I’m VERY pleased to be posting this Q&A with Mark Siegel! For those that don’t know, Mark is the creator behind the beautiful and mysterious web-comic/graphic novel SailorTwain or the Mermaid in the Hudson that updates every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Mark is also the Editorial Director of the excellent Graphic Novel publisher First Second Books.

At a certain point, it was ready. The characters found their voices, the story had an organic life of its own, in other words, it escaped me. I’ve never worked this long on a single project, but this one keeps getting more interesting for me. And the idea of serializing it as a web-comic came later in the process. Reading a few web-comics myself, some of them long-form stories, some of them short strips (like Kate Beaton, my continuing favorite) it struck me that this was the 19th century serial-novel tradition, in its freshest incarnation. You know how people lined up on the docks to get the latest chapter of Great Expectations? Now I guess we have RSS feeds.
3. How are you enjoying the experience of working in web-comics? Have you felt a sense of community through the process?

I love it. Sailor Twain draws together some delightful, inspired, funny, articulate people from all kinds of backgrounds. There are also many more of the quiet ones, some of whom surface every so often in the discussions. It’s already been a wonder for me, meeting readers and contributors to the project’s research, with Hudson River history, poetry, boating details. There’s also a very unique feeling that comes from being received, page by page. That is priceless, and wouldn’t happen from only putting out the finished book in print. Plus, some of them are really careful readers, picking up on nuances and subtle story and character shifts, which is most rewarding. As for a sense of community, yes, it turns out that is the biggest discovery of all for me. At first the “companion blog” was an afterthought, with little tidbits to go alongside the story. But then it has grown into a part of the Sailor Twain experience, and the discussions sometimes take off in marvelous ways, with people I’m genuinely excited to meet.

4. Because the story is unfolding online, do you find that you’re changing parts of the story or art as you go along?

The story is framed and scripted, but then as the saying goes “plan your work, and work your plan…” As I work on finished pages, Sailor Twain is constantly being

kneaded like pizza dough, adjusted, a scene performed differently, dialog trimmed or cut, and so forth. The interactive aspect probably influences that to some degree, but I’m careful to keep a good head-start on what’s appearing online, maybe to keep away the wrong pressures from my telling of the story.

5. How did the artistic style of the project develop? (As in why charcoal as opposed to pen & ink?)

In the last few years, I made several early versions—entire chapters in ink, then in watercolor washes—but I always had a frustrating sense it wasn’t the right mood, or the right look for characters who were deepening and layering themselves. Then came a piece of charcoal, and suddenly I could feel the industrial revolution, steel and smoke, coal and steam, rain and fog. . . It just came together, and nothing else would do. I love charcoal. It’s forgiving, it can be soft and hard, it can suggest things in the mist, just beyond our sight.

6. Are you drawing inspiration from the creators that you work with at First Second?

Yes, absolutely. First Second showcases some of the most inspiring comics authors working today, and I get to work with them, witness their process. Lots of inspiration there. But then with a project like Twain, I also had to close myself to outside influences at a certain point. I try not to bring my inner fanboy to the studio.

7. Are you working with an Editor on Sailor Twain? If so, has that been odd for you?

Tanya McKinnon is an agent, editor, and author. She has been an invaluable editorial partner on Sailor Twain, since before First Second began. From the start she was relentless with tough questions, questions and more questions. Having a mind like hers team up inside one’s vision is a rare blessing. Tanya not only pushed me to a depth I wouldn’t even have set my sights on, on my own—she also gave me renewed respect for what an editor can be. It’s always been easy to bash editors (and several comics authors do it regularly) but I believe in good editors, not meddlesome, or authoritarian editors… A true editor may or not work under that title. Some talented authors have their kibbitzers, coaches, trusted friends… But unless you can spare ten years to give yourself the necessary distance from your own work, an editor can provide some of that, much sooner. I think that’s invaluable, and many good works might have been great with a bit more of it.

8. How hard is it balancing writing & illustrating Sailor Twain with your duties as “Head Honcho” at First Second?

Since before First Second started I’ve been working on my own projects. My routine involves a couple hours in the studio before heading to work in Manhattan. At first that was a discipline, but now it’s part of my daily well-being. So its always been there—only now, it’s out in the open.

Go. Read. SailorTwain. Now.

You can also follow SailorTwain on Twitter & Facebook.

And a HUGE thanks to Mark for taking time out of what must be a incredibly hectic schedule to participate in my Q&A series. In fact, I think he answered my questions while on vacation!

And as promised last week, here’s my interview with Matt Bors regarding his new Graphic Novel WAR IS BORING —out today!

1. How did you hook up with David Axe to work on War is Boring? Is this your first graphic novel? Or at least the first time working with a writer?

I first hooked up with David at a comic convention where we were both seated at the NBM table. I was familiar with his book War Fix and he was looking for an artists to do the sequel, his previous artist having fell through. Though he had only seen my political cartoons, which are drawn in a more cartoony style, I was able to convince him to give me a shot at the book. That book fell through and we developed War Is Boring, which, after an incarnation as a weekly web comic, was developed into a graphic novel and shopped around to publishers.

2. What about the subject matter attracted you to the project?

As someone who writes his own comics, I don’t want to give away my time to another project unless I feel strongly about it. While this is David’s life we are telling, he happens to have an interesting one. There is something immediate and important about the places he visits and the stories he tells. I’m very interested in politics and world affairs in the most impoverished, war-torn areas of Earth. I don’t get to go to these places, but this way I do get to help tell the stories.

3. What was your working process like? Had David written a graphic novel before? Or did you have to break down a regular book script into the graphic novel format?

David has published War Fix and has a few other graphic novels in the works. He writes scripts with a very specific panel breakdown and what’s happening in each scene. As we grew more familiar with each other’s approach, I felt comfortable suggesting changes where I didn’t think things worked and he was very good about giving me artistic license to rework certain scenes – either condensing them or drawing them out over more panels.

4. Did you design the overall look of the book? I’m thinking specifically of the Chapter pages.

I did design the chapter pages and the overall look of the book. The only thing I didn’t do was the type design on the cover, which was handled by Penguin.

5. Did you find doing this type of hard after creating so many political cartoons that haven’t focused on sequential art as much? Having read the book, I immediately wondered if you found any of the chapters harder to bring to life than any of the others (due to specifics of the story or tone in those chapters)?

I’ve been wanting to do some long form comics forever so I was clamoring for a chance. The entire time I was alternating between this book and my editorial cartoons so I had to start thinking differently for each one. I can’t think of any particular chapter that was hard, but getting the look right for each country took a lot of photo references for clothing, architecture and military hardware. Thankfully David brought a camera on his trips.

One area of the book where the tone completely changes is a surreal fever dream David has in East Timor that features talking animals. That is really uncharacteristic of the rest of the book so I did small things like use different panel border to signify to the readers we weren’t in reality anymore.

6. Word on your Twitter account says you’re headed of to Afghanistan. When, where and why? Are you at all nervous?

On August 9th I’m leaving with two other cartoonists, Ted Rall and Steven Cloud, for a month long trip through Afghanistan. Were are traveling to Taloqan, Herat and remote regions in the Southwest near the Iranian border to see how Afghans are coping with nine years of American occupation and war. We won’t be with the military, an NGO group or any other media outlets–just completely on our own. Ted and I are both filing comics form the ground to our syndicates. Ted is doing a daily cartoon blog for the LA Times and I will be posting sketches, comics and such to my website as well as lining up some longer work when I get back.

After nine years of sitting behind my drawing table, I feel I should put a little on the line to see what’s happening with my own eyes.

7. How hard was it getting War is Boring to the masses? What was/is your relationship like with your agent and publishers? How long did you have to work on the finished book?

This is New American Library’s first graphic novel and they were great about giving us editorial freedom and promoting the book. We hooked up with our agent, Bernadette Baker, fairly quickly and she was great in placing the book with NAL. As for the time frame, it took me about a year and a half to draw. It’s only 130 pages, which is on the short side of graphic novels, but drawing it in that time frame and still meeting my weekly deadlines for the political cartoons was pretty grueling.

8. Will you be doing any signings for War is Boring? Any kind of book tour?

There won’t be a book tour, but David and I are doing various appearances. I’ll be at Wordstock Book Festival in Portland in October. David and I will also be tabling at APE in San Francisco.

Thanks to Matt for taking the time to answer my questions. For an earlier interview with Matt, head here. And don’t forget—go buy WAR IS BORING.

Next Tuesday I’ll have an interview with Graphic Novelist/Political Cartoonist Matt Bors regarding his book War Is Boring (out on 8/3) as well as a new GO HOME PADDY page posted.

See you then!

There’s a superb interview with author Carla Jablonski about her Graphic Novel Resistance over at The Boston Bibliophile blog. Seriously, it’s a good little interview that will make you really want to read the book! And what a cover!

The site warisboring.com posted a snippet of my interview with Matt Bors, so I thought I should plug that site in general. The good souls behind War is Boring describe themselves as: “We are citizen journalists with a deep interest in world and national security. We are opposed to violence but recognize the necessity and utility of war. We advocate diplomacy and compromise over force as a solution to conflict.” Go check out the site and learn something.

War is Boring is also the name of the upcoming Graphic Novel by David Axe & Matt Bors.

Matt Bors originally came across my radar when I began reading Idiot Box in the Boston Phoenix. Since then, we’ve connected on Twitter and traded a lot of music. He’s a cool and interesting guy, and if he ever comes to Boston, I owe him a few pints. Read on and enjoy!

What’s your background? Where are you from originally? Did that and family play a part in your interest in political cartooning?

I was born in Canton, Ohio, where I spent most of my life. My family wasn’t particularly political, but I have always had the singular goal of becoming a cartoonist since I was a little kid and they were supportive of that. For a while I was into superhero stuff – X-Men and Spawn – and then in high school became more interested in what Fantagraphics and D&Q were putting out. Then in college I shifted to political cartoons. I have a love for all forms of cartooning though. I finished a graphic novel this year and want to branch out and do some other stuff besides political cartooning.

Did you go to art school? If so, was your program focused on strip cartooning or just illustration?

I went to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in 2001 for graphic design. There wasn’t any focus on illustration besides a few life drawing courses and cartooning certainly wasn’t part of the picture. Basically I knew cartooning was a long shot and wanted to work in the creative field in some way instead of working a lame day job, which, of course, I did after college.

How did you get Idiot Box up and running? How did you achieve syndication?

I began political cartooning in the run-up to our invasion of Iraq. I had been growing increasingly political as the Bush years took shape and it seemed a natural evolution for me to combine my thoughts on it with comics. I submitted a political cartoon to the school newspaper, my fist published work, and haven’t missed a week since. That was March of 2003.

From there I quickly realized I wanted to do it for a living, or at least figure out a way to justify one political cartoon a week as part of a career as a freelancer. So I submitted to alt-weeklies and slowly started picking up clients. The Cleveland Free Times (now The Scene) and Seven Days in Vermont were among my fist clients and continue to run me to this day. I’ve also remained in Pittsburgh, bouncing around to a few defunct papers before being picked up by the City Paper a few years ago.

I never really submitted to the syndicates because I never thought my style was viable to mainstream papers given the kinds of cartoons they run. But a few years ago Ted Rall called me up and asked if I wanted to do three editorial cartoons a week for United Media. He was their submissions editor at the time and was actively recruiting cartoonists that were doing different things withing their genres. (The daily strip “Diesel Sweeties” being a good example.) I had come to know him a little bit through “Attitude 3,” an anthology of webcomics he included me in. I jumped at the chance–then the recession decimated newspapers already averse to adding opinionated content that could get the granny brigade to write letters to the editor.

What kind of research goes into your strips—what books/papers/blog/websites do you read regularly?

I’m basically a news junkie. I work from home so I’m listening to NPR, talk radio, podcasts and audio books when I draw. I’m dipping in and out of the internet all day checking news sites and blogs. Tweeting. I’m doing the tweeting. I even subscribe to the print edition of The Oregonian to stay up on local news (I do local cartoons for them occasionally) and give my eyes a break from the computer. I subscribe to about 12 different magazines. Read books. And then I drink beer and stare at the wall until an idea hits.

How did you end up out in Portland? Was it through the cartooning scene out there? What is the scene like out there?

There was no specific reason I moved to Portland other than wanting to move to the west coast since I was young and not being so much into California – or able to afford it. That pretty much leaves Seattle and Portland if you’d like to live in a bigger city, which I do. One of the things I appreciate out here is the bike culture. We basically have the most bikeable city in the States. I don’t don’t drive and live close in so that works for me getting around. Also, I only commute from my bed to my drawing table.

As for the cartooning scene here, it’s pretty vibrant. There’s a good number of publishers and an overwhelming amount of cartoonists. There are a few I pal around with, like Shannon Wheeler, Kevin Moore, Jack Ohman and Barry Deutsch. It’s nice to get out from behind the drawing table and be able to talk about work with people when you are not working. Nothing beats that relaxing feeling.

What has been the effect of the Recession on your work? Are you finding the web as a viable alternative to newspapers?

The Great Recession has been pretty hard on newspaper cartooning. Alt-weeklies have slashed their content and some of my colleagues have stopped drawing regular political cartoons altogether (David Reese, Tim Kreider, Mikhaela Reid). I lost a few papers and haven’t picked up any new ones in quite a while. Freelance rates have plunged but I’ve noticed that rent seems to increase every year. (Stop moving to Portland, young people. It’s not cool – I swear!) So that’s a drag, but I’m still able to do what I love for a living.

The web is great because I’ve found a lot of readers through it, but it hasn’t come close to replacing the money available in the print world. Most websites don’t want to pay to run your strip. Building a readership on your own site is great, of course, but you need to have merchandise to slang and political cartoons don’t lend themselves to that as much as strips with rotund felines and their hilarious fixation on lasagna.

My hope with the web is not much different than what it is – or was – with print: make enough money to justify doing one or two editorial cartoons a week and fill the rest of my time with freelance work. I would like to get back up to three comics a week (as when I started syndication) and I would jump at the opportunity to do 5 a week for any paper or website willing to pay enough for it but realistically that era is pretty much over, save for a few lucky individuals. I like doing longer works such as graphic novels as well. That area of comics still seems to be growing and I’ll be working in it as much as time and money allow.

You mention both an upcoming graphic novel and a desire to do some other work besides political cartooning. What do you have in mind?

I have a graphic novel coming out August 3rd called “War Is Boring” through New American Library. It was written by David Axe, who is a journalist, and is a memoir of his forays into different war zones over the last few years. This will be my first book and the art is a little different from my political cartoons – more realistic, which is actually in line with how I’ve drawn most of my life.

As for other work, I am set up to draw a graphic novel written by Ted Rall, the sequel to “The Year Of Loving Dangerously” that came out recently. Right now I have a lot of freelance projects up in the air. I’m currently designing a few book covers, doing freelance illustration, plotting a collection of my political cartoons. I enjoy it all, but cartooning is my main priority so I’m trying to find the balance between decent freelance work and what I want to do with comics. I see myself always keeping with the political cartoons, so other projects I plan on doing, such as writing my own graphic novel, may take a while to get to. But I’ll get to them.

Any interest in coming back for a round 2 of Q&A when War Is Boring comes out?

No interest. You kind of disgust me. Wait – I mean, YES!

I recently had the chance to run a brief Q&A past Author and Illustrator George O’Connor. George’s most recent book, BALL PEEN HAMMER (with Adam Rapp) has garnered great reviews as well as solid sales. Publishers Weekly describes BALL PEEN HAMMER as “an eerie postapocalyptic urban world, where humanity is turning on itself“. Also from publisher First Second, George created JOURNEY INTO MOHAWK COUNTRY which was based on the actual diary entries of Dutch trader Van den Bogaert, who set off through New York’s Indian territory in 1634. Thanks to George for his time!

Is this your first time working with a writer for a graphic novel? If so, what was the working relationship like? Was there much more editorial involvement since you weren’t the complete and sole creator?

Unless you count Harmen van den Bogaert, who’s been dead for over 300 years, this was my first time working with another writer . As for our working relationship, the truth is, Adam and I never actually met until after Ball Peen Hammer was finished. Aside from a few e-mails of character designs and such, there was virtually no interaction. This was actually a good thing, in my opinion. I was able (with some help from editorial, repositioning a few pieces of text, etc.) to go in and create my own vision of Ball Peen. I think it worked pretty well—Adam was very pleased with how the book the book came out, and I am too. It really feels like a book we both contributed to equally.

What was your process for this one—from script to finished page? Did the writer present you with the story as a whole or broken down into specific pages/panels?

The script of Ball Peen was written as a play—there were no panel or page notations, just dialogue and stage notes. After reading the script a few times, I started marking up the script, breaking down the dialogue into panel-to-panel chunks, and occasionally drawing some sketches in the margins. Then I started sketching out thumbnails of how these panels would fit on a page, figuring out the wordless stretches (and there’s a lot of them in Ball Peen), repositioning some chunks of dialogue, stuff like that. Thumbnailing is, for me, by far the most difficult part of the whole process. After thumbnailing, I create a “dummy” of the book—a rough draft of the whole thing in a bound notebook that is the same size as the print version of the finished book. This dummy will serve as my blueprint for the finished artwork, with page turns, compositions, lettering, etc all in place.

With everything laid out, the final step, finished artwork, was a comparative breeze. I drew the final artwork at approximately 10 by 15 inches, and inked the whole thing with dip pens (and brushes to fill in the many large areas of black). This was my first time working with dip pens. I originally decided to use pens for Ball Peen because they gave the lines, partially due to my unfamiliarity with them, a weird, wonky, disturbing quality. Now I love the pens—almost all the artwork in Olympians is being done this way.

Why do you think that the book has had such great initial success?

“Such great initial success”—I’m blushing! Well, I’m assuming you’re referring to the book going into a second printing already, which has been nice, I admit. As for why, well, I’ll say Adam has written a remarkably “true” feeling book. Yes, there are a lot of not-nice things happening in it, but there is an actual soul to the piece that really resonates with some people. Plus, I heard that the artist is a cool dude.

What’s next for you and what other types of stories are you interested in tackling down the road?

I’m currently had at work on The Glory Of Hera, book 3 of the projected 12 book series Olympians I’m doing for first second, which are graphic novel retellings of the Greek myths. Books one and two, Zeus King of the Gods and Athena: Grey Eyed Goddess, come out in January and April, respectively. Interested folks should check out my blog at geooco.blogspot.com for some sneak peeks. If all goes well, these will be keeping me occupied for a good, long time.

Who are your influences? Whose work do you follow regularly? And what’s the best book you’ve read in 2009?

Influences—I’m always worried that my influences might be too transparent in my work, but some of my faves are Mike Mignola, P.Craig Russell, Jaime Hernandez, Bill Watterson, Mike Golden. I try to keep up with all of their work, except, of course, Mr. Watterson, who hasn’t done anything for public consumption for many years now. Best book I’ve read in 2009? I’m going to go with Stitches, the first graphic novel by children’s book illustrator David Small. Wow, what an affecting memoir, such great storytelling, and his drawing line is so expressive it’s actually, at times, shocking. Great stuff.

I recently conducted an email Q & A with George O’Connor (author/artist of Journey into Mohawk Country and Ball-Peen Hammer) and I’m hoping to post it next Tuesday. George is a cool guy and it was nice of him to take the time to answer my questions.

I’m also hoping to post some new quickie book reviews next Tuesday as well. It’s been a while since I posted any book reviews and I think I’ve read quite a few books since then.

Also, for book lovers—check out the blog of The Boston Bibliophile. Excellent reviews are posted often and the Bibliophile often reviews Graphic Novels as well. So….click the link and check the blog out!

Check out a brief Q&A with me over at http://www.whohub.com/johnawalsh

It’s fun and brief!