May 31, 2014

CR Sunday Interview: Noah Van Sciver

*****Last week Fantagraphics announcedas their second book with the cartoonist Noah Van Sciver tells the story of four days in the life of a restaurant employee struggling to make ends meet while struggling to function through a cloud of alcohol, a terrifying level of responsibility, a certain amount of free-floating desire and severe money difficulties. The book is due in 2015. Van Sciver has plenty on his plate between now and then., Van Sciver's first book with AdHouse , collects several short stories from the cartoonist's self-publishedand various anthology contributions. Van Sciver is also a prolific maker of comics on-line, including intermittent diary comics and the serial. A diary comic is due from this summer from 2D Cloud and we may see a collaboration between Van Sciver and Hic & Hoc this year or next.The 29-year-old Van Sciver is among the cartoonists most respected by his same-age peers, and is sometimes portrayed as a man out of time for making comics that remind of those that were more common in the late '80s and early '90s -- something we get into below. I was happy Noah took the time during a busy CAKE weekend to talk to me about his work: old, present and forthcoming. -- Tom Spurgeon*****[laughs] Oh, yeah?I wound up here... I was born in New Jersey, and lived there until I was like 10. My parents split and we moved to Arizona. From Arizona my Mom moved to Colorado and I came with her -- I was like 15 years old. So I've been up here since then. I started drawing comics up here. I didn't come here for any particular scene.isThere's Kilgore Books John [Porcellino] was up here for a while. They started the Denver Comic Con a few years ago. There's a little scene happening.It doesn't seem like the cartoonists up here are that ambitious. Sam Spina was up here, but he moved. People don't seem to stick around up here for very long. [Spurgeon laughs] You know what I mean? A lot of cartoonists -- when I say ambitious, I mean just sending your comics out to blogs to have them reviewed, or going to conventions. A lot of people don't do that here.There's a drawing group I go to every Tuesday night. There are cartoonists there. But they're just guys that have a webcomic or they bring their sketchbook or something.Oh, yeah. [laughs] I do sometimes. I get scene envy for Seattle, really bad all the time. I think Seattle has the coolest thing going right now. The comics there are awesome right now. They have the wholecrew. There is a lot that's happening in Seattle. I think if I could thrive anywhere it would be Seattle, but I don't necessarily need to be around other cartoonists to thrive. I do better alone.Yeah, I think so. That's true. Definitely. Also, I'm way more aggressive about that kind of thing out here. If there's a publication, I want to be in it. I'm pretty active about contacting them and trying to get comics in there.Yeah. You know every city has the alternative weekly newspaper. In Denver it's called. They had a comic strip in it for a while but the guy quit. I kept submitting comics ideas and they wouldn't get back to me. They eventually gave the gig to somebody else. I kept at it. I kept e-mailing the editor and sending her stuff I was working on. When that cartoonist dropped out a year later I had another pitch for them. They were like, "Fine." They just kind of gave in. Jules Feiffer was doing a reading in Denver one time. I went to see it. He said that the best advice he could give a cartoonist is to not say "No" for an answer. Keep bugging the editor. Eventually, they'll relent. It worked out for me. I took that to heart. Even with Fantagraphics I did that a lot. I kept bugging Eric Reynolds until he said, "Yes." For. That's kind of my technique.Ummm...[laughs] I don't think so. If it has I just moved on, didn't think about it.King-CatOh, right. Yeah.It was exactly what I needed. Yeah, he's really realistic about what you can do with comics as far as a career goes. I feel like that's something a lot of people don't understand. A lot of young cartoonists think they're going to do comics and that's going to be their living. They'll be like Frank King sitting in an office, wearing a tie, and doing comics. John put it into my head that that doesn't exist anymore. It's not about making a living at comics anymore as much as it is about this being your art. If you're going to do it, you're going to do it. It doesn't matter about making money.That was big for me. I didn't know that. I thought if you put out a graphic novel or something, you had it made. You could live off of that and do comics for a living and be fine. Just knowing him woke me up to the fact that comics are something you do because that's who you are. It's not something you can make money from.The HypoI didn't go into it thinking I was going to make a lot of money. I did it because it was something I was interested in. It was something I wanted to learn about. I don't know. It was a book I wanted to exist. I didn't think it was going to make my career or anything.Oh, yeah.Yeah, I enjoyed that. It seems like as soon as Fantagraphics even announced that book, I was getting more respect than I had for just doing [his comic book series]. You know? I enjoyed that, because I want that. I was brought up to a different level. I think that respectability is very good.The HypoYeah, I plan to do another book similar to that one on Joseph Smith. It just takes so much time. I enjoy doing that, because I enjoy learning about history. It's more of a passion project than anything else. I'll get to it whenever I get to it.Saint Cole1999Mark, yeah.I think so. Up here in Denver at least, that's the average guy, the average twenty-something person. That's who I can write because I'm around those kinds of people. Maybe I have pieces of those people in me. I don't know, I guess that's just who I'm interested in right now. The loser character, you know? Maybe I'll get out of it eventually.Yeah. Exactly.specificallyYeah, I think so. It's just a guy that has to work a shitty job to survive in this country. You just have to bust your ass and then you barely scrape by. It's something that I do, and it's something that I'll probably always have to do. So maybe in a certain way I'm expressing whatever agony I have in me. [laughs] Like a regular loser guy.You're talking drugs and alcohol?It's just showing the escapism aspect of it, but it's not akind of escapism.I've never done any of that stuff. I've never smoked meth. [laughter] I live in Denver, where everyone smokes weed. Drinking... everyone drinks, too. I'm not against it. It's just the reality of what people are doing now.I wasn't trying to portray it as good or bad. It's just that character's escape. Cole is smoking meth to escape all of this responsibility. He just wants to get away. He was just dating this girl who got knocked up; now he feels like he has to stay with her. Then her mom moves in. All of this stuff is piling up on him, and he's looking for any way out of it. It's just an escape.Saint ColeIt's just the kind of people that are in the background, people that are hanging out. Sometimes I'll put in somebody that I know. I'll have them in the background. These are the people that inhabit that world. Middle America. The regular types.It sounds like I should get some more anatomy books. [laughter]I draw really fast. I'm drawing all the time. As we're talking, I'm drawing. And I don't stress out over pages at all. I think, "That's great. That's good. That works for what I want to do."It depends. I'm getting ready to go to CAKE today, where I'll be around a lot of great artists. When I come back, I'll probably have some trouble drawing because I'll be intimidated. I'll get over it in a day and get back to drawing really quick.Yes. There was a moment. It must have been... I remember talking to John P. about this. Whenever you see an older cartoonist still trying to make it as a cartoonist, and you see how miserable they are, you think you don't ever want to live like that. I don't remember when it happened, but I made the decision that while I love comics, and it's something I always want to do, I don't want to be one of those older guys. Struggling all the time. Having a wife that's just pissed off at them because they're not bringing home the bacon or whatever.[laughs] Not while you're recording. Maybe at SPX , after a beer.Oh, yeah.Yes! People will e-mail me and try to get me to draw their comics for them, and I can't think of anything I would like to do less: work with somebody else. I like doing my own comics and telling my own stories. If this isn't my job, why should I ever want to stress out about it?Not that often. When I put together the AdHouse book [], that was a weird thing going through all those comics. I had an idea of what I wanted to be in the book. Going through the old issues ofto see if I was missing anything, that was pretty brutal. Robyn Chapman -- do you know that cartoonist?She posted a picture on Facebook of the first two issues ofshe picked up at a yard sale a couple of days ago. It was so embarrassing! I'm like, "Please don't read those." It's hard to think about those things as existing and out there in the world.Oh, man. There's just nothing there.I have a better grasp on the kinds of stories I want to tell. Currently, it's that 20-something loser character. I have a lot to say with that character. [laughs] I want to write those stories, or more history, and it's all about communicating actual feelings instead of trying to tell a dumb joke or be self-deprecating like every cartoonist is at the beginning.Saint ColeBlammo!in mindYeah, it was.Yeah, it does.Saint ColeIt gave me more freedom to do whatever I wanted. I never thought about how it would look on the printed page. When you're doing a comic for print, you also have to be really conscious of page count. That's another thing. I didn't worry. I didn't have to think about it being 24 pages or 36 pages; I was just drawing. When that chapter was done it was done. So in general, there's more freedom.Yeah. And I actually really like that a lot. Forthere was some press and stuff, but I didn't get a lot of feedback from people. I wasn't getting a lot of e-mails back from people saying, "I really love this book." If I had posted it on-line, I probably would have gotten a lot more. I've been doingon my tumblr page, and a lot of the fun is seeing what people think about it, the responses I get.I think it has to do with that everybody knows some douchebag writer like that: someone who romanticizes the struggling writer, the struggling artist role. They don't care about doing what it takes to actually become a great writer, they just like living that struggling-writer role. They like having that title. I think people find that funny.It's a few people I know. [laughs][laughs] Okay.youYes. I definitely think that. I feel a stronger kinship to those comics than to the comics coming out now. The focus seems to be... the focus largely seems to have been taken away from telling stories and it's been put more on the art and how artsy you can get. Page layouts aren't about visually storytelling anymore, they're about making a large drawing that hopefully you can read. I don't have anything to do with that stuff.Yeah, sure. Joseph Remnant . That's the obvious one. Let's see. Chuck Forsman Julia Gfrörer . There's a lot of them -- Sean Ford , I really like his work.Yeah. I'm not into stuff that looks too stylish. I could never get into -- and I know this is blasphemy -- but I could never get into Paper Rad . It just seemed like it would be dated soon. It was all about the surface. It doesn't do anything for me.But it's all helping the story. It's serving that purpose. It's never "check out this drawing."The Hic & Hoc eventually. [laughs]When I'm working on a project, I'm always thinking about who the best person would be to publish it. I think if it's more weird, I'll probably want to work with 2D Cloud. Those guys are really great -- and really weird. Hic & Hoc came about just because I like Matt. I think he's a cool guy and I wanted to work with him on something. Yeah, I'm still working on that. With books, there's Fanta, and with AdHouse I just like Chris Pitzer a lot. [laughs] I don't know.I really like everything he does. I think AdHouse is an amazing publisher. I remember that Paul Hornschemeier book he did, where it was a collection of his short stories. I like Paul Hornschemeier, too, so I thought working with Chris would be a good fit. So I pitched it to him, too.That, too.That's a good point. I really like that and I benefit from that because I'm not a good designer. So like with Fanta, it was Jacob Covey on. Chris Pitzer. The 2D Cloud guys, they can pull off stuff I cannot do. They all can. WithI took all the pages when I was finished and mailed them to Fantagraphics and had them scan them in and everything. [laughter] It was the total '90s cartoonist move.It seems experimental to me! I don't know. [laughs]Fante BukowskiIt's the same! It's a challenge. With the diary comics it's like, "Let's see if I can do 30 of these." It's a project for fun. WithI have a sketchbook that's 52 pages long, let's see if I can make a graphic novel in this sketchbook and post a page a day. If I can post a page a day of this comic, then I'll have a graphic novel in two months?It is new. The first time I did that was last Fall when I did the first batch of 30-day diary comics. It's a new challenge. In a way,was the same because Joseph and I put up a web site and then we were like, "let's see if we can put up a chapter." We totally failed at our goals. We were supposed to have that web site for only a year, and have a graphic novel each in a year. I just finished mine, and I don't think Joseph's anywhere near to finishing his.Sure. It's helping me build an audience.Kind of ugly. Kind of mean. [Spurgeon laughs]I think in a large way, yes. I remember being at an SPX and signing. I was with Lilli Carré, who was signing. All of her fans were these really beautiful people. Everyone that came to buy my book was an old guy you wouldn't sit next to on the buss. A guy with a limp. An eyepatch. A hook. Just pirates, basically.That's because you don't even see them. They're in the background, and you ignore them.I like the stuff after the show. The show itself can be kind of tiresome.It's not like that!You know what I'm talking about. You're in this room for so long... you feel disconnected by the time you get out of there.Mm... nah.It seemed like... when I did Blammo #6 it seemed like that was a big turning point for me. It seemed like all of the sudden whenever I'd go to the show I'd get a lot more attention. People were like, "Oh yeah, this is..." That was the year I was nominated for an Ignatz Award and all of this stuff. I was like, "Oh, this is so exciting. This is great." Matt Madden e-mailed me.I still remember when with Kate Beaton came out and it was like the biggest thing ever. I still want an experience like that. Or Ed Piskor with, where it's already in its third printing. Jesus Christ, I can't even imagine that. I want that experience. That would be really fun. I want to be able to post a picture of thebestseller list with my book circled. "Check it out, motherfuckers!"Yes.. That's going to be my bread and butter. [long pause] [laughs] I honestly don't know. [laughter] I mean, who can tell? I don't think about it. I'm not searching for ideas that could be the nextor. I can only do what I'm interested in.Oh, no. I don't know. I guess we'll have to wait and see. If you have any thoughts on the matter, I'm open to them.No. I've been nominated but I always lose. And I can't even complain because the people that beat me are always talented. The first time was Lisa Hanawalt . The second time everyone told me I was going to win. "This is it. People like you more than all these other people. You got it." And I was like, "Oh, really? Maybe I will." [Spurgeon laughs] And then Corinne Mucha won. [laughter]I try not to get bummed about it now. Gary Groth told me last year after the Ignatzes last year, "What do you care? Do you do comics hoping for a carrot?" [laughter] I always think about that now. Who gives a shit? Gary sure is good at crushing whatever happiness you have.He does! Every summer. We hang out. He's great, man. I love Gary Groth.It's really weird.Feeling like I'm not ahead in life, feeling like I'm not where I wanted to be. I'm still financially insecure. [laughs] I feel like I'm still not a grown-up, and I wanted to be by the time I was 30. I didn't focus on that.Yes. Yes, that's how my year has been.Yes! [laughs]A little bit. I didn't want to cross any boundaries with her. She didn't know about it. I was doing these comics. I would draw a date because that's what I was doing, and then it started to work out. And I thought, "God, what if she sees these diary comics and gets upset that I was drawing all of this stuff?"I didn't know this, but she had googled me and she saw them. Luckily, she had no problem with them. And she likes them now. 2D Cloud is supposed to put out that mini-comic on my birthday. It's dedicated to her. We live together now. It's all happened really fast.I just don't get my hopes up.I guess so. I assume I'll always have to work, like at a deli or a bakery or something. I'll just do comics at night.*********** the cover image released for; who knows if it stays the same* self-portrait swiped from Brian Heater's interview; for some reason I've never taken a photo of Noah* acomic* from* four from, hopefully understandable in context each time out* ainstallment* the new book from AdHouse, collecting earlier material and short stories#6* cover to this year's 2D Cloud mini* pouring a drink in[below]***************