You Could Do This In Comics

Scott McCloud is a comics expert. Not in the history of comics and its accompanying trivia, but in the art form itself. In the past 14 years he has released a trilogy of graphic novels (UComics, Reinventing Comics and the recent Making Comics) that has broadened our general knowledge and understanding of the medium, while keeping an eye firmly fixed on its future. On top of this, he’s a full-time dad to two net-savvy daughters, Sky and Winter (who produce their own video podcast Winterview), and is currently in the process of taking his family on the road for a year-long book tour through all 50 states, a few provinces and the U.K. He’ll be passing through Vancouver for a signing and chat at Sophia Books (author’s disclosure: I work there selling graphic novels… often his) on May 31st at 7pm, and had time to chat for a few minutes beforehand from the parking lot of a Holiday Inn somewhere in Montana.

Q:Recently, when I showed my back issues of your early comic Zot! to a friend, he said he was excited to see how the concepts and structure talked about in the non-fiction trilogy were applied in a creative fictional outlet. Was Zot! much of a testing ground in being able to try new linear techniques and artistic styles, and see how comics worked in conjunction with more traditional art forms?

A:I had a traditional agenda with Zot!: I just wanted to tell the story. But I delighted in finding new ways to tell it. I hadn’t really gotten to the point where I’d embraced my formalist side. That is, I don’t think I had quite realized to what degree I was my father’s son and how, for me, experimentation was kind of the point of it all. I thought I was still a a storyteller first and foremost [laughs], which was probably good news for the series, ‘cause that meant it was more of a storytelling exercise. But I was trying out techniques with an eye toward conveying specific aesthetics and then reflecting on those techniques as I went, thinking, “Ooh, you know, you could do this in comics! You could do this in comics! You could do this!” Until after a while, “you could do this in comics” became my entire message and the story just fell away.

Q:Reinventing Comics, which I seem to recall was rather criticized at the time of its release for (among other things) its unrealistic notions about the rise of webcomics and people’s interest in paying for things online, has turned out – in retrospect – to have made some rather prescient predictions. With a growing shift toward web-based comics (both originals and scans), do you think the 24-page pamphlet is a saveable format?

A:Well, you know, there’ll always be a place for the pamphlet format. I think that the idea that comics’ primary expression are these 24-page, stapled, $3.00 magazine—I don’t know if that’s necessarily going to be our primary expression. Graphic novels make a lot of sense. I think they’re more attractive to the retailer; I think they’re more attractive to writers and artists of a certain kind of ambition. And I think that a lot of the energy that monthly comics had is precisely the energy that the web tends to siphon off of it—which is the idea of getting it out on a regular basis, having a rhythm and being a part of everyone’s lives. That’s the sort of thing the web can do in spades.

Q:You coined the 24-hour comic which has grown tremendously and spawned spin-offs like the 24 hour theatrical play. What do you think is universal and appealing in the idea?

A:I think all of us struggle with the glacial slowness of comics. It’s a frustrating medium. You get one idea and then it takes you a year just to execute it, and by then, you’ve had 100 more. And the 24-hour comic, I think, is the only case in which your hands can actually work faster than your brain. That’s a pretty exciting thing, just trying to come up with ideas as they come. To just wake up in the morning and go to bed with a comic is an extraordinary feeling. Also, it’s about potential, and in a way this is the one common denominator in virtually everything I’ve ever done in comics. I’m obsessed with this notion of potential: that everything we do is just the tiny tip of the iceberg of what we could be doing as a medium, as an artform, as an industry, as individuals. The 24 hour comic is about the potential of the individual.

Q:Your daughters have proven themselves to be exceptionally canny (and entertaining) with the use of new technologies, fielding interviews and producing things like the Winterview podcast. What have they taught you about creativity, art and emerging media?

A:One thing I’d already suspected and others have written about, but [my daughters] have demonstrated pretty vividly, is the notion of the native speaker. The idea that someone who’s born into a technology is going to be fluent in that technology and those of us who weren’t will always speak with a bit of an accent. And, as much of a technophile as I might be, I find that Sky and Winter seem to take to technology so easily. Sky gives her own PowerPoint presentations on the road. She’s given them in places like Carnegie Mellon and MIT, and her eight minutes kill. I’m actually a bit afraid to go after her these days because at least the first part of my talk I don’t think is as strong as hers. And I gave her about 30 seconds of instruction in how to use PowerPoint. I think I taught her how to make a new slide once, but everything else she’s learned on her own. It’s just all so natural. On the tour I’ve been struck by how they’re more addicted to and more in tune with technology than I am, although this is also true of my wife. The three of them have their heads buried in the laptops so often. Sometimes I’ll walk in and I’m the one saying, “Hey, we should be out enjoying the sun or going for walks! ” And they’re like, “No no no, I have to catch up on my email or my blogs or whatever.” And it’s kind of strange; I don’t know what I’m learning from it exactly, other than I’m vaguely frightened that my family is turning into pod people. Usually, I’m the one getting dragged out by my wife to experience life when I’m spending too long at the screen, but it’s been the reverse a lot on the tour.

Q:So, with Making Comics in the can, and considering by the time you’re done you’ll have spent a year on the road. Do you have any ideas what’s coming after that?

A:Yes, I know exactly what’s after that. Assuming I can get enough of an advance from a major publisher that I can sit on my ass for three years, I will be working on a graphic novel with a story that I’ve had in mind for about 20 years, and it’s likely to go to 300 or 400 pages. It’s time. I can’t write about making comics for my whole life. I have to finally sit down and apply all these ideas. No series, no sequels, just this one single self-contained story.

Q:A graphic novel?

A:A graphic novel, exactly.