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Sequential Tart Interview (Part
1)
"TO THE MAXX WITH FOUR WOMEN"
originally posted by Katherine
Keller on Sequentialtart.com
When trying to describe Sam Kieth, phrases such as "30-something
10 year old", "Dr. Seuss on crack", and "wonderfully
insane" come to mind. Kieth claims that he can't draw
or write, but thousands of loyal fans eagerly follow
his ... unique ... stories. A few months ago Katherine
Keller had the opportunity to pick the brain of one
of the most intriguing creators currently working today,
and ended up with over an hour of insight into his world
view, the origins of his stories, and his creative process.
This is part one of her adventure.
Sequential Tart: So, when did you discover
comics?
Sam Kieth: Oh, wow jump right into it. Well,
when I was a kid, I used to draw, even before I picked
up a comic I was drawing these little stories on 3x5
index cards. My mom bought a pack and when she brought
them home, the only thing I could think to do with them
was draw a picture and write little words underneath
each one. Then I'd string them into a story [laughs].
ST: About how old were you when you were
doing this?
SK: Oh, about eight years old. I guess those
were comics, although I didn't think of them as that.
It wasn't until I was 12 or 13 that I discovered comics.
There wasn't a comic store I don't know if you discovered
them this way but they used to have them at supermarkets
on the racks.
I could never get them in order. I'd just get an issue
of a comic, and then I'd wander in a couple months later
and get issue 5, and then issue 7 whatever struck
my fancy. It never occurred to me to try and get them
in order [laughs], and how much more enjoyable they'd
be if they were all read in order.
ST: Did you like anything in particular?
SK: Well, you know, it was the typical adolescent
wish fulfillment people running around in their underwear
and seeming not to have the problems I had. I mean,
the metaphor of running around in long underwear and
seeming to have the tastes and maturity of a kid, but
powers far beyond an adult, was the first thing that
attracted me to them. There wasn't really any it was
quite a bit later that I discovered alternative comics
in the '80s, comics that had a little more maturity
to them.
ST: What were a couple of those titles?
SK: Oh gosh ...
ST: Was it anything like Love
and Rockets?
SK: Yeah, that was one of them. But coming off
of superheroes, even reading things like Nexus
or American Flagg, it seemed
to lead the way to things like Cerebus
and Love and Rockets.
When I went down to the end of a comics show, the colors
stopped and they started being black and white, then
it was pretty fringy. You were down there right next
to the underground, and you never knew what you were
going to get into. And that's where all the interesting
stuff was, come to find out.
ST: So, I presume that in high school, you
were "one of the guys who could draw"?
SK: No. I was a guy who drew, but I always hung
around people who drew a lot better. So I was always
one of the guys who people would say:
"Hey, do you know Kelly Jones or Grant Johnson?"
"Yeah."
"Boy, they're pretty good, aren't they?"
And I'd say, "Yeah, they're real good." [laughs]
I knew a lot of people who drew. My cousin, who is
an animator he actually created the Cow
and Chicken cartoon he was four years older,
and he drew, and his sister drew. They were like brother
and sister to me. My father drew when I was growing
up. He painted, too I never really got too involved
with that. It just seemed like everyone around me drew,
and it was nothing special to draw.
So, you always had to try twice as hard just to stay
up, you know? Everybody was older than me, and they
drew better, it was like, "well, drawing isn't going
to get me any attention." [laughs]
I didn't even start to get serious about it until much
later, when geez, well this is a probably a whole
'nuther conversation.
ST: That's okay, a long interview is not
a bad thing.
SK: I met my wife at ... an unusually young
age. And, so, it probably wasn't until I was about 18
or 19 that I started to think seriously about trying
to get into comics. From the time I met her I was
15 and she was 30. I moved from my parents' home into
her home, and lived with her, and kind of essentially
grew up. There was no way I was really ready to jump
into the comics field at 15-16 years old.
ST: What made you decide on a career in comics?
SK: I have to tell you, I admire your ability
to stick to the subject matter after an answer like
that. Usually most people are, "What kind of a freak
are you?" after they hear that. "What the heck? What's
the deal with that?"
ST: Well, my husband is 12 years older than
I am, so ...
SK: So, you're used to the whole age difference
thing, then.
ST: Yeah.
SK: That's cool I feel so relieved [laughs].
Like I'm in good company all of a sudden. What was the
question?
ST: What made you finally decide on the career
in comics, as opposed to, say, illustration or animation,
or
SK: I couldn't get in to any of that stuff.
I wasn't good enough. My whole career is a case of failing
into comics [laughs]. Failing into getting a book, y'know?
[Laughs]
I tried getting a graphics job I couldn't. I tried
getting hired as a chef once I couldn't. I tried to
teach guitar lessons and I just wasn't skilled and/or
lacked the discipline to do any of those things.
I kept trying to run around conventions with portfolios
like everybody does. I didn't have a portfolio case,
and I couldn't afford those nice leather ones that everybody
had, so, my mom had an old orange container that had
once had X-Rays in it that was made of cardboard, and
it was just original art size. I'd stand in line with
this X-Ray box and show my portfolio [laughs]. I'd pull
out my pages, and all the editors would make jokes,
"What are you going to show me, your X-Rays?" [Laughs]
I'd be, "No, this is it." I remember burning with shame
that I didn't have at least a decent something to pull
them out of.
It didn't much matter anyway, because they were terrible
and I had years and years to go before I got better,
and years and years to unlearn the mistakes I kept making.
So, it's like, "How long'd it take you to get in?"
"Oh, 'bout 10 years." "What?!" I'm like, "No, no, I'm
a slow learner. And I'm an idiot, but you, you can probably
get in in two or three years." At which point they go,
"Okay, whew!"
Mostly the thing that kept me out was making the same
mistakes over and over again. Learning to draw by following
other artists spending at least two or three years
trying to be John Byrne, and just being a bad John Byrne
clone, then trying to be a bad Bernie Wrightson clone,
and we already had a bunch of those.
It just took me a long time how to figure out how to
be a bad Sam Kieth. [Laughs] But, dammit, I made it!
ST: Speaking of that, how did you land your
first professional job?
SK: Y'know, because most people that read these
interviews I bet, what they're really looking for
they're passing through the personal stuff I know
I used to search all the articles with interviews of
professionals "Yeah, yeah, you were born here, sure,
okay ... " and I'd go right to what is the thing that
happened. Was there some magic thing? Is there a moment?
An editor of a book? There always winds up being, but
....
There was a big moment when I got into my first black
and white book. There was a big moment when I got a
chance to ink a color book Mage
was this comic I was inking that Matt Wagner was doing,
and I inked maybe 12 issues of that. And then it was
a big deal to pencil the Sandman
book, which was the first regular penciling job I had.
In-between those were years of doing books that were
bad, or were bad introductions, such as the first inking
job I did for DC. The editor and writer of the book, Roy Thomas,
called me up and said basically, "Kid, you're bad, you'll
never work in comics again, and you need to quit while
you're behind." These moments were in my mind as much
as any of the seeming successes. I mean it [the inking]
was a terrible job. It's all those little failures
that you know the clichι the success you have is
built on a bunch of failures, everything I've done is
built on all these bad anatomied bodies I've drawn,
and all these bad stories I've tried to write. [Laughs]
I mean, you stick around for 15-20 years, and you get
an awful lot of failures that you can climb up on top
of.
I don't know. I can't think of any magic words, or
any thing to tell people out there that would get them
through it, other than when they're suffering through
a really bad story with really bad art, every single
person that I've ever admired has told me that they've
been there with the stench. [laughs]
I hope that doesn't sound too pessimistic.
ST: [Laughs]. I discovered your work just
as I was getting into comics, and I picked up this comic
called Marvel Comics Presents, and I opened it up and
took a look at it and said, "Who the hell is
this?!"
SK: [Laughs] So that was the first reaction,
right?
ST: But really it was more because your art
was just completely different from anything else I was
seeing at the time, so "Who the hell is this?!" isn't
necessarily meant in a bad way, either. How did you
land that job?
SK: Just doing those covers and stuff?
ST: Yeah, and that Wolverine story.
SK: Well, again, when I was working on Sandman, I was really unhappy, and I don't think
I was doing my best work, and everybody was trying to
get me to quit and I was trying to get myself fired.
[Laughs] Then, when I left, I really wanted to try to
do something that was see, the problem is I'm a weird
guy in a world that ... it's a lot different now than
it was 10 years ago, but then, if you were weird, you
really stuck out from everybody else and I was really
worried, working at Marvel, just crawling into their superhero books,
that people wouldn't get my work and it would just seem
really strange, and I'd be rejected.
Some how, I think I was going to do some Nightmare on Elm Street book that Peter David was
writing, and he was really not thrilled with the gig
and neither was I. I think I only did a pin up and I
had the editor bluffed, because he thought I could draw
Freddy Krueger that well all the time, and here I just
got lucky once. So he kept saying, "Yes, I just want
you on this book. The licensers really like your Freddy
Krueger." And I thought, "Well, this is great until
he figures out I can't draw Freddy Krueger. So I better
duck out of this quick." [Laughs]. Peter David says,
"Yeah, we better duck out, because this is a slimy book
to be doing anyway." So I got to know him there, but
I think it was just luck. I called up Marvel
Comics Present's editor one day, whom I had gotten
to know from telling my Sandman
story showing him the work and apologizing and he
said, "Yeah, this guy, Todd McFarlaine, was going to
do a miniseries, but he's crapped out, and you've just
called me up. So, do you want the job?"
It was literally luck that I just happened to be there
at the right time and I just started doing covers for
them and the cover editor at the time just kept saying
that it was wrong and that I should be fired every
issue and Terry Kavanaugh was really cool and was
like, "No, no, just keep letting him screw it up and
do weird things."
Kids would write in and say things like: "Wolverine's
okay, but his back is too round." "What's up with Wolverine's
feet? Why are they growing?" And, "Wolverine is really
out of proportion, I think your artist is losing his
mind or something." And it was funny, because the letters
I would get would be kids who really loved it, or kids
who were saying "Why are you ruining my universe." They
had a very specific view of the world. "I'm going through
latency," they wouldn't say it in those words, but,
"I'm going through this world view phase where I'm trying
to categorize and order things, and you're causing chaos
by giving me a version of things that are drastically
different from everything else. So please, please, please
go away and not do that anymore." [Laughs] So, in that
way it was almost a relief when I went off and did my
own book, because then I could screw around and introduce
my proportions.
ST: Well, speaking of doing your own book,
what was it that prompted you to leave Marvel?
I know you talked a little about this at the panel at
San Diego ...
SK: I'd like to say that I had some burning
desire to create my own character, and a lot of people
did, and I did too, but part of it was the fact that
I figured my chance to do a run of a book would be at
Marvel Wolverine or something and I kept waiting around
to get the book, and I couldn't get it because Marc
Silvestri was on it, and when he left, there was another
artist that got on it. It became clear that the only
way I was going to get Wolverine was if an artist died or got sick. [Laughs]
And, I just didn't have that luck. I was simply waiting
around a Marvel, knowing that
my favorite characters were all taken and I wasn't going
to get a shot.
I just happened to be at Marvel
at the time all these people were taking off and Jim
Lee was like, "Hey, come on over into the corner and
do this eight page story." Nobody had any idea
what the results of this would be, because dozens of
times before people had left Marvel and DC, and gone
off and said they were going to start a company, and
it always blew up. Nothing happened because the artists
lacked the discipline to get anything done.
It was pure luck.
The truth of the matter everybody knows that there
are hundreds of other artists, many of them much better
than me, could've been there at Marvel,
taking off to Image. Many of them had the opportunity offered
to them and turned it down, "What? Are you guys nuts?
Forget it." So, I think it was just my desperation
and timing that caused me to be with these guys. I
mean, Dale Keown just happened to be there at that time.
He could've been at DC, he
could've been doing an alternative book. I mean, are
there better artists than Dale Keown and me, and the
other guys who were working at Image?
Sure. Totally. I walk down the aisles at San Diego and
see artists who totally kick my butt. I wonder what
the hell am I doing in here? It has more to do with
proximity and people who are stupid enough to keep working.
[Laughs]
That's the only thing I can think. What do you think?
You've been around, you've seen people come and go.
Why do some of the same idiots keep popping up and others
disappear? The only thing I can think of I mean, if
Matt Wagner keeps popping up, it's because he keeps
doing work. [Laughs] We've tried to get rid of him for
years now, and he's still around. [Laughs] I say it
to him when I see him, "Why are you still here?" He
says, "Ahh, I keep working." "Man, for so long, I keep
seeing your work, and everywhere I go, there you are."
[Laughs]
ST: So, where did The Maxx
come from?
SK: I have no idea ... must have been
some bad heartburn or something. Something that just
didn't go down well. It looks pretty much like the Hulk
with his purple pants stretched over his whole body
pretty much. He's pretty much an excuse to draw a circle
and a triangle and add some arms. It just came from
doodles in a sketch book of jungle foliage and some
guy running around. The story literally came from sketchbook
notes and hopefully didn't suffer as a result from that.
It's interesting, because I was just reading some of
the stuff in the reviews I'm sorry, I was just vain
enough to do this I looked up some of the reviews
at Sequential Tart about Zero
Girl. I thought they were right on target. I
was aware one of the people who reviewed #3 were a little
concerned with some of the violence seeming out of place
with the characterization, which I really agreed with.
Kind of weird, because I did it, you'd think that I'd
not do that. I was thinking of this story as kind of
a goof, and now it seems like it's a better story than
I was giving it credit to be. I think I should've gone
back and not quite played the violent surreal stuff
quite so heavy. Carrie Landers didn't like #5 at all.
I just got done telling Scott Dunbier that I really
want to put her review on the back of the trade paperback. It
would be really cool to have all these reviews that
seem really nice, and then something that just says,
"Look, this is a really bad idea, go out and buy Gen
13 instead." [Laughs] He says, "Yeah, that's
kind of cool. At least you have your feet on the ground."
I said, "Exactly, and, y'know, she's got a point. She
thinks I flubbed the ending. Maybe I did."
ST: I think it's really cool that you're
not like "You gave my book a bad review! DEATH TO
YOU!!!"
SK: Well, you know, I'm glad I read a lot of
other reviews that liked it before, or I might have
been. And I can't say that at three in the morning it
doesn't bother me [laughs], but the truth of the matter
is, I'm not vain enough to think that everything I do
works.
It's particularly nice to hear people talk about it
of different sexes. Women, what they think about the
book. I'm really annoyed with guys who write women that
think they know what they're talking about. The only
way I can write a female character is to write a character,
and realize that on certain level it probably always
rings false, because I'm not a woman.
ST: Actually, that's something I wanted to
touch on. A lot of your books I know you kind of have
this reputation as "Oh, Sam Kieth, he's so funny, he's
so quirky", and there is a lot of really laugh out loud
funny stuff in your books, but The Maxx, and Zero Girl,
and the synopsis you sent me for Four
Women, you deal with a lot of dark stuff
in there.
SK: Well, that one's ...
ST: I mean, like Julie, that's some serious
psychological wreckage going on there.
SK: [Laughs] "That's some serious psychological
wreckage." Yeah.
ST: First, what's the appeal of exploring
those issues, and second, have you had a reaction or
attacks along the line of "You're a guy. You can't possibly
know what it's like, and you shouldn't be doing this"?
SK: Mostly that comes from me. Surprisingly,
when I was doing the book, it was a huge swell of people
men and women but the letters we get from women
... and this is also, if people seem to like it, it's
partly just due to the dearth of things from the female
perspective. There's an absence of it; there's a lack,
there's just not a lot of things being explored from
a female perspective, the industry being the adolescent
male dominated dream factory it is.
So, yeah, the fans of The Maxx
were really supportive of it, but the things I'm trying
to do now, I keep trying to draw them closer to what
really happened. Like obviously as I just told you in
Zero Girl, the story is a first
attempt for me to tell a story that's closer to me and
the truth although my wife wasn't my teacher, the
age of Amy and the counselor aren't that far removed
from me and my wife. I was really just telling trying
to, minus all the circles and squares and monsters eating
people in alleys trying to get closer to telling our
story. Disguising my sex and her sex so that I thought
she would not say, "Why are you telling our story to
a bunch of strange people?" But probably fooling no
one as a result.
But, people like you were talking about, writing female
characters, the first thing I think about is, I'm just
trying to write people who happen to be female
characters. So, on the one hand, if things seem more
dimensional, maybe that's why. On the other, if it rings
false, it's because, once again .... That whole gender
question can drive you crazy, "Would I be writing this
differently if I was a woman or a man?" I drove myself
particularly nuts in this Four Women
story. The bottom line is, yes, I think that it's probably
a weaker story, yes I think that a woman could write
it better, but on the other hand, I can't help who I
am and the stories I'm compelled to write.
I was also trying to go back and deal with the very
thing that some of the reviews of Zero
Girl were concerned about. You try to build up
these characters, and the plot basically descends into
the clichι of physical jeopardy you don't necessarily
have to do that. So my question with the outline I sent
you was, even thought the plot seems really action dominated,
because I make sure, or I try to make sure that I have
the skill to make you care about those characters, that
in the end, it wasn't just a "twist" ending. That you
actually felt, that on the surface it was a story about
rape, but underneath it was a story about sacrifice
and a test of friendship. Which sounds kind of hooky
and cliched, but I wanted to act those parts. I even
retained the rights from DC
to be able to do it as a play.
What it really became is discovering how weak I am
as a writer, but I think as a result of writing it ...
there's just so many facets as I get older, to women.
It's interesting because I use my mother as a model
in the book. It was interesting using her in it, because
I kept drawing her differently; I showed her the pictures,
and she said, "I don't look anything like that." [Laughs]
"Well," I said, "I'm trying to see you differently than
I normally see you. I have all this mother stuff projected
on you, and I'm trying to see these four women, these
four generations." I know from personal experience with
my wife and the women around me, that god, these aren't
even sentences! [Laughs] It seems like sooner or later
I'm going to have to grow up and stop hiding behind
the pouting teen-aged girl persona. As much as I feel
comfortable writing that disenfranchised, alienated
teen, I'm already halfway through my life. I'll be dead
in 30 years. I might as well come up with a way of looking
at older people and older women that reflects the fact
that they're not all pouting teens. But, it is a pain
in the butt. I think that's ultimately why the story
can only go so far I've only experienced so much.
You've got to write about what you know, and if you
write about something too far from your experience ...
it all starts to cave in.
So go out and buy that book, kids! [Laughs] "So, this
is why it fails, this is why it's no good, and this
is why you're recommending it ...."
But everybody know when something's working, and when
it's not, despite the recommendations'.
I thought it was really sweet what Izzy wrote, by the
way [Editor's Note: Check out Izzy's write up on getting a sketch from Sam Kieth]
[Copy Editor's Note: Izzy said to insert "woodgie
giggles" here because Sam remembers her.] I had the
same experience of it that she did. I wondered if it
was just me remembering it that way, and when I read
it, "That's exactly the way it happened!" It's so amazing
that she's writing it down for people to read. I'm really
grateful for what she said it was so important to
her.
ST: Oooohhh I ran into her afterwards,
she was seething to put it mildly.
SK: I could tell, those tears, the frustration
of it. It was funny, because I was reading it to my
wife, and she didn't know the back story, and I said,
"And then she handed me her pants." And my wife said,
"Excuse me?!" I said, "No, they were her pants." "Yes,
now what the heck? What goes on at these conventions?"
"She had them with her."
Anyway, now that I've completely lost my train of thought
and we're completely of topic....
ST: Okay, so, back to The
Maxx. Were you expecting it to be anywhere near
as successful as it was?
SK: Okay, we all knew that. [Laughs] Sorry,
being a smartass.
ST: I mean, I was kind of shocked to hear
at San Diego, at your panel which I was not expecting
to be packed how well it did.
SK: Well, the other thing was, through The Maxx, there's this army of people who've followed
me around ever since then. There's even this newsgroup,
and people that hang out there. I'm not even doing the
book, and they're still hanging out. I'll never know
if they're Sam Kieth fans, or Maxx
fans who keep hoping I'll get off my duff and do it
again.
Nobody was expecting it. I wasn't expecting it. It
grew into something that I don't think I'll be able
to completely walk away from. It completely overwhelmed
me. It completely overwhelmed Bill Loebs, who was dialoging
the first 12 or 15 issues. Everybody that was involved,
the colorist .... It was doing a comic that happened
to ride it wasn't the comic itself, it was the sales
speculation thing at the time. But also, I was able
to go on and do 35 issues before exhausting everyone's
patience. And eventually it would fan out into the cartoon,
and go on into the inevitable development that all these
things do in terms of ... a movie. Then I was attached
to write and direct the movie, then the movie petered
out, and then the second season of the cartoon petered
out. It was all back down to like none of it happened.
Yeah, my hope was I'd get on Wolverine
for three years, I'd do what I did in Marvel
Comics Presents for Wolverine.
I'd be the guy who drew Wolverine weird, and that was
my line.
Just the fact that I would create this character, and
it would flourish into all of this stuff, how people
would respond to I don't think it was just my stories.
People were going through stuff, sometimes emotional,
heavy stuff, and they would gravitate to this book.
They would talk about it in the letter columns. Me and
my wife often felt like it was beyond our control. We'd
get these heavy letters from people going through stuff,
and they would write to each other and talk to each
other, and it just seemed like The Maxx was the place they happened to be working
it out. I think they would've wound up working it out
some other place; it wasn't necessarily our book. We'd
never had any children, but if we did, doing the letter
column for those 35 issues .... It was the fans who
eventually told me, "Look, you keep starting stories,
and you're not finishing them. This is out of control.
This is crazy. You've got to do something." I realized
then it was time to quit. I didn't know what I was doing
anymore. I was clearly restless, but afraid to quit.
But it was time to quit until I knew what I definitely
wanted to do.
ST: I remember when I was reading The
Maxx, I used to sometimes read the letters columns
first.
SK: Oh, everybody did that. It was the best
part of the book, the letters column.
ST: The Maxx first
came out before the internet really got going.
It was a unique community that developed there.
SK: I know. It's not the same even now with
people writing letters on a newsgroup doesn't have
the intimacy that all those letters that people write
to you in person do. People pour out more heavy emotions
when they write letters. I mean, there can be a heavy
exchange in an e-mail, but it just seems like there's
an intimacy when you take the time to write somebody
a letter.
It's kind of missing today, with them dropping letter
columns in comics.
Whoever I wind up reprinting all The
Maxxes with I still haven't decided
ST: So they are going to come back into print?
SK: Yeah, they are going to come back if I can
finally decide who I'm going to do it with. That's the
dilemma right now; it's a tug o' war between a couple
of different publishers that I'm currently talking about
it with, because I want to still hold on to everything.
I'd like to after they do volumes reprint all of
them, but all the letters, too. In a collected format
for somebody who would be insane enough to go through,
because, what is it like ... 600 or 900 pages with all
the letters, too. But just for somebody that had their
letter in it, that remembered it, and that once every
ten years wanted to plow through the whole thing and
just remember it as it was published. Starting out with
1 through 20 making sense, 20 through 30 being the disappointing
follow up that had some interesting moments, and 30
through 35 being absolutely chaotic as hell until we
eventually had to pull the plug on the whole thing.
It's like adolescence, it's like growing up for me
it was anyway.
God! That sounds so self immortalizing, like we're
talking about some great thing. If I was reading this
[interview] and I hadn't read The
Maxx, I'd be like, "Who is this putz?! Who is
this pinhead and why does he think he's so damn important?"
But for the people that read it, I don't think it was
The Maxx itself. I think it
was who they were when they were reading that book and
what was going on with them.
But yeah, it was pretty weird with some of the heavy
stuff. I don't know why it winds up being so dark. I'm
not really as dark a person as that. I don't think.
Everybody has secrets, but ultimately, there's only
so many secrets you're going to have, right? There's
only like 160 good secrets, and pretty much everybody
keeps cycling through the same ones. I don't think mine
are more interesting than anybody else's. [Laughs] "Oh,
you've got #137? I have #28."
I was really taken with the website [Sequential
Tart].
ST: Oh, thanks.
SK: I think it should be a model. I haven't
checked out too many other comic websites, but as far
as the site, I'm really taken with how you have all
your back issues cataloged and easy to find, not only
by the subject and month, but the person. It seems that
is one advantage to the web I mean you could have
[paper] issues, but going through all the issues and
trying to find who is in a particular issue would drive
me nuts. There's one advantage to a computer in that
it seems that
ST: You can make a data base pretty easily.
SK: Yeah! I was just talking to Diana Schutz
the other day and I said, "Guess what! I know you said
this over at Sequential Tart." "Oh? How'd you know that?" "I'm
not going to tell you, but I've got friends over there
..."[laughs]. It's really cool to go through and see
I said to myself, "Man, I could spend like, two months
going through their data base looking up all these people
that I used to know."
[Laughs] I'm glad you're not Carrie Landers, or this
might be a kind of intense conversation. "So, why did
you have to screw up #5? It started out really nice,
making sense, and then you had to go off the deep end,
and then you give us a bad ending on top of it. You
disgust me, Kieth. You're a failure." "~Sigh~ You're
right, Carrie." [Laughs]
[Editor's Note: Carrie really is a nice, sweet,
kind-hearted, lovely Tart and would never ever
say anything like that to Sam Kieth. She threatened
to beat me up, if I didn't say that
.]
ST: If it makes you feel any better, I liked
Zero Girl #5 quite a bit, actually.
SK: It's okay if people don't. What do you think
of the idea that the violence was out of place with
the rest of the characterization of the book we really
didn't get enough into them as people?
ST: But ... I think it is a "payoff" for
all the tension that has been building throughout the
issues. All that tension building it had to come out
some time. Personally, I think the series would have
been better if it had been one issue longer.
SK: Really?
ST: Because you really had to wrap up quite
a bit in #5.
SK: That's an interesting point. Somebody else
said that at the panel. That was one of the things I
was kind of curious about. Hmmn ... I kind of get into
this with doing another Zero Girl series, Katherine. Whether or not in
the new series to play up the physical jeopardy of there's
somebody and they have supernatural powers, because
physical jeopardy is one of the things that whether
it be physical jeopardy because of a supernatural power
or the soap opera thing of "I'm going to leave you because
you don't listen to me," something has to be at stake
in a drama for you to keep watching, whether it be feelings
or actions or something.
But on the other side, I do want to get more into the
characters' emotions. I'm just concerned that some of
my propensity for gimmicks and bizarreness overwhelms
your feelings. If you're watching and you care about
the character and you say, "Okay, okay, uh-oh they're
being chased by a washing machine?!" This is fine, but
it's a red herring to the plot. The real issue is are
Amy and Tim going to get back together, or in the case
of the second series that I'm doing, I want to answer
the question of does Amy really know who Tim is? Ten
years have passed, and they get together again does
she really love Tim, or does she love the idea
of who she was when she was a teenager with him?
That's what's interesting to me, and that's where I
get stuck trying to talk about my wife. I remember when
we first got together, and she's like "I really don't
want to remember when we first got together." I'm like,
"Why? It's romantic." She's, "So? It was illegal."
"Aww, come on." She's like, "No. I'm serious. I really
don't want to go back there. Let's just move on."
ST: Talking a bit about that, how do you
think that the story is changed by reversing the genders
in Zero Girl? I know that you
don't want to spell out all the details of your private
life, but
SK: [Laughs] Oh why not ...
ST: Do you think changing the genders change
the story in any way?
SK: Well, I think it's probably not as good.
It's almost like a cheat, to try and change the characters
and I'm not fooling anybody.
ST: Do you think that the emotional truth
of the story was changed?
SK: I don't think I ever got to quite the depth
of what it's really like. I feel like I kind of hit
on some of the issues externally. I feel that in some
ways it's a valid point that the circles and squares
and some of the theatrics and stuff while interesting
to me as an artist and also as a concept; it was a side
issue to the core of the issue.
In fact, every female reviewer brought this up, which
I thought was interesting even more so than men reviewers
they all had a moral problem with her being involved
with somebody so old. They were more aware of it as
a potentially sticky problem beyond the personal matter,
that morally it was a compromising situation. I think
it was more pronounced with him being male on top of
everything else. I very rarely had people bring it [age
difference] up when I was involved with my wife. Of
course, I think it's part of the problem with Tim being
in a teacher role. I think if it happened to be just
a person she knew it could be different, and also she
was portrayed as not necessarily particularly mature.
We really felt like she was more of a baby duck. Some
people when they're 15, they can be emotionally closer
to 17 especially since we know that girls mature earlier.
But, I don't think it really got to what it was really
like to be with my wife. That's a whole 'nuther story
that, frankly I'm not sure I have the honesty to tell.
It's really intriguing to me because I don't think I've
seen an age difference story that's really told by somebody
who's really been there, at least not in comic form
before. To do it, I think you'd have to dispense with
all the fantasy elements and just tell it as a regular
story.
And then there are all the clichιs that everybody already
has in their minds, like the typical Summer
of '42 clichι of the young boy; it's attributed
to some burgeoning manhood thing. People are slapping
him on the back and saying "All right!" There's that
extreme, and then the other clichι is the reverse: the
evil guy who drags the little girl into the bushes.
Only it's, what, an evil 30 year-old woman dragging
a boy into the bushes? That's clearly pretty stupid
and nobody would go for that one. So, there's those
two clichιs. But the reality is not really explored.
The only way around it because I did try to respect
her [wife's] feelings, because some things are more
important than a damn story. Like the person I've lived
with for the past 20 years one idea I had was to tell
the story of five different couples of all varying ages,
who all had age differences between them, from an 80
year old man dating a 40 year old woman, to somebody
who was in our situation, and show how it affected all
of them, to show what they all had in common.
>> Click
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