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by R.J. Carter Published: January 1, 2002
Reprinted collections of comic strips are nothing new-you can get them in any bookstore. Why choose the comic book medium for your reprints? It was Mark Wheatley's idea. I've always kept him updated on my syndication situation. My syndicate had been negotiating with a couple of book companies, including Andrews & McMeel. Technically, they still are negotiating to get Liberty Meadows collected as one of those big fat Calvin & Hobbes type books. I was bitching and moaning to Mark about my syndicate: "It can't get done with a negotiation; I don't know what's going on; blah blah blah." And everyday, I was getting flooded with fan letters saying, "When is the book collection going to come out?" Mark said, "Why don't you publish it in a comic book format, because it will [...] please the fans and it won't compete with the book market." So Mark approached my syndicate and got the licensing to publish Liberty Meadows in a comic book format. The next thing I know, it took off... we're selling roughly over 14,000 copies per issue. What was the initial reaction to University Squared? It was great! People loved it! Was it sitting in your head for a long time forming before you put pen to paper, or did you just start doodling characters? How is something like a strip born? Actually, it developed in multiple stages. The duck character in University2 first appeared when I was in high school, when I was doing the high school newspaper (High Point High School in Beltsville, Maryland). Back then it looked like a real duck. Then, when I went to Prince Georges Community College, I continued the strip and started adding other characters: the pig character, Ralph and Leslie. Then Brandy. Brandy technically made her debut in Prince George's Community College student newspaper called The Owl. When I transferred to University of Maryland, I pretty much had all the characters fleshed out--all their personalities. Once I had the characters established, the gags just pretty much wrote themselves. Were any of the characters based on composites or on individuals you knew? Sort of. Kind of. But not really. The one character that I used someone as a model was Dean the Pig. In Prince Georges Community College, I knew I wanted to make him a male chauvinist pig. But I didn't think I quite had the character down, to be honest with you. His name back then was Ragamuffin. When I went to University of Maryland, my college dorm mate's name was Dean and he was a fraternity brother--everything kind of congealed. But the other characters, I really didn't use any real people as models. So are the other characters alter egos for Frank Cho? Yeah, I guess technically... well, except for Brandy. Brandy, she wasn't, personality wise, modeled after anyone. Physically, she's modeled after Linda Carter--Wonder Woman--and Bettie Page. In Liberty Meadows, I see a lot of what looks like the influence of the previous generation of comic strip artists; the animals seem to draw from Berke Breathed's Outland style; the Mighty Shmoe Pong pencils are instantly reminiscent of Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes dinosaur daydreams. Some people have accused you of 'ripping off' these creators because of these stylistic similarities. I make no qualms that one of my big inspirations and influences is Berke Breathed. Frankly speaking, I never read the newspaper funnies as a child because I never really found them to be funny. I guess comic books ruined it for me. Growing up, I used to collect the X-Men by Chris Claremont and Paul Smith, Fantastic Four by John Byrne, Batman by Don Newton... the basic mainstream titles. The comic books hit me at a very early age and I was hooked on them. Trying to read the newspaper strips... it was like you drove a sports car and now you're riding a tricycle. That's how I felt. So I never really liked the newspaper comic strips. Except for Bloom County. I didn't really start reading Bloom County until I was in middle school. (I started collecting comics when I was in elementary school.) A buddy of mine, who was a voracious reader, he told me to try Bloom County out, because it had the same type of humor as he and I. So I started reading it. I can actually tell you the very first Bloom County strip I read in the newspaper. It was a Sunday strip where Opus is sitting at a diner, and a person next to him is smoking. Opus daydreams that he'll set a fire hose to him and just starts spraying the entire place, knocking people over. Then at the last panel, the punch line was: "But I s'pose 'Miss Manners' wouldn't approve." I thought it was one of the funniest strips I'd read. So, thanks to my friend, Terry DiSandro, I got hooked on Bloom County. I went back and started collecting the Bloom County book collections that were out. My initial research for this interview was a search in USENET forums. The only interesting thing I really found there was a very long thread looking for nude pictures of Brandy on the Internet. Is there a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, or should I not waste my time searching any further? Uhm... I really shouldn't say this, because I'm trying to discourage it. Brandy is a very voluptuous character, and I guess pretty good-looking. Readers absolutely adore Brandy. I get flooded with fan letters about Brandy... and they usually involve asking, "Would you do a commissioned naked Brandy sketch." About two years ago, I did a Cheesecake and Critters portfolio to tell them if you want naked Brandy, get this portfolio (published by Insight Studios). It sold very, very well. I think we're down to the last twenty copies. We printed about 1500, easy. It just kept selling and selling and selling. I guess I kind of grew a conscience or my wife has a maturing influence over me. Now people ask me "Will you go into a second printing of the portfolio?", and I say no. I'm debating on whether or not to make a Cheesecake and Critters 2. I mean, I'm not going to lie to you--the demand is very good. I really enjoy drawing Brandy pin-ups, but not all the time. I did find a page of artwork you had done for Cavewoman. Have you done any other comic book work, or do you have any more planned? Yeah, I do. Again, my first love was comic books. Originally, growing up, I wanted to be a comic book artist or a book illustrator. I'm doing a Cavewoman one-shot, with Budd [Root]'s permission. I've been working on it for over a year now, just doing a panel here and a panel there. Every free chance I get. DC Comics editors, some of the senior editors, really love my stuff and they pretty much offered me a Batman one-shot deal. That would be a departure from the kind of work we've seen, what with the city scenery and grim and grittiness of Batman. Right. So, DC Comics, they want me for Batman. At this point, I have to turn them down because my workload is so heavy. There are a couple of other projects, stuff on the shelf which I want to do eventually. There's been a lot of controversy recently about your work; for instance, many people are upset that you nominated yourself for the Ignatz award, which you subsequently won. I don't think many people have heard your side of these events. Well, again, I told writers from The Comics Journal the other side of the story which they never printed. My impression was they had already written the article they wanted. What had happened was, there were, I think, five nominating judges in Ignatz, and seven categories. In each category, we judges have to nominate four comics and one alternate. I had a tough time filling out a couple of the categories, because, well... the submissions I got, in my opinion, weren't that good. I'm not a big fan of artsy-fartsy stuff, and a lot of these alternate comic books tend to be very disturbing and just didn't make a whole lot of sense. Also, in my opinion, the artwork was horrendous. So I had a tough time filling out a couple of the categories. I asked the Ignatz coordinator, "What should I do?" because I was thinking about nominating my book. I asked him, "Is this against the guidelines?" and he basically said, "Do what you think--use your judgment." It wasn't against the rules. So I asked a friend of mine, what would he do, because he was also a judge last year. He said "Well, just think of it this way. Don't think of it as your book. Do you like the art? Do you like the story? Do you think it deserves a nomination?" I made a terrible mistake of voting for myself. On hindsight, after all these great controversies, I shouldn't have done it. The SPX people have been so wonderful to me from the start. I feel so bad for bringing such negative attention to them with my bad judgment. Ultimately, you didn't cast the winning vote, though? Right. Each judge submits five books for each category, and the Ignatz coordinator tally up the votes. Then he print out the top five books that each of us nominated. On the final ballot sheet, there are five choices for each category. All the people who attend the SPX get a ballot--one person, one vote. So even if I nominated myself, I don't have the power to get myself on the ballot. Some of the other judges must have also nominated me. Then the public votes right there at the show. 1,200 people showed up. So my sin was, I nominated myself; I helped fill out the categories that I thought were lacking. And here's another story I want to tell you. I don't know why The Comics Journal got so bent out of shape about self-nomination, because they often do it themselves. Have you read the list of the best 100 comics? [The Comics Journal] chose, in their opinion, the top 100 best comics of all time, and I think four or five of the top ten are their books. If I had to do it all over again, I would have just dropped out of the whole nomination process. Some folks also seem upset about a campaign, orchestrated by you, to have Liberty Meadows replace Peanuts now that Charles Schulz is retiring. They seem to liken you to someone hovering outside a rent controlled apartment whose current occupant is packing to move out. (laughs) Okay, here's the story. I have a semi-monthly newsletter that I send out to the Internet fans who send me e-mail. On each newsletter I talk about what's going on in my comic. Before I send out each newsletter, I have Mark Wheatley and a couple of other people check the facts, and if the facts are wrong, they just delete it, or don't send it out or correct it. My syndicate told me they were getting all this news from other sales reps, from other syndicates, that Charles Schulz was retiring and everyone in the industry was scrambling to fill Charles Schulz's slot. Every syndicate was sending out their sales force to promote their syndicate's strip. Everyone knew in the industry that Charles Schulz had repeatedly said that once he retired or died, the strip would stop. Period. The sales force director of my syndicate told me this, and everyone else--other cartoonists--said, "You've got to self promote; it's the only way you can survive in this industry." So in my last newsletter, I said, basically, "After a fantastic 50 year run, Charles Schulz is retiring. If you like my strip, write or call your Features Editor." And I also put in a note that said "Charles Schulz is retiring and his syndicate, against his will, will reprint Peanuts," because, again, based on what the sales force director told me. So I gave this newsletter to Mark to check the facts, and it turned out it was wrong--it turned out Charles Schulz did give permission to run the reprints in the newspapers. So, Mark Wheatley took that part out. From what I gather, Mark passed it in email to Steve Conley and Rick Veitch at Comicon.com to check the facts and see if this was correct. I think Rick contacted The Comics Journal to get Charles Schulz's phone number, and [they] asked him "What's it for?" The next thing I know, I got a call from The Comics Journal saying, "Who's your source?" I didn't tell them it was my syndicate--my syndicate's sales force director. I didn't want to bring them into it. So, I told them I got it over e-mail from a couple of fans. They in not so many worlds called me a liar. My newsletter with the Charles Schulz reprint decision never went out --but then I get some news from Kim Thompson of The Comics Journal, and... ...by way of The Comics Journal, it kind of went out anyway. Right. The Comics Journal is the one who spread the rumor. Now that you've ventured into the comic book arena, is there any chance of seeing you at some of the conventions? I'm going to the San Diego comic convention this year, and I'm also going to the Dragon Con in Georgia. I'm also looking into going to the Detroit Motor Con, but I'm having a tough time finding information about it. And of course, I will attend the SPX in Bethesda, Maryland. ### Liberty Meadows has since left the newspaper comics pages, but it's still published as a comic book. For more of Frank's work, check out the Insight Studios website at www.insightstudiosgroup.com. |
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