DE: Are you still going to go with self-teaching or
will you actually take some courses?
ED: I would like to try but it’s hard. One of
the problems with comics is that you learn on the job.
While that’s true of a lot of places, your stuff
really looks raw. There are jobs I’ve done that look
absolutely like hell. I had no idea how to ink. Only
now am I getting an idea of how to lay a really nice
line down. I’m trying to use a brush more. My
writing is nuts. I’m all over the place, I write too
much. Hopefully I will be spending the rest of my
learning to solidify and simplify my stuff. But like I
said, if people are hiring you and buying your books
it's hard to say I suck and say that you’re going to
quit for six months to learn to draw. I could go take
classes or I could be working. I’m also very scared
about that stuff because I’m afraid that I wont be
able to break out of that cartoony style.
DE: Maybe that’s why making the money could be
important because more money could give you more time.
ED: Well, I will say that in the back of my
mind, one the lesser reasons that I did the Eltingville
cartoon is that if it succeeded it would take care of
a lot of financial situations in my life. We would be
able to get health coverage for the first time. I had
health coverage twice in my life and that was working
in the comic store and one year at Marvel working on Bill
and Ted's Excellent Comic [based on the movie].
Other than that we don’t have the money for
coverage. We have bills to pay and you just don’t
make a lot of money on the small press. But that’s
where your heart is.
Whenever I’m working on the
mainstream stuff I just want to get back to my own
stuff. I’ve only been able to get maybe forty pages
of my own stuff out a year late. I’ve got two books
I’m trying to get done right now and I’ve got to
juggle them with a job that will support them. I’m
not as fast as I used to be, now I seem to question
everything I do. I also have a really bad drawing hand
these days.
DE: What happened?
ED: I was working in the comic store like ten
years ago and I got some glass through my hand from a
display that shattered. I didn’t take care of it for
a week and the thing really bit into me. There was
apparently no circulation loss but my hand hurts like
hell. I was also in a car accident when I was nineteen
that screwed my neck up. I was also in a football
injury, which I’m sure no one expected to hear from
a wimpy Jew like me, but I got creamed when I tackled
a guy bigger than me. A whole bunch of people fell on
me, wrenched my right shoulder and I was paralyzed for
a couple of hours. That’s the one that’s been
coming back. I’ve usually got wrist wraps on me and
I’m always putting stuff on me for the pain. I go to
the physical therapy when I can afford it. You can
start the violins anytime.
DE: You went on the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s
Making Waves cruise ship. What was that experience
like? Were you nervous about being on a big boat with
possible rabid fans?
ED: That was really swell.
DE: Really?
ED: Why wouldn’t it be?
DE: I haven’t spoken to anyone that’s been on
it. So I’m wondering, you’re stuck on the boat.
ED: I called it the convention you can’t
escape. I like talking about comics. I could talk
about comics until the cows come home and choke me. I
get along with a lot of small press and mainstream
guys. We didn’t just sit around and talk comics
either. The people who signed up for it were by and
large really nice. There were only a couple of people
who lets their fannish tendencies get the best of them
in social situations and got pushy and a little too
drunk and argumentative.
DE: Drunk fans?
ED: Well, drunk professionals are sometimes
worse. But it was a lot of fun. Mexico was really
cool. Only one fan got a little weird with Sarah and
I. But basically the one or two fans that got snotty
or weird with people did it with Frank Miller because
they had issues over Batman or something. I do feel
bad that Eltingville seems to sometimes
perpetuate the idea that comic or cartoon fans are
scary but anyone who has a little bit of perception
could step back from it.
DE: Since Eltingville is somewhat
autobiographical, is that the kind of work that want
to move into more?
ED: I’m probably going to do more
autobiographical stuff. But like anything in Dork
it’ll be three pages here or there. I’m thinking
about doing a story on three particularly good ass-kickings
I was handed as a child from other kids.
DE: Was being named Dorkin the reason you were
beaten up do much?
ED: No, it was because I was a big mouth
asshole. Go figure. As an adult people are always
telling me to watch my mouth because I’m going to
get my ass kicked but I got through all that as a kid.
I was real loudmouth and on a couple of occasions I
learned the error of my ways. So I might do a strip
called “How to get your ass kicked in three easy
lessons” and I’ve got a strip about all the
schools I got kicked out of as a kid. I was once told
by principal that I would never amount to anything.
She ended up in this big scandal and I ended up with
this career sitting on my ass doodling. I would like
to get back to Hectic Planet where I can do the
autobio stuff diffused through fiction. All my books
are about me to a certain extent.
DE: Did I read that Tin Tin was a big
influence on Hectic Planet?
ED: Tin Tin wasn’t a huge influence
but it was a big influence on liking comics. I was
reading it as kid. Tin Tin, Peanuts, and
then
I really got into Marvel. If Tin Tin was that
big of an influence I would be drawing a lot better. I’d
know how to draw a car or a dog. Mad Magazine
when they reprinted the fifties comics was a big
influence. I loved [Will] Elder’s stuff from Mad.
If I could draw like anybody I would like to draw like
him. I wish I had his touch.
I grew up in a household where my mother supported
what I did but didn’t know how to be conducive
towards it. I didn’t grow up with a father and my
grandparents so I never really had any kind of mentor
who would point me in the right direction and I always
regretted that. There weren’t a ton of books in the
house, that’s why TV and comics were such an
influence on me because they were the only road signs
that I had about culture. I can’t ever see myself
burning pop culture out of my system. But I would like
to one day challenge myself to do something that isn’t
based on trivia or comics and I think I’ll get to
that and if I don’t then whatever.
DE: Have you thought about moving your work to the
web more?
ED: No, I could see putting stuff on the web. I’m
not interested in doing Flash animation. Someone else
could do Flash of my work but not me. I like working
on paper. The Internet’s fine but its not where my
thinking goes. I’m a bit of a luddite when it comes
to that sort of thing. Sarah’s really good with
computers but I just like using the web as a source of
information and promotion. I feel I have enough of an
audience where I don’t have to use the web to grow
that audience. I just don’t have the time. The web
is just another piece of paper. Sarah uses computers
to help me produce my work. We scan everything in, we
do art corrections sometimes. But I don’t think of
the web in that term, maybe one day I will. I don’t
like looking at comics on the web. After looking at a
few pages my eyes hurt. I don’t dig it.
DE: One last question, apparently you live in
Staten Island. Why?
ED: Where do you live?
DE: Upper upper west side of Manhattan. I grew up
on Long Island.
ED: See Long Island makes me sick.
DE: Me too, that’s why I got out.
ED: I spent a year on Long Island in Lawrence
in Jew Town which I can say because I’m Jewish. My
father, who I don’t speak to, his third wife owned a
fur shop on the main street. My father just got
arrested in Lawrence for choking her. That’s the
only thing I heard about my father in ages. Jew on Jew
violence is rare in America. In my yearbook I wrote,
“I hope to become an artist someday and get off
Staten Island”. The funny thing is I ended staying
in Staten Island. I always wanted to live in Manhattan
and by the time I could have done that I realized I didn’t
want to live in Manhattan. I didn’t want to spend
the money on a little shitty place where somebody pees
on the front of it and kids in leather boots ask
for change.
To me the city is a place to go to and not to live
in. The only way I’d live in the city is if
circumstances happen that never will and that’s
being filthy rich. Staten Island is not expensive,
thoroughly middle class. There’s a lot of people out
there who used to drive me crazy and I used to hate
it. When Sarah and I got our first place that wasn’t
on top of or below anyone we really enjoyed it. We work
out of the house so we live anywhere, we can afford a
house, and we have a backyard and garage. The block is
a little nutty. On the hill above there is a half a
million dollar house where a Senator lives overlooking
the water and on the right you can probably go buy
crack. Our friends are here. Staten Island is not the
classiest of joints but I ended basing Eltingville
on it.
DE: If you got to do another episode of Eltingville,
what would you put in it?
ED: The next episode would probably be the gang
going to a Renaissance Fair but one of them, Josh,
decides to go to Klingon camp instead and they get
into a big fight. The Klingon camp is right next to
the Renaissance Fair in upstate New York and the last
couple of years there’s been a lot of tension
between the two camps. In the third act there would be
a Klingon vs. Elf war that would end with everyone
arrested and upstate NY all burned down. Another idea
is a Staten Island-type parody. Bill’s mother throws
out a ridiculous stupid tiny accessory to an action
figure that looks like junk. He freaks out and runs
around town trying to find a replacement, when that
doesn’t work he goes to the world’s largest
landfill in Staten Island. They proved years ago that
there is stuff in there that is not decomposing so I
decided a Treasure of the Sierra Madre parody
where all
four of them would spend two days wading through piles
of garbage from the fifties. They all start infighting
from greed.
DE: Great Evan, thank you so much.
ED: Thanks.
Welcome to Eltingville will premiere on Cartoon
Network’s Adult Swim block on Sunday, March 3rd at
11 pm.
Check out Evan & Sarah Dyer’s website out at www.houseoffun.com.
Email Dan at danepstein75@hotmail.com.
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