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American Splendor's Inimitable Harvey Pekar on The Pekar Project

Words: Christopher Irving . Fumetti: Seth Kushner

Harvey Pekar sits in a comfortably worn plush chair in the Brooklyn Lyceum, the start of the second day of the King Con, where he’s a guest, there to promote The Pekar Project, his venture into a territory where he’s completely lost – the Internet.
Harvey Pekar— the everyman file clerk from Cleveland who loves old records and write comics about things as mundane as unclogging a toilet, or as serious as dealing with cancer in his comic American Splendor; who was catapulted to cult stardom with the biopic of the same name that garnered attention for lead actor Paul Giamatti, after a short stint as a recurring guest on Letterman. Just minutes prior, Harvey was hamming it up for a camera, clicking away at his casting out exaggerated emotions on his distinctive face; at one point he joked “I can only parody myself at this point.”
Because, despite his tendency to ramble off into tangents, Harvey Pekar is not an “angry brooder” or a curmudgeon.

On July 31, 1987, Harvey walked onstage at the Letterman show wearing a t-shirt that read “On Strike Against NBC”. He looked tense, wired, and ready for a fight, his eyes wide open, ignoring Letterman’s condescending probing of “You more relaxed now?” You seem a little more laid back” Then he asked Harvey how things were in Cleveland, and Harvey responded ‘That’s a stupid question…you’re trying to bait me.” Then Letterman sticks his nose into an offer for a TV pilot that Harvey turned down.
“It’s a drag to go on night after night doing simple-minded bullshit,” Harvey explained to Letterman as a reason not to do it. And, then when Harvey’s getting ready to start on his serious issues, David cuts to a commercial; when it comes back, Harvey’s yielding a stack of notecards and trying to get to his point. In the exchanges, he jokingly tells Letterman the host doesn’t read much, and then Letterman comes back with a “This is a guy writing comic books telling me I don’t read much,” while waving his copy of American Splendor. Harvey goes through his list of G.E.’s shadiness, blowing the smirking David off, to the point that yet another commercial break is called. When they come back, the hyper Harvey, waving his arms angrily, eventually cools off enough to walk off the stage with Letterman as the show closes and the final credits roll.
Even after the blow-up on Letterman, Harvey was called back a few more times.

“When you live in Cleveland, it’s hard to transcend,” Harvey admits of his hometown. Part of the appeal behind his autobio comics are that they do take place in one of the most uneventful cities in existence, where mundane, everyday occurrences are the pinnacle of excitement – and all there is to write about. By reading about Harvey Pekar the everyman file clerk (now retired) and his neuroses, it’s easier for us to relate through the boredom of our own everyday lives.
In the ‘70s, Pekar’s friend, former neighbor, and fellow jazz fanatic, underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, encouraged Harvey to tell his stories in comics form. First given birth in stick figures scrawled out on paper, Harvey’s first story “Crazy Ed” were metamorphosed into a comic book story in Crumb’s The People’s Comics. By 1976, Harvey was writing his life story in stick figures, illustrated by an assortment of artists, for his self-published comic American Splendor.

American Splendor came out sporadically over the years, garnering Harvey an American Book Award in 1987, a year after the Letterman debacle. Harvey started the ‘90s with a near life-ending experience: lymphatic cancer. Harvey and his wife, Joyce Brabner, chronicled Harvey’s bout with cancer in the 1994 American Splendor graphic novel, Our Cancer Year.
Recovering from his illness, Harvey jumped to Dark Horse Comics to publish new American Splendor, and then found his way to DC Comics/Vertigo. Along the way, he picked up more contributors, such as Frank Stack, Josh Neufeld and, in particular, Dean Haspiel. His association with the Brooklyn cartoonist was the catalyst for the American Splendor film in 2003.

American Splendor, the movie, starred Paul Giamatti as Harvey, with Harvey and Joyce even appearing in interview segments throughout the movie. It was life imitating art and art imitating life so well that it garnered awards and nomination, as well as putting Harvey in the spotlight again.
Making the shift to DC/Vertigo, Harvey teamed up with Haspiel to produce The Quitter, the life story of Harvey Pekar’s formative years, back when he had hair and before he became a file clerk. Dean’s slick inkline and bold design elements illustrated Harvey’s trials and tribulations as he picked fights, got canned from jobs, and endured the heartbreaks every young person does – but in the inimitable and poignant way that only Harvey Pekar can. While Splendor was Harvey Pekar in the now, The Quitter lifted the curtain to show the drama of his growing into manhood, both held back and pushed even further by his failures to finish college, play on the football team, or stay in the Navy.
Dean’s art renders Harvey’s story in possibly the most dynamic manner it’s ever been told, infusing a bit of Jack Kirby into Harvey’s memoirs, whether it’s in Harvey’s lofty position as neighborhood street fighter, or amongst the stacks of files in the V.A. hospital.



Harvey Pekar is a writer. He writes comic stories of his life through stick figure thumbnails.
Harvey Pekar is not a technological maven.
“I don’t like to mess with technical stuff, I’m just a total wash-out that way,” Harvey . I wish I wasn’t because it’s given me a lot of problems in my life.”
It’s ironic that Harvey’s current project, appropriately titled The Pekar Project, is an online comic on Smith Magazine. Smith has been in the forefront of producing webstrips with a success rate to print: past strips include Shooting War, AD: New Orleans After the Deluge, and the anthology strip Next-Door Neighbor.
“They have a pretty good record of selling their projects after they’re shown on the Internet,” Harvey points out. “I’m hoping that when we get them all done we can sell them as a book.”
Approached by Smith Mag editor Jeff Newelt through comics networker extraordinaire Haspiel, Pekar writes his autobio strips for a group of four artists to alternate drawing – Rick Parker, Tara Seibel, Joseph Remnant, and Sean Pryor – each with a different style and visual approach towards Harvey’s work.

Seibel’s style evokes a child channeling later period Picasso, through use of crayon and with a loose line, with vibrant patches of color; Pryor’s subtle stippling gives a grit to his subtle contour line; Remnant uses a dead-weight outer line on all of his forms that, with his mastery of forced perspective, gives an eye-popping experience; finally, Parker’s classic style slips in bits of modern collage and coloring, but still feels like it belongs in a baby carriage in Haight-Asbury.
Harvey admits that The Pekar Project is no different from American Splendor, but it is – at the most, Project is bite-sized pieces of Harvey’s unique narrative idiom, bought at an online restaurant rather than a print one. Feeling like Splendor is a strength, though, giving it the familiarity of a phone conversation with our old pal, Harvey Pekar, catching up on Oscar the Amazing Baby, free stale potato chips, or what a pain in the ass sweeping cat litter into a dustpan is.

And busy Pekar has been. Unfortunately, he hasn’t reaped all the benefits of his hours of work yet.
“I did something that was real American Splendor style. I finished it. It was a book that had four biographies in it and was about some interesting and unusual people that I know. I sent it in and it was accepted by Random House and it was supposed to come out in September. I followed up and asked the guy just before it was going to come out – ‘Is this coming out or what?’ – and found out that they had pushed it back two years. I would be the vehicle for getting the story over, narrating it, and friends of mine would be the main characters. It was a graphic novel, each story about thirty-five pages.
“It’s called Huntington, West Virginia on the Fly. They pushed the publication back because they were having problems like a lot of publishers, and maybe they weren’t having good advance sales. It might have been because of the title because people couldn’t tell what the book was about. I kind of like the title, but I could see where it couldn’t sell any books; people could be confused by it until they could pick it up.”
Huntington isn’t the only project on hold for Harvey Pekar. His list includes his much-desired biography of Lenny Bruce.

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For the Love of Comics #5: Dig Comics with Miguel Cima!

Words: Christopher Irving

When I first met Miguel Cima, he told me he wanted to make rock stars out of comics folk. Seeing as the affable Cima used to work in the music industry, it wasn’t a surprising comparison.

It was at Jim Hanley’s Universe just a few weeks ago, for a screening of his documentary Dig Comics, with a panel discussion following.

Dig Comics is Cima’s attempt at a cutting-edge documentary that preaches the wonders of comics, and how we need to get them into the hands of the uninitiated. To convey this, he talks to a few comics talents – Scott Shaw, Dame D’Arcy, and Jeph Loeb – about the diminishing presence of comics, comic shop owners, gives a well-studied review of comics’ sales decline over the past few decades, and in contrast to other countries’, and even goes on the street to get comics in the hands of non-readers. The thirty-minute documentary Miguel has painstakingly put together is like a “pilot” towards a longer and more ambitious version to come, with him as an approachable and fun-loving host, with just a tinge of self-deprecation that makes him feel like an old pal.

Dig Comics is ambitious, positive, and full of pep. Cima’s passion towards comics is genuine and hopeful; however, the thirty-minute proto-form of the documentary only focused on ways to get people hooked on single issues and trade paperbacks, and to make the current marketplace survive.

One of the things we talked about during the panel were the presence of trade paperbacks and graphic novels in bookstores, as well as the rise of the digital comic (panelist Tom Brevoort of Marvel Comics: “Webcomics are the future.”). Currently, webcomics are being produced by everyone from up-and-coming cartoonists to industry vets, and also have a huge presence on Marvel’s website. What’s lacking are standardized viewing methods as well as a set electronic distribution, both of which will probably happen once the fabled and almost mythological iPod tablet goes on the market.

By this time next year, Diamond may be feeling the weight of electronic comics’ competition, taking a huge bite out of their single-issue sales in an already dwindling direct marketplace, as folks give up their $3 to $4 single issue habit for a cheaper subscription-based approach. Comic shops will unfortunately feel the change, as well, and the smart ones will adapt towards becoming trade paperback and graphic novel stores with a selection of single-issue sales.

Dig Comics doesn’t tap into any of this in the half-hour proto-version; if Miguel chooses to touch on the phenomenon in his expanded version, he’ll also cover more bases, but may find himself documenting the comics industry as it goes through an astounding metamorphosis.

I, for one, am anxious to see the ultimate version of his documentary. The comics industry in America is more accepted than it’s ever been, but it still needs more cheerleaders like Miguel Cima.

Learn more about Dig Comics at Miguel’s website. Tell him Graphic NYC sent you.

Graphically Speaking: Whatever Happened To The World On Tomorrow

Words: Seth Kushner

Whatever Happened To The World Of Tomorrow follows fifty years of technological revolution, as seen through the eyes of a boy who is promised a particular idealized future by a trip to the 1939 World’s Fair. The book opens on the boy and his father on the way to the fair and the story is told by author Brian Fies in a clean, retro, “cartoony” style. Fies utilizes big, mostly full-page panels, leading to concise storytelling. Much of the text is in caption boxes and the writing does a fine job of conveying the boy’s own sense of wonder. The reader is given a tour of the fair as the boy and his father make their way through the exhibits and Fies manages to effectively incorporate photographs from the World’s Fair through the father taking pictures of the boy at the fair, combining the photos with his illustration.

While at the fair, the boy is given a comic called Space Age Adventures featuring Cap Crater and then the book’s pages change to yellowed newsprint, mimicking the look and feel of a golden age comic, completely with big printing dots, giving the look of Lichtenstein-esque pop art.As the story moves forward through different eras the comic returns, each time with era appropriate art; the one from 1965 evokes Jack Kirby, 1975 is an homage to Neal Adams, and so on. The story catches up with the boy once every decade and events of the time are played out. 1955 has the boy and his father having moved from the city to the suburbs (as many did then), and building a bomb shelter. The section taking place in 1965 has the main characters at a Gemini rocket launch.In each period the boy still dreams of the flying cars and jet packs he saw at the World’s Fair, until 1975, when the Apollo Space program is winding down, and then he realizes that the future promised to him – and to all of us— is not coming. The final section has the boy, now a grown man, living in the distant future, and explains how what the future the we actually got, (our present) is wondrous, clever and effective.

Whatever Happened To The World Of Tomorrow is a handsome book, as one would expect from Abrams Comic Arts. Designer Neil Egan uses the bookjacket in an inventive way, creating a narrative between it and the cover beneath.

The main drawback of the book, at least to me, is that it sometimes reads a bit like a textbook. Fies, I believe, is looking to educate the reader and it sometimes comes off as heavy handed. Regardless, Fies does very well with creating a sense of nostalgia and he’s a fine visual storyteller and draws the architecture, clothing and furniture of each time period accurately, giving the reader a good sense of time and place. He also develops the relationship between the father and son and it feels honest.

I've been a World's Fair enthusiast for a long time and was very excited when I originally saw this book solicited. Happily, it delivered for me.

Now, where the hell are my flying car and jet pack?

Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow is the book of discussion at the Abrams Book Club, held at Bergen Street Comics on December 3 at 8 PM. Bergen Street Comics is at 470 Bergen St, located near the Bergen Street stop for the 2 and 3, and blocks from the Atlantic/Pacific station.

Q and A: Mike Allred on Red Rocket 7 in 1997

Interview by Christopher Irving

My first time interviewing Mike Allred was upon the release of Red Rocket 7 and his indy film Astroesque (on VHS!) in 1997. At the time, it was Allred's first non-Madman project.

CHRIS IRVING: Right now, you’re currently working on Madman, you have Astroesque coming out in a month, and Red Rocket 7 #4 came out yesterday. Anything else you’re working on that you’d care to tell?

MIKE ALLRED: We’re ready to go to Memphis to mix my band’s album at Sunset Studios....The band is called The Gear, but it’s the Red Rocket 7 album.

CI: So what type of music would you describe it as?

MA: Kind of...mod metal. (laughter)

CI: Mod Metal? That’s a new one.

MA: I don’t know. I really like the kind of crunchy, infectious early Kinks and Who, and early Stones. This is kind of really fun, simple, powerful, infectious rock. You kind of take those mod sensibilities and just give it a lot of crunchy metal, almost technical twist. So, yeah, Mod Metal would be a good way to describe it.

CI: Wow, so do you play guitar and do vocals on this?

MA: Yes.

CI: How many other band members do you have?

MA: Two, a bassist and guitarist.

CI: I understand Astroesque ties into Red Rocket 7. You’ve been having some hints about that. Does it serve as a prequel, or does it take place between panels, or even after the fact?

MA: It’s kind of parallel. With Red Rocket 7...[it] kind of takes place over forty-some years, and Astroesque takes place in the day after tomorrow. The time frame is exactly when Red Rocket 7 begins and ends which is one step ahead of the present day.

In Red Rocket 7, after people see Astroesque, they’ll see the characters walk by someone, or someone will be on TV that was on TV in Astroesque. One of the characters in Astroesque is one of the characters that sets everything in motion in Red Rocket 7.

It’s not a secret, it’s the original man [Red Rocket]. He’s one of two major characters in Astroesque.

CI: Red Rocket 7 in itself seems to be a pretty ambitious series; you’re retelling the history of rock ‘n’ roll and, at the same time, this grand Kirby-esque, cosmic adventure. Do you think Red-

MA: If that’s what you think, then I’ve succeeded (laughter). That’s what I was trying to do.

CI: That answers my question! Now what about Madman? We haven’t seen him since the Hullaballoo with Superman. Do you plan on picking that back up very soon?

MA: There are going to be four monthly issues of Madman Comics following Red Rocket 7. There will probably be a couple of months’ break. Madman Comics #11, which was the last regular issue flowed into Hullaballoo. It’s Madman continuity, not Superman continuity. The Hullaballoo, if I had my way, would have been called Madman Comics #12, 13 and 14. But, we wouldn’t have sold as many comics! (laughter)

It’s that continuity exactly. Madman Comics #12 follows immediatly after Hullaballoo.

CI: Does Red Rocket 7 tie into Madman in any way?

MA: Not at all...I’ve never really defined this, but Madman’s world -- Snap City is a fictional city so, obviously, it is some kind of parallel universe. But Red Rocket 7 takes place in the real world with real history. Actually, in Red Rocket 7 #1 there is a Madman refrigerator magnet that says “This is a real world, this is a piece of merchandise from a comic book.” So in red Rocket 7, there could be someone reading a Madman comic book. There won’t be a real Madman there unless it’s an actor, like in the film; which we’re in pre-production on right now.

CI: What can you tell me about the film for Madman. How far into pre-production are you?

MA: Well, we’ve finally found the perfect director and we’re in negotiations now, so I can’t say who he is. When we were at Universal, it was going to be me. Through all of the frustrations, I think by my insisting on being director, it completely halted the project. There were too many people worrying, too many concerns. I wasn’t. I know I could make the perfect Madman movie. With those frustrations, it inspired and prodded me into making my own films.

So, I took some of the option money and made Astroesque. I have a partner named Shane Hawks, who helped me with Astroesque. I couldn’t have done it without him. So we did a second film which was his concept, called Eyes to Heaven. We’re now finishing the editing on that, and I will then be doing the soundtrack music for that. We also have a comic book tie-in for that, which is also kind of an off-shoot.

I’m trying to bring other interested parties into comics. It is my highest priority, the comic book medium. Mainly because, I think it’s being with the greatest potential, and the most accessible elements, but also the most untapped potential. The misconceptions for comics, that it’s for kids, or you’ll hear people say “Oh, I’ve outgrown comics.” Well, would you ever hear somebody say “I’ve outgrown record albums,” or “I’ve outgrown movies,” “I’ve outgrown television.” It’s ridiculous, when you realize that comics are literature and artwork combined for storytelling, you can do anything in a comic book, and it’s possible for one person to do a comic book. It’s the purest storytelling art form there is....

One person can write a novel, but maybe that novelist can’t draw. For me, the definition of a cartoonist is someone who both writes and draws, and illustrates. A cartoonist is the purest storyteller, with the greatest potential for telling a story ultimately in a visual [way], using literature. In that end, I find it most exciting and having the most freedom to try and stretch a little bit. My whole career has been about trying to find vehicles that are marketable in the medium and the current industry with it’s current readership, and stretching it, using those vehicles to just push it a little further and bridge that gap between juvenile entertainment and real, pure artistic literature.

Did I go roundabout your question? I don’t even remember what the last one was (laughter)!

CI: I asked you how far into pre-production Madman was.

MA: There you go! I went on a big spiel. I am so fanatical about comics and just how much we’re falling short: it’s frustrating and exciting at the same time. There is so much that has happened in music, and will happen, in films. You can’t just step up to the plate and say “Okay, I can make a significant difference,” it’s too daunting. The room to grow and the room to make a mark, it’s there. That’s important to me. There are so many wonderful people working today, yet they have an underground fanbase, or the audience just doesn’t exist to give them the appreciation that they’re due.

I’ll be the first person to admit to selling out, just enough to kind of bridge that gap between mainstream tripe and something that is excellent. Hopefully, my work [you can] walk across my back to get to the really good stuff and the kind of work that I aspire to. I don’t think I’ve come anywhere close to doing my best work, and hopefully this medium will grow and support that work when I get to that stage of my career. It’s where things like these other projects tie in. If someone is an indy music fan, maybe they’ll find out the lead singer/songwriter/ guitarist of this band also does comic books, and check it out. Or someone will see my films at an arthouse or on video and find out “It says here there’s a comic book, and here’s a phone number.”

When you look at comic books, it doesn’t look that commercial, but when it’s being made into a film, it has that greatest potential of bringing people back. Every time there’s been a big comic book movie, interested, curious people will go into a comic book store and they hit a wall. There’s just no one bridging that gap, as I was saying. It’s everyone’s responsibility, it’s the retailers responsibility, the distributor’s, to encourage the growth of this medium.

So, with the Madman film, I’ve realized that I could steer things as a producer, and have the confidence with the collaboration, for it to be the film that I really want it to be, even if I’m not directing it. I’m very excited about who we’re negotiating with right now, and the cinematographer that we’re getting, the production designers, that’s the stage that we’re at. Once we get all that in place, the obvious next step is casting, and then it’s into production.

CI: As far as casting, do you have any suggestions? I remember you’d once mentioned Kyle McLachlan as Madman.

MA: Yeah, I’ve always found him to be interesting. He looks like a classic leading man, but at the same time, there’s something odd about him; something not quite right that makes him very interesting. I see the same characteristics in Eric Stolz, someone who I think could have made more obvious choices and been a more famous movie star...clearly from his choices, that wasn’t what interests him, being an actor is. Here’s somebody that could, through this strange costume, show all those facets of Madman without putting a name actor in. He is a name actor, but not somebody that neccesarily would get people in theaters. That was a problem at Universal whenever I would mention both of these actors. They want somebody that’s going to bring people in, for obvious reasons, they want to make money. Fortunately, Robin Williams has followed teh book, and everybody agrees he’d be teh perfect Dr. Flem, and put him in a role where he can be intense and kind of dark. In the script there are all these failed clones with bright red hair, and goatees and blisters, he gets his head cut off and put in an aquarium and a bathtub and in a jar, and carried around in a container. We kind of see two Robin Williams -- we’ll see the really interesting actor, in the more serious films he does, and then the goofball wacky Robin Williams. Here, we’d have the serious actor, but in these really strange situations. I think it would bring the really best out of him. Hopefully that would bring people in, and we’d have the freedom to get the right actor for Frank Einstien, instead of the most box office actor. Although there are some box office actors that have been brought up that I think would be great. Everytime it appears who I make a suggestion, you’ve read that I’ve said Kyle McLachlan, this just irritates everybody to no end ! (laughter)

Nobody wants to be the second, third, fourth, choice but for me to say “Here’s some actors that I’ve thought of,” that shouldn’t discourage anybody for making a run for the part. This is me just dreaming.

CI: Good luck, something I’ve always been wondering: what do you see the costume made of, a cloth costume?

MA: In the film?

CI: Yeah, in the film.

MA: This was one of the first hurdles that, once I made clear how it would work, people went nuts over. To me it’s obvious, but it’s a concern that I thought was ridiculous. I want to kindo fgo back about fifty years ago and kind of take the approach of ths Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz or, more recently, Jim Carrey in The Mask. In other words, it would be a normal cloth costume, he’s made this himself.

There are cut-away shots of him pulling this cloth mask on his face, but when you’re seeing him walking around, the prosthetic will be a piece that goes around, almost like a ski mask, but with the face cut out, but would be blended in so the actor’s face would be right there, completely open, but would look like a second skin. It would have this surreal feel to this. It will have a really odd, interesting look in the film, the actor’s face is going to be right there.

I think it’ll look great. I’ve done some production paintings, and one of them was published in an issue of Madman Comics. I actually used Eric Stoltz as a model for that, it would look like that....it would look like the full headpiece with the hair coming out. In that illustration I even left the eyes alone, he’s got very pale eyes. Otherwise, we’re kind of looking at Marilyn Manson-style white contact lenses (laughter). Again, just have a real strange look to it.

CI: The Grafik Muzik series you did years ago, how would you grade it now, looking back in comparison to Red Rocket 7 and your current Madman work?

MA: Very primitive, kind of primal. Even as I was doing it, I was disappointed, because it wasn’t coming out [right]. I always had very specific ideas in my head, but I couldn’t make my hands put it out on paper. It wasn’t actually until Madman that I dstarted successfully making that connection. Which is different than how a lot of other people feel about their work, I think. Some people relate to how I feel about the process of creating something. I see a lot of people at conventions that will come up and show me their work. It’s obviously in need of a lot of development, a lot of skills jsut haven’t been exercised enough: lack of understanding of anatomy, or perspective, yet they’re convinced it’s great. So, when you come up against somebody like that, you can’t critique their work, you can’t constructively tell them “Here’s a few suggestions to help you improve,” because they take it as an insult. I’ve always welcomed that. The first comics professional I’ve ever met was when I was a TV reporter in Germany. I was just working on Dead Air, and I met Will Eisner. He came to Germany promoting a film called Comic Book Confidential. I was at the comic shop where he was going to do a signing later. I was asking where I could get [a] Comic Book Confidential poster. It looked really cool, and I asked “Is there any way I can get one?” and they told me “Go to the movie theater where they’ll be showing it.”

This was during the day and I went over there. The guy who answered teh door at the theater, which was locked, didn’t speak English, but heard that I spoke English. He just waved me in, smiling “Oh, come on, come on.” He was very relieved that Laura and I had shown up because poor Will Eisner and his wife were just sitting there with nobody to talk to! So, he talked to us, and I had some of my work with me, and it was just this great moment; here was just this great legend, one of the true pioneers and, to this day, is a progressive cartoonist. I had all of this private time with him and he, some would think, tore my work apart, really told me “Here’s some of your weaknesses, here’s what you can do to improve some of your draftsmanship, etc., etc,” and it was like money, it was like wow! You couldn’t pay for that kind of advice, from Will Eisner. I reall took that stuff to heart and really went to town.

There was another time where Neil Gaiman asked me to do Sandman, early on in the series. The editor rejected my sample pages. I thought it was a done deal, because Neil wanted me to draw it, I thought that was all it took. I did some sample pages and they were rejected and that was the hardest moment for me in this career. Fortunately I thought “Man, I’m going to show her,” and I worked harder and harder and harder. To this day, I look at my stuff and see where I just didn’t nail it, what I really wanted to be on the page just isn’t there. I’ve since accepted that that’s a very healthy thing. Later I can go back and look at the work and enjoy it and see the progression. Sometimes I’ll go too far, and try something that isn’t quite working, and realize that...I’d preferred how I’d been doing it before and so, I’ll rework that. It’s a never-ending cycle [that] keeps you interested, keeps you fresh and excited about what you’re doing. I consider it a blessing, to be your most critical critic.

CI: Do you plan on reprinting any of the Grafik Muzik, or any of your earlier work?

MA: Not at all. For me, they’re like ancient hieroglyphics. If people make the effort to hunt them down and buy them. If they want to see them that bad, then godspeed. But it’s nothing that I want to encourage being seen, on a more accessible level. It was a learning period for me, and I kind of like it’s place where it is. Everything I’ve done from Madman on, however, I want to keep in print...keep it as available as possible because it’s work that I am very keen on having people seeing. From now on, my intent is [that] I think Madman’s got another twenty issues before I complete the ultimate story before I tell his entire story. In the meantime, I want to do other projects that play with format and do that stretching that I like to talk about. Madman is something that I have a lot of affection for, has given me a spotlight in this business and I definitely will not be abandoning the story until it is finished. I will also use it to provide me that visibility, to have less conventional comics [and] projects get more attention, and at least do my part on moving this medium forward.

CI: It must have been cool to get The Spirit assignment from Kitchen Sink for the new anthology that’s coming out soon.

MA: Actually that’s something that I’m really disappointed in, because it came right when I was at my busiest. This year has been unbelievable. I’ve had at least one thing out every month for about a year. It’s because after I did the movie stuff, even going back to all of the time I spent at Universal, developing the Madman film. I looked back and it was like “I didn’t do anything.” Last year I had three comics come out. I thought that was pathetic. Here was something that I’d really committed to and was letting myself down. So, I kind of re-committed. When Madman was re-optioned, that’s when I pulled myself out of the director’s seat, and everything started to move along. I realized what I really wanted to do was independent work, whether it was independent films, independent music, or independent comics.

I was inspired to follow Astroesque with Red Rocket 7, and there was Superman/Madman Hullaballoo, which we then moved up to give a nice big burst of attention before Red Rocket 7, which needed it because it’s obviously pretty unconventional format-wise as well as story-wise. I did a Spider-Man book right before that, because it was an opportunity to work with Joe Sinnett. In the middle of all this was the Spirit offer and I just didn’t have the time to do it. Fortunately, one of my best friends, Matt Brundage who is a cartoonist, and Micheal Avon-Oming, who is a talented cartoonist kind of stepped up and said “Okay, we’ll pick up the slack.” We all kind of came up with this story together and I roughed it out and then Micheal tightened it up and Matt inked it, he did some drawing on it too. It was fun as a collaboration but, for me, as a Spirit fan, I wish I could have done it on my own to really have made it mine. So, it’s a mixed blessing -- on the one hand, the finished work is something that I’m proud of, and was a real joy to work with these two great guys, but also there was the selfish side of me that wishes that it was all mine! (laughter)

I’m glad that I was involved, and I just wish that the darned thing would come out.

CI: What should we expect to see from you in the coming year?

MA: The album will be coming out right after the last Red Rocket 7-Oh! What I didn’t get to mention that I am so jazzed about -- when I first came into comics, [there] was a comic book called The Jam, created by Bernie Mireault. This book lit up my life, there was a one-shot called The Jam Urban Adventure Super Cool Color-Injected Turbo Inventor From Hell. It came out in the late ‘80’s; to this day it is my single-most favorite comic books ever. The Jam was actually a major influence on creating Madman, as was The Spirit and Alex Toth’s The Fox and Jack Cole’s Plastic Man. It was just fun and had characters that felt real and were three-dimensional. Bernie also has this very unique style which is anything but commercial, but to me is very addictive, I love it. Anyway, he’s been doing a lot of coloring work and varying projects over the past few years and we got together [and said] “Wouldn’t it be fun if we did something together?”

So, he’s bringing The Jam back; it’s a two-issue project called The Madman Jam, and...I think it overlaps the last Red Rocket 7 and fills the gap before the next Madman Comics. The beauty about this book is [that] it’s going to look like animation cels. Bernie was actually a big influence on Laura’s coloring and...the color in Color-Injected book, the pages were shot on animation acetate and then painted with cel vinyl, just like you paint animation cels. It looks amazing! His pallette [and] coloring was a major influence on Laura and I. The first box of Madman cards were painted with cel vinyl. The book has this M. C. Escher theme through it, all kinds of weird visual tricks throughout all forty-eight pages. I’m drawing and inking Madman entirely, and I’m also inking his character. It’ll be drawn in his style, inked by me, which kind of pulls it together, and my characters are completely inked and drawn by me. Because of the difference in our inking styles, it’s going to pull the figures out from the background and will have this incredible look to it. It’s just a blast of a story!

Following Red Rocket 7, you get the Madman Jam, four monthly issues of Madman Comics, The Feeders (which is the comic that ties in with the Eyes to Heaven film, which will be coming out on video by summer), the Astroesque movie comes out next month on video. Then, I’ve got this detective story project, which I’m going to be doing before the next Madman Comics chapters. I see it coming out in four or five issue chapters. This next four-issue arc is "The Exit of Dr. Boiffard", somewhere around issue #30 is what will take me to take Frank Einstien to his climax.

CI: It was quite a cliffhanger at the end of #11...

MA: That was a real stinky thing to do and I apologize! It wasn’t intended to be that way. Actually, #11 was going to be the beginning of this five-issue monthly arc and, right as we were doing it, this other stuff started happening. As I worked on a Kevin Smith movie called Chasing Amy, these various opportunities came up, and so we decided to release #11 to try to explain what the plans were. I think if I continued on this arc with Madman...I didn’t have the juice, and I wouldn’ve fallen into the trap of just being 'the Madman guy'. Instead, I’ve exercised these other muscles which were needing attention and, ultimately, it’s just made me a better storyteller [and] artist. I’m healthier in every way because of it. Instead of just sitting around and waiting for the right opportunities for making these things, I’ve made those opportuinities.

I guess that ultimately that’s what I’m about, that’s the moral to this story: that’s the message that I’m trying to get across: for anybody whose just sitting around waiting for that opportunity, waiting for permission to create something in any of these mediums, my words of wisdom are simply “You can do it, attack it. Attack it now! Do it now!” Find out what it takes to do it and simply attack it! Get it done, and then move on to the next step. In all entertainment...mediums, there’s this feeling that you have to be discovered [and] given permission. That’s what the independent movement is all about, it was what was so exciting about [their] success in the mid 1980’s, with independent films recently. The most exciting thing that’s going on in entertainment is this desire to discover this raw, honest, sincere work of all these different creators who are just taking what they have and making something great out of all of this. I am a huge fan of all of this, as long as there’s that instaiable need for fresh, original, exciting ground-breaking entertainment -- Wow! we’re really on the crest of a wave here. I encourage everybody to stop, if they are a creative or artistic person, they have those juices just boiling up.

Let them out, and I’ll be your biggest fan.

Thanksgiving Releases

Graphic NYC’s Seth Kushner has much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving Day: the online premieres of both an original webstrip, Schmuck, and a video documentary, The ACT-I-VATE Experience.
“What began as a promo piece for ACT-I-VATE became an informative film about webcomics, web vs. print, and the future of the industry,” says Seth.
The ACT-I-VATE Experience, a documentary directed and produced by Kushner and Carlos Molina, (CulturePopProductions.com) gives a behind-the-scenes look at the premiere webcomics collective, makes its online premiere at esteemed comic news portal Newsarama (www.newsarama.com). The film has already premiered at the Baltimore Comic Convention and Brooklyn’s King Con, SPX in San Francisco and Quimby Con in Chicago.

Kushner shows off his writing chops with Schmuck, a semi-autobiographical graphic novel that outlines Kushner’s days as a bachelor, on ACT-I-VATE (www.act-I-vate.com), with art by Fishtown’s Kevin Colden. Colden’s clean art is complemented with Kushner’s distinctive photo-comics segments smattered throughout for specific sequences. The strip runs weekly as Kushner works on shopping around the print form of Schmuck.
“One of the first things Seth showed me when we first got together on Graphic NYC was a PDF pitch of Schmuck,” Kushner’s Graphic NYC partner Christopher Irving says. “Let’s just say that he’s upped his game with the online aspect of it, and it’ll only make our site more than just the premiere New Comics Journalism site. And just wait until you see what he’s got in store for next week…”


Look for The ACT-I-VATE Experience on Newsarama.com and Schmuck on Activatecomix.com, both on Thanksgiving Day.

Madman's Mike Allred: Rock Out Flying An Atomic Red Rocket 7

Words: Christopher Irving. Pictures: Seth Kushner

“I have a hard time with denying things, where people say ‘you don’t have enough faith.’ No, God gave us intelligence, and we should use our intelligence to discern things. I’m going to listen to an Atheist, an Agnostic, and I’ll listen to a Jew, or somebody whose faith is Hinduism or Islam. I want to know why you believe what you believe is it because your parents told you that? Was it because of tradition or intellectual pursuit? For me, I was drawn to the intellectual side and, because of that, I’d get these feelings because I was using my brain.”

Mike and Laura Allred, jetlagged as a result of flying in from Portland, Oregon and having worked a convention all day, sat in the lobby of their New York hotel, still full of energy. Allred, the temples of his short hair starting to gray like Reed Richards, still retains the boyishness he brought onto the comics scene in the ‘90s, with his groundbreaking comic book Madman, following the adventures of the existentialist Frank Einstein. His wife and colorist, Laura is also full of pep, and has a spot next to him on a long sofa.

“I didn’t want to believe something just because my Mom said that was the way to go,” Mike says. “The more I studied, the more I learned that we’re encouraged to learn. We’re not just supposed to believe things because somebody told us to; we need to think these things through. With Frank Einstein, he’s a clean slate, but had a life before. The more he learns about his previous life, the more he realizes ‘Maybe I don’t like who I think I might’ve been, but what’s important is who we are now.’

“That’s the lesson I’ve learned in my life: I may have done horrible things, but that shouldn’t affect my future. This day, I can decide to change my behavior, and tomorrow I can be a better person than today, and the next day I can be a better person than I was then. That’s who Frank Einstein is – he wants to be the best person he can be.”

Allred’s seminal creation, the amnesiac Frank Einstein aka Madman of Snap City, is a pop-culture saturated hero running through Technicolor adventures, as he explores his own spirituality and sense of self. Mike, like his avatar, spent the ‘90s questioning faith, religion, life, and identity in print; his existential questions found their way in Frank’s word and thought balloons, as every adventure forced Frank to discover yet another facet of who was while forging ahead on who he is in the present.


The culmination of Mike’s probing culminated in 2004, when he and Laura announced their belief in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, more widely known as Mormonism. Not only did they announce their beliefs openly, but also began a series of graphic novel adaptations of The Book of Mormon, collectively titled The Golden Plates.


“There are so many misinterpretations of that faith,” Allred says in his soft-spoken deep voice. “I think church members misinterpret it just as badly, because a lot of people don’t go to church, but they don’t really read the book. That is startling to me when I started to do the Book of Mormon adaptation: there were people who hadn’t read it, but since they’d gone to Sunday school and get a lesson here and hear a talk there, that they had this vague overview of it. Having said that, when I got enthusiastic about wanting to know what it was really about, and a lot of that happened because my aunt gave me this journal of my great-great grandfather’s, who knew Joseph Smith, the first prophet of the restoration.

“The reason anybody was called a Mormon was because there was this other ancient record that was provided to Joseph Smith, by God, of this people who left Jerusalem 600 years before Christ, and came to the Americas. The resurrected Christ came to visit them, but this race then died out 400 years later. The man who compiled all the records was named Mormon; that’s why it’s called the Book of Mormon.


“There were rooms of records that Mormon then abridged, and that became the Book of Mormon. It was a derogatory term by people who didn’t like Mormons to call them Mormon. The church started calling itself Mormon. It’s the Church of Jesus Christ, and the later clarification is of Latter-Day Saints, these supposedly being the latter days. That’s the American history of the Church, but the book of Mormon is what happens, and most significantly of the resurrected Jesus Christ appearing here. In the New Testament, Christ said when he’s resurrected and appears to his Apostles, that he’s going to visit his other sheep. Supposedly, The Book of Mormon is one of these records from one of his other sheep.”


Despite his strength in his own faith, Allred remains open and willing to discuss, and even address questions about the Mormon faith head-on.


“This is the thing to get the most excited or interested about with the Mormons:” he points out. “It could be the greatest fraud ever, because Joseph Smith had a fourth grade education and, to anyone, to have made this fictional account from scratch? Either he was a genius and made this amazing fraud, or he told the truth that he was given these records on these plates by God, and was also given this device to translate it. If what he said is true, we know that there is life after death. Then, when God the Heavenly Father and Jesus were presented to Joseph Smith, they appeared in this beam of light. It confirms that God and Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, are one in purpose, but are separate beings. That’s interesting to me. By seeing these two beings, saying that they had physical bodies of flesh, and they were in a beam of light and he was given this device to translate these plates – it gets very science fiction-y at that point.”

Where the first Madman story arc, "The Oddity Odyssey", focused on Frank’s lack of identity and questions of self, the next arc focused more on his spiritual and existential questions. In a dream sequence in Madman Adventures #3, published by Tundra, Frank asks himself:


“One of two things will happen. Either I’ll die and that will be it…the end. All life I’ve experienced meaningless. “Or my being, my lifeforce, my spirit, my essence will live eternally. A continuous afterlife that goes on and on and on and on…”


“There was a scripture that says ‘Man is as God once was,’” Mike explains. “God went through what we went through. Then your mind starts really messing with you: So God had a Heavenly Father as well, and he lived on another planet…Then you start getting a galactic thing, because you think about this Earth being created and evolution set into motion so that we could grow and progress and learn from our ancestors. Then, this all happens and we move on to the next life, and as we progress to the Eternal, we at some point will create a world as well.”


“And we believe that you’ll still be who you are,” Laura adds.


“You’ll take your experiences with you.”


“It’s all about progression, and progressing through eternity.”


“It’s all something tangible,” Mike elaborates. “Also, our spirits are retained here. There’s a purpose and a plan. This isn’t the be-all, end-all, because our other progressions will go beyond this stage.”

Frank Einstein later learns he was a secret agent named Zane Townsend. As Zane, he was a hired gun who was killed by a rival agent, and was pulled back to Earth when mad scientist Dr. Boiffard brought his soul back from the light, bringing Zane back from the dead without his memory. When Frank learns the truth of his past life, he gets through it and focuses on his current life with his girlfriend Joe, by 2003’s Madman King-Size Super Groovy Special!:


“We are all, in fact, eternal beings. Our souls lived before this mortal realm and will live on after.

“But we must progress, improve ourselves, help others when we can…

“Love each other. “Strive for the eternal happy ending that’s possible for all of us.

“Or am I just mad?”

Madman has, in essence, created a new world; it’s one where he progressed and evolved beyond the darkness of Zane Townsend, and made his own brightness as Frank Einstein, the hero of Snap City who has pop-culture coursing through his veins.


“It’s an insult to say ‘You think you’re the center of the universe,’ because literally, you are,” Mike reflects. “Everything’s relative. It’s your choice to be ‘If I’m the center of this particular existence, because everything I know has come through my eyes, my ears, my nose, my touch—that’s my existence, what I know, and what I relate to. Yeah, we are the center of our own universe.”


“You can get into existentialism, but it’ll drive you insane. You can start thinking ‘If that’s true, how do I know that I’m not the only being in the world and made all of you up? I don’t want to be lonely, so I created this fictional reality and cut that part off from me.’ Existentialism can completely mess with your head.


“Really, what it all comes down to is choice: Do you choose to make the best of what you know is real? The relationships that do come into your existence – do you make the best of those? Do you treat people the way you want to be treated? That’s what Frank Einstein’s all about.”

Madman went through a handful of publishers: first Tundra, then Kitchen Sink, in his first two storylines. The format of the initial miniseries introduced father figures Dr. Boiffard and Dr. Flem, as well as love interest Jo Lombard (modeled off of Mike’s biggest cheerleader: his red-headed wife, Laura). By the time Madman Comics started with Dark Horse, Madman gained alien and robot sidekicks (Mott the Alien and Astroman, respectively). The influences were gained from general pop culture (Madman is as permeated with it), to the classic comic book artists. Two, in particular, ring true and are evident in Allred’s style: Alex Toth and Jack Kirby.


“Jack Kirby’s the ideal,” Mike observes. “My perception of him and the way he lived his life is that I can’t think of anybody I admire more. He was very kind. So much garbage got dumped on him, and the way he conducted himself through the lack of fairness, and the ways he was treated, but a lot of times there was the example he set as a human being. As an artist, there was the pioneer he was and this magic and power to make electricity on the page. On a personal level, I love the way he conducted himself. I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about him, and I think that’s fantastic.


“On the other end of the spectrum is Alex Toth, who I really love as an artist. He was really kind and supportive to me by building me up, and guiding me artistically. I’m not telling any secrets here: the way he treated people at times was kind of cruel. At one point in our relationship, he cut me off over the most ridiculous thing. I felt horrible about it, until I heard from everybody else that they had had a similar experience. So, as much as I loved what he had to teach me, and the kindness he showed me in mentoring me, I wouldn’t want to conduct my life the way he did. Ultimately, he died alone, where he’d cut off every loved one he’d ever known. Again, that’s my perception of him: when he died, he could have been surrounded by dozens of loved ones, but the perception I had was that he had alienated dozens of people.


“Kirby, on the other hand, drew people to him and was a very loving and forgiving man.”


Toth, infamous for his personal volatility, died in 2006, while Kirby passed away years earlier in 1994. Mike met Kirby twice, and Toth once.


“He was as friendly and just patient,” he says of Kirby. “Also, when I think of Jack Kirby I think of ‘gratitude’. He really loved the people that appreciated what he did, and that’s what I always saw in him and the way he treated everybody. It wasn’t ‘Oh, you’re important so I’m going to treat you better than this person I don’t know.’ He treated everybody like they were special, and that really came across.


“With Toth, I talked with him on the phone quite a bit, and I met him once at his house. That was exciting. If you were on the roof of his house, you could see the Hollywood bowl. It was a cool, unique neighborhood, and there was this network of sidewalks and even an outside elevator to get you to the next level of this neighborhood. There was a Spanish style of architecture. He was a cluttery guy, and accumulated stacks of things.


“Again, I have a lot of affection for both of these guys. I don’t understand why Alex got so angry and would cut people off for ridiculous reasons. He would be your biggest cheerleader and then go ‘Okay, I’m done with you.’”


Despite any personal differences that erupted between Allred and Toth, and along with the personal inspiration between he and Kirby, the inspiration of both men’s work is still obvious in Mike’s own.

And Madman? He continued to live around goofiness in a pop culture-based world of adventure. He even had a crossover with Superman.


“I want to enjoy things, so what’s fun for me is to surround him with robots, aliens, mutants, and you have all this fun, goofy, pop culture, and genre stuff. And it’s fun!”

And the Allreds have had a multitude of things to enjoy – a uber low-budget film of his pre-Madman works, G-Men from Hell, came out in 2000; Madman had a strong life at Dark Horse Comics in the late ‘90s; Mike made a low budget flick of his own with option money for a Madman movie; a foray into self-publishing with their label AAA Pop Comics – and even two record albums (with music by Mike and his band, The Gear) spinning out of Mike’s Red Rocket 7 mini-series from 1997.

Red Rocket 7 was Allred’s ambitious multi-media foray into non-Madman territory, the story of the immortal clone of an alien who is sucked into the history of rock ‘n’ roll music. In a ballsy move, he even put Madman on hiatus while completing this ambitious seven-issue project, formatted into a square not too removed in size from a record album. Blending prophecies, religion, rock music, ‘60s fabness in a gear vein, and Jack Kirby, Red Rocket 7 was decidedly darker and more adult than Madman, and ended with Red Rocket 7 moving on to rock ‘n’ roll heaven. It was Allred’s chance to pose deeper religious questions in a more serious vein than Madman might have allowed.


Red pops up in the most recent issues of Madman Atomic Comics, when Madman and crew take a trip to space to rock out to an auditorium of aliens.

“I was wrapping up the series and wanted to clarify that it was part of my world. I wanted there to be a definitive universe with my creator-owned work, and also The Gear was doing a new album, so it seemed it was the right time to make that connection,” Mike says.


“I think I’ve established that he’s this inter-dimensional and interstellar character,” he says of revisiting Red. “The way I did it gives new life for me to bring him back any way I want when I want. But for now, I think the story’s been told. At the end of the original series, he ends up in rock ‘n’ roll heaven, and I like the idea of that being open to interpretation.”


2000 saw the coming of Mike’s new superteam, The Atomics, spun out of the pages of Madman. The Allreds took the self-publishing leap with their AAA (Allred Atomic Art) Pop Comics, putting out fifteen issues of The Atomics (guest-starring Madman, who became their de facto team leader). The book lasted until late 2001.

Mike and Laura then made the jump to Marvel Comics that year when they joined up with writer Peter Milligan on the reinvented X-Force title. Formerly yet another X-Men title, Peter and Mike brought out a team of new characters, many of whom didn’t make it more than a few issues before being killed off, in this combination of action, drama, and social parody.


“I played with how much detail and how much economy,” Mike says of his art. “Just before X-Force, I was trying to be as economic with my linework as possible. In some ways, it was too simple. With X-Force I started to get more detail and finer linework, instead of that thick brushstroke, so less bold and more intricate and lush, maybe. Then, also, I was experimenting with efficiency…


“That even goes to ‘Where should I put my pencil down? If I put it here, it’ll be easier to reach.’ It’s something as simple as that. With the X-Force stuff, I even experimented with page size, and was working almost printed size. It was faster, but because of the detail I was putting in it, it ended up physically hurting my hand. Again, it was an experiment, and I learned some things from it and realized other things didn’t work as well as I would like.”


X-Force was rechristened X-Statix in 2002, and lasted two more years. In all, Allred enjoyed a three-year run on a mainstream superhero book that forced him to reinvent his way of working, as well as his style.


After X-Statix, it was time to return to Madman for a one-shot in 2003 (through Oni Press), and then into a more personal venture – The Golden Plates, and Mike and Laura’s openness about their religious beliefs.


“To cap off this whole religion discussion, I’ve learned so much about tolerance. It’s obvious to say, but the horror of religion is how so much of it creates the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to inspire. Every religion is supposed to inspire us to care and love for another, yet people kill each other over it.”


“On our message board, I never realized how much hatred some people had, until that,” Mike says of the announcement about their Mormonism. “There was a tidal wave of ‘Why are you doing this? Mormons are stupid and this and that…’ A lot of it may have been based on a personal experience with somebody, or a misperception; there were a couple of months where we quietly chipped away.”


“There were a few really nice people who chimed in, and Mike didn’t have to say anything,” Laura leaned in and added. “They did it really nicely. And Jamie Rich was awesome!”


“To the credit of the people that are regularly on our website, they are mostly kind, considerate, and compassionate people,” Mike reflects. “I can mostly let them talk things out. There are some pretty strong political discussions going on there; the whole Prop 8 thing came up, and I thought ‘This is going to get ugly,’ but it was all quite nice.


“Again, there’s the principle of agency and choice: there are people in my faith and others who can be so hateful of gay people. If they feel like a gay person is making bad choices, let them make those choices. Don’t try to destroy their lives, because if it is a bad choice, they’ll come to terms with it. Let them do what’s going to make them happy.


“And there’s Christ in general. When did he ever rip on anybody? He was the one who was always getting ripped on…


"And eventually, the angry people just fell away, and just talked stopping. There was a lot of goading and trying to get angry discussion going. It was eventually the patient and kind dialogue that first became the mode of discussion, and then became an interesting discussion.”

The low-key Allred is affected by the reactions aimed at he and Laura. He has to be a cartoonist and create his own worlds, possibly (in part) out of a frustration at the shape of the real world. When the real world isn’t meeting up to its full potential, a better one can be represented through art.


“What it boils down to for me, in its simplest form, is that I see hypocrisy (if not the greatest) as one of the greatest evils,” he says. “If everybody really thought about what their intentions were, and goals were, and what example are they following, I think we’d all be a little nicer to each other. We’re all imperfect, and the second somebody tries to come up with a better idea, they’re called pious and preachy.”


While fairly liberal in his beliefs, Mike Allred belongs to the Human party on the country of “the World”, eschewing an allegiance to either the Democratic or Republican parties.


“While I’m perfectly happy to identify myself with the Mormon faith, I’m also perfectly willing to criticize it and those that I think represent it,” Mike continues. “Again, with the Prop 8 stuff, I don’t want to be associated with the members of the church who claim that the thing to do is to be intolerant of people just wanting the same right as everyone else. It doesn’t affect your faith, how you worship, or what you choose to do with your own life – let them make their own choices. To me, that goes right back to the heart of what Christ taught: love one another, and don’t try to take things from each other. I want to make sure that if someone wants to identify with me in a certain way, I want to clarify the differences that those perceptions of misperceptions may have, and that would be one of the main ones.


“[I don’t] represent the church in general,” Mike elaborates. “This is me. This is my opinion. I think I always clarify that, that this is my opinion.”


“We can each decide what we have in our lives, with everything. We’ve been poor, and we’ve been well off, but the only thing that’s changed is our attitude at that moment in our life. We can be poor and blissfully happy, or we can be rich and horribly miserable; it really is our choice to make the best of what you’ve got. “The more I make a study of life in general, and have this comic book of all things to use as an outlet, the more I learn and the more I grow from it. First and foremost, I hope that people have a good time with my work, and the stories I tell and a part of, but also if something inspires somebody to think ‘You know what? I’m going to make something of my life, even if it’s that tomorrow I’m going to be happier than I was today,’ that’s everything.”

The most recent Madman series, Madman Atomic Comics, features Madman and his pals The Atomics adventuring through space and Snap City. The Allreds have taken a more experimental approach with their work – in one issue, Mike aped several of his favorite cartoonists, as Frank had a subconscious journey with his hero, Mister Excitement; the figures and backgrounds are sometimes drawn separately and compiled in Photoshop, producing an animation cel effect; and Laura’s coloring has taken a more sculpted approach – and they are bringing all the tricks learned to March’s new ongoing series for Vertigo comics. I, Zombie! combines the Allreds’ unique blend of art and coloring to writer Chris Roberson’s script.


“The main girl is a zombie. It’s a running theme in all of my work of dying and coming back again,” Mike jokes. “But, in this case, if she doesn’t eat a brain once a month, she then becomes your drooling, traditional zombie.”

The zombie in question is the short-haired Gwen, who works at a natural “green” cemetery, where the dead are buried without the process of embalming, shy of injections of formaldehyde.


“She buries the bodies with three other guys, and then comes back later, digs them up, and eats the brain once a month,” Mike explains. “The side effect is that the memories overwhelm her, so we can go in any direction on whose brain she just ate: it could be an astronaut, a little boy. But the characters in the story are also fun, too, because her best friends are the ghost of a teenage girl who died in the ‘60s; there’s a 2,000 year old Egyptian man who has to do sacrifices and rituals to stay young, and he’s the mummy character; there’s a were-terrier; and these two kung-fu monster hunters. And there’s a clan of vampires who run a paintball business and take people out into the woods and shoot them.”


The first Zombie story was in the House of Mystery Halloween Annual, and featured Gwen, Ellie (a ghost), and their were-terrier pal going trick or treating in the Allreds’ hometown of Eugene, Oregon. They just happen to knock on the door of a mummy preparing a human sacrifice…


“I can say right now that Gwen, the lead character, is easily in the top three of my favorite female characters, ever,” Mike points out. “She may sail into first place: I like her every bit as much as Jo or It Girl.”


It’s now past midnight, and Mike Allred has to be too tired for hype: all that’s left for it to be is his trademark golly gee sincerity and enthusiasm, whether it’s talking about comics, religion, or planning their trip to Strawberry Fields tomorrow.


“With any opportunity, I really always want to talk about the potential of comic books in general,” Mike says in closing. “Even today, it’s so untapped, the power to combine pictures with words. I always want to express to people out there who want to give it a shot: if they do, have fun with it, no matter the skill level. As long as you’re having fun, it’s good for you. If you have fun with it, you do it more, and if you do it more you get better at it, and if you get better at it it’s more fun…and it keeps building on itself. I say that because I’m a fan, and anytime I can get excited about somebody else’s work, it gets me excited about my own. The more people who jump into the pool, the more fun the party’s going to be. I encourage everybody to pitch in and do stuff that’s going to get me excited.”

See more of Mike Allred's work at his AAAPop Comics! site.

For the Love of Comics #05: My Schmucky Endeavor

Words: Seth Kushner

Schmuck: The term entered English as a borrowed pejorative from the common Yiddish insult, where it is an obscene term for penis. It a range of meaning depending on context. In its most innocuous use, a schmuck is a person who does a stupid thing, in which case "dumb schmuck" is the appropriate expression. A schmuck's behavior ranges from pesky and inconsiderate, to obnoxious and manipulative.

Growing up, my mother often called me a “Schmuck.” It was part term of endearment and part beratement. The word “shcmuck” always struck me as a funny sounding Yiddish word, and I suppose from hearing it as often I have throughout my life, it was the first title that sprung to mind for the manuscript I started writing in 2003.

Schmuck is a very personal story for me. It's based upon a period of my own life when I was dumped by my girlfriend and while depressed, I went on a personal journey of blind dates, Internet connections, break-ups, etc., all in hopes of finding the then abstract concept of my one true love. Along the way, I endured many painful, comical, tragic and comically tragic situations, and it's those on which the story mainly focuses. Though it falls under the category of "memoir," the names have been changes to protect the innocent, and the guilty.

I wrote Schmuck to shed a realistic, brutally honest light on love and relationships. I hope by reading it, both men and women will humorously cringe at the all-too-human moments we all can relate with. My main character's internal monologue is filled with all of the superficial, inane, perverted and self-deprecating thoughts we all have but are ashamed to admit.

As I’ve said, the main character is based on me, a pop-culture-obsessed photographer who is torn between attempting to please an overbearing Jewish Mother by finding a nice Jewish girl, and figuring out what he wants for himself. Meanwhile, his group of name-calling, sex-obsessed Brooklyn boys stand-by, and give their own brand of advice on the subject.

Schmuck began life as a prose novel, back in 2003. I spent five years writing it, off and on, and it wasn’t until I began working with and befriending all of the amazing comic book creators on the Graphic NYC project that I had the idea to seriously pursue turning it into a graphic novel, something I’ve always dreamed of doing.

Nearly two years ago, I quietly began adapting my manuscript to a proper comics script. Using Brian Michael Bendis’s Powers Script book, a Neil Gaiman script in the back of a Sandman trade and some material on Brian Wood’s site, I learned how to form a comic book script. I learned that writing a script for a comic is a unique thing. It’s neither a book nor a screenplay, but something else entirely. The writer must pre-envision the layout of the page, deciding how many panels will be on the page, whether they will be horizontal, vertical, some combination, and also what parts of the story will be told in dialogue, or caption or through the art. Over about a week’s time, I managed to eke out an adaptation of two different portions of my manuscript into 17 pages of comics script. I started with my intro (or prologue) and then, as an exercise, moved on to a much later chapter. It was a challenging but rewarding experience and most importantly, it was a learning experience.

Reading over my script, I felt it was working, but my lack of experience left me wondering if it was any good, and I knew I had to seek advice. I sent an email to my friend, cartoonist extraordinaire Dean Haspiel (Billy Dogma, The Alcoholic) and asked him if he’d mind taking a look at what I had. Dean (God bless him) came back with some great, constructive feedback. He told me to watch out for using too many words, which is a mistake many novice comics writers fall into. He reminded me that the story in a comic is told 50% through words, and 50% through pictures. In other words, don’t be afraid to let the pictures tell the story and there’s no reason for the text to describe what is already seen. Of course – duh! I’d never thought of it that way before. Dean also pointed out that I was sometimes using too many panels per page, which would make for cramped and difficult-to-follow pages.

With Dean’s advice, I immediately took another crack at it and eliminated as many words from each page as I could, as I could then see that I was indeed over-explaining. There was no need for a caption to read, “He opened the door,” if the panel shows the character opening a door. I also broke up a few of my pages into two pages, cleaning up the storytelling and allowing the whole thing to breath. Dean also explained the need for finding the beats in the story and figuring out the best place to end each page, making the reader want to read on to the next page.

Man, did I go to the right person, or what?

With my freshly polished script, I decided it was time to find an artist. But how does one go about doing that? I had no idea, so I went back to Dean and asked yet another favor of him. He thought about it for a moment and said, “Why not bug Colden?” He was referring to Kevin Colden, an artist who’s work I admired greatly from his Xeric award winning comic on ACT-I-VATE, Fishtown, which has since been released as a graphic novel (IDW Publishing, November 2008) and was nominated for an Eisner Award. I had met Kevin a few months earlier when I photographed he and his wife, cartoonist Miss Lasko-Gross for Graphic NYC, and liked him a lot, but was nervous to ask him to look at my script. But, having come this far already, I was determined, so I sent him an email explaining the project and attached my script. The next day I received Kevin’s response, which was that Schmuck was just the type of project he was interested in working on. We discussed and agreed that we would make a proposal and pitch it to publishers as a graphic novel.

A few weeks later I received an email from Kevin, and attached were the first four pages, fully inked! After spending so much time writing something for so many years, it was an unbelievable feeling to first gaze upon Kevin’s visual translation of my words. I was immediately struck by Kevin’s depiction of the main character, Adam Kessler walking through SoHo in the snow on his way to meet his friends at a bar. He drew Adam, a character based upon me, in a way that doesn’t exactly look like me, but feel like me. The way he walks and slouches is something I recognize from looking in the mirror. Kevin told me that he observed some of my mannerisms and included them in the character. He also said that he designed Adam a bit “rounder” than me because he’s somewhat of a combination of him and me.

Looking past the character design, I loved the way Kevin drew the city and how he paced the panels. He took my page and panel descriptions and gave me much, much more that I asked for. The whole thing seemed to come alive for me, and finally feel real.

A few weeks later I received 14 pages, all inked and lettered, which was the full prologue of my script and would comprise our proposal. Again, Kevin gave me so much more than I expected; He found creative solutions for making pages of talking heads look interesting. He took moments of humor I had written and gave expressions to the characters that helped to sell the jokes. He made things meant as outrageous and made them uproarious. And, somehow, he took character based upon my friends and made them actually look and feel like the people on which they were based.

While Schmuck tells a universal and relatable story, I feel it is told from a fresh perspective through both my words and the visuals Kevin Coldon. Kevin's sensibility, style and ability to tell a story in a way that feels both fresh and natural make him the ideal collaborator. I got lucky.

Kevin and I felt good about our proposal and were ready get the thing sold and get crackin’ on finishing the rest of the planned 200 pages, but then Dean had an inspired suggestion. “You’re a photographer,” he said, “Your main character is a photographer, why aren’t there photographs in this?” Yeah, I thought, why weren’t there photographs?

So, adding to the uniqueness of the package, I’ve weaved flashback sequences throughout the narrative which are done photographically in a fumetti style, blurring the lines between art and reality, fact and fiction. I found excellent subjects to portray the characters in the story, and went through the very odd experience of recreating moments from my own life and photographed them. I decided to utilize a style of imagery for the photographs which is obscure, using lots of shadowing and blurring to create a dreamlike effect represent hazy memory.

I’ve long planned on doing a graphic novel using sequential photographs and text to tell the story so I’m excited to be experimenting with that approach with Schmuck. There have been comics that have utilized photography before, but as Kevin says, “we’re making a photo-comic that doesn’t suck.”

With the “photo pages,” we have 23 completed pages of story for our proposal, which is about to be shopped around to publishers by our agent. But first, Schmuck will be serialized on the awesome webcomics collective site, ACT-I-VATE.com over six weeks beginning Thanksgiving Day. Having just produced and directed (with Carlos Molina) the “promo-mentary” The ACT-I-VATE Experience and being immersed in the work on that site for so long, I am greatly honored that the braintrust of the collective saw fit to included my work with the works of such comics luminaries as Dean Haspiel, Tim Hamilton, Simon Fraser, Mike Cavallaro, Leland Purvis, Roger Langridge, Joe Infurnari, Tom Hart, Warren Pleece, and so many more. I feel some sort of validation.

Who is Schmuck’s target audience? My influences while writing include: In lierature; Portnoy’s Complaint, the works of Jonathan Ames and Nick Hornby. In media; Curb Your Enthusiasm, Woody Allen films, Good Will Hunting, and Entourage. In comics; Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, Alex Robinson’s Box Office Poison, Bob Fingerman’s Minimum Wage, works by Adrian Tomine, Jeffrey Brown, and Joe Matt.Schmuck’s is aimed at anyone who’s a fan of anything I’ve just named, or is interested in smart, funny, awkward and touching stories about a guy on the road from man/boyhood to actual adulthood.

After reading comics my whole life, I’m now making comics.

And it feels great.