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Interviews
Finding His Way
An Interview by Jesse Fuchs
Jesse Fuchs: What was the first comic you ever read?
Nick Bertozzi: Oddly enough, the first comic I was ever exposed to was Zap Comix. My dad would read it to me.
JF: Wow. How old were you?
NB: I don't know. It was before I could read, so—
JF: So, like, 14, 15...
NB: (laughs) Exactly. I read Zap by myself when I could read, too — I remember really liking Mr. Natural. Then, when I was 8 or 10, I read a lot of National Lampoon. There was nudity in it, and I was always thrilled by that, as any little kid would be.
JF: Yeah, I got that from Elfquest. Distorted my taste in women for life. (I take out some Incredible Drinkin' Buddies comics from my bag)
NB: Oh, man. Where'd you get those?
JF: I bought them! Yes, someone actually bought... you know, I still think The Incredible Drinking Buddies is a fine, fine piece of work. It was pretty lunatic, but in such a genial way that it all seemed to make sense.
NB: Well, I'd attribute that whole vision to Bill [Weaver]. I just gave him suggestions for what I wanted to draw. I think for the second issue I said that I wanted to draw a car crash and more naked people ø I love drawing fat naked people, but who doesn't ø and he would just throw it all together into these odd scenarios. But I agree with you; I love them. But nobody else did. Of course, the drawing is terrible, but... (points to a panel of an old woman smoking crack) well, this page I'm really proud of. That's one of the only things Bill ever gave me any reference for. He wanted to make sure that I drew that crack pipe correctly.
JF: What do you think went wrong?
NB: Well, it didn't make much sense as a full-size comic ø it would have worked better if I had stuck to my mini-comics.
JF: Grab for that big brass ring. Were you still working in the DC marketing department when you started them?
NB: Yeah, well, the idea was to get out of DC and devote myself to this and sell, you know, ten thousand copies an issue (laughs). I was pumping them out, too — 32 pages every two months. Of course, I probably ended up making more money from the Drinkin' Buddies mini-comic than I did from the full-size. That was just money lost — I printed up five thousand copies of #1, three thousand of #2, and two thousand of #3 and #4. By the time I hit Tranquilizer, I got it through my thick skull that I was only selling three hundred copies, soÉ
JF: (pointing to the comics) So, you still have a bunch of these?
NB: No, I threw them out. They were at my friend's house, and when he moved, there was a big dumpster fortuitously placed outside his apartment, and I just chucked. I remember that Ivan Brunetti did that and he felt cleansed, and I (laugh) wanted to feel that cleansing. And I did.
JF: Well, I'm glad I have it, 'cause now it's a collector's item.
NB: Nah, there's still a box left of each — maybe 300 or so. And, of course, there are comics stores all over the country that bought three of each issue and still have them all.
JF: So, only four full-size issues came out. It's kind of a shame.
NB: Well, by that point, we had gotten no attention whatsoever. We weren't even universally loathed ø we were just universally ignored. That was when Bill and I had something of a falling out, which was... we were friends before and we still are, but it was just a reaction to the fact that we weren't getting anywhere with it, and also just that I wanted to write. I did that issue of Tranquilizer with the same characters; I wanted to do all new characters, but at that point that was all that I knew how to draw. And I couldn't really write at that point. I thought that it would really grab people, but again— ignored. As it should have been — I flipped through it four or five months ago, and it just seemed like a re-hash of a Pulp Fiction-type thing.
JF: Actually, I thought the dialogue was good, though the plot itself was pretty trivial. But I got thrown off by the slickness, which didn't mesh with the characters for me. So, after that was the Filthy Baby mini-comic, to which I can only say: why, God, why?
NB: It was something to take around to publishers and say, "I want to do a Filthy Baby comic." I wanted to show that I wasn't doing The Drinkin' Buddies anymore, and that I was doing this brand new thing. I just wanted people to get into this new character.
JF: So what happened?
NB: Rejected by everybody. But that story was pretty harsh — it was my fuck you to the comics industry, because I was pissed that I had been ignored for Tranquilizer and Drinkin' Buddies. "Oh, Drinking Buddies weren't weird enough, but they were too weird." And Tranquilizer was: "Well, it's getting less weird, but the characters aren't very interesting — you have too much going on." So I pared it all down to one character, and he had one desire, and that was to play with feces.
JF: I wish this website did pull quotes. [note to self: reconsider pull quotes. --yhed]
NB: But it got turned down by everybody, and that was disheartening. I think it was then that I realized I was never going to make money at comics. It had always been in the back of my mind that eventually, people were going to catch on, but at that point, I realized that if I was going to do this, it would have to just be for arts' sake. Which is why you should do comics in the first place.
JF: And then you got a Xeric Grant.
NB: Well, right after Filthy Baby, Dean [Haspiel] told me about Comix 2000, and that was the first thing that I did that said something about who I was really was.
JF: Yeah, Filthy Baby didn't seem like it came from some deep artistic need...
NB: No, it was just exorcising the Crumb demon from when I was a kid. And then the Comix 2000 piece actually got accepted, and I thought, "Finally, somebody's paying attention to what I'm doing," and I did what I really wanted to. All the comics I was afraid to show to anybody because I thought they were too pretentious turned out to be the ones people actually like!" So that gave me the impetus to do Boswash.
JF: And that's gotten some very good response.
NB: I got my first real fan letter! It was from a woman in Germany, and she actually got what I was trying to do, which was a thrill. She wanted to buy the cover, too, which was quite the novelty for me.
JF: Well, it's a very graphically appealing "book" [Boswash is not actually the usual pamphlet format, but designed like a map. Check out our review for more info. -- yhed] .
NB: Now that I feel like I can control the drawing, I don't have to worry about "Is this anatomy right? Does this head look like a head?" I can worry about positioning the characters within the panel, and putting together the whole page. It's funny, but the stuff that you know you have to learn before you start doing comics — you know you have to learn about composition, you know you have to learn about pacing, you know exactly what you have to learn... but it still takes time to learn it. You've just got to bash your head against that wall for a few hundred pages.
JF: What gave you the idea for the book?
NB: My fiancée, Kim, had all of these books on nationalism ø and I had independently already had gotten it. So I read all these books, which were amazing and horrifying: what's going on in Bosnia, Somalia, Ethiopia. I couldn't help thinking, "Why don't all these people just... lay off! What makes them do these sorts of things?" I don't really know the answer, but Boswash helped me get a little closer to it. I don't get into it that explicitly in the comic — I really wanted to pare things down as much as I could, just keep it really basic. Dean had given me On Directing Film, by David Mamet, and if you ever want to write a script for a comic, you have to read that book. Even if you hate Mamet and only get one thing out of it, that one little nugget will stick with you and change your writing for the better.
JF: How did you get it printed up?
NB: Well, I wanted to make lots of them, since I had all this Xeric money to use. The funny thing is that I neglected to even try Quebecor at first — I figured since they're not mapmakers, they'll never be able to do this for cheap. So I went to all the mapmakers, and they all told me, "Oh, you want to do 1,000 copies? Well, that'll cost you $3,000." So I figured what the hell, Quebecor can't be any worse — and they know comics, so at least they'll make sure the panels fold correctly. And it turned out to be much, much, much, much cheaper. So I was able to print up enough to last me the next twenty years, in English and in French. And it makes for a great calling card.
JF: Are you ever going to do another map-style comic?
NB: I've been asked that by a couple of people, which actually gave me the idea to, maybe twenty years from now or whatever, to revisit it. Do the same story, but this time from the side of the captain, where he's the hero and Boswash is some little punk who thinks too much and jeopardizes the lives of the captain's soldiers. Maybe flip the color scheme.
JF: What are you working on now?
NB: Now I'm working on short stories that I'd like to place in anthologies, and then collect them in a book eventually. That way, I can keep myself visible and get some reactions, and then have a nice thick book in which all the stories revolve around a common theme.
JF: Playing with feces?
NB: No, but close. It's all about art, different perspectives on creating art. I'll have a story in the Expo anthology, I've got one about music that I'm pretty excited about...
JF: So each story is about a different art form?
NB: Yeah, or an examination of a different... well, for example, the first story I did was called "Belles Lettres", which is about a woman who's asked to develop this new typeface for a magazine, and she becomes obsessed with it. The next story I did is about this guy who developed part of the U.S. interstate highway system. So, they're all stand-alone stories, but hopefully they'll fit together well, too. And if there's something that everybody dislikes about one of the stories, maybe I can fix it before it gets collected... And then I'm also working on doing some Flash animation and other web stuff, which is a little more remunerative. Or renumerative. Whichever one is a real word.
Visit Nick's website (http://www.luxcomics.com)
to see everything Bertozzian. It's a great site chock full of peculiar
comics and animations.