John Allison (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr) is awesome. He’s a comics-machine. He’s got an awesome style that I like very much, and a great story-telling style.
I’m sorry that I won’t be spending more time on him, but things happen and I wanted you guys to get to see his interview before the Featured Webcomics and Artists Section concludes.
Seriously though, he’s got one of my favorite styles in webcomics these days. I feel like I want to study it. For the most part, he works in flat colors (meaning not really adding shadows and such) but you don’t notice. It’s fantastic. I’ve included a sample page from Bad Machinery (The Case of the Unwelcome Visitor) that shows some of the humor in his comics and the mystery too! They’re great stories.
Q. When did you know you wanted to make comics?
I’ve been making comics since I was 7. My first was a Transformers comic drawn on the cut-off backs of empty Kleenex boxes, probably in 1984. I stapled together 9 pages and that was it. I was a cartoonist. I wish I still had it!
Q. How did you get started with comics?
I was bought comics from a very early age. When I was small I read Rupert The Bear, kind of a British institution, I still have a box of about 100 of those comics. Rupert is a little twee but I later read that it was thought of as a great world-building exercise, and those are exactly the kinds of exercises I’ve been involved in making comics as an adult. When Rupert’s run ended, I read the British reprints of US Marvel titles – Transformers, Spider Man, and an American Marvels I could get my hands on. I was pretty much done with the American monthly pamphlets by university, but I read all the usual suspects while I was there – Sandman, Sam Kieth, Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, Gibert & Jaime Hernandez.
Q. Where do you get inspiration for your comics?
This is a horrible question! The question that every artist hates! EVERYWHERE. Everything is inspiration, good or bad.
Q. Are you a writer or an artist first? And how does that affect your process?
I don’t have to try as a writer. I always found it easy. I don’t mean to say that I am a great writer, but what I am able to do is not a struggle. If I’m struggling to write something, it usually means that there’s nothing there in my head to write about it. I find drawing much harder, but with time and practice, it has come to give me a great deal more pleasure than writing.
Q. What’s your favorite movie, and why?
I don’t know if I have a favourite movie. I find that I only ever want to watch them once, then maybe again after four or five years have passed. I enjoy good movies when I watch them, but I don’t have a slavish love of them. Even the greats rarely stay with me. I’ve always preferred TV to movies. In TV you get to see a character, a performance really stretched out until it means something. Movies are over so fast that it feels like a heartbeat and then that world disappears.
Q. What’s the one thing you would say to a person wanting to make comics too?
Try to finish something. Even if it’s only short. Finishing something is important. I didn’t finish anything for a very long time.
Q. Who is your hero, and why?
You probably shouldn’t idolise anyone you don’t know well. Ronald Searle was probably the greatest artist of my lifetime, but I don’t know if he’s my hero.
Q. As an artist, where do you draw value from your work?
Being a comics writer and artist means being in charge of everything. It’s hard, but you’re only limited by your own ability. You can do whatever you want. Your imagination is the limit, so long as you can draw it. That’s incentive to constantly improve, and reason to continue until you fall out of your chair trying.
And with that, we conclude this short-lived Featured Webcomics and Artists segment. Have some happy holidays and I’ll see everyone on the other side of my shortish hiatus!