Steve Bissette is a true legend in our field. One of a select group who had the guts to say 'fuck you' to the mainstream and go their own way. Unfortunately, the comics industry recently had to say goodbye to this great talent. In December of '99, Steve formally announced his retirement after 23 years in the biz. Steve spent those final few years working on his book TYRANT, a true labour of love. Steve's final piece of work to see print was a SWAMP THING tale entitled 'Jack In The Green', which appeared in the recent Neil Gaiman collection MIDNIGHT DAYS. You'll find a goodbye on the bottom of the final page of that story from the man himself.

But that's not the end of Steve's story. While he did retire from comics, he did it to go forward in his career. Since the publication of MIDNIGHT DAYS you can find Bissette working on Joe Citro's VERMONT GHOST GUIDE, for which he provides 40 B&W illustrations of his birthplace and current home. "I grew up in the Northern region of the state," said Bisette in an interview with PopImage. "Lots of mountains and woodlands -- but I have settled in the Southern end of Vermont to raise my own kids. Still pretty country, but I miss the REAL mountains."

Bissette's recent ghoulish illustrations weren't his only foray into horror, a genre he loved as a youth. Steve recently just finished the final touches on some illos for BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: THE MONSTER BOOK with Christopher Golden and Tom Sniegoski. Steve's work has also been appearing weekly since August in the newspaper THE BRATTLEBORO REFORMER with his review column "Video Views" with the occasional video-related article. Steve has even been doing slide lectures around college campuses with his presentation "JOURNEYS INTO FEAR: THE HISTORY AND HERITAGE OF THE HORROR COMICS". In May Steve will be a guest author and teacher at the New England Young Writer's Conference. It seems bisette, despite retiring from producing comics, will continue to bring his expressive and detailed artwork to fans for a long time to come.

PopImage was recently granted a chance to talk to the man himself, and ask him about what we consider to be an important career in comics. We're happy to be able to present the first part of our interview with Steve Bissette, and we hope you enjoy it.

PopImage: What encouraged you to join the comics profession and what was your first work?

Steve: My first comics were little hand-made minis before the term "mini-comic" even existed. Drew them with my then-best friend Mitch Casey back in the very early 1960s. We emulated the monster movies we saw on TV. Some of them were actually crude hand-drawn monster magazines, inspired by FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND and the like. What I remember really hooking me was an original story Mitch wrote and drew, entitled ATTACK OF THE GIANT TSE-TSE FLIES. That's when I really got the bug, so to speak. We sold our comics at school for milk money.

What I really wanted to create were movies. My friend Bill Hunter and I used to make all kinds of Super 8mm short films, including some crude animated and stop-motion clay animated stuff. Somewhere along the line, though, I realized the daunting amount of money, collaborative talent, and attending business necessarily involved with genuine filmmaking wasn't an issue if I could apply myself to DRAWING the movies I visualized in my imagination. That led me back into drawing my own comics, which led me to pursue some serious art studies in college.

My first pro work was drawing diagrams for the local Town Meeting Report, and ads for the School Yearbook. First published comix work was a full zine-sized comic called ABYSS back in 1976, self-published with a group of friends in college. That was my key portfolio piece for entry into the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in the fall of '76. I graduated from the school's FIRST-ever class. That's where I bonded with folks like Rick Veitch (a fellow native Vermonter), Tom Yeates, John Totleben, Tim Truman, and many others. While at the school, I landed my first pro work: back-up stories in SGT. ROCK, which Joe edited at the time; the color pinups in Kubert's short-lived oversized comic zine SOJOURN; horror stories for Scholastic Magazines' WEIRD WORLDS and BANANAS; and a trio of pieces for HEAVY METAL. And that was BEFORE I had graduated!

You expressed an interest in movies and movie monsters as a kid, have you ever tried or thought about following through on this and actually working in the film industry? Seeing one of your creations on the big screen?

Cinema is a marvelous artform, and "Movies" are as seductive as ever, but I stuck with comics, thank you very much. Before I got into comics as my life's work and a profession, movies were my first love; that's what I WANTED to be doing. But comics provide a much purer storytelling medium, imposing far fewer hurdles between the storyteller and the audience: what I write and draw IS essentially what you read and see, really.

Like all media, working within the industry that has been constructed around this medium can impose its own unique problems, but they are far fewer, and to my mind far more condusive to creative self-expression, than those the American movie industry has erected around cinema as an artform. That was apparent to me in my early twenties, when I began pursuing comics as my life path in earnest, and seems even more obvious to me today.

Like almost all comics professionals in the 1990s, I've had my brushes with Hollywood and the low-budget wanna-be outfits. I won't go into too much detail here, other than to note my contribution to the first TEENAGE NINJA MUTANT TURTLES sequel, SECRET OF THE OOZE, featuring the snapping-turtle humanoid Tokka which was derived from one of my sketches for the toy line. Peter and Kevin were honorable in the end, but it wasn't a pleasant experience. Typical of my experiences, I had to fight for what little I earned: screen credit was promised but ultimately failed to materialize (Kevin never got screen credit for coming up with Tokka's companion monster, either) and there was no money, though I did earn some sweet royalties and a credit (on the back of the board art on the blister pack) on the Tokka toys, thanks primarily to the efforts of Steve Murphy and Ryan Brown.

Far less pleasant were my experiences with RETURN OF THE SWAMP THING, which lifted art by all the SWAMP THING comics artists (myself and John Totleben included) for its title sequence, and story and visual concepts from my run on SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING with Alan and John. John and I had, in fact, managed to get some sample art and monster designs into a preliminary production meeting on the film, via friend and fellow ex-Kubert School student John Bisson (whoÊ works with KNB FX in Hollywood). The producers loved our work, but the nature of their contracts with DC granted them ALL rights to ANY ST-related work "past, present, and future," so they were free to simply swipe what they wanted without engaging our services. We weren't even invited to the film's premiere in NY City, though I could have gotten in as a writer for FANGORIA and GOREZONE (!!). I declined, and waited till the damned thing came out on video. I didn't sleep a wink that night, I so loathed what they'd done with our work.

When Tundra was trying to extend all available properties into films and TV, I declined, and contractually prevented them from exercising any options on TABOO. When asked to justify my stance, I explained that any film derived from TABOO would be inherently opposed to the manifesto of the anthology: no producer would willingly finance a film that lived up to TABOO's stated agenda, because it would have to be an NC-17 or Unrated production by nature. Anything less would end up being as tepid as CREEPSHOW or TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE: THE MOVIE, and I had absolutely no interest in selling TABOO or its contributors down the river in such a manner.

I also find Hollywood's relationship with the comics industry and professional community of questionable merit, to say the least. Am I the only one outraged by the entire Marv Wolfman / BLADE legal monstrosity? I saw first-hand how the entire cartoon-movie-TV show success of the TURTLES undermined the Mirage comics empire, and surely others have noticed how movie/TV franchising have apparently ground some prominent cartooning careers into the dirt (i.e., Dave Stevens with ROCKETEER, James O'Barr with THE CROW, etc.). Control or lack of control, lots of money or little money, it all seems to derail even the most inspired creators from their path. I've gone on the record stating my opposition to the comics community being so thouroughly enraptured with Hollywood, and my disgust with the many real-life crimes and horror stories affiliated with comics-to-film deals. When one dances with movie or TV interests, it's a real dance with the devil more often than not. Back in the mid-1980s, when I first met Clive Barker, he once told me, "Oh, you'll be working in film, I just know it." I assured Clive it wasn't going to happen, knowing full well he was already on his way. It's very telling to me that only Clive's FIRST film, HELLRAISER, made for comparatively little money at a time when he desperately needed to create something unique in order to even be able to make a second film, remains his best work. NIGHT BREED and LORD OF ILLUSIONS are far more expansive and expensive enterprises, but they carry little of the power of Clive's maiden effort, where his voice rang loud and clear.

If Clive can't make the films he wants to make, who am I to entertain illusions to the contrary? Do you really believe a film with my name on it would have any relation to the film I would WANT to make? No, I think it's impossible, unless you engage with the medium and industry on ALL levels, as your primary means of expression, the way a Martin Scorsese or David Cronenberg does.

On that note I know a special effects man who worked with Chris Warner on the designs for Aliens: Ressurection, have you ever thought about something along those lines?

Again, I've been approached, and I've flirted with it, but no, it's a pretty remote possibility for me. Chris Warner is one in an honorable pantheon of cartoonists who successfully work in production design, creatur-design, illustration and story-boarding for movies. Among them are Jean "Moebius" Giraud, Ron Cobb, Michael Ploog, Paul Chadwick, Ricardo Delgado, and Bill Stout... what a line up! In fact, Bill Stout ended up working on the Disney dinosaur movie I was once, for a day or two, approached to work on. The problem was TYRANT, to work with Disney, you must sign away all rights to the work you do for them, and TYRANT presented an apparently irreconcilable conflict of interests legally. I certainly wasn't going to compromise the work I'd already published in order to log a few weeks on the Disney project. The legal issues are really complex, and make comic-book work-for-hire issues seem comparatively simple.

Also, in order to work in films, I'd have to live full or part-time in Los Angeles, or be willing to commute. Right now, that isn't feasible. My children come first, and Vermont remains my home. Maybe later in life, if they'll have me, or if the opportunities present themselves, I'll have something that may fly in movies, but it would have to be something tailor-made for the industry. I've no interest in playing the games necessary to survival or a profitable (in dollars and cents terms only) existence working with films.

I find comics much saner, much more fulfilling, and much more in keeping with who I am, how I live, and where I chose to live. No more movie questions, please. Let's talk about comics!

On November 17, 1988 at the Northampton Summit you partcipated in the creation of the first draft of a bill of rights for comic creators, which promoted "the rights and dignity of creators everywhere". this served as an important progression in the evolution of independant publishing, but how did it specifically influence your own career and your approach to a project? what impact do you believe it had on the industry?

The Creator Bill of Rights had a profound impact on my own subsequent career and how I deal with business matters relevant to creative properties and propriety. I insisted upon including the complete Bill (and Scott McCloud's notes on the document) as an appendix to COMIC BOOK REBELS because I felt a mainstream public record of the event should exist, outside the short-term venue of periodicals like THE COMICS JOURNAL and THE COMIC BUYER'S GUIDE. The Bill is, to my mind, a significant turning point in the history of the industry and, for its impact upon subsequent generations of creators, the medium.

The Bill was the first clear statement of what rights we intrinsically "own" when we put pen to paper. It's hard to convey today how muddy those waters were prior to that statement. The European comics world and the American underground movement understood and embraced the ethics of creator ownership, but the mainstream comics industry had persistently undermined any discussion of the matter. Were there a simple reference library available, I'd refer you back to Dick Giordano's interview in THE COMICS JOURNAL in which he argued the companies were required to hold copyright (ha!), or news reports on the entire First Comics debacle from the mid-1980s, when they had actually convinced some pretty prominent comics creators that legally the company had to hold the copyrights to work published in order to "protect" them FOR the creators (hogwash!). Precious few writers and artists really understood what they were signing away and what they indeed owned by law PRIOR to signing away their rights via individual contracts or blanket work-for-hire contracts (such as the one I signed at Marvel back in 1977). Indeed, the publishers themselves, in their arrogance and powerful grip on the status quo, didn't fully grasp the issues, either, as is being borne out by recent developments in Marv Wolfman's BLADE lawsuit.

The Bill of Rights was a bold and necessary clarification of rights and ownership issues that had been (often deliberately) obscured for decades, and its impact cannot be minimized. The most clearcut impact is, arguably, the wave of self-published work that followed. A generation that may have aspired (as prior generations had) to simply working for Marvel or DC understood they COULD own their own work, and proceeded accordingly. Unlike prior generations, they had powerful examples of successful creator-owned characters: the Turtles arguably most prominent among them and visible in literally every walk of life, along with the titles that had inspired Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman to create and retain ownership of the Turtles: CEREBUS, ELFQUEST, etc. The Bill of Rights followed in the wake of such sterling examples of self-publishing (and let us not forget, the negotiation sites for the Bill were financed by Dave Sim and, subsidizing the Summit itself, Peter and Kevin), anchoring the movement with a declaration of independence that was remarkably clear and insightful. However, it's important not to be simplistic about the issues of propriety it addressed. Self-publishing remains the most direct means of maintaining one's autonomy and independence, but many publishers (including DC, Dark Horse, etc.) subsequently addressed creator-ownership issues via imprints like Vertigo and Legend. Frank Miller, Mike Mignola, Neil Gaiman, etc. found havens for work they owned with the very mainstream publishers they had already established themselves with.

Many creators continued to sign away their rights -- but the environment did shift. If one signs away essential rights to original creations (as opposed to licensed properties: i.e., STAR WARS, ALIENS, etc.), there's a new ability to negotiate more $ for those rights being signed away. For those who continued dabbling with work for hire jobs (myself included, though only occasionally), there was no confusion over the ownership, clearer contract negotiations, and again, one expected more $ for such a job given the rights issues. In every way, the Bill broadcast a clear understanding of the creators' proprietary rights, a polemic essential to the changing times.

Sadly, many of its authors and proponents have turned their backs on the Bill. I would site Kevin and Peter's handling of Mirage; Kevin's HEAVY METAL CD-ROM debacle; the race for Hollywood with properties like THE CROW (what a tale there, with so-called creator rights advocates like Tundra and Kitchen Sink at its core); Alan Moore's work for Rob Liefeld and the Image partners; Dark Horse Comics' Hollywood courtship and the ongoing abuse of their perceived proprietary role over work legally owned by individual creators; etc. These are rather tragic events, especially in light of the Bill (and Kevin and Peter's role in its drafting) -- but at least the legal issues are clearer, and more fully understood by the comics community. It's harder to get away with the kind of slippery shit that used to be unquestionably status quo. For myself, the Bill informed decisions about work I would and would not do, and under what conditions I WOULD be willing to sign away my rights to work. It steered me toward a greater understanding of work for hire, and instilled a drive to self-publish the work most important to me (i.e., TYRANT).

TYRANT, the return to 'childhood inspirations' series, the extensively researched story of the life cycle of a dinosaur, how do you extensively research something like that? Who were your resources? doctors? historians? books? etc.

Since the second issue, my research has been pretty intensive. I started the project off working from "layman" texts -- you know, the kind of books any of us can pick up in a library or well-stocked bookstore. I had precious few contacts within the professional paleontological community, and relied primarily on what books I had in my own library. Once TYRANT #1 saw print, however, I had something to SHOW people, and quickly expanded my contacts within the scientific community. Primary among them was a young paleontologist named Michael Ryan, whom I met through Mark Schultz (XENOZOIC TALES). Michael's a great guy, and he was the first to take my work seriously and offer to help. Through Michael, I joined the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, and have been able to attend three or four of their annual fall gatherings and network with other paleontologists. The learning curve has been a steep one.

By 1995, I had considerably expanded my library to embrace current scientific papers, academic texts (VERY dense reading), the SVP publications, and all the cutting-edge books as they are published. It can be a pretty daunting task, and sometimes quite expensive, but it's fascinating and rewarding reading, by and large. God, I made SOOOOOOOOOOOO many mistakes in TYRANT #1 and 2! I could spend a lifetime redrawing and rewriting what I've already done, but that would be counterproductive. From #3 on, I felt a little more grounded in the available research.

There was a satisfying bit of cross-fertilization, too: I contributed three illustrations to Philip J. Currie and Kevin Padian's definitive ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DINOSAURS (Academic Press, 1997), returning long-overdue favors to Michael Ryan by illustrating two of his chapters for the book. That also represented the first artwork I've done which was rigorously inspected, revised, and approved by the experts themselves, lending my dinosaur reconstructions a credibility I intended to extend into the ongoing work on TYRANT.

Due to the range, and depth of the interview with Mr. Bissette, we'll be presenting the interview in multiple parts. Look for the second part of this interview in the June edition of PopImage. Until then, please check out his site, accesible via Comicon.com.

Jonathan Ellis is Interviews Editor at PopImage.

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