Profile Interview: Teddy Kristiansen
By Arni Gunnarsson

Setting up a meeting with Teddy Kristiansen was not easy due to his workload but eventually we met at a place not far from our respective homes, at the Vester Vov Vov Cinemas lounge, where we had some coffee and I tried to find out what made the man tick.

When did you start in comics?

I discovered early that I wanted to be a comic artist, I read an insane amount of comics as a kid and had a good library near by which imported both American and French comics and they translated to Danish. So I was bombarded by many types of comics and I soon found the store in Copenhagen; Fantask, where there were more comics. The library where I lived also had a magazine called "Kulørte Sider" and it was the only the comics magazine at the time about comics and it was a coincidence I think that they got it, and suddenly when the interest flared I could see what was going on in the industry.
I read a lot of Claus Delauren, TIN TIN and classic French albums and then with a friend from school we started a studio together, as we were both interested in comics. So he lived in this house were they had a loft were we had a studio.

How many years ago was this?

We were only kids, I think we were 10. We were very ambitious, we sat after school in the studio and worked. We collected Politiken ( a Danish newspaper ) which ran strips about the character Felix which we cut out so we had a huge pile of strips in the room and numbered the strips and gathered them in volumes. It was a continuation of Jan Loef´s FELIX, a Swedish strip.
Then came the teenage years where I didn't draw as much. I did what teenagers do but kept drawing and then I signed up for a drawing course where I met another artist, the girl I drew with earlier had quit drawing and changed school by this time, and at this course in Charlottenlund I met Thomas Nør, and he was the first I met besides my friend who was interested in comics and we started going to Fantask, the only store in Copenhagen at the time.
Soon after we saw this ad, various people in the industry were looking for people to start a new studio, we went to the meeting and got to partake. We were about 17 at the time. That was the beginning of our introduction to the Danish industry.

One thing led to another, we were there for a while and then I drew SUPERMAN AND THE PEACE BOMB with Henning Kure as editor, he was the driving force behind that project. Later he asked me and Peter Snejbjerg who started at the same time, we both had an interest in American comics, at the time the main interest in Copenhagen and Denmark was focused around French comics, they were always looking in the direction of France.

It seems to me they still do.

They do a bit yeah but we began looking at American books and published our debut albums at around the same time. Peter then moved to Copenhagen and joined our studio. Henning asked if we would consider a TARZAN project together to which we said yes, it was to be published by Zemi and it was to be published in America as well.
In the middle of the project Henning suggested a few short stories he would have other people write. Peter and I had worked together on the project up until that point and therefore wanted something where we did our stuff solo. Henning contacted Matt Wagner and Walter Simonsen and asked if they wanted to write the stories which they did and when that was finished we started the joint TARZAN project. Wagner and Simonsen´s stories were in the first album of three.
After this we went to San Diego with our contacts and met a lot of people and we both returned with new projects.
I was to draw GRENDEL TALES: FOUR DEVILS, ONE HELL, the first of the GRENDEL TALES books and Peter was to do LORDS OF MISRULE.
It was delayed because Tundra went bankrupt while it was being done, and it lay in limbo for a long time. He had drawn 6 issues at the time, almost 6, maybe 5 and a half at the time of the bankruptcy. It was supposed to be 6 issues and luckily Dark Horse picked it up and published it first in single issues and then the trade paperback.

At the same time I did the GRENDEL TALES book and after that I drew a short story for DC, (Finde Navn) which I drew and colored myself. That was followed by more job offers from DC. This was when I discovered what a small world it was. When you look from a distance, you feel America is something which can not be overcome but it turned out to be just as small as here in Denmark. It wasn't as if there were 10.000 people drawing in the US and as in so many environments you soon find people of like minds. I then did a short story for Dark Horse, a Harlan Ellison story for his book DREAM CORRIDOR. Drawing that was a wonderful experience.
Later on I did the SANDMAN issue and at the next SDCC Matt Wagner asked if I would do SANDMAN MIDNIGHT THEATRE, if Neil Gaiman was up for it. They would write it together and would have Morpheus, the main character in the SANDMAN series by Gaiman, meet the old established Sandman, Wesley Dodds, I said yes and Gaiman agreed as well.

At the same con I was introduced to a very quiet person and that was Steve Seagle and it was so nice. Here were all these stressed out people, running back and forth trying to promote themselves and suddenly there he was, so calm in the middle of all this hysteria. We soon got to talking and I had read this series he did with Tim Sale called AMAZON, a fantastic story with amazing art by Sale. It had a very European quality/feeling compared to other American series. It was a heavier read at a different pace, not a superhero book in any way, and reading this was so lovely.
After the con we wrote to each other and talked on the phone a few times, one of the last things we talked about was doing something together some time and then Steve wrote that this might have been one of these empty promises of working together but he could hear that I meant it. So we started talking about what we liked and soon found out that we were both interested in structure, not just the structure of course but it was our common interest. The different ways you can tell a story are very interesting. We found some different things which we looked at. Then at one point I talked to either Steve or Shelly Roeberg and we sent a proposal in. This was HOUSE OF SECRETS.

And this was to be a miniseries?

Yes, originally it was to be a mini. After it came out Karen Berger said she would like to see it as an ongoing monthly series and I thought that was great. I loved the idea of telling many stories. We discussed it and found that the biggest problem would be that I can not do a monthly, it is impossible, and I have no wish to split my art into just sketching. That would simply make it too boring for me. We finally decided that instead of doing it like the SANDMAN series where the stories can be long and suddenly the artist is lacking behind and they get a fill-in artist, the story is still the same but the characters are drawn completely different. I always thought that was very disruptive for the flow of the story.
So the idea was that I did 4-5 issues and then there would be 1-2 independent fill-ins to give me time to do the next issues.

So the fill-ins were stand-alone, yet related to the storyline?

Oh yeah, but not just anybody is capable of telling a story of a certain kind so we wrote a list of our favorite artists and tried to find what we would like to see them do. Like Guy Davis doing a black & white story set in the American south. I could easily have done the story but it wouldn't have the same feeling that his would.

Did you attend art school?

Not really, I attended a half year course at Ulrik Hoff´s Artschool which was a sort of preparation for the Design School. He had an idea about exactly what they were after and with his help people drew portfolios which then got them in.

So he had one style which he taught?

He knew what they were after and he taught that, he was slightly interested in comics but he was also very interested in girls and there were a lot of young girls there wanting to get into the design school and so when we were talking about comics and one of these girls came over he decided to be more serious for the young ladies.

(LAUGHTER)

No I have never really gone to a school, I have spent a lot of time studying art books, I am very fond of "cobweb" research. If I am reading something and the writer mentions what has interested him through the years I have a look at that. If it's something I like it can lead to several other things. It's always been that way, with artists as well. So I have spent a lot of time educating myself.

Gathering info and such?

Yes, looking at the works of others, not just comics. I think you will hit a wall pretty fast if you draw like John Byrne, then you begin to draw hands like John Byrne and then someone comes along inspired by how you draw hands and all of a sudden you are caught in this cycle. You get further removed from the reason of the art. So I tried drawing as many different things as I could so I would not get caught there myself.

Do you consider yourself an artist then rather than a comics artist?

I consider myself a comics artist because that is what I do. But I have a lot of other interests and I am inspired by a lot more things than comics. I think it makes my work more interesting. I would be bored if I were to just clone what others are doing. The art becomes a cliché and it's these clichés that make comics boring.

What comics are you reading today?

I read everything made by my friend Jens Solheim, then there is a French artist, Christophe Blain, BERLIN by Jason Lutes...Eddie Campbell books and Alan Moore´s specially the books he does with Eddie Campbell. FROM HELL is fantastic. Chester Brown, Seth who does PALUKAVILLE. There is another Frenchman, Blotch and when Dave McKean does something I read it. That's what I read these days.

You said that you went to the library a lot when you began, what do you think of the "Kulørte Bibliotek"?

I think it's a really good idea, it's wonderful for those interested in comics and is a fantastic way for these people to get to know the various works. It is difficult for someone who is interested to go into a store and look at a catalogue and decide based on what he sees there.

How was the collaboration between Steve Seagle and yourself on the monthly?

It went very, very well. We met at least once a year and tossed ideas around and drew one another in every direction conceivable. We work the same way on other projects, we have a graphic novel we have been walking around with for a while.

The new HOUSE OF SECRETS?

No, this is something we will do after HOUSE OF SECRETS. We will be working on it along side HOUSE OF SECRETS till that one is done.

A side project then?

One side project, yes.

There are more?

I have my own little story which I write as well as draw. I did a Summer story which takes place in a park and I want to do the other seasons as well and Steve will also be partaking in that. I wanted to do it alone but I asked Steve if he wanted to do a Fall story which he has and the whole thing has taken a new direction.
I will now be writing the Winter story and he will do the Spring. They are all intertwined but take place in separate decades. Then there is a project I am doing with Jan Solheim, a love story which we have been working on for quite a while and have recently revived and want to finish. It will probably be two 16-20 page stories which we are gonna publish here. We might send it to a French publisher when it is complete. We are very interested in French artists and of course Danish as well and their work, specially from the 40´s and 50´s when they used flat colors and we almost had a competition when we collected them. We are so fascinated by these books, the colors they used. It's the same Seth who was interested in another artist but it was something similar that interested him.

Sounds very interesting, hope we get to see that soon.

Might be, I have been using them a lot to draw lately. I hope we can be done soon and perhaps have it out by spring/summer.

If we go back to SANDMAN again, I read somewhere that it was after your work on SUPERMAN that Neil Gaiman became interested in you.

Wasn´t quite like that. Henning Kure, the editor of the SUPERMAN book, had sent it to Matt Wagner who showed it to everyone and that was the first time they saw my work. Then came GRENDEL TALES and other work and it was first after this that SANDMAN came along. But SUPERMAN and TARZAN were what got me noticed in the American industry.

When you did SANDMAN you made it so that your style fit the one that came before so it was not easily recognized.

I came into the regular series when the regular artist fell behind and as I said I hated that so I did what I could not to disturb the reading. And there either the old artist comes back or a new one comes along.
How you convey a story is very important, if you want to do a story set in the middle ages you do not approach it the same way you would a science fiction story, if you do the art might look good but the feeling isn't there, a lot can be lost. So I always try to find what it is that needs to be conveyed and draw the story that way. I hate just doing static images as comics are after all a storytelling medium.
If I were to do story set in Japan I would try to capture that feeling, making it light and airy.

Talking about Japan, what do you think of Japanese comics?

There is a lot of good books that have come out of Japan but I feel it has stagnated a bit since AKIRA, which was a phenomenal book, very different from anything you had seen elsewhere.
There are still a lot of things that irritate me about Japanese comics, there was this one book...I can't remember it's name, something about Hitler.

ADOLF?

ADOLF, yeah. What irritated me to no end was that it went back to the old clichés, you had this gorgeous book, very realistic and a very good flow to the story and suddenly you get this very cartoony character with a huge round mouth. It irritated me immensely and ruined the reading for me.

What is your stand on censorship?

I think it's crap, it is idiotic. This witch-hunt against stores in the States is ridiculous. I don't think anything good will come of people trying to control what other people like and want. There are better ways to present things of course, something I have never liked is the way it's set up in stores here in Copenhagen, how DONALD DUCK stands next to the porno magazines. This gives children skewed ideas about sex.
But the way they do in the States saying what should and should not be published is wrong.

Have you ever run into censorship?

There was one time where you could see the backside of someone I had drawn and DC asked me to change that. I think either DC or Warner had recently lost a court case around that time so anything slightly out of the norm had to be changed.

How long does it take you to draw an issue?

That varies a great deal, sometimes it just flows and other times I am just stuck. On average HOUSE OF SECRETS took 6 weeks, some were faster some slower. Personally I think I am fairly fast but I try not to compromise and just get the work over with.

What about the coloring?

I didn't do the colors on HOUSE OF SECRETS, I had Bjarne Hansen to do that (Ed. Note: Bjarne Hansen is now coloring DEADENDERS).
I tried some American colorists but many of them thought that one color should cover everything but that isn't everything. Simple things like the shadow on a persons nose or face can tell you a lot but to see that requires that you can draw which Bjarne can. I chose him because I trusted him and I felt he was the best colorist for my work.

Is there anything in the creative process you prefer?

There is no one thing I prefer over another, I love what I do. It is different from project to project. I love drawing in black & white and I love trying different colors. Like with BATMAN: B&W I knew everyone was gonna do heavy black pages and I tried to do it as light as I could, lots of white instead of black.

Arni Gunnarson is Co-Editor of Interviews for PopImage.