Comicgate: Which artists are your idols or had a big influence on you? Your style, at least concerning the faces, reminds me somewhat of a more refined version of the ‘traditional’ Image style.

Tony Moore: I’d say my biggest influences have been John Romita Jr, Geoff Darrow, Jack Davis, and John Severin. Davis and Severin are my oldest influences, since I was into them in Mad and Cracked when I was first learning to read. Romita came as I got a little older and has since become my model for straightforward storytelling. Darrow hooked me when I was about 13 and never let go. In fact I’m still trying to pour over all the details and lines of the first book I ever bought of his.

I grew up on the early Image guys, back when they were doing great stuff for Marvel and I followed them over to their new titles. I took a lot of storytelling cues from Erik Larsen, and I really strive to spark readers the way those guys did me. When people my age or older come up to me at conventions with books to sign, it’s great… but when a kid does it, man, that is fulfilling.

CG: How about European artists? Are you familiar with some of them? Any influences from this direction?

TM: I love Moebius. I really enjoyed his work on Blueberry, and I have a few others including just some various art books. I really like Bruno Gazzotti’s work on Soda, but I haven’t been able to find any translations of it that I could buy over here. I also love Milo Manara’s work in Heavy Metal. My exposure to most European stuff is pretty limited, though I’m trying to track down more and more stuff as I get increasingly disinterested with American superheroes as they are.

CG: As an artist, what would you say are your greatest strengths and weaknesses? Anything you really have to struggle with if you have to draw it?

TM: I think my strengths come in having characters emote on the page, and in adding a tangible grit to things. I try to make a scene easy to immerse yourself into, and I feel good about what I’ve been able to do along those lines. I don’t think that heavy use of blacks is a strength of mine. I often wish I were bolder in that aspect. And I’m not very good with technical design. I try to lift as many successful aspects of that kind of stuff from other artists whom I think are better at it than I am, and hopefully add enough of my own spin on it that nobody notices.

CG: You and Robert Kirkman worked together prior to The Walking Dead. How did you two become the creative team for Battle Pope?

TM: We met when we were 12 years old, in 7th grade History class. We went to the same school and graduated the same year, so we have a good deal of history, considering how young we are. When I was in my first year of college, I got a call from Robert, whom I hadn’t seen in months, asking if I’d be interested in trying to do a comic. We didn’t know how to make comics, but we knew what they were supposed to look like, so we basically reverse-engineered the process and figured it out.

CG: For The Walking Dead, how exactly did you and Robert co-operate? Did you meet in person and discuss things or did this all happen via phone, snail mail and the internet?

TM: Once I left college, I actually got a house just a couple of miles away from where he lived. Sometimes there were phone conversations, but mostly, I would just come over to his studio and we could shoot ideas back and forth as we worked.

CG: How big was your influence on the character designs? Did Robert have clear cut visions about how the characters should look or did you have some leeway there?

TM: For many of the main characters, Robert would have ideas of specific actors he envisioned playing them, so I would base them off those general descriptions and try to put my own stamp on them as I went. Other characters had looser descriptions, and some of them were just names that I turned into people based on how they acted in the scripts, based a lot of times off people I knew or had seen in real life.

CG: Who had the idea of doing the title in monochrome and what was the decisive factor for doing so? After all, only one major zombie movie (George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead) has been shot in black and white.

TM: I don’t remember whose idea it was to do the book that way, but I know Robert and I both really liked the idea, especially given that Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was made that way. I had done a few short things in that style before and was anxious to try it on a whole book. And the fact that black and white books are considerably less expensive to print sure didn’t hurt.

CG: Did you have any influence on who ‘colored’ your issues? After all, the quality of the monochrome color pretty much varies depending on who was responsible for the coloring.

TM: I did the shading on the first 5 issues myself. I left the book just a few pages into the shading process on issue 6, and Kirkman asked Cliff Rathburn to step in. I didn’t pick him myself, but he’s the one I would have picked if I had been asked. On my cover work, I always colored myself, but that’s mainly because I find painting very therapeutic, and in lieu of getting to work on a canvas, getting to digitally color my work for covers is my only outlet for that, these days.

CG: The visual style of the title is quite impressive: I still remember turning the page in the first paperback and there was Rick, in the middle of what was once Atlanta, now overrun by zombies and with that derelict tank standing out from the crowd and I just thought: ‘Yeah, that’s how zombie stories should look like.’ So, what did you do in order to get the ideas about how the world and the zombies should look like? Did you watch certain movies, read certain books, look at certain photos?

TM: I really liked the run-down look of the settings in George Romero’s Day of the Dead, and Lucio Fulci’s Zombie. As for the zombies themselves, I really liked what Tom Savini had done in Day of the Dead and the Night of the Living Dead remake. I also loved the inclusion of bugs in Fulci’s Zombie, which I really integrated into my stuff, since I hadn’t really seen it all that much in comics for the most part.

I did a lot of research for the zombies, studying photos of corpses in various stages of decay and looking at a lot of crime scene and autopsy pictures. It wasn’t easy at first, but I learned to let go of the issues of humanity that would make me uneasy and I became able to look at them objectively and scientifically to learn how to construct gruesome but believable zombies, based on real anatomical study, not just draw generic zombies like I had seen in a lot of books. I tried to make each zombie feel like a real person that once would have laughed and cried and interacted just like any other character, to visually add to the human drama aspect of the book.

CG: Your women actually look like real world females, which is still not a given in the comic industry. No Red Monika or Power Girl bust, no tactically shredded clothes as with Caitlin Fairchild. How come?

TM: Well, mainly because I don’t think people can relate as easily to a story supposedly about real people when none of them look like real people, but are all superheroes or models. Also, I’m no good at drawing cheesecake pinup girls.

CG: In the same vein: How do you regard the general tendency to shy away from any actual nudity, while strong violence seems to be perfectly okay?

TM: I think it’s an American hangup that is completely ridiculous. We’re so repressed I think we allow overt violence because many feel that’s an acceptable outlet for tension or something. I was continually amazed at what I was able to get away with putting on the covers of the book. Unadulterated gore was met with no qualms whatsoever. Blood and guts and violence all over the place. If a book had a tasteful artistic nude on the cover, however, a single female nipple would get it filed away with the porno comics. American society is so deathly ashamed of our anatomy and sex that it’s sadly comedic.

Kirkman has a lot of the typically American hang-ups with nudity that I don’t share, so he’s specifically avoided it in his scripts for some time, though I didn’t let it stop me in a few slight cases where the bodies were so multilated it would be ridiculous to have them fully clothed when they were already pretty much unrecognizable, anyway. I guess years of art school, looking at nude people all day every day, removed the giddy taboo associated with the uncovered body, as far as I’m concerned.

CG: What about the other people involved in making the comic? Did anybody from Image ever have any problems with your material and adviced you to change certain things or was Image in general just happy to publish The Walking Dead and focussed entirely on getting the title to the printer and to the stores?

TM: Image has always been very hands-off with the book. They never get very editorial about the creative process, usually only worrying about the actual publishing.

CG: Since you mentioned your cover designs: How do you feel about the fact that the individual covers are not included in the TWD paperbacks, not even in an additional cover gallery?

TM: I don't mind the covers not being in the paperback. I think the market is shifting toward paperbacks right now, with a lot of people forgoing the singles and waiting for the collection to be released. For the market, this is kind of dangerous, because of the single issues don't sell well, a lot of times there might not even be a trade paperback. Producing the paperback at an affordable price but keeping the covers and all the little extras for the single issues at least gives something special to the singles, hopefully motivating people to buy those as well. Besides, the interior of the trade paperback is all black and white. Adding the covers in color would jump the production cost significantly, and just printing them in black and white wouldn't really do them justice. The covers are in the collected special edition hardcover, though, which is nice. I'm satisfied with that.

CG: Do you include Easter eggs in your drawings? For example having friends or family appear as background characters or – in The Walking Dead – as zombies?

TM: God, yes. All the time. I figure the zombies were people, too, so they should look like somebody. It was a lot easier then for me to populate the crowds with real faces I already knew. Saved me a ton of time on design. Why not?

CG: After the first arc you left the title and Charlie Adlard took up the pen. Why that? And did you and Charlie ever talk about how to draw the title in order to retain a certain visual style?

TM: There were a lot of reasons I left. Most of which I don’t feel confortable going into here, but the amount of time it took me to pencil, ink, and greytone the book each month was causing me to slip on the schedule, especially when you toss in that I was doing the covers as well, and did a 48 page issue of BRIT, also with Kirkman, concurrently with The Walking Dead. In the end, though, I knew I had to leave or I would run myself into the ground.

When I left, there was no communication about who would come on to take over. Kirkman chose Charlie probably because he knew he could get the book done considerably faster than me, especially with Cliff Rathburn doing his shading.

CG: Zombies are still pretty big, in Hollywood as well as in comics. What do you think about this zombie boom? Did you read any other zombie titles like Frank Cho’s Zombie King or George Romero’s Toe Tags?

TM: I’m grateful for the zombie boom. It was something of a vacuum when we started the book. Horror in comics had become nearly a dead genre, with only one or two successes in recent years, and in movies, the best we had to hope for was looking fondly back on Romero’s oldies and Savini’s remake of Night of the Living Dead, with some scattered foreign releases like Cemetery Man and Brain Dead. Little did we know that we were on the cusp of a new zombie explosion.Hollywood kicked the door wide open for us on that one, and for that, I’m eternally grateful.

I feel dirty admitting it, but I haven’t read the majority of the new zombie books that have come out since, and I have only seen a couple of the newer movies.

CG: Since you really seem to know about your zombies: Do you have a favourite zombie movie?

TM: I don't know that I could pick a favorite. I love the original Night of the Living Dead. It's a classic that really did it right. I also liked Tom Savini's remake in the 90s. It took me a while to warm up to it, but the special effects are really top-notch and even though the general message of the film changed, I could appreciate the new film fully. And for sheer gore and goofiness, I still love Peter Jackson's Brain Dead. That movie cracks me up.

CG: Right now you’re doing Fear Agent for Image and The Exterminators for Vertigo. What are these two titles about and why should people check them out?

TM: Fear Agent is a 50’s style sci-fi book, basically Rick Remender’s and my love letter to the old sci-fi monster romps by Wally Wood and the old EC Comics crew. It’s more about high adventure, with sleek rockets and bubble helmets, and ray guns and tentacle monsters. We both had gotten tired of science fiction that was bent on over-explaining the technology of everything, and seemed to be all about trade federations and bureaucratic nonsense. We missed stories about tough guys who scuttled around in rockets and punched aliens for no good reason, so we decided to make our own.

The Exterminators is a stranger concept to sell. It’s about Henry James, an ex-convict who is trying to get his life back on track, starting with taking a job at his stepfather’s extermination business. He works with some of the weirdest and most vile characters humanity has to offer, and he comes to realize that this motley crew of rejects are society’s only line of defense against nature, which could instantly envelop us all on a moment’s notice, but which we’ve all pretty much taken for granted or treated like a nuisance at most. Henry comes to an almost Zen-like revelation about the purity of his position in life, and goes through some harrowing twists and turns along the way.

As for why people should check them out, all I can say is that they should because they’re good comics, testing some fairly untraveled ground genre-wise, and they’re both books that I’ve co-created and co-own, so my stake in them makes me feel like they’re my babies.

CG: Something I always ask: Which title is your favorite right now? Is there any comic out there, where you say: ‘This is great. Everybody should read this.’

TM: Jeez. The majority of books I’m reading now are older books. EC reprints of all their war books, and horror and sci fi stuff. I also have a massive Jonah Hex backlog that I’m slowly working my way through. I enjoy all of Garth Ennis’ stuff. I also pick up anything [Mike] Mignola touches. I’m really digging Shaolin Cowboy when it comes out. I also love The Goon and Ex Machina. And Hawaiian Dick, Battle Hymn, The Expatriate and anything else B Clay Moore writes.

CG: Now, looking at these titles, considering what you said about Fear Agent and that you mentioned earlier that you are dissatisfied with superhero comics in their current form, do you think that the US mainstream - i.e. Marvel and DC comics - nowadays lacks a certain sense of fun? After all, The Goon, Hellboy, Hawaiian Dick and many comics done by Ennis don't take themself too seriously.

TM: I do. Personally I think having fun is what it's all about. Serious comics have their place, and I enjoy them immensely, but I don't turn to superheroes for anything like that. I get tired of reading about which new superhero's sidekick is addicted to crack or has AIDS.

CG: How hard is it to eke out a living being a comic book artist? Especially in the beginning, when you haven’t worked on a high profile series. Do you have to do additional illustrations (i.e. for advertisings) to make ends meet?

TM: In the beginning it’s not easy, especially starting off a new book of your own. I kept a day job at UPS, throwing boxes around, while I was in school and drawing my first few books. Fortunately, I got a good gig drawing a BeastMan one-shot for the Masters of the Universe license and made enough money to live off of for a couple months as I took the plunge into being a professional who lives off his art. Kirkman was in a little better shape, having other projects since his time invested per project was considerably less than an illustrator’s, and having a wife who was working as well.

I, on the other hand, had to commit most of my time to a single project and lived alone. Working on The Walking Dead, we didn’t see a single dime until more than two months after the first issue was published, so I was working for several months launching the book with little income, lucky to make rent and wondering exactly where my next meal was coming from. I did a few miscellaneous illustrations to help stay afloat, but nothing substantial, given how time-consuming drawing a whole book each month can be. Luckily, the hard work paid off, and now I can live like a real human being, especially working with a bigger publisher.

CG: Seeing these troubles you have as an artist starting your career, which lesson you learned the hard way would you teach to those who try to break into the industry?

TM: A couple things. Don't be afraid to take a chance. Life's too short to sit and wonder if you could have made something. You fail at 100% of the things you never try. If you think you're going to spend the next year building your portfolio, but then in the meantime you get an offer to do a small-press gig that is likely to not pay, go on and take the gig. You'd be spending that time practicing for free anyway, but at least this way you'd maybe be getting published in the process. And you never know, it could be successful and you will have made it on your own terms.

But that said, be smart and watch out for yourself. Things happen and just because you know someone and consider them friends doesn't mean they're always looking out for your best interests. It doesn't mean that they're horrible people. You should never shy away from something that sounds like a worthwhile project, but make sure you're protecting yourself in writing from the get-go, because any number of things could happen and turn your entire situation upside down.

CG: I’m sure you heard this joke far too often by now, but do you ever regret leaving Iron Maiden to pursue a career as comic book artist?

TM: I look fondly back on those days, but between my gospel group, kickboxing, and being the most successful Subaru dealer in Decatur, Alabama, I’ve managed to keep plowing ahead with few regrets.

CG: And as a closer: What are your ambitions for the future? What do you want to achieve?

TM: I’d like to be able to break away from the monthly grind of American comic book production, and be able to take a year or so and produce a volume of work, sell it and then do it all over again, much like how novelists are able to work. I’d like to produce a few westerns and some Viking stories, and I don’t know what else.

In the long term, though, I just don’t want to fade away. I was awakened recently by looking at some world-class illustrators, and realized I need to step up my game. I was nearly stopped dead in my tracks looking at come of these illustrators, but mostly it really lit a fire inside me to try and make some really meaningful and inspired work. I want to make my mark and be truly remembered. That’s my ultimate goal, I guess, pompous as it sounds. I don’t know if it’s even possible, but that won’t stop me from trying.

CG: That about wraps it up. Thanks for taking your time and answering our questions, Tony.

TM: No, thank you! This was great!

Walking Dead is TM and © Robert Kirkman, 2006. All Rights Reserved. Mit freundlicher Genehmigung von Cross Cult.