Any given event’s significance, be it an individual one or a part of a much larger series of events, is always huge. Even the smallest of events, something that seems completely insignificant and random, has the ability to turn our lives around. For example, because of such an event, you might one day be forced to choose another path while walking to work. Maybe if you follow that path you’ll end up under the wheels of a tri-axle truck that will squish you, and then be caught on fire, and then you’ll burn to a crisp. Or, quite accidentally, you might get to meet the love of your life.

Therefore, the power of a small or greater event can alter your life forever. Or, failing that, it can at least offer you a great story (or a comic strip) to tell. This week’s guest, Kevin Huizenga, can be blamed for the latter one for quite some time now. Huizenga has dealt many times with small and great events in his semi-autobiographical comics, while referencing plenty of details and trivia, which he proceeds to analyze for pages upon pages. His comics are always based on simple and mundane events and never escape the sphere of real life (or, if you so prefer, the sphere of the quite possible, since his comics aren’t strictly autobiographical ones). The fault for that falls unto his practically permanent main character, Glenn Ganges.

Glenn Ganges can be found in almost every comic made by Huizenga. He made his first appearance when the creator was publishing (photocopied might be a more accurate term) the SUPERMONSTERS mini-comic, while still being a high school student. Next were his first works for a publishing house (Drawn & Quarterly) and sometime later, the OR ELSE series, in which Huizenga appeared to have perfected the technique of presenting his own true experiences adorned with elements of imagination. Naturally, his collection CURSES (that ranked #54 in our very own Top 100 of the 00s) shouldn’t be absent from his list, not to mention the series that borrows the character’s name, GANGES (ranked #23). So, Ganges is what we’d call “an ordinary quiet guy” who comes to face various circumstances happening at the suburbs. His voice is interchangeable with the voice of reason and daydreaming, and the effect he has in each of Huizenga’s comic books is great, regardless of whether he’s starring in it or not.

Other than everyday events, Huizenga’s comics frequently feature various facts, at first glance irrelevant, such as, for example, the explanation of the lunar eclipse phenomenon. More times than not, Huizenga lets his passion for apparently useless yet interesting facts take him over, thus resulting in the inclusion of trivia in his comics. This method peaked in the AMAZING FACTS AND BEYOND WITH LEON BEYOND strip, published thrice per month in the Saint Louis’s RIVERFRONT TIMES, and also on this blog. Huizenga works together with Dan Zettwoch and Ted May in this strip, whose topics are exactly what its title suggests.

Of course, this foreword you’re reading for the past few minutes is very generic and as short as it can possibly get. There’s plenty more useful information or trivia for this week’s guest, Kevin Huizenga, such as his contributions to important anthologies like KRAMERS ERGOT, his relationship with Glenn Ganges, and the forthcoming release of GANGES # 4 next September, in the following interview (made real with help from Dimitris Sakaridis and Aris Kotsis):

When you began your career in self-publishing, was it always your goal to eventually collaborate with an established publisher, or was it something that simply came around? In other words, did you knock on their door, or did they track you down?

I never thought I’d be published by an established publisher. When I began drawing comics I loved all kinds of comics, but I thought I could only expect to self-publish my work in xeroxed form. This wasn’t disappointing, however, because I loved the work of the minicomic cartoonists and was excited by the idea of putting out many minicomics in the years to come. I never thought of myself as a potential professional artist, just as an enthusiastic fan of comics, experimenting with drawing and writing. It’s all I ever wanted, just my own magazine to play around with. Self-publishing seemed ideal. No one to tell me what to do, no worries about results. After I had made around 25 or so self-published comics (I’d only print 50 copies of some of them, but hundreds of others), I had some left over at a comics show, so I handed free copies to some people at the show, and one of the publishers liked it enough to ask me to work with them. I was surprised and excited to give it a try, and that worked out well, so that’s what I’ve been doing since then.

In what ways do you feel that your skills (in drawing and storytelling) have evolved the past few years?

I’m more confident now, and I understand the steps you have to go through to make a story and draw it. It used to seem like magic, like I had to wait for the right mood, and I’d move forward by instinct. Now I have names for all the parts of the machine and when it breaks down I can figure it out. There’s greater peace of mind in general, but in particular cases, when I can’t figure out how a story should go, or when I’m searching for somewhere to start, it seems harder than it used to be, somehow. My predilections are more for abstract, formal thinking than the details and empathies that are the requirements of the kind of straightfoward fiction writing I aspire to do, and over the last few years there’s been a fruitful tension between those two aspects of what I do. Between the straightforward and the “meta.”

How strong are the autobiographical elements in the Glenn Ganges character?

They’re very weak. It’s not autobiographical. I take things from my life, like any writer does, and I try to make a new thing out of it that others can identify with and hopefully enjoy.

Has the larger format of GANGES given you more advantages to tell your stories?

Not really. I can fit more on a page. Initially it gave me an advantage in the sense that it was published in other languages, and that brought it more fans and more money. But after issue one that situation pretty much fell apart. The foreign publishers backed out, and now it’s just Fantagraphics in English. It wasn’t really a sustainable arrangement. Hopefully the collected work will appear in other languages.

Can you tell us how did the strip AMAZING FACTS AND BEYOND WITH LEON BEYOND came about?

Dan Zettwoch and I were asked to do a strip for the local weekly newspaper, and we brainstormed the idea of doing fake facts, kind of inspired by the writer John Hodgman and by the cartoonist Ben Katchor. Dan and I figured we could do a weekly strip if we alternated weeks. The character of Leon came from an old forgotten Disney movie named MIDNITE MADNESS. He’s an uber-nerd, the kind of guy who thinks everyone is interested and amazed by “fun facts.”

You seem to frequently present some widely unknown facts through many of your works, from OR ELSE to AMAZING FACTS. Is this related to a kind of hobby of yours or do you have to research for new facts and information?

Learning about weird new things is probably my favorite thing to do. It’s like exploring. When writing I like to twist or distort the facts a bit to try to amplify the strangeness of things, and also, I admit, to save myself from the requirements of in-depth research and verifying everything. Just today I was reading about Mexican beliefs about the “evil eye” and about plastic in the ocean food chain (a hot topic these days).





Your stories always utilize many of the medium’s storytelling tools and cannot be described as linear or simple. Do you struggle for this kind of approach or is it something that comes naturally?

A lot of my ideas are first ideas about forms of stories. Like how a musician might have an idea for a kind of bright, upbeat song, or a slow, repetitive one. That kind of thinking is not a struggle at all. It’s more of a struggle to take those ideas and make comics that are readable and friendly. I want my stories to seem approachable, but once you’re in it to seem stranger than you expected. Most of the time I’m just trying something out. Each time it’s like “let’s see what this combination of things does. If it harmonizes. Let’s see if I can make this mix work.” If it doesn’t work, hopefully it’s kind of interesting anyways, and I move on to the next one.

In what ways do the tensions that occur with philosophy, theology and science (some of the themes often recurring in your work) play an important part in your comics?

In the first part of my life I was more religious, and was educated in theology and religion. More recently I’ve tried to balance out my education and learn about scientific ways of thinking about the world. I’m not working through these philosophical ideas systematically in my comics, it’s more like they’re in the mix of things I plug into the recipes. Maybe in the future I’ll write more directly about these things.

You have collaborated with other alternative cartoonists. Are there any (artistic) profits from such collaborations?

Yes, and I’d like to do more of that. It can also be frustrating, obviously. But cartooning can be a lonely job. The advantages of collaborating is that you get out of your own head, and there’s always something you can learn from great artists. You also get a better sense of your own tastes in comparison.

In the last couple of years, we’ve seen many of your peers from the “alt-comics” world working for mainstream publishers doing superhero comics, or similar “genre” work. Would you consider doing any work of the kind, if you were asked? Do you have any “affection” for any of the major established characters, like Superman, Batman, or Spider-Man?

I have more hostility than affection for those superhero properties. I don’t want to be part of that world at all. That’s not my kind of thing. In the right situation, though, I might work on something, who knows. It’s hard to turn down a job if someone gives you $600 a page or something. But like I said at the beginning of the interview, I never wanted to be that kind of cartoonist. I’d rather do comics about the Muppets, or adaptations of the Bible, or history or whatever, if someone was paying me. The world of superhero comics is the place I want to keep traveling far away from.

Do you have any other plans for the immediate future?

I’m working on a story for KRAMERS ERGOT #8, and a book of my “Gloriana” stories for Drawn and Quarterly. Then I hope to finish up the GANGES material for a collection.





[Translated by Alexandros Tsantilas]