Showing posts with label Small Press Expo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Small Press Expo. Show all posts

Monday, October 02, 2017

SPX Oral History - Joel Pollack

Rhode & Pollack at Baltimore Comic Con 2014
by Mike Rhode

Joel Pollack founded  Big Planet Comics in Bethesda, MD in 1986, and is still behind the counter a few days a week. The chain has grown to four stores, as Joel's former employees have opened their own stores. Joel was at the beginning of the Small Press Expo and jotted a few notes down.

I was involved in the first ten or so. The first was a collaboration between Jon Cohen (Beyond Comics), Lou Danoff (Zenith Comics), and myself with moral support (and much feedback) of Dave Sim (Cerebus) and Jeff Smith (Bone). It was planned for a Thursday evening before a Diamond Comic Distributor trade show. It was held at the Ramada Inn in Bethesda. Retailers were invited to set up.

What was your role? How did it change over time?

I'd like to think that I was a bit of a moral compass. I believe my greatest contribution to SPX was disallowing retailers from setting up, starting with the second SPX. I felt that it was a show about creators, and that creators shouldn't have to compete with retailers selling their products. As time went on, my role quickly diminished, and ultimately became the one task of procuring the park for the Sunday picnic/softball game. I actually umpired a few of the games.

Where was SPX when you worked on it?

Mostly Bethesda, though I believe I had some small role the one year it moved to Silver Spring.

What were some memorable events?

One of the big ones was Chris Oarr's tenure as executive director. I believe it was Chris who introduced the Sunday picnic/softball game and pig-roast. I believe it was Chris' idea to create the Ignatz Awards. Chris created the template for the current SPX.

What were your favorite parts of SPX?

The feeling of camaraderie amongst exhibitors and staff. The great volunteers that SPX attracted. The opportunity for creators to meet their fans, and sell their creations which were generally unavailable in comic shops.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

A BCC Interview with John Patrick Green

by Mike Rhode

For years now, John Patrick Green (as he now styles himself to avoid confusion with the young adult writer John Green) has been a regular at the Small Press Expo, usually accompanied by Dave Roman and Raina Telgemeier. This year, I caught up with him at Baltimore Comic Con where he agreed to answer a few questions.

What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?

I'm the writer/artist of HIPPOPOTAMISTER and the upcoming KITTEN CONSTRUCTION COMPANY early-reader graphic novels, both from First Second Books, and also the artist of the TEEN BOAT! and JAX EPOCH series' with writer Dave Roman. I also do a lot of freelance graphic novel and type design for other publishers like Scholastic Graphix.

How do you do it? Traditional pen and ink, computer or a combination?

I do a combination of traditional and digital. I still like to draw by hand onto actual paper, and then scan the work into the computer for colors. For inking often what I'll do is sketch out my pencils, scan and compose them into proper layouts in Photoshop, print the pencils as "blue lines" onto bristol, then ink over the printout. Then I'll scan those back into the computer for coloring, and the leftover blue lines can just be turned off, without having to erase graphite from the page like with classic inking over pencils. Depending on the project I'll do my balloons, captions, and letters by hand or in computer.

When (within a decade is fine) and where were you born?

I grew up an '80s kid on Long Island, NY.

What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

I went to School of Visual Arts (SVA) in Manhattan for graphic design, but I took a number of comic book-related electives. I pretty much grew up making comics, starting around 4th grade or so, and was always taking as many art classes as I could in school. I'd say I'm mostly self-taught, but my college experience was invaluable.

Who are your influences?

My earliest influences would be newspaper strips, like Garfield and later Calvin & Hobbes. Favorite painters would be Van Gogh, René Magritte, and Norman Rockwell. As for comics, my biggest influence as far as my own sensibilities go is probably the original Spider-Ham series (yes, I said "ham.") I was definitely more of a Marvel kid than a D.C. kid, but I was also inspired by a lot of indy books like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Usagi Yojimbo, especially. And being an '80s kid, of course Star Wars was a big part of my youth.
  
If you could, what in your career would you do-over or change?

I wouldn't say I have any regrets, but possibly the one thing I'd do differently is stay at Disney Publishing. I worked for Disney Adventures Magazine for almost 10 years, and I loved working for Disney, but I'd gone freelance before Disney bought out Marvel and Lucasfilm. So being huge fan of those things as a kid, I occasionally wonder if I'd stayed at Disney just a little longer, would I have a hand in those properties now?

What work are you best-known for?

Probably TEEN BOAT! It's the only graphic novel about a boy who can transform into a small yacht. It features the angst of being a teen and the thrill of being a boat!

What work are you most proud of?

That's tough! I don't know if I'm necessarily more proud of any one project of mine over another. I guess I'd probably go with HIPPOPOTAMISTER because it's gotten a lot of positive responses from librarians and kids, and the recognition certainly feels good. But that doesn't make me like any of my other books less. I am proud of my KITTEN CONSTRUCTION COMPANY book, but that doesn't come out for awhile, so I'd say I'm more nervous about how people will respond to it.

What would you like to do  or work on in the future?

So many things that it's hard to narrow it down! I'd love to finally finish NEARLY DEPARTED, this video game I've been designing for years, but technology moves so fast that every time I get around to working on it, most of my effort goes to rebuilding it for modern systems. That's more of a hobby project, but it'd be nice to put it to bed. Same for getting the final volume of JAX EPOCH published, as that's been completed for a few years and hasn't been released. As for my next book (after finishing the ones already in my queue), usually the thing I'd "like" to work on is whatever a publisher gives me the green light for! When there are half a dozen book ideas I want to do, but can't do all at once, it can be a big help to have someone else say "do this one!"

What do you do when you're in a rut or have writer's block?

There isn't really one specific thing I do. It could be anything, really. Sometimes I'll just zone out. Sometimes I'll pace around. Usually I'll just preoccupy myself with another project, or watch some TV, or play a video game, or cook some food, or do some chores, like wash dishes or something. So my strategy is basically "do something else and come back later." I guess that's also known as procrastination.

What do you think will be the future of your field?

The future is now! There are already a lot of things going on in comics and the book industry that I'd call futuristic. Digital versions with sound effects and motion graphics, things like that. Having a social media presence be so much a part of an author's profile. The Kickstarters and Patreons and the like being new or alternative funding and distribution models. But as much as things change, I think there's still a place for people who just want to write or draw. It certainly helps to keep up with the changes in the industry, but the basics aren't going to completely go away. Until the robots come for us, that is.

How was your BCC experience? How often have you attended it?

This was my first time at BCC and it was great. I've exhibited at big shows like San Diego Comic-Con before, and this show is in a similar vein. Lots of wonderful fans and the convention was well-run. And I got to see a lot of other creators that I haven't crossed paths with in awhile. I look forward to doing it again in the future. I haven't spent much time in Baltimore, but it seemed like a great city, so I hope to be back soon.

Do you have a website or blog?

My website is www.johngreenart.com, but I am absolutely terrible at keeping it up-to-date. Probably the best way to be informed of my projects and appearances is to follow me on twitter: @johngreenart

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

A Big Trip to the Small Press Expo: A Guest Post by Charles Brubaker

John Kovaleski and Charles Brubaker
by Charles Brubaker

One thing that became apparent to me as I became serious about cartooning is that vending in conventions is very important. Not only are comic conventions the best way to network with other comics professionals, but also are a good way of gaining new readers as well.

Figuring out which cons work best for me is a case of trial and error. Even if I focus on cons that are friendly to indie comics, it's still a gamble. I tried everything from a big ones like Baltimore Comic Con to smaller ones like SPACE in Columbus. However, one con I really wanted to go to was Small Press Expo (SPX), which was held this year on September 16 and 17.

Long regarded as the ultimate indie comic convention in the US, I was very curious about what it's like. Getting a booth there wasn't easy, as SPX gets thousands of application every year, while only being able to take a small number (I believe that nearly 600 people exhibited this year), so they choose who gets to have a table by using a raffle system.

To say it took me a while to get a space there is an understatement. In fact, it took me 2 years until luck shined on me. SPX was the fifth con I went to in 2017 (including a free table space I got at a children's book festival in my local library). I normally try to reserve my number of conventions to three due to cost factor, but I decided to take the SPX offer because, well, it took me years to finally get an opportunity.

I would normally fly to conventions, but after several airplane trips and going through TSA, I decided to drive to Bethesda, Maryland with my dad. It was a long trip from western Tennessee; it took two days, with a stop in Huntington, West Virginia.

I arrived with several boxes, containing paperbacks of my "Ask a Cat"  and "The Fuzzy Princess" comics, plus left-over minis and floppies from my other cons. Both of my on-going comics feature cats as leading characters. So naturally, the SPX people saw fit to put me in booth K-9 (har har), where I shared space with Lucy Bellwood, who traveled a lot further than I did, coming from Oregon. I don't know if the SPX people gave me that table number on purpose, but I'd like to think they did. It would fit with their sense of humor.

In previous cons, I would normally only sell floppies and mini-comics. I had my "Fuzzy Princess" stories printed in individual standard-sized issues, and minis collecting "Ask a Cat" strips. However for SPX, I had paperback books, having drawn enough material for both comics. I was worried that I would have harder time selling paperback books over the comparatively cheaper minis, but the opposite was the case. I ended up selling far more paperbacks than minis and floppies. As Lucy told me, "people like books with spines." I especially sold a lot of "The Fuzzy Princess Vol. 1," which is more story-oriented. Graphic novels are popular there, it seems.

While I still plan to continue making mini-comics, since they're easy to make, and also because they make great perks for my Patreon, I've been thinking of phasing out my floppies because of the cost. The cost of printing full-color comic books is about the same as printing up a 150-page black and white paperback book, and people would rather pay for $10 paperbacks with tons of content, even in black and white, over a 30-page color comic books that cost $5.

Of course, with nearly 600 people vending, and over a thousand or so people attending, you are bound to run into familiar faces. Pretty much everyone I worked for was there, but I was meeting them in person for the first time. These include Chris Duffy (editor for SpongeBob Comics), Ryan Flanders (art director for MAD Magazine), and Shena Wolf (editor at Andrews McMeel). Other familiar faces included comic creators. It was nice seeing Keith Knight again; the last time I saw him was over 10 years ago, when I was still in high school. Among people who were near my booth were Sponge Bob-contributor Joey Weiser (Mermin), whom I already met a year before at FLUKE in Athens, GA, Drew Weing, who draws "The Creepy Casefiles of Margo Maloo", and Steve Conley, who draws "The Middle Age" for GoComics. I also ran into John Kovaleski, who drew one of my favorite comic strips, "Bo Nanas", years ago. I had my online readers come visit me, which is always a pleasant experience (and a special mention to Mike Rhode, who suggested I write this post when I saw him).

The second day was a lot slower, selling fewer books, so I took the opportunity to walk around the con more. The thing about cons this big is that there will be creators you admire, but had no idea they were going to be here. That was the case with KC Green and Meredith Gran. It's impossible to keep track of everyone you know who's going to be here.

In spite of the slow second day, my overall experience was very good. It was a jam-packed event, from seeing everyone who is enthusiastic about comics, to the lively Ignatz Awards ceremony, and the legendary chocolate fountain. Here's hoping I can go back in 2018.

Charles Brubaker is a cartoonist based in Martin, TN. He draws Ask a Cat (http://www.gocomics.com/ask-a-cat) and The Fuzzy Princess (http://fuzzy-princess.com/), and also contributes to SpongeBob Comics and MAD Magazine. His blog is http://bakertoons.tumblr.com/

Friday, September 22, 2017

An SPX Interview with UK's Avery Hill Publishing


by Mike Rhode

Tillie Walden was a guest at SPX this year for her autobiography Spinning out now from First Second. I was surprised to be told that she had already published three works with a British publisher and that Avery Hill Publishing was at the con. On their website, they have a very clever mission statement: "Avery Hill is a publishing company based in South London that helps aspiring creators reach their potential and is a home to the geniuses that the mainstream has yet to recognise. Our canon includes psychogeographical mappings, drunk 19th century scientists,time-travelling beagles, minimalist musings, kids running amok in dance tents, a giant cat called Nemo and much more." I went over and met owners Ricky Miller and David White, and they agreed to an email interview.

How long has Avery Hill been publishing?

We started self-publishing our own zines about six years ago. They were mainly filled with our own work and contributions by friends. Then we realised that everyone else we were publishing were far better than us and so we decided just to put out work by them. It kind of escalated from there, but some of the people from the early days, such as Tim Bird who does the Grey Area series for us, are still with us now.

Where are you based?

We’re based in London in the UK. We tend to get a bit provincial and narrow it down to South London as there’s a faux rivalry between north and south London, in the same way you get in a lot of cities. We both grew up around this area, we’ve know each other since we were eleven and Avery Hill is an actual place quite nearby that we used to go to when we were young. The Avery Hill logo is actually based on a photo of Ricky climbing over the fence into Avery Hill when we were 18.

How many artists do you publish? Just cartoonists?

Over the years we’ve published roughly 25 creators, some multiple times. We mainly do comics, but we’ve also put out a couple of books of illustrations, including Internal Wilderness by Claire Scully, which is a series of images of imagined landscapes and A Is For Amos by Ukranian illustrator Daria Hlazatova, which is an A to Z of illustrations of her favourite musicians. In the UK a lot of the comics creators we work with come form an illustration background rather than a comics/cartooning background, so it’s quite a fluid thing to move from comics to also illustrating things like children’s books and magazine editorial work.

What are your individual backgrounds?

We both grew up within about a mile of each other in the deep, dark, working class suburbs of South East London. We went to school together and are still very close friends with some other people from that time. We shared a common interest in music, mainly Britpop at the time and comics. After university we briefly formed a band, called The Do-Nothing Kings with some other friends and then when we realized we weren’t very good we started doing podcasts and music reviews. Dave then decided to put out a zine, which Ricky contributed a comic to called Metroland (which we still put out and that brings you up to date.

Favorite cartoonists, or influences, living or dead?

One of the first books that we both got into was Cerebus by Dave Sim. Whilst we find his politics and social attitudes problematic to say the least - Google him if you don’t know the story - the level of artistry in those books by him and his background artist, Gerhard, plus his self-publishing ethos were massively influential. We’d also both consider From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell to be one of the greatest works of art in any form. In recent times anything by Darwyn Cooke or the Morrison & Quietly partnership are essential. More modern creators from around our scene would be people like Jillian Tamaki, Jason, Eleanor Davis and Isabel Greenberg.

Was this your first American con?

Yes, this was our first con in the US. We’ve mainly only done shows in the UK, apart from going to the Toronto Comics Art Festival a couple of times and one in Denmark. We’d definitely like to do more of them and are seriously considering shows in Boston and New York next year.

Why SPX?

We met the Executive Director of SPX, Warren Bernard, at the Toronto Comics Art Festival last year when we were there with our creator Tillie Walden. Warren took a lot of interest in our work and said that he’d love for us to go to SPX this year and that he’d help us out with some of our expenses. We were blown away by the generosity of that and of course accepted. We’d tried to get in to SPX in the lottery prior to that and we also had a couple of Tillie’s books nominated in the Ignatz awards last year (which she won) so we were desperate to make it there. We’d heard such great things about SPX, it’s pretty famous in the UK.

What did you think of it?

We absolutely loved it. The quality of the exhibitors was incredibly high and there were lots of great talks and guests. The overall vibe was just lovely as well, such a great feeling of community and diversity. Little touches, like having free coffee in the morning really make a difference as well. When you do a lot of shows you definitely notice that kind of thing. Having all of the exhibitors in the same room is another great thing as often if people are in different rooms then it can inevitably lead to some feeling they are in an area with less footfall.

How were your sales?

Sales were great, it was busy all weekend. We sold nearly everything that we shipped over, which meant that we didn’t have too much to have to carry back! It definitely stands comparison with some of our best ever events in that regard.

How do you decide what or whom to publish?

Essentially we just publish books that we like. Which doesn’t really tell you very much but it’s how it is. When we started Avery Hill we had no greater aspiration than to end up with a shelf of books that wouldn’t exist had it not been for us. We run this company in our spare time, we both have day jobs, so we have to keep it interesting for us and that means basing what we want to publish more on our personal choice than it does on a commercial decision. One of us will find a creator and then we’ll both discuss whether or not to approach them. If we do then we ask the creator what they’d like to do and more often than not we agree to do whatever it is they’re most interested in doing. Our only real limitation is time, so that dictates how many projects we can take on, but beyond that it really is just a case of trying to find books and creators that we’re passionate about. Luckily, it also often pays off.

How did you become Tillie Walden's first publisher given that she's an American educated in Texas and Vermont?

We first discovered Tillie’s work on Twitter when she posted a couple of images that someone retweeted. We got in touch with her to see if she’d be interested in doing a book and got a reply back from her saying she was too busy with school as she was only 17. This stunned us as the level of her work was already very high and we’d assumed she was much older. We gave it another six months and then got back in touch with her when she had finished school and had enrolled in the Center For Cartoon Studies in Vermont. This time she agreed to put a pitch together for us, which turned out to be her first graphic novel, The End of Summer. We loved working together and so quickly moved on to do another two books with her, all before she turned 19! She’s a great friend of ours and often comes to shows with us. The UK has a long tradition of discovering great US creators before their own country does, so we refer to Tillie as being our Jimi Hendrix.

Does your company have an overall aesthetic?

People often say to us that although we have a very wide range of different kinds of books, they can still see an Avery Hill aesthetic unifying them into a cohesive line. If there is one then it’s probably the midpoint between both of our tastes, plus the strong emphasis that we both put on quality writing. But really, an Avery Hill book could be anything, as long as we both like it.

Did you get to spend any time in Washington?

Yes we got out here early in order to do some sightseeing. It’s such a lovely city! We did the usual touristy things of the Lincoln Memorial/Washington Monument and the National Gallery of Art, of which the Impressionist section was a big highlight! Then on Friday evening we went to see The Nationals vs The Dodgers, which was great fun. We definitely hope to come back some day soon!

Thursday, September 21, 2017

An SPX Interview with French Cartoonist Alex Alice

Alex Alice at Takoma Public Library, photo by Bruce Guthrie

by Mike Rhode

I was walking around at SPX when ace photographer Bruce Guthrie introduced me to a French cartoonist he had met previously at the Takoma Park Library. I wasn’t familiar with Alex Alice’s work, but I was quickly impressed by his new book and asked if we could do an interview.

Amazon says, “Alex Alice is a French graphic novelist, working in France and sometimes the U.S. His works have been translated into more than fifteen languages. Born in 1974, he grew up in the south of France and had the chance to travel around Europe, where he developed a lifelong passion for the ruins and castles of the medieval and romantic ages. This experience influenced his art, from the grim setting of his esoteric thriller The Third Testament (co-written with Xavier Dorison and published by Titan Comics) to the primeval, mythic world found in Siegfried, an operatic re-telling of the northern saga of the great dragon slayer (published by Boom Entertainment). In Castle in the Stars, he draws on Jules Verne and nineteenth-century romanticism to create a watercolor world of adventure and wonder to enchant adults and younger readers alike.

Alice’s new series is described as “In search of the mysterious element known as aether, Claire Dulac flew her hot air balloon toward the edge of our stratosphere—and never returned. Her husband, genius engineer Archibald Dulac, is certain that she is forever lost. Her son, Seraphin, still holds out hope. One year after her disappearance, Seraphin and his father are delivered a tantalizing clue: a letter from an unknown sender who claims to have Claire’s lost logbook. The letter summons them to a Bavarian castle, where an ambitious young king dreams of flying the skies in a ship powered by aether. But within the castle walls, danger lurks—there are those who would stop at nothing to conquer the stars.”

Mike Rhode: [After two other series, now] you are the author of Castle in the Stars: The Space Race of 1869. How many books are there in the series? Four?

Alex Alice: Probably more than that. This first story concludes in book 2. The universe of the story is so interesting to me that I keep having new ideas. The idea is that there is space travel in the nineteenth century, so I ask, ‘What if we had come up with a way to travel through space in 1869 instead of 1969?” and this opens up a whole world of adventure and possibilities. Space isn’t the way we know it today; it’s the way scientists imagined it at the time.

MR: Are you more influenced by 19th century authors such as Jules Verne or by 21st century steam punk? Or both?

AA: I would say I’m a fundamentalist steam punk writer so I go back to the roots. It’s Jules Verne and actual scientific hypotheses of this particular time period. It’s hard core steam punk, or hard steam punk, or… I’m trying to be as science-based as I can, perfectly realizing that this is a fantasy. I’m trying to be as close as I can to what people of the 19th century would have found believable.

MR: It’s Newtonian physics, instead of Einsteinian physics, and you can propel yourself through the space because there’s something to push against?

AA: Yes, and use as fuel.

MR: How many books in the series are out already?

AA: Book three just came out. My publisher in France is a fairly new publishing house Rue de Sèvres, which is an imprint of L'École des loisirs. They are a very respectable children’s book publisher that started a graphic novel imprint. This is very exciting for me because this is not a book for kids, it is a book that is also for kids, and I’m very glad to work with this publisher who has an ability to reach a younger audience.

MR: The same is true for your American publisher First Second…

AA: Is it? I was hopeful for that, because that’s what they told me [laughing].

MR: Let’s talk about technique… you occasionally build models for some of the spaceships?

AA: Yes, again, in the idea to have something as believable as I can. I was fascinated by this idea setting the story in a world where it’s not just alternate history, it’s an alternate cosmos. It’s not consistent with what we know about space and science now. My challenge was to say, “This is not believable for modern audiences so how am I going to pull the reader into my story?” My idea was that I didn’t care if it wasn’t true, [rather] it was something people could have believed at some point. 

The important thing for me is as I’m writing it, I believe it. I am not a scientist, and I’m perfectly aware that aether doesn’t exist. I believe in my story as I’m writing it, and it’s easy for me; to be perfectly honest, the vision of Venus that people had at the time … we could see from the telescope that it was covered in clouds, which is true; we could see it was closer to the sun so it must have been very hot ,which is true; so they thought, it’s hot, it’s cloudy, there must be a lot of water so there must be huge jungles down there. Because they thought that planets had appeared in the order of their distance from the sun, they thought Venus was younger than earth so life must not have reached the same development and be stuck in an earlier era. So they genuinely thought Venus was a jungle world filled with dinosaurs, and this sounds like a pulpy sci-fi world of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but it is the actual science hypothesis of the time. This is fascinating to me, and very poetic. I find this hypothesis easier to envision, and too imagine, and frankly easier to believe in than the actual reality of Venus which is a hell world with incredible pressure and acid rains [laughs]. 

I found it was quite easy to believe in this world as I was writing it. To help me believe in it, I had a model made of the main machine that will allow the characters to travel to the stars. I even had an aether suits made life-sized of leather and wood. I had to talk with model makers and costume makers, and having their input of how they would do it and what would work. This world is 100% believable for me and I’m comfortable writing this story.

MR: How has the reception been for it in France?

AA: I was very happy with it. I was hoping to make a book that would appeal to adults and children alike, in the tradition of Tintin, that was marketed as for ‘children between 7 and 77.’ That was a  catchline for Tintin in France. That was my goal and I was very happy to see families to come signings, and say, “This is the only bandes dessinee that I read, that my children read as well.” And vice-versa.
MR: So what brings you to the Washington area?

AA: My American publisher, First Second, thought it would be great for me to come to SPX which I’ve never been to before. I’m much more comfortable here than I was when I visited Comic-Con in New York a number of years ago. First of all, I’m not a huge superhero fan, and secondly, it was strange for me to talk to artists who work on someone else’s character which is not at all in the French tradition. Whereas here, I feel like everyone is doing their own story, and I find much more common ground, even if their stories or their visual styles are completely different from mine. I feel I have maybe something in common with a lot of the artists here.

MR: So how do you do your art? Is it drawn in pencil, and then inked, and then water-colored? Or digitally colored?

AA: It’s all done in the real world. I try to do everything on the same page – the pencilling, the letters, the color… because I really like to have the original artwork in front of me, looking as it will in the final page.

MR: Ah, a classicist.

AA: Yes, part of it is the pleasure of having the actual page in front of me; part of it is laziness [laughs] because I like to be able to judge the exact amount of details I will have to put in.

MR: That makes perfect sense to me. There’s a political cartoonist here at SPX named Matt Wuerker who still watercolors his cartoons every day by hand because it’s faster. And he knows what he’s getting.

AA: And it’s faster. People don’t realize that. The computer will not save you time. For most things…

MR: So it was watercolors that you use, and not colored pencil?

AA: It is actually at little watercolor and a lot of calligraphy’s colored inks that are permanent.

MR: You water those down a little bit to get the wash effect?

AA: Yes.

MR: Did you pitch the book to your publisher, and then get an advance to do it?

AA: Yes.

MR: Because traditionally in France in the golden days, and I think this is mostly gone now, but Tintin would be one page per week in the newspaper, and then be collected in an album.

AA: Right, and the artist would have a salary. The salary is entirely gone, but we do get an advance in France, when you sign with a major publisher.

MR: You have the complete original art at the end of a book. Do you sell it? Is that another revenue stream for you?

AA: Potentially yes. [laughs] But I haven’t sold pages in a while especially because I wanted to set up an exhibition, which we did at Angouleme which is the biggest festival in the south of France. This year at Angouleme we had the means to do a big show, with even more props and models and sounds and a moon and a lot of costumes of the time period… we made the world pop out of the page. I wanted to keep my art for that. I will be doing a commercial show in New York next year.

MR: You mentioned ‘the world’… I just bought your book and I haven’t read it yet. Is this book about going to Venus?

AA: In book one, Seraphin is talking about Venus in the beginning, but the story is actually him and his father trying to follow the footsteps of his mother who disappears in the first scene in a balloon flight. Her logbook is found by someone who sends a letter to Seraphin and his father and gives them a rendezvous in Bavaria. We don’t know who this character is, or what he wants, but when they get there, we find out that it is the King of Bavaria, King Ludwig II, and he is planning on space exploration.

MR: Is he still building a big castle?

AA: Actually, it is only the historical approximation that I made consciously. I might have made several mistakes, but he has already built his Neuschwanstein castle at this point, because I really wanted to draw this castle and I wanted to set the story just before the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

MR: So you are using real historical characters and following real historical events?

AA: I am. I made a point of having the story begin the real world as much as I could.

MR: Where are you finding your background information from? In America we had Popular Science, and Popular Mechanix and even Scientific American. Are you using the French equivalent of those?

AA: Yes, I guess. I’m especially using Camille Flammarion who wrote a popular astronomy in the latter half of the 18th century. It was very popular at the time, and these sort of popular science texts were quite an influence.

MR: In America they have a lot of magazine covers of the giant airplanes, and the future was going to be great…

AA: Or terrifying, depending on the cover.

MR: Looking at the cover of your book, are you influenced by Miyazaki?

AA: The answer is definitely yes, but my primary influences are the reading of Jules Verne and the travels I did through Europe as a kid. There’s a lot of things here that I’m using that Miyazaki was also using. That being said, I adore Miyazaki’s work, and his influence with this type of story is impossible to escape so I embraced it. The title of the book, and one of my characters, are influenced by a Miyazaki character from Future Boy Conan. There’s also a wonderful film that’s maybe lesser-known called The Castle of Cagliostro. It’s a masterpiece. It’s one of the best adventure films ever made. It’s incredibly fun, and touching, and full of wonder... one of the greatest. One of the scenes from Castle in the Stars that I was really happy with, where I had a wonderful idea and did the scene and did the book, and the book was printed, and I showed Castle of Cagliostro to my son and realized I had stolen the whole scene! [laughs] As it happens.

MR: Are you going anywhere else in the States?

AA: Yes, it’s a short but intense tour with the Brooklyn Book Festival tomorrow and then the Boston area for libraries and schools.