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Anders Nilsen at Comic-Con
The work of Anders Nilsen can be cryptic, daunting. But his comics are as raw and primal as they are poetic, and their philosophical scope and artistic magnitude have never been clearer than in the Big Questions anthology. I have to admit that I was afraid to pick up the brick of a collection. Then I attended the Epic Literary Adventures panel at the San Diego Comic-Con, where the Chicago artist admitted to Drawn and Quarterly’s creative director Tom Devlin that even he had to draw a map so that the sprawling volumes wouldn’t contradict each other. It turns out he’s a regular guy who just happened to write and draw an ambitious, inspiring, and thought-provoking 600-page comic book about birds, snakes, and a plane crash.
Big Questions by Anders Nilsen
MW: You’re in the midst of a reading tour to promote the Big Questions anthology. How’s that going? How do you structure your events?
AN: I just finished the first leg, going up the West Coast. I leave again in a week for Toronto and Minneapolis. It’s been great so far. People are coming out and I’m having great conversations. Most of the stops were basically just me signing books for a while, doing a slide show, talking about the book, and doing some readings from it, a bit of Q&A, signing a few more books… and then going out for a beer.
MW: The book is massive. Did you prefer long, epic comic book stories as a kid? The Kree-Skrull War? The introduction of the Inhumans?
AN: Yeah, totally. The X-Men battling the Brood, Elfquest, The Dark Knight–all that stuff.
Brian Ralph at San Diego Comic Con 2011
The comics of Brian Ralph are packed with effortless, raw energy yet arranged in a ridiculously knowledgeable and sophisticated manner, belying both his punk rock roots as a part of the Ft. Thunder scene and product of the Rhode Island School of Design. Building on the primordial, mostly wordless, and much loved caveman-meets-time-machine opuses Cave-In and Climbing Out, Ralph’s latest collection boasts storytelling that is as bold as the brushwork. Following an engaging panel at Comic-Con led by Drawn and Quarterly‘s creative director Tom Devlin regarding the epic literary adventures of Anders Nilsen, Jeff Smith, and Ralph, I had to follow up with the professor of sequential art at the Savannah College of Art and Design for more thoughts on Daybreak and more.
MW: What’s it like for you to revisit finished works and then compile them? Are they time capsules for your personal life and events as well as for your artistic progression? Do you ever get sentimental when reading them?
BR: Normally I don’t get sentimental for old work. Once it’s done, it’s done. I don’t ever reread the old work either; I just move on. But with Daybreak, you are right. I do get a little sentimental I really enjoyed that character of the one-armed guy. In a weird way, we became friends over the course of the comic. I was basically drawing an imaginary friendship and I didn’t want it to end. But I knew I had a responsibility to move on.
MW: Daybreak‘s second-person perspective/first-person shooter style is quite unusual in comics. Were there ever difficult moments in writing when you wished you didn’t do that? Did you ever consider changing the perspectives like Rashoman?
BR: It was a very exciting experiment, but I never regretted it. I really feed off challenges and working my way into difficult storytelling situations. I had established a couple of rules for myself, like, “never show the reader’s character’s hands or body” and “never let the reader’s character speak or have a word balloon,” which created some interesting problems. But it forced me to find creative solutions. I did entertain the idea of killing off the one-armed man and then allowing the reader to meet someone new, but I just liked the one-armed guy so much I couldn’t bear to leave him behind in the wasteland.
Daybreak art by Brian Ralph
GR: Are you as educated in writing stories as well as you are in drawing them? How did you go about developing your writing technique?
BR: That was something that came up when Anders Nilsen and I talked. That we just thought of a bunch of cool things that we wanted to happen in a comic, and then figured out the story around it. It strikes me as a pretty irresponsible way to tell a story, but I have been guilty of it in the past. And I have heard of the style described as “video game storytelling.” Is that bad? People say, “It’s just a bunch of stuff that happens.” Is that bad, too? I don’t know.
I never studied writing, no. But when I sit down to draw a comic, I’m not just allowing it to happen. I do have a plan for what I want and I don’t want it to be some contrived, formulaic package, either. I want it to be unexpected.