Who's Who In The CBU Update 2008

Who are... Park and Barb?

Barbara Lien-Cooper writes the comic GUN STREET GIRL at Panel 2 Panel, was an original founder of Sequential Tart, is the managing editrix of the 2004 Eisner award-winning print magazine COMIC BOOK ARTIST, and was named by Mark Millar (The Authority, Ultimates, Wanted) as one of the three most promising new talents in the next wave of comics writing.

Park Cooper started writing about comics at the now-defunct DC FANZINE website.

Lien & 'lein: The Jane Irwin Interview (Part I)

By Park Cooper

Jane Irwin writes the comic Vogelein. It's very good. She's a friend of ours. Readers of this column recently will have gotten the general idea that these facts are true and that we want Jane to succeed in her writing career. However, what many people don't always get from Jane's sometimes-serious, sometimes-suspenseful, often-touching comic is how amusing and droll she is in person, as we first learned at last year's Mid-Ohio Con. So we're also sharing that facet of her with the world in this, part one of a two-part interview that we just couldn't wait one more week to post...




Jane Irwin: Sorry I'm late.

JI: I got writing hard on the next next next script and looked up and it was 25 past.

Park Cooper for SBC: Hi.

SBC: Oh yes?

SBC: Yeah I leave my wife alone when that happens.

JI: I'm trying to Shoehorn Lady Gregory into the 4th Vogelein script.

SBC: Lady Gregory you say...

JI: Ol' Greg sure was good at recording legends, but at actual prose, not so much.

JI: Yup. Public domain, for the last 20 years or so.

SBC: I'm afraid that I'm not sure that I know Lady Gregory.

JI: I can have my way with her, just like Yeats did!

JI: S'okay. Few do.

SBC: I know Madame Blavatsky...

JI: Heh. Lady Greg was an Irish historian.

SBC: Ah.

JI: Translated a lot of the myths straight outta Gaelic.

SBC: Figured it was something like that.

SBC: And yes, my wife sometimes operates in that fashion as well.

JI: She's as close to the original texts as you can get w/o learning ancient Gaelic. And copyright-free, to boot. Muahahaha.

JI: Anyway, lemme get a cup of tea and you type in your first question.

SBC: Okay.

SBC: Well the first thing I wanted to open with was to have you talk a little about the, ah, educational outreach programs that you do.

SBC: You do that in tandem with someone else, don't you?

JI: Occasionally I work with Jim Ottaviani. He's at www.gt-labs.com, and he's been nominated for the Eisners three times for his three books. Jim's a great guy, a superlative writer, and a librarian -- all of which make him great for doing educational talks to teens. He's also got an encyclopedic knowledge of early Marvel and DC comics, particularly anything pertaining to Kirby and Ditko, his personal heroes.

SBC: G/T as in Gifted/Talented, perhaps?

SBC: Do we want to list his books?

JI: Having Jim's background in that is great, because that's something I lack. We compliment each other very well -- Artist and Writer, we talk about how the two can work together to make a comic book, to try to break the stigma that if you can't both write AND draw, you can't make comics. Teens like to hear that as long as they've got one talent, they can still contribute.

JI: Actually, gt labs is the name of the company that made the radioactive spider that bit Peter Parker in the very first issue of the Lee/Ditko ASM.

SBC: Actually Barbara and I were having one of our talks this morning in which we compared comics to the music industry and I commented that the insistence on quality art from readers, unfortunate and blinding in many ways as it is, is perhaps the one thing that keeps a certain standard in the industry... yet also keeps writers who can't draw down...

SBC: Wow

JI: Jim's 3 books are: Fallout (2001) Dignifying Science (1999) and Two-Fisted Science (1997)

JI: Wow? Wow which?

SBC: Wow was for GT Labs.

JI: I have a friend who's just discovered comics for grownups. She's very discouraged because she's a writer, and she sees all her scripts visually now, since she's started reading stuff like "Queen and Country".

JI: So I pointed her towards Amy Unbounded and TSSTG - because the artists who drew those books were writers who taught themselves to draw. I beleive Beland's self-taught, or taught by his father at least, and I'm also pretty sure that Rachel's self-taught as well.

SBC: In comics, as in music, it's slowly becoming an expectation that a creator outside of Marvel/DC be both writer and artist, just as so many young singers seem to be expected to write their own songs now...

SBC: Discouraged because she doesn't draw? Or not as well as she writes?

SBC: Yes, we love Amy Unbounded... but are worried about more being forthcoming.

JI: I like the idea that an author can find a simple way of conveying their feelings that might not be as complicated as, say, the 4-color Marvel books. Authors like Scott Mills -- his art is very simple, but very very powerful.

SBC: Was there ever any more after the Belondweg Blossoming storyline? Did I miss it? Or did things just stop there (so far)?

JI: Not to mention our own local Simplicity Genius, Matt Feazell, author of Cynicalman.

JI: Rachel put out one more mini past the 12th, and it's called "The Weaver and the Warrior".

SBC: Um, I'm sorry, but TSSTG? Oh right, True Story Swear to God. Not used yet to seeing that acronym.

JI: I hype Tom's stuff so hard he's threatening to make me his midwest distribution point.

SBC: Haven't seen any Cynicalman lately... Have you read Colonia?

JI: Feazell just put out a softcover book of his strips. It's his first big self-published effort, as opposed to the self-published minis, and an earlier collection that someone else paid for. And when I say, "just put out", I mean he picked them up from the printers last Friday. :) [Thus making it about the end of October/start of November--Ed.]

SBC: Ah. Well then people reading this next week can watch for it. By a Rachel 'one more mini' you mean a single issue, I presume?

JI: Yes... issue 13 was W&tW, and it came out at Wizard World Chicago 2002, before Byron (her son) was born... it continues a short storyline she did with Tara Tallan in a Galaxion/AU 24 page flip-issue.

SBC: Oh the flip book, yes I have that too... It is true, and frustrating, that some must go the route of finding, keeping, and working with artists... especially considering the financial considerations.

JI: As for Colonia -- I read it, but frankly, it was hit or miss for me. I really hate to admit that, because I genuinely like Jeff Nicholson's work -- Habitrails absolutely cored me out when I read it about six years ago.

SBC: I think it's fair to say that I know something about that since that's a big part of my job with Barb.

SBC: Haven't read that but I did read a Father and Son collection. It was slightly dated but intelligent, you know? Although one wanted more of the female cartoonist and less of the son...

JI: I still think that Habitrails is a stunning, monumental piece of work, even if it's not representative of what Jeff's done recently. He's working hard to break that dark angsty mold, and I hope he can do it. I think Colonia has a lot of potential, and the old fish-man really is great.

SBC: It's such a thrill to find INTELLIGENCE in comics writing... Such as when I discovered Paul Chadwick's Concrete.

JI: God, I love Concrete.

SBC: The brains he put into that overcame any other flaws for quite a long time.

SBC: Yes, one doesn't want to get typecast.

JI: I used to dig that out of the quarter bins when I was broke and in college, and it was like striking a vein of pure gold. I unearthed the Chadwick/Vess collaboration when I was cleaning out my longboxes a while ago. Stunning, stunning work.

JI: Hm. let's talk about writers and artists working together. I want to get back to that.

JI: I don't have any actual, actual experience with that, sadly.

SBC: To turn the subject (duh) back to you for a while, though, let's talk about art. Barb and I, brainstorming stuff to talk about for this interview, were talking about how Vogelein has that _real-world_ sort of pretty... and we made a big list of all the things you could have done wrong but didn't. Go manga style on her, for one obvious example, not that there isn't a time and place for manga-style but Vogelein isn't the time nor place.

JI: What I do have experience with is writers skipping out on me, not the other way around. I must be the one lone artist in the world, who got a year into doing a comic, and was left standing there with thirty finished pages going, "WHEN WILL YOU FINISH THE DAMN SCRIPT?!"

SBC: Sorry, I went in the total opposite direction and started talking about another writer/artist, Jane.

JI: All I ever hear about is writers kvetching that Artists flake out and never fulfill their end of the commitment. --Hehe. S'okay, I'll come back to that now.

SBC: Yes, that's been our experience, until we found our adopted son Ryan Howe.

JI: Well, to talk about the point you just raised -- I like manga, but I'm not comfortable with that style. I'm also not comfortable inking yet. I'm really not that good. I'm a pretty darn good painter, though, so I went that way. And, frankly, I'm sick and tired of the fact that there are about five bodytypes for characters in comics.

SBC: Yeah.

JI: Vogelein was a clockwork designed three hundred years ago. Her metal body has to house enough clockwork to make her walk and talk and fly. Waifish she ain't.

SBC: Ah, inking. I know a little something about the perils of inking, as well.

JI: She's also made after the beautiful bodytype of the time: Well-rounded and well-fed.

SBC: Hm... has anyone ever called her waifish?

JI: Nope, and I hope they never do.

SBC: Really? In the poster over here she just looks... normal. Young and normal. Proportionate to her size of course.

JI: I'm busy designing the characters that are going to appear in the fourth Vogelein script...

SBC: I wouldn't call her well-fed though... Just not underfed.

JI: Well, she has bigger hips that most people are accustomed to seeing on a comic book character and breasts that are actually proportionate to her frame. They're kinda big, but she's modeled after a sturdy German woman. (Kinda like me.)

JI: So anyway -- I had to design this teenager who's going to play a prominent role in one of my scripts. and I really wanted her to look like a real teenager -- one with acne and a soft face and some pudge that comes from a poor diet.

SBC: Uh huh.

JI: I don't know if I mentioned this before, but along those same lines, I want to work a "normal" lesbian couple into the story very soon, hopefully in the 3rd script, which hasn't been written yet. By normal, I mean not a soap opera and without one of them being knocked up, or caught in a love triangle. Just a nice, calm, domestic, co-habbing lesbian couple.

SBC: Hmmmm... do you drop that into the conversation because of Gun Street Girl? [http://www.graphicsmash.com/series.php?name=gsg&view=current] And was that pregnancy a knock at Gaiman, Maggie and Hopey, or neither? Or all of the above?

SBC: By script do you mean issue or storyline?

JI: It seems to me, that every lesbian I've ever read about (with the exception of GSG) -- Death: High Cost of Living -- SiP -- and Chasing Amy -- They're all questioning their orientation. I just want to write a nice, confirmed, monogamous, non-bi, in-love lesbian couple.

JI: And yes, I admire that about GSG. I haven't read L&R yet, though I have about 7 books from Jim O[ttoviani] on loan. And the reason I brought it up was both because of GSG and because of the stereotype-busting that we were talking about: there are 60 women in the world who have bodies like Halle Berry, and 3 billion who don't.

SBC: Barb speaks: "I think that's really admirable because I get sick of the Chasing Amy thing. If you're a gay female (as opposed to a bi female) and you know it, there's no right man for you, I think."

JI: Ha! Yeah. I really live to bust stereotypes in my writing. That's live, not love. It's one of my main purposes. "All women have to be thin to be happy."

SBC: Yeah, welcome to the part of the act where I channel my wife for yez.

JI: Heh... "A lesbian just needs to meet the right man." "A guy would only be a streetsweeper if he had no other choice in life."

SBC: Barb: "Plus with the exception of Gaiman really there hasn't been that much of an attempt to introduce monogamous couples into the urban fantasy comic... Just that and Shade the Changing Man as far as I can think of."

JI: Hm. One could argue Peter and Mary Jane Parker...

JI: And I like busting the stereotypical stereotypes as well. Or rather, I like busting the stereotypical stereotype-busting stereotypes. Such as: "The hooker with the heart of gold." "The biker dude who paints."

SBC: Oops she meant monogamous gay couples... although your point's well taken about monogamous couples in comics in general.

SBC: Barb: "Clark and Lois I suppose."

SBC: Oh don't get me started on Clark and Lois, Barb.

JI: Man of steel, woman of tissue paper? :)

SBC: Yay Niven. A great man for working with generalizations.

JI: Heh. I'm a Pierson's Puppetteer.

SBC: YAY!

JI: Hindmost! Hindmost!

SBC: Okay we're in a world my wife knows little to nothing about now (BUT I DO!) but my best friend from High School would LOVE to meet you...

JI: Heh.


Part two of the interview continues in two weeks when Yours Truly tries with great effort to adapt to the intensive geek levels of Jane's natural habitat. In the meantime you can learn more of Jane and of Vogelein here:
http://www.vogelein.com/vogelein/voghome.html
http://www.vogelein.com/fierystudios/fierystudios.shtml

And while we're at it you can learn more about Barb's GUN STREET GIRL here:
http://www.graphicsmash.com/series.php?name=gsg&view=current
http://www.worldfamouscomics.com/bakersdozen/back20031126.shtml





















Your New Mantra: I ATE WHAT THEY ATE, LIVED AS THEY LIVED