A series of author photos #2: rob mclennan by Brown, whist + Fowler,

I’ve been digging further around my archive, and have continued to discover artwork of me produced by various artists from across Canada over the past decade or two. Idid a previous post on such here.

I don’t remember when or how exactly I met Tim Brown, proprietor of brown comix and at least two dozen issues of obliviositer, which later on became the graphic novel Pulpspotter. I suspect it was around 1998, when I was doing a tour that went through Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, given that I know I met the guy and his catalogue has him in Bradwell, Saskatchewan. Perhaps we even met up (also) at a Canzine in Toronto? I know I have a t-shirt of his I purchased, a couple of issues of various things, and a copy of Pulpspotter, as well as this drawing I used on the back cover of at least one chapbook down the line. The same image also graced a broadsheet poster that Tom Snyders and I printed at his home studio in Vancouver, in May 1999. Whatever happened to Tim Brown?

Here’s another incredible sketch of me by the enormously talented emily whist (Rob Nelms), who I wrote about in my previous post. I never actually used this one for anything. I’m not sure why.

He once showed me a scrapbook of a series of comic strips he drew about the life of a cup of coffee which was absolute genius. I can honestly say that this guy had far more talent than he knew what to do with. He didn’t lack ambition, but no one was entirely sure where that ambition was directed, exactly.

Ottawa artist Tom Fowler [who did our “engagement photo” last year] has produced more than a few images of me over the years, including a wrap-around cover for my poetry collection bagne,or Criteria for Heaven (Broken Jaw Press, 2000), as well as a series of images used for posters to promote the semi-annual ottawa small press book fair. Usually Fowler would come visit me at the donut shop for a coffee, and sketch me as we were talking, to either leave me with the finished image, or bring a copy of such later on for me to put on a poster. This is the image he drew for the spring 2002 edition of the fair.

His blog will give you the best sense of what he’s been working on lately, but some of his other work includes an issue of Batman (in which he included a character wearing a t-shirt with the Broken Jaw Press logo), the Jango Fett one-shot for Dark Horse Comics, and some stellar work on Green Arrow and Venom. You should also check out his Mysterius.

Ongoing notes: early September, 2012

Where does all the time go? I’ve been saying this for years, it seems. Currently, we’re on the final of six days (again) in Sainte-Adele, Quebec, hiding out in Christine’s mother’s cottage, quietly working on various projects, just we and our wee cat, Lemonade. Sainte-Adele, where we witnessed the blue moon, what Peyo claimed brought about the birth of another new Smurf (we so far have seen none).

Mere weeks to the wedding, now. Check out the“engagement photo” that Ottawa artist Tom Fowler did for us, recently posted to the wedding blog. Fantastic!

I just had a chapbook manuscript accepted by Gaspereau Press! Watch for spring 2013 for the appearance of Mother Firth’s, a poem I wrote on old Bytown history, my finally own Devil’s Whim…

Vancouver BC: After I complained in the previous “Ongoing notes” about receiving so few Canadian-made chapbooks by Canadian writers, it was a relief to see Vancouver poet and interview Kevin Spenst’s self-published Happy Hollow & the Surrey Suite (2012). As he writes in the colophon:

This chap-book bricolage was finished August 2012 at the Sage Hill Writing Experience: the energy in these poems was siphoned from my fellow writers. Special thanks is due to my workshop instructor Ken Babstock and fellow poets Margot Lettner, Cassidy McFadzean, Ruth Asher, Jacob Scheier, & Brian Campbell. Thank you for helping me get the right mix.

I’ve always liked small workshop chapbooks such as these, and/or works produced when the writer is on any kind of away-trip, whether retreat, vacation or whatever else. The chapbook even reminds me of when I used to receive envelopes of chapbooks from Robert Kroetsch moons ago, works by himself and various students during a previous Sage Hill Experience. It was where I was long ago introduced to the work of K.I. Press, I believe.

In Spenst’s chapbook, the poems run the gamut, and a number work in the immediate “I did this, I did that” mode, with poems for “Lumsden,” “Qu’appelle Valley,” “St. Michael’s Retreat” and “SaskEnergy,” using the material at hand to trigger poems. Still, the poems here that resonate most are the ones that exist beyond these pieces, with all the action sometimes taking over, distracting from what might really be going on; once the material of the immediate has been utilized does the writing happen, where the deepest action occurs.

Uncle Willy’s Buffet

believe it or not was once the stomping grounds of the only Canadian sumo wrestler who’d thrown in the mawashi and come back from Japan never acclimatized to wiping the derrieres of senior sumos but instead ended up at Hans and Willy’s establishment where they charged him for two and he ate like three sittings at Surrey’s very own Mount Fuji in the middle of the restaurant next to Craig and his skater-buddies from Cloverdale with their backpacks stuffed with chicken breasts when no one was looking and around the corner from them was the girl with the “what-the-fuck-are-you-looking-at” hair lip and her “well-don’t-fuckin’-look-at-me-I-gotta-deal-with-her-all-the-time” boyfriend and then through the swinging doors was the dish-pit drop and then the closet with the two-liter of sweet cooler which we took turns chugging and then through the thump-thump doors again, looking at Surrey’s Mount Fuji who was in fact smaller than the glass pyramid atop Guildford Mall, but bigger than the cloth I’d used to wipe my first table under the tutelage of Hans who’d just come from East Germany to start a business with Willy who was from West Germany and who liked my Germanic looks enough to forgive my first wipe of crumbs from the table directly onto the floor and next to them was the manager with hair like Roger Daltry who sold coke on the side and my friend Sigsworth who started a month after me and was always coming down from acid and there I was with my free plate of buffet at the end of the day and all the ice-cream I could stomach.

Davis CA: Every time I think the slew of dusie chapbooks that once flooded my mailbox are over, another one slips its way through, this time equinox (2011) by California poet and publisher Jill Stengel. Equinox, as the title suggests, was “written on the autumnal equinox, 2011 / inconsistencies included with intention.” As she writes:

dear equinox—what will you

bring me—or, rather, what will

I make of you—enough with

the waiting—I move ahead

outward onward into—passive

chalice ruptured

This is a lovely, short sequence: “I am out here raw as the / night sky waiting for you”

New Orleans LA: From New Orleans poet and 17 Poets organizer Megan Burns comes the chapbook a city / bottle boned (Chicago Il: dancing girl press, 2012), a short sequence of etchings on her home town, scratched in small phrases across the white page. As her thirteen-part/page poem begins:

[in the anatomy]

here             rivulet of sweat pathing

a maze of goosebumps

    night flesh

listen to the thunder      deep in no rain

think about a wind that bends bodies

picks up bones       discard:

      rush of featherless flight

      rumor of pretty birds

Interview with Tom Fowler

This interview was conducted over email from February to March, 2010

Tom Fowler has worked in gaming, concept design, advertising, and for almost every major north american comics publisher drawing a wide variety of books including: Star Wars: Jango Fett, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Revolution on the Planet of the Apes, and the critically acclaimed creator owned series Mysterius: the Unfathomable with Jeff Parker for Wildstorm. Tom is currently drawing the comic strip “Monroe” for MAD Magazine, which chronicles the exceptionally horrible life of it's teenaged protagonist, as well as his contribution to the anticipated Prince of Persia GN for Disney Press.

rob mclennan: I guess the first question is pretty obvious: how did Mysterious first come about? And, given that it originally appeared as a six-issue monthly, are there any plans for a second, or even ongoing, series?

Tom Fowler: on December 6, 2007 6:02:19 PM EST I received a very nice email from mark paniccia at marvel letting me know that the job he'd wanted me to do with jeff parker had fallen through but hopefully we'd get a chance to do something else in the future. At 6:03:35 PM EST I got an email from ben abernathy at wildstorm wondering what I had cooking schedule-wise and whether i'd like to do a creator owned book with jeff parker. The next day jeff introduced me to MYSTERIUS.

MYSTERIUS was originally jeff's tribute to 1920's stage magic, dr. who, and douglas adams' dirk gently novels (the first of which I was reading at the time). I saw the who and the gently and raised him some hammer horror, wes anderson, and EC comics. Over christmas we just started churning it out in a flurry of emails and the universe of MYSTERIUS started to come into shape. Much of which (nudism, sprawling magical/living estate, famous ghosts, ponce de leone, leprechaun evisceration, and a punk troll named kevin) never made it into the initial series.

As for whether we do more, that's up to the audience. We were VERY well received critically, but the sales on the periodical series weren't so hot. A LOT of people seemed to be waiting for the trade. If the collected edition does well we have a pretty decent shot at another book.

rm: You once referred to Mysterious as a “fat Doctor Who.” How difficult is it for you to develop characters? Does it all come from the writer, or was it more of a collaborative process between the two of you?

TF: we came up with a bunch of clever elevator pitches and tag lines like HOUSE but with magic, DR. WHO but with magic, (or my personal favourite) Wes Anderson's CONSTANTINE. As much to amuse ourselves as to try and synthesize some kind of explanation of what we were working for the people who were paying us to do it. Not that it mattered, our editor ben was along for the ride and seemed to be having loads of fun watching yell things like “bigger nose!” at each other. As i'd mentioned above the initial idea was jeff's, but became OURS pretty quickly. We were given the time and freedom to build a world from the ground up. Jeff would start with a character idea, i'd flesh it out on paper, then he'd add an affectation or two then I would, then i'd subtract them all and say: “when he's at home he's a nudist” and that would play to the character, and so on. We built all the characters, how they looked and acted and the stories and back stories that way.

Part of the beauty of our relationship is that jeff is both a writer and an artist and he, likewise, understands that i'm an artist who can write. We both respect that in each other, so when i'd get stuck with how a room or a particular piece of decoration or a character (delfi!) should look jeff could doodle it out for me, and occasionally if I saw a scene or a piece of dialogue going a certain way I could suggest an alternative. It's never a question of banging your fists on the table and screaming “MY WAY!”. You have arguments now and again, but if everyone brings their opinions to bear, respects everyone else's, and, most importantly, explains/listens to the arguments for those opinions the best idea ALWAYS floats to the top. And then everyone's happy.

rm: You’ve always had a fondness for drawing characters with curves, particularly women. How does this play out when you’re working with some of the larger, more mainstream, companies, such as Marvel or DC?

TF: well as I alluded to ben and wildstorm more or less gave us carte blanche to do it the way we wanted to. We felt it should have a different kind of life, and they agreed. It's not really something i'd do if I were working on the x-men or something, unless I was asked to. When MYSTERIUS came through i'd been out of comics for a year or two, working mostly in design and advertising and for MAD magazine. So when I came back I just did as felt most natural; kind of a euro-EC hybrid look.

rm: I remember when you drew that issue of Batman, complaining that they wanted you to bulk up the character and, as you said, missing the point of Bruce Wayne being a “regular guy.” How important are these concerns, to draw a character properly, even if it might not jive with those you’re working with, or for?

TF: well, in that particular case they were right. I think i'd wanted to give batman an athlete or swimmer's body, but it just didn't look right at least as I was drawing it. Certain characters, particularly super heroes, are best served by being drawn as iconically as you can make them. Also, frankly, batman isn't mine. They know how they want him, and so long as they communicate that to me it's my job to give them what they want. MYSTERIUS on the other hand IS mine, and I draw him the way that I think he works best. I get the final word on him and everyone else in his universe for better or worse.

rm: You’ve worked for a number of companies over the years, including Dark Horse (the Janga Fett one-shot), MAD and DC Comics (including a run on Green Arrow), among others. How does the experience with Wildstorm compare?

TF: I don't want to sell anyone short because I've had very good experiences most places i've worked, but my dealings with both MAD magazine and wildstorm have been the best and most professionally rewarding of my career. There have been bumps, but i've nothing but glowing things to say about both companies and people i've worked with at them.

rm: I know you’ve talked for a few years of attempting to develop some of your character and story ideas into feature-length film projects as opposed to more traditional comic venues. With more television and film projects coming from comics these days (the new Human Target series comes to mind, or the Iron Man 2 and Captain America: First Avenger films working their way into an Avengers franchise), do you worry about comics looking at film first and book second, if at all? How is film and television changing the face of comics?

TF: I think what's it's doing (provided you have a good

agent) is giving creators and opportunity to go out on their own and actually be compensated for it. Selling the option on a book can amount to roughly what you'd get paid if you signed away the rights to whatever project, and if it actually hits then it's just that much more in your pocket. If the property gets optioned you can use that to create buzz and sell more books. If the option get picked up you can use THAT to sell more books. If the movie gets made, regardless if it's good or bad YOU CAN SELL MORE BOOKS! And if hollywood completely screws it up at least the original book, the story YOU wrote is out there; complete, unabridged, and unassailed.

I'm sure there are down sides, but that's the job and I have muths to feed and a mortgage to pay.

rm: Who are some of your influences, whether as artist or writer?

TF: i'd be remiss if I didn't say first and foremost; douglas adams. In many ways MYSTERIUS was our love note to him.

As far as artistically, that's a very long list. I'd like to think that as an artist you learn from every other artist you look at, whether you like their work particularly or not. Specifically my two favourites are: Albert Uderzo, artist and co-creator of Asterix, and Jack Davis, cartoonist and illustrator for EC comics, Mad Magazine, Creepy, Playboy, Trump, Humbug, various movie posters, ad campaigns, books, magazines... you name it, he drew it. I think both of their influence is very apparent in almost all of my work especially the comic book work. But the list (which is in no way complete or in any kind of order) also includes Peter de Seve, Adam Rex, Mercer Mayer, Tony Diterlizzi, Al Parker, Norman Rockwell, Will Elder, Wallace Wood, John Buscema, Tom Palmer, Edward Gorey, Charles Addams, Sempe... the classic Playboy cartoonists like: Erich Sokol, Jack Cole, Edlon Dedini... british cartoonists like: Thelwell, Harry Hargreaves, Ronald Searle... and the countless, nameless (to me at least) designers of animated movies and posters and paperback novels. Right now, hanging on the wall of my studio, is an old 60's broadsheet movie poster for Disney's The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. I have no clue who painted it but it remains, in my opinion, one of the most beautifully executed gouache paintings I have ever seen.

Tom Fowler signs copies of Mysterious at Ottawa's Silver Snail on Wednesday, March 17th from 11am to 5pm;