Showing posts with label Baltimore Comic Con. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baltimore Comic Con. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Fink and Leopold & Brink interview, long after a chance meeting at Baltimore Comic Con

by Mike Rhode

I encountered Christopher Fink (aka CA Fink, Christopher Alan Fink, who prefers to go by Fink in person), last fall at Baltimore Comic Con, in front of Eddie Campbell's table. He was talking to Campbell about his upcoming comic, and as he noted when writing back to me, "I’m the dude with a wacky contraption on his head, a treatment for brain cancer." I've written on cancer and graphic medicine in the past so I asked him about an interview. He agreed, with the caveat, "I should let you know my current work isn’t ABOUT cancer at all and is only in there (at the very end) as a lazy reader’s rationale for the events of the plot, namely me believing I’m a character in my own comic series, Leopold & Brink." According to copies for sale on the Internet, he began self-publishing the series in 1997, while an Instagram post says he began working on it in 1987. 

We've both been dilatory with finishing this interview for months, so I'm posting the second revision from April. I also assumed he was from Baltimore, so some of the questions reflect that mistake.

What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?

I started cartooning as an unconventional approach to a Philosophy dissertation in graphic novel form.  Though I’ve done a few short pieces since then, I’ve really only focused on the world I built for that project in the mid-‘90s. Nineteen 90s that is.

Your current graphic memoir is about suffering from brain cancer... can you tell us more about it?

Oh I wish it was simply about that ! It’s not a cancer book at all. 

My brain cancer does show up at the end of the Leopold and Brink-embedded autobio, and though it’s an honest presentation of my early experience with it, it mainly serves as a possible explanation for some outlandish plot points in the rest of the book.

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

This is Leopold and Brink # 5 I’m currently finishing and due to my health, I picked the most expedient media I could think of.: thick digital gouache on an iPad.

LaB #1-3 are all done with brush on Bristol. Tombo for the first. WN7 for 2 and 3.

LaB #4 is all text, a proper novel, and was written out on sketch pads then typed on various desktops.

This Instagram post from May says Fantagraphics will be publishing issue #5 this fall.


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

Born at 12:06am Mercy Hospital, Coconut Grove/Miami, Florida March 12, 1970.

What neighborhood or area do you live in?

Fox Hills / Culver City, CALIFORNIA

What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

Copying John Byrne in the early 80s. Giving up after seeing Bill Sienkiewicz’s work in Moon Knight. No training at at all. Looked at a lot of art books as a kid.

Who are your influences?

After Byrne, it was all writers - Mainly the big Brits, Moore and Morrison. Swamp Thing and Animal Man convinced me to not give up on the medium as a possible voice for my interests.

As I went deeper, Kurtzman was big. Then I found all the masters, an exhaustive list. Mazzucchelli’s Rubber Blanket was a oooooh THAT’s how you do it. 

Oh, Heavy Metal was a favorite.

Influences as far as my own work, I’d have to go full pretentious and discuss other mediums. I’ve never been able to draw as well as I feel I can write or build worlds so I’m drawn to idealistic literature, fine art, and tv shows like Star Trek.

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

Had I let someone else publish LaB back in the mid-90s, I’m pretty sure I could now say I had a career as a cartoonist.

What work are you best-known for?

I’m not known at all unless this is being read after the LaB movies are out 🤪

What work are you most proud of?

No question - Leopold and Brink. My life’s work and the one thing I’m truly proud of.



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

My ruts are always some form of procrastination. I’m blessed with flow when it comes to creating. I am not blessed with discipline.


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

Like most entertainment fields, it’s inevitable that AI will do all the production and future artists will more or less be mixmasters, curators, or victor frankensteins. I’m not opposed.


Until then - and I’m encouraged by the shows I’ve attended recently (2024) I think small press will continue to flourish and that community will grow. Maybe a kind of a weekly Farmer’s Market for comics in cities and towns everywhere?

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

I’ve only recently been back at shows, mainly to promote LaB 5. One of those was SPX, which was fantastic. I went to the very first one of those!! And a couple other early ones in the 90s. APE in SF was similarly wonderful. I’ll be at CALA Dec 2024 for the first time and can’t wait!

I think shows are always lovely and full of my kind of madness.

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

Oh no! I haven’t read a comic in months and before that, years. Not good. I had a strange program of gathering retirement reading for some dude I called Future Fink. Uh, do not recommend.

I DO recommend my local stores tho! Pulp Fiction on Sepulveda, Comic Bug, Stuart Ng, and of course, Secret Headquarters.

What's your favorite thing about Baltimore?

Only spent a few days there. I love that there’s an alcove to appreciate local legend, Thurgood Marshall, at the airport. 

For a graphic novelist, Fink's online presence is scarce but he's on YouTube and Instagram.

Monday, November 04, 2024

Two pieces of original art from Baltimore Comic Con

 While I was throwing the comic strips newspapers from 1991 on the old barbie scanner, I did these two pieces of original art I bought from the artists at Baltimore Comic Con.

 

Ron Randall - Secret World of New Krypton p9 Adam Strange original art. 
 
Adam Strange has always been a favorite of mine since I got a pile of Mystery in Space comics from my cousin Mike Violante in the early 1970s. Ron Randall's art is lovely - check out his self-published Trekker graphic novels on Kickstarter.

    
Brenda Starr 1997-08-03 original at by June Brigman and Roy Richardson. Richardson inked and lettered the strip - colored too, but you don't see that here.