Yes, I know, it sounds like I was an uptight and pretentious youngster. Well, maybe I was. But after hesitantly dipping my toe into adulthood and discovering that it wasn’t as bad as I had imagined it would be, I was able to loosen up to a more sensible and enjoyable openness. I began to notice that there were comics written on myriad topics. Not only this, but there was this new term that I had never heard before referring to comics that had a decidedly more literary ring: “Graphic Novel.” Some of the subjects that graphic novels are written about include autobiography, history, religion, science fiction, romance, and (yup) superhero stories.
The wide range of topics written about in the graphic novel format is not new. In fact, the Japanese have been writing comics covering just about all things entertaining, strange, serious, and important since the end of WWII. There are Japanese comics made with contents especially interesting and more appropriate for male readers (shonen manga) and those made with a female audience in mind (shojo—you can officially be a lady and read comics!) Shojo manga is usually based on love, romance, and self-discovery, while shonen focuses on science fiction, space travel, robots, and action adventure. There is also manga for young men (seinen) which contain themes of honor, action adventure sequences, humor, and the occasional harmless sexually explicit material.
The first version of the comic book was created in the United States in 1934, and some speculate that the U.S. occupation of Japan in WWII sparked the advent of manga. Ironically, in the 1950s, when manga was becoming increasingly popular in Japan, interest and sales of comic books in the U.S. had begun to decline due to the increasing popularity and availability of television and a new concern over children being exposed to frightening and violent images through reading horror and crime comics. The Comics Code was developed as a self-censoring devise, and thanks to the Code, an underground comics scene emerged in the mid-1960s. These underground comics were mostly self-published, uncensored pieces of cultural, social, and political commentary. This informative, thought provoking, and often subversive type of comic seems to have much more clear a leaning toward the taste and tendencies of one who has decided to make literature their area of expertise than the average superhero comic. The Japanese had their own version of this underground comic; geika, which showed the depressing realities of everyday life, using a drawing style which portrayed realistic images of darkness and violence.
Though superhero comics still exist and flourish today, the possibility of becoming a graphic novelist in the style of those who went underground in the 1960s is much more feasible than creating a work that will get published by Marvel, DC, or Dark Horse Comics. There are countless independent publishing companies in existence and self-publishing and distribution is becoming increasingly easy and inexpensive. Lars Martinson is a cartoonist who has been working on publishing his own graphic novel, and has written a charming and thorough documentation of the process on his blog (complete with illustrations, of course). As Martinson points out, it is quite difficult to make a living (at least a decent one) solely as a graphic novelist, but it is not impossible. It takes time, effort, talent, and self-motivation. It also doesn’t hurt to know (or happen to run into) the right people.
T. Edward Bak is one of those people who has the right combination of qualities and luck one must possess in order to get by as a graphic novelist. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and started out by publishing his own works. By doing this, he was able to display his talents and get his stuff out to people who could help him with the publishing and distribution of his stories in the future.
He is currently working on an historical graphic novel about the18th century German naturalist and explorer, Georg Wilhelm Steller, and his role in a Russian expedition that lead to the discovery of Alaska. Using information based on his research of historical accounts and Steller’s own journal, Bak gives us an engagingly intimate glimpse into the experiences of the men who were involved in this expedition. As he writes this tale, it is being printed serially in a publication called Mome, a quarterly put out by Fantagraphics.
I asked him a few questions about his personal beginnings in the field, and with his answers, was able to gain some insight on how it’s all done.
Q: How did you become involved in the graphic novel "scene" (for lack of a better term)?
A: I began self-publishing my work in the late 1990s in a zine called, "I Have Ruined My Entire Fucking Life". I later created the self-published mini-comics, "Continental Drifter" and an "ironically-titled" collection called "Rainbow Pudding".
I founded a small press comics event in Athens, GA, and afterwards began writing and drawing a comic strip called "Service Industry".
The "scene" I was associating was mostly with underground or independent Bay Area, Montreal and New York artists. Eventually, we all got to know each other. Some of the artists I know and have published with have known each other (or, at least, have known each other's work) since the late 1980s. I'm a latecomer; people knew I was kind of an antagonistic drunken baboon, but didn't actually notice my work until I remained sober enough in my late 20s to create a small handmade comic called "The Firefly Waltz - a comix-loteria". This work was not easily defined, it was more like low-brow underground art influenced by Fleischer animation, Jose Guadalupe Posada and the Montreal underground cartoonists.
Q: Did you always supplement your words with drawings/drawings with words? or What came first; the words or the drawings?
A: I grew up copying Peanuts characters, but was later one of those sad teenage boys who composed unrequited love poetry for cheerleaders during his early high school days. Later, I began associating rock'n'roll lyricism with Baudelaire. I got into the Beat writers and Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski. I wanted to write about "real life", man! Reality! Realism! I still don't know what that means!
But I was always drawing, too, and took classes with instructors who were steering me towards a practical career in scientific illustration, and I've had friends who thought I ought to become a tattoo artist. Who knows how many callings I've missed out on.
I now consider myself a writer who draws. It was always more important for me to learn how to write effectively. It took me years to understand the meaning of the word, "language", and how it could apply to a cartoonist's work, as well as to a writer's. Reading Nabokov and Kafka and Paul Westerberg's lyrics helped me as a cartoonist, I think, more so than reading Crumb or Clowes or Kurtzman! I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Q: What sort of training do you have in writing? Drawing?
A: My writing came about because I knew I had to develop a voice, and I focused on this for a long time. I knew that if I could manifest a voice, I would be on the right track. It is a matter of me understanding what I find important in writing myself and what is self-evident to me in the creative, expressive use of language. I've always been drawing. My mother was a watercolor artist when I was very young, and according to her, the first words I learned were "pencil" and "paper". I've only recently began feeling as if I'm discovering a graphic style of my own.
Q: How many stories/graphic novels have you had published so far?
A: I've published one complete volume of work, a "Service Industry" volume which collects most of the last year of the strip into one long story. Mostly, I've published stories which have appeared in anthologies. I am currently at work on a project which is being published in serials and will eventually become my first "proper" graphic novel.
Q: What was the first piece that you got published? How did you go about getting it into the hands of someone who was willing to publish it?
A: The first work which was published was through an invitation by a publisher who'd seen "The Firefly Waltz" who was curious to see if I could adapt a story for a comic anthology. The story was "The Tomb of Sarah" (originally by FG Loring) and it appeared in the anthology "Orchid", the first book by local independent publisher, Sparkplug Comic Books, in 2001.
Q: Can you give a brief explanation of your current project, the research process, the publishing process, funding. How much time per day do you spend working on your book?
A: I have several projects in the works with my publisher, Drawn and Quarterly, and am looking to raise money through Kickstarter to fund a drawing expedition into the Aleutian Islands this summer for my current project, "WILD MAN - The Strange Journey and Fantastic Account of the Naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller - From Bavaria to Bolshaya Zemlya (and Beyond)". I'd like to get a grant to travel to Siberia, too.
I try to complete a drawing a day. It is imperative that I accomplish a little work every single day, whether that is drawing or researching or writing. The process is very intuitive. I write a great deal about what needs to be written, and what needs to be examined.
Q: How do you think the graphic novel, its authors and publishers have been/will be affected by the increasing popularity of the ebook? Do you think it is more important for a reader to be able to hold a graphic novel in their hands and flip through the pages than it is with a traditional (word-centric) novel?
A: I don't think any of this matters at all. There have always been word-image representations for people to read. I prefer reading a book, but I think new work and/or mediums will adapt to new technologies, and vice versa. Books aren't going to disappear. There may come a day when people are reading comics (or graphic novels, or sequential narratives, or whatever they decide to call it next) through electro-telepathic 3-dimensional holographic implants. They might prefer that. Who knows?
Q: Has/will/can anyone become wealthy by writing graphic novels?
A: I have no idea. Personally, I don't like to talk about the money I earn as an artist. I'm interested in creating art, and while I need to earn a living, I'm not comfortable putting price tags on my work. It's like putting a price tag on a private letter you write to a friend. I don't even know if I'm entirely comfortable with allowing everyone to read it. I don't think my work will be embraced by American readers and that's just fine with me. I would actually prefer an intelligent international audience who understands what I'm attempting to accomplish with my work.
If I could barter my life through my drawings and comics stories, I would. I'm actually looking for ways to get there.
Q: Future plans?
A: I'll be teaching with PNCA in the fall, and returning to school to study Environmental Science. I'm interested in creating entertaining and educational narratives for adult audiences, examining the relationships between human history and natural history.
-Reyna Kohl
Image at top by T Edward Bak
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