A Chat with Nick Davis, a DC-adjacent cartoonist

Awesome Con photo by Rhode

by Mike Rhode

I was walking around Awesome Con with another local comics fan who wanted to check out the children's section. Since I know that some of the best cartoonists are making comics for children, and local cartoonists John Gallagher, Kata Kane, and Carolyn Belefski set up there, I was glad to follow along. With a British accent, Nick Davis introduced himself as DC-adjacent which was enough to get him a ComicsDC interview offer right there (we also do visiting cartoonists, so heck, anyone can appear here). Nick sent a very thoughtful set of answers to our standard questions.

What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?

I write and self-publish fantasy adventure stories, featuring the Night Guardians, cuddly toys and kids who protect you from the monsters under the bed, and their master the Boogeyman. The stories are fantasy adventures, much in the same vein as the Amulet, or Wings of Fire and I consider them to be all ages adventures, written to appeal to kids and adults alike.

And if you are a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, especially their first appearance, I publish a series of books called Let’s Hunt Montas! Which is more cartoony violent, a lot like Rick and Morty, set in the same fantasy world as the Night Guardians.

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

Veronica Smith, the artist I work with on the Night Guardian adventures, works the layouts in pencil and then the final art in Manga Studio. The Let's Hunt Monstas! comic, that I exclusively write and draw, is drawn completely in Procreate.

There is a movement that digital art isn’t real art in the comic book community, but you don’t get to draw on these tablet programs without putting in the hours using traditional pen and ink methods. The skills transfer. You can’t cheat your way to good storytelling art, you have to put the hours in.

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

I’m generation X, the largely forgotten generation, the one that has to get things done, because we were left to it. I was born in the early 70’s in a small English market town called Melton Mowbray.

Why are you comics-adjacent to Washington now?  What  area do you live in?

I work in DC for a health care non-profit that overseers medical accreditation, when I am not in DC (which is a lot). I live in PA, right in the middle of Amish country.

What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

None.

I am trained graphic designer, so I have art courses that are attached to that, you know form, life drawing, color theory, but I received no formal training in comic book storytelling. While schools like that do exist, you can only learn from reading comics and doing it yourself.

Who are your influences?

The biggest is the King himself, Jack Kirby, I used to dislike it, then I started telling comic book stories and the sheer storytelling power of his work, the mastery of his panel storytelling is the pinnacle. 

I grew up in the UK reading the Beano, 2000AD, Warlord, Battle, so I have a very heavy black and white influence. The book that really blew my mind was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it was unlike anything I ever saw before, and those turtle boys captured lightning in a bottle. 

So, I guess you can add Eastman and Laird to my influences too.

If you could, what in your career would you do-over or change? Or rather, how are you hoping your career will develop?

You learn more from your mistakes, than you do from your successes. I try not to look back at things I do, as that isn’t the direction I am going in. Learn what works, apply it to future work and keep moving forward.

My career in cartooning? I would love it to develop to the point where I don’t have to work a day job and can live making comics. It’s an independent dream, few of us actually achieve it. Personally I would love to have the success the turtle boys had, but that was very much a time and place thing.

At the moment my goal is to keep telling good stories and having readers come back wanting more. So far, I’ve been mostly successful in that area.

What work are you best-known for?

The Night Guardians - Awakenings graphic novel was a work of a couple of years to get done and told one of my longest stories about four cuddly toys who have to journey into the realm of the Boogeyman to save their child. It hit all the themes I wanted it to, about courage, friendship and hope, and told a fun fantasy adventure in the dark fantasy voice (with a touch of whimsy) that I wanted it too. 

It was also my first real dive into the world of comic book storytelling and I am immensely proud how it came out.

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

I am working on two separate books at the moment, with my artist I am working on Dream Warriors, the tale of two children and their teddy bear spirit guide, who find themselves becoming the defender of dreams. And my Let’s Hunt Montas! Book, that allows me to play fast and loose with my Night Guardians world and inject some Tom & Jerry style humor into things. I guess LHM is very much my safety valve and allows me to release more of my 2000AD ID.

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

There is no secret to writing, except to write.

Accept whatever your first write is a pile of poop, once you do that, let the words flow until whatever story inside you is out. Then go back and turn it into something that actually makes sense. Remember it is your world, you control everything, and do not have to kowtow to realism. Let yourself go wild.

The biggest issue I have found with folk who want to write is they are scared of what they want to write, that it is silly, that is nonsense. Tell your story, embrace the absurd.

What's the story about the FCBD issue pictured here?

Every year the comic book store that hosts me for Free Comic Book Day, gets a complimentary FCBD book from me that is exclusive to their story. The book, in this case Adventures Ahead, is a compilation of extracts from the opening pages of Let's Hunt Monstas! Dream Warriors and TeamD, It's a fun little comic book that gives the reader an idea about my stories and gives the comic book store, an extra air of exclusivity.

The book will also eventually be available as a digital download via my Comix Well Spring online box store at https://cwsbookstore.com/store/nick/

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

That is tough, comics as an industry is largely stagnant, not shrinking, not really growing. You would think after all the superhero movies we would have a new readership. But the simple fact is can you find a comic book that easily?

Manga for example is everywhere, American style comic books are relegated to niche stories, that are mostly uninviting, and the books within tell stories for adults, into the wonder of superheroes and worlds beyond our own that we read as kids.

I fear that my generation is the last one that grew up reading all types of comic books, we simply had no choice because we read what we could get. Now, you can choose what you want to read, and the funny kind of freedom directs you into niches, or silos, and you inherit a fear of trying something new.

Comics are not doomed, they will survive. I think the Manga style is going to dominate in another ten years or so. I hope my stories can keep up and continue to grow.

I like to think the future is bright, but it's hard work if folk don’t recognize your work and the kids they are with want Deadpool.

What local cons do you attend? The Small Press Expo, Awesome Con, or others? Any comments about attending them? I know you were at Awesome Con - how was the show for you?

I just finished Awesome Con, which turned out good for me. I was a little worried at first, but folk came, brought my books and it was worth my time going too.

I would like to attend the Small Press Expo, which is dependent on their lottery system and my next big show is Four State Comic Con in Hagerstown, MD. You can view all my ‘tour’ dates on my website.

What comic books or strips or webcomics do you read regularly or recommend? Do you have a local store?

My local store is Comic World, it's a great comic book store, before that I used to pick up books at Collectors Corner, sadly they are no longer local to me. As for reading, I read all kinds of books. As you can imagine I am a huge turtles fan, and the Last Ronin stuff is a return to form. 

What's your favorite thing about DC?

DC is an interesting city, I love how walkable it is and you can always find something interesting to do, and it is surprisingly free.

Least favorite?

Traffic, really easy to get into the city, really hard to get out of it.

What monument or museum do you like to go to?

There are some amazing, breathtaking monuments in this town. I enjoy the American Art museum and the National Air and Space Museum, because I am a huge plane nerd.

How about a favorite local restaurant?

Gosh… There are so many good restaurants here.  One of my favorites is Sol Mexican, it's very much a hole-in-the- wall place on H street, but has the best Mexican food ever.

Do you have a website or blog?

Certainly do, you can find all my work and learn more about me at altworldstudios.com

How has the COVID-19 outbreak affected you, personally and professionally?

The lockdown hit just as I finished the Night Guardians Awakenings book, I lost an entire year to market and sell the book and I’ve only just started recovering from that. You would think being locked in place would be a boon to a cartoonist, it really wasn’t because I couldn’t tour my work and lost a lot of momentum.

Thank you for this opportunity, cartooning is hard work, it's fun, get good folk around you, to play with and work with and it becomes more than just cranking out a page. Especially when folk start reading your work, everything takes up a life of its own.

Meet a Local Cartoonist: A Chat with Sarah Boxer

Boxer and Powder Wash

by Mike Rhode

Earlier this year, Sarah Boxer interviewed Jaime Hernandez at Politics and Prose bookstore. Until that evening, I had no idea that she lived in Washington (as she's a regular writer for New York-based publications), let alone that she was a cartoonist. We chatted briefly, and she's answered our usual questions -- extremely well as you'd expect from a professional essayist.

What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?

I do long-form comics (books). Since I don't like drawing human beings, all my comics have animals rather than humans in them. And most of them play as much with language and ideas as with line. In fact some of my comics, particularly my psycho-comics, Mother May I? and In the Floyd Archives, both have footnotes. And I've recently finished Hamlet: Prince of Pigs, a comic-books version of Hamlet; it's full of visual puns, beginning with the fact that Ham-let is a little ham, a pig!

Tomorrow, June 8, is the publication date for Mother May I?: A Post-Floydian Folly and the date for the republication of In the Floyd Archives: A Psycho-Bestiary. I'll be at Politics and Prose on July 13 at 1 pm.

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

I've worked mostly in pen or pencil in smallish (8x5) Strathmore notebooks. But recently the difficulty and expense of transferring paper to a publishable digital form makes me think I need to give up pen and paper. This upsets my son, who is also a cartoonist and insists that paper and pencil are best. But I find drawing on a tablet relaxing. It's easy to erase and fix small details and work on nuances of facial expression. The only snag was once losing all of my saved drawings on a Samsung Tablet. I have since switched tablets.

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

I was raised in the 1960s and 1970s in Colorado and published my first comic (a single panel of an elf in a snowstorm) at age 11 in my local newspaper.

Why are you in Washington now?  What neighborhood or area do you live in?

I moved from New York to Washington eleven years ago with my husband and son, because my husband, Harry Cooper, got a job as the curator of Modern Art at the National Gallery. We now live in Cleveland Park, not far from the zoo, so I have lots of live models.

What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

I was raised on Peanuts and went to college in Krazy Kat. Seriously, though, I don't have a lot of formal training in cartooning. I remember taking only one cartooning class, at Parsons. (R.O. Blechman came to speak to us.) But I've done a lot of life drawing (at the Art Students League, Parsons, the New York Academy of Art).  By far, the most absorbing drawing instruction I ever had was the Drawing Marathon at the Studio School. (I wrote up my experience in The New York Times.) I remember that one of the huge drawings I made over a week's time had a little cartoonish figure up on a ladder and Graham Nickson, the teacher who led the crits, asked, pointedly, "What happened here?"

Mother May I? page

Who are your influences?

I wouldn't call them influences, but the cartoonists I admired most as a kid were Charles Schulz, William Steig, Saul Steinberg, R.O. Blechman, JJ Sempé, and George Herriman. Ach, I see they're all men! I wish I could change history, but I can't.

If you could, what in your career would you do-over or change?

I guess I'd be born a boy. 

What work are you best-known for?

If anyone knows me for my comics, it's got to be for my first psycho-comic, In the Floyd Archives: A Psycho-Bestiary, based on Freud's case histories, which Pantheon published in 2001. (It's now being republished.) But it's likelier that people know me for my writing. I was at The New York Times for 16 years. There I was a photography critic, book review editor, and arts reporter. And since all my editors at the Times knew I especially loved comics, I got to write the obituaries for Saul Steinberg and Charles Schulz. I also got to interview Art Spiegelman when the second volume of Maus came out. And I got to sit in William Steig's orgone box. 

As a freelance writer, I still often write about comics. Last year I wrote an essay for The Atlantic about why it's so hard for cartoonists to lampoon Trump, and this October my Atlantic essay "The Exemplary Narcissism of Snoopy" will appear in the book The Peanuts Papers. I have also written quite a lot about comics for The New York Review of Books. My first essay there was on Krazy Kat and my most recent piece there was a review of Jason Lutes's epic, Berlin.

What work are you most proud of?

I'm most proud of my new psycho-comic Mother May I? I like that it's loose and rigorous at the same time. And I am tickled beyond belief that both Alison Bechdel and Jonathan Lethem are fans of it! I'm also proud that some selections from my first tragic-comic Hamlet: Prince of Pigs were published by the NYR Daily.

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

I'm looking forward to diving into drawing my next Shakespearean tragic-comic Anchovius Caesar: The Decomposition of a Romaine Salad, in which Julius Caesar is an anchovy and all the action takes place underwater.

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

I write when I have drawer's block; and I draw when I have writer's block.

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

Mother May I? page

I think the future of comics is online. The experience of trying to get a nice clean copy of Mother May I? set for publication made me realize that I need a very good tablet with a pen, so I don't ever have to go through the copy process again. That's how I composed Hamlet: Prince of Pigs. I find using a tablet very liberating. It's easier to change little expressions on the faces of my characters. It's nice not to have a lap full of eraser dust. And in the end, it's much easier to get my comic to a publisher or printer!

What local cons do you attend? The Small Press Expo, or others? Any comments about attending them?

I go every year to the Small Press Expo with my (now 15-year-old) son, Julius Boxer-Cooper, who's also a cartoonist, and this year I am sharing an exhibitor's table (or rather a half-table) with him. In school he hands out zines -- or, as he calls them, cackets (short for comics-packets) to his classmates. Here are his words of wisdom for would-be cartoonists:  "If you're going to be a 'zine cartoonist, then you're going to have to get used to seeing your comics torn, crumpled, thrown on the ground, thrown in the recycling, or thrown in the trash with strawberry or raspberry Gogurt that's a few weeks old dumped over them." I admire his toughness! And his comics! 

For our debut at SPX, Julius and I are working on our first collaboration -- a comic called Corgi Morgue, which is about a corgi (that's a dog) and his wife (also a dog) who run a morgue for animals and also serve Indian food, particularly coorgi murgh, to their grieving clients.

Boxer & Jaime Herandez

What's your favorite thing about DC?

I love that the museums, the zoos, and many of the musical performances are free. I'm proud of the protests against our horrible president. I also love the racial openness and relative harmony of DC. They are rarities in this country.

Least favorite?

I despise our very orange very nasty President in the very very white White House.

What monument or museum do you like to take visitors to?

I love taking people to the East Wing of the National Gallery, especially the rooms devoted to Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko.

How about a favorite local restaurant?

I'd rather eat in New York. 

Do you have a website or blog?

I wrote a book about blogging and how I'd never do it, Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web. So now I feel I have an obligation never to blog. But I do have a website. It's sarahboxer.weebly.com . 

(updated 6/8/19 with Mr. Cooper's name and correcting the SPX quote)

Meet a Local Cartoonist: A Chat with J.C. Thomas

by Mike Rhode

J.C. Thomas is appearing at Big Planet Comics Washington on Saturday February 18 (2-4 pm) to sign his two books. From his press release: "J.C. Thomas is a writer, artist and public elementary school teacher from Northern Virginia. His first children’s book, Ninja Mouse: Haiku, earned acclaim from both Publishers’ Weekly and The Midwest Book Review, and won a Gold Benjamin Franklin Digital Award from the Independent Book Publishers Association. He will be signing copies of Ninja Mouse: Haiku and The Gates of Dawn, an original graphic novel by Philadelphia-based writer Benjamin Finkel. Ninja Mouse: Haiku is a collection of haiku poetry with themes of martial arts philosophy and nature and includes Japanese translations. In The Gates of Dawn, a young girl with special powers and a nomadic veteran flee across a barren stretch of Utah as they’re pursued by a dark terror. Finding themselves cornered and desperate, they’re forced to make a final stand."

What type of cartooning or comic work do you do?

For now, I mostly work on one-shot, short graphic novels as opposed to serialized comics work. It’s partly a preference, partly circumstantial, and partly a product of the collaborations I’ve built in the last year or so.

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

I create all of my work on a custom-built PC. I use a lot of 3D models as the basis for my artwork. My main software applications are DAZ Studio, Photoshop, Octane Render, and Manga Studio. I use a Wacom Intuos for touching up line work.

I’m hoping to venture into paper and ink for some projects in the future, but for now my workflow is pretty set.

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

I was born in Northern Virginia in the early 1980s.

Why are you in Washington now? What neighborhood or area do you live in?

I’m in the Washington area now because I’ve stayed here. I’m in Sterling, VA, which is about thirty minutes west of Washington. I’ve been all over, but I keep coming back to home.

What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

My “training” in cartooning is all informal. As a kid, I gobbled up every how-to book I could, from How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way to Will Eisner’s Graphic Storytelling. Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics was also a big part of my comics “education.” I took art throughout high school but was always frustrated with the lack of respect comics art tended to be treated with.

Who are your influences?

I probably have too many subconscious influences to count, but there are some I’m more aware of. Visually, I’d have to say Alex Maleev, Jae Lee and Michael Lark are influences. I really dig their use of heavy blacks. Pacing wise, I’ve always loved the dynamic between Garth Ennis and three of his common artists: Leandro Fernandez, Steve Dillon, and John McCrea. I’d also cite Sam Esmail, the creator and director of Mr. Robot, as an influence, especially on The Gates of Dawn. The cinematography in that show had a big influence on the framing in The Gates of Dawn. Jeff Lemire is also an influence. He’s a master of knowing exactly what to draw and when to draw it, really maximizes the impact of every panel. Essex County, Lost Dogs, and The Underwater Wielder are some of my favorites of his work.

If you could, what in your career would you do-over or change?

I’d either choose to have studied something creative in undergrad, rather than International Relations, or to have studied education in undergrad. Being involved in education can really spark your creativity, and a lot of my ideas have their origins in something education-related. I wouldn’t have minded if some of those sparks were to have come earlier.

I think also I wish I had explored getting representation a bit more when I first finished Ninja Mouse. I contacted a couple of literary agents, and when I didn’t hear back within a couple of weeks, I went ahead and published it on my own. I say that with some lack of certainty, because self-publishing is great fun and very rewarding in pretty much every way except financially. But once Publisher’s Weekly released their review, agents were contacting me, but I didn’t have anything else to show them at the time. I could have probably let that play out differently and have ended up with an agent right off the bat. But the freedom that goes with being on your own is a definite perk.

What work are you best-known for?

Probably Ninja Mouse: Haiku. It received praise from Publisher’s Weekly and The Midwest Book Review, which was a pretty big deal for me at the time. It’s also the first work on I got onto Comixology, which was validating.

What work are you most proud of?

I’d have to say Ninja Mouse: Haiku again. A lot of love and work went into that project, and I was really happy with the final product.

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

Geez, what don’t I want to work on in the future? I’ve got a scifi anthology in the works that I’m anxious to finish. The second story in that project, Arcas, with writer Christopher Hutton, is almost finished and should be out in a couple weeks. I’ve also got a couple of screenplays that I plan on adapting into graphic novel format.

But the thing I’m looking forward to the most is the next Ninja Mouse project. The first book was a collection of haiku poetry about martial arts and nature, illustrated sequentially with a very loose story. The next project will be a more traditional graphic novel. I’m planning on three volumes for that one.

Other than a horde of my own projects that are in various stages of production, I’d love to do some mainstream work at some point. Batman, the Punisher, and Shang-Chi, of Master of Kung Fu Fame, are probably my favorite characters from the Big Two, and I’d jump at the chance to do work on any of them.

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

When I’m in a rut or have writer’s block, I normally try to work on a different project. I ran into more than the average amount of ruts with Arcas, and each time I’d try to get some work done on something I’d put on the backburner. On one hand, that’s a positive of balancing a lot of different projects at once. On the other, obvious, hand, it can be distracting or can hinder my productivity to have a lot of projects going on at the same time. I also turn to music to get me out of a rut.

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

That’s a good question…I don’t know, on the one hand, some trends in the industry make me think the future is looking a bit bleak. The sheer number of universe-redefining, multi-title events from Marvel and DC in the last decade or so has really turned me off from mainstream comics. I don’t really see that changing anytime soon. Don’t get me wrong, there’s been some outliers here and there that I really enjoyed. Jeff LeMire’s Moon Knight comes to mind. But in general, the big two have left me with the feeling that nothing I read matters, because they’re just going to undo and redo it again in a year. I think those types of trends will continue to alienate all but the most hardcore of fans.

On the other hand, I feel like this is a rich time for the art form in general and there are a lot of trends that make me very hopeful about the field. It seems to me there’s been an explosion of talented indie-creators and small press labels in the last five years or so. And we’re lucky to be in an area where there are retailers willing to take risks on small press titles and unknown creators. I’m also very hopeful about the genre diversity we’re seeing now. It used to be that you really had to scrounge around if you wanted to read something without capes and masks, but that’s not the case anymore. I think part of that is due to digital platforms like Comixology. I think digital comics will continue to grow, but I don’t think they’ll ever replace physical comics. I hope that someone… publishers, online retailers, I don’t know who…but I hope that someone can find a way for brick and mortar retailers to get a piece of the digital pie. I think there’s a lot of potential in apps like Madefire as well, which basically adds simple motions, background music and sound effects. It hasn’t taken off yet, probably because there are additional costs to making them and the return isn’t much more than a typical digital comic. But I think the potential is exciting.

I’m also thrilled to see the increasing acceptance that graphic novels and comics are being met with in schools and libraries. Comics have a place in literacy instruction, and more and more educators are beginning to embrace them.

What local cons do you attend? The Small Press Expo, Intervention, or others? Any comments about attending them?

I’ll be attending the NovaCon this year, which will be my first. I’m planning on attending the Small Press Expo as well. I had a chance to do a signing at last year’s FBCD at Comic Logic in Ashburn, VA, and it was absolutely packed. Like, line-around-the-building packed. I imagine something like that, but on a much larger scale.

What's your favorite thing about DC?

Diversity.

Least favorite?

The soul-killing traffic.

What monument or museum do like to take visitors to?

I have to admit that I don’t really take advantage of the museums and monuments like I should. But I really like the Freer and Sackler galleries. I also had the chance to explore Hillwood Estate recently, and that’s definitely on my short list of favorites.

How about a favorite local restaurant?

I can’t say I know a lot of restaurants in DC proper, but I love Clarity in Vienna. Mokomandy in Sterling is also one of my go-to recommendations.

Do you have a website or blog?

Sure do! It’s www.jc-thomas.com. I’d love for your readers to stop by.