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MARKOSIA

Date:

March 24th, 2008 4:33 PM

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BEHIND THE SILENCE: TALKING TO JOSHUA HAGLER

Bulletin:

BEHIND THE SILENCE: TALKING TO JOSHUA HAGLER
by Steve Ekstrom

A few weeks back, AAM Markosia announced the release of The Boy Who Made Silence from Xeric Grant winner Joshua Hagler. AAM Markosia is the home of titles like Headlocked, Starship Troopers, and King Kong. Hagler is known, not only for being a Xeric Grant recipient, but also for his accomplishments in the art world as an internationally exhibited painter.

The Boy Who Made Silence is about a deaf child, Nestor Gudfred, and his ability to create complete silence around himself that allows the people around him to access the memories of the other people within the radius of the silence—in this series of graphic novels, Nestor becomes a prophet to his small religiously guided community, falls in love, and searches for his father.

Newsarama contacted Joshua Hagler to talk about his project; as well as, discuss his trials and tribulations in regards to acquiring the Xeric Grant; and to talk about the rigors of writing and painting a project of this magnitude.

Newsarama: Where did the concept for The Boy Who Made Silence come from? Did you have any outside influences when you were creating your story?
Joshua Hagler: It's always hard to answer this question, especially since it came out of a short story I wrote in college sometime in 2001—but so little remains of that original story. The title and the idea of the silence, I think, is all that remains.

Somehow, I think the character Nestor Gudfred comes from my younger brother who died when I was about six years old. I grew up in a small religious town reading comics,; so, like any comic book reader, it wasn't uncommon for me to want to escape a traumatic situation. For some reason it had been more traumatic for me than I can actually remember. My mother has told me a lot that I can't remember at all.

I remember imagining what kind of powers Danny would have up in Heaven. Since then, many of characters in stories and within my paintings have been strange sorts of children, usually in kind of surrealistic settings. Even before he was born, I had two imaginary friends, Peter and Charlie, so I had always been "imaginative." Peter'n'Charlie is also a character in the book, with whom only Nestor can communicate, who makes his first appearance in issue 3, and is central to issue 4.

The town that Nestor lives in was inspired by the rural Illinois town I grew up in, though the towns are much different in some important ways. The bridge he falls off of, is a covered bridge my friends and I used to ride our bikes to, although it was just a little creak instead of a real river.

I could go on and on, but overall the story probably comes from trying to remember something about my childhood and holding it up to the present to see how much sense I can make from any of it. As I got older I learned more about the nature of my brother's death, rejected my religion, and started to feel some kind of strange obligation to understand what I could about the history of this country and how and why people hold the beliefs that they do. That curiosity fuels the content of this book.

NRAMA: How difficult has it been getting this project together? It's painted--that can't be easy.
JH: Well, I would say the act of painting it is far easier than the act of getting people to pay attention to it! You have to realize that I've been finished with issue 1 for years! I started working on it in college, but threw out the original pages. The final pages of issue 1 are actually the first pages I painted out of school…sometime in 2002. I would get small bits of the book done at a time, but was so broke that I had to work a lot to make rent in San Francisco. Whenever I could get freelance illustration jobs, I would take them, so the book went from being second to third. Then I got going with showing my work in galleries, so the book became fourth. I would take bits that I had finished and mail proposals out or take them to conventions and try to get publishers to pay attention, but never succeeded. The book, over time, has been rejected by every comic publisher I can think of. I probably shouldn't say that in the interview, but it's true. I wanted to just finish the whole thing and take it to a publisher when it was finished, but without any resources to have the time to prioritize it, it just wasn't possible.

I've found that with American publishers, if your work doesn't fit neatly into a genre, or borrow heavily from convention, it's exceedingly difficult to convince someone to take a risk. The combination of it being painted, the story being two six-issue volumes, and it being an unconventional physical size, all the elements were against me.

The two things that came together to finally give me what I needed to work on it was the combination of the Xeric Grant, which was my last hope, and winning a few painting awards that would help me to be able to make a living as a painter. I saw the value of my paintings rise over a pretty short period of time, which would allow me larger windows of time to work on the book. By the time Markosia came along, I had a good momentum going on it, and had stopped contacting publishers altogether, figuring I'd have better luck getting an arts publisher or European publisher down the road when it was time. Thank goodness Harry and Chuck at Markosia both seemed to really believe in it. Now I have Thomas Mauer helping with layout and lettering. He or Harry email or call all the time telling me what I should have to them by when. It finally feels real. It took me longer to finish issue one than the four issues I've painted since then combined.

NRAMA: Let's talk about Nestor Gudfred, the protagonist of your book, how difficult is it to write from the perspective of a boy who cannot hear? As you were writing, did you try to actually limit yourself to try to understand or did you just imagine what it's like to be deaf?

JH: Yeah, it's been an interesting challenge for sure. In general, I spend a lot of time alone in my studio. I can often go the entire day without speaking to anyone. So I can draw from that sense of isolation and apply it to a deaf character. For the specifics of deafness, I spent a lot of time researching online, reading things written by deaf people about their experiences. Tried to ask questions you might take for granted, like, how does a deaf person wake up in the morning? One device flashes the lights in your bedroom off and on, for instance. How does a deaf kid in rural areas, where they don't have many resources, get an education? What's the difference between being born deaf and going deaf later? I needed to learn what sign language looks like, so on a couple of occasions I sat in front of the deaf resources office in the public library and pretended to be reading. Whenever I see deaf people, I do my best to notice things about them, whatever it is. I still have more work to do with the sign language aspect.

Despite doing the best research I could, I realized I will never really be able understand deafness as a deaf person would. That was part of my reason for giving him the character Peter'n'Charlie, who shows up later. Because only Nestor can see or communicate with him, that gives the readers an opportunity to understand what's on Nestor's mind, what motivates Nestor in general.

The narration is from the second person, which allows us as far in or out of a character as I need at any given time. Much of what I can't know about deafness is hopefully circumvented by the construction of the storytelling. Deafness was a way of isolating Nestor from the general population of his town, which is central to understanding how and why events take place in the course of the plot. I learned how to do some of this by reading books like “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” by Carson McCullers, “As I Lay Dying” by William Faulkner, or “Wiseblood” by Flannery O'Connor. Southern literature has played an important part. Also works by Kafka, Haruki Murakami, and Paul Auster.

NRAMA: How difficult was the process of obtaining the Xeric Grant? Has being the recipient of the grant opened more doors for you beyond the creation of The Boy Who Made Silence?

JH: Well, the first time I applied for it, I didn't send them the required number of copies of the application, and was disqualified. I was really depressed about this because I knew the Xeric Grant was my last option, and now I would have to wait six more months before I could apply again. I have heard from some people that they have applied several times and not received it. So from that perspective, I guess despite my initial frustration, it wasn't too hard. After I got the grant, lo and behold, people got interested—same book—now with credentials. The Xeric Grant has meant everything to me. I highly recommend applying to creators who are doing unconventional work.

NRAMA: Who are some of your influences in the medium? Have you been influenced by authors or artists outside of the comic book industry?

JH: Well, there's the writers I mentioned above. I consider myself to be constantly "under the influence." I'm influenced by literature, comics, art, the stage, film, history, philosophy, religion. As far as comics are concerned, I have learned a whole lot from Sam Kieth, David Mack, Dave McKean, Daniel Clowes, Paul Hornshemier, Johan Sfar, Gipi, Alan Moore, Chris Ware, Craig Thompson, Adrien Tomine, George Pratt, Greg Ruth, Kent Williams, and many others.

NRAMA: As the writer and artist of a project--how does your process work? How do you translate your story to pictures or do you do a reverse process where pictures are laid out first and then scripted later? Tell readers about your method of working...

JH: The process has really evolved over time. By now, I'm writing script and dialogue to get a feeling for what will happen in 22 pages. Then as I break it down by panels, I realize that certain things need to be re-written. I try to make the images follow the plot, but in acquiring reference to draw from, I start getting inspired to draw it differently than how I've written it. So I make sure that I keep the images that I feel are strong and write around those particular images rather than making them less interesting to fit the script. The nice thing about writing your own book is that the assumption that the writer is boss goes to hell. I find that I'm a much better artist under my own art direction because I'm learning to write to my visual strengths.

To make the artwork, I actually go through the process of penciling, inking, and painting. The pencils are pretty loose. I'm inking with those Japanese refillable ink brush pens, dry brush, ball point pens, and Microns. I keep the painting fairly simple, a couple different colors of watercolors to establish warms and cools. I don't spend a lot of time deciding which object in a frame should be which color. I find that for the kind of story I'm telling, that's less important than the overall tone. I occasionally use gauche, oil, collage, but only here and there. The main thing for me is to be able to get a good drawing down. If you can make a good drawing, it's harder to fuck up the painted part. This revelation was instrumental to me, and I've found that the art in issue 5 now is an enormous improvement over issue 1 for this basic reason. Then I photograph the pages and digitally manipulate them in Photoshop. Not surprisingly I've found that the better raw image I start with, the harder it is to fuck up the digital stuff. And mainly I've learned that the more digital work you do, the dumber it looks. In fact, with the digital craze, I'm finding raw materials more and more appealing. My goal by the end of the series is to be using Photoshop only to alter the levels, adjust color and nothing else. Certain tricks are easy to accomplish in the program, but more interesting if you can find a way to do it with raw materials.

NRAMA: Do you have any other projects out in small press or is this your first big project?

JH: Currently, My Inner Bimbo is available from Oni Press, which I helped with. Sam Kieth writes it and, following his lead, I drew it with him. It has been a dream come true working with Sam. Aside from that, I have done small things for Dark Horse, Speakeasy, Image, DC (trading cards), and small press magazines.

The Boy Who Made Silence will be my first large-scale project that I am also writing.

NRAMA: What else are you working on currently?

JH: In terms of comics, I've written another script called Even God Fears Notes from the Swell Feet Row, which will be the first comic book musical I know of. I've hired Josh Kemble, a fellow Xeric Grant recipient for his book Numb, to draw it. I will be working on The Boy for so long to come that I don't want the idea for Swell Feet to go away. It's a black and white book.

Outside of comics I am creating paintings for art shows in LA, New York, and Berlin. I am also going to try to find funding for a collaborative multi-media project I want to do involving video, animation, photography, sculpture, and painting. I'm hoping to start on that this summer and have it ready by early 2009. A current selection of my paintings can be viewed on www.joshuahagler.com.

The last thing worth mentioning is that I have a studio/gallery space in West Berkeley called 5 Mined Fields Studio. I do a bi-monthly series of art shows there, featuring emerging, under-represented Bay Area artists. This has been an experiment and will hopefully develop further over time. You can see photos from our last show with Danielle Lawrence on 5mf.blogspot.com.

NRAMA: Ultimately, where do you see yourself? Do you want to work at the "Big 2" or do you see yourself taking a route that's more creator-ownership friendly?

JH: That is something I have been considering lately. To be honest, if Vertigo or someone wanted to publish something I did, that would be great. But I think the more you go with the big companies, the more leverage they have to get you to conform to the methods that they feel comfortable with. Currently I like working with Markosia because they are happy to brainstorm with me on ways to get the book out there. We're both pursuing fresh ideas.

The fulcrum in the lever is money. It's very difficult to do something really unusual and find someone who wants to give you money for it. For me, the question isn't so much whether I want a big or small publisher, as I probably don't get to decide that anyway. The question has to do with how can I make the kinds of projects I want to make and be able to find the financial and institutional support I would need to keep making those projects?

The general answer, in my mind, is to stop competing for the same pie that Marvel and DC are enjoying and to stop maneuvering though the same channels. Why compete for a disinterested audience? Marvel and DC have the market cornered on vegetables. Diamond, without competition, is in the business of getting the vegetables to vegetable stand. People come to the vegetable stand to buy vegetables. Somehow despite all these vegetables, a few pieces of fruit come in. To people wanting fruit it's a welcome relief. Everyone else wonders what the hell the fruit is doing here.

One of the best sellers of the book is here in SF, but it's an art gallery. I sell about five to seven of the self-published books on consignment per week there on a regular basis. They also sell original art from the book, which is a supportive income. They are also far more supportive than many comic shops I deal with. Whatever the answer, big publisher or small one, fruit-lovers need to find my book, and I hope that over time, I can play a role in the cultivation of a different kind of market, not just for my projects but for other sequential storytellers as well.

The Boy Who Made Silence #1 is due in stores in March.

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