Quote/Unquote

March 3, 2008 on 9:52 pm | In Interviews

A big part of what we’re planning for Indie Jones is creator interviews. One of the best parts about working at a place like Wizard is that on any given day, we staffers can say, “Gee, I’d really like to talk to Artist X on the phone,” and within a few days, that becomes a reality. While Dave and I are currently cooking up a new slew of comic chats to post here, I thought I’d drop a few links to interviews with indie folks that have gone up since out latest site redesign, including:

My good bud Dylan Brucie talking to mini comics favorite Jim Mahfood about his current projects and his feelings on his art for Colt 45:

They’ve been really cool about sponsoring all of my art shows and galleries. Whenever I do an event, they’ll send cases of beer. They’re sponsoring the show in Brooklyn. So there’s going to be free Colt 45 there for everyone. I think it’s funny, because it’s the sh– me and my friends used to drink when we were freshmen in art school because we were poor and we could only afford a 40oz [Laughs]. So it’s really weird to have it come full circle. And the reason I named my studio 40oz. Comics is because back in the day we would sit around and drink 40s while we drew comics and stuff. It’s weird that I eventually got work with a 40oz. company.

My recent interview with New York Times best-selling cartoonist Jeff Kinney on his acclaimed kids series Diary of A Wimpy Kid and his lead character Greg Heffley’s origins:

I had my moments of being a wimpy kid. I think I was a pretty average kid, but my wimpy moments were pretty far off the charts. I did not have a diary, but if I did, one of the stories I might have recorded or might have omitted on purpose was that in swim team when I was a kid I used to hide out in the locker room and for the whole practice I would hide out in the stalls and literally wrap myself in toilet paper to prevent myself from getting hypothermia. That’s kind of where Greg Heffley was born, I think, from those moments that I’m not so proud of.

And finally, a long-gestating interview I did with the extremely patient Neil Kleid on his life as an up-and-coming graphic novelist:

The big question I get outside of the comics industry is “What do you do?” And my first reaction is “I tell stories.” Even though my day job is as an art director and I write novels and draw comics or whatever, my first response is “I write stories.” Whether that’s “I write stories and my ultimate end goal is X, Y, Z,” I just want to tell stories well and for people to read them.

I should probably take this opportunity to note that we’re also doing what we can to resurrect some of the more popular interviews that were taken down when the site redesign hit. If there’s anything you’d like to see, please comment here or jump on the message boards and let us know what you’re thinking.

- KP