Deadbeat or Ramblin’ Man?

(Nov 04, 2009)

We here at brownpaperbag are happy to present our first artist interview.  This was also  our first time trying to do some serious recording, and there were some growing pains and technical snafus along the way.  In the end though, we’re pretty happy with how it turned out.

Our first interview guest is Jeremy Massie, a cartoonist from Wise, VA and longtime friend.  His first graphic novel, The Deadbeat, was recently published by Alterna Comics.

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If you have a chance, let us know what you think in the comments.  We have more interviews we’d like to do in the future, so any feedback is appreciated.

An Excerpt from The Deadbeat

The Deadbeat Mascot

Mike Lynch recorded this sighting of the elusive Deadbeat in the wilds of the 2008 Small Press Expo.

An Excerpt from Back Pew Blues

Links

Jeremy’s Blog: Massie is a Deadbeat
Buy The Deadbeat at Powells.com
Alterna Comics, publisher of The Deadbeat

References

Jeremy made a couple of references during the interview that may not be familiar to folks who don’t read comics. We thought we’d offer some explanations.

Ed the Happy Clown: A comic by Chester Brown, written in a stream-of-conscious, surreal style.  It features inter-dimensional travel, scientists of questionable morals, missing body parts, vampires and a man who can’t stop pooing.  There is also a clown named Ed, though his happiness is debatable.

“S-H-I-O-T… Crock… Number 87?”: The anthology whose name Jeremy couldn’t quite remember is Shiot Crock #16.  The book is still in production, but we’ll update with more info about the book and where it can be found when we have that information.

Writing American Splendor Style: American Splendor is a anthology series of autobiographical comics by Harvey Pekar.  While most comics writers create a script with panel descriptions and dialogue, Harvey draws his comics with stick figures standing in for the characters, which serves as a guide for whoever is drawing the story.