OFF LIFE 13 by OFF LIFE Comic

T a k i n g o u r s w e e t t i m e Man, are we late with this issue. Like, months and months and months late. We could carp on about how busy we’ve been, about other projects and the realities of publishing independently. Truth is, after putting out Yellow last December – our book of one illustrated year – we were physically knackered and creatively barren. Sure, we could have half-arsed an issue in February. It would have been dripping with indifference, but we could have done it. Thing is, as we’ve said in the past, we feel a huge weight of responsibility to the artists who trust OFF LIFE with their work. Putting out a half-arsed issue would be a betrayal of both those artists and the reason we started this rag in the first place. Moreover, this magazine is completely independent and – without wanting to sound like some arsehole on his soapbox – if we don’t feel ready to put an issue out, then we don’t have to. Now, I don’t say that to sound all contrary and hip. The simple fact is that we don’t have a staff relying on us, any investors awaiting dividends or subscribers to whom we owe an issue. When we’re ready, we simply select comics from the hundreds of submissions received, call around a few friends for columns, a few likeminded companies for advertising – then send it to print and deliver it to one of the dozens of places where you, the reader, picked this up. It’s a simple set-up and it means we don’t hit print until we believe in every comic, writer or advertiser featured within our pages. Nothing is here simply for money or to fill a gap on a flatplan. And we think that feeling is worth the wait. Enjoy the issue! Daniel Humphry / editor

issue 13 • free spring 2016

Why all the festivals? Nobrow 8 Changing Hands Chester Brown 14 Creative Cynicism dan berry 25 you have been reading 30

... editor daniel humphry @Daniel_Humphry art director steve leard @steveleard copy editor Lucy rice offlife.co.uk @offlife_comic

Why all the f e s t i va l s ? By — Sa m Arthur, co— founder of Few art forms boast the sheer mass of festivals and gatherings that the comics industry enjoys. But do festivals and conventions benefit the industry? The obvious answer is, of course, yes. There is, without doubt, a sense of bias here as we at Nobrow established ELCAF, the East London Comics and Arts Festival, five years ago and have seen the festival grow bigger and bigger every year. But the reasons for starting ELCAF are the very same reasons we continue to attend other festivals across the world. They provide a sense of community and unite creators under one roof, to celebrate the art form we’ve dedicated our lives towards. The truth is, festivals are hard. They’re expensive to attend considering the overall costs of the stand, travel, accommodation and time; they’re often exhausting (talking for eight hours on your feet takes its toll); and there is never the guarantee that people will buy any of your books. But despite these well known truths, there’s something more significant that festivals offer that explains why we all continue to attend them. First, they offer a platform from which we can broaden the audience and introduce the art form to a wider public who may be unaware of the depth and breadth of works being created. It becomes an open exhibition space where the

general public can dip into the gallery, take stock and come away with a little a more knowledge about comics. Festivals create an opportunity to open up and diversify the industry. Second, festivals provide an unparalleled insight into what people are producing and the different voices that are emerging. With this insight, it’s integral that we as publishers look to what’s exciting and new but also to what’s lacking. What is under-presented and why? What are people doing differently and how do we celebrate this? Of course, everyone’s work is available online and is easily accessible should we look for it, but to see the publications under one roof and examine what sort of landscape they create is something else. Even the talks and panel discussions, a regular feature of most fairs, stimulate conversation and should be a catalyst for growth. Whether we choose to listen or not is another matter entirely. Whether the general public come away with a book in hand or a shopping list that they’ll share with their friends is out of our control. But the gateway is open. And aside from all of the above, it’s just pretty great to have a beer at the end of the day with other creators who pour blood, sweat and tears into producing comics… surely that’s got to be good for the industry. 8

An interview with

Chester Brown

When discussing contemporaries and inspiration with comic artists, few names crop up more often than Chester Brown’s. A true artist’s artist, his work has covered prostitution, politics, unfortunate clowns and – now – religion. OFF LIFE sat down with the man who has been namechecked by almost every other creator we’ve ever interviewed – including Tomine, Gilbert Hernandez, Jeffrey Lewis and SETH – to try and find out what makes him such a magnet for other artists. 14

OL When did you first become aware of comics, as just something to read or an art form?

OL Early in your career you dabbled in small press and self publishing. These days it’s a side of comics that is huge. What were your experiences back then?

CB I have a vague memory of being attracted to the Sunday comics in the newspaper, which would’ve actually been printed in the Saturday paper, since newspapers didn’t have Sunday editions in Montreal. When I was about five, the Batman television show starring Adam West was starting to air, and my brother and I were watching it, so my mother bought a Batman comic for us. I fell in love. I couldn’t read yet, but I wanted more comic books.

CB I began in 1983 by self-publishing eight-page photocopied mini-comics. I got my work out into the world like that for several years. I wasn’t making any money doing it, and I thought maybe I never would, but I did have fun. Then, in ’86, a publisher contacted me and offered to take over the publishing chores. OL In the nineties you moved towards autobiographical comics. Was it a conscious decision? What made you want to explore own life?

OL You came up through the alt comics movement in the eighties. What was that time like in the art form?

CB I saw the brilliant work that other cartoonists were creating, particularly Julie Doucet and Joe Matt, and I wanted to do the sort of stuff they were doing.

CB At the beginning of the eighties the underground comics movement of the sixties and early seventies was dead, and things weren’t looking good for creators like me who wanted to follow in that tradition. So when good titles started to be published – such as Love And Rockets by the Hernandez brothers and Neat Stuff by Peter Bagge – it was difficult to tell if they were the start of a broader movement or if they were isolated examples of brilliance. Even when I quit my day-job in late 1986 to become a full-time cartoonist, I wasn’t sure if I would really be able to make a living drawing the sort of comics I wanted to draw. It wasn’t until the early nineties that the alt scene really started to flourish and I felt more secure in the profession.

OL To this day, autobio seems to be the style that most defines the indie side of comics. Why do you think that is? CB I’m not sure that I agree that autobio still dominates. It was an important genre back in the nineties, but I don’t get the impression that the majority of non-corporate comics and graphic novels these days are autobiographical. But I’m quibbling – there are still quite a few autobiographical works being published. I’m not sure that I know the answer to your question – the best autobio comics do seem to have a raw vitality to them that a lot of other comics don’t have. 15

OL In 2003 your book Louis Riel became the first graphic novel to be a bestseller in Canada. Was that surreal for you?

for me to objectively assess my role in the development of that scene. People like Kate Beaton, Michael DeForge, and Jillian Tamaki are so talented that I’m sure they would be as successful as they are now even if I’d died back in 1999 and had never drawn Louis Riel.

CB Not really. It was successful and brought me more media attention here in Canada, but my work had already been getting a lot of attention, so more attention just felt like more of the same. I don’t mean to sound jaded – I enjoyed the experience – but it didn’t seem surreal. And while we sold a lot of copies of the book, it wasn’t enough to make me rich by any standard. I was a little more comfortable, but hardly wealthy.

OL Your 2011 book Paying For It detailed your time with prostitutes. Were there any hesitations from you or your publisher about eventually putting out that book? CB It’s probably clear to most people who read Paying For It that I’m ideologically committed to the cause of decriminalizing sex-work. Those of us who are ideologues never hesitate to support the principles we’re passionate about. Plus, I was already “out” as a john to the people I’m close to. I wasn’t hiding the fact that I pay for sex. I don’t think my publisher hesitated either. I doubt that anyone who works at Drawn & Quarterly had much interest

OL Do you think it marked a turning point in the way comics were viewed in Canada? I think at least in UK we view the Canadian comics scene or industry as a sort of Utopian ideal. CB We do have a particularly rich scene here. There are so many great cartoonists in Canada, it’s wonderful. It’s difficult 16

in the sex-worker rights movement before I proposed doing the book, but they are committed to me as an artist and to letting me follow my muse. I suspect that their dealings with various people in the movement since then have made them more receptive to the cause, but I haven’t actually asked if that’s been the case.

approved of prostitution, and suddenly the whole book fell into place for me. OL What do you hope readers will take away from the new book? CB The roots of our culture’s whorephobia are in the Bible. If I can convince some readers that Jesus actually approved of prostitution, it might decrease whorephobia to some small extent.

OL Your new book Mary Wept Over The Feet Of Jesus touches on similar subject matter and is sure to become one of the most controversial books, let alone graphic novels, of 2016. Could you explain the book a little? Where did the inspiration come from?

OL Finally, in recent years you’ve taken to republishing old comics such as Ed The Happy Clown with explanatory notes. What’s the thinking behind this? Do you think readers may have gotten the wrong idea first time around?

CB There are little odd details about prostitution in the Bible. There are a few hints in there that the Virgin Mary was actually a prostitute. Jesus was anointed and made a Christ by a prostitute. And there was an early Christian community that was proud of its association with prostitution. For quite a few years I’d been thinking about doing a book about prostitution and early Christianity, but wasn’t sure how to approach it. Then I read about a little-known ancient, nonBiblical version of a parable by Jesus that indicates that he

CB I don’t like either Ed or The Playboy. Those were my first two books. Most writers and cartoonists are a bit embarrassed by their early work. Drawn & Quarterly wanted to put out new editions, and I was saying “Do we HAVE to?” So, really, the new notes sections for those two books are extended apologies to the readers.

... You can discover more of Chester’s work at drawnandquarterly.com ... 17

C r e at i v e C y n i c i s m Creativity. You get what you put into it. Approach the page half heartedly and some twee little story might just escape your pen. But cut open your belly, pour forth your guts and spread them in public... well, you might just reach something honest, meaningful even. So how should new artists approach their work? Few people have witnessed more ways than Dan Berry, a man who, when not creating his own comics, is busy lecturing and interviewing the next generation of creators. My first teaching job was in 2005. I was a Masters student and was asked to run a short course on the creative process for engineering students. I was disappointed with the work that they produced for me. It wasn’t particularly creative and they didn’t particularly enjoy it. On the way into the room on the first day I heard one of the students say “This is gunna be soooo shit.” In 2012 I started recording the comics interview podcast Make It Then Tell Everybody and have since interviewed around 140 or so artists about how they do what they do. Speaking to so many artists and writers about their craft has given me a lot of insight into the process of making comics, and the main thing I keep coming back to is the idea that cynicism is creatively poisonous. Most of the people I’ve spoken to have a kind of love/ hate relationship with their work. They experience waves of creative joy, followed by low tides of ambivalence or despair. This emotionally stormy relationship appears to be fairly normal. If you experience this, too, you are probably normal.

My experience of working both with artists and as an artist myself has been that you find what you go looking for in your art. When I started I was not a good artist. I would go so far as to say that I was bad at art. Then I spent a long time trying to get better. I made progress slowly. These small progressions gave me some hope that what I was doing was working, that if I kept aiming for improvement I would find it. Which brings me back to cynicism. If what you believe in your approach to your work is that it is ‘gunna be so shit’ then that is what you will find. That’s what those engineering students found. The advice ‘believe in yourself’ is given liberally to young artists and I feel this is not the best phrasing. While I appreciate the sentiment, I don’t think that a surplus of confidence naturally equates with nicelooking lines on paper. If I was given the task of rephrasing ‘believe in yourself’ I would do so in the following ways: ‘Believe that you can improve your ability, don’t believe that the outcome will be automatically terrible, and over time you will find your beliefs confirmed.’

By Dan Berry. Artist, comics lecturer and host of the Make it Then Tell Everybody podcast.

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