| Interview mit Andi Watson (OmU) |
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| Geschrieben von Thomas Kögel | ||||
| Mittwoch, 17. Oktober 2007 | ||||
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Watson is a very versatile artist whose work isn't restricted to a certain genre and whose style changes from project to project, although developing a distinctive personal touch. Comicgate's editor Thomas Kögel met Andi Watson at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2006 (Yes, that was one year ago! I know I'm late, sorry!) for an interview. Among other things, they talked about the conflicts between art and commerce, between doing work-for-hire and working for one's own creative visions. Andi Watson, born in 1969 in Yorkshire, England, started creating comics in the earls nineties. geboren 1969 im englischen Yorkshire, macht seit den frühen 90er Jahren Comics. He made his final degree as a graphic design student with his self-published comic book Samurai Jam. This attracted the attention of US publisher Slave Labor Graphics, which published several of Watson's works ever since (e.g. Skeleton Key and Slow News Day). Watson has also created miniseries and graphic novels for Oni Press (Breakfast After Noon, Love Fights, Little Star) and DC's new label Minx (Clubbing). Currently, Image Comics ist publishing Glister, a comic about a young girl who attracts unusual and magic occurences. Apart from his rather personal indie works, Watson is also working as an author for mainstream comics like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Star Wars (Dark Horse). CG: Breakfast After Noon is your first published work in a German translation. Stefan Heitzmann, your publisher, says on his website that this is your best work. Do you agree? AW: Uuuuhm... no. I think the latest work is maybe the best work, but Breakfast After Noon ist the most classicly structured, the way the story is put together. So I can see it's more satisfying to read, whereas the Little Star book I just finished wasn't structured as carefully. The ending was much more open. The characters don't necessarily learn anything, there's not a lesson in the end, whereas in Breakfast After Noon there's kind of a moral subtext. CG: But it's a good point to start reading your work, isn't it? Yeah, I think so. It's probably the best way to start, and hopefully it's not downhill from there (laughter). CG: If you could choose a follow-up book in Germany, which one would you choose? AW: Maybe something like Slow News Day, because again it's more traditionally structured, more like a three-act movie, and it has a happy ending. It's in a very accessible genre, it's kind of a romantic comedy with office stuff. I'm not sure how it really translates to Germany, with the local newspaper and how much that would make sense. But then, thinking about Little Star, I know that the way the gender divides in Germany is a bit different. Moms generally stay home and dads generally go to work. So I'm not sure how accessible that would be to German culture. But probably, if German people are used to watching Hollywood movies and enjoy them, then something like Slow News Day would be a good next step. [Editor's note: Meanwhile, Little Star has been chosen to be Andi Watson's second work to be translated into German] 
CG: Speaking of happy endings: Breakfast After Noon has a kind of happy ending, not a real Hollywood ending, but still not a sad ending. When I was reading it, I wondered if you considered giving it no happy ending, but a sadder one instead?AW: I think the point of this story was that Rob goes down and then he has to pick himself back up again. I mean, if he goes down and then he goes down and that's the end, I don't think there's much emotional payoff for the reader. But I always had a kind of an unravelling ending, because you don't necessarily know how stable their relationship is in the end. It's kind of when the child comes along, it really galvanizes Rob and he kind of grows up. I wasn't thinking: "If I put a sad ending to it, it would be a less successful book", but that was just the way I built the characters: Rob does not necessarily learn a lesson, but he changes over the course of the book. If he was kind of selfish, and then he was more selfish, then there's no real story, there's no drama, no turnaround. Whereas when he's a selfish prick for a while and then he sees the consequences of his ways, it's a more interesting book to read, I think. CG: You live in Great Britain but you do most of your work for American publishers. Is there a notable comics scene in England, except for 2000 A.D., which is the only thing I know about? AW: Yeah, that's really pretty much it. There's always a kind of small press, fanzine, underground thing happening. But if you want to make money drawing or writing comics, you have to go the the U.S. and work for DC or Marvel and generally do superheroes. That's the way most people do it, but the way graphic novels are taking off, things are changing. Publishers like Walker Books are beginning to produce comic book adaptations of children's books like Stormbreaker. I think they see there's a growth market and maybe things will take off in England. I hope that publishers will invest in English creators. Lots of companies like Jonathan Cape just republish American authors. I don't understand that. You want to grow your own homegrown talent and people who talk about your own culture. I understand that something like Palestine by Joe Sacco is a great book but I just don't see why you necessarily need to buy it from an English publisher. If people want it, they can get hold of it. I wish they put more money into their own grounds and really grow a comic culture within the U.K. CG: Are there any problems for you working for American publishers when everything has to go trans-atlantic? Do you miss personal contact, or do you actually have personal contact to your publishers? 
AW: Before I had a child, I used to go over to the American conventions every year. I noticed that it really pays off to do that. Because when you skip that for a few years, you kind of slip off the radar, you don't exist anymore. I mean the work itself is fine, it's all e-mail and FTP, everything is digital anyway nowadays. You just download and upload stuff, so there's no problem. But yeah, I think that putting a face, an actual physical presence at a convention, makes much more of an impact than just sending e-mails and stuff. You gotta keep going over. Even if you're losing money on the short term, it's kind of a long-term investment. "Hey, I'm still alive, I'm still here, I'm still working" rather than just disappearing. Because the Americans don't come over to the UK conventions. It's a very small scene in the UK, so it doesn't make financial sense for them to do so. You have to go to them really.CG: Could you tell us a little bit about the differences between working on licensed properties - you worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Wars comics - and actual creator-owned work? I think there must be huge differences... AW: I'm my own boss with my own work to some extent. I mean there's still deadlines and stuff that you have to meet. Working on licensed things like Buffy or Namor which I did for Marvel, you're working for a boss who has some expectations of what the work is going to be. You have to do what you're told, basically. You don't necessarily play to your strenghts -- like, Namor was kind of an action-adventure comic for boys, and yet they wanted kind of a romantic story to it, but the two just don't meet. It's hard and it's not very rewarding creatively, but you get paid for it. That's basically the reason to do it. The harsh truth is that the only way to really make a living is to write a book monthly, and the rest of the time you just have to balance your own work with commercial work. 
CG: I read a quote by director Steven Soderbergh, who said something like: 'I do one for them [the major studios], and then I'll do one for me.' Can you share this attitude?AW: Yeah, I can. I mean, I'd rather do 'one for me' all the time, but it's not always possible. I think it's just a matter of keeping your own ball rolling and making sure that you keep going back to your own work, working on your own ideas. It's very easy to be seduced by work for hire, it's reasonably comfortable and you get paid regularly and all this kind of stuff. It's easy to fall into that and just hack out work for other people that has no meaning to you and is not really of any worth. Anyway, it just fills a slot in the publishing schedules... So it's a constant battle, trying to make a living and express yourself in a way that's fulfilling. CG: But this balance does work for you... AW: Generally, yeah. I mean, again, you have to keep going to the conventions and meet people face-to-face. And you have to at least appear enthusiastic about working on Buffy the Vampire Slayer even if you're not, you kind of got to keep yourself open to do that kind of thing. I mean, I'd rather write novels or something, but there's no money in that either, so basically I have to keep going back to Marvel and DC and begging for work. It's not fun, but it has to be done. CG: On my way to Frankfurt, I read your graphic novel Geisha. In the subplot, there's a lot of "art versus commerce" going on. I suppose this is a quite important subject for you. 
AW: Yeah, I find it a really interesting subject. There's another work I did called Love Fights, which hasn't been translated so far, except into Spanish, where the characters live in a world where superheroes are real and have copyrighted likenesses. You know, this kind of world where art and commerce clash which is really interesting. I guess that comes up all the time. I think there's lots of drama there. Even in Slow News Day, it's the same kind of thing: working on a small newspaper with a small audience versus doing a sitcom with a huge audience on TV. It's always a great source of conflict for characters trying to be true to themselves. It becomes more and more relevant, I think, because the way the media becomes globalized... Something like Friends sold in multiple markets around the world. But there's a growing pressure to not do anything too specific or too local, anything that could alienate viewers around the world. I think it's an interesting subject, a subject I touch in Breakfast After Noon: the main character, Rob, works for a British ceramics company and then he buys his cups and saucers from Ikea. People don't really put these things together in their head but what they buy has an impact on the world around them and effectively Rob helps to lose his job by doing that. 
CG: Apart from writing and drawing your own books you also write for other artists, like Paris (with Simon Gane, SLG Publishing). What's the difference between writing for yourself and writing for somebody else?AW: Writing for other artists is very satisfying when you're playing to their strengths. Something like Paris has very few panels per page and more attention to architectural details or girls kissing. It wasn't necessarily something I was interested in, but Simon really wanted to do that kind of stuff, so he gave me a shopping list of things he wanted to draw and I took those and incorporated them into the story. And yeah, it's fantastic when the pages come back from Simon with these beautiful Paris scenes, that's just a great experience. This is the first time I really got that buzz, because before that I did just work for hire as a writer and not something I was that attached to. CG: Have you ever drawn after somebody else's script? AW: Yeah, just small things, nothing big. Like this DC book called Bizarro which is a big collection of short stories, and I've drawn some stories by Evan Dorkin and some other people. It's interesting, 'cause writers make you draw things you wouldn't normally draw. If a writer made me draw comic strips with a traffic jam, it would be a real challenge 'cause I hate drawing cars and I'm not very good at it. So, it's good to be pushed into regions you wouldn't normally dare to go. But with comics, the pacing and the way the page is layed out are so important that it's hard to feel connected, unless it's two people who are really of the same mind and really interested in the same things. That's the case with Paris, Simon and I were really into the same stuff: art and Ingres and classical paintings and all this kind of stuff. We really agreed. So in this case it worked, but I'm not sure how funny it would be to draw a graphic novel about a traffic jam. You know, just cars and cars... It can be interesting, but I prefer to work on my own stuff whenever I can. CG: Speaking about drawing: almost all of your books are in black and white. Maybe for financial reasons, but maybe also for artistic reason. What are your views on colour versus black-and-white? 
AW: Black and white is much more direct and it takes less time. And you can get the same effects from black and white if you have experience of working in black and white. And of course, there's the financial aspect. In colour, you can change the emotional tone of a panel by different colours, but then you have to balance all the panels on the page. It's a lot of more work, there's a lot more involved. So, ideally, if I was gonna do something in colour, I'd like to work with a really good colourist who I'm on the same wavelength with. Something like Hellboy, which is really beautifully coloured. The colouring is a storytelling element, the way it's put together. Mike Mignola obviously works in black and white, but he has the colour all in his head, how it's gonna play out on the page. I mean, I admire the way that works but I also am somehow intimidated by how difficult it is. I'm used to work in black and white, and it's just a whole lotta more things to juggle, putting the page together. But yeah, it's great when you can get different emotional effects but it's another couple of hours on the table, in front of your computer. But I think you can get the same effects with black and white, and it just doesn't take as long, which is always good. CG: Ironically, speaking of Hellboy, the German publisher of Hellboy does it in black and white, because he says for him it looks better in black and white and Mignola made it in black and white. And everybody, well not everybody but a lot of people seem to be very enthusiastic about it, even Mignola himself and Dark Horse gave him feedback that it looks great in black and white. I think it works in both ways. AW: Yeah, definitely. I've seen his work serialized in Dark Horse Presents in black and white and it's fantastic. He just knows how to balance a panel and do the solid blacks versus the areas of white. He's just brilliant at that. And yeah, I'd buy both. CG: You can check it out, their booth is just across the floor of Modern Tales's booth. AW: Oh, great! I'm interested in getting a copy of that. CG: My last question is about Manga. Manga is one of your influences as well, especially in your early work. Here in Germany, we have a very divided market. There's the manga crowd and there are the other guys who like western comics and while there are a few publishers who do both, most of the readers do just read either manga or western stuff. Everything is very divided, and I think in the U.S. and in the U.K. it's similar. I think it's a tragedy, because everybody can tell good stories in sequential art. What do you think, how could we change that? AW: I think it will change over time. It's not gonna happen immediately, but the kids who are into manga now are gonna want to draw their own comics. Some of them will just want to slavishly follow manga styles but I think many of them will start incorporating different elements, you know, western comics and illustration... And, over time, I hope it will not be as divided and the two will kind of merge together. That's what happened in France a bit, there's a movement where they specifically take both elements. But to me, it's all visual storytelling. Comics is really a universal language. 
I can understand younger readers being kind of very hardcore. It's like music, you know: you listen to heavy metal and you don't listen to anything else, or you just listen to punk rock. I think when people get older, they'll be hopefully less uptight about labels and belonging to something. But anyway, to me there's something to take from bandes desinees and from manga and from superhero comics. Movies and novels and fine arts and painting, it's all there to take, it's all free to use and be inspired by.CG: It shows off in your work... AW: Thanks! Yeah, I mean, you just gotta keep your eyes open. Otherwise, you'll end up drawing in one way forever and you'll lose the energy and the enthusiasm for it. You just gotta be constantly open to new things, otherwise you just grow old and boring (laughter).
RELATED LINKS:
andiwatson.biz: Andi's official website Andi Watson at Oni Press : Information and previews Andi Watson at SLG Publishing: Blog entries about Andi's comics Andi Watson at Modern Tales: Information and previews (in German) Image sources: Andi Watson, slgcomic.com, onipress.com, darkhorse.com, modern-tales.de. Photographs: Thomas Kögel
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