nicole_powers

Paul Pope has built a reputation as a visionary artist and writer on the strength of some of the most acclaimed graphic novels of the past decade, including Heavy Liquid and 100%. His multiple-Eisner-winning story, Batman: Year 100, immersed the dark knight in the same kind of near-future dystopia that makes his creator-owned work so thrilling. If you saw The Dark Knight this summer, you saw a motorcycle that looks remarkably similar to the one Paul designed for Year 100.

That's not the only place Paul's work has come to life outside of the printed page. Earlier this year, he was picked by DKNY Jeans to design a line of men's clothes for their fall collection. His original characters are also entering the third dimension as vinyl toys from Kidrobot. As if all of this isn't enough, we still haven't seen the main event. THB, the self-published sci-fi epic that launched Paul's career, is drawing to a close after more than a decade. Both the faithful and the uninitiated are in for a treat in 2010, when THB will finally be widely available -- and greatly expanded -- in a multi-volume series (Total THB). And we're not done yet: just before he releases Total THB, Paul is kicking the door in with a new story called Battling Boy, about a kid hero who takes on a gang of mythical monsters.

Suicide Girls chatted with Paul about all of this and more.

Jay Hathaway: You've got so many projects in the works right now that it's hard to know where to start. Let's talk about the project you're most excited about.

Paul Pope: That would be THB and Battling Boy. I always compare it to albums. Comic book periodicals are like releasing a single every month, and the trade paperback is like the album. With these original graphic novels, you're basically going into the studio, recording a record, in my case, it's a like double-gatefold long-playing thing, but nobody hears anything until the album's done, so that's a bit frustrating...

If you take the music analogy a little further, in my case I feel like the kind of stuff I'm doing is like Miles Davis in the late 60's, or like Pink Floyd. It's head music. In a sense, it's better to read this comic at one sitting. I guess the advantage is that you can structure it more like you would a novel or a film. You can have really long passages that you couldn't do if you were publishing just periodicals, where everything has to be 20 pages or 30 pages and continued next month. It's got some pros and cons.

JH: So, with THB, are you continuing the series, or is the original stuff is being reprinted?

PP: It's kind of a combination. The final printed version's going to be called Total THB...I quit publishing it a while ago, and I've just been working on it myself. People hate this, but it's kind of a good way to frame it: if you look at it like those first three Star Wars films, Empire Strikes Back is done, it's been cut, it's been scored, and then maybe the first 30 or 40 minutes of Return of the Jedi is finished as well. Then I've got the rough cut of the first Star Wars, which is the original THB. So the first third has been published, but I'm not happy with it. That's the stuff I'm redoing. I'm basically finishing Star Wars, taking it from rough cut to final, and then the last hour and a half of Jedi.

JH: It'll be great to see so much of your stuff in print at once. It can be kind of hard to find sometimes. I know people who haven't read THB because they've had trouble finding it. You could pick up a lot of first-time readers here.

PP: I grew up reading stuff like Akira, Moebius and this stuff, Tintin... for me it was always a dream to have stuff published in foreign languages.

JH: I should have said, "in print in English." You've had a lot other editions out over the past few years.

PP: I think that's kind of the Holy Grail for comics, because we get so much energy from manga and classic comics. There are really great comics being done now, contemporary comics. That's what I really want to do, just a really great comic that can get out there and reach people, whether they're Canadian or Chinese or whatever.

JH: There's a lot division in comics, at least in terms of exposure, between the superhero stuff and everything else. Does that division ever affect your work?

PP: Take that music metaphor again. If you're crafting a pop song, there are certain things you put into it that fit the form. If you're writing a free jazz piece or a prog-rock piece or something, there are different things you need for that. The format determines what you're doing. But in terms of storytelling, I don't see any reason why you couldn't do a really good story that was a pure romance or funny animals and then, if you have a good idea for a superhero comic, do that.

I'm 38, and growing up I feel like there was always this distinction, like you're either part of the Art Spiegelman / Robert Crumb crowd or you're a Jack Kirby clone. I always hated that 'cause I felt like it was just too limited. If you look at someone like, let's take Lewis Carroll or Bret Harte, these guys wrote poetry, they wrote fiction, they wrote short stories, they wrote novels ...I always thought that was a much better way to look at it.

JH: Do you think the popular perception of comics has changed since back then, for people who aren't necessarily hardcore comics fans?

PP: Yeah, by far. In the old days, old days meaning 10 years ago even, if someone asked you "What do you do?" you'd say, "I'm a cartoonist," and the first thing they'd say is, "Oh, do you make a living at that? Is that your hobby?" They don't say that anymore. Because of the success of the films and games and all this, I think people tend to see comics as a valid part of entertainment. They look at the success of an Iron Man or an X-Men and they tend to see it more as part of the mainstream.

JH: Sure, but then all sorts of artists, writers -- visual artists in particular -- still get that question. "Are you making a living at this?"

PP: It's funny. When I was working on Heavy Liquid for Vertigo, I hated talking about it, 'cause it was embarrassing. So I'd go, "Oh, I work for Time-Warner," which, at the time, wasn't actually true, but it was enough of a diversion. Then they'd always open up a conversation about something really boring, about somebody's dumb job that's related to corporate slavery. (laughs) Now I actually enjoy telling people I'm an artist, 'cause it sounds like I don't have a job.

JH: In one of your essays in Pulphope, you mentioned there was a time when you thought you'd never work in film or the fashion industry. Now you're doing a line of clothes. How did that come about?

PP: I fell into the radar of the creative director for the men's line for DKNY [Jeans]. He had an opportunity to develop a line of clothes with somebody, and they wanted to have an individual stamp...There's some stuff in the line I'm really happy with. I hope that they sell well so they can continue and really do some stuff that's more far out. My initial proposals were just wildly impossible, the materials I wanted to use and things. So I think it's a healthy first step toward finding a new canvas for comics.

JH: It's a completely different context to work in.

PP: For sure. And to me, the thought of doing t-shirt designs is not that interesting or that different from what we can do without a fashion company, in comics. But when they ask you to reinvent camouflage, come up with a new idea for camouflage -- that was really intriguing. I got this big book on the history of camouflage, this massive 800-page history, and it's a pretty serious subject. A lot more serious than I'd ever given it credit for. Creatively, I found it a very interesting problem that requires a different sort of skill set from what it usually takes to tell a cogent story in a comics form. It was a good challenge.

JH: I've always thought camouflage was such an odd fashion statement, because it's designed to hide something, and so much of fashion is designed to draw your eye to it.

PP: There's that, and then on top of that, you invoke the visual rhetoric and the history of, let's say, hip-hop. And then you've got military, and then you've got Cuban revolutionism. It really does say a lot. It's urban, it's all this stuff. I'm not very attracted at all to typical military camouflage, either. That's why I tried to come up with something that was more about nature, when animals are trying to hide. It's what they call displacement patterns. The moth on the side of a tree. I was interested in trying to find something like that, something that was really organic, but wasn't a leaf. My line's sort of based on insect wings. And they liked it! That was the big crux for the line. The first real problem was, "Do you have a good idea for a new camo pattern?" So I took a look and tried to come up with something different.

JH: I think a lot of people would say that what they wear reflects their emotions and their psychological states, as well.

PP: Oh yeah, by far. It's funny, too, 'cause I was a kid in the 70's and 80's, and it really did say a lot about who you were by what you wore...Style's always been some sort of projection of your personality. Or at least what you want to be. What Carl Jung would call the ego, it's a projection of yourself to the world. A shell.

JH: Taking that into account, do you think it's kind of strange that 70, 80 percent of the people you see on the street are wearing the same kind of pant, the jean?

PP: Yeah, you gotta try hard. One critique I have of American culture is that it doesn't value history and age as much as I would like. I feel like people really value convenience and disposability, so a lot of people are just satisfied with wearing the same old thing. I also think there's a reason people want to be part of a tribe or part of a gang. You see that too with the way people dress. To be honest, even with the way I dress. I'm conscious of what kind of an image I'm trying to project to the world, and I think everyone has that sense.

I really admire iconoclasts, people who have the guts to do their own thing and really just be balls-out. I think that's great and I think to arrive at that psychological state and be willing to do that, you have to have put up with a lot of shit in the past. You think about icons in terms of fashion, whether it's a John Lennon or a Miles Davis or Marilyn Monroe, those people, to some degree, are probably fabricated images, but they really do stand for something. Andy Warhol. Their very image represents something.

JH: That's absolutely true. So, is that were you were coming from when you conceived the idea of the Comics Destroyer?

PP: When I really started thinking about this stuff seriously, I was influenced mainly by the philosopher Walter Benjamin, who has a theory of creative destruction, which I learned through this German musician named Blixa Bargeld...

It dovetails with something Picasso talked about, destroying a painting. A picture is the sum of destruction. I think that, in the early '90's at least, when I was really formulating this idea, I was really interested in smashing distinctions in comics and trying to break down barriers -- these artificial things we were talking about, that crept up between different genres of comics. Luckily, I think I've been able to take it to a new level with fashion design and toy design and film work on top of comics. So that's where it came from.

JH: Where does your current comics work fit into that?

PP: Frankly, I care most about -- and I would imagine most people would -- stuff that I completely own, and as a consequence is closest to my heart and my intentions as an artist. That'll be stuff like THB or Battling Boy, which is mine, 100%.

JH: Would you ever consider letting any of your creator-owned stuff become a Hollywood movie?

PP: Yeah, totally. I feel like film is a sister medium. In fact, I've got a few dogs in that fight myself. Nothing signed for film, but I constantly have things in and out of option...I am interested in Battling Boy and THB films, because I think that they're strong stories, and a strong story can exist in different media. That's one reason I think Batman has survived. He's a strong character. He's bigger than his medium. This is true going all the way back to the Iliad or Beowulf. These are strong ideas, and they can exist whether they're told as poetry or comic books or film or whatever.

JH: What are you obsessions right now? What have you been reading about or thinking about every day?

PP: I'm into Carl Jung, the psychologist. I'm really into old radio shows lately. I've been listening to old science fiction radio, adaptations of stories by guys like Asimov and Bradbury. I'm into the band The Verve. Led Zeppelin. I'm into rock n' roll. I listen to a lot of books on tape, just because I'm inking so much. I'm into manga, I'm into Jack Kirby. I like classical music. I'm just all over the board.

JH: I know sometimes artists tend to get really into something and kind of go down the rabbit hole of that obsession. How big a factor is obsession for you?

PP: That's a good question. I think it's important to have healthy creative obsessions. There's a great line from Nietzsche where he says, "When casting out your demons, be sure you don't throw out the best part of yourself." I like that, because I really appreciate how obsessive the whole career of comics is. You sit alone in a room, drawing, and it's like surgery. You're performing surgery on a piece of paper to carve out these lines and create this anatomy of a story, or a little facet of a story on page. It's kind of irrational in a sense, but at the same time I really embrace it. I guess I'm obsessed with drawing, if you think about. Drawing with a brush, it's endlessly interesting to me. I'm sort of a traditionalist, I like things that were [around] a million years ago, a thousand years ago. I tend to trust those things. We've had cave paintings since the beginning of time. If it's good enough for a caveman, it's good enough for me.

JH: Do you ever look at your own work and wonder how long it's going to be around?

PP: Honestly, as I've gotten older, I've lost that. I try to be a lot more zen and just be in the moment. It's funny, because my girlfriend's a performer. She does burlesque. Her art form is kinetic, and she has an audience. Mine's dynamic, but there's no motion, really. The ultimate end product is printed lines on a page, whether it's words or pictures. The performance happens, in my case, a lot of times in the middle of the night. I just finished a page on Battling Boy that I honestly think, in all humility, is one of the best pages of comics I've ever drawn. For me it's satisfying knowing I drew it, but I'm preparing myself for having to wait a year before anyone sees it.

There's no applause. The applause has to be inside yourself. So I feel like I'm just the grownup version of the person I was when I was 10 or 12, drawing alone in my bedroom 'cause I was too shy to go out and talk to people. Back to Carl Jung, that's something that he's into, that the thing you loved as a kid is the thing you should do when you grow up.

JH: I really believe in that, too. My first thought when you told me you had toys coming out was that the coolest thing in the world to a 12 year-old would be to create these characters and have them turned into toys.

PP: Yeah, for real! It is exciting. The thing that surprises me is how much work it is doing toy design. I don't mind telling you I've got a good deal with Kidrobot, but I haven't made a single penny off the stuff we've done, and I've probably put in four months of work so far. That's not a complaint; It's just going to show that before you actually see the thing in vinyl, you do a lot of prep work. I do the designs myself, I do the model turnaround sheets, work directly with a team at Kidrobot. Everyone wants to make toys, but now that I'm doing it, it's a lot more work than I thought it would be.

JH: When we first started talking about doing this interview, I hadn't read your Pulphope book yet. I didn't know the story about how you had been commissioned to do a pin-up for Suicide Girls ...

PP: Actually, I'm glad you brought that up. That really is the reason I did the erotic section of the book. That was a big challenge. They asked me to do literally a pin-up, and if anybody knows anything about erotica, guys like Petty and Vargas did these amazing pin-ups for Playboy magazine. I think they wanted to try to revive that. I found it very difficult. It's very hard to come up with a genuinely erotic image, not something that's very cynical and borrowed, or a reference, or postmodern. I found that to be a real challenge. That's actually what led to the series of drawings and thoughts that basically make up a third of that book ... that everyone who is going to read this should buy.

JH: What I really appreciated about that book was that there are so many interesting references, and I didn't know a lot of them, so it left me with a lot to dig into and read more about.

PP: You know, if you take someone like John Berger, the book Ways of Seeing, there's a significant difference between an erotic drawing and a pornographic photograph. I just started thinking about that, and finally it got interesting enough that I thought there was an essay there. Not that I'm the first guy to think about the difference, but hopefully I can contribute something to the debate.

JH: America has such a strange attitude about sex, too, I feel. There's a lot to analyze there.

PP: Definitely. Our culture is more comfortable with violence than it is with sex.

JH: Yeah, all the speech that we're not supposed to have access to, all our censored words, are about sex.

PP: Or else racial categories, right? That's another form of censorship, I'd say. It is kind of funny that violence isn't considered x-rated. I'm much more interested in orgasms than I am in having my head shot off. (laughs)

JH: Even when people are creating something, it seems like they're more comfortable drawing massive amounts of gore than a sex scene.

PP: I would tend to interpret it in terms of Carl Jung. He says that every person has a masculine and a feminine side, in the sense that they have a receptive side and an aggressive idea. I think in order to be in touch with the erotic, you need to be receptive. It's about pleasure, and pain is always about being hurt or inflicting pain on someone. It's easier to be that person, because it's more of a question of power. A lot of times, sensuality and sex is bound to a feeling of acquiescence, whether it's an orgasm or the touch of someone that you care about -- not even that you're in love with them, but that you just want to have pleasure with them. I think that's a more difficult state to achieve, consciously or at least publicly. Where it's not like the power play of stripping on stage and the money exchanged for a lap dance, or it's violence. It's just two people engaging in a sense of trust and harmony, where they're sharing a sense of being physical.