MEMOIRS OF A PART-TIME, FULL-MINDED, ENTHUSIASTIC CARTOONIST.
FEAR, JOY, HOPE, SWEAT, PAIN, FUN, STRUGGLE AND FRUSTRATION:
SOME DOUBTS AND MANY LAUGHS ABOUT THE MAKING OF VICE-VERSA, PINK THE UNPINKABLE.
I’ve been asked for an interview. I’ve agreed with great enthusiasm.
Since I am not a well-known, respected, considered cartoon artist… they don’t come to interview me.
I have to go there and being interviewed.
All right. I go.
It could be an experience worthwhile the effort. I take the train early in the morning and I try to survive some hours in a crowded train, trying to ignore some respectable workers commuting from town to town and some noisy tourists constantly relocating themselves and their precious bags in the train compartment.
The meeting point is at Café San Marco, charming atmosphere, the place has been damaged during WW1 and it has been renewed after the end of the conflict.
The interviewer is nice and curious, asks questions, I do my best to answer.
James Joyce was not a client at Café San Marco, says my interviewer, who apparently is pretty well informed about James Joyce’s frequentations of Trieste. He rather preferred the Stella Polare Café. Joyce was a regular at Pirona pastry shop, since it was located in front of the house where he lived in 1910.
The interview comes to an end and I know more about Joyce changing houses in Trieste than my interviewer could have learnt about my project: a great deal, after all. This is a preview of my interview:
“The following is the most recent interview with EKS, whose collection of “Vice-Versa Pink the Unpinkable” Season I and Season II, is going to come out soon in softcover as pirate copy material called “Island to Island”.
Question: You choose to issue a collection called “Island to Island” of your comic strips. Four volumes at the same time, it’s a bizarre choice.
Is it a new marketing strategy?
EKS: Not really. When an novelist writes the first book or a musician records the first album, and such artistic product becomes a big success, it’s a huge problem. When the artist tries to write the second book or record the second album, the public expects the same success.
For this reason I’ve decided to skip the deadlock and I issued Season I and Season II at the same time. It’s a risky move. This is a collection of 4 funny books written with the clear purpose to entertain, pages best turned waiting for a train or while flying on a plane, or when sick in bed because of a 5 days long feverish flu. Two people I’ve given it to read, reported back that it had not become their favorite graphic novel of all-time, but they are pretty interested in reading the sequel.
Question: Do you mean this is a publishing strategy?
EKS:The reader has the necessity of the continuity. The public is emotionally engaged only when it learns to know the characters, if they are interesting, the reader becomes fond of them. It’s an intellectual investment the public does, so it must be paid back with witty strips. When the public loves a character, it wants to know what happens to the characters. The reader cares about the fictional character, it wants entertainment and new funny stories. The appetite for new smart adventures is uncontrollable.
Question: Why did you decided to issue a “pirate copy”? It’s a choice quite unconventional.
EKS: I don’t see the difference between conventional and unconventional. My supporters were going to issue some pirate material with poor graphic resolution, so I thought best to anticipate them and give the public the opportunity to read a copy of my work with the graphic quality it’s created for.
Question: How do you organize your work?
EKS: My project is energy demanding. It’s a part-time immersion in writing and inking, it’s true, but to reach the finished product, it takes a very long period of time. I usually write the first draft of the script when I have some kind of inspiration. After that crucial part, I begin to sketch the comic strips. When the work reaches a pencil degree of completion, I start with ink. Ink is my nightmare, of course. It needs patience and attention.
At this point I hop from graphic revision to correction of the smallest details, and I jump from ink it again to correct it again. All these “hop back and forth” look like to be a waste of time, but it gives me the option to see details that I never would have seen if I had been focused full-time on the pencil phase or the ink phase of the process.
Question: When did you discover your talent?
EKS: l have no talent for it. I was not born to sketch and to ink, that’s clear.
I’m pretty skilled to write a script, I must admit it. But I like the whole process, it’s fun. It’s time consuming, evidently, but it’s not difficult. It just takes a lot of time.
Question:How do you plan a season?
EKS: I look the characters closer and closer, when I finally spot some aspect I can use, at that point starts the fun. I never know what’s going to happen, especially I don’t know the ending. Characters are inspired by real people, but I don’t pretend to portrait any real side of the personality of the” VIPs” I involve in Vice-Versa’s life. While I’m taking notes I am forced to learn about something I didn’t know before, I did not know what a boga grip was, I know now.
Question: Are there parts of that process that have become easier for you?
EKS: I’ve become more comfortable with time. I need to practice a bit in order to obtain the effect I see in my mind and I force myself to find the appropriate way to invent new graphic effects. I have learned to take my time to ponder about my visual sense. There’s no point in being in a hurry to do something, if the result is a lousy story and the graphic is mediocre. It must not be an innovative effect at any cost, but it must be right for me. It has to correspond to what I’ve figured out in my mind.
Question: The characters in your strips around show various examples of cultural cataloging: the major component of contrast is big city VS small town. Is this your intention?
EKS: No, it’s not my intention. I live in a small town, now. I’ve been living in the country in my youth, I’ve always thought it’s something about being tucked up in the corner of the country, among people who were native to the area, there is a persistent sense that you’re not a part of the rest of the country, you’re apart from it, you’re unique. Let’s say it’s a sense of privilege. I can see a contrast “big city VS small town” when Vice-Versa spends one week long holiday in Connecticut. It’s a place like New England, a place where old people from New York and Boston go to retire, people are open, they chat, go fishing, play cards.
I find the divergence between town and country are enormously funny, the cultural gap is not so accentuated nowadays. Last century reported people struggling to adapt themselves to a different life, they ease down into compromise, now is no more necessary. People from the country settle down in the city, but they live as they still were in the country, they adapt their lifestyle, their habits, that’s all. Frenetic life in the city is not seen as more valuable, compared to a more placid life in the country.
Question: Your character wonders if Hollywood is good enough.
EKS: Yes. Vice-Versa thinks big, he has not written one page of his novel and already thinks about the movie it could be done.
Question: Do you think big, too?
EKS: Of course, I do. In my wildest dreams. In reality I am a very cautious creature.
Question: Season I and Season II have been published, what do you plan for the future?
EKS: It has been an extremely positive experience. I plan to write Season III.
Question: Are you already working at Season III?
EKS: … I’m thinking about it. My creative endeavor comes to the surface when I walk, I try to remember and write it down at the first chance. Let’s say I’m still walking.
Question: Do you care for the fictional character you have created?
EKS: I do. Vice-Versa is full of contradictions, full of good intentions and very positive. He has a dark side, too.
Question: Have you ever thought about the early life of Vice-Versa? He seldom says “that’s another story!”. The reader will be interested in that “other story”!
EKS: I’m thinking about a prequel, of course. When I’ll be out of ideas, I’ll cling to the prequel.
Question: Is there a topic or an interest that occupies space in your brain that hasn’t yet made it into a story?
EKS: Absolutely yes. There is a lot of primordial traffic jam that needs to be converted into stories.
Question: What do you think people will be talking about now that Season I & II is published?
EKS: I don’t know. I hope they will like it, it is meant to entertain. A lot of people will simply be turned away, but this is the nature of narrative.”
PINK NOTES BY EKS
© 2015 EKS All rights reserved/Tutti i diritti riservati
VICE-VERSA PINK THE UNPINKABLE © 2015 EKS All rights reserved.
No part of this work and/or the same in its entirety can be reproduced and/or filed (including by means of electronic systems) for private uses and/or reproduced and/or filed (including by means of electronic systems) for the public without previously obtaining in each and any case, the explicit consent from the author.
Pink notes by EKS 