Zombiehamster.com

I am not going to begin this by stating how much I love Calvin & Hobbes. We all love Calvin & Hobbes. If you don’t love Calvin & Hobbes, there is something fundamentally wrong with your brain, possibly a massive tumour, which, in all probability is caused from having no soul.

Spotted on Cleveland.com, this delightful little insight is a rare and splendid stroll into the mind which created one of the most iconic and beautiful comic strips of al time.

With almost 15 years of separation and reflection, what do you think it was about “Calvin and Hobbes” that went beyond just capturing readers’ attention, but their hearts as well?

The only part I understand is what went into the creation of the strip. What readers take away from it is up to them. Once the strip is published, readers bring their own experiences to it, and the work takes on a life of its own. Everyone responds differently to different parts.

I just tried to write honestly, and I tried to make this little world fun to look at, so people would take the time to read it. That was the full extent of my concern. You mix a bunch of ingredients, and once in a great while, chemistry happens. I can’t explain why the strip caught on the way it did, and I don’t think I could ever duplicate it. A lot of things have to go right all at once.

What are your thoughts about the legacy of your strip?

Well, it’s not a subject that keeps me up at night. Readers will always decide if the work is meaningful and relevant to them, and I can live with whatever conclusion they come to. Again, my part in all this largely ended as the ink dried.

Readers became friends with your characters, so understandably, they grieved — and are still grieving — when the strip ended. What would you like to tell them?

This isn’t as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of 10 years, I’d said pretty much everything I had come there to say.

It’s always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip’s popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now “grieving” for “Calvin and Hobbes” would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I’d be agreeing with them.

I think some of the reason “Calvin and Hobbes” still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.

I’ve never regretted stopping when I did.

Because your work touched so many people, fans feel a connection to you, like they know you. They want more of your work, more Calvin, another strip, anything. It really is a sort of rock star/fan relationship. Because of your aversion to attention, how do you deal with that even today? And how do you deal with knowing that it’s going to follow you for the rest of your days?

Ah, the life of a newspaper cartoonist — how I miss the groupies, drugs and trashed hotel rooms!

But since my “rock star” days, the public attention has faded a lot. In Pop Culture Time, the 1990s were eons ago. There are occasional flare-ups of weirdness, but mostly I just go about my quiet life and do my best to ignore the rest. I’m proud of the strip, enormously grateful for its success, and truly flattered that people still read it, but I wrote “Calvin and Hobbes” in my 30s, and I’m many miles from there.

An artwork can stay frozen in time, but I stumble through the years like everyone else. I think the deeper fans understand that, and are willing to give me some room to go on with my life.

How soon after the U.S. Postal Service issues the Calvin stamp will you send a letter with one on the envelope?

Immediately. I’m going to get in my horse and buggy and snail-mail a check for my newspaper subscription.

How do you want people to remember that 6-year-old and his tiger?

I vote for “Calvin and Hobbes, Eighth Wonder of the World.”

Interview by Plain Dealer reporter John Campanelli

Regular readers and visitors to these shores (Quick, what’s that behind you? Nothing? Well, you’ve looked away and back again, which now makes you a regular reader.) will know that I have been a long-time admirer of the art of Tom Brown of Copper Age fame.

A few months ago I posted an article in relation to the upcoming ‘Hopeless’ a collaboration between Brown and UK based writer Bryn Colvin. Their unique and simply breathtaking Maine based horror fantasy will simply have you reassessing any existing preconceptions which you may have concerning the genre. The art itself bridges a gap between hyper-realism and the opaqueness of nightmares. We have been treated to several previews via Brown’s Twitter and DeviantArt sites, but finally, it’s time for the release. With an introduction being posted via the new website (www.itisacircle.com ) this weekend, I caught up with both Brown and writer Colvin to ask them a little about this unholy union, and if they have in fact, come for our souls.

• Zombiehamster: ‘Greetings! How do I find you?’
Tom: Well and busy.
Bryn: Slightly garlic flavoured, and not very awake.
ZH: Now that I am very pleased to hear.

• ZH: ‘Can you please elaborate for the ignorant and uninitiated, a little upon the origins of Hopeless’?
Bryn: It’s entirely Tom’s fault.
Tom: Mea Culpa! It is a project that is an outgrowth of a story that I started a long time ago called New England Gothic. The idea was good but it didn’t really come together until the character of Salamandra arrived, and meeting Bryn, and discovering manga.

•ZH : ‘Who are the main characters and can we expect to be following them for some time?’
Bryn/Tom: Salamandra (experimental occultist) Owen (priest’s son), Reverend Davies (priest) Melisandra and Durosimi (Sal’s creepy parents) Annamarie Nightshade (witch) – just to start with, there are a lot of others who turn up along the way and the story arc is HUGE.

• ZH: ‘How would you describe the overall tone of the story? Is this something that you would feel comfortable doing, or would this be a piece of work that you would prefer to lie outside the confines of descriptive categorization?’
Bryn: Gothic, with humour.
Tom: Owing something to the roots of the ‘weird tale’.
Bryn: With tentacles.

• ZH: ‘How many hours a day would you spend on average working on your art and writing? On average, how long would an individual page take you?’
Tom: When I’m producing pages, between eight and thirteen hours a day. An individual page takes me two days due to lunatic amounts of detail.
Bryn: Varies a lot, I usually spend an hour or two writing most days (I also edit and other stuff) a comics page for me takes less than half an hour to write. Frequently a lot less.

• ZH: ‘Are you now dedicated to the artistic media which you work in, or are there any plans to experiment or alternate the existing formats?’
Bryn: I do all sorts – I write smut, and folk songs, sing a lot, am interested in film and theatre. I’ll try anything really.
Tom: I have a long history and deep love for this media and its potential, am also branching out into other forms and formats and as Bryn would say ‘open to suggestion’.

• ZH: ‘There are several glimmers of influence to be found within Hopeless, but it is very much its own beast, what would you cite as having a definite creative influence on you?’
Tom: Mike Mignola, Hayao Miyazaki
Bryn: For Copper Age stuff, my biggest influences would be Neil Gaiman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Tom. He’d written a few scenes when we started and I put in a lot of time trying to emulate his voice. That’s where most of the humour comes from – I don’t think it’s actually mine!

• ZH: ‘I was going to ask if Lovecraft was in there somewhere. I’ve seen some of the images taken from the upcoming story and Cthulhu would be proud. It’s like watching his babies run amok throughout coastal New England.’
Tom: I do confess to being exposed to Lovecraft at a tender age, am much more enthusiastic about the legacy of his work at this point than I am about his original stories. If you look at Lovecraft closely, he’s a very problematic figure.
Bryn: What can I say? Tentacles. Mmm.

• ZH: ‘Are there plans for a hard copy release for those of us who haven’t embraced the digital or onscreen formats yet?’
Yes. (But we haven’t got that organised yet)

• ZH: ‘On that note, what are your feelings on digital comics compared to traditional publications? Do you feel that an equal balance is essential, or do you have a personal favourite?’
Tom: I think the medium is irrelevant and any way the story can get out there is a good thing. I’m actually excited by the possibilities of new format delivery to mobile phones and whatnot. There’s also the environmental impact of it not being made out of dead trees.
Bryn: I’ve been doing ebooks for years, I like the way they democratise things, anyone who wants to play, can.

• ZH: ‘Aside from www.itisacircle.com, are there any places where people can check out more of your work, both together and individually?’ (*Whispers* that’s where you do the plugging!’)
www.hopelessvendetta.wordpress.com – fictional newspaper for Hopeless.
Tom on deviant art – www.copperage.deviantart.com
And Serendipity – http://www.serendipityartsales.net/Brown_T_Index.html
Merchandise is at www.zazzle.com/copperage
Bryn’s erotica is at www.loveyoudivine.com and her music videos are at www.youtube.com/mistressnimue

• ZH: ‘What do you soundtrack your working days to? Or are you both only able to work in silence?’
Tom: Bryn and a steady diet of Amanda Palmer and Dir en Grey
Bryn: We use skype so I’m doing most of my music practice while Tom listens and passes comment – is good to have an audience. I tend not to have music on when I’m working, but otherwise mostly it’s folk and rock for me. Currently Show of Hands are my main obsession.

• ZH: ‘What would your cinematic preferences be and do you find yourself occasionally seeing things that you find thinking to yourself would work within the Hopeless universe, even in diluted and reimagined ways?’
Bryn: I like dark, weird, surprising. But mostly I am limited to films I can take my 7 year old son to!
Tom: Going back to Hayao Miyazake and we’d like Guillermo Del Toro as a director.

• ZH: ‘You seem to both have a great knowledge of demonology and mythology, where does this stem from and is it a major factor within Hopeless?’
Tom: I know nothing about demonology at all! It’s more fun to make things up. A lot of grounding and interest in mythology and archetype.
Bryn: Yep, mostly the demons are invented. I grew up exposed to paganism and folklore, and between those two fascinations, I’ve picked up a lot of stories. I love myths, and magical things, and I have done all kinds of peculiar stuff, so have a sense of what some of it feels like!

Hopeless is now live and available HERE

In the first of the ‘Below the Fold’ Interviews, I present:

The Jimmy Misanthrope Interview:

Zombiehamster: So you’re another of these layabouts. Unshaven, reclusive, self-employed comic artist types, eh? Explain yourself for the benefit of those with proper jobs so that they can marvel at the degradation and squalor of your existence. Why do you do it?

Jimmy Mizz: I do it primarily because there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing at this point of my life. I’ve had a number of other jobs over the years, and I’ve hated them all, so I came to the realisation a couple of years ago that illustration and comic work are the only things I really enjoy doing as a profession. I had been doing illustration stuff and working on my comic part time up to that point, and I decided one day to quit my day job and devote my energies to what I really loved to do.
I’ve had to make a lot of sacrifices to do what I do, but its working out quite well so far.
Plus it affords me the opportunity to experiment with various permutations of ridiculous facial hair, like the “way cool” sideburns I am currently sporting.

Zombiehamster: So what the bloody hell is an Ancaluvion then?

Jimmy Mizz: Ancaluvion is the name that pixies use to refer to their species in my webcomic Agents Of The Endtimes. They’re 2 to 2.5 inches high on average, and live in a satellite dimension of our own. Ancaluvion is a word I made up many years ago, and when I was formulating ideas for this comic the name just seemed to fit the little pixie characters I was coming up with.

Zombiehamster: Well, I guess that you had better tell us a little bit more about ‘Agents of the Endtimes’ c’mon then, tell us!

Jimmy Mizz: The basic premise of this comic is that the world (i.e. dimension) that we all exist in is surrounded by a number of satellite realms which orbit this one, akin to how moons orbit a planet, but in this case the “moons” are alternate realities of our own. In order for these satellite realms to exist and remain stable, a certain balance of forces in this world must be maintained. This world can exist on its own in an “unbalanced” state, but it’s dimensional moons cannot.

Agents Of The Endtimes follows the exploits of Starla, Fubar and Marnie, three Inter-dimensional Ancaluvion Agents, who travel from their world to ours to regulate the presense of inter-dimensional invaders. In other words, they kill monsters, on a fairly regular basis, to maintain the aformentioned dimensional balance.

I guess you could say Agents Of the Endtimes is a mish-mash of many things that I’m into as a fan of art, writing and film. Its a character driven action/science fiction/romance/horror/black comedy which tends to shift and change through a lot of of different moods and tones, and explores a wide range of themes.

Basically its a dumping ground for my id.

Zombiehamster: You have recently launched your very shiny (albeit porn free) website, how do you think that, in the absence of boobies, this will help the Misanthrope Empire?

Jimmy Mizz: Well, I set this site up with the intention of having somewhere for my current fans to see all my current and future online work via one handy place, rather than it being scattered around the internet as it was in the past. And hopefully this will help attract new fans. I’m doing fairly well on merch sales through the store on my site, which helps my empire by allowing its emperor to get by without having to live in a cardboard box and eat wood and rocks.
Which in turn helps me update AOTE at a consistent weekly rate, rather than going on some wood and rock fuelled rampage, leaving a trail of dead innocents and maimed property in my wake. So everyone wins really.

Also, having my own site frees me from the constraints of other site’s censorship. For example, there are a couple of panels in AOTE that feature story specific nudity. So, my site isn’t totally bereft of bewbage. I used to have AOTE up on photobucket, and I’m amazed I never got busted for the small amount of nudity that’s in the comic, as photobucket does not allow nudity, not even the softcore stuff I have in the comic.

Zombiehamster: Can I help the Misanthrope Empire?

Jimmy Mizz: I think you’re doing rather well in helping by doing this interview with me, and with your continued efforts in helping get my work out there.

Zombiehamster: Will I get a hat?

Jimmy Mizz: Damn straight you’ll get a hat. I’m thinking some kind of helmet with the AOTE logo emblazoned on the front in gold.. And with massive, oversized steel horns coming out of the top. That you could pour lighter fluid on and set on fire at regular intervals. Perhaps we could rig it so it plays a jaunty little tune whenever you set the horns on fire whilst screaming at local schoolkids. See, I think big son. Are you certain you’re capable of handling the sheer eye exploding awesome that is me and my grandiose asininity?

If the firey horn hat doesn’t work out, I dunno, we’ll get you one of those beanies with a little propeller on top or something.

Zombiehamster: Didn’t you almost get killed by one of your own creations, in a roundabout kind of a way? Bet that’s never happened to Dirge.

Jimmy Mizz: A while ago I designed this… horrible little cartoon cow for a milk company. The company has this cow on their milk cartons and on their milk trucks. Anyway, a few months ago I was driving down the road and one of those milk trucks came out of a side road and almost collided with me. After I had eviscerated the driver I had a good chuckle at the situation, this truck with this giant jolly cow on its side almost wiping me out.

Such a thing would probably not happen to Dirge, but if he were to suck on a Lenore doll I guess there’s the offside chance that he could choke to death on it. Actually no, make that a Ragamuffin doll, that would be funnier.

Zombiehamster: Tell me about the weasels.

Jimmy Mizz: I am really fond of weasels. I’m really fond of the word “weasels”. I read a quote from Matt Groening’s Life In Hell years ago, about the nature of romantic love. It went somewhere along the lines of “love is like joyfully sliding down a snowy hill on a toboggan, when suddenly the toboggan flips over, pinning you under it. At night, the ice weasels come.” I thought that was just perfect.

Zombiehamster: On paper, you live the existence of a serial killer; do you think that would be a viable career option if the comics don’t work out?

Jimmy Mizz: Well, I’m male, reclusive, somewhat disaffected and (mainly) white, which most serial killers tend to be. But to make a bona fide career out of it I’d probably have to go down the hitman route. For what are hitmen, but contracted serial killers who get commissioned to off people? Serial killers are just hobbyists really.

Zombiehamster: You’d always have somewhere to hide the bodies. Come to think of it, what would the Jimmy Misanthrope method of corpse disposal be?

Jimmy Mizz: A corpse’s soft tissues are relatively to get rid of by dissolving in acid or a solution of lye, its the bones that are the hardest to dispose of. Its probably easiest to crush the bones up into bits before giving them another go with a dissolving agent. Failing that, just make furniture out of them. Or, if you happen to have access to a lot of pigs, things become far easier.

Zombiehamster: So, when you’re not drawing comics, what tickles your proverbial fancy?

Jimmy Mizz: I tend to watch a lot of movies. I like to read often. The other things I get up to are covered fairly well in the biography section of my site I think.

Zombiehamster: Do you want to touch it? Just a little?

Jimmy Mizz: Yes. I am but a slave to my concupiscentious desires.

Zombiehamster: On that subject, do you still receive a disproportionate amount of hentai fan art? Does that concern you a little as to the nature of your readership?

Jimmy Mizz: I don’t think its disproportionate as such. The vast majority of the fanart I have received has been G-rated.

I try not to dwell too much on the nature of my readership. Judging by the feedback I’ve received over the past few years, my fans are a pretty diverse bunch. There just happens to be a small percentage that have decided it was necessary to send me fan art of a couple of my characters not wearing any clothes. At first I thought it was just plain odd, but I’ve gotten used to it. Its not something I particularly encourage or discourage. Its always nice when people take the time to draw my characters & email the drawings, but I prefer the drawings to not be naked, kthanks.

Zombiehamster: So what started you off drawing comics? Was there a catalyst or particular moment in your life that made you say ‘Yes, I want to draw comics for a living?

Jimmy Mizz: I started learning how to read when I was four, and the first things I started reading were comics. Its a pretty natural progession, going from just looking at the pictures to figuring out what the pictures are saying. The first comic I really got into was Murray Ball’s Footrot Flats, when I was about five. Footrot Flats was a New Zealand daily newspaper comic, about a farmer and his dog. The dog was the main character, and most of the strips revolved around him and his reactions to/opinions of the things that would happen to him and the other characters around him.

Although my work is very disimilar to Ball’s, he’s been a huge influence on me from a very young age. I have a great deal of respect for his work, the man is a fucking genius.

So drawing comics is something I’ve always been interested in, I’ve dabbled in doing them off and on for most of my life, but it wasn’t until I started doing Agents Of the Endtimes that I really started to get serious about doing comics. Nowadays, if I go for any longer than a couple of weeks without drawing something I start feeling really empty, which is a pretty good reason to want to do it as the primary focus in one’s life eh.

Zombiehamster: What soundtracks your working day, music, film, terrified screams, or can you only work in silence?

Jimmy Mizz: Mainly music. I often spend all day listening to music, as music is a very big part of my life. Sometimes I’ll have a film on in the background. This year I’ve been listening to a lot of film scores while I work. Things like Reinhold Heil & Johnny Klimek’s score for Land of the Dead, that’s deliciously creepy. I’m far more influenced by film and music’s emotional effect on me than I am by other comics.
Apart from getting me into the right mood, I also feel I have to have music going in order to mask the screams coming from my basement. So oddly enough terrified screams are quite detrimental to my creative process, as they’re distracting, and I’ll deal with those fuckers down there when I’m good and ready.

Zombiehamster: Approximately how long does an AOTE page take and how much time per day would you spend on your work?

Jimmy Mizz: It varies, depending on how much detail is in a particular page, how much background stuff is in there etc. On average it takes about 2-3 days to do each page, from pencilling to the final touch ups. The pencilling, inking and lettering are the relatively quick and easy part, its the grey toning that takes up the most time. I literally spend hours tinkering with things during the greytoning process, usually tiny little details that nobody but myself is ever gonna notice. So I’m trying to cut down on that obssessive side, as its not very conducive to getting stuff done in a timely fashion.

On average, I spend between 12 to 14 hours working per day, sometimes more, sometimes less. But that’s just because I’m a workaholic.

Of course I spend days working on a page that people can read in under a minute, but there are many subtle (and not so subtle) layers to my comics, which are designed to be picked up on during subsequent readings.
Zombiehamster: Are there any plans in development for releasing a hard copy collected edition of your work, or do you see the future of comics as a purely online medium?

Jimmy Mizz: Oh yes, there will definitely be a dead tree version of AOTE. I’m thinking of collecting parts 1-5 as a trade, once I’ve drawn part 5. I think there will always be a percentage of comic fans (myself included) that like to sit down with a book in their hands rather than reading comics off a monitor. And I’m quite happy to cater to those people.

I think webcomics, by the very nature of them being online… there’s a huge wellspring of creative presentation that people have just started to mine. I’m talking about things like flash comics and such, that would work far better in an online form. But AOTE is set up in such a way that it will work fine in a printed format as well.

Zombiehamster: Should Samuel L Jackson stop making movies, or will you give him another chance?

Jimmy Mizz: I’ve given that man plenty of chances. I used to quite enjoy his performances, until he stopped being Samuel L. Jackson and decided he could get by rather well by just doing Samual L. Jackson impersonations. I think the last movie with him in it that I liked was The Incredibles, and even then he was just doing the voice of an underdeveloped sideman. So I guess whether or not he should continue to act in movies depends on who you’re asking, but seeing as you’re asking me, I shall say a big fat NO.

Zombiehamster: Is it true that you are a racist, but only when it comes to Australians?

Jimmy Mizz: I have a few friends in Australia, and one of my best friends has just moved there a couple of weeks ago. In fact, I’m planning on moving there in the future. So I’m not anti Australians per se, its just a population thing. There are more people in Australia than in New Zealand, so there are proportionally more fatheads in Australia than in NZ. I’ve noticed there’s a more racist streak in Australian culture as well. But of course, any fans and friends of mine in Australia are wonderful people, and exempt from any dislike I may have for their countrymen.

Zombiehamster: You’re not going to let me interview you ever again are you?

Jimmy Mizz: That all depends on whether or not you’re going to give me back my gnomes.

You can visit Jimmy Misanthrope’s website ‘The Vortex Machines‘ and send him perverted fan art by Clicking HERE. This will get him back nicely for all the naked polaroids that he keeps sending me.

Jamie Smart is without a doubt one of the finest comic artists in the business and one of my personal favourites. I have been reading and enjoying his work for many years now and he just keeps getting better. Unlike so many artists who create iconic characters, Jamie has moved on from the success of ‘Bear‘ (his breakthrough comic, published by Slave Labor Graphics) by giving us such wonderful strips as Whubble and Corporate Skull alongside the fantastic Ubu Bubu and the delightful Space Raoul. Being the accommodating sort of fellow that he is, Jamie was very kind to give an interview with zombiehamster.com, here’s what he had to say.

Zombiehamster: So, how the hell are you sir?

Jamie: I’m good ta! How are you? Not answering back would be very rude.

ZH: I’m doing really, really well thank you!

Are you a fan of horror movies? If so, what kind? If not, what do you tend to watch?

Jamie: Yeah I love horror films, mainly because they always seem to have the most interesting stories to tell. The massively grisly trend of recent years for torture porn turns me off, I’ll confess i hate stuff like that, but anything else spooky, sinister or head-slicingly nasty is always pretty enjoyable.

ZH: Fat Chunk 2 is coming out soon; please tell us a little about it.

Jamie: Fat Chunk is a collective of artists who are all given a theme and asked to produce a page or two of comic on that theme, we then slap it altogether into a tidy little book. The first volume, Robots, came out last year, with over 80 artists in. Some are well known comic artists, some are newbie webcomic creators, some are vinyl toy designers, there’s a massive mix of styles and approaches, from all over the world.
Volume 2’s theme is ‘zombies’, and we’ve managed to top even the high quality of the first book. It should be out in June I believe, through SLG Publishing.
More info and the artists involved can be found at www.fatchunkcomic.com

ZH: Do you think that such examples of collaborative work are essential to maintaining a degree of camaraderie amongst artists in what is a tumultuous time for the comic industry?

Jamie: Not essential, but it certainly helps when you’re an artist, to get to know others. It can help you find new work, or their work can inspire you, or you can just be supportive of each other. I know some of the artists from Fat Chunk have got to know each other through the books, and that’s cool, I myself have been lucky enough to get to know some wicked people through sourcing everyone together.

ZH: On a similar note, do you think that artists who maintain a consistent and widespread internet presence are at an advantage to those who don’t, or can it just become a massive distraction?

Jamie: It’s certainly important I think. You need a hub where your work is that you can point people to, but also you need to constantly be coming up with new stuff and showing and announcing it online to build up an audience. If you do it right, you can become hugely well-known, although it should be said the secret of how to do that is pretty elusive.

ZH: The idea of posting a piece per day on your website Fumblog.com has been both successful and highly entertaining. What has the general reaction been and is it ever tough to come up with something to post each day?

Jamie: Yeah it’s been really nice, people seem to be digging it. The point of it was that before I ever became a published artist, or before I ever started showing work online, I had produced a really substantial body of work before all that. And I was proud of it all, the comics and strips and paintings, so it seemed silly to me that I should just be sitting on it when I could be showing it around. Obviously I also use Fumblog to show new work, and random sketches that emerge during the day, but by and large it’s slowly releasing a catalogue of my earlier work that I enjoy most.

ZH: You are very fortunate in the variety of platforms in which your work is published, from ‘The Dandy’ which is aimed at a very young audience, to UBU BUBU, which has Nazi zombies in it. Is it a good feeling to be as childish as you want on one hand, and also have vehicles for swearing, violence and bodily fluids?

Jamie: Oh absolutely, and I’m ever amazed that I’m allowed to work in both arenas. I would think by now someone would have complained, or some child would have googled my name and found the sickening filth I draw for older audiences. It’s a buzz to be doing both but in all honesty, I feel like I can juggle it. To me, the humour is the same in whatever I do, it’s just sometimes I will tone down the language.

ZH: Are you a cat person, or does Looshkin represent the inherent evil that dwells behind all of their eyes, their plotting, scheming, judging eyes? (I seem to remember a story about you trying to nuzzle a cat’s belly, that’s the riskiest bit to nuzzle y’know!).

Jamie: Yeah I think I am a cat person, despite having my child face clawed off. There’s something inherently attractive about that mad mix of cute and lethal that they do so well, all carried round in this cocky persona. I don’t think I ever chose to draw cats as much as I do, but they just seem so much fun.

ZH: Would you ever crossover your characters into a one off special or do you like to keep their universes separate?

Jamie: Nah I think it’d be funny to pile them in together, I have crossed a few over briefly before but never on any proper stage. I think one day everything I’ve done will all draw in together and it’ll turn out they all existed in the same world. Not sure how that’s gonna work though.

ZH: Do you think that kids will always buy comics?

Jamie: Yeah I think so, obviously it lessens over the years as new distractions came in, but comics are one of the few mediums where an artist can truly express themselves and tell whatever extraordinary stories they want. That then produces the most interesting work, and I think people of any age will always respond to that. There’s a wealth of imagination in comics and I don’t think that’ll stop.

ZH: When you were studying art, did you find that they were supportive of your comic aspirations? (I ask because any comic work in the art school I attended was branded as ‘evil’, ‘puerile’ and ‘silly, boy stuff’ by militant feminist lecturers who wanted everyone to spend all of their time emulating Georgia O Keefe.)

Jamie: I remember at school being dismissed by art teachers for drawing silly cartoons, despite the fact I was starting to get paid work for it. When I went to art college they were a lot more supportive, they tried to show me other techniques and disciplines which was interesting, but I think my tutors liked comics too and were quite happy in the end to let me run off in my own direction.

ZH: You work in a variety of mediums; digital, paint, your pen and ink pieces being particularly striking. What’s your preferred way of working, or does it depend on your mood?

Jamie: I haven’t painted for a while, I love it while I’m doing it but actually building up the momentum to start is hard work for some reason. I like to ink, its when I can switch off mentally and just enjoy what I’m doing. Pencil work is nice but it can take so long and be so labour intensive, and I’m working with a very limited concentration span here…

ZH: If Christopher Walken or Jeremy Irons could be your foster uncle for a week, which would you prefer to have read you bedtime stories at night and why?

Jamie: Walken, easy. Irons freaks the shit out of me, I think he’d be lovely, but there’s just something creepy in his smile. Walken can tell me tales of whatever the hell he wants, and then give me a cuddle. Yes. I would like that please.

ZH: Finally, tell us what we can expect to see coming out from you in the near future, and where can we acquire ourselves a shiny copy?

Jamie: Fat Chunk 2 is out in June, the Ubu Bubu book comes out in July. After that I don’t have any more comics or books planned particularly. Things I’d like to work on, but it’ll take me a while before I actually do. My Desperate Dans still appear in the Dandy, and my new strip Count Von Poo will be appearing regularly in Toxic comic in a month or two.
I think more and more I’m into pushing my work onto web though. There’ll be more comic books released as downloads through Fumblog, and maybe more webcomics on the way.
At the moment I’m working on big plans for an old idea I did called Find Chaffy. It’s secret at the mo, but I’m hoping to start that up again in a month or two in a really big way. It’s exciting. I think if I only ever had one thing to work on, I’d get so bored.

Jamie Smart lives in a specifically redesigned factory on the south coast of England. He spends his days being taller than you might think and having very good hair. You can see more of Jamie’s work at Fumblog.com, or you can harass him on Twitter or Myspace.