by Mike Rhode
Out of nowhere last fall, Dan Mazur sent me an advance copy of his excellent wordless fantasy graphic novel, Lunatic. Lunatic is the story of a late-Victorian woman obsessed with the Moon, or perhaps more correctly, the man in the Moon. I recommend it highly. In fact, I liked it so much I bought a copy for myself when he did a book talk, and sent the first one to Michigan State University's Comic Art Collection. I also reached out to thank Dan, and asked him to do an interview.
First, here's the official description of Lunatic -
The moonstruck Lunatic is an unusual and striking graphic
novel in the tradition of wordless books by the likes of Frans Masereel,
Lynd Ward and William Gropper. Part fable, part classic adventure in
the tradition of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Méliès, the tale is told
in nearly 200 full-page, wordless images in a variety of media from
pencil, pen and ink, ink wash and paint that lovingly evoke the artistic
styles of its period setting, and classic illustrators from Charles
Dana Gibson and Toulouse Lautrec to Edward Gorey.
The word “lunatic” derives from Latin, meaning “of the moon”, or
“moonstruck” and in this sense it describes the protagonist of this
story: from infancy she develops a magical, almost intimate relationship
with the moon itself, a celestial being who acts as her friend, lover,
mentor. Our heroine is a dreamer, an outsider, never feeling like she
quite belongs to this world. We follow her through the stages of life,
infancy, childhood, youth and adulthood, at each point guided by the
moon toward a fateful journey and an unexpected destiny. A timeless and
charming story of longing, loneliness and the pursuit of dreams.
What
type of comic work or cartooning do you do?
Different
kinds, but all of it independent. For my own creative work, I work almost
completely independently, and mostly self-published. So I write and draw, whatever I feel like
doing. I’ve done some historically-based
comics, and some fantasy, some super-hero, but with an ironic take on the genre. Most recently I did my first long-form
graphic novel, “Lunatic,” which was published by Fanfare. It’s black and white, a “wordless book,” with
one image per page, so pretty much on the arty side of things. But totally
accessible, I hope! It has a children’s
book feel, but it’s not a children’s story really – at least not by
contemporary standards. It’s really a
sort of fantasy/fable about life, dreams, disappointments…
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| cover art by Kurt Ankeny |
I
also work within the Boston Comics Roundtable, which is a collective of
cartoonists here in Boston (like what you all do in DC), and I have edited
quite a few anthologies within that group, currently working on Boston Powers,which is an all ages superhero anthology, all set in and around Boston. Recommended even for kids not from Boston,
though! I’ve also edited and published
some themed anthologies through Ninth Art Press, which is my own
micropress.
And
lastly I do some historical or scholarly comics writing, such as co-writing
with Alexander Danner, a few years back, a book called “Comics: a Global
History, 1968 to the Present,” and last year an article on The Comics Journal,
“Ibrahim Njoya: a comics artist in Colonial-era Cameroon.”
How
do you do it? Traditional pen and ink, computer or a combination?
Mostly
traditional, pen, brush, ink, ink washes etc., though I make liberal use of
Photoshop for touchups, corrections, sometimes combining images. But pretty much I always start with as fully
finished a traditional drawing as I can.
In
your new book, Lunatic, you used multiple sets of techniques - how come?
It’s
partly a conceptual thing: since the book is divided into chapters about
different ages in the character’s life, from infancy to middle age, it seemed
to make sense to change up something stylistically in each phase of the story. So
the changing styles hopefully reflects the changing way the character sees life
at different stages.
Also,
it was the longest project I’d ever taken on, so I think that I decided to
change things up from chapter to chapter to keep my own interest fresh. It was more like doing 8 or 9 short projects
in that way.
Is
Lunatic an homage to silent movies?
Partly
– I couldn’t help but think about Melies’ Voyage to the Moon, and the innocence
of early science fiction movies…just building a big rocket and flying to the
moon, walking around on the moon as though you could breathe there. The face in the moon of course. And my chapter heading pages are modeled on
silent movie caption cards, with the ornate border. It was probably more just a love of the past
and the Victorian aesthetic in general, but wordless story-telling in comics
relates to silent movies, the purity of it.
I had a friend once who was really into silent movies, and she was about
my age, so grew up with talkies like everyone else alive today, but she used to
say “sound ruined the movies.” Joking,
but I like the purist approach. Not that
I prefer silent movies myself, or have any scruples about words in comics. MOST of the comics I do have words.
Why
did you make it wordless?
It
wasn’t a decision I thought through. I
like wordless comics, and have done a few before. Sometimes I just naturally think of a story,
and it’s purely visual. Other times the
idea couldn’t be done wordlessly.
How
long have you been working on it?
I
started Lunatic in mid-2016 and finished in early 2020. It was a long time, a lot longer than I
thought it would take.
How
did you hook up with Fanfare, a publisher that more typically translates work
from Europe into America? Is your book for sale by them overseas?
I’ve
always liked the kind of books that Fanfare puts out… I happened upon a book of
theirs called “A Patch of Dreams” by Hideji Oda, which was the first
“alternative manga” type thing I ever saw, and I loved it. Years later, I met Stephen Vrattos, who is
Fanfare’s US person… I met him at SPX in fact, and bought some stuff from him,
and we hung out a bit… then I think I met Stephen Robson, who runs the company
in the UK, also at SPX. I really liked
the production quality of their books and their taste. I hadn’t actually submitted a comic to a
publisher before ever (except for anthology submissions), so when it came time
to “shop” Lunatic I chose a few publishers where I personally knew someone
there. Fanfare was top of my list, so
Stephen V. helped me get it to Stephen R., and luckily he liked it.
They’re
selling it in the UK. So far not in any
other countries as far as I know.
So,
returning to our standard biographical questions, when
(within a decade is fine) and where were you born?
December
19, 1959.
Where
do you live now?
Cambridge,
Massachusetts
What
is your training and/or education in cartooning?
I was
a fine arts major in college, but as far as cartooning it’s all self-education
and training… I took a few classes years ago at a school called “Associates in
Art” which were actually quite helpful.
And of course, the input and examples of other cartoonists, especially
the ones I know through Boston Comics Roundtable.
Who
are your influences?
I
think like most people I have hundreds of influences from a lifetime of comics
reading and other input.
Childhood
influences: DC comics (Neal Adams & Kirby’s Fourth World especially) and
MAD of the 60s and 70s and Peanuts, as well as lots of different children’s
book illustrators.
Youth:
R. Crumb and other underground cartoonists – but especially Crumb. Not his
sexist/ racist stuff as much though… there IS a lot of Crumb work which is
neither. The French artists introduced
to the US by Heavy Metal, especially Moebius and Nicole Claveloux.
Later
on, it was a real revelation to discover Love & Rockets, which brought a
lot of the threads I liked in comics together – mature and smart, but also
playful and fantastic, and amazingly well-crafted and expressive artwork. I also really got into Scott Pilgrim when
that came out, for its playfulness and zaniness and energy, and incorporation
of manga ideas.
When
working on the Comics: A Global History book, I discovered lots and lots of artists
I never really knew about who’ve had a big influence. Shojo manga of the 70s,
the “Year 24 group,” for their formal innovations and emotionalism. Yumiko Oshima is a favorite, though her work
has never been officially translated. She is less “over the top” than some of
them like Moto Hagio or Ryuko Ikeda (who I also love), but has a “quieter”
softer approach… makes great use of negative space on the page, her comics are
sad & moody and wistful.
Alberto
Breccia, the Argentinian artist – just one of the greatest artists who ever
worked in comics, and he experimented with different styles and media his whole
life, never got into a rut.
Oh
but also, there are project-specific influences… so on Lunatic I looked at
different types of artists – mostly if not exclusively non-comics artists – for
some of the different chapters. I’m
working on something new now, and my model is the French artist Fred, and very
particularly a comic he did in the early 60s, Le Petit Cirque, which is
wonderful and quirky and not like anything else I can think of. To “warm up”
for the project I’m doing studies of that comic, just copying panels from it as
closely as I can, and hopefully something will rub off on me.
By
the way, maybe that’s a good answer for “cartoonist’s block”: copy something
you really like.
If
you could, what in your career would you do-over or change?
Well…
I guess I would have gotten serious about comics a lot earlier… in the late
70s/early 80s when I was in school, there was little encouragement in the
culture for comics as art, and I didn’t have the guts to do it anyway – I have
huge respect for the artists of my generation who did. I think I understood the potential of the
medium then, but just didn’t have the independence of mind to follow it as a
passion. But maybe that means I just
wasn’t ready, so it’s just as well. I’m
kind of glad to be able to publish my first graphic novel at 60… at least I’m
not going to get jaded. So, the answer
to your question is really “nothing.”
What
work are you best-known for?
Ha ha
ha. I don’t know. I have the same name as a major mountain
climber.
What work
are you most proud of?
The
next one.
Your
last book before Lunatic was a history of comics. Can you tell us about it?
Alexander
Danner and I co-wrote it, as I said. I
had this idea that comics history, as opposed to history of any other art,
tends to be very nationalist and parochial… separate history of comics in
separate countries, and here in the US we don’t know much about comics of other
lands, especially if they’ve never had a commercial existence here in the
US. That was much more true 10 years ago
when the book was conceived than it is now, happily. This seemed very different than art history,
or film history, or the history of literature or music, where if you know the
first thing, you’re likely to know quite a bit about European work, and probably
some Asian as well. And the artists
along the way in all those fields did too, so there are international trends as
well as national “schools” of art, etc.
So we set out to do sort of parallel chronologies of what we deemed to
be the three major comics cultures: Japan, U.S. and Europe, and especially
looking for moments where there were connections and influences between the
cultures. It was going to be the ENTIRE history, starting in the middle ages,
or whenever, but the publisher Thames & Hudson decided that was too much
for one book, so we split it in two, choosing 1968 as the dividing point, for
various reasons. And they wanted to do
that one first because it had more commercial appeal... but so far we’ve never
gotten round to doing “volume one,” which is sort of a shame. On the other
hand, it was an enormous amount of work, so I’m sort of content with letting it
stay one volume.
I
have to say now that I think that while we were trying to bring world comics
together as a single field, we left too much out… It was probably as much as we
could handle, but I feel bad that there is nothing about the Philippines,
Africa, India… I’ve learned SINCE finishing the book how much we left out.
What
would you like to do or work on in the future?
I
have other projects lined up… they continue the completely self-indulgent, whatever-I-feel-like
approach. I just hope for variety, and
not to bore myself… so there isn’t another wordless book in the near
future. But experimenting with different
styles and formats will always appeal to me.
What
do you do when you're in a rut or have writer's block?
I get
down on myself and anxious for a while… then I force myself to sit down and
just start. I don’t know any secrets or
tricks or rituals, I just find that brute force to get yourself to start is the
only way, and then it will work out. I
remind myself that anything Is better than nothing.
What
do you think will be the future of your field?
I’m
hopeful for the future of the printed comic as cherished object, even with the
rise of digital comics. I think there
will be a place for that. I’m hoping that
comics shows will come back after the Pandemic, since that’s an important way
for independent comics to find their readership. Honestly, I just hope that the world and
humanity survive in recognizable form.
Telling stories with drawings will survive if it does.
What cons do you
attend? What are your thoughts about SPX? Can you discuss MICE and how
you came to found it?
When I started working in
independent comics in the aughts, I discovered comics shows like SPX, APE,
MOCCA etc., and smaller shows, zine fairs, and loved everything about
them. The variety of work, the
interaction with the crowd, the fellow-feeling with other cartoonists. Shelli Paroline and I were in BCR at the
time, and we felt that Boston should have a show like that. We got involved with the Boston Zine Fair…
which in its then-current incarnation was on its last legs, and as it sort of
disintegrated, we morphed into MICE (the Massachusetts Independent Comics
Expo). I was teaching comics at the Art Institute of Boston, which was then
part of Lesley University, and they agreed to host the first one in 2010, and
Lesley has been our home for the show ever since (in Cambridge). Its grown a lot, but I think it retains the
qualities we were going for to begin with :
a warm celebration otf independent comics, like a big creative party for
cartoonists and readers.
SPX is the gravitational
center of independent comics show, I think.
I’m not sure if it was the first, but it’s outlasted some of the others
that I first went to (we’ll see which ones return after Covid -- I hope they all do), and it’s a lot of fun
because of being held in the hotel where most of the exhibitors stay… a big
comics party! I hope to be there again
soon.
What's your favorite thing about visiting DC?
I’ve visited DC some over the
years – my wife lived there before we were married, back in the 80s so I saw it
most back then. When I go to SPX I
mostly see the inside of the hotel in Bethesda.
But what I like most about DC are the museums – the Hirschhorn, the Phillips,
National Gallery, etc. Also a great food
town…
Least favorite?
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the original drawing done in my book ordered from HBS
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I guess the whole area is so
spread out, so going to SPX I see Bethesda… I have family in McLean, and we go
there almost every year for Thanksgiving, and pretty much never get out of
McLean, which is a nice place to live, but not much to visit (though we walked
past Lyn Cheney’s house, I think).
What monument or museum do you like to visit?
I haven’t been to those art museums in a long
time… I guess the Phillips was my favorite, it’s sort of like the Gardner here
in Boston, in an old house and based on one art collector’s tastes and vision,
from a great period, early Modern Art.
How about a favorite restaurant?
It’s been too long to remember the names of
them… but DC was where I discovered Ethiopian food… I think there was a place
called Red Sea – it was ages ago but it’s a safe bet there was an Ethiopian
restaurant called Red Sea. More recently but still a few years back, I went
with some fellow cartoonists to a really good Ethiopian place in walking
distance from the Marriott after SPX one year… I think it was called Sheba, at
least that’s the only Ethiopian restaurant I can find on Google maps near SPX.
If it’s a different one, it looks good anyway.
How has the pandemic affected you?
I've been fine, personally, and able
to work at a reasonable pace on my own comics. But a bad time to be
coming out with Lunatic and Boston Powers -- that one in particular was
pretty much designed to sell to kids at comics shows. I'm looking
forward to live events being possible again!
