Josh Neufeld
& R. Walker

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Interviews

January 2000
Semi Auto-Bio Revelations with Josh Neufeld, part II
Interview by Austin English

Austin English: Why did you move out of San Francisco?

Josh Neufeld: Sari got another creative writing fellowship, here in Provincetown, Massachusetts. We were planning on leaving San Francisco anyway, to go back to New York. We're just about to go to New York [for the holidays] tomorrow.

English: Is there more work for you on the East Coast?

Neufeld: I think there'll be more options for commercial illustration, but I did have a nice job in San Francisco. I wasn't hurting for work. I'm actually still working for the same company.

English: Do you think you'll be spending more time with Dean while in New York?

Neufeld: Well, I'm gonna be seeing him pretty soon. And just from being closer to each other, we'll definitely do more together. We've talked about sharing a studio in New York...

English: How do you think that'll affect Keyhole, since this will be the first time you've been working on it while being in the same area?

Neufeld: That's a good question. I don't think it'll be bad for Keyhole, but I don't necessarily know if it'll be good or not. Dean and I really haven't set anything in stone. And there will be more options [for other kind of stuff]. When you're around Dean, you sometimes end up working on a project that you never really thought you'd be doing. He'll just confront you with certain things — so yeah, I can envision doing some collaborating with him. This is if Keyhole is eventually "reborn."

English: Well, what is the status of Keyhole?

Neufeld: Dean and I are talking with a certain alternative comics publisher about picking up Keyhole, but since it's not final I don't really want to mention his name, or the details. We've been talking to a lot of publishers. We talked to Slave Labor, who said they wanted to publish the book but weren't sure they could make money on it, in addition to all the other books they were publishing. The guy we're talking to now, however, is sure he'd be able to sell more copies then Top Shelf or Millennium ever did. He said he likes the travel stuff, and he wants Keyhole to stay the way it was. He has talked about possibly changing the name and starting over at issue 1. He thought that would trigger sales. I think the best orders we ever got were about 800, which is pretty pathetic, and he said he'd never had a book that went under 1,500. He guaranteed us more sales.

English: So how has it been for you to shop the series around like this?

Neufeld: It's been kind of a weird process. I haven't been really that involved with it. Dean's been doing more of the actual legwork. He went to SPX and talked to people. We've just sort of gone through different feelings as to whether we want to keep doing Keyhole or not. Dean's Billy Dogma stuff is starting to take off now...

English: I'm seeing his work all over now. He was in Non —

Neufeld: Right. Exactly. He's been getting his work out in other formats. And so I was thinking, maybe it's time for Keyhole to end as a collaborative project. Maybe I'll end up doing my own book, and Dean will end up doing his own book, with the "Dean stories" in it. I've been thinking more of doing this one last travel story that I wasn't really going to serialize in Keyhole. I putting together a collection of all my travel stories from the comic, and this last story will be the original piece that would be the selling point for the book. People that already bought the other stories would buy the collection for that story. So, I've been kind of off in my own world, what with moving here and working and making money. But then Dean came back to me, and was interested in still doing Keyhole, in still having a book out there. He was kind of getting tired of all the anthologies he had been submitting stuff to. He missed just having the security of Keyhole. And we like working together. It's fun doing Keyhole.

English: Well, how has it been for you to not be working on Keyhole?

Neufeld: I guess I just thought, "Well, this is a break." I didn't decide that it was all over. I just thought of it as an extended break, because we weren't doing Keyhole more then twice a year anyway, so we skipped a year. It's been one year since the last issue came out. And it's still something, that I... I liked it. When I see people, and they ask me what I do for work, I tell them I'm a cartoonist, and give them a copy of Keyhole. So it's sort of always there. In any case, I've only been able to focus on writing and doing new comics in the last couple months. So I guess, even that last travel story that I'm working on right now, I don't see it as appearing in Keyhole.

English: Well, can you talk a little about that last travel story?

Neufeld: Sure. It's a story about coming back to America, and sort of settling back into my own country, but after being gone for so long, it seemed just like another foreign place. And not even going back to where I grew up, but to another city like Chicago, and then combining that strange experience of being a stranger in my own country, to having to work in an office. And then, my grandmother died, right around that time that I came back. She was an important figure to me. And, so what happens is, we get to Chicago, my grandma dies, and we have to go back to New York for the funeral. It's just this whole bizarre experience. The funeral was very, very strange. A lot of it had to do with religion, and Jewish rituals. She was buried in a traditional Jewish way, and we had to have the funeral immediately. And the whole ritual to me was very foreign, because even though I'm Jewish, I'm not very religious. So, this funeral was just very, very, weird and I felt very disconnected from it. That's the basic theme. The story's about rituals and different cultures. And, when your traveling to different places, even when you return home, you feel like you're still traveling.

English: That being the last travel story, if Keyhole does in fact keep going (and I hope it will), what do you have planned for your half of the book?

Neufeld: Well that's the other big issue. That's the other thing I'm excited about. For a long time I've been thinking about doing a comic about what it was like growing up in Southern California, in the early '70s, right at the end of the Vietnam War. This is going to be in little chapter installments. I originally thought it was going to be a graphic novel, but I think that the serial format of the comic book is just the perfect way to stretch this story out into chapters. Sort of like each chapter would be a different year, a different part of my life, a different theme relating to Vietnam. Basically what this thing is — and it sounds like a bizarre idea — is a memoir about the Vietnam War and me. And even though I never went to Vietnam, or know any people or close relatives that were in Vietnam, I was really, really closely... I was obsessed with this war. I read all the books about it, every movie, just anything I could lay my hands on about that war. I grew up with this fixation on this place that I'd never been to before, and had never been involved in. I think that it's rich material for combining interesting auto-bio work with this outsider's perspective of the Vietnam War. I really believe it'll be resonant with people my age. I think there are a lot of men my age that have the same fixation. There's a book called The Beach by Alex Garland that touches on a lot of the same themes. It's actually being made into a movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio (laughs).

English: Big underground comic fan.

Neufeld: That's right. His dad used to be friends with Harvey Pekar. When I heard that Harvey Pekar use to know Leonardo DiCaprio, I sent him all four issues that we'd done up to that point with a letter saying "Hey, how ya doing. If you ever want to make a movie out of Keyhole and star as me, that'd be very cool."(Laughs) Of course I never got any response. So anyway, the way I'm thinking about it now, I had almost said to myself, "I don't need the pamphlet format to do comics. I could just go the European way," which means not doing comics on a monthly basis, but just doing your book and taking however long it takes. Like a real writer would do. I'm not getting paid for it anyway! I'm not under any pressure to meet deadlines — I'm happy here at my own pace. I'm now a little bit more removed from the comics field, not having to get a book out by SPX or San Diego. That was how I think about it. Either way, I'm happy with how things are going. If Keyhole doesn't get revived, and I can't do the Vietnam story in chapters that way, I'll end up doing it in chapters on my own.

English: Would you rather it appear in Keyhole?

Neufeld: If there's gonna be a Keyhole, that would be the perfect venue for it.

English: And you want there to be a Keyhole, right?

Neufeld: Yeah I do. Just because I'm attached to it — and just to play devil's advocate for myself here, I think it is important to have sort of a presence out there so people don't forget who you are. I don't want to come back in a couple of years and find that people have forgotten me. "What ever happened to Josh Neufeld?" (Laughs).

English: Well, I hope this interview will help that a little bit.

Neufeld: Yeah, that would be nice. I also think this thing I did for Harvey Pekar is good. If he could help me out by giving me more work to do every once in while that would be great.

English: Could you fill us in on what projects you're working in addition to the Harvey Pekar thing?

Neufeld: The thing I did for Harvey is a one-page environmental rant. It's gonna be in Green Magazine, and then the back page of the next American Splendor. I'm hoping that I've kind of swung back into Harvey's stable of regular artists. For me, it's been terrific to work for Harvey. He's really great to work for, since 90% of the time he's very happy with what you do artistically. Harvey is ... (sighs), I don't know... he's just a very personable guy. And you can tell when you first talk to him that he's kind of feeling you out, to see if you're a smart person, and interested in the things he's interested in. But once he decides that you're a cool guy, he's warm, and friendly, and funny, and very informal. You feel like you can say anything to him without pissing him off. When I talk to him, I feel like I'm talking to a buddy, a friend — not an employer. For drawing him, I usually just refer to other comics, although I have met him face to face.

English: (Laughs) I kinda suspected that's what happened with most American Splendor artists.

Neufeld: Yeah. Especially since a lot of the things I've done recently with him have become more cartoony. I have his collections, and I choose the artist that draws him the most realistically, and then put a little less hair on top of his head (Laughs). He's definitely getting on in years. Last time we talked, he kept moaning about how he can't wait to retire.

English: That's what his last book (The Terminal Years) was all about. That one was really good, by the way.

Neufeld: That was the one with Dean's illustration. It was good. Also, I enjoy working with Harvey because, not only is he the father of auto-bio comics, but also his political views speak to me on a personal level. You don't feel like you're selling out when you work for Harvey Pekar. And he's controversial. He rubs people the wrong way. All these things are good.

English: Any other projects?

Neufeld: Well, I have something in the Comix 2000 book —

English: Oh really! Wow — I had heard about a couple of the American artists listed, but I didn't know you would be in it. I can't wait to read that thing.

Neufeld: I have a 4-page thing in there. I think everybody under the sun is in there.

English: It's all wordless, too, right?

Neufeld: Yep, everything's wordless. I know it sounds really cheesy, but I feel really honored to be in that. It's like a time capsule for comics. That's something that once you have a copy, you'll just never... you'll pass that thing down. So that's really exciting. As far as Keyhole goes, I think I'm really excited about having it get going again. But I'm not putting my hopes on it. That's not where my ego is at the moment. The best thing about Keyhole is, I have this perspective on it now that I never could have had before. It's enabled me to grow so much as a cartoonist. I got so amount of critical attention, and I met a lot of terrific people, and at this point Keyhole means a lot of different things than when I first started. Maybe a good anecdote to end with is, back in August, I was at a baseball game in San Francisco with Steve Weissman, Ed Brubaker, and Brian Biggs, and Brian's new baby. We were just sitting there, enjoying the ball game, and then all of a sudden, we looked at each other and said, "You know what? This is the weekend of the San Diego Comic-con, and none of us are there!" And we were all just so happy. None of us had even remembered, and every other year we all had to go down there to hustle our stuff. I love hanging out with cartoonists, and I like thinking about comics, but not in this business sort of way.