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--- Renee French is fantastic. Her new coffee-table
book, Marbles in My Underpants is coming out from Oni Press NEXT WEEK.
A retrospective of her work to date, Marbles is an absolutely definitive
collection by one of the most idiosyncratic and potent creators working
today. And then go to http://www.onipress.com/exclusives.shtml
and check out her webcomic "The Ticking" there. It has a
monkey in a nightgown. --- Your work makes me feel all oogie. Why is that? Oh sure, start with the hard stuff. I'm not sure why my work makes people feel "oogie,"
and I'd like to know more about your "oogie" feelings. What
things in particular make you feel that way? Hm. I think your work makes me feel oogie because
there's nothing about it superficially that makes me THINK it's going
to make me feel oogie. It's a kind of creeper-oogie. A sneak attack is a lot more fun. I don't think oogie is bad. I kind of like oogie,
because it's like dreaming and sort of knowing that you're dreaming
in the dream but not being able to become lucid therein. So it's kind
of scary and kind of wonderful and kind of creepy and kind of beautiful
all at once. What's behind that door? It could be candy. It could
be a bucket of knives. Who knows? Let's open it and see. It strikes me as a pretty pedestrian thing, comparing
your work to dreams, but goddammit I think it's pretty dream-like.
I've always had nightmares, they were a lot more
violent when I was little, and I remember them when I wake up and
think about them throughout the day. I think they're an influence
in my work, but an influence on the mood rather than on actual story-lines.
When you're dreaming you don't have that stop button on your creativity
that you have when you're awake. You really don't have that button
when you're a kid either. Oh, man, don't get me started with the dreams.
I'm a wreck with 'em, and have been all my life. I actually, for a
while, developed lucid dreaming skills (as a result of a long and
jagged period of recurring nightmares...) Me too, exactly. I've always had just awful dreams
and I'm not a good sleeper, so I developed the lucid dreaming skills
early on to try to cope with the nightmares. I still use them now
when I'm in a jam as far as storytelling goes. I mean, if I'm stuck
on something (a story element) I'll give it shot and sometimes it
turns something up for me. Do you find that your dreams inform your work? Some things are directly out of dreams I've had (to
use Corny's Fetish as an example) like the dream sequence where
he's got this little person in a paper cup, etc., that's just a dream
I had during the pencilling of the book. I'd gone to sleep thinking
about Corny dreaming and had that dream and got up and wrote it down.
But I don't really feel that a dream alone makes a good comic story.
They have lots of amazing imagery and strange plot twists, but dreams
are seldom interesting to anyone but the dreamer himself. I felt that way about Corny's Fetish. I told Jamie
(Jamie S. Rich, Boy Editor of Oni Press) something similar, and he
responded to me as though I were poopers, but MAN something about
Corny’s Fetish just wigged me out. It just got under my skin,
but I couldn't stop reading it. I actually felt myself reading it
faster and faster. Thanks so much. What's odd is that there's nothing there that
says "creepy" about CF, you know? It's not like you got
boiled puppies or anything. In fact, I liked the dog in Corny's Fetish
a lot. He was great and sad and made me think of my dog. My mom and
I used to wonder if we died in the house, would the dog eat us? We
decided that no, she would not. Except for maybe a finger, but when
she realized that she was eating one of our fingers, she would stop. While having dinner with a forensic entomologist
friend we got to talking about pets eating their owners after they're
dead, and it turns out that dogs don't do it. There is one breed of
dog that's been known to nibble on their owners (I'll find out which)
but the others just don't do it. BUT, cats will start eating the face
of their owner just hours after his/her death. This is exactly why I'm a dog person. I checked with my source - the breed of dog that's
been known to eat its dead owner is COCKER SPANIEL. It's the kind
of dog my brother has. Wow, I don't feel like I'm answering questions. I'm
sure you'll make it all better in the end. That's okay: I don't feel like I'm asking any.
This will rock. I think we're off to a great start. This is really funny. What stuff of yours creeps you out? And do you
find that your reaction to your own work runs opposite of other people's
reactions? Well, you found Corny's Fetish to be creepy
and I really didn't know that it was a creepy story at all until someone
told me. When I was working on it, I was so inside the story and Corny's
character (and Buck's character) that everything that happened within
that world seemed so normal. I was really sad drawing the final pages. Well, okay, this almost leads us to a question--
how DO you make a story? What's your comics process? OK, I get an idea and put it in my notebook. Then
I think a lot. I hammer out the story in my head, taking a shower,
driving, lying in bed unable to sleep, until I've got it pretty tight.
Then I write it down in screenplay form and I've got all the pictures
in my head. Then I do really rough thumbnail drawings, that only I
can decipher, to go with the script. This is boring, isn't it? Then what? Then I lay out the thumbnails into pages
and start pencilling. I used to get really bored with pencilling so
I'd ink each panel after I pencilled it but then after hanging out
with Gene Fama I started pencilling the whole story before starting
to ink (I don't use ink anymore though, I use a black pencil). I work
on a drawing board on my lap, well, on a pillow on my lap and get
a lot of headaches. Were you asking about the physical process or the
mental one? Can you scan and send me some of the undecipherable
thumbnails that I could run with this piece? And yeah, what's the mental process? I know that when I'm drawing, I put myself in the
character's head. And I stay in the character's head a lot.
I showed those thumbnails to my pal Dustin. He
said, "She must have pretty big thumbs." So, those thumbnails will like be the only artwork
you run with this piece and people will come up to me on the street
and say, "Hey, I saw that thing on SAVANT! Those drawings are
AMAZING! How do you get such detail?" And I'll just shake my
head and look at my shoes and think,"Oh, that kooky Matt Fraction." I can see it. If ANYONE comes up to you on the street and says
that, I will send you Five (5) US Dollars. What kind of shoes? Skechers, with lights in the soles. Are you Ms. America? The Ms. America 2000 lady
is called Heather Renee French. Is that you? Very funny. Yeah, that's me all right. Actually I
was on a photo expedition with 6 guys down the San Juan river for
10 days (no toilet, no shower, no nothin' and on the siltiest river
in the world) when the Miss America pageant was taking place and when
I got home my answering machine was full of wise ass people saying,
"congratulations! I didn't even know you were giving it a shot..."
She is the evil Renee French. It's always good to have a nemesis. Where are you, geographically? Where are you from? I'm in Jersey. How old are you? Is that bad to ask? No, I was born the week JFK was shot. What's an average workday like for you? There's no real average day, but when I'm in the
final drawing stage of a project my day starts with Grape Nut Os.
Then I try to wake myself up with some email and NY Times on the web
and I end up getting to the drawing around 2pm. I work pretty much
straight through to about 4 and then take a break to read email. Then
I get back to work and work until 7 or so and break for dinner, then
I get back to work around 8 and work until around 1am. That's what
my schedule has been like for the last few months and now that I've
finished the book I was working on, The Soap Lady, it feels
weird not to be drawing all day. Have you ever had cereal but used yogurt instead
of milk? Like vanilla yogurt? It's really good with cereal, and more
filling, too. I do not need more filling. What kind of educational background/formal training
do you have? I've got a BFA in Drawing. Are there any other mediums in which you kick
out the jams? (Editor’s Note: At this point, Renee went
looking for the definition and context of "kick out the jams”
by asking folks on the Brian Michael Bendis message boards to help
her out. I felt bad, so I sent her the following email, trying to
explain.) Acceptable Usage of “kick out the jams” "Hey, did you see HELP?" And then you go "Sure, yeah, I could be into
some kicking out of the jams" And then you kick out the jams. These are all acceptable responses, I think. It's good to kick out the jams. I could be into some kicking out of the fucking jams. I make black & white photographs with a 4x5 field
camera. My subject matter is pretty much all over the place in my
photography, not many portraits, well, except for the portraits of
the squished bugs on truck grills, but the photography feeds the drawing
and vice versa
Okay. Tell the folks reading this who may not
know about Marbles in My Underpants just what exactly Marbles in my
Underpants is. Right. Marbles is a 240 or so page collection
containing almost everything I've ever done in comics plus some new
stuff. It's got my old Fantagraphics Grit Bath stuff, and the
Dark Horse books, Corny's Fetish and The Ninth Gland
and then all the shorts I did for Zero Zero, and Last Gasp,
and foreign anthologies and some drawings and sketches that haven't
been published before. Everything under one cover. I'm excited about
it. One thing I've read of yours is The Adventures
of Rheumy Peepers and Chunky Highlights that you did with Penn Jillette.
There's something... Horribly depressing about that stuff, somehow?
I don't know, but it's really fascinating and interesting and strange.
On your site, you've got some work you've done for Penn and Teller...
So, how'd you hook up with them? Penn and I have been really good friends for a long
time, but here's how the Rheumy & Chunky thing happened.
Penn and our friend Barry Marx were sitting around talking about Debbie
Harry's dog who had rheumy eyes, rheumy peepers, in fact, and they
thought that sounded like an old Borsht-Belt comedian's name. So they
started making up stories and back story and then some time later
they saw a TV commercial for some hair product that promised chunky
highlights in your hair, and that sounded like it could be the name
of Rheumy Peeper's partner, Chunky Highlights. How did you find working with a writer? To the
best of my knowledge, that's not something you do often. No, it's not. I find collaboration really difficult.
If it's not my story, I make myself crazy worrying about how close
my artwork comes to what the writer saw when he/she wrote the story,
so I avoid it. Penn is easy to work with, but I still had that weird
feeling in my stomach about the artwork not being right. I did that
in a way different style for me to try to fix that feeling. I must warn you that my typing might be goofy for
the next few rounds. I'm typing with one finger. I've got some tingling
in my drawing fingers and have been advised to not type or draw for
a little while. I think the Soap Lady did a job on me. Do you want to wait a day or two for the tingly
stuff to go away? No, that's ok. I'm getting pretty fast with one hand. Do you think that the tingly feeling in your hand
is perhaps akin to Spider-Man's spider sense? I hope so. Perhaps the tingly feeling is indicative of superpowers
manifesting themselves within you. Possibly. You should stop now; you're getting my
hopes up. Do you have any pre-existing super powers? How
about weaknesses, like kryptonite or the color yellow? My superpower is remembering faces. I never forget
'em. But with names, I bite the big schlong. Are there any foods that make you uncomfortable? Uni, and those little hard cubes of fruitlike substance
found in fruitcake. HELLISH! Can I ask about the sex stuff (in your comics)? Sure, kick out the jams. Okay. What's up with the sex stuff? Matt, you're going to have to be more specific. I know, I know, I just couldn't resist. Amusing, Fraction. Well, to be serious (ha ha boogers), what I'm
angling towards goes back to the first question, actually, about the
oogieness of your work. You said that sometimes reactions to your
work aren't what you planned and so forth... And the PR Oni put out
for Marbles used "horror" as an adjective for your work...
I guess what I'm trying to ask is... What kind of responses do you
try to elicit? I've thought about this and I don't really try to
elicit any response from anyone but myself. I don't think about the
reader's reaction when I'm working. That would drive me crazy. I do
love the feeling of drawing something that makes my own skin crawl
though. "to be serious (ha ha boogers)" made me
snertz coke through my nose. Snertz? Wow, good word. Thanks, but it's really Penn's word. What's going on in my head? I guess it depends on
the story. The story I'm working on right now is an online strip for
Oni Press's website and it's called “The Ticking”. The idea
came from something that freaks me out. HOLES. A small hole through
which you can only see a tiny piece of what's going on on the other
side is way creepy. It's actually the same feeling I get about the
ocean. All that dark water beneath you. You can't see what's down
there. I guess I'm afraid of the dark. You see, I'm not very good
at describing it. Pictures do a better job. So, I do like to do stories
about things that scare me, yes, because I like that feeling. But
I don't think I'd call them "horror." I don’t mean to imply that... your work is
manipulative or anything. But there are REALLY disquieting elements
at work there: some of the sex stuff, glands and stitches and violence...
Does your work make YOU feel oogie? It does make me feel oogie and I like that. I just don't try to judge what will make someone else feel oogie. I don't expect anyone else to be creeped out by a hole in the wall. But it's great when that happens. I do love to hear, "that story made the hair on the back of my neck stand up." But I also love to hear that it made them laugh,
or feel sad. Do you allow-- or do you find, maybe accidentally--
that reader/audience perception of past works influences work you're
currently doing? I mean, do you find yourself pulling back? How does
audience response-- which, seems to me to be one of the best (or worst)
things about comics that there's a vocal audience that interacts with
the work and then comments on it-- influence you? Wow! I sound like a jerk off! Don't brag about it. I think I actually know the answer to that one. At
least in terms of "So you find yourself pulling back?" I
know that my work isn't as harsh as it was when I did Grit Bath
but I was a different person then. I think if I were to let the audience
response influence my work, I would have to keep up the grossest,
most shocking work and maybe get more shocking. But, people change,
and to just keep doing the same stuff over and over, just because
you know it works on some level, seems dishonest to me. My work just
comes out the way I'm feeling at the time. Also, I learned a long
time ago that if you pay attention to what the audience says, you
can wind up crying in a bathtub with stale French bread and a jar
of peanut butter. Do you find people have weird perceptions of you,
based on your work? Uh, yup. Did you? Actually, I was kinda hoping you’d be just
like you are. Which sounds like a cop-out, maybe, but it’s the
truth. Funny and approachable. I certainly didn’t think you were,
you know, a jabbering nut-job or anything like that. Do you go to lots of conventions, have interactions
with fans, etc? What are those like? It can be fun. People are surprised when they see
the way I look. Most seem to be expecting a tiny dark haired girl
with circles under her eyes and striped stockings. That's not the
kind of girl I'm. Also, I've had my run-ins with animal rights people.
There was one in particular that was kinda sorta disturbing. During
a signing, this guy in an anti-fur t-shirt really laid into me about
my depictions of cruelty to animals. He asked me why I hated animals
and if I really did those things in my stories. The guy was a whack-job.
I hypnotize rabbits. I love all the little animals. Except groundhogs. I saw this, thought of you: http://www.hatsofmeat.com/ What should I have for dinner tonight, Fraction?
Sushi? Chinese? I would say Chinese food. Something good, with
lots of rice so you'll get all tuckered out and sleep real good and
then wake up tomorrow with lots of pep. Sushi's always more of a Friday,
work-week's-over sort of deal for me. See? I told you I was lousy at interviews. Ooh, wait, I thought of a good one. Why comics? I started out showing my drawings in small galleries
in Philadelphia (I lived there for 8 years) and, I think I passed
a comic store every day on my way to work and started checking out
what they had in their 'underground' section. I remember buying Weirdo,
and Yummy Fur and Dirty Plotte and I realized that I
could reach a much bigger audience if I did comics instead. But I
had to learn the language. What sort of things influence your work? Everything I guess, but I notice the biggest changes
in my work when I come back from a trip. I spent some time in Tromso,
Norway, where there were roughly 2 hours of daylight and 6 feet of
snow on the ground. It was so peaceful and strange. And I saw the
work of Terje Risberg, and Svein Nyhus and something sort of clicked.
But it was a quiet click. And that was big influence. What books or titles were influential to you once
you started to learn the language? I remember reading Ed the Happy Clown and
just thinking that this was the ultimate storytelling medium. It also
helps to be Chester Brown. Are there any comics you read regularly now? Dave Cooper's Weasel, Pete Sickman Garner's
Hey Mister, Scott Morse's Soulwind and anything by Jim Woodring
and Anke Feuchtenberger. I don't know. I still don't feel like I "get"
it. Like I'm missing something. But I'm starting to not care about
following those rules as much lately. I think there are interesting parallels here between
you and Chester Brown, actually-- in light of the 'how you got into
comics' bit-- where I don't know that you could call his work 'horror',
but there's really something horrific going on there (beyond the emotional,
autobio stuff, that is...). Same thing with Jim Woodring, too, I think. Well, I think Jim's work is terrifying and I think
he's a genius. Which is interesting to me that he's doing the
Marbles intro, and accomplishes a similar effect with his color work
as you do with your pencil work-- some weird, psychic sense of false-security... Thanks Matt. Man. I'm so psyched that Jim did the
intro for Marbles. It's a work of art itself. What's your favorite stuff in Marbles? 'Mitch and the Mole' is one of my favorite stories,
and Corny's Fetish and I like the newer shorts. But that's
probably because they're the most recent work in the book. There's
so much in there. What kind of relationship do you have with your
work once it's finished/published? I put it away pretty quickly when it comes back from
the printer, and don't look at it again until I absolutely need to
refer to it. I have to go on to the next thing. While putting together
the 'marbles' collection with Jamie, I saw stuff that I hadn't read
in probably four years. Why is that? I just need to move to the next thing. Are you satisfied with your work, ever? Eh. Not so much, no. There are always bits that I
feel I could have drawn better, or awkward wording I could have fixed
and I can't help but stare at those bits until I gag. But not really. I think your shorts are just as strong, albeit
in different ways, as your longform stuff-- there's a pop and crackle
to the shorts, you know? They're lovely. Thanks. This might be dumb, but do you have a preference
as to long stories or short stories? It's not dumb, but I don't really have an answer.
I like them both. I think longer stories are more satisfying in terms
of being able to really explore an idea thoroughly. I don't like to
rush the pacing of a story to fit it into a number of pages if I really
like the idea. But short stories are a lot of fun. You can get something
off your chest in a day and move on to something else. The work on your site, which is indicative of
the book THE SOAP LADY coming out from Top Shelf, is more pencil-oriented
than the pen-and-ink work you've done before. Is this where you think
your work is going from now on? And why? Well, the pencil work you're talking about is all
I've been doing now for almost two years with some exceptions. The
first comic story I did in that style was a three-page story for L'Association's
Comix 2000 called, "ZZZ." I'd been living in Australia for a few months and
working on colored pencil drawings and when I came back to the states
I just couldn't go back to pen & ink. So, I did “ZZZ”
in black pencil instead, and haven't gone back to ink. I've done several
short pieces in that style for various anthologies and Oni's online
story, "The Ticking," and I've been working on The Soap
Lady that will be out in June. I think I was always trying to
achieve a sort of velvety texture with my crosshatching, especially
in the large black areas, and the pencil really does that for me.
The drawing process isn't any faster with the pencil, but I love the
look of it. So yeah, for now I'm sticking with it. It's really fantastic work. I think the pencils
give your work a softness and warmth that wasn't there with the pen
and ink-- it gives the work a whole different vibe, somehow... Like
more subversive, maybe? I found that the warmth-- that's the only
way I can describe it, I think-- of the pencils almost lulled me into
a different mindset than the pen and ink stuff, you know? Almost as
if I was fooled into thinking I wasn't looking at your work, so that
set of expectations was thrown out of the window, with the baby and
the bathwater and the randy schoolmarm and the whatnot. Is there anything else you can tell me about The
Soap Lady? It's inspired by a saponified woman on display at
the mutter museum in Philadelphia. When I lived in Philly I spent
lots of lunch breaks just staring at her in her glass box. The
Soap Lady is a picture book about a little boy and a woman made
of soap. It's about friendship, and loss, and a ventriloquist dummy
and bloodthirsty townspeople and those soap horns your mom gives you
in the tub when you're a kid. I just finished it and man does my hand
hurt. Will you marry me? Um. --- To learn more about the woman who probably won’t
be my wife, you should go—right fucking now—to www.reneefrench.com
and watch one of my favorites kick out the jams. Marbles in my Underpants
will be released next week from Oni Press, and The Soap Lady will
be released in June from Top Shelf. I would like to thank Renee French for enduring all this. She’s the bee’s knees. --- If You Are Interested in Contributing to Savant. To
Fully Understand Savant Distribution. To Download the Free Adobe Acrobat Reader. --- --- |
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