Thursday, April 3, 2014

[replay] Back Matter Interview #4 - Jacen Burrows

When I first started writing about comics, I wrote for a now-defunct website called "Independent Propaganda."  The name of my column was BACK MATTER, and a fuller explanation can be found here.

Along with spotlights on specific comics, I also interviewed a handful of people working in comics.  This interview was with Jacen Burrows, whose art has delineated stories by Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, and Alan Moore, at Avatar Comics.  I discovered his clean, 'realistic' style on his and Antony Johnston's adaptation of Moore's The Courtyard.  An artist who could be working for Marvel or DC, Burrows has preferred to do more personal work with Avatar where creative control is in the hands of the creators (note the commonality between "creative" and "creator" there), and this is something I appreciate about him.  I hope you enjoy the interview.


Jacen Burrows is the much-lauded artist of many a title from Avatar Press.  Since graduating from the Savannah College of Art and Design, he has had the fortune to work with some of the best writers in comics – Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Antony Johnston – on titles that include Scars, Dark Blue, The Courtyard, 303, and the forthcoming Chronicles of Wormwood.  His artwork is articulate, smooth, and as clean as you will find. 

He was gracious enough to answer some questions for Independent Propaganda a couple weeks back and his responses were thoughtful and enlightening.  I hope you all enjoy what follows.

-         Can you tell us briefly how you broke into comics?

It wasn't easy.  I graduated Art School in 1996, right as the bottom fell out of the comic industry.  I tried to work my way up through the independent publishers but they kept going out of business.  There are a few really rare comics out there that I drew for London Night and Caliber, but the art really wasn't strong enough back then to make a jump to any sort of mainstream company.  I also worked in the Role Playing industry for a while but again, those companies went out of business.  Well, TSR was bought out and relaunched but I still lost a lot of money working for them.  Eventually, the writer I worked with at Caliber, Tom Sniegoski, set up a deal at Avatar and brought me in.  I've been there ever since because they consistently offer me books that are impossible to turn down and they pay well and on time. 

-         What do you feel is the most important factor from your personal history (education, family) that has allowed you to be successful in the comic industry?

My mom essentially raised me on her own.  She worked her ass off to keep us afloat and really instilled a strong work ethic in me.  I was also an only child and spent a lot of time developing my own imagination.  Working in comics requires a lot of time alone with the drawing board and I know a lot of guys haven't got the discipline to do that.  I have always been good at dealing with that since childhood.

-         Many creators, especially when starting out, hold down a day job while creating their comics.  What jobs, if any, did you have and did they provide anything for you with regards to your art?

In college I was prep/line cook which was challenging but a great experience.  You spend 4 or 5 years in a kitchen in Savannah, Georgia and you really start to appreciate drawing for a living.  After I finished college, I spent a couple of years living with family in Dallas which allowed me to pursue an art career as a full time freelancer.  This was that period in which just about every publisher I worked with went under still owing me money.  I think I made maybe $8K a year at that time, working 60 hours a week.  If I hadn't been living at home, I'd never have been able to survive but I didn't have to have a non-art job ever again.

-         What is the most important thing an aspiring artist should do in order to better their chances of finding work?

I know a lot of people talk about networking and getting to know pros as a door into the industry but really, the only thing that matters is your portfolio.  There are maybe a few hundred jobs in this entire industry and tens of thousands of people fighting to get them.  At the end of the day, the jobs go to the person with the best pages and a reputation for meeting deadlines.  If there is one thing that will improve every aspect of your work it is perspective.  Seriously.  Master perspective.  The better you understand the picture plane and how perspective affects each and every object the better you will draw.  Most artists starting out learn tricks to deal with challenging objects.  They'll draw faces, for example, from the same angles and direction over and over but that is a 2-dimensional approach.  When you apply 3-dimensional perspective to everything, you break these bad habits and everything starts to come together.  You'll figure out how to place figures anywhere in the picture plane accurately, your "camera" placement will improve, your environments will become tangible places, and your foreshortening will look more real.  Editors will notice these things.  Don't cut corners and fake it or you'll hit a wall at some point and stop improving.

-         What artists, possibly more obscure ones and not necessarily within comics, would you recommend aspiring artists study?

It really depends on the areas you are looking to improve.  I think the best stylists are ones that seem to have developed their look unconsciously over a number of years so I tend to study more fundamental things.  Composition, dynamics and solidity of form.  I've spent the last year or so really examining a lot of classic illustration people, Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell.  They are hardly unknown but I don't think a lot of modern comic artists really look at these guys much anymore.  I have also really been getting a lot out of studying certain painters with a knack for building amazingly immersing environments in a single image.  People like James Dietz, William Aylward, Howard Pyle, Jean Leon Jerome and the Pre-Raphaelites.

-         Marvel and DC seem to be pushing sales through a series of crossover “events” and relaunches meant to feed off that hive mentality of needing the next new thing.  Admittedly, they have to answer to shareholders, but what could they be doing differently in order to promote sales?

The big two are in some ways, slaves to their own branding.  The more success their properties have outside of comics the harder it becomes to do anything drastic or truly innovative with them inside comics.  Plus, I think their core audience enjoys the familiar consistency and tends to throw tantrums whenever major changes are presented.  They seem to have this unspoken rule about keeping everything under this proverbial umbrella of the corporate brand which hamstrings a lot of the creative process.  Obviously there have to be rules in order to keep their properties strong but I think creative freedom breeds excitement and interest.  Hire the best writers you can afford and let them make it their own with a unique vision, tone and stage without having an editor pop in every few issues to shuffle artists, force crossovers and steer the direction.  Trust your talent, not the costume.  The emphasis should always be on who is doing the book even though I see how that can end up biting the company in the ass when they leave to work for the competition or to start their own thing.

-         This apparent need to utilize gimmicks in order to artificially inflate sales in the short-term almost begs the question, what is missing from mainstream comics today that has caused this sales drop-off?  In your opinion, what do you feel is lacking in today’s mainstream comics?

Are sales dropping off?  Most of the buzz I hear is that the big 2 are having a resurgence, possibly at the cost of the independent market.  Personally, I think that the talent pool working in comics today is better than it has ever been.  If anything is lacking in mainstream comics it seems to be ingenuity.  We have boiled the craft of making comics down to a science.  Even mediocre writers can write interesting dialogue and competent scene shifts these days.  Everyone has done their homework, so to speak, and all of the elements seem to be in place.  But like those forgettable summer blockbusters, there is something missing.  To me it feels like we have mastered the craft and forgotten to add personal expression a lot of the time.  I want to be affected on more than just a superficial level.  That only seems to happen when creators are given the freedom to chase their personal vision.  To use the most overused example, Watchmen doesn't happen by committee.

-         Do you feel the recent push toward graphic novels – both collections and original works – and bookstore distribution has been good for the industry?  Why, or why not?

Certainly a good thing.  The more venues the better.  I think the best thing that can happen to comics is for the world at large to see us as books, not periodicals.  Magazines are designed to be cheap, quick reads with everything set up as bullet points and factoids.  You consume and move on.  The information in a book is meant to be digested and considered.  The kinds of comics I want to do are closer to books than magazines and being shelved like books is a step in the right direction.  Bookstore distribution certainly won't herald the new Golden Age, but it makes surviving a little easier.  The backbone of comics will remain the Direct Market, though.  A curious newcomer should be able to walk into a clean, professional, welcoming comic shop, strike up a conversation and end up with a small stack of material that suits their personal interests suggested by intelligent clerks who know their product.  Comic stores like that are the real future.

-         For you, what are the advantages of working with Avatar rather than Marvel and DC?

Costumes really aren't my thing.  I think they can be fun and I expect to play with that side of comics eventually but I really enjoy making movies on paper.  I came along at just the right moment and have been really lucky.  I was just hoping for some steady work initially but once Warren Ellis put me on Dark Blue everything changed.  Now I get to work with only the best of the best writers on their edgiest, most personal works which suits my personal tastes perfectly.  When not doing that, I get to draw horror stuff.  Zombies, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Lovecraft...THESE are my Batman and Spider-man.  I truly love the genre and its fans and I never have to pull my punches.  I'm not a PG artist by nature so being let off the chain to do hard R material is wonderfully fulfilling.

-         You have had the opportunity to work with some of the best writers in comics.  What are some differences in the way these creators approach a story, and what are some of the challenges you face in realizing their visions?

Warren [Ellis] and Garth [Ennis] are actually pretty similar in approach.  They both have a few preferred page flow tactics unique to them but they are both very concise.  I had to earn Warren's trust initially.  The scripts were a bit denser and had more specific panel directions but he loosened up once he saw that I wasn't going to cut corners or stray from his vision.  Now when we work together he gives me a lot of freedom and we really flow well together.  With both of them, the stories are so well formed that they play like movies in my head and I just have to pick the best snap shots to put into the panels.  Same with Antony Johnston.  I think he'll be a superstar in comics in the next 5 years.

-         How much input do you have into the stories you draw, and do you have any aspirations of one day writing your own stories?

As far as plot, none.  These are fully realized stories before they get to me.  The writers already have a vision and my job is to be as faithful to that as possible.  All of the work I do is in service to that vision and the purpose of the story and that is really thrilling to me.  I'll add little expressions and details that I think might push a point a little further than the words or maybe come up with a cool archetypal character design for someone in the shot that I feel adds something but it is all to enhance their vision of the story like a good actor working from a great script.  It should come together in the end. 
I have some story ideas of my own I really want to do down the line if only because there are things I haven't gotten to draw yet that I don't think will ever be in any script I get.  I think you have to be a writer/artist to pull off certain types of stories or scenes.  When you wear both hats in one production your approach to a scene might come from a direction that a straight writer wouldn't attempt.  I want to really play with the boundaries of storytelling one of these days and I think I'd have to write to do it.

-         With your body of comic work to date you are primarily known as a horror artist.  Do you have any need to break away from that label or does it even make a difference?

I think I am horror influenced no matter what I do.  Scars was a crime noir thing but my approach was so dark and grisly that it became horrific.  That was intentional on my part.  I had no intention of hiding the horrific scenes in that story.  I think you can sense more of the character's descent into his own personal hell by seeing exactly what he sees and that was what I think Warren intended.  303 was the same way.  It is a bit more than a war book, but whenever I showed the violence of war I wanted it to be completely visceral and unflinching.  In a way, I see it like I am respecting the reader that way.  I won't censor the imagery and the reader can choose whether to dwell on it or pass over it at a glance.  When you see what a claymore does to a human body it can be horrific.  It is just my own personal aesthetic as well.  I don't think of myself as a horror artist any more than I imagine David Cronenberg sees himself as a horror director

-         I just picked up the Chronicles of Wormwood preview and it looks great.  I understand it’s going to be an ongoing series.  Does Garth have a definite end in mind as he did with Preacher?

No, the book is actually a six issue mini.  I really couldn't keep up the pace on an ongoing.  I try but I am just not a monthly artist right now.  There is definitely an end to the arc.  I know there have been talks of a sequel already but not in the way most people would suspect.  You'll have to read the book to see what I mean.

-         Will this be your only project for the foreseeable future or will you be able to work on other things as they come up?

After this I am doing an original Alan Moore miniseries at Avatar but no details yet.

-         And finally, what would you like to tell us about Chronicles of Wormwood and any other projects you have coming out?

Wormwood is Garth's darkly hilarious take on the Antichrist and by extension, Christianity, organized religion and the world around us.  The Antichrist himself is a charming British guy who really doesn't want to go through with his asshole father's plan to start the apocalypse.  Without giving too much away, we are taken on a road trip to the after life and get to see Heaven, Hell and more with Jesus and a talking rabbit as copilots.  The book is seriously the funniest thing I have read in ages and has an oddly positive spiritual message despite being possibly the most blasphemous comic ever.  Aside from that, I am doing a lot of covers for Avatar these days including Night of the Living Dead, which is a real thrill for me.  This is the first time anyone has gotten the real license and blessing from George A. Romero and John Russo and created a real prequel in continuity with the film.  Night of the Living Dead is not public domain despite popular opinion and being involved with the official book is a huge deal for me.  I'm the biggest zombie fan in the industry and I hope my various zombie covers show that!

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