Another Orphaned Interview (?) (Patreon)

While clearing up an e-mail file I came across a quick interview that I'd done with someone last year which I don't think has actually been published. So, onto the Patreon it goes for you folks. It's actually a fun little interview, it reminds me a lot of old zine interviews I did back in the 90s where the questions were brief and often silly, and so were my answers. Relatively.

While going through these old e-mails I found several where I was ghosted, concerning potential work, con invitations and interviews. It's amazing how often you get someone e-mailing you about work or an appearance and you get back to them and they just...don't answer. Sometimes after an exchange of a few e-mails, which is even more frustratng and bizarre. Especially as the stranger on the other end is sounding positive about things moving forward. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Crickets. Even if something nutty happened -- you got fired, the project or license fell through, your business shut down, your dog ate your interview questions -- just let the freelancer know. Common courtesy. Professionalism. Cripes a'mighty.

Anyway, I should go to bed so I can get up a few hours before the Tear Them Apart Videocast tomorrow (which starts at 9 pm EST). At least one person has indicated that they're going to watch it. Unless they ghost us. Har har. We're obscure.

Okay, then, here's the interview:

Q: Your characters have always reminded me of Alan Moore and Alan Davis’s D.R. and Quinch, the alien JD anarchists from 2000 AD, created in the early 1980s. Was that series in any way an inspiration?

A: I had the Titan edition of D.R. and Quinch back in the 80s, but they weren't an influence or inspiration. The initial inspiration for the characters was alcohol. I drew them on a napkin while waiting for food after a show at CBGB's with friends. I was three sheets to the wind at the time. Milk & Cheese were just characters I'd doodle on envelopes and backing boards at cons, but one year at the San Diego Con I was asked to draw a comic with them by Kurt Sayenga and Steve Niles for Greed magazine. That lead to more appearances and eventually the comics from SLG.

Q: I understand you once worked in a comics shop. What were some of your own favorite titles?

A: I worked in comics retail for roughly six years. Over that time I started weaning off Marvel and DC titles and getting into indy genre stuff like Nexus, Judge Dredd and American Flagg. And I became a huge fan of alt/indy titles like Love and Rockets, Eightball, Hate, Weirdo, Sin, Dirty Plotte, Jim Woodring's work and many others. I was also following the comics in the Village Voice and New York Press free weeklies, which ran Mark Newgarden, Mark Beyer's Amy and Jordan, Matt Groening's Life in Hell, Charles Burns, Steven by Doug Allen, Carol Lay, Kaz. My boss, Jim Hanley, got me into The Spirit and old comic strips and I saved up enough pay to eventually buy my first Russ Cochran EC library. It was a great time to fall into all sorts of work. Heady times.

Q: Do you have a preference between Milk or Cheese?

A: No. They're brothers from different udders, a bonded pair. I love both of my hate children equally.

Q: If you were a type of cheese, what type would you be? (A Barbara Walters question!)

A: I have absolutely no idea.

Q: Soy milk, cow’s milk, goat’s milk, or other?

A: Cow's milk. I'd try the others but I doubt they'd go well with Count Chocula.

Q: I know there was talk of an animated version. Who do you hear voicing your characters?

A: There was never serious talk about optioning the characters for anything. In the 90s there was a number of tentative offers but they all included buying the characters, which was a dealbreaker for me. That's how the Eltingville Club pilot came to be at the Adult Swim, originally I was asked to do a Milk & Cheeses how. I've never been able to pin down voices for them in my head. It would be an east coast dialect, though. New York City or New Jersey.

Q: I see it as a buddy cop movie—Bad cop/bad cop. Who would play live action versions?

A: No idea. Put a gun to my head? I'd say Ed Brophy and Edgar Kennedy. Old character actors, both long dead.

Q: Did you ever hear from Merv Griffin or his estate? (I love that particular strip!)

A: No, I never heard from Merv. To my eternal regret.

Q: The Milk and Cheese issues went through multiple printings. What were their initial print runs like?

A: It sold well, for a small press humor comic. The first printing of the first issue sold around 3000 copies initally, if I remember correctly. It went through nine printings total, I don't recall the final tally. All the issues were reprinted, some multiple times, except for the seventh and final one, which SLG printed more of. The SLG collection was reprinted multiple times and then we did a second edition with a new cover, which also was reprinted. The Dark Horse hardcover collection was reprinted a few times, same goes for the paperback version. Now Dark Horse is reprinting it as part of an omnibus edition that will also include Dork and The Eltingville Club.

Q: Did you receive any actual fan mail on the strips, then or now?

A: I did, actually. Quite a bit, actually, for small press books like Milk & Cheese and Dork. I answered almost all my fan mail, something I still do now, between e-mail and DMs. My address was in all my SLG comics, eventually I had to get a P.O. Box. I still have a box of old fan mail, I used to have a few, and my wife had a box of fan mail to Action Girl, but we didn't have room for all of it and recyceled most of it. I have some mail from folks who ended up breaking into the comics industry. I'm going to use it to blackmail them.