FLIGHT 3 ROUNDTABLE
7 Questions + 11 Artists = The Flight 3 Roundtable

Introduction
Interview Roundtable
Interview - Kazu & Kean
Interview - Michel & Tony
Interview - Azad & Reagan
Interview – Dave & Joey
Interview - Neil & Bannister & Ben

Flight 3 Cover By Kazu Kibuishi

1) Tell us about your story and what inspired it.

Kazu: My story, "The Iron Gate", is about two boys that grow up with opposing views on war, only to find themselves in the same boat when the reality of war hits them both. It came about a long time ago when I began drawing the story of a soldier fighting a tank with nothing more than a rifle and his desire to survive. After leaving it unfinished, I set it aside for a couple of years. When I was going through my sketchbooks to develop ideas for Flight 3, I saw the sketches again and felt there was a good story in there somewhere. The tank idea then fused with a lot of the themes that I was playing with in my Copper comics and it became this story.

Kean: The story that I contributed ("The Tea Party") features the characters from my Jellaby series. Two kids and a monster sit down to have a nice little tea party, but things don't go quite the way they plan.

Most of the story was actually written and drawn in the week after last year's San Diego Comic-Con. The idea for the story came to me on the flight over from Toronto, and as I was hanging out in the LA area with Kazu and some of the Flight crew for a week, they certainly influenced and helped me tighten up my story as I was working on it. I had a lot of fun trying out new things and bouncing ideas off of them as I was working on the story. It was definitely the first comic I wrote and drew while I was 'on the road,' so that was pretty interesting.

Neil: The story is told as a journal of a slightly fictionalized version of myself. It's inspired by having graduated and moved across the country to a place where I didn't initially feel like I belonged, and the mix of feelings of regret and isolation, and then moving beyond that. But I prefer to just let it speak for itself!

Joey: My story is titled "The Lumbering Beast." It's about a girl who gets captured by a sasquatch-esque beast in the forest. However he's just desperate to have friends, and he's quite a mess. The story has microwavable 'Possum Pockets', fly swatting, and all sorts of calamity.

It's pretty much about me and my girlfriend, ha ha. I often feel guilty about having dragged her into my lifestyle... however, it's not just negative like that. It's also about how she helps me, and about how the best friendships are two-sided.

Michel: For my work in Flight, I'm taking a character I created in 1998 (which was featured in a book called A Search for Meaning: The Story of Rex) on a wild adventure. I've always wanted to make a big graphic novel featuring "Rex" and Flight has become the venue for it.

"Snow Cap" By Matthew Armstrong

The new chapter featured in Volume 3 (each volume features a chapter of the planned graphic novel) shows the main character intervening in a sacrificial ceremony. It deals with courage, fear, spiritual belief, death and reincarnation.

I have a tendency to build my stories using a cause and effect philosophy. As I go, I try to interconnect the elements and give meaning to the overall story. For me, art is about the process, so there's a strong element of improvisation in what I do. I like to discover as I go. That process of discovery is what I enjoy most. If I had a tight script to work with, I'd have no fun producing the story. I'm anxious to know where my story is going as I progress. The challenge is to make sure that it all make sense in the end and for that, I trust my instinct.

If I'm successful, when all the chapters of my big story are completed, every piece will fit perfectly in the overall puzzle. I already have some cool ideas for Flight 5 that will give additional meaning to every main event that's happened in each of the previous chapters. In a way, I feel like I'm making a "Rubik's Cube".

Dave: My story, "The Great Bunny Migration," is about a far-off planet where rabbits work in factories producing milkshakes, until a swarm of birds invades the city, stealing all the rabbits' natural resources (like milk pigs). The economy and the city go into a great depression, but at the darkest hour, a lone star in the sky convinces the rabbits to seek out a new home.

I just wanted to write a fun story that combined lots of things that made me happy, like milkshakes, bunnies, videogames, and storybook logic. Some elements of the story could be seen as a pre-history to my Astronaut Elementary web comic series, but only if you choose to connect the subtle dots!

Tony: I had been struggling to develop a different story for Flight 3. Despite a lot of assistance from the members of the Flight Crew, though, it just wasn't coming together. It was kind of dull, and secretly I didn't feel it was really Flight "material".

Then one afternoon I was out for a family lunch. My grandmother started to talk about her youth, and at one point mentioned that she used to write little letters to the fairies who apparently lived in the woods near her childhood home. I'm pretty sure I immediately thought of Flight. And I really wanted to realize it as a nice thing to do for gran'ma - sort of a tribute, I suppose. So I sketched some characters up, picked gran'ma's brain a little more, developed it into a bit of a story, and with not a small amount of help from the lovely Flight Crew, ended up with "Old Oak Trees"

Reagan: My story is a short little episode about two characters, Wyit and Sidna, who are part of a much, much larger story which has been kind of a project of mine over the last few years. Wyit is a young fox servant/squire to Sidna, a knight girl. In this particular episode Sidna sends Wyit off to find some tea roots, which leads him into a bit of trouble. I guess what inspired this story was how I kept originally trying to do completely different stories that I was less interested in. I was always trying to do something that would "fit in" with Flight, so I kept burning myself out on all these ideas that I thought other people might like, but had no interest at all in myself, which made it hard to stay motivated.

Then while sitting at the Flight table at Comic-Con and voicing my story troubles, Kazu, Rad and some other guys said "Why don't you just do a story with that fox character of yours?" At first I was surprised, since I thought the story I had going with Wyit and Sidna would be too dark or grim for Flight. But since the characters and story are something I'm really passionate about and have a lot of personal resources and imagination invested in, it was really easy for me to just jump in and start making a comic for Flight 3.

"Wurmler Of The West" By Paul Harmon

Bannister: Well, err... It's a story about two people that "meet" in the bus. Something's happening between them, like "good feeling" or "good vibes". They know they could have been lovers maybe, but they're already engaged on they're own with someone else. So this is just about this instant, this little emotion, when you feel your life could have been different from this point.

Concerning inspiration, well, I guess everybody took the bus once and kinda felt this way at least once in their lifetime. Honestly I don't know, it just came like this in my head... "pop!".

Ben: My story this time around is about two young men, one a believer in myths and legends and the other an eternal skeptic and debunker. In the woods near their town they find what seems to be the edge of the world, and they meet the cranky old hermit who lives there.

I wanted to tell a story with these characters, Tom and Felix, the doubter and the believer, because they represent the competing voices inside all of us. So I hoped it would be fun to watch them interact.

Azad: My story (titled "Polaris") is about a little girl with a gift who wants nothing more than to be "normal". When her wish finally comes true, her gift becomes her curse.


2) For those making their FLIGHT debut with this volume, how did you get involved with the book?

Joey: Well, I finally made myself a website (Tragic Planet.com) a year or two ago. And after that I was like, "Okay... got this now... how do I get people to look at it?" So, I was looking into forums and stuff, and the FLIGHT board was maybe the nicest place on the internet. There were all sorts of constructive critiques, and an all around friendly attitude there. So, I started posting art and comics there more and more frequently. After a while Kazu contacted me and gave me an invitation to contribute to the book!

Dave: I first discovered Kazu's work at the Alternative Press Expo a few years back, when he was selling prints of his Copper comic strips. When I asked if he had done a mini-comic, he explained that it was a web comic only, so I started checking out his website pretty regularly. We ended up doing some projects together for Nickelodeon Magazine and had lots of mutual friends within cartooning circles. So I ended up being fairly active on the Flight message board, had seen a lot of the book as it was developing, and was obviously really excited by the time it was released for San Diego Comic Con. Kazu invited me to a big celebratory dinner for all the Flight contributors, and there was lots of encouragement for me to do something. But it took me a while to overcome my own self-doubts as an artist before I finally posted the story ideas I had been developing!

Tony: I think I bumped into Kazu "hanging out" on the Shane Glines webforum. I don't know exactly how it played out... at one point I did this drawing as a bit of a tribute to Kazu's Daisy Kutter. I exchanged emails with Kazu about comics and stuff, I think. Probably very fanboyish. Then, somehow, I got invited to join the Flight community, and it was basically, "do up a story and we'll put it in the book". Volume One was put out, and it was amazing. Then Two followed, and it just became a matter of finding time to be a part of the book and developing a story that didn't suck.

"One Little Miracle For A Hungry Swarm" By Alex Fuentes

Reagan: I knew a little bit about Flight before I joined it, but not much. My first encounter with it was at Comic-Con 2004 when I was walking around with fellow artist Matt Rhodes, who said we had to check this Flight Comics booth out. I liked what I saw and met a couple of the people there, so a few months later I dropped by the forums and posted some art. I wasn't expecting anything other than some good art chat, so I was really pleasantly surprised when Kazu tapped me on the shoulder asking if I'd like to make a story for Flight. Utterly blew my socks off.

Azad: Johane Matte and I were sharing a table at San Diego Comic con in 2004, and she had been involved with Volume 2. Through her, I met Kazu and he was gracious enough to invite me to participate. Plus I slipped him $5.

3) Did FLIGHT's movement to Ballantine Books affect how you approached your contribution?

Kazu: I will have to admit that thinking about how Ballantine produced a lot of harder-edged pulp material made it easier for me to draw a slightly edgier story.

Kean: I don't think I was consciously thinking about it, although after having stories in the last two books, I was definitely more aware of the fact that I needed to keep pushing myself in order to raise the quality of my own work.

Neil: The change in publishers didn't influence how I approached creating the story, because the book is still aimed at the same target audience (everyone). It may have helped me in an incidental way because we had a little extra time, so it's done in a more detailed style than my previous stories.

Joey: Not really. I was hardly involved with FLIGHT while it was at Image. But I think I was already working on my story by the time that the Ballantine news came through. I was just excited at the chance to work on a longer story, and one in colour... the publishing news was just an added bonus!

Michel: No, that didn't change anything for me.

Dave: I think the potential for Flight to have an even bigger life outside the comic book marketplace was, and still is, really exciting to me. But it didn't affect my actual storytelling, since I had worked out most of the script long before I knew about the change in publishers. And there was already tons of pressure to do my best, just because of the insane level of talent that would be in the book and the expectations based on the first two volumes.

Tony: I wouldn't say so. I think I started my story before that deal actually came through. I'm just happy to be a part of this project, however it gets published.

Reagan: Not a whole lot, really. I must confess I wouldn't know how being published by Image or Ballantine Books would've affected my story. Though since Ballantine apparently is getting us wider publishing, I'm pretty dang excited about that!

Bannister: Absolutely not. I'm still free to do what I want the way I want to do it. So it's no problem for me. On the contrary, if it gives Flight more places on the shelves and more audience, it's good. But I won't change my way of approaching my stories because of a new company.

"Conquest" By Becky Cloonan

Ben: It did add some excitement.

Azad: My story was written and pencilled half a year before the move, so it didn't affect the story. It did give me a heck of a morale boost when I went into production though. Knowing that we cracked the book market is an amazing accomplishment.

4) How do you feel your piece contributes to the overall quality and diversity of this book?

Kazu: I'm glad I took a different approach to my piece this time. I think it helps provide some balance. I love the approach that many are taking on the book right now, that of the storybook/fairy tale variety, but I also want to remind contributors that it's okay to experiment outside what one could consider a Flight "genre".

Neil: "In Due Time" is a stream-of-memory, mostly non-fiction piece, so it's a bit different in terms of genre and storytelling; it's not really a fable or a fantasy. Hopefully it balances with the other stories and increases the variety and appeal of the book as a whole, rather than appearing out of place!

Joey: My piece is comedic and sincere. I don't know that my piece will be one that really "Wows 'em" with visuals, but the story and the heart of the characters will hopefully communicate with readers.

Michel: Well, I'm hoping that my work adds flavour to the overall. I'm incredibly honoured to have the opening story in the book so that puts pressure on me to do my best. I'm working hard to keep up with all these young artists that are so talented. Hopefully I'm succeeding.

Dave: Well, my story probably has the least amount of background detail!

Many artists in Flight excel in reflecting nature with beautiful landscapes and a dramatic sense of atmosphere. My story bucks that trend, by just being cute enough to get away with a blatant lack of draftsmanship. Hopefully people will read it, think it's funny, and not notice anything missing!

Tony: It detracts from the diversity in a very significant way. Somehow, I ended up doing a story that I feel is quite similar to Joey's (at least when you sum it up like, "little girl in the forest plus threatening creatures"). I swear I didn't steal his idea, heck, my story isn't even MY idea, really. When you read them, though, I think they come off different enough. Outside that, I just tried my best to uphold Flight's reputation for beautiful, naturalistic visuals and tight, honest storytelling.

Reagan: I think pretty much everyone involved plays a hugely important part in making Flight the diverse thing it is, so I don't think any one story was more 'important' than others, especially mine. Though since this was my first time ever doing comics, I think I added a bit of a raw experimentation element into my contribution. I normally like to paint in a sort of widescreen cinema style of composition, which I incorporated into a lot of panels in my story. Lots of use of negative space, whites, and flat blacks.

Bannister: Well, I don't know. With this story I tried to bring a bit more emotion than I did with the previous one. Some stories are very fantasy, action, or arty, beautifully illustrated. My point on this one was to focus on an emotion, and I hope it is a good complement to the others stories.

Ben: I just cross my fingers and hope that it does! Really, I think as long as an artist puts forth a solid effort to tell a story that comes from his own thoughts and experiences, and doesn't fall into the trap of trying to make his story fit into some mold or resemble another artist's work, then everything will turn out all right.

"Voodo" By Matthew Forsythe

When you're aiming for honest storytelling it's hard not to come up with something unique!

Azad: I'm not the one to judge my story's place. I can only hope it holds up against the high standards and quality of the rest of the pieces included.

As for diversity, Flight has been, from its inception, a venue for artists to have their voice heard unfiltered. By its very nature, it's a showcase for unique and sincere work.

5) One of the noticeable evolutions of FLIGHT seems to be the move from a more animation influenced look to that of a storybook style. Did anything or anyone have a particular influence on you work for FLIGHT, whether personally or artistically?

Kazu: The shift to a more storybook feel for Flight 3 seems to be a reflection of a certain nostalgia and innocence on the part of the creators, and as Kean said, Tony Cliff did set a strong example with his story.

Kean: For me personally, it really felt like Tony Cliff's story ("Old Oak Trees") set the tone as we were starting out this time round. Seeing his first couple of inked pages as they came in really gave me that much-needed kick in the pants for me to get working on my own story. And although I don't know how much influence each of us had on one other's work, there were certainly some common threads running throughout a number of stories in the book. Maybe it was a subconscious thing?

Neil: I have done cartoony and storybook-like material before, but not for Flight. My own pieces in the books have been more influenced by literary fiction and certain obscure movies that I find transcendently great. Lately though, I've been realizing that the best way to go about writing and drawing my own fiction is to scale back and tell simple, effective, robust stories and work my way up, and I've realized that all those great storytellers I admire did the same thing. So while my tastes are still the same, I guess I've been rethinking how they influence me. I hope this isn't too vague! Yet, we really have some common influences. The Miyazaki love is right there on the cover.

Joey: Besides my usual subconscious influences, no, I don't think so. I actually try not to over-think my methods. The way I see it, I should just tell the stories I want, and do my best, and the quality and style of whatever sort will be there or it won't. Thankfully, I think the quality was definitely there with my FLIGHT story. Like I said, I was pretty excited about the chance to tell a longer story in print...

Michel: Well, my work is definitely "animation style". I've got over 20 years of animation experience and that's bound to show. I established a certain style when I created the first chapter for Volume 2 and now I have to stick to it until I finish the whole story.

Dave: "The Great Bunny Migration" was definitely influenced by storybooks, mostly because I'm still an avid reader of children's literature, even more so than comic books. I love kid's books that balance seemingly simple art with whimsical humour. The best examples being, Dav Pilkey (Captain Underpants), J.Otto Seibold (Mr. Lunch, Olive the Other Reindeer), Lane Smith (Stinky Cheeseman), and Rodney Greenblat (Slombo the Gross). My story is also an intentional tribute to stuff I digested heavily as a kid, like Super Mario Bros and Care Bears, where clouds and stars have cute faces and personalities.

"Ad Astra" By Chuck BB

Tony: Personally, I felt a more "storybook" style would be suitable for my story - I looked at a lot of different things, from the Wind in the Willows book I grew up with to those little phone-number journals decorated with fairy pictures. Not that it did me much good, though - I think I ended up just using the style that's most comfortable for me (which should be "animation-style"). Mostly this was due to the necessity for speed, but it was also a bit of discovery, finding out how I draw things if I just go ahead and do it. You're probably seeing a lot of that throughout the Flight series - everyone's just using a style that's natural for them, and so any shifting style is due simply to the different people involved in the book. And that's one of the excellent things about Flight - all the different styles, and they're all excellent!

Reagan: I don't think this change really affected my contribution that much, nah. Although a few people did have huge influence on my story, mainly when I was taking my first awkward steps at composing comic pages and doing the sketching stage of things. Kazu, Kean and several others gave such incredibly valuable advice and pointers. So it was a different kind of influence. It didn't necessarily make me change my work to a different style so much as find better ways to execute it and tell it in a manner which I found more satisfying.

Bannister: I have a lot of influences from everywhere in the comics, animation, illustration, movies industries. But I couldn't tell about a particular influence from the outside. Especially these days, where I'm a bit disappointed about the lack of quality and imagination in most of these media.

Ben: I think my comics still lean more toward animation than illustration. As for influences, I'm always blown away by Jake Parker's draftsmanship, the sequential expertise of Phil Craven, the charm of Kazu's storytelling, the natural ease of Vera Brosgol's characters, the zeal of Kean Soo's work, and the sheer drawing skill of Rodolphe Guenoden. I wish every Flight artist had a book of his own, if only so that I could fill my shelves with them and bask in the creativity.

And outside of Flight the influences are in the hundreds.

Azad: I had done storyboarding for animation and film for years, but never really enjoyed it. It wasn't until I went back read some Shel Silverstein books and Edward Gorey that things started falling into place visually for my story.

6) One of the strongest things the Flight anthology has going for it is its sense of community in drawing so many creative people from different walks of life all under one banner. How has this implication of convergence influenced you or affected your work?

Kazu: I've found that being open and honest about the work I do makes it far stronger than I could ever have imagined. My involvement in Flight is reflective of that. I'm honoured that all of these fantastic, talented people want to be a part of this.

Kean: It's really taught me the value of hard work. Knowing that a large majority of the artists on Flight these days are balancing day jobs and families, and are still managing to find the time to produce these great stories really made [me] realize how much of a slacker I can be sometimes. I mean, Michel Gagné's work ethic is insane!

"Message In A Bottle" By Rodolphe Guenoden

Neil: I am definitely one of those people from a different "walk of life." I've never had formal art education or industry experience, so Flight was finally my way of connecting with a community of people who care about art and storytelling, and are very good at it. So, it's of course been an immense influence on me. It's certainly challenged me to do better and actually think more critically about my own work, and a lot of that has started to gel in my mind only in the last few months. I can say I'm definitely better because of Flight. It's surprisingly analogous to a great formal education. It's also really cool to have some of your biggest heroes as friends and acquaintances.

Joey: All the other anthologies that I've been published in were a lot more "hands-off." There would just be a book, and you'd do your piece and send it off, and if they liked it, you were in. If not... better luck next time. Since FLIGHT is put together on a forum like this, it's much more like a classroom environment, where everyone contributes to critiques. You can get a lot of different perspectives, and instead of simply writing a story that gets in or not, you work together to perfect the piece. My piece went through several drafts. The original story and stuff is all there, but little things have been tweaked here and there to make it stronger.

Michel: I love the Picollo Factory forum where we put the book together. The flight crew is so nice to me. They keep throwing me flowers every time I post something new on the board. I think they take it easy on me because I' m older.

Dave: It's constantly inspiring and a real kick in the pants to be able to see what everyone else is working on. Nothing is more motivating than seeing development sketches posted on the Flight Forum. Every few days my jaw drops to the floor, I freak out, then take a deep breath and head back to the drawing board. I'm such a huge fan of all the other creators, I want to make sure I don't embarrass myself with what I draw!

Tony: Like Michel said, it's all about the Picollo Factory. Without the support of all the awesome storytellers involved in Flight, my story would have been a lot weaker. It's such an excellent community, and everyone's so constructive... really, we're spoiled to be able to work in this way.

Reagan: I remember when I was rushing to get in before the deadline, staying up until 6am each night, blasting music into my head and watching things develop over the forum. Seeing all these other people going through the same feelings of anxiety, insomnia, enthusiasm, excitement and a general "It's tough, but we can do it!" spirit was so unbelievably motivating. If I were trying to do it all by myself with little or no contact with the people I was going to be sharing pages with, I think I would've been a lot less interested in the project. Being up at an insane hour, staring at your half-done page in Photoshop, and knowing that somewhere there's maybe one or two other people in Flight doing the same thing at that very moment is a really incredible feeling. I guess that's what it must be like to be an ant or Zergling. Really wonderful feeling of community.

Bannister: The influence I got from these guys, is they pushed me to work on my own stories, to do it by myself. I'm not much a writer and it's always painful to come up with a good idea and try to structure it.

Ben: Frankly, being part of the Flight community is, artistically, one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I am a mostly self-taught artist and before Flight I rarely had the chance to share my art, stories and creations with other artists.

"Earl D" By Yoko Tanaka

Through sharing my work in such an open, friendly talented and creative environment, I've been able to improve a hundred times over. I really owe a great debt to all the Flight artists and particularly those who were instrumental in making the first book and the forum a reality.

Azad: There's a freshness to having non-comic artists doing comics. I find the industry has, for the past few years, lacked a certain enthusiasm because it was feeding on itself. Everyone was inspired by the same 5 people, and ended up doing variations of the same 5 stories.

Having some new blood come in kick the industry in the rear is just what it needed.

7) What's next for you following FLIGHT?

Kazu: Well, I imagine I'll be doing FLIGHT books for quite a while. I want to do my best to keep it afloat for as long as the artists want to keep creating stories for it. Aside from Flight, I'm working on a graphic novel series called Amulet for Scholastic, and continuing to update the Copper comics on my website.

Kean: Well, I'm now working on finishing out my Jellaby graphic novel, which was just picked up by Hyperion Books to be published as a two book series. It's pretty exciting actually, as I'm moving away from the day job so that I can work on comics full-time! It's something I never thought would actually happen.

Neil: I did a short for another anthology, You Aint No Dancer #2, from New Reliable Press. The book has not been released yet, but you can read my story online here. I'm continuing to post comics to my website, and I'm also illustrating a "Li'l Mell and Sergio" story written by Shaenon Garrity, which is running now on Girlamatic.com. I've written and thumbnailed my story for Flight 4, and happy with that so far. I'm slowly working on a book of my own, but I don't have a publisher or anything for that yet. I'm hoping that people will like it, and that I'll be able to make a lot more.

Joey: Well, I'm finishing up my first graphic novel, The Ride Home. That's pretty much my top priority. I unfortunately had to opt out of FLIGHT 4 because of it. I'm serializing TRH online at Tragic Planet.com/The Ride Home/Chapters and update with 3 new pages every Wednesday at Tragic Planet.com/The Ride Home!

This summer I'll also be in More Strange Eggs, from Slave Labor Graphics. It's a sequel to Strange Eggs, which I had a piece in.

After The Ride Home, I'm going to work on some short comics, including my next FLIGHT contribution. It'll be refreshing to do some short stuff after completing a 150+ page book!

Michel: I always have lots of projects in the pipeline. I'm currently working on the XEKO trading card game. The first set of 116 cards was released in April and it's showing lots of promises. I'm currently working on the second set. You can check out some of the work I did for the first set here.

Issue 7 of my comic series ZED is coming out in June. I'll get going on issue 8 after the San Diego Comic-Con.

I also have a couple of new hardcover books in the works. One of them is called My Insane Childhood. It's been in the making for the past three years. I'm hoping to wrap it up in the next few months.

Dave: A teen detective/horror series called Agnes Quill, coming out from Slave Labor Graphics in October. It will also feature art by Raina Telgemeier, Jason Ho, Jeff Zornow and Jen Wang.

I'm writing the final story arc for what will be the 3rd Jax Epoch and the Quicken Forbidden trade paperback from AiT/Planet Lar.

A page a week for my web comic, Astronaut Elementary. Continuing to edit comics for Nickelodeon Magazine. Working on my story for Flight 4!

Tony: A continued involvement in the animation industry up here in Vancouver. Over the next couple months I'll be finishing up my stint as a Lead Animator on the Pucca animated series, which should air in the fall.

I hope to contribute to Flight 4, though currently a lack of both time and ideas is hampering that goal. I would also like to try taking up Parkour, though a lack of both stamina and physical agility is hampering that goal.

"Hunter" By Johane Matte

Reagan: Well, right now I'm trying to get into art school for like the fourth time. We'll see how that goes. But otherwise I'll most likely be doing sketches and advertising concepts for Armor Holdings Inc., who has been my steady employer for the past year or so. Really fun people to work for. I basically get to come up with ideas to help market - and occasionally develop prototype ideas - tactical armor for military and law enforcement.

Aside from that, I'll definitely be working on my next Flight piece for a future volume, again with Wyit and Sidna. I'm hoping to really take off with this story in the future.

Bannister: In Flight 4 I'll have 2 stories, one in collaboration with the talented Joel Carroll, for a story called "Tripod" based on the well known H.G. Wells book, and one I did by myself, where I tell my first skydiving jump. It's gonna be a very fun story (I hope).

I'm also finishing my first book in France called les Enfants d'ailleurs who's the first volume of a (long) series of fantasy books for children (in stores in January 2007).

I've got some other projects here and there, in France and in the US.

Ben: Well, I just recently turned in my story for Flight 4, which will be the print debut of my character Zita the Spacegirl (who has a small, rarely updated webcomic at Zita Space Girl.com).

Right now I'm working on painting and sculpture near Florence. When I return to the states in November I hope to be able to start designing and decorating churches in addition to taking on book and comics projects. I'm chronicling my progress at House Hatke.com.

Azad: Aside from another Flight story for Volume 4, I'm working on some more online material for my site Guerilla Comics.com, and a project with B.Clay Moore (Hawaiian Dick) is slowly brewing. I hope to do some more Sammy material over the year and I've started working on some scripts to some OGNs I've been picking at for years.

Be sure to check the links to the side to read more about the individual artists and see even more preview art from FLIGHT Volume 3. Check back as the Interviews will be updated throughout the week.

Introduction
Interview Roundtable
Interview - Kazu & Kean
Interview - Michel & Tony
Interview - Azad & Reagan
Interview – Dave & Joey
Interview - Neil & Bannister & Ben

 

Interviews Conducted by Co-Editor in Chief, Jonathan Ellis. E-mail Us To Comment On This Article.


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