly how this stuff works but were you in competition with anyone else to design the books?
S: Not exactly. [Fantagraphics Publisher] Gary Groth had told me that he was working on doing the books and if it ever came about, would I be available. He knew I liked Peanuts and I had done a cover for The Comics Journal once. There was some level of competition because I went down and presented designs to Jeannie Schulz and had she said that she couldnt stand it that probably would have been the end for me.
DRE: Is it weird working on something that Charles Schulz may not have wanted to happen?
S: Kind of, but I do totally negate that idea. I do understand why he wouldnt want it because I wouldnt want people publishing my early work either. But once you're dead you lose the right to your own work. I love a lot of artists early work that they hate. I heard that [Shrek author] William Stieg had burned up a lot of his work from the 20s and 30s before he died. I loved that stuff, so it just goes to show that artists cant be trusted with their own work.
DRE: Do you have a favorite Peanuts time period?
S: Thats a tough call but I probably liked Peanuts best from the mid-50s to the late 60s. But truthfully I like every period.
DRE: How about the last 15 years or so?
S: I do like it. I can understand why people find it unsatisfying compared to the earlier work. I think of it as a different strip. Its an old mans strip and the characters even became old people. If you look at Lucy shes drawn with the body of an old woman during those years. Shes even walking around in a pair of old sweatpants all the time.
DRE: Have you been collecting anything lately?
S: Ive been building a lot of fake trophies for myself. I buy trophies on ebay, take them apart then reassemble them into other trophies.
DRE: Where did that idea come from?
S: Its sort of a spin-off idea from a book I read about the caricaturist Max Beerbohm. He did a lot of projects for himself. He liked to take books and make fake inscriptions in them. He would pretend the author would write to him and copy their writing style for a flattering inscription like To Max, the most talented writer in England. Then he would sign it George Bernard Shaw. I thought that was so funny and it just morphed into the idea of making trophies. The funny part is that I planned for the trophies to be all self-aggrandizing but they actually turned the other way around and are now mocking.
DRE: What do they say?
S: I just did one that was for Self Interest Masquerading as Introspection. Its all really dry and not for much else than my own amusement.
DRE: I asked Chester if he missed Joe Matt and he said no.
S: Thats a Chester answer. I miss Joe and I wish he was here.
DRE: When I spoke to him a while ago he seemed to happy to get away from you and Chester.
S: Oh yes, hes having a much happier and nicer life now.
DRE: Do you now feel bad about ripping on him all the time?
S: Joe and I always had a very adversarial relationship. To some degree I think we were taking out unhappiness on each other. Now he seems to have friends that put up with him. Hes got a girlfriend and things are going well.
DRE: Have you gotten an update from him?
S: We dont talk that much on the phone because hes too cheap to call. But I call him once a month.
DRE: How is the Peepshow pilot going?
S: I gather its going well. They have writers and contracts have been signed. I dont know how quick things happen in television but maybe it will be done in a year.
DRE: Who is playing you?
S: I have no idea [laughs]. That should be a shocking experience. I am one of the characters but I havent given Joe permission to use my name. Im sure there will be some nostalgia guy in a hat. God only knows.
DRE: How about seeing your work in TV or movies?
S: I see no future in Hollywood for me. I couldnt even imagine it. I could see someone doing a play but I couldnt imagine anyone asking to turn my work into a movie. I dont think my work has that kind of quality to it.
DRE: How was it doing the interiors on Aimee Manns CD, LOST IN SPACE?
S: That was easy. You rarely get such pleasurable experiences working with people. Basically she let me do what I do and was easygoing and supportive.
DRE: Do you see the connection between your work and hers?
S: I did after I got to know it. I was unfamiliar with her when she first called because I dont know anything about anybody who does modern music. It became pretty clear to me as time went on why she was interested in my work. I could see the similarities. Ive heard people say they dont understand the connection between us because I think they see me purely as a retro sort of guy or something. I dont think of my work that way. I dont think I am trying to create work that would have existed in 1940. I can see the emotional connection between us.
DRE: There has been so much more interest in your work in the past three years or so. How has that changed things for you?
S: Things have changed. Ive been on a steady climb in the last few years where things have been getting better. I got a rep in New York and I started getting more illustration work. Whats mostly better is that Ive been doing more work that I actually like doing. A few years ago I was doing mostly stuff I couldnt stand like illustrations for magazines I didnt care for. Like right now I am doing a continuing strip for Toronto Magazine. The stuff I am doing now might be more work but its stuff I dont mind putting my time into. It makes me feel more like a real artist than I did ten years ago.
DRE: Where did you grow up exactly?
S: I grew up in a variety of small towns around Windsor, Ontario.
DRE: What comics did you start out reading?
S: Superheroes and newspaper strips.
DRE: When did you start drawing?
S: Ive always drawn for as long as I can remember.
DRE: When you were a kid what did you draw?
S: I vaguely remember drawing a lot of underwater scenes for some reason. But then luckily I started drawing adventure related stuff and I had a period of Planet of The Apes. But then it was all superheroes.
DRE: When did you discover underground comics?
S: It was the early 80s. Really it was Love & Rockets that changed everything for me. I had stopped reading comic books a few years before Love & Rockets started, though I was still drawing comics. But they were Heavy Metalish kind of crap. When I came across Love & Rockets that really opened my eyes to a new approach.
DRE: What are you reading now?
S: I love Eightball, everything Chris Ware does and Im a big fan of Ben Katchor. The usual names.
DRE: Do you have kids?
S: No and no kids coming either.
DRE: How come?
S: It isnt that I dont like kids. Theyre fine. If I had had children it would have been part of an urge to get back my own childhood but fortunately I am old enough now to be able to see that Im not looking to recreate childhood with another child. I am only interested in myself as a child, which doesnt necessarily make for a good parent. The key thing was that I married a woman who doesnt want children and that opened the door for me to say that I dont want children either. Often it depends on the woman because I think men are somewhat ambivalent about children until they have them. You rarely meet guys who say they desperately want children.
DRE: What are you going to do with all your stuff when you die?
S: It will probably go into a dumpster. I could see my wifes foot crunching it down into the trash.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
erin:
irst...
retry:
Great interview. I enjoyed seeing how much of Seth's process involves creating an emotional state to work in.