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Ask Me Anything. (Patreon)

Published:
2020-02-27 02:50:45
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Silly or serious, comics or not. 

I'll answer everyone as soon as possible, if anyone asks anything at all.

In the future, I hope to possibly do AMAs and process posts as videos, but for the time being, I can only type back to you.

Anyway, feel free!

Comments

Joe Rauch

Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck, or 100 duck-sized horses?

Sam Hadge

Favorite SGC2C Episode?

David Cilley

I’m a big fan of the Eltingville cartoon as well as your 90’s album covers. Who’s decision was it to use the Aquabats to create the Eltingville theme song?

Evan Dorkin

I'm assuming I wouldn't be armed? Definitely 100 duck-sized horses. The big duck would take my head off in an instant. Of course, I'd rather be friends with these animals, but nature is cruel. And I probably did something to piss them off.

Evan Dorkin

I wanted the Aquabats for the themes, we asked the producers, they went and set it up. painless situation, and very exciting for us.

Eric Webb

Cheating with a 2-in-1: 1) What mainstream superhero needs to be irretrievably retired? 2) The hardcore autobiographical stuff from the Dork! era was great and sometimes at odds with the laff riot humor stuff you were putting out at the same time. Do you think you’d still approach it in the same way now, if given the chance?

Evan Dorkin

Of ours? Probably Lawsuit. I'm hard on our episodes, but that one had the best script, I think, and everyone did a nice job on the production. I'm fond of Zorak, Girly Show...parts of Hipster. $20.01. Whichever one had Klugman in it. Geez, I'm having trouble remembering most of them. Our worst was Art Show, the original ending wasn't able to be worked out, so a lot of air escaped from it. It's weak. Gum, Disease is stiff, out first attempt. But Lawsuit moves pretty well, Andy Merril's performance made Dr. Nightmare a lot funnier, Jan and Jace are funny, it clicked really well.

Brian Carter

How was working on Predator Big Game?

Andrew Lueder

How did you like working on the Yo Gabba Gabba HC? What inspired you to create the Devil Puppet?

Joe Rauch

Who was the better Hammer horror actor, Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee?

Roger H.

In the past you've worked on movie adaptations and spin offs like Predator and Bill & Ted. Assuming you had completely free reign to do whatever you wanted, money, time, etc., whatwtmovies and/or TV shows would you adapt?

Roger H.

Same goes for novels, etc.

Erik C. Jones

What's a genre of comics you'd love to work on, and what's a genre that just doesn't do it for you?

Ray Cornwall

Those last few issues of Hectic Planet are some of my favorite books of all time. I realize you're probably emotionally far away from those books, but did you have an idea where you wanted to go after the last issue?

Dan Whitehead

I first encountered your work in Deadline, and Milk & Cheese felt like a perfect fit there, with its Young Ones-esque slapstick violence. Did you ever get to spend any time or have any contact with Brett Ewins, Steve Dillon and the other artists/writers from that stable or was it simply a long distance reprint deal?

Evan Dorkin

This gets confused a lot but I was a regular contributor to Deadline for a couple of years before they started running reprints of my comics. I did a number of Milk & Cheese strips, a Hectic Planet story and a four-part Vroom Socko strip for them. I attended four UKCAC shows (I wasn't with Deadline when I first went over, but that helped get me in) and I met most of the contributors on those trips. I was also part of a Deadline signing tour with some of the cartoonists. There's a report on it in one of Si Spencer's letters pages, something about me hanging out of the open door of the tour van on the motorway (no comment). But I met most of the contributors at the time, and spent time with a few of them here and there back in the day. Glyn Dillon when he visited NYC, hung out with Steve Dillon and Garth Ennis on a few occasions, Glynn and Phil Bond attended a party at our house one Halloween, I've hung out with John McCrea (and his wife when they were in NYC). Had a memorable drunken conversation with Jamie Hewlett in a hotel bathroom after a My Bloody Valentine show. Hung out with Si Spencer. Met Alan Martin, Rachael Ball, Shaky Kane, Pol Sigerson, D'Israeli, I'm probably forgetting someone. I met Roger Langridge later on, he was a contributor while my work was being reprinted. Sadly, I never did get to meet Brett Ewins (at least not that I know of, I was liquored up at those UK cons. the only con I ever attended where alcohol was served in the same room as a panel was held).

Jonn W

Two in one... Name your favourite 5 Bands And Name the 5 songs that changed your life..

Evan Dorkin

I know where things go for about the next year or two in their lives after HP #6/The Bummer Trilogy. I had a batch of issues/stories planned, they're still all filed away. I jot down some notes once in a blue moon about the series/characters, although it's not even on the back burner, it's more like on a back burner in someone's kitchen in another country. I still hope to do a few stories or something, although I know I'll never do an extended run of issues.

Evan Dorkin

I don't really have genres I think about, just projects, really. I'd like to do more comics for younger readers, maybe something like Blackwood but all-ages and more cartoony, like Kid Blastoff/Biff-Bam-Pow. I'd like to do a long-form memoir, in the style of the short autobio Dork comics. I have a creator-owned superhero project I've wanted to write, but the street's littered with the dead bodies of those things. It seems the only real way to get any traction with that sort of thing is to have some success at Marvel and DC before embarking on your own convoluted universe. I honestly enjoy superhero stuff, but I can't read anything beyond old Kirby and Ditko, more or less. I can't ever see myself writing a straight western or a historical drama or anything heavily involving a culture I'm not a part of. I'd be too anxious about getting things right and not coming off like an imbecile. I find mystery/detective stories impossible to put together. I dislike serial killer stuff on the whole, I have no taste for espionage/spy/men's adventure-type stuff. Black ops and all that. My eyes roll up in my head. I doubt I'd be happy doing straight fantasy or swords and sorcery, unless it was something really short. I don't know if I could do it, without it being jokey or being something related to Beasts of Burden. I probably wouldn't be good at non-fiction/biographical comics.

Evan Dorkin

Oooh. I'd have to say I prefer Cushing on the whole, but I'm a fan of both. But I think I do light up more when Peter Cushing enters a scene for the first time, he's just so likable. Lee has a tendency to advertise his boredom or irritability with a role, he practically glares and gripes his way through the movies he has contempt for (a fair share, especially when he'd get bored at Hammer or was in some WTF 80's crap). Cushing is always a pro, even in the silliest shit. Cushing might have more range (?) he can play silly and doddering, which Lee couldn't. Lee is certainly more commanding and imposing, a Cushing Dracula is pretty unthinkable. Anyway, I like when they're on the same heroic side in Horror Express, that just makes me super happy. I want 12" Sideshow-type figures of them both.

Evan Dorkin

I really enjoyed doing those two stories but I was very anxious about the work, and my OCD kicked in very hard when it came to matching everything from the models we did for the Super Martian Robot Girl shorts. I was very nervous drawing those pages and doing the best we could, I was really proud of the show and the work we did on it. I would like to do more comics in that sort of style, cleaner lines, open (sort of) for color. The thing that troubled me the most was drawing Super Martian Robot Girl -- we designed her costume and I never really got the hang of the damned helmet, whereas others have drawn it more elegantly than I have. Ugh!

Evan Dorkin

The Devil Puppet is based on an actual puppet someone sent me back in the days when people would send us stuff through the mail. I always thought the puppet resembled Jonathan Harris from Lost in Space to a degree (at least at a certain angle), and that voice for him stuck in my head when I started the first story. I'm not sure exactly why or how my brain elected him to be a sort of horror host about pop culture urban legends, it's something that just tumbled. I remember how/why I came up with Eltingville. the Murder Family, the first Beasts of Burden story, I drew Milk & Cheese while just doodling things on a napkin while drunk -- not sure really how the concept for the Devil Puppet came together. He knows, I'm sure.

Evan Dorkin

An exciting nightmare. The gig in comics (along with Bill & Ted) that allowed me to go into comics full-time. Unfortunately, I was completely unsuited for the job. The artist originally on the project ghosted DH, and they were scrambling and Diana Schutz called me and somehow my samples were approved. I could not draw the Predator well, and unfortunately Armando Gil was a terrible choice to ink my newbie, overdrawn, over-detailed pencils. It was pre-internet, there weren't as many fan resources, and I had really shitty reference from DHC/Fox. The military stuff was hard to find, the native American imagery was even harder to pull together.It became a horrible chore, and I kept going because I was able to work through my disappointment and anxiety much better back then. I hit my deadlines, the book hit the stands, and I think writer John Arcudi would have hit me because of his disappointment over the finished art (he just shook his head and smiled at me in a disbelieving way the first time we ran into one another at a con post-Big Game, and I turned read and started laughing because I knew what he was on about. Of course, it's the best-selling comic I'll ever work on (iirc the first issue sold over 200,000 initially), I had my best-ever royalty check because of it, I sold all the art almost immediately, and I still get checks years later as DHC reprints it, along with the series I wrote (both are getting reprinted again, I believe, along with other stories to supplement the Predator: Hunters series). I get butterflies in my stomach whenever I think about drawing the tanks, cars and helicopters. I was not the right artist for that book, but I was the artist who drew it. It was a learning experience (and a new stereo and 35" tv for my bachelor apartment).

Evan Dorkin

I posted about commissions here on Patreon a little while back, if you read that it will cover prices and other information. But the easiest way is to just write me at evandorkin@gmail.com and let me know what you're interested in. FYI, I've got a pretty full list right now, an commissions added to it now will be a while before I can start them. Work is crazy right now all of a sudden, and I'm drawing slower these days (and still adding too many lines)..

Evan Dorkin

1) If you put a gun to my head, I'd say The Punisher (get it?). There are characters I wish had limitations set on how many times they appeared a year, Batman, Deadpool, Harley Quinn, Wolverine. Some villains need to be benched and aired out for a while, the fucking Joker especially. It would be cool if the Watchmen cast was put in mothballs, for different reasons than overexposure. Or being The Punisher.

Evan Dorkin

Andy Fish and I talk about Kolchak: The Night Stalker, who I know has been adapted to comics before. He's just a fun character, he'd be fun to write, and try to back up with solid stories. Back in the day I would think about wanting to write a ReBoot comic. I almost pitched a story to DHC for The Thing franchise, something Sarah and I worked up, but I was too fearful to pitch it, and the license went. Same with a Godzilla series there, which I ended up pitching to Bob Schreck at IDW, but he left the company before it went anywhere. The Godzilla plot was a lot like Cloverdale -- what it would be like to be in Manhattan during a rubber suit rampage -- so I never brought it up again, because, it would just be called a rip-off even though I wrote it beforehand. I did another pitch for a Toho-pantheon series, but, I don't remember if I ever had the chance to send it in before Bob was gone. I didn't know who else to speak with there and my anxiety issues kept me from pursuing the gig further, Eric Powell got the first gig at IDW on that license, iirc. I dunnio, I don't really give it much thought. Licensed comics are a pain in the ass, you have to get approval from two groups, and you can't do a lot of things, and I'm not enough of a fan of much to jump up and down if the offer comes my way. I turned down the TMNT revival at IDW, an offer to do a South Park project, a few other things. I did a bunch of licensed jobs for Nick Magazine that most of my readers never saw, Fairly Oddparents, Jimmy Neutron (one page only). I'm reaching at straws, will likely remember something after I hit "enter", which I'm going to do --

Evan Dorkin

Re: books -- It's not exactly the same thing, but we really, really, really would like to continue doing more work on Calla Cthulhu. We were going to bring in more characters based on old paranormal detectives and the like, along the lines of the descendants of John Silence and Carnacki we had in volume 1. The second plot involves a Tillinghast device from "From beyond", the pig-creatures from Wm Hope Hodgson's "The House on the Borderland" and a bunch of other stuff public domain would allow us to futz with. I really miss that project. Otherwise, my interests being pretty low-culture, I wouldn't sneeze at trying to write The Spider from the pulps, as a period piece. But if I won the lottery (I guess I should play the lottery?), my dream would be to edit a big, beautifully-designed HC book adapting my favorite prose horror storie to comicss, drawn by some favorite artists. Pipe dream.

Evan Dorkin

2) Re: the autobio material from Dork -- if I ever do the little memoir I'd like to do, it would take the same approach as what I've done before, some things would be like Dork #7 and deal with some very negative stuff (albeit still with jokes, I think Dork #7 was pretty funny), some would be like The Soda Thief, more straightforward and goofy.

Evan Dorkin

I am terrible at narrowing favorites down, it's like trying to order at diners where I can't decide and there's too many things I want. Shit. As a kid it was The Beatles, now I almost never listen to them, mostly Harrison-written songs, funny enough. When I was a teen, I was super into Yes, as an older teen it was Madness, for sure, and they are probably in my top ten or so. The Specials, ditto. Rocket From the Crypt is a top ten. E.L.O -- a band I loved as a kid, dismissed when I got older, and then embraced all over again. X? The Clash? My Bloody Valentine? I listen to The Thermals a hell of a lot these days. I have no fucking idea!

TimeGentleman

Thanks for doing an AMA! Another couple of Hectic Planet questions: 1) if you were given the choice between getting another bunch of issues published but with a different artist, or not ever getting to make any again, which would you go for? 2) was there ever any interest in a tv show, on your part or others'?

TimeGentleman

I'd be very interested to see your take on TMNT, but I can totally understand why you turned that and South Park down. I'd love to see more Calla!

Evan Dorkin

One Step Beyond by Madness is one I can say changed my life, I saw the video when I was 14 or so on a show called Rock World and looked for more of the same. Devo doing "Satisfaction" on SNL, that definitely stayed with me and made me go ?!? -- I think a number of songs that had early impact on my tatses were heard through television. When SNL had Fear on and the punk kids wrecked the stage and they pulled the segment -- I was lit up and freaked out. Videos were starting to appear on weird syndicated tv shows (Rock World, The Kenny Everett Video Show) and that's where I first heard The Buzzcocks, the Boomtown Rats, Grace Jones, Lena Lovich, XTC, etc. It's easier to think of songs that blew my mind or whatever, than life-changing, I guess, I have such a shitty memory for anything outside of childhood television. Roundabout, played on the camp PA system one summer...that memory sticks hard. Hearing Planet Rock on a student hangout jukebox my first year at NYU was like a experiencing a dimensional rift. First time I heard Holiday In Cambodia was like doing drugs and made me want more of whatever the hell that sort of music was. I was fairly sheltered, I played D&D and went to movies with my friends and didn't have older siblings into anything like that at the time, if the Kennedys were on SNL or Fridays or Rock World I would have found them sooner, same with X, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Bad Brains, Husker Du. I think I could add The Replacements to the list, what song, I'm not sure. On The Bus? Or something from before Tim? See, I can't give a straight answer to a goddamned thing. "Let's Go" by Broadcast was a big deal. There has to be a Beatles song, a Bowie song, a Yes song (not Yessongs, though), Night on Bald Mountain because of seeing Fantasia when I was a kid, there's a Stereolab song I don't know the name of and never can remember, maybe Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Shit, don't ask me top five anything (I mean, you can, I just become a broken robot answering) I give up! I don't know! No comment!

Evan Dorkin

The Replacements are up there. The Muffs are in a top something. Devo? I can't do this...

Evan Dorkin

I've never liked the comic, have never had any real interest in the property or characters or world, and the appeal was absolutely mystifying to every one of us working at the comic shop when the first issues came out. It's so insane that a self-published raggy parody of Frank Miller comics turned into a worldwide, ongoing, beloved sensation (and was the springboard for ding-dongs to almost sink the comics industry with the b&w boom/bust). Now I'm just happy for whoever loves it, it's a huge favorite for kids, it makes people happy. I worked on storyboard clean-up for a few episodes of the first season of the original animated series, but I never felt like it was a series I could write well or enjoy writing.

Cantsin

On average, how many hours a week do you reckon you spend working, including time spent promoting your work through social media (and time spent doing AMAs)? And do you reckon that's typical of professional comic artists/writers/colourists?

Evan Dorkin

I've considered having someone else draw it, I still think about it, but it was a money-loser even back when everything seemed to make money. I can't drag another soul into that situation, unless we went with a KS or whatever. HP's always the last thing on the list of things to do, unfortunately. As far as other media goes, I never gave it any thought, and we never had anyone reach out about optioning it for anything.

Evan Dorkin

These days, it's hard to tell. Depression and anxiety really screwed up my process and schedule this past decade or so, I'd go days without doing anything substantial. This past year things have improved some, lately I'm working maybe 8 -12 hrs a day, leaning more towards 12 as things get hectic. I don't produce nearly as quickly as I used to, and there are still days where I'm fairly useless, but I try to get something done on those days, e-mail, Patreon, paperwork, clean the studio, put art up for sale, something that moves life forward a bit. I'm fairly optimistic the way things have been going the past few months. I don't have actual days off, haven't in a looong time. Haven't had a proper vacation in I don't know how long -- eight years? Seven? Which was a weekend at the beach. Comics is super labor-intensive (most freelancing seems to be a nightmarish existence unless/until you become a big deal or develop an amazing regiment, I've achieved neither) and you're paid by the finished job, I'd say most work-a-day comics creators are running on fumes nearly all the time, working on holidays and missing out on a proper social life (if they want one). Some schedule days off, they're more organized and stable than I (and others) are. Back in the 90s, my heyday, I guess, I would work 18 hrs a day for weeks on end, sometimes go over 24 hr shifts. I think the longest period of time I was awake, mainly at work was 36 hrs, with breaks. I recall being up past 24 hrs in a stretch and then driving into Manhattan to drop off Bill & Ted pages at Marvel to hit a deadline, that happened a few times. Sometimes I'd go in by ferry. I fell asleep in someone's office a couple of times. Those were the days. These days I'll often be cooped up in the house/studio up to two weeks straight without going out for anything other than getting mail/taking out the garbage. I just get a lot less done on those hours because of age and the lizard brain. It's a living..?

TimeGentleman

I would LOVE (and crowd-fund!) new HP, but it's not a story with a definitive end point that never got told, and we're getting great new stuff from you instead, so I try not to be too bummed out by its absence! That said, it's always my go-to answer in 'which comic would you like to see an adaptation of' conversations. I just can't quite decide whether I'd prefer animated or live-action...

Roger H.

Again, time/money/interference not being a factor, my choice for a Dorkin/Dyer adaptation: The Borribles novels by Michael de Larrabeti. Do you know them? Reading Beasts of Burden gave me the same feeling as when I discovered these novels ages ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Borrible_Trilogy

Bob McLennan

Cats were a big part of your newsletters and blog posts back in the day. Do you still have pets? Did any of your fuzzy pals' likenesses ever make cameos in Beasts of Burden?

Layne V.

Do you do commercial work, and if so, do you have a manager or agent that it needs to go through, or could people approach you directly? (Apologies for the dumb not-fun vague question, but I am currently working on a project that has a way to go, but if/when it does look like it might turn into something that would make money that I could pay an artist, I would love the opportunity to talk to you about it).

Bob McLennan

Were you ever tempted to give the Eltingville gang a happier ending?

Hal Phillips

Of the different types of comics you've worked on, which ones do you enjoy doing the most? Or like, which ones would you most want to be associated with?

Evan Dorkin

No. I think the fact that Jerry escapes, as emotionally wounded as he is, is the happiest it could have ended. And, Eltingville being what it was, it shouldn't have had an actual happy ending.

Nick White

Somebody else has already asked my Deadline and Hectic Planet questions (I'd give all my spare cash to the HP Kickstarter, I fantasise about a TV series, and Dorkin, Dillon and Bond drinking together is my idea of quality fan-fiction) - but what happened with Instant Piano? I adored those gig reviews with you and Kyle Baker, but I get the impression you two don't exactly hang out any more? I understand if you'd rather not answer, but I had to ask.

Evan Dorkin

We currently have one cat, Nutmeg, and a snail, who we call "Snail" or "Snaily" or "Mister Snail". It's probably our last snail, Alice has become bored with them, we've adopted a number of snails from the backyard since she was little. I would like to have more cats and someday a dog, but it's not a possibility now. The Orphan from Beasts of Burden is based on our cat Crushinto, aka Crushy (RIP) who we called Orphan before we were able to adopt him from the street (he was someone else's neglected cat). Jill based her drawings on a neighbor's orange tabby named Sammy. Holstein, the black and white cat at The Green Thumb farm, is based on Jill's cat (RIP).

Evan Dorkin

No need to apologize, it's called "ask me anything" for a reason. I do commercial work, I've done book covers, drawings for the MTA union, album art, magazine work. I'm a freelancer, I draw for money. No agent. I'm at evandorkin@gmail.com

Evan Dorkin

Probably Dork and Beasts of Burden. I tend to enjoy writing Beasts and making my own comics the most. Cartooning is in my blood, if I didn't have to make a living, if my own work could support my family, I'd only work on Beasts and draw whatever comics I wanted to..

Evan Dorkin

Instant Piano was a headache from the beginning, and didn't exactly help my increasingly strained friendship with Kyle. The original version of IP was abandoned after his lawyer started turning the project into a mess, when we finally got it going again Kyle was difficult to deal with, turned things in late, and (imho) hacked his stuff out and making it feel like IP was an afterthought. He complained about the money -- always complained about money -- and wouldn't own up to his own unreliability. He stiffed me out of one of the ReFelx review strips, and finally, the straw that broke, accused me of not asking him for permission to run those strips in Dork, and asked me for money for them knowing I made almost nothing off that book. I asked him about the strips in a bar in front of other cartoonist friends, he gave me permission and didn't want money. I gave up on him at the SDCC he harangued me at. I occasionally hear he drags me through the mud from people at cons, on the other hand, I've listened to professionals tell me about negative experiences with him because they have no one else to vent to and know I used to be friends with him. I'm still in touch and friends with Robbie and Stephen, Mark and I follow each other on Twitter, no one from IP has been in touch with Kyle for some time. I think Kyle has done a lot of things as a person and a professional to undermine his incredible talent and wit. Instant Piano was always supposed to end, but it's a shame it ended with so much negativity involved. And the reason the ReFlex concert strips weren't reprinted in the Dork collection is because I had no desire to deal with Kyle, and the strips are co-owned by the two of us. Anyway, there's all that in a nutshell.