INTERVIEW CORNER #24: Evan Dorkin

1 Comment Written by Θωμάς Παπαδημητρόπουλος on December 7th, 2010 – 08:37

Το χιούμορ δεν μπορεί να είναι πάντα αθώο. Μπορεί (και πολλές φορές επιβάλλεται) να είναι ενοχλητικό και να στοχεύει σε συγκεκριμένους ανθρώπους και πτυχές της ζωής. Έχω ξαναγράψει, σε παλιότερο post μου, ότι απολαμβάνω ιδιαίτερα το χιούμορ που ενοχλεί και έχω αναφερθεί σε παραδείγματα.

Σε ένα από αυτά τα παραδείγματα, πρωταγωνιστούσε και ο καλεσμένος αυτής της εβδομάδας, ο Evan Dorkin. Η πιο γνωστή δουλειά του 45χρονου Αμερικανού είναι, φυσικά, το DORK, μια συλλογή μίνι ιστοριών και strips που ξεκίνησε κάπου στα μέσα της δεκαετίας του ’90 και συνεχίζει να εκδίδεται σποραδικά (το #11 κυκλοφόρησε πριν μερικά χρόνια).

Στο DORK έκαναν την εμφάνισή τους διάφορα “ενοχλητικά strips”, όπως το “Murder Family” (μια τηλεοπτική sitcom, με πρωταγωνιστές μια οικογένεια serial killers), το “Fischer Price Theater” (σύντομες εκτελέσεις κλασικών θεατρικών έργων, με πρωταγωνιστές τα κουκλάκια της Fischer Price) και δεκάδες ακόμη, με κάποια από αυτά να διαθέτουν τίτλους που σε προϊδεάζουν για το τι πρόκειται να ακολουθήσει, όπως τα “The Devil Puppet” και “How To Get Sued”. Μέσω αυτών, ο Dorkin “χτυπούσε” αλύπητα στόχους, όπως η τηλεόραση, οι μόδες, η grunge μουσική, ακόμη και οι comic fans και οι κάθε είδους geeks.

Παράλληλα, ό,τι έμενε όρθιο από το πέρασμα του DORK, ισοπεδωνόταν βίαια από δύο εκ των πλέον αναγνωρίσιμων ηρώων του: τους Milk και Cheese, οι οποίοι, πρωταγωνιστώντας στην ομώνυμη σειρά, γκρέμιζαν, βανδάλιζαν και ισοπέδωναν τους πάντες και τα πάντα.

Βέβαια, ο Dorkin δεν ασχολήθηκε μόνο με την καυστική πλευρά των comics. Από τις αρχές της δεκαετίας του ’90 μέχρι σήμερα, η υπογραφή του βρέθηκε σε σειρές, όπως τα BIZZARO WORLD και SUPERMAN/BATMAN: WORLD’S FUNNEST, αλλά και σε all-ages δουλειές, όπως τα MASK: THE HUNT FOR GREEN OCTOBER και BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT COMIC BOOK. Kαι πέρσι, η ενασχόλησή του με τα all-ages comics έφτασε στο απόγειο της, με τη mini series BEASTS OF BURDEN (της οποίας οι ήρωες βρέθηκαν πρόσφατα και σε crossover με τον Hellboy του Mike Mignola).

Και σε όλα αυτά, έρχεται να προστεθεί μια παράλληλη καριέρα, αυτή στο animation. Ο Dorkin έχει γράψει σενάρια για αρκετές animated σειρές της τηλεόρασης, όπως τα SPACE GHOST: COAST TO COAST, SUPERMAN, YO GABBA GABBA και SHIN CHAN. Έχει, επίσης, μεταφέρει στην τηλεόραση, μια από τις ιστορίες του DORK, τo WELCOME TO ELTINGVILLE, το οποίο, όμως, δε γνώρισε ιδιαίτερη επιτυχία.

Στη συνέντευξη που ακολουθεί, ο καλεσμένος αυτής της εβδομάδας, Evan Dorkin, μας μιλά για τους σημαντικότερους σταθμούς στην καριέρα του και τα σχέδιά του για το μέλλον, τονίζοντάς μου, παράλληλα, ότι δεν έχει χαθεί από τα comics για χάρη του animation και ότι θα έπρεπε να ανοίγω και καμιά ανθολογία που και που, αντί να παραπονιέμαι ότι δε βλέπω πια τόσο συχνά τις δουλειές του:

You haven’t been making comics as regular as you used to. Has animation won you over?
No, not at all. We’ve done very little animation or television work over the past few years, other than scripts and design work for the YO GABBA GABBA series. I’m actually doing more comics work than I have in a while, it’s just that aside from BEASTS OF BURDEN and the recent HELLBOY crossover, the comics press and fans on the internet don’t pay much attention to what I’ve been doing. I work on a lot of all-ages comics for Bongo, which means nothing to the Direct market. The same goes for anthologies like LIBERTY COMICS, DARK HORSE PRESENTS, and MAD MAGAZINE, which no one notices in comic shops. Also, I do a lot of short stories, one-shots and pin-ups, which aren’t things anyone really cares about, especially from someone who isn’t a big name in the industry. On the other hand, the BEASTS OF BURDEN material is the first sustained narrative work I’ve done in some time, and that’s gone over pretty well. Right now I’m working on nothing but comics. People just don’t discuss them much, I guess.

You have written scripts for many animated shows, like SPACE GHOST, SUPERMAN and SHIN CHAN to name a few. Is any of them your favorite?
I’d have to say my favorite TV jobs have been SPACE GHOST and YO GABBA GABBA. Good shows, good people, good experiences, a pleasure to be a part of. SUPERMAN wasn’t a bad experience, but the scripts were always a case of too many cooks, on SPACE GHOSTand YO GABBA GABBA the folks in charge really trusted the writers to do their work and gave us a lot of freedom. I also had complete freedom on the ELTINGVILLE pilot, but maybe that wasn’t such a good thing in the long run. I took on too much and it could have been a better pilot. If I had it to do all over again I’d have delegated more work and tightened the script and designs up. SHIN CHAN was not a very good experience and although I’m a fan of the anime and the character I can’t say I was a huge fan of the re-purposed series.

The Welcome To Eltingville animated show, for which you scripted and animated the pilot episode, was based on the Eltingville stories from DORK. How does it feel seeing your own characters “coming to life”?
I’m very ambivalent about the pilot. On the one hand, it was produced and we got it done and a lot of people liked what we did. On the other hand, I wish I could go back and rework a lot of it, especially the script. I would also redesign the characters. It was a good experience but the failure of the pilot was heartbreaking and affected me pretty badly for several years.

What were the things that most inspired the humor of DORK and MILK & CHEESE?
Watching too much television growing up, growing up in New York City, Monty Python, SCTV, MAD, tons of comic books, my friends, seeing the world around me and how stupid people can be, seeing how stupid I can be, a surplus of anger, and beer.

In DORK you poked fan at almost everything, from fans to yourself. Is it difficult to be funny with such “delicate” issues?
Just because fans can be touchy doesn’t mean those are delicate issues. A lot of people have complained to me that if I don’t like comics I should give them up. Which is defensive and idiotic. You can love something and still be critical of it. And I’m just as critical of myself and my own relationship to pop culture as I am with others. When fans attack my fan-centric work they almost always end up proving my point for me by the way they act.

You have written in one of the DORK stories that no autobiographical comic can be interesting, since it’s about a guy that makes comics all day (actually, that’s one of my favorite arguments). Yet you have used yourself as a character in one of DORK’s best stories (“What Does It Look Like I’m Doing?”) in what seemed as a semi-autobiographical story. What can make this kind of story “good”?
Any story can be made interesting or worth telling if the storyteller does a solid job of presenting it. I find too many autobiographical comics terrible because the cartoonist is young and has no idea of why a story is compelling, or how a story is compellingly told. Folks start cartoon diaries and become convinced every trifle in their life has deep meaning or interest, and that shouldn’t be a given. Good, affecting or funny autobiography involves a good story, or takes a mundane story and explores it for potential interest, often involving a strong point of view or a strong style or voice. Very few people can get away with just pouring out their mundane life story at the age of 22, especially when the comics are all about someone making their autobiographical comics, almost always a recipe for a tail-swallowing navel gazing. Most of us have done very little in our lives besides make comics, go to shows, meet people, go to conventions, read books, see movies. You have to tell more compelling stories or tell stories in a more compelling manner, either get out of your small existence and find experiences to write about or celebrate “mundane” life in a new way. Otherwise you’re the seven-thousandth person to write about your crazy roommate or dating or staying up all night drawing comics.
When I do an autobiographical comic, I try to pick something worth writing about, and approach it with some sort of angle that allows me to sidestep the usual “and then I went here” and “then this happened” unpacking of events like a diary entry. I’m not saying I do amazing autobiographical material, I’m just saying I try to present these stories in a different matter than most folks so it’s not a rote list or dull sequence of events. The “Soda Thie”f isn’t an incredible story, but I tried to punch it up by portraying it as a story about a substance abuser, the comic about several beatings I got as a kid was presented in the form of a how-to seminar, and my anxiety attacks and emotional breakdown was laid out in a number of approaches throughout DORK #7. Again, I’m not saying people should make autobiographical-based comics the way I do, I’m just of the opinion that many, if not most young autobio cartoonists think far too much of their life, personality and/or cartooning chops. You have to bring something better to the table, story or approach-wise. The lousy job, the hipsters you have to deal with, breaking up with someone, seeing bands, it was old in the 1990′s.

One of your most recent comics is BEASTS OF BURDEN, an all-ages comic that is different from your other works. Can you tell us more about it? How about the crossover with Mike Mignola’s Hellboy?
BEASTS OF BURDEN started off as a short story called “Stray” that ran in the Dark Horse BOOK OF HAUNTINGS anthology in 2003. Scott Allie asked me to write an 8-page story for the book, and I came up with a story about a haunted doghouse, which I wrote with Jill Thompson’s art in mind. It was never intended to be the first installment in a series, but it was well-received and the following year, when Jill and I were asked to contribute to THE BOOK OF WITCHCRAFT, we did another story with the dog and cat characters from “Stray”. This was followed with stories for THE BOOK OF THE DEAD and THE BOOK OF MONSTERS, at which time we began discussing doing a BEASTS OF BURDEN four-issue mini-series, which finally saw print in late 2009. It didn’t sell well, but the response was strong and a number of professionals talked it up, and it got some nice word of mouth. At some point Mike Mignola was talking to Scott Allie and came up with the idea of doing a Hellboy crossover – he had a few ideas and offered to let us use Hellboy in a BEASTS story. Which is what we ended up doing. Mike did one of the covers for the one-shot, and tweaked the Hellboy dialogue, and people seem to have enjoyed what we did. It sold pretty well and I hope it brings a few new readers into the BEASTS camp, although at the moment the BEASTS hardcover collection is sold out from the publisher and is awaiting a second printing. But readers interested in checking out the BEASTS OF BURDEN comics can read the first three short stories for free at the Dark Horse website and there are also previews of the first mini-series issue and the Hellboy one-shot floating around various websites as well.

I read the TREEHOUSE OF HORROR story you made for THE SIMPSONS comic and it made me wonder in which page were Milk and Cheese going to appear (they didn’t, though). Do you miss those days of hilarious and gruesome violence?
No, because the TREEHOUSE story was full of that sort of material, and I still do comics like that from time to time. And I still do a MILK & CHEESE story every few years or so. I still like the characters and plan to keep working with them but I don’t want to keep pounding out the same comic or kinds of comics for the rest of my life. I like doing different things and get bored fairly easily, I like bouncing around from horror to humor to superhero and whatnot, sometimes in the same project if I can work it out.

What are your plans for the future? Any other comics on the way?
I’m currently working on two SUPER MARTIAN ROBOT GIRL comics for the YO GABBA GABBA anthology from Oni, as well as a guest cover for a Dark Horse one-shot. After that I’m working on a ten-page BART SIMPSON comic for Bongo, and several Bart strips I’ve written should be published in 2011. I’m in talks to write some stories for a few other publishers, and a one-shot I’ve written is still waiting to be drawn, hopefully that will appear sometime in 2011. I did a pin-up for the MAD SPY vs SPY SPECIAL that I believe has just come out here in the U.S. And I assume I’ll do a few drawings for MAD in the coming year. I’m still slowly working on some new MILK & CHEESE strips and hopefully I’ll be writing some more BEASTS OF BURDEN material soon. That’s about everything, I think, at least everything I can discuss publicly.