In many ways, Jeff’s appearance captures the archetype of the “geek” in the best possible way; a slim, bespectacled bright-eyed man . . . → Read More: Interview with Jeff Ellis]]> by Bevan Thomas

At one of Cloudscape Comics’ Wednesday meetings, I sat down to chat with Jeff Ellis, the organization’s founder, as around us numerous fellow cartoonists worked on their own projects.

In many ways, Jeff’s appearance captures the archetype of the “geek” in the best possible way; a slim, bespectacled bright-eyed man with a mouth rarely far from a gentle smile. He is approachable and unassuming, even shy, and yet when he speaks, his words are confident, thoughtful, and earnest. Dedicated to his own projects, but always interested in the works of others, welcoming to new associates but always loyal to old ones; perhaps he above anyone else embodies the creativity and openness of Cloudscape.

“You’ve spent most of your life in Vancouver?” I asked.

“Yeah. I grew-up here. Though I did live for two and a half years in Japan, from 2004 to 2007.”

“What made you decide to go to Japan?”

At this question, Jeff dropped his gaze in slight embarrassment. “I wanted a fresh start.”

“A fresh start?”

“I’d graduated from college,” Jeff began, “a three-year program in graphic design, and couldn’t find a job. Any art job, I mean. I was working retail and was sick of it; I wanted a change. A friend of mine had gone to Japan before and had found it easy to get a teaching job; so she suggested I give it a shot.”

“Did you have an interest in Japan before talking with your friend?”

“Sure. Actually, I was studying the Japanese language at the time. I had been unemployed for a few months and another friend had recommended that I take a class since it would add structure to my life.”

“Yeah, it is really important to incorporate structure if your life is otherwise without it,” I said. “You must have adapted well to Japan, considering how long you stayed there. What about the country did you love the most?”

“I loved riding the trains to and from work; the subway and light rail system there is amazing!” Jeff smiled dreamily. “I also really loved that there were ancient Shinto shrines everywhere. If you ever needed a quiet place to meditate, there was always one nearby. Oh and the food; Japanese food is great! And I ain’t just talkin’ about sushi.” He laughed. “I loved oyako-don, tako-yaki, and yaki-nikku. I guess in general I loved the peace and tranquillity, and that everyday seemed a new adventure.”

“What was your life like in Japan?”

“I lived in the city of Kofu within the prefecture of Yamanashi, not far from Mt. Fuji. I could see Fuji from my balcony and I used to teach at a school at the base of it. I drew surprisingly few comics while in Japan. I guess I took a break from my life in a lot of ways, but I did lots of paintings and even had a few gallery shows. I spent way too much time at the local gaijin bar, and watched lots of quality BBC with my mate Steve. I also travelled a lot. I went from Hokkaido to Nagasaki and covered all the four islands. There’s some really lovely places there.”

It was certainly easy to see Jeff’s love of the country. As he spoke of Japan, his voice rose in excitement and his eyes gazed past me, focused instead on some flickering memory of the Land of the Rising Sun.

“Then why did you decide to leave?” I asked.

My words snapped him back to the present. “I, uh, was living there for so long that I’d basically reached a point where I had to make a choice: was I going to permanently live in Japan or return to Vancouver? If I stayed much longer, I wouldn’t be leaving.”

“Obviously you chose Canada. Why?”

“I missed my family of course. I also missed new comics Wednesday, and fine meats and cheeses. One time when I went home for a visit to Vancouver, I went to a deli on Commercial Drive and had a giant focaccia sandwich. It was heaven. I also missed new release movies and TV shows when in Japan. I –heh– I remember watching Desperate Housewives on NHK simply because it was one of the few shows I could get in English in Japan.

“But I’m not sure if those were the real reasons.” Jeff sighed wistfully. “It’s hard to put into words. In many ways, Japan was the more rational choice: I’d started to put down roots there and there were not as many job prospects in Canada. And… uh…,” Jeff smiled bashfully, “it was amazing how many young pretty Japanese women are interested in someone just because he’s relatively tall and speaks English. But I think I just felt Vancouver was the right place to be. Being in Japan finally made me realize I wanted to be in Vancouver. It was really an intuitive choice.”

“Do you ever want to return?”

“Oh, yes. If I’d the money, I’d visit Japan once every six months.”

“For how long?”

“Probably for a month each time. Yeah, that’d be great.”

“So how soon after returning from Japan did you develop Cloudscape?”

“Pretty soon. Really Cloudscape came out of Japan. I didn’t know what to do with myself after I returned to Canada, so I decided to try to do some comics again.”

“It was the Vancouver Comics Jam that connected you to local cartoonists, wasn’t it?” I asked.

“Yeah. I heard about the Jam, and it sounded really neat, numerous comic artists meeting regularly to create comics. Actually, my girlfriend at the time wanted to take a look at it, and she didn’t want to go alone, so she convinced me to go as well. I met a lot of people at the Jam, a lot of people who became important to Cloudscape. I met Jack there too, who became my roommate for a while. So the Jam really ended-up having a big effect on my life.”

“What about the Jam inspired you to create Cloudscape?”

“I saw all these really talented individuals at the Comics Jam and felt that we could meet regularly to help develop our artistic abilities. Our meetings soon became a weekly event and then I started to think ‘hey, we have all of these artists making comics – rather than spending money to do our own individual works, why don’t we work together and pool our resources to publish something?’ That’s where Robots, Pine Trees, & Broken Hearts, our first anthology, came from; it was published in 2008 and doing that encouraged us to keep going.”

“Is Cloudscape the first organization of that nature you’ve been a part of?”

“Actually, no. I tried to do the same thing back when I was 18, but it failed.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t as good at leading back then. We had meetings and discussed printing an anthology, but didn’t have enough submissions and couldn’t get enough people interested in participating. We were going to call the organization ‘Visible Trout’ because there was a Visible Trout model in the meeting room.”

“So not as grand a creation as Cloudscape has turned out to be.”

Jeff chuckled ruefully. “No, not at all. Cloudscape’s reached the size that now it goes where it wants to go. That’s both scary and exciting.”

“How so?”

“It’s scary when the thing you’ve created takes on a life of its own because it means you no longer have control over it. But it’s encouraging to know that Cloudscape would continue to do things without my involvement, such as if I were too busy or moved out of Vancouver. Cloudscape would remain as a fixture in this city; it’s a legacy that I’m happy to leave.”

“Do you enjoy being the leader, or would you rather be in some other capacity?”

Jeff paused for a moment before speaking. “Initially I would have said ‘no, I don’t like being a leader.’ However, now I enjoy being in control. Heh, sometimes I say I’m a recovering perfectionist.”

“Well, I have noticed you seem to often take on a leadership role with your friends. I mean, you’re generally the person who organizes social events and brings people together.”

“Well, I’m used to leading,” Jeff said. “I’m an elder sibling, with two younger sisters and one younger brother, so I’m used to taking charge, and have often ended-up as the leader in my peer group. I really like bringing people together, something I strive for. Some of that started in Japan, where I would spearhead Christmas parties for foreigners who weren’t going back to Canada, trying to make little events happen.”

“Had you always wanted to be a comic book artist?”

“Yeah.” Jeff grinned. “I always wanted to be a comic artist. I made comics before I knew I was making comics.”

“What do you mean?”

“My dad’s a teacher and he brought home old math tests. The backs were blank and I drew on them. The pages were stapled together and on each stapled test, all the pictures I drew were of the same story, appearing in sequence.”

“What were your stories about?”

“Originally I used cartoon characters like the Ninja Turtles and the Real Ghostbusters; I was a kid,” he said sheepishly. “Then, after a while, I created my own characters.”

“Like?”

“Well, when I was 13, me and my friend would make superhero stories together. A lot of them were about a woman superhero called the Raven who fought crime in Vancouver.”

“Why a woman?”

Jeff almost blushed. “I was 13; I liked to draw pretty girls. She wasn’t based on Native American stories or anything. I was inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe poem. It was just kid stuff.”

“I know what you mean,” I replied. “When I was young, I created stories where a dog dressed as Superman fought a tiger dressed as the Shredder.”

Jeff laughed.

“You read a lot of superhero comics as a kid,” I said.

“Yeah. I was addicted to Spider-Man until I became 23, and liked a lot of other Marvel characters as well. Also Batman.”

“I was a big fan of Alpha Flight,” I said. “Since they were Canadian superheroes.”

“I wanted to be big on Alpha Flight; it was neat that they were Canadian,” Jeff said. “When I was 16 or 17, I got a letter printed in one of the comic’s issues, showing how I’d redesign the characters so the maple leaves on their costumes would look more like the one on on the Canadian flag. But as a whole, the characters and stories in Alpha Flight didn’t attract my attention.”

“Why was Spider-Man your favourite superhero?”

“Well, heh, Spider-Man’s an awkward guy who doesn’t fit in and who, originally, had glasses. That resonated with me. Some friends took the first panel from the first Spider-Man story, where Peter’s classmates are making fun of him and he’s lonely, and they replaced the name ‘Peter Parker’ with ‘Jeff Ellis’ and it really worked.”

“Did you ever try to break into mainstream comics?” I asked.

“Yeah. It was the year before I went to Japan, back when I was unemployed. I took my portfolio down to the San Diego ComicCon. It taught me I wasn’t ready for a career as a comic artist.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“I talked to a lot of editors; showed my portfolio to a lot of people. The feedback I got back wasn’t too positive.”

“That was quite a few years ago, and your art has certainly improved since then. You never had the desire to try again?”

“Well, I’ve lost a lot of my interest in superhero comics and in working with other people’s characters, so working for Marvel or DC doesn’t really appeal to me anymore.”

“Who would you call your biggest artistic influences?”

To hear about Jeff’s influences, read part 2

“Where do you get your ideas?” is a question so common that it has become a cliche, the thing the creators supposedly least like to be asked. All works of art, indeed all human creations, develop from ideas, but each person finds ideas in their own separate ways. What may be a . . . → Read More: Where Do You Get Your Ideas?]]> by Bevan Thomas

“Where do you get your ideas?” is a question so common that it has become a cliche, the thing the creators supposedly least like to be asked. All works of art, indeed all human creations, develop from ideas, but each person finds ideas in their own separate ways. What may be a font of inspiration for one person may be a dry ditch for another. That said, there are a few generally reliable sources:

1. Your Own Life: One of the prominent philosophical traits of the underground comics movement was the importance of the individual human experience, that “the stories that make up our lives are more interesting than the stories one usually encounters in comic-books” (Chester Brown, The Little Man, p. 169). A similar stance to the Realist painters of the 19th-century who sought to depict everyday existence, warts and all, in opposition to the Raphaelite idealists. Though science fiction, superheroism, historical dramas, and other such genres present fine opportunities for stories, even they can be given depth by including feelings, events, trials that have been directly experienced by the reader. In the 1960s, Stan Lee’s superheroes were ground-breaking because he sought to include within them many of his own personal issues, which made the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and other such individuals potent and engrossing characters. Always be aware of what is happening in your life and think about how it can be brought into the stories you create. Every person has experiences that can serve as powerful inspiration.

2. Your Passions: What do you love to it? What fascinates your mind? Dominates your dreams? Alan Moore developed a bizarre fascination for Jack the Ripper that he couldn’t quite explain, and from that produced From Hell, a graphic novel with intense depth and vision. Neil Gaiman was always compelled by the blurring distinction between dreams and reality and from that created Sandman, one of the most influential sequential series of the nineties. What is important to you? Is it medieval Spain, baseball, the city of Medicine Hat, Korean mythology? How can you present it in a way that is uniquely yours? What do you have to say on the subject?

3. The World Around You: Things are constantly happening every day and you can receive inspiration for a thousand works of art just by going for a walk and being attentive to what is going on around you. A strange design inscribed on the pavement in chalk, a tired old woman who looks like she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, a snatch of conversation overheard on the bus, a man screaming at his pet gerbil, all of these could be woven into something grand. And that doesn’t even take the news into consideration. Open up a newspaper, and you encounter stunning events on the front page, detailed biographies in the obituaries, curious notions in the editorials, a wealth of ideas there for the taking.

4. Other People’s Works: The one piece of advice that all creative writing teachers given is that the best way to improve, much more important than lessons, is to experience a lot of whatever medium it is you want to create. A screenwriter watches a lot of movies, a novelist reads a lot of novels, and a cartoonist reads a lot of comics. By seeing how a lot of other people have done it before you, you develop your understanding of the medium, seeing what works and what doesn’t, savouring their successes and learning from their mistakes. You also build on their own ideas, using them as a guide in finding your own path. But also don’t be afraid to incorporate elements outside your chosen medium. After all, a large part of Sandman‘s great success was in taking a lot of the ideas and sensibilities of the fantasy novel and introducing it to the fantasy comic book.

The comic series The Boys, by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, brings us numerous superhero teams with strangely familiar names: Fantastico, G-Men, Payback, and above them all is the Seven orbiting in their satellite headquarters: Homelander, world’s greatest hero, Queen Maeve, mightiest of heroines, Black Noir, the dark detective, the Deep, lord . . . → Read More: Fallen Heroes]]> by Bevan Thomas

The comic series The Boys, by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, brings us numerous superhero teams with strangely familiar names: Fantastico, G-Men, Payback, and above them all is the Seven orbiting in their satellite headquarters: Homelander, world’s greatest hero, Queen Maeve, mightiest of heroines, Black Noir, the dark detective, the Deep, lord of the watery depths, Jack from Jupiter, alienesque crime-fighter, A-Train, fastest man alive, and Lamplighter with his magic lamp. The champions of that world, beings whose natures are strangely reminiscent of the superheroes who have defined our last century’s popular iconography, and as the series reveals, a more corrupt bunch of beings could hardly be imagined. The superheroes of The Boys embody the worse stereotypes of celebrities who crash-and-burn in orgies of unrestrained decadence the moments the cameras are off them, and many even cross-over from depravity to out-and-out villainy: committing assault and even murder.

A forerunner to The Boys was Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neil’s Marshal Law, in which a government sanctioned “superhero hunter” eliminates rogue heroes in a distopian future, especially targeting the Public Spirit, a being of vast power seen as the world’s greatest hero, but who hides a very dark secret, and similar story elements have appeared in Alan Moore’s Top Ten, Mark Waid’s Irredeemable, and numerous other comics. Stories such as these keep turning up in comics. Why do comic fans enjoy seeing versions of Superman, Batman, or other iconic heroes being reinterpret as grotesque hypocrites or insane monsters?

A few years back, Grant Morrison uncovered a disturbing trend of Internet fan fiction in which popular heroines such as Wonder Woman, Invisible Woman, and Batgirl become enslaved by villains or civilians, forced to perform their every desire. Morrison felt that this pointed to a repressed or not-so-repressed rage felt by many people towards said characters, that they feel betrayed or frustrated and so tell stories that use these characters as proxies for revenge. In some cases, that is almost certainly true. Garth Ennis has said that one of the reasons why he created The Boys is because he is disgusted with how much superheroes dominate the comic book medium. Similarly, Alan Moore’s presentation of a thinly-veiled Justice League parody as egotistical snobs and sex offenders in his Top Ten stories was no doubt at least partly motivated by Moore’s anger and resentment towards DC Comics and how they treated him in the past. There is rage from these authors, and there is likely rage from some the fans, fueled by their disappointment when they discovered that the heroes and the ideals they represent are not all that they hoped they would be.

However, as much as these stories seem to be directing frustration at the superheroes, they often as much seem to be about using the heroes as metaphors to express frustration towards other things. The central theme in these fallen superhero stories is that those we idolize, the celebrities, are often undeserving of our praise and have been corrupted by their celebrityhood; the Public Spirit of Marshal Law, Atoman of Top Ten, the Plutonian of Irredeemable, and the Homelander of The Boys are all variations of Superman and all present themselves as upstanding moral characters, as the World’s Greatest Superhero, but all fall disastrously short of this ideal

One lesson that can be taken from this is that no one is perfect and often those who appear the brightest have the darkest secrets, another is that those who desire fame and power are often psychologically imbalanced, and that once they achieve the power, it corrupts them. These are certainly lessons that the world continues to teach us and our heroes so often turn out to be too good to be true. But the fascination with the degraded superhero seems to be deeper than simply a fallen celebrity story in fancy dress because the superheroes archetype runs so much deeper than that.

It is so often the symbols that people develop in childhood that remain the strongest for the rest of their lives, whether they use the symbols in their conventional fashion or deconstruct them for ironic purposes. For so many people, especially many boys growing-up in North America, their first and most powerful role models were superheroes and it is these superheroes that embody such traits as strength, discipline, celebrityhood, and ideals of power and moral superiority. They were the saints and gods of his childhood, weaving stories as potent as that of St. George or Heracles. When the boys get older, and they became disillusioned or frustrated with these traits, than this disillusionment can be shown by tarnished or fallen superheroes. In their youthful innocence, the people admired Superman and wanted to be like him. If now they are no longer innocent, then neither is he.

A child’s understanding of the world is much cleaner; heroes are good because they are heroes, without ulterior reasoning. A child doesn’t question why Superman or Spider-Man does what he does or that all that would be required to right the world’s wrongs would be superstrength or a plasma cannon. But as the world expands with age, things become more complex. Solutions stop becoming so simple and people realize just how hard it is to create change. Those who create the largest changes in the world are often the tyrants and plutocrats who are motivated by their own selfish gain. In such a world, Superman would either be impotent or become corrupt himself, either futilely try to fight the system or become part of the establishment.

It is important to note that enjoying the fallen hero does not necessarily mean a disdain for the original version. Many comic fans adore the superhero archetype but also find the fallen one compelling. They love All-Star Superman while at the same time enjoying The Boys; laugh with Marshal Law while warming their hearts with Zot! For some people, the tarnished hero gives them license to express their frustration against the genre, for others it shows that their enjoyment of the genre is so all encompassing that it can be savoured from opposing directions. Maybe it’s because that dichotomy allows us to wrestle with certain issues we have about disillusioned but still treasured ideals, or maybe we’re just grown-up kids taking a sadistic fascination in bashing the hell out of our favourite toys.

On our ustream, we made some late night confessions of our artistic sins. Complete with tracing, perspective faux pas and 14 year old art failures. Forgive us.

This is for Cloudscape’s 21 Journeys Fundraiser on IndieGoGo. Before 5PM PST April 2, 2011 you can pledge $5 for any commission featuring anything.

Thanks for supporting . . . → Read More: Comic Artists Confessing their Sins.]]>

On our ustream, we made some late night confessions of our artistic sins. Complete with tracing, perspective faux pas and 14 year old art failures. Forgive us.

This is for Cloudscape’s 21 Journeys Fundraiser on IndieGoGo. Before 5PM PST April 2, 2011 you can pledge $5 for any commission featuring anything.

Thanks for supporting indie comics!

From the Cloudscape Perpetual Jam, which is going on until Saturday April 2 at 5PM PST on our ustream. ]]>

From the Cloudscape Perpetual Jam, which is going on until Saturday April 2 at 5PM PST on our ustream.

You can find parts two and three on Youtube. . . . → Read More: Colin Upton, Local Comic Star]]> Colin Upton has been making comics in Vancouver since before some members of Cloudscape were even born. Scary, I know. This recent interview with him is very well done.

You can find parts two and three on Youtube.

By Bevan Thomas

In his screenwriting guidebook Story, award-winning screenwriter Robert McKee discusses the relative strengths of various storytelling mediums, and deduces that live theatre is the medium best-suited for detailed dialogue, novels and short stories for character introspection, and movies for visual subtext observed by witnessing characters’ behaviour . . . → Read More: Reader Controlled Art]]> The Strength of the Comic Medium

By Bevan Thomas

In his screenwriting guidebook Story, award-winning screenwriter Robert McKee discusses the relative strengths of various storytelling mediums, and deduces that live theatre is the medium best-suited for detailed dialogue, novels and short stories for character introspection, and movies for visual subtext observed by witnessing characters’ behaviour and their environment as opposed to what they say or think. It’s an interesting theory, and certainly novels allow us smooth access to characters’ thoughts in a way no other medium does, while movies and television display a private and highly visual world and plays are certainly primarily about conversation and monologues. There are, of course, exceptions such as the movie My Dinner with Andre, which entirely consists of two people discussing philosophy in a restaurant, or the television show Dexter, which makes extensive use of a voice-over narrations to get inside the protagonist’s head. However, despite such productions, McKee’s analysis rings-true as a general overview, if not as all-encompassing as he implies.

What then is the storytelling specialty of comic books?

In Writing for Comics, prominent comic author Alan Moore comments that comic books can combine a movie’s visual subtext with a novel’s ability to be experienced at whatever pace the reader desires, which opens up the possibility for complexity and reference that movies lack. One comic book where this is prominently displayed is in Legends in Exile, the first collection in Bill Willingham’s Fables series. In that story, a detective investigates a murder, and prowls the crime scene to study everything there. At the end of the story, the detective explains the whole mystery in true “drawing-room mystery” style and as he does so, images from the crime scene are shown with the significance of particular sections explored.

As I read the explanation, I often flipped back to the initial appearance of the crime scene in order to see the clues in their original context and to judge how well they fit in with the detective’s theory. It was something I could only do with a comic. Rewinding through a DVD is usually more hassle than it’s worth, and in a novel, it is difficult to find a scene from skimming page after page of pure text. However, it is incredibly easy to return to a particular place in a graphic novel, just keep flipping until the pictures start to look familiar. It is a medium suited for easy back-and-forth movement between sections.

In a novel, with the exception of the occasional illustration, all information must be explained with words; if something exists in a scene, then the author must actively describe it. In a movie or television show, that, of course, it can be placed in the image without the author needing to bring it to the audience attention, but still the visual subtext is limited by the speed at which the film moves. A particular scene cannot be studied for as long as the viewer desires. It is there for a few moments and then gone, and the viewer just has to hope that he didn’t miss anything important. Now in a comic book, the reader can decide how long he stays at each image. A picture can be as complex as needed, as filled with as many figures and clues as suits the story, since there is no limit to how long the reader can spend on the panel to figure everything-out. Graphic novels such as the aforementioned Fables and Alan Moore’s Watchmen are packed with visual information, with numerous panels filled with references and hints about the richly detailed world which the reader can discover and decipher at his or her leisure, and which create an incredibly intricate environment with a huge amount of depth.They play to the strength of the medium.

When the depth of pictures is organized to tell a story, when a visual narrative is placed on the page so that each scene can be dwelled on as long as the reader wishes and referred to whenever he wants, when the intimacy and narrative detail of prose is combined with the intensity of art, then that presents a unique form of storytelling. Fables: Legends in Exile, Watchmen, and numerous other comic books tell their stories in ways that no other medium could.