Q&A 37: two from Matthew (Patreon)

Matthew asks:I feel you often have goth/alternative women characters in your comics. Are you "drawn" to creating/writing/drawing these characters or is there another reason you return to them (e.g. popularity with your readers)?

I'm not sure I have as many of these characters as you think! I think when I started creating characters, they were quite vanilla and cookie cutter, and then I looked to alternative cultures for ways to differentiate them. So Amy has tattoos and reflects a certain strand of alternative culture, and Esther is a goth/emo/metal kid when she emerges. Throughout my twenties and thirties I tried to reflect the cultural movements that were around me, that interested me even if I didn't engage with them directly (or sartorially). If I notice something, I want to know why it is how it is and why it is the way it is.

Also, it was partly a reaction to how a lot of early webcomics didn't seem to reflect any fashion at all, a way to differentiate myself as a writer and artist. I used to go to music gigs two or sometimes three times a week, so I was able to look around at what went on, and I suppose it was reflected in characters I created.

But if you take Lottie and Claire, I write and draw them to be quite mainstream, in what they wear, and what they're interested in, because subcultures aren't as strong as they were twenty years ago. Young people seem to magpie a bit of everything. I am as keen a fashion watcher as I ever was but now it seems to be a smear of the last 25 years, anything goes. Also, Lottie and Claire are very unusual in their approach to life generally, so I like to balance that out. [Maggie and Billie in Steeple is a different matter. But everyone in Steeple has a very carefully designed wardrobe to reflect their personalities, and the Cornish setting. Fashion-wise, Cornwall is its own thing. A lot of knitwear. I could talk more about this generally, but I might need more specific examples to explain.]

As to why I returned to them, I think just because there was interesting territory there to explore. Characters only grow in the writing. I'm not sure what I might have done instead? Two dudes in boxy jeans playing video games? That seemed to be covered. But also: it's very easy to come to the end of your personality and start making characters who are very slight variations on previous ones. Naming no names, there were popular comics where after a few years I couldn't tell the difference between the near identical people who fell off the production line. So I try to work hard on my designs.

And then Matthew asks:Giant Days finished at the end of 2019, just a few months before the global pandemic and a fairly major shakeup in the world of comics. In hindsight, would you have done anything differently with (ending) Giant Days and your next series knowing what was going to happen next?

Giant Days had to end. I didn't want to take the characters past the point we ended the series, and I think Boom! Studios were ready to wrap it up too, so we mutually agreed the end point. I was pretty close to burned out near the end - I agreed to create another series for Boom! (By Night) when I didn't really want to, writing it in parallel with Giant Days - I was afraid to say no. That series ran for 12 issues and was not successful, then Max and I reunited for Wicked Things, which was cancelled after six issues, six issues that we both worked incredibly hard on. In the midst of this I wrote and drew five issues of Steeple for Dark Horse in five months, plus the covers. I also did some punishing and unproductive (unpaid!!) development work for Marvel because I felt like this was what one did at this point.

I was lucky to sneak Giant Days in at the end of the last indie comic boom. It was a far tougher road for anything that came out after that. Wicked Things did well in the book market - it made money! - but I couldn't get Boom! interested in more issues or finishing the story off with a second volume.

When the pandemic hit, I was forced to stop, and was able to rebuild myself creatively from a very very low ebb. In retrospect I should not have done any of the post-Giant Days series at the time I did - I should have taken a break. But there was no one to tell me this. I was "hot" off the back of the multiple Eisner nominations, then the two wins in 2019. No one hands you an instruction pamphlet telling you what to do when everyone suddenly wants a piece of you. All I knew was that it probably wouldn't last. And there are comic writers who just seem to pump out work - your Jeff Lemires and James Tynion IVs. Who was to say I wasn't one of these writing machines?

I definitely was not one of those writing machines.

It still makes me sad, because I was completely broken just after the point of my greatest "success". I would never say thank goodness for the pandemic, it was awful, but if I hadn't had my life aggressively simplified in early 2020, I might not still be making comics at all. I put myself back together in those weird months.

This is kind of a gloomy answer, but in a way I'm glad the train came off the rails the way it did. I realised that I don't want to just be a comic writer - I like writing and drawing my stories. Anything else feels like I haven't finished. It's great to work with super-talented artists (as I have), and I'm sure I'd do it again if it was the right collaboration, but I don't think I could ever have been what the US comic industry seemed to want me to be. And that's okay.