Christian Read - December 2004

The following questions were put to comics writer Christian Read via e-mail. They were compiled from questions
asked in the Pulp Faction forums and sent by e-mail. In order to sort them all into a proper interview, some
editing and re-wording occured. Please blame Maggie McFee if you don't like these changes. A big thanks should
go to Christian for further shaping the interview questions as well as for bothering to answer at all.



Thanks and enjoy.

Maggie

Q. - Could you please bring newcomers to your work up to speed by

giving a brief rundown of what your past work includes?

My name is Christian Read. I've written twelve issues of The Watch
with a few in the can. Contributing artists include Image's Doug
Holgate, Dark Horse's Nicola Scott, and Marvel's Andrew McKenny. The
three issue mini Dunwich: A Tale of the Cthulhu Mythos, with Doug
Holgate, Eldritch Kid, a four issue mini with Christopher Burns, and the
long delayed but out next Feburary Witch King, with Paul Abstruse [Ed. - Issue 1 art preview below], as
well as the web comic Criss Cross Jazz with Scott Fraser.
Scott and I also work together semi-regularly on the Dude in the Coat shorts. I also did a few Star
Wars shorts a few years ago. All but four of those books are distributed
internationally. We've had sales in every continent but Antarctica.



As a quick aside, a few days ago I calculated that's around 450
published comic pages since 2000, with another 100 in the next year and
a bit.

Q. - What's coming up?

Finishing Witch King [Ed. - Previews below] and EK. A project with Doug Holgate, and I've
got a few proposals doing the rounds. Expect some announcements soon
concerning the incredible artists on the new Watch mini Cathexes [Ed. - Preview art below] and
possibly a new monthly, with the working-title “Superwicked”. Expect
resumption of Criss Cross Jazz very soon. Plus, Sidereal Kingdom, oh yes.
I've also got some upcoming work with Top Cow and I'm
very excited to be doing a horror short with Tonia
Walden. I've been a fan of her's since I was
seventeen, so that's a bit of a dream.
I'm also doing a commisoned piece with
Chelsea Fritzlaff for the band "Dead Inside the
Chrysalis" [Ed. - Preview art below]. An excursion into surreality for me.

Preview from The Watch mini Cathexes.	Preview from 'Dead Inside the Chrysalis' project.	Preview from Witch King

Q. - Any mysterious projects you can speak cryptically about and
spark some gossip, rumour and innuendo?

Nah. If I start shooting my mouth of about the work roughly based on
the life of Gesar of Ling or Villanelle, I'll look stupid when it never
comes out. Mind you, the remixed Contractually Obliged that appeared in
the excellent Ink anthology is slouching towards Bethlehem.

Q. - You've done pretty well for yourself in terms of recognition
and continued work on several titles. In other words, you've established
yourself as a 'professional'. So, inquiring minds want to know; Why
don't you "sell out" (Readers: Please note my use of quotation marks
before anyone comes gunning for me)? Why not shoot for a book with one
of the big guys and suck down some cash and instant recognition?

What is selling
out? Do you mean doing work for a professional
company using their characters? I'm fucking trying.

Look, I've never heard anyone use the words ‘sell out' used
by
anyone who actually worked in an industry where your ideas solely decide
if you're eating that week. Did anyone call Eddie Campbell a sell-out
after Order of Beasts or that Green Lantern? No. And if they did, fuck
them. Selling out is a myth people with no talent or no experience
foster.

I would love to write for Marvel or DC or whoever. I have some, if I
say so myself, tops ideas for certain characters. I do not feel the need
to justify that.

But, like any writer worth his salt, my main focus and love is, and
always will be, what I create myself. I fail to see how one diminishes
the other and I very much doubt anyone will be able to explain it to me.
The point is, I'd love to work for a big company. I just don't need
to.

Although, to be fair, Luke Webber has gotten drunk and railed at my
mainstream work. Of course, one day, I'll seduce that mad bastard and
he'll draw for me. Then I will have won.

Q. - Being a writer is generally
viewed by the public as a cerebral
vocation. Good writers tend to prove this out by being well-read and
voracious absorbers of knowledge. With all that goes into writing and
goes into becoming a good writer, how do you respond to the idea that
comics are 'just for kids'?

Writing is a cerebral vocation. It should be. But interesting
writing is good living. I can research the poetry of James Mangan, the
micro-gravity/string implications raised Brane Theory, the history of
the Haitian Uprising until the eyes drop out of my skull. All that stuff
is great, but it's just props, a decoration you know? It's just a
trick.

It's living an interesting life and thinking about interesting
things, and going to interesting places and talking to interesting
people that makes good writing.

Pump as much money into the pokies, play as much X-box as you want,
watch as much children's television as you like, that's not gonna
make a good writer.

Just get out there and experience. That's all you can do.

As for the idea that comics are for kids, well, no one who would say
that with any breadth of knowledge and are talking out their arse. So;
‘fuck you, you non-comic reading motherfuckers.' That's what
I'd say.
Or I'd suggest they enter a comic shop of repute and, on discovering
their taste in other forms of fiction and non-fiction, make
recommendations concerning works that may engage with them.

Q. - What does writing comics give you that other forms of writing
cannot? What's different about writing comics for you as opposed to
other forms? Do you see yourself eventually moving within the profession
(screenplays, novels, etc.), or do you see comics as always being a part
of your life?

You know what?



I don't know for certain, what comics can offer that
is wholly unique. I have suspicions but part of why I work in comics is
to understand the form.

My notions in regards to comics is that there are narrative
structures and conventions that film, prose, music, poetry and
photography can't emulate. But I don't feel qualified to tell you
what those are just yet. It's all a bit complex and theoretical. Check back
in a year and perhaps I'll have a better vocabulary to express what I'm
saying.

Working in comics is good because the artist does all the work. You
can go look at internet pornography and the wrestling while they squint
at a drawing table into the long hours of the night. (My advice to comic
writers is that you don't tell them that)

Seriously, comics writing is a series of complex relationships
between image and alphabet, time and space. One must be aware of
physical limitations in the medium as nowhere else. The page size is
limited, the space to put words is limited.

For a writer who is not an artist, one is constrained (and boosted)
by the artist's aesthetics, commitment, style. Your vision is never,
ever, going to be your own and you rise and fall with the penciller.
Communication of ideas and plot information is in a very real way out of
your hands

That less positive stuff being said… comics are a way to express
complex ideas quickly, and utilize many storytelling techniques and I
like pretty pictures very much indeed.

As for my writing future, I've been working freelance as a
journalist for many years. See my upcoming feature in Hyper Magazine for
a taste of the kind of pop-culture ephemera I discuss.

Novel? One day. Hopefully very soon. Writing a novel is without a
doubt the hardest experience I have had in my artistic life.

Film? Working on getting two out.

Play? Should have had one out in January, but the director pulled
out. Still trying to salvage that. Pray for me.

Q. - Speaking of "craft",
do you keep a writer's journal?

Since the death of my website, I certainly keep a blog using popular
web-based software. See if you can find it! It is, for all intents and
purposes, a writing journal.

Otherwise, my writing journal is called ‘my writing'. See if you
can
pick when I've been drinking. Nicola Scott and I play a game “guess
what
page I did naked”.

Q. - Comics readers are divided along many fault lines, so to speak.
A lot of rumblings come about from the grinding where they meet. One
'plate', if I may run this analogy rapidly and completely into the
ground, views mainstream super-hero books with a less than prideful eye.
However, The Watch seems to have avoided this stigma and been generally
accepted by both the opposing sides. To what, if anything, do you
attribute this?

This stigma about superheroes… I don't understand it. It always
seems a basically false position to take. Critiques against whole genres
always strikes me as ineffective, incoherent and short-sighted. And
almost always comes from people who argue with bloody-high-mindedness
about art. Booooring.

You can either choose to view corporate superhero books as boring
wastes of paper, written by aging hacks or you can dig a little deeper
and see an vast experiment, unique in the history of the world, in
meta-narrative. And if you ignore the good work using supers to examine
a variety of themes, and still dismiss the sub-genre as a whole… then
you're ignorant and have no right to an opinion. Walk on home.

People who make those tired old “adolescent power-fantasy” attacks
are herbivores of the mind. Ignore them in favour of the carnivorous who
see a vital, sexy, magic pop-art when it's in front of them.

That being said, if you defend superhero books mindlessly, refusing
to take criticism from either within the medium, (re: Planetary. That's
not a comic book, that's an extended act of criticism and deep
engagement) or without is a mistake.

All that being said, I think I tried to write a book about people
with super powers, not superheroes. Superpowers have played an important
role in the book as both the basic plot engine and the most basic sub
textual symbol of what's going on really.

If people like The Watch, I think it's because it's smart, there
are
some good jokes in it, and there's stuff exploding on a fairly regular
basis. There's some good characters and hopefully an entertaining
central mystery.

Plus it's one of the best looking books out there. Look at the list
of who has worked on it above. Am I not devastatingly proud of the
incredible people who have and will work on that book? Call me a
terrible hack who molested your pets and stole your wife's undies, I
don't care. But attacking how good that book looks is futile.

As for why people who don't like superheroes, but who do like the
Watch (and we do get correspondence to that effect, especially from
countries where superheroes never took off) I think it's because I never
really worried about writing a genre book. I write about what I want, in
this case, that happens to be about people with amazing skills and
gifts.

It's not just a book about Dr Weaselflaps kidnapping the moon. It's
a heavy dose of shock and awe with a point of view. If it transcends
notions of what a super hero book is capable of then I've done my job,
because people stop viewing it as a “superhero” book and just see
the
story. That's all I want.

I write it for people like me, informed about the world and curious
to know more and I don't really feel the need to have all the tropes of
a superhero book. It's a story about people, about the whole pernicious,
hateful notion heroism, and about what makes someone a good person.
I think that's actually pretty easy to see.

Of course, I'm not the person to talk to about why people read the
Watch. I'm not qualified to speak for them. All I know is I see a lot
of
people at the cons and get a lot of letters and my readers are uniquely
sexy, smart, funny, clever and informed people. If you've bought my
works, and enjoyed them, you can almost guarantee that you're one of
more of those things. Tell people I say so.

Q. - Have you ever or could you ever write [a version of] yourself
or someone very close to you into a story -- even just a thumbnail?

Many, many times. The Dude in the Coat is me, and many times I've
put my opinions into characters mouths. So, I suppose you could argue
they are versions of me. I doubt many writers could, would, or should
help that.

However, I don't think that's what you're asking, so
Dude in the Coat and upcoming and previous Diggsville
for more.

Q. - A very involved question: Tell us about your theories on the
use and integration of space, time and movement in sequential art. Or is
what you do instinctual and innate?

Oh, man, we'd be here for hours and I can't imagine too many people
care. Let me simply say that photographic theory, not film theory, is
the most useful tool we have to inform comic writing and drawing. Comic
art is basically a series of photographic representations, that only
become a story via their relationships to each other, and their
relationships to space. Foremost in writer's and artist's mind should
be, I maintain, the understanding that a story needs to make the most
amount of time that happens in the slippage between panels.

I enjoy, very much, the craft-related underpinnings of any art form.
Comics have very little theoretical cannon and it's something I look
forward to writing about one day.

I think that my approach to the stories I tell is innate. It's all
gut-feeling concerning what's going to be fun to tell and interesting
to
read. But when it comes to the behind the scenes matters of crunch, I'm
all ruthless application of cold, machine like calculation. Oh yes.

As for my own work, I've never been more aware of theory than in the
upcoming Superwicked, but of my published works, examine the Watch,
volume 2, issue 5, and the final issue of Casus Belli. My notions of how
time is expressed in comics are probably best expressed there.

Q. - How do you cope with the notion that nothing is original? Or do
you feel that's nonsense?

Is nothing original? I don't know. I don't have a chronological
table of every thing written ever. And how far can you take that
questions. “Read's use of pictures and words in this comic is
derivative”.

However, if you find yourself saying “it's like the bit in
X, where…” you're probably not original.

If my work reminds me of anyone else's, I scrap it. I'm a firm
believer in telling my stories my way.

Nothing gets me off-side or disinterested quicker than someone
saying “it's meant to remind the reader of” or “it pays
homage too”.
What they're really saying is “I don't have enough faith in
my talents
to tell my own story”. And, brother, if you don't have faith in
yourself, by Christ, I'm not going to. I don't need to read something
that artlessly apes what has happened before. Nor does anyone reading
this.

If you are not consciously trying to create something great, why are
you trying at all? Would you read something that you knew was
half-hearted?

That being said, notions of originality are highly suspect. Even if
you are working in a vacuum, you may unwittingly hit on already used
ideas. Anyway, the human experience has only certain finite expressions.
I don't think succeeding in being original is nearly as important as the
attempt.

So I don't over worry. I just ensure that whatever I'm writing is
an
expression of my concerns, my talent, my voice. If you aren't doing the
same, you're probably not going to be telling a good story.

Rethink. Try again.

Remember, even working with unoriginal material, you can tell
original stories. It's why “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”
is a
powerful comic, masterfully rendered comic about the myths colonial
powers tell themselves, and not a rip-off of Jules Verne.

And be aware the self-conscious art is sooo 1998.

Q. - In a sweeping generalisation, it seems that when Aussies go to
work freelancing for one of the major US publishers, they don't catch as
much slack for working on 'super-hero' books as they seem to when
working on those sorts of titles locally. You've worked in super-herodom
locally (and managed to avoid a good deal of the 'slack'), so what's
your take on this phenomenon?

No one would dismiss David Yardin for doing superhero
works, because
I don't think there's anyone that fucking idiotic in the world.
David
trained as, and wanted to be, and slogged his guts out to become, a
super hero artist. He's one of the best at it. Who could or would attack
someone for living their dream? Are you gonna dismiss Darren White, a
smart guy, just because he wrote some Batman?

I don't know that many people do automatically attack people just
for doing superheroes.

It's like telling Steven Griffin his work is “too Hawaiian,”
or Jason Rand his work is “too much about gods that are small.”

I've had three bad reviews out of some twenty five and the only
review I have ever had that seemed dismissive of my work simply because
it was mainstream was from an Australian. And I didn't pay attention to
that because the reviewer was making a conspicuous big deal about how
little they knew about superhero comics.

I think anyone who says “superheroes aren't my thing and I don't
like them”, should probably not read superhero related work. They have
little useful to say to me, my work, or the readership.

Anyone else working with pop-material who gets this kind of review,
here is my advice. “Fuck em”. Don't ever dismiss criticism,
but always be aware of your reviewer's credentials.

Q. - Do you see Australian comics industry as running in place? Is
it advancing to a point where it can compare to other markets and carve
out its own unique niche? Some say we are stuck in a cycle of derivative
regurgitation of mainstream comics, particularly from the US, and
narrow self-referential works when trying to make them 'Aussie'. What's
your take on this?

[Ed. - I intend to ask this question of all our interviewees.]

Hmmm. OK. I approach this question with a fair amount of care. I've
never noticed this “industry” deals very well with criticism. Any
attack
can be made to seem personal, and people don't care to separate the
dancer from the dance. So, up front, let me say that I have no
intentions of attacking specific people.

But: What comics industry?

There is not an Australian comics industry. Industry indicates
professionalism, indicates commercial consciousness. Tell me, do you
honestly see many comic creators out there sticking to deadlines,
creating markets for their books, printing professionally and all that
other jazz?

Cos I don't.

That's an industry. Phosphorescent is the only commercial comic
concern in this country. That's one company. One. We have very little
peer reviewing that's not fraught with either tentative worry about
hurting feelings, or is cowardly, anonymous bitching.

There is no industry.

What we have here is a scene. A movement, if you will. We have an
intense amateur hobby market. Some of the things that come out of this
scene are very fine indeed. You'd have to go a long way to find someone
who likes the work of, say, Matt ‘Stikman' Hyunh, more than me,
for
instance. I thought Crumpleton Experiments was one of the best comics,
(not Australian comics, comics) I read this year. I've talked many times
how much I liked Violin Girl and Dogs and on and on. It drives me nuts
someone like Mandy Ord isn't enormously well known and reviewed in Heat.
Why isn't Selan's magazine distributed through Gordon and Gotch?

As for the smaller stuff… it's not going to sell. By dint of their
very nature they are not, shall we say, industrial. I suspect two
reasons for that.

One, a lot of those books just aren't up to scratch for a mainstream
audience, who rightly expect high production values. They're not meant
to be, after all. They're not designed as commercial work.

And secondly, comics are already a niche market. A zine is almost
certainly going to be narrowly focused. I don't think I'm being
radical
here when I suggest that indie material is going to find an indie
audience that is, by definition, not mainstream.

There is less readership for
that kind of work because it doesn't
court it. If you produce a book that's meant to be read only by your
mates, don't complain when only they read it. If you rush the art over
the weekend, with no good equipment, don't be surprised if people are
dismissive of it. If you produce a book rife with spelling mistakes,
don't complain when the stores don't buy it. Produce irregular size,
don't freak out when the companies don't distribute it. Produce
ten pages a year, don't be shocked when you can't maintain readership.

Mainstream means, appeals to more people, after all. The difference
between indie and mainstream is that simple. And that useless.

Let me tell you a quick story. My fine friend Doug Holgate did a
book called 'Tales From Under Your Bed' a few years back. Born out of the 24
hour comic challenge, he did 20 page story. It is funny and charming.
Then, when he decided to print it, he took his time, reproduced the art
with a proper scanner. He cleaned it, redrew what didn't work. He
drafted. Then he bound it together and had it printed professionally.
That book had international sales, gathered huge reviews and was loved
by fans retailers and pros alike. It was part of the momentum that
surged him to getting into the prestigious Flight anthology and his own
OGN with Image.

It didn't have superheroes and tits. It was a kid's story about
a worm. That book did well because he worked at making it good. Indie
material, treated to mainstream quality and, golly, look, it did well.
I've been barking in the dark about this for years, and Doug proved me
right.

Make no mistake about what I'm saying, now. It is not talent that
this country lacks. It is application. Forget about the bullshit divides
between mainstream and indie. Only sad bastards who had no friends who
think a Jesus And Mary Chain album makes them interesting buy into that
shit.

Comics will not advance in this country, or create an international
profile as a whole, until we all apply ourselves to creating works that
can and should be seen internationally. And that has nothing to do with
whether or not your comic is about fucking superheroes or menstruation
or your cat.

It has to do with creating quality works in marketable formats.
That, my friends, is the sad reality of this fallen world. Otherwise we
will remain a hobby scene. If that's what you want, fine. But I have
bigger dreams for our talent.

Australian comics should, and can, be seen internationally as a
hothouse of talented an interesting creators. But not until we all agree
to try as hard as we can, every time.

No one quits. Everyone fights.

December 21, 2004