ProFile Interview - Jill Thompson.
A look at the development of a unique artist.

Jill Thompson has been working in comics for a long time. How long? "I was in highschool when I did my first professional work. I'd like to define that as 'I was paid money for it'." In the anthology comic "Just Imagine Comics and Stories" a highschool girl got her start in comics and never looked back. Having enjoyed cartoons, comic strips, and finally comic books, working in the industry seemed a natural fit. After attending numerous conventions and working on the other side of the table, she got to meet a great group of artists who encouraged her to go to school to hone her talents. After graduating from The American Academy of Art in Chicago Illinois (which has produced talents like Alex Ross and P. Craig Russel) with a degree in illustration, Jill began to focus on the comics she loved and landed a job at DC Comics.

Jill talked to Christopher Butcher from her studio outside of Chicago, Illinois. Chris learned that besides being incredibly talented, she's a warm and funny person, and the easiest interview he's ever conducted. Jill let us in on some of her upcoming work, as well as giving opinions on everything from her experiences as one of the pre-eminent artists on Vertigo's Sandman, to breaking into the micro-managed children's book market. But ironicaly, our ProFile interview started off with a question she asked us...

You're calling from Toronto. Are you located in Toronto?

Actually, PopImage is sort of an international magazine, that's the beauty of the internet.

I tend to associate you with a British magazine. Am I wrong in assuming that?

No, actually. A lot of people see PopImage as this crazy British thing, and it's probably because three of our editorial staff are in England.

Maybe the people who have contacted people I know have been British people. They tend to assume it's a British magazine.

It's actually being hosted in New York right now, with people in England, and Denmark, Australia, Los Angeles, Tennessee and me here in Toronto.

Oh wow, that's pretty cool

Yeah it gives us a unique perspective on comics that way. There's stuff available in other parts of the world that just isn't available here. One thing that we don't really cover is manga, unfortunately. It's something I'm really interested in, we probably need a Japanese correspondent.

I'm totally interested in French comics.

Graphic albums and things?

Yeah...

Yeah, I'm slowly being worked over by one of our editors. He's always asking me "Did you see this new album" and I have to ashamedly say "No, we don't have albums here Arni..."

I just got back from France and I brought back as much as I could carry. I was displacing clothes in my suitcase to fit more comics in there. And... man... it's just wonderful! It just makes you feel good and makes you feel bad at the same time. That's what I'd like to see here. To be able to walk into a store, that's the equivalent of a Tower Records or a Virgin megastore here, and to have like 3000 square feet devoted to nothing but comics! And see people and children and older people all standing around reading them! When you walk in you'd think they were giving out free money or something, but no, people were in the comic book section! I'm like "That's not like that in the United States! This is like heaven!"

That is pretty cool. With your Scary Godmother hardcovers though you're approaching an album format. I mean obviously you're mixing prose with traditional word balloons and things like that. But I'd say you're approaching an album format. Do you have distribution into Europe?

Not yet, we're working on it. I'm in the process of writing a bunch of letters to the French publishers of the albums I picked up. Plus I was so impressed because there was all of this Halloween oriented material; characters and albums and stuff, and it was Christmas time when I was there. I thought "Well this stuff sells over here year round. It's not just considered a seasonal item. I mean they did have special stuff for Halloween, but here it was on the racks in January. It wasn't like they just put it away when the season was over.

That sounds fantastic. I'm with you on that. I have friends who've come back from Japan and they've given away their clothes so they've had more room to bring back comics and stuff. Now I know why Arni is always going on about graphic albums. I'd love to see more of that format here.

The Studio System

The method that comics are created in Europe is very different from how they're created here. What do you think of the tradional American studio system?

It doesn't work in this day and age. I think it's hard to get people together. And tell them to be creative. In art school it works because you're bouncing ideas off of class mates and you're excited by all of this sort external stimuli. And you bring it to your classmates and work on it, and you can bring it home to work on it.I can't say that the marvel bullpen of the 60's is really possible nowadays. I hear that they're trying to do it, at this company called CrossGen...

That's sort of where I was going with my question actually. Have you heard much about CrossGen comics?

I think, pardon my french, that the idea is really retarded.

I know if I'm sitting in a room... I've seen the diagrams, and I really admire them for wanting to create a situation where they can keep tabs on their creative teams make sure there isn't anyone flaking out that'll throw off the deadlines for the book. So you keep your writer/penciller/inker/colorist/letterer in the quote-unquote "pod" together. Everyone works differently though. I know that I don't work with the radio or stereo on too loud. Everyone at the studio here works with their headphones on, and every once in a while someone will say "Hey, let's put on the stereo" and we'll decide what to listen to. I don't mean to be cutting CrossGen down. I mean if it works, great. If it helps the industry even better. I just know that I couldn't do it.

That's quite a rant.

A friend of mine sent in a resume to Crossgen, he was doing some work at DC. I was actually ranting to him about this. It's sort of a Heaven's Gate thing. I mean, the concept of the thing sounds really good, "Create a bullpen!". It's great. But I mean you've got a writer who's on a roll in the same room as the artist. And the artist has to draw something that involves like, 700 Army men, while the writer just writes two pages that say "American army and German Army clash. We see lots of tanks destroying troops and blood everywhere. We need to see, oh, planes flying in and shelling the tanks. Draw all this on a two page spread." The artist is now "Gee, thanks. You can get up and go to the video room now because your quote-unquote 'day's work' is done, and I'm going to be here for 45 hours."

Do you think that sort of system will create animosity then, between the creative people on the books?

I just don't know if it will be condusive to getting work done. Not necessarily animosity though. It's supposed to be this sort of camaraderie but people all work at different paces, people need different stimulus or lack of stimulus to make sure that they can work. To have everyone working in a little pod, to say that everyone can share this little 8 square feet of room, might not work the way that they think it's going to work. I mean, I hope everything works out fine for them, I just couldn't do it.

Crossgen is very much talking about being successful in the industry. Do you think that there's an art versus commerce thing there? That it'll be good for getting the books out on time and what not, but because it's an assembly line it's not really art?

Do I think it's going to be good for commerce?

Do you think that the assembly line method of creating comics is condusive to quote-unquote "Art", or do you think it's more of a commercial necessity?

I don't know, I could be wrong but it sounds like they're doing it to keep it as more an artistic camaraderie type of atmosphere. "Me an my buds are going to make this comics." But I mean you could sit Chuck Dixon, Adam Hughes, and Kevin Nowlan in a pod together and you're not going to get that book out any faster. Chuck Dixon could write a book in like, a week, and Adam Hughes will just freeze up at a blank page. And Kevin Nowlan is going to change what Adam Hughes does to look like Kevin Nowlan anyway. I'm not slamming any of these guys, I just know what their work looks like. I've wanted Adam Hughes to work on certain books, and editors will just come out and say "There's No Way." They always come back to "Do you know how long it took him to get [Gen 13] done?" It was a two issue story that took six months. And at the end, [it only got done] because they locked him in a room and left him there. So I mean, Adam has his own work schedule that's comfortable for him, he has to do what he needs to do to make sure he's okay with his work. So that's why I think that what they're doing is looking for certain types of people willing to work in this environment, and willing to live in that situation, because I don't think everyone could do it.

I'm eager to see how it works, and for the first fall-out story. "I escaped CrossGen comics!"

[laughter]

I would really love to just be able to read more awesome comics, from whoever puts them out.

Actually that's a tenet that someone put forward this month in an editorial in the Attitude section. They don't care what gets made, they just want to see lots more stuff. The Michael Moorcock method of banging out an Elric novel in like 3 days, and putting it out there. Pulp Comics. But, you were talking earlier about the way that you create your artwork. What's your creative process like? Take us through a page of creating a Scary Godmother hardcover.

Once I get down to the hardcore work for a book, it all boils down to the same situation. I've got my notes jotted down on the book. I write an outline of the action that happens in the story. I break the outline down to the amount of pages that I need, and write the script for whichever page that it's on. Then I go from that outline to the illustration. What I do for a painted book is pencil the entire book first, and then, once I'm done with that I jump into the painting of it. I try and do a painted page per day. That changes only in regards to how long my day is. Sometimes my day is 10 hours, and sometimes it's 14 or 15 hours of painting, but I try and make sure I paint a page during that day. I actually thought that I'd be smart and do a lot more full-page paintings in the Mystery Date, I figured "This'll help me out, to cut down on time." But those then became the pages that took me two full days to do. They were much more detailed because they were chock-filled with things to noodle over. That's the same way that my Scary Godmother comics work. As far as my notes and outlines work, and then to the illustration. The only difference is that instead of painting, my day becomes basically inking and lettering a page a day.

How does that differ from when you're not doing Scary Godmother? Something like Finals, or Invisibles? How does your creative process change then?

Well, it changes in the fact that I'm not writing anything. But my day is pencilling and inking or whatever, depending on what part of the book I'm doing that day. What I do when I get a script from somebody is read through it several times, and I'll mark off all of the things that I'll need for reference. Whether it's something that I have, or something that I'll have to search out. Unfortunately, there's never really that much time for reasearch, because you're always sent the script and they're like "We need the pencils in a week and a half" and you're like "Oh... great." But I go searching out reference material, and usually look through [previous work], because a lot of it might be reference of things that have happened before. But if it's something different that takes place in an exotic location then I'll see what I have, and gather reference. And once I have that, it's pencil & ink, pencil & ink, pencil & ink. I try and put in a regular work day like the rest of the world. Usually I end up staying here until 7 or 8 pm, depending on when I go to work. If I make it in the morning, then 7 or 8. If not, then I'm here later [laugh]. But I always make sure I have a page done before I leave.

You've been interested in comics from a young age, and almost growing up in the comics industry. You used to work at conventions actually...

I met the people that published "Just Imagine Comix and Stories" at one of these small conventions, and actually started working for them at conventions - manning the tables and selling stuff. Basically, I was driving around on weekends during highschool to any place you could drive to in 8 hours. From Chicago that means Ohio, Indiana, St. Louis, Iowa, Wisconsin. Any kind of little card or baseball thing that also carried comic book stuff. Eventually it became that I would go and just help unload the truck. I was supposed to be working the table and instead they'd let me take my portfolio and my sketchbook around to show all the artists. That's pretty much how I met a bunch of comic book people. I was just sort of sitting there dallying watching people draw. I was too shy to actually show anyone my portfolio for the longest time, or my sketchbook.

Why do you create comics? What pushes you to create in an art form that, by all accounts in North America is slowly dying.

Not so slowly (heh). It seems to be tenaciously holding on, but yeah it seems to be dying. Well, when I first fell in love with comics, it wasn't dying at all. It was giving birth. It was growing into something bigger, and that was well into when I started getting interested in comics. When I was growing up they started having comic stores. Instead of going to the drug store, you ended up finding that these were these stores that had nothing but comics in them. And it was like "Oh boy!" And then those grew and grew, and the comic industry grew and grew, and unfortunately when I entered it and really started working in it, it just [imploded]. But my love for the medium didn't [implode]. I mean I like to paint and draw, and do all sorts of other kinds of things, but this is what I do. Until there is no more comic book industry for me to rely on...

I'm hoping that comics will be accepted into outside culture like they are in other countries. I know that's a big hope. But they kind of are in different media. In the internet, and in magazines, I think that part of the storytelling of comics is being absorbed into other places that will make sure that I have an outlet for what I do. I think that most of it is because people my age are creating business and media and pop culture in these other fields. It's always been accepted for us, and it comes as this natural thing that's incorporated into how we express ourselves. I mean, I have changed the way that I... not look at the comic industry. I'm trying to straddle two industries. I'm trying to break into another industry and bring comic books with it.

You mean the children's book market?

Yeah. Where you can do something that's cartoony, but it's given a lot more credence. I would like the Children's book market to sit up and realize that the way that I tell a story is a perfectly valid way for children to read one. I'm trying to drag comics into another market.

Have you encountered resistance at bringing that sort of storytelling style in? You have a wholly unique storytelling style as far as I'm concerned, mixing narration with panel to panel comic style.

I haven't encountered resistance, but I'm not sure that people know what to do with it. The children's book industry is sooo interested with "What age group is it for?" They have to know is it a board book, is it a bath book, a young adults book? Is it a picture book? A 3-4 book, a 5-7 book, a 4 year old book? They have all of these categories for things. I wanted Scary Godmother to be a book that everyone could read. That a young child could have read to them, but in the back of their minds they want it to be the book that they will one day read themselves. Cuz that's the kind of experience I had when I was growing up. My grandmother and my parents had read me books that I couldn't possibly read myself at that point. But I couldn't wait for the day that I could read the book myself. I think the fact that Scary Godmother is a huge combination of words and pictures is great. The pictures will help the kids read through the words, and the fact that there are words there will help the adults through the mass of pictures.

Really, the only resistance we've found (and I don't look at it as any true resistance), is that it's all about categorization. People are so comfortable with categorizing things that when they see something different, it's difficult for them. We were having problems with our Ingram (Bookstore Database) distribution. We couldn't figure out why, and I personally still can't figure out why. What we were finding though was that bookstores could order our books, but our books never popped up under a certain category. Well it was under Graphic Novels, and that meant that it wouldn't come up in a standard book search. It would only come up under a very broad search for the title. So, it was ghettoized as a comic book. Some other friends of mine have seen it in book stores now though, the Barnes and Noble here. I was like "Really? It's not Halloween and I didn't tell them to put it there." I think that it's been ironed out now though. We just couldn't figure out why it wasn't popping up under a "seasonal" heading. It turns out it wasn't considered a book.

Do you think that sort of intense micro-management organizational structure is the result of an industry that produces a lot more product, a lot more varied product than the comic book industry?

Well, certainly they do. They specifically make books for 1 year olds or toddlers or 6 month olds.

Well, an example might be that in the comic book industry your product is very unique. I can count the number of books for kids, and their parents I suppose, on maybe 2 hands. You're a lot of things to a lot of people in the industry, because there's such a dearth of that sort of material. But in the book industry they've got it down to "This line of books is specifically for teething children" etc.

Right, right.

Whereas in the comic industry there are 15 or 20 books total that are even appropriate for kids.

Oh yeah and there are tons of books that [the children's book] industry deals with and can't figure out how to categorize. I don't know. I mean Neil Gaiman's book, "The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish", isn't in the children's section, it's in the comic book section.

Really?

Yeah. I mean, when I got to borders or Barnes and Noble, it's in with the graphic novels. Maybe they're looping it in together, lumping all of the Gaiman books in together. But that book is a picture book, what they would consider a picture book.

Yeah, it doesn't even really have any of the comic trappings that you use.

Well, it's got some word balloons and things like that. But in the word balloons it's got things like "He said, 'That Looks Very Nice'". You know, that kind of thing with the he said's and she said's around it. But that book is meant to be a regular put in the children's book section children's book. And they lump it in with graphic novels.

Mm-hmm.

Not that there's anything wrong with graphic novels, but graphic novels aren't displayed where you can even see the covers. Y'know, they're all displayed [spine out] next to each other. Unless you know what you're looking for...

You're never going to find it.

You're never going to even think of pulling them off the shelf! They're thin spined, multi-worded titles. When I was in the Fanac(french bookstore) store in France, in the comics section, the books were stacked like books. Lots of them were stacked on the floor and on shelves flat, so you could see the full face of the book. Some of them were facing out, some of them are stacked up just like they are at the student book store and all the books are on the table- giant stacks of them. The point of the art on the cover is to help draw you in, and if it's never displayed that way how is it going to help you? Which is why the quote-unquote graphic novels section of most book stores are sorely lacking, because they carry like one of a few things here and there, put them all together on the same shelf, and you don't get to see what they're about. Except for Neil Gaiman's one because it was facing the wall, on a rack.

[laughter]

I saw it and I thought, what's this doing over here? This should be upstairs by the Ralph Steadman books, or the "Stinky Cheese Man". That's got a freaky art style that wouldn't necessarily be considered childreny. But it's a children's book and it should be in a children's book section.

Can you talk about where Scary Godmother actually came from?

Scary Godmother came from two things. It came from my niece being born, my first time being an auntie. It came from wanting to make a Halloween book for her because I went to the book store and I found that there were no Halloween books that I thought were cool. Yknow, they were either too cutesy or too scary and that didn't seem to fun. Either it was this old, elegant rhyme about Halloween or it was like the Care Bears wearing black masks and rouge on their cheeks. I was like "Euuuughhhh!". So I thought, "well, I'm gonna make a cool Halloween book.

Will there be another scary Godmother book?

I'm... trying.

You've very subtly hinted that you're going to be sticking with and promoting the first three books for a while.

Well, there are a couple of things that are just dangling over my head that might happen. And it greatly affects the way I'd be able to schedule a book.

Different projects you mean?

Yeah, Different projects and certain scary godmother things.

Ooo... Is the Mainframe animation deal?

Yeah. If we get picked up by somebody, for a series or a film, a huge amount of my time will go into that. Therefore my painting time will be much less. I'm going to be starting a new book, and hopefully I won't be able to finish it. Because I'll be busy making a film or a holiday special or a series or something.

Heh, not since "It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown", to my knowledge, has their been a Halloween-themed children's special.

It's about time there's another one!

So, Mainframe are the "Reboot" people, how did you get in contact with them?

They contacted Sirius and myself, and they send me a reel of the stuff of the stuff that they were working on, and that they were capable of. Reboot got cut off at the end of the first season here (in America).

Yeah, I saw the third season hehe.

Yeah, by that season it had gotten dropped by whatever station it was on. And, it just made these giant leaps and bounds in the quality of their animation. Not that their animation was bad before but, from when I had seen it before to what they sent me on the tape - they were still making it for other parts of the world, including Canada - I just hadn't been able to see what was going on with it. I was like "Oh my God! This rocks! This is how I want to see Scary Godmother!" Plus the tape had all these different examples of things that they were doing like Aliens and Star Trek, Dot's Spots and Weirdoes and they took some scenes from children's books and animated it to show how they can adapt different styles and that's what did it. Because this was such a diverse tape I thought "They can do what I want". Then we went through the lengthy process of options and lawyers and all that kind of stuff. Then once that was settled it was like "We have to find a network or somebody that wants to put this out."

Do you have an agent to help you secure these kinds of deals?

Umm, no.

I got into a discussion about agents with a writer I was talking to, and I'm curious about artists and writers taking them on. Is their any reason you don't have an agent?

Right now I don't need to pay somebody else... I'm busy right now. I haven't ever needed a rep or an agent up 'til this point (and I'm knocking wood while I'm saying that). Right now I've got plenty of work and I haven't need anyone to bring it to me, that I have to pay them for it. Usually I can find myself something that I want to do, or I'm working on something that I like. Luckily I've been able to work on projects that I like and I've wanted to do.

I don't have an agent as far as a Hollywood agent or anything like that because I'm not a writer by trade. What I do is Scary Godmother by trade, and I create things by trade and stories by trade, but I don't just sit there and try and pitch. At this point I suppose if someone wanted to pay me 1.7 million dollars for a one line sentence for what a movie might be about I would probably say "Okay, I'll take some of that. But I'm not writing screenplays right now, I'm not pitching projects. I'm focussed on a few projects and I'd like to see those come to fruition. Once those come to fruition I'd like to see other projects come to fruition. I'm very concentrated on the creative efforts . I know a lot of people who have agents right now. It's just not something that I'm looking for at this point. That's not saying that it's something I'd never look for.

The Vertigo Years

You mentioned being able to projects that you enjoy. When you look back on your career a lot of your work has been on the Vertigo line from DC Comics. Are those the kinds of comics that you enjoy as a reader?

Some. I enjoy a lot of different types of comics. But I was working on those kinds of projects because, well, I believe I was there. I was working on Sandman when Vertigo came into being, so I was working on the book that launched Vertigo as an imprint. It was good for them to make sure I had some other projects, involved in that. Because I was closely associated with them at their conception.

Have you found being associated with, or being labeled as a Vertigo Artist has harmed your career? Or do you feel it's helped your career?

Oh it's helped it. I think it gave it an air of... I don't know. My work on the Vertigo books associated me with a vertigo "style". People working on Superman have a Superman "style". I think that people who were working on those books want to work on stuff that they like. But tt's not that it's the only type of thing that they like.

I would like to see Guy Davis work on Iron Man, but I don't know if the guys over at Marvel are thinking "Geez, that guy's a Vertigo artist - I think he'd do a good job on Iron Man." But then, now a days they might. It's all about being different and changing people's idea of what something's supposed to be about. At that time though it was very cut-and-dried. This is supposed to look like Swamp Thing, and this is supposed to look like Superman. This looks like an Image book. Using certain labels on things you could pigeon-hole the artist. By saying "he's a Superman artist" you could tell what I mean. It just kept you in a certain storytelling atmosphere.

And you see those walls breaking down now?

Mm-hmm. Because... They have to.

Have you read Hy Bender's new book "The Sandman Companion"? Hy interviews Neil Gaiman for like 300 pages.

I've looked through it, but I haven't read the whole thing.

Okay, because you're mentioned very, very glowingly in the brief lives chapter.

I... heh, I've of course read all the bits that concern myself. [laugher]

What was your Sandman experience like? I'm sure a lot of people would like to know, through the foggy eye of memory.

One thing I mentioned in that book is how I wanted to know about that. I mean I had a really good time working on Sandman. I easily could have drawn Sandman for the rest of my days. I had a really great affection for those characters. Neil was really great to work with. I think if anything I was too bothersome to him. With his writing career and his fame taking him all over the globe I was always after him; "I need more pages! I need more pages!" I think I became a stress factor for certain parts of his Brief Lives years. [Laugher] "I just gave you a page!" "Yeah, you just gave me a page, yesterday, and I did it. What do you expect me to do today?" "Well, I'll fax you through another one." But, we worked really well together. He wrote to my strengths, and I was very lucky to be in a situation where I find a writer that was so sensitive to "What would make a great comic between us?" It was like "If I write everything that you're good at, then this is going to make a really great comic."

Well, conversely then, let's talk about your Invisibles experience. Because...

Why would it be conversely? Are you saying I didn't have a great time working with Grant Morrisson?

Hah, I'm sure you had a good time working with Grant, but there were issues during the Arcadia arc. There were editorial issues. And I sort of...

Well, I'm not the editor.

That's true.

I had no problem working with Grant Morrisson. Any kind of editorial snafus that we ran into was really DC comics doing what they have to do because they're Time-Warner, and they're associated with Superman. No matter how much you're a Vertigo book, you're still a comic book, and you're there to make money. So, they were a little bit overly-sensitive about certain parts of the Arcadia storyline, which I can see, upon first reading them and freaking out. Like, "How do you adapt into comics 101 Days of Sodom"? Well, maybe you shouldn't. But when I had read the script for one issue in Arcadia, I knew exactly how to draw the offending bits without showing anything. But then we ran into a problem where no one knew how I was going to do that, and they just wanted Grant to change everything. With my art, I tried to do things that implied what was going on without showing anything, and I believe I did do that. But because they were a little bit sensitive about the whole issue, they had the production department go in and draw shirts on the victims of the atrocities in that certain issue. "Draw a shirt on this dead bloated corpse in the hospital."

Do you know what I noticed last night? I was flipping through the Invisibles trade for a review of the art I'm doing. You've got the Cypher-men, these insect guys and they're devouring the entrails of these nude female corpse. It's disgusting, they're dripping in blood and she's ripped of part and they're pieces of stuff everywhere. BUT, they drew panties on the corpse. You can see that someone in the art department has drawn these frilly little panties on this naked corpse.

Right.

It blew me away.

And y'know, that's not just a DC Comics problem, that's a United States problem.

These characters are bathing in the entrails of a woman, which is considered totally fine. No weird undertones there. But, she's gotta have her underwear on.

Yeah, they can't show her genitals. Because babies come out of there...

And that's something to be feared...

Yeah, someone might molest her, but it's okay to eat her corpse. I completely agree and I understand. Like, why in an R rated movie can you show a naked woman, but if you show full frontal nudity of a man it's NC-17? Because a man's part is so much dirtier than a female's part. And a woman's body is there to excite you...

It's not the happiest set of circumstances. Things are getting a little bit more even handed though, I think.

But as far as the comic book situation there went, on Invisibles, Grant was incensed (as well he should have been) because the point he was trying to make was being diluted. He knew very well that I would be able to pull this stuff off without showing anything. And I told him that I had already figured how to do every bit of it in my mind. It was actually very challenging to evoke that kind of horror and that bad reaction without being pornographic about it, and showing the violations that were happening. Your mind is a dirtier thing than I could ever draw. You'll think of worse things happening off panel than things you could ever draw on panel.

But you succeeded though. The artwork succeeded in not being overly explicit but still got the point across.

But then they made sure that they still drew shirts on them. And panties on the corpses.

Ugh.

But I believe you never would have seen any genitals, just where the genitals would have been. Like say, a girls legs would be crossed. Whenever I'm doing stuff like that I try to make sure that one leg is raised a little higher or something. The woman might be naked but you will not see it.

You got your revenge though, Finals had penis' all over the place.

It's not like they were lovingly rendered or anything..

Just a line and they were done...

They've loosened up a bit I guess eh?

Possibly, although perhaps it wasn't quite as charged a storyline as Invisibles was. Speaking of which, what's it like coming back to Invisibles now? I mean you actually drew a scene in Invisibles v3#4 that was a direct mirror of what happened in v1#5.

I've drawn a couple of scenes like that. There's a scene in the issue that follows that as well. But yeah, it was nice. There were other stories that I would love to have done with Grant, and with the characters. It was nice to be asked. I had fun working on that book. His writing style and Neil's writing style were totally different, as far as the involvement. Grant was like "Okay I wrote this, here go do it" and Neil was more like "Here I wrote this, do you like it? I tried to make sure...". Neil was very talky, where you could never get in touch with Grant. So I liked working with Grant but I wish I could have spoke with him more about stuff.

Have you met Grant?

Oh yeah! I'm sad to see [Invisibles] go. I met Grant in 1993. I think he's terrific. I stayed at his house in Glasgow, later in 1993. He's great.

Finals, Censorship, and DC Comics.

Can we talk about Finals? It just sort of showed up in the store one day and it blew me away, the first issue blew me away.

Actually, it came from 1993 as well.

[laughter]

Will Pfeifer, someone I don't think I've ever heard of in comics.

Well, unless you're a fan of the mini-comic violence man, you probably haven't heard of him before. That was his only other comic book writing. He's a journalist, and I knew him when I lived in Kent Ohio. He moved out to Illinois to take a Journalism job at the Rockford Register Star. When I moved from Ohio back home to Chicago, he helped me move and we were both loving comics and we were popping around my new neighborhood so I could get familiar with it. We both started talking about comics, and things that we'd like to see. You know the Branch Davidians and all this kind of crazy stuff, and it turned into an idea for a comic. We brainstormed on it for a while, and Will took it home with him and shaped it into a proposal, and I read it, added some things, and then we started sending it around to comic companies.

And six years later it was a comic book!

That's right! [laughter].

That's a shocking revelation for those of us that want to break into the industry over night I suppose.

And for anybody who comes up to me at a convention and says "Could you do a character sketch for my proposal? Because with your name on it people will open it up right away?" That's proof that it won't. I was working for DC comics the entire time, and I was asking people I was working with to read it. No one had the time. It wasn't until Joan Hilty started at Vertigo that I thought "She's new. She's not a full blown editor, an assistant. This doesn't make her job any less stressful, but she may have a little bit more free time than anyone else. She's Karen [Berger]'s assistant, so if she reads it then maybe Karen will read it."

I guess it worked out for you...

She took it home that weekend, and she was the person that did it for us. She liked it, and she wanted to talk to Will because she was unfamilar with his work.

Finals is a very dark book. Espescially considering the seemingly benign subject matter. And actually, parts of the first issue were changed between it's inception and the printing of the first issue.

Yes, thank you psycho children. When Will and I wrote this, stuff that has happened in the past three years at highschools was not happening. It's not that we predicted it was going to happen, but we were making a statement about stuff. We have no problem with the fact that it was changed. We had a sniper scene in the first issue. One of the students was doing his term paper, and it was a psychcology term paper, and it was not appropriate considering what had happened at Columbine. DC was worried about it, and we all said right away "This has nothing to do with that. It's not about any of that." They said "We know, but we think we can do something else." So Will said "Okay, let me think". He wrote something that was 5 times better, that was a lot darker, and more violent. They were worried about violence, but they were only worried about gun violence. This guy mutates into a horrible monster and uses his now lifeless girlfriend as a weapon, it's just the choice of weapon became more acceptable unfortuantely. We're still making our violent statement, but we can't use a gun.

What a bizzare state of circumstances.

And y'know, we're associated with that situation no matter what. Columbine happened, DC comics puts out a comic about a horrible crazy school and kids die there. Except, it's so overlooked now because there are no guns. Except for Dave. Dave does carry a gun. But he's a criminal justice major. [laughter] The only way we can be thankful that the industry is going down the tubes is that kids don't read comics. There will be no child picking this up because it's just no their thing.

That's a little bit more of a measure of creative freedom. But DC for that whole period just snapped down hard. I mean, they cancelled an issue of Hellblazer. They said it was just too sensitive considering what happened with Columbine.

I have no problem with that. This comes down to the other question, the Invisibles question. They're Time-Warner, they have to make these decisions. I'm working for a company that I know does this. I'm not self-publishing, I'm no Mike Diana, where I'm doing comics where one day the CBLDF is going to have to come bail me out because someone in Florida has had a huge problem with it.

Another reason not to move to CrossGen! [laughter] But anyhow...

You can't wear a thong bikini in that country, much less...

I think you meant to say "state", but "that country" seems just as appropriate.

I guess it is like it's own little country... I think DC felt it was in their best interests to make sure that they were being sensitive, and being perceived as sensitive, and caring about what was being put into their quote-unquote comic books, because no matter what is on the cover of that, "For Adults" or "17 and over", it's a comic book. The rest of US culture thinks that all comic books are suitable for children. They don't understand the difference between comic books, and they know that DC Comics puts out Superman. So they have to make sure that they're presenting a concious effort to make sure that they're sensitve to what's going on in the country. I didn't have any problem with that. I don't know what was in the Hellblazer story, I know that there was a whole Hellblazer issue between Warren Ellis and DC.

I'm sorry, I don't want to make you comment on something...

It's okay. I totally defend DC's decision to pull the quote-unquote "offending" pages from Finals. I was happier with what I did afterwards. Will and I have had no problems, but people always pull our names into some sort of censorship hoo-hah when they're talking about Warren Ellis. And we've gotten online and said "We don't care! We liked what we did better! We think it's cooler!" but they're like "How dare DC censor you?!" It's DC Comics, they can do that. When you sign your contracts you're working for hire. They have final say, and they don't ever have to print anything we ever do, period. That's the price you pay to have your comic put out by DC Comics. It's not like they tell you this afterwards, you know you can have a problem with it and be upset about it, but you have to know that that might happen. What a creaor-owned project like we did, we also had the option, if they were going to do something that we thought was to the detriment of us, we could pull it and say that we didn't want to publish it, and give them their money back, and take our project elsewhere.

Fair enough.

I think it was fair enough.

An Artistic Evolution.

Your art style has really changed, over the course of your career. From the tight, controlled sort of stuff you did in Invisibles to the more iconic/abstraction of stuff like Finals. Was it a conscious change?

It's probably because of the art training that I've had, in art school. I was pretty much trained as an illustrator, and one of the projects that we always had to do was copy other illustrators. We'd have to, and this is back when movie posters were drawn instead of just photographs, draw a movie poster in the style of Richard Ansel or somebody. Whatever the subject matter is, my art seems to change according to it. Now I don't try to do it, and I've kept a very Scary Godmother-esque feel to Finals. I find that when I do sketch now, it's more in this kind of style. When I draw something like Wonder Woman, it changes back. Like I just did a bunch of Santa Claus illustrations and elves for a friend of mine. I thought they were going to turn out like my Scary Godmother stuff, and they didn't. They changed according to the design of the Santa Claus that I drew. I drew a very classical, Coca Cola kind of Santa Claus, and the style of the elves carried along with that.

You've also experimented with various storytelling styles too, most notably on the She Male arc from Invisibles.

Yeah, those little archie kind of strips. Neil Gaiman actually got me all wound up about that because he was the only one who ever asked for it. He wanted me to draw stuff in the style of the illustrations in A.A. Milne books, or put some Rube-Goldbergesque kind of machinery in there. At the time of course I knew his work, but I didn't know that it was Rube Goldberg work. That's the problem with my art history, I never took it. [Laughter] So, I know what things look like, "That's the guy that does the old-timey fairy tale stuff." Now I know that it's Arthur Rackham. So I wouldn't know the names of the people he'd want, but I was familiar with the styles, and once I figured out who they were it made things a lot easier.

Yeah, changing the style ofmy storytelling and artwork. It's something that I really like to do. It seems like I naturally do it according to what I draw. I really like the Scary Godmother style. I'd never force it onto something that... Actually, I can't say never. I did this 8 page back-up for Wonder Woman, and it was a lot more angular and Scary-Godmother-esque. But I think I was doing it while I was penciling Revenge of Jimmy. So naturally I kept in the same frame of mind the entire day. I'd went from one project straight into the next. But if I sit back and think about it... Well, for example, I'm going to be drawing a Chyna comic for Chaos! comics.

Really? You're going to be drawing that?

Yeah, I just found out actually.

That is so bizzare.

Oh, I'm totally sparked for wrestling. I'm really excited about it because she's like a real-life Wonder Woman. People have always wanted me to go back to that character, but here I get to draw a character that's like that but in real life.

Well, I don't know. You've had some rather interesting with run-ins with licensed properties before...

Yeah, I totally hope that this doesn't harsh my boner for wrestling. But I don't think it will. I think the WWF people have been a lot more lenient with Chaos! than Fox was with Topps, as far as X-Files goes. I asked them about that, and told them "I will turn down this project if I don't want to watch wrestling anymore." And Chaos! said they've been really good to them, and they like what they do. Chaos! asked me to do a sample, and I sent them an illustration of Chyna and they liked what I did. That had to be passed on to WWF people and they liked what I did as well. I'm really looking forward to it.

Personally Speaking...

You're maried to Brian Azzarello, writer of 100 Bullets from Vertigo.

Yup.

How did you meet Brian?

We were at a bar.

Wow, that's sort of co-incidental.

I didn't know that he was involved in comics in any way. I didn't... this is going to sound worse than it was. I didn't want to be involved with anybody in the comics industry. I had just come out of a relationship with somebody, and I thought "It would be best to date someone that works in a completely different field." So I met Brian, and I didn't know what he did. I totally enjoyed his company, and didn't know that he was in comics in any way. One day I finally asked him "What do you do for a living?", and he took me over to a comic book rack and pull off a comic book. I was like "You are kidding me...". He was like "No." [Laughter]

But obviously he knew what you did...?

I don't know. I mean, he knew once I told him, but I don't know if he knew before hand.

Interesting...

It's never been a problem. It's the best thing that ever happened to me, y'know?

Well, you did marry him.

Yeah.

And on Halloween?

Yeah. It was more important for me than him, lemmie tell ya.

Is that part of your love for Halloween then?

Yeah, I always wanted to get married on Halloween. You can ask my mother. Of course I had the whole plan of like a big costumed reception, so obviously Brian and I compromised because he wasn't into that, heh. We just went down to the courthouse and got married on Halloween. It was a Tuesday.

Heh, "It was a Tuesday." That's sweet.

Well, I mean nobody knew, it was a complete secret. We sprung it on everyone afterwards, we called my parents from the courthouse. Got the various kind of, responses. My brother was like "Are you in Vegas? I'll be right there." I was like, "Sorry, we're in the courthouse in Chicago." He was like, "Are you sure you don't want to go to Vegas?" "Well, we're already married." "Awww. You should get remarried in Vegas." So if I ever get remarried he will be able to come.

Do you work in the same studio as Brian?

Oh, no. We'd have nothing to talk about at the end of the day. I share studio space with two fellow artists, and Brian works home. I mean, sometimes he'll grab his laptop or a legal pad and wander around. But yeah, I have a studio outside. I used to work at home, and then when he started doing writing there was no way we could both work at home. That's one of those different work situations, he works in a totally different way than I do, and he has a different rhythm and schedule to his day. There were times, when we got snowed in, we couldn't get anything done. Then there was the time when my studio was... made smaller. I was sharing a studio with someone and they were remodeling their space, and everything had to be covered because they were dry-walling and stuff. I was put into this tiny room. I had to just bring home my necessities and try and work at home. I couldn't get anything done. Maybe if we had a big house, and he worked in the attic and I worked in the basement things would be different. But I was working in the living room and he was working in the back bedroom, and I'd need the phone or he'd need the phone, and he was faxing and I was expecting a call, or I needed a messenger to come, it was just too much.

Do you think that's where your dislike of the CrossGen studio style comes from then? [Laughter]

Oh yeah! I mean, knowing how we work together, and we love each other! [laugh]

Jill's upcoming projects include the 3 issue "Scary Godmother: Wild About Harry" mini-series from Sirius Comics (check out the preview). She'll also be penciling the "Chyna" mini-series from Chaos! comics, and part of Invisibles volume 3, #2, from DC/Vertigo.

Christopher Butcher is Columns Editor of PopImage.

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