Only moments ago, Jeremy and the rest of the boys jumped off the cliff into the ocean. Now the boys waited for Adam, circling like sharks. They knew he would be too chicken to jump, and they tormented him with delight. READ MORE.
Jimmy Calabrese - Jumping into your high school years, I heard you took a film class that got you interested in film?
Brian Pulido - I was college bound, but I didn't know what my major was going to be, even during my senior year, believe it or not. Until I took a film criticism class where we watched and discussed movies. We were watching this movie "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang," and I suddenly understood what film was all about. I knew film had an emotional impact on me and other people, but after watching this particular movie I knew this is what I wanted to do. The way the teacher taught us to view the film made me see the emotional effect it was going for. I just hadn't looked at it that way, but when she began pointing it out I was like "Oh wow, there’s something to this". And right then I applied to just two film schools. I applied to NYU films and Seaton Hall. Usually the rational is that you apply to about ten schools with the hope that at least one won't reject you. Thank my lucky stars I got into NYU. I went to NYU film school starting in the fall of 1980.
JC - When did you start getting into music? When did the love affair begin?
BP - I loved music ever since I could think. My dad had an amazing collection of Jazz and Blues records, and stuck inside his collection was the Sly and the Family Stone album. I must have been about eight years old when I started listening to those records. But even then I was listening to Charlie Parker, Diana Washington, Billie Holiday, and then not long after I got into the Rolling Stones. Right off the bat I was a "deep track" kid. I was into the Rock, then veered off into the harder Rock like Ted Nugent, but the second I heard Punk that was IT.
JC - Do you remember which punk band?
BP - It was the Sex Pistols. I'm not going to debate it, but the Sex Pistols are the single most important band to ever walk the earth. I won't even listen to any arguments about whether New York, California or English Punk is more important. I'm not even willing to entertain it because everything begins and ends with The Sex Pistols. Just the way the Night of the Living Dead is nihilistic, the Sex Pistols annihilated music -- they destroyed it. And as soon as I heard the Sex Pistols album Never Mind the Bullocks, I played that record consistently for all my waking hours. I learned about everything that came after them; the Ramones, the New York Punk Scene, Dead Boys, Ultravox, Suicide and all the English stuff but nothing in my world compares to the Sex Pistols. So that was my defining musical moment.
Music has always been a back drop for me; music is an identity thing for me. To this day I listen to all sorts of music but I particularly like all kinds of Rock. So that could be Blues, Jazz, Metal, Alternative, Classic Rock, and Punk. I like the Rock. It is very very important.
JC- I've heard that you wrote a story in high school about lunatic Santas. Did you ever end up using that story in any of your comics?
BP - I wrote this story in 9th grade, "When Speaking of Dark Splotches in the Sky" about a bunch of lunatics that escape from an asylum, get dressed up in Santa Claus outfits, and go to this small northern California town an destroy it. I turned that story in to the schools literary newspaper and I disgusted the guy who ran that. In this day and age I'm sure I would have been brought up to the Principle and sent for psychological help. It was really insane. And no, I never used that story again.
JC - At least that story was written well enough to where they didn't think it was the ramblings of a madman.
BP - I guess but it was rejected. They wouldn't run it.
JC- But it didn't get you expelled, so there must have been some merit to it. They didn't think it was a manifesto of murder.
BP- True. All of my anger is taken care of in the fiction I write. I wouldn't want to face the consequences of doing anything real. It’s fun to do all this stuff in fiction.
JC - What was your major at NYU Film? Did you focus on all aspects of filmmaking, or just scriptwriting, editing, directing?
BP - It was pretty well rounded. We were working with real film, 16 millimeter film.
JC - So you have experience cutting actual film?
BP - Yeah, we worked with what was called an upright Moviola. We'd shoot film, the next week we'd get it back, and then we'd edit the actual film, splicing it together. The next week after that, we'd screen it. Then we began using sound, which was magnetic tape essentially, which had to be physically cut as well. In our Junior year we would use what was called a flatbed Steenbeck to cut film, which was fantastic. It was much easier to navigate. At that time I made a film called a Junior Narrative, which was titled “Night Fall”, which was a loose adaptation of a Tennessee Williams story about these lost and lonely lovers who were fated to be together. It was a very nicely crafted movie that was very boring. We did everything throughout the course: edit film, shot film, and wrote scripts.
JC - So when you graduated film school why did you stay in New York and not move to Hollywood?
BP - I actually did fine, working in New York City. When I graduated I didn't have anything lined up. Luckily, nine months out of graduation I got a break. A friend of the family introduced me to this man who was a Location Manager, and he gave me a break. I began working as a PA for the movie “Batteries Not Included”. Off and on I was working that movie for over thirteen months. I found myself working quite frequently in New York, because I found myself a nice group of people who helped me find work from one job to the next. So from “Batteries”, I then worked on “Bright Lights Big City”, and at the same time I got another break and was hired as a Second Assistant Director of the music video “Tougher Than Leather”. The first day the First Assistant Director had a nervous breakdown and quit and I by default became the First Assistant Director, not knowing what the heck I was doing.
BP - Yeah Run DMC “Tougher Than Leather”. I was the First Assistant Director and way towards the end when a car blows up, I'm the guy running towards the car. Theoretically I get blown up in the car.
JC - Laughs.
BP - That's my claim to fame. That was fun. That's a whole other interview.
JC - You also worked on music videos for KISS and Queensryche. Do you have any stories about working on those?
BP - Sure, what happened is that the “Tougher Than Leather” video got me into the world of commercials and music videos in New York and LA. I started working with a quite a few of the who's who. The first time I was an Assistant Director I was on a song for the movie “Earth Girls Are Easy”, directed by Julian Temple of all people. He directed “The Great Rock N Roll Swindle, The Filth and the Fury here comes the Sex Pistols”. I wasn't so good at my job. I got it done but I didn't work with him again. I was really "green" to be honest with you.
Queensryche was great. I did 2 Queensryche videos. One interesting story was that the first one we did was directed by Mary Lambert, who directed “Pet Cemetery”. I was brought on specifically to corral her, so to speak. Apparently she was very de-focused. I was kind of hired to muscle her through. She was very artistic and not easy to work with. Ultimately after those two days of shooting, the whole thing got scrapped.
My KISS story: I was an Assistant Director for the music video Domino and Unholy. This is my Gene Simmons story, this is great. So we were on Unholy. We were on a stage and I worked with this Producer named Tema Tascantin. Tema was a tough Producer; she could make grown men cry. But now that we were working with this upper echelon of talent she was always very concerned that they were being taken care of. She'd always ask me to make sure the band was happy. At one point Gene comes over, and people were going about doing hair and make up and costumes, doing what they were doing. Tema still nervous looks to Gene and says "Is there anything I can do for you?" And without missing a beat Gene says "You can line up every woman in this place against the wall so I can fuck em." Tema just looked at him kinda nods and drifts off. Amazing.
JC - Laughs. What a character.
BP - Yeah it's KISS. I'm a big KISS fan, so that was really fun.
JC - So how the heck did you jump into comics after being that involved in movies, commercials and music videos?
BP - I realized at one point while I was working with this wonderful Director Darees Auria, who I worked with regularly. Darees made Spanish commercials and high end music videos. We were on a particular shoot, and I just came off working a Mark Romanek industrial, Marks the guy who did the Nine Inch Nails video “Closer”. Something was gnawing at my soul more or less. We were there on set and I had that Talking Heads song that says "What the hell am I doing with my life" and I realized at that point my own goals were kind of on hold. I was an Assistant Director; I was serving others, apposed to having the balls to have my own vision come to life. It was really at that time that I just said “ok, I'll make my play”. Later that day, the Director Darees said “something just happened with you didn't it?” He's like “I know something just happened with you.” I was like “Yeah I can't do this anymore.” He said “Alright man I can see that.” And that was it. That was the last job I did. That coincided with several of my comic projects coming to life within a month of that.
JC - Were you working on comics while you were an Assistant Director?
BP - I was actually. When I graduated from college I was working on long feature films and it was very difficult to get anything done, working 18 hours a day. Especially starting out, it was pretty all-encompassing. I was working on comics as a hobby at night. I had a lot to learn actually, about spelling, grammar, how stories are structured. But I wasn't putting it on a full burner until that particular video when I said I can't do this anymore. It coincided with meeting and being with Francisca my wife. To be honest, I said I needed to grow up and be a man about stuff, take charge of life. That's really what made me start driving hard towards the comic book career. The movie career, at that time of my life- I could not see how I could end up as a Director. I had the inability to figure that part out. So, I skirted out of the film industry, and became a writer and publisher of comics. It was not my stated goal in life, but it was a wonderful creative expression. I remember when Evil Ernie #1 came out, it was the December of 91, and some guy recognized me at a comic book convention, one of the first ones I was ever at. He was like "Hey you’re that guy who wrote Evil Ernie, that comic wasn't too bad." That was like my first compliment on something I did creatively, and I liked it. I wanted to repeat it.
JC - Did anything you learn from film school translate over to comics?
BP - A lot does and a lot doesn’t. Initially it gave me the training to think of the story in pictures, which helped quite a lot. Things like lighting, camera placement, I would always throw that in the scripts, and artists I've worked with are real cool with it.
The fascinating thing I found out in the past couple of years is that there are a lot of bad habits I've developed writing comics that I had to unlearn when writing and directing a movie. In most movies you "show don't tell" when in comics, because of time constraints there's a degree of exposition, because it speeds things up. What I learned making this movie is that a picture is really worth a thousand words. I have to be real careful about being redundant.
JC - Why did you start Chaos Comics? Why didn't you try and enter the already established Marvell and DC companies?
BP - I love all the Marvell and DC comics but I did not necessarily have an interest in writing them. Yes, I've always been entrepenureal and my drive has always been to tell the stories I'd like to tell. I've always admired guys like Stephen King who keeps telling the story he wants to tell, and Richard Matheson. It's not like Stephen King developed his talents and then started writing Agatha Christie novels; his expression is what he wants to say. There's a cost to that ‘cause new and unproven things are really hard to get into the market place. I was very lucky when I started in comics, because it was a time when that stuff was embraced. That was the reason I didn't go into that particular direction.
Lets be honest, the reason I formed Chaos Comics along with Francisca my wife and Steven Hughes was because we had a deal to do another Evil Ernie series with a publisher, but they dropped us like a hot potato and we were destitute. It was either start all over again and look for another publisher who was into our thing, or just start it up. With a $28,500 loan from my father and the efforts of all the people I mentioned, Chaos Comics was founded.
JC - Chaos seemed to start up at the perfect time, right at the boom of independent comics.
BP- There was so much luck involved in retrospect. People say, "Brian Pulido is a marketing generous who can anticipate the market change." I think a lot of it was luck. We came in at a great time, and the comic print runs were gigantic. 2 million wasn't very unusual; Spawn #1 was 1.7 million. Our first comic Evil Ernie Resurrection # 1 we ran 66,329 the way I remember it, so with a wholesale price 2.99 it was hard to make mistakes and not be grossly profitable, although we did make a fair amount of mistakes. By time of Feb 1994 Lady Death became part of a phenomenon called "The Bad Girl" comics, and her sales by August 94 were in the 250,000 print runs.
JC - How long did it take you pay back your dad on that loan?
BP - I offered to pay my father, but he refused to take the money. Conceivably we could have paid him back with the first issue. He always refused me paying the money back. He would say "I'd rather you have your inheritance now." He deserves a lot of credit for the founding of Chaos as well.
JC - You've stated that Chaos was about fun, rock ‘n’ roll and outrageousness. Why do you think rock ‘n’ roll and comics mix so well?
BP - Well particularly then, no one was doing that at all. Back on the 90's we were coming off the time in the world of comics where superhero comics were very stale, and a confluence of independent publishers rose to fill that void. What I wanted to see as a fan didn't exist, things like Evil Ernie, Lady Death, Chastity, stuff we published. It was edgier anti-heroes, and outright bad guys who ran the book and I just didn't see that. Also as a KISS fan, as a rock n roll fan, it was always natural that when we put out a comic book we also offered a button, or a model kit. From the very beginning it always made sense to me. It was just a natural expression on how I saw things anyway. I've always seen them three dimensionally, there's a comic, barware, apparel, an action figure, and it always made sense. That kept showing up, and we teamed up with Clayburn Moore and had among the first round of action figures released into the collectors market. That's when people didn't think that was possible.
Why do comics and rock combine? I don't know why, but they just do.
JC - Last week I read on MTV.com that the rapper 50 Cent put out a new album called War Angel which was inspired by your comic. Are you surprised that your work has influenced the Rap Genre?
BP- I put out a comic called War Angel in 2005. It's about an angel who's bred by God to make war. He stops speaking to her but her mission never changed, so it corrupted her. She's one brutal character. I think War Angel's great but where I'm surprised is that it was an experiment. I was trying to throw as many genres into one comic as possible, so it's a horror / bad girl / western / sci-fi- it's all in there. When you stack those things up, it makes it crazy and inaccessible. War Angel's real name is Serenity, she's a lesbian, she's pitting Warlocks and Vampires against each other, it's really among the craziest stories I've written. That part’s surprising, but it's just cool. 50 Cents is cool, good for him.
JC - What do you think comics can do that movies can't and vice versa?
BP - Comics can go really far, in terms of genre. Comics can really depart since relatively speaking they cost less than a movie, so you can stack 15 genres up. In the world of very personal comics, like journaling comics, you can be really personal and yourself. The form itself has a lot of flexibility and the budgets are really reduced. I think there's just more opportunity to tell personal stories. There's not always sales there, but there’s alternatives like web comics. You can see a lot more different points of view, where as in today’s movie market you are seeing more and more of these blockbuster sort of films, where it's getting more difficult to do more independent personal films. I still think you can do that in the world of comics without getting too hurt. Comics have some of the most fertile story telling minds like Mark Millar, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, and Grant Morrison. These guys are great story tellers, really trippy thinkers. I haven't seen movies incorporate their ideas yet, but really it's only a matter of time because comic books are the breeding ground for Hollywood. They are on a ten year lag.
JC - Did you like running the business of Chaos, or did that hinder you? Eric Powell said that the business side took up too much of his time when he self-published, but then again he spends more time drawing, inking and coloring. How was it for you?
BP – Running Chaos was everything; it was great, it was terrible, and it was wonderful. I really started out as an artist, at one point I advocated the management of Chaos to other people, but that was our most inefficient year. We had 19 employees, our costs were crazy, and I was just interested in being the artist and not the business person. However we started getting into financial trouble, so I had no choice but to buckle down and become the business person. In the last couple of years Chaos was really strained, because we were carrying forward debt and we made some huge mistakes and ultimately we folded. Chaos was everything; it was wonderful and horrific all at the same time. During the time of comic’s boom it was fun, it was like printing money, then it became more challenging and we made a few strategic or financial mistakes and it was heartbreaking. Not only for me, but for the people who worked for Chaos and the fans. It was complicated; it was a lot of life packed into 9 years.
JC – What's your take on education? Sounds like you are pretty pro-education.
BP - For me, I'm like a building block guy. I wish I could learn better than that. I have to take it one step at a time. Take Chaos for example. I seem to only learn by making dramatic mistakes. Now I look back and say I'm a little better at business, because I made so many mistakes. I wish I had the vision of educating myself in business a head of time, so I didn't make all those mistakes, but I'm pro-education to this second. I'm always educating myself in trying to keep current to the best of my aptitude. I'm all about it.
JC - Even the creative type people? Do you think the "artists" need education?
BP- It would be ideal to be purely creative, but it's a little more responsible to educate yourself in the business. If you’re going to be in it for the long run, you need to handle yourself in the business. It seems as if you have to develop both sides. The creative side and business side, if you want to stay in this for a while. For me, working independently as a creative person in my 19th year, it's really required me to educate myself in some stuff that's pretty dull, things like balance sheets, income and expense, developing marking strategies, stuff like that. A lot of these things just simply had to be learned, either that or I wouldn't be doing this anymore. It's important to develop them. It was a terrible mistake that I made, I hired management inside Chaos Comics, and then I turned away and became creative guy again. I abdicated my management and just looked away and whatever happened, happened. If I could do that part over again, I would have managed those people to create a certain atmosphere, instead of looking away. Which is a normal thing for a creative person to say -- I'm going to do my own thing over here plotting the end of the universe, you take care of the rest. That was a terrible blunder because I literally dropped out from management for 9-10 months, and I think that ultimately doomed the company.
I can't believe I'm about to go through with this. I knock on the flimsy trailer door, and the trailer shifts slightly as someone responds. I hear the click of the lock, and a dark-haired woman in a silk mini robe appears in the doorway. She's too beautiful for a place like this, I bet she probably owns the trailer for such occasions.
I met with Brian at a Borders bookstore here in Arizona, the same one where we first met to discuss theVoices of the Dead music video he directed. I brought my trusty hand held recorder, and a few pages of questions with the intent to dig deeper into the creative force that is Brian Pulido. Not only is Brian a writer, director, producer, and comic creator (Lady Death, Evil Ernie) but has a positive “can do” attitude, and entrepreneurial spirit that I admire. His current movie project, The Graves, that he wrote and directed (and features Calabrese), has been added to the After Dark Horrorfest – 8 Films to Die For. TheAfter Dark Horrorfest runs for one week in theatres across the United States from January 29 – February 5, making it the largest nationwide film festival. Be sure to check it out. Now on with the interview! Part 1 - Origins
Jimmy Calabrese: Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me about growing up in New Jersey. Brian Pulido: I grew up in Long BranchNew Jersey, on the wrong side of the tracks, until about first grade. We lived on Joline Avenue in this creepy three story house. One of my earliest recollections was of a little mouse caught in a vent grate in the second story. I was trying to get my family’s attention about this mouse and no one would listen. Later that night while we were eating at the kitchen table, which was directly above the grate, the mouse fell and landed in my mother’s tea cup. That was living on Joline Avenue.
JC: Laughs. BP: My mom turned me on to horror movies and crazy movies. I'd watch shows like Chiller Theater, and Creature Feature as a kid. My childhood really was a blast. We came from very modest means. I think we were pretty poor the first couple of years of my life, but I was a kid and wouldn't know the difference. We never went without a meal.
When I was seven or eight, we moved to the other side of town called Elberon, which was a nice middle class side of town. Growing up was great there. That was a time when people would have their doors open, and as a kid you would wander around into different people’s houses; have a snack, see what's going on. You could cut through people’s backyards, and it was no big deal back then. You felt like Huck Finn back then, great times.
JC: Your life as a child sounds great, but I heard you had a reading disability? How did that affect you?
BP: As a kid, when I moved from one side of the track to the other, so to speak, the new school did not recognize that I had it, so I got left back a grade. That was emotionally devastating. I thought that was flawed. But being a kid you can get over things pretty quickly. The turning point for me was when they put me in this special reading class in third grade. They would teach you to read with these stories that were color coded. That in particular got me excited for reading. I started with the easy stuff like Dick and Jane, ultimately getting to more complicated stories. I got seduced by reading. By third grade I learned the value of reading, and I caught up. I took off and became a voracious reader and story teller. I even ended up writing my own comics and half baked stories. As early as fifth grade I wrote my own versions of what would happen if I were in the middle of Night of the Living Dead. JC: If you didn’t go through that struggle and hardship, do you think you would still love reading and writing as much?
BP: It's hard to say if I would or wouldn't have gone to that level of reading. But I've gravitated to it. I'm still a voracious reader to this day. I'll have five or ten different things going at once, in all the different bathrooms in my house.
JC: Laughs.
BP: Right now, I'm reading The Steven King Companion, finishing up a story called Plague Year. I have five or six magazine articles that range everywhere from business to home theater. I think it might have been luck that I connected with something that I enjoy.
JC: And didn't your family own a business?
BP: My dad was a short order chef for most of my life at the Sand Piper Restaurant. My dad made the best sandwiches, burgers, and home fries. My mom was the head waitress at a Mob run restaurant until she passed away. JC: Which Mob?
BP: Everybody’s dead, I don't say nothin’. But it was on the Jersey shores.
JC: Laughs.
BP: Literally they are all dead. But my sister and her husband owned nail salons and hair salons. So I was in that environment too. As a strange aside, I used to cut hair. I was into punk and that was the punk thing to do, be a punk skateboarder who cut hair. I was the dude in the neighborhood who did that. I did that all the way into college to make extra money. JC: So growing up around those family businesses, did that inspire your entrepreneurial streak?
BP: For sure, observing my sister and brother-in-law in business, trying new businesses and trying new things, mapped my brain out. In my adult life I've worked as an employee at a business for only nine months, the first nine months of college, and since then I've been on my own. So I saw how they would do it. Not only would they own their business, but they might do a publishing venture. They also attempted a cheesecake business, which didn't work but they just kept going. Yeah, I think I learn from them.
JC: How does your family feel about the horror aspect of what you do?
BP: My sister is unconditionally supportive. What I do in particular is not to her taste but she has always been supportive. I give her a lot of credit because in many low points in my life she's been the person to be there, to prop me up.Like when I was a teen having trouble with girls, she'd give me the inside scoop on how to handle it. There were also tough times financially when I went to college. I was the first one in our family that went to college, and she helped financially and emotionally. My sister has always been unconditionally supportive of me.
JC: You’ve said in past interviews that your mom was a horror fan, and that she brought you to see Night of the Living Dead when you were seven years old. Why would your mother do such a thing! BP: I don't know, but it was amazing. I think it was the first weekend that the movie came out. My mother brought me and my sister, and our two friends. I'm guessing she took us because we were used to movies like the Amazing Colossal Man, and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Although, they were totally scary to me as a kid, they were not of the level of Night of the Living Dead. When we went to that movie it was a whole different reckoning.
I think some people can look at that movie today and not feel the fear that we did. When we saw that movie, within fifteen minutes we were totally and utterly terrified. The fear was palpable. We actually left early cause it was too much for us. We went to visit our Aunt Loretta, who happened to live in a house off the main road, which just happened to look like the one from the movie, a little deserted farm house which terrified us even more. It took a couple of years later to finally face the fear and watch the movie all the way through. I probably sweat like ten pounds because of the nightmares it gave me. To me, that movie was a whole other level. JC: So was that your defining horror movies moment? Is that how you got hooked on horror?
BP: It is. To this day, I like all sorts of horror to some degree, but that total nihilistic apocalyptic situation, where there's an evil outside force that's super dominant, but the true evil is among the people, who fight amongst each other…when that is done well, it's the tastiest stuff to me. It's ruined me in a way because those are the movies I'm always looking for. Recently the movie The Mist was satisfying. So was 28 Days Later from a couple of years ago. Those heavy nihilistic siege movies are remarkable, and few and far between. Studio horror movies like the Orphan are just not for me. I couldn't care less. The Exorcist is another great movie. The multiple layers of taboo that is violated, the amount of horror that is inflicted on that family is outrageous to this day. It just ruins you for other horror films, they are just so damn good, and the other ones just don't give you the buzz. JC: What kind of comics did you read as a child? What was the fist comic that got you hooked? BP: I've read comics consistently since 1970, but I distinctly remember Captain America starting in August of 1976, I think. Issue 176, which is very interesting - Captain America quits. Captain America sees something go down and he quits. Being a guy cognizant of the politics during the Nixon era, it was very interesting to pick up Captain America at the moment in time when Captain America was also disillusioned by his government. I also like comics you’d imagine I'd like such as Werewolf by Night, and Man Thing. I actually enjoyed a lot of superhero kinda stuff, and I still do. I was more of a Marvell guy, than a DC guy. I also have a collect of Where Monsters Dwell, and Monsters on the Prowl.
When I was a kid, about 12 years old, I was really smart about comics. When the new comics would come out on a Wednesday, I would grab all the #1 issue of something. I would get every single #1 from everywhere in town before everyone else. I then told kids I had a collector’s items and sold them for 20 times the value. I was really intelligent on the comics until I grew up just enough to where girls took over my brain.
I slide open the glass door, and the cat crouches in the middle of the patio. It’s the same cat that’s been crying outside my bedroom window at four in the morning. I aim the BB gun between the cat's eyes. READ MORE
My new flash fiction horror story, "Too Much Of A Good Thing," has been published at Flashes In the Dark.
Too Much Of A Good Thing by Jimmy Calabrese
I wished it didn’t happen; I really do…it just got out of control. I turned the wheel and drove my Jeep off the freeway and out into the Arizona desert. I gripped the wheel tighter as I bounced in my seat; the uneven earth shook my vehicle and my nerves. I needed to clear my head before I went home to face my wife.
Here's my first attempt at a Flash Fiction Horror story (under 666 words) called "Kentucky Moon", it was just published on Microhorror.com. Let me know what you think…
Kentucky Moon By Jimmy Calabrese
We pulled into the lot of the old gas station, the only car parked out front glowed with a ghostly hue from the moonlight. I reached into my jacket and pulled out my gun.
The robbery took a week to plan and only a second to fall apart. Hank was supposed to enter the gas station to clear out the customers while I waited, but as soon as he entered I heard the blast of his shotgun. I ran inside and found the clerk erupting blood like a volcano from a hole in his chest.
Let’s jump right back into the interview, we last left Eric as he recalled all the rejection letters from when he first started…
Jimmy - So ignoring the rejection letters, you brought your portfolio to show Bernie Wrightson. Bernie was doing a signing at a local comic shop. What did you think would happen? He'd take you under his wing?
Eric – I really didn’t have an expectation. I was like wow, Bernie Wrightson was going to be in Nashville. I was just excited to meet him. I was hoping I would get some advice or some word of encouragement. Tom Sniegoski who I met there, who really jump started my career, remembers exactly what I said to Bernie, I guess I plopped down my portfolio on the table and said “do you think I have a chance?”
J – [Laughs]
E – Bernie was really encouraging and it was nice to meet him. It was a fateful day because up until then I was not getting any positive feedback.
J – By believing in yourself and taking a change to meet Bernie Wrightson it actually put you in contact with Tom Sniegoski. Do you think writers are always looking for artists and that’s why he was able to spot your talent?
E – Writers can’t draw so they are always looking for someone to work with.
J – And Tom helped you get your first real comic industry job “Razor: Uncut” series. Did Tom write the issues that you drew?
E – He wrote them and I drew them.
J – What did you learn from that first real job in the industry?
E – I learned to work from a script a little better. Up until then I’d never really done anything, I was really learning on the fly, like how to make layouts from a script and about story telling.
J – Did Tom help you with this?
E- He pretty much gave me free reign. I got spoiled by Tom because he knows how to write a script for an artist. A lot of guys will write a comic book script with a whole string of action and I only have one panel to work with. I try to describe it as writing a film script but instead of filming it with a movie camera you are filming it with a still camera. You have to take single snap shots. A lot of guys don’t understand that. Tom is really good about just giving the information that you need and not overdoing it.
J – So you were really lucky to work with him at the beginning. If it was anyone else…
E – I’d probably put a gun to my head.
J –[Laughs] Are you still friends with him? Have you gotten him any jobs?
E – Yeah I’m still friends with Tom we actually worked on a young readers series called “Billy Hooten” I did the covers and some illustrations for that. I actually did get him a job once. Marvel contacted me about doing a “Devil Dinosaur” book which is this crazy 1970’s Jake Kirby comic about a giant red dinosaur. Ironically Tom and I were talking about “Devil Dinosaur” a couple of weeks before so I called Tom and said “guess what Marvel just offered me?” So we worked on that together.
J – After the “Razor: Uncut” work you did some Freelance work, then you ended up releasing the Goon with Avatar Press but you were not happy with it.
E – The production value was not good; the ink would come off on your hands when you read the book. The covers looked like someone took a can of black spray paint to them. I talked to them about the production value asking if they could at least get it on a better grade of paper and they said the sales didn’t justify putting it on better paper. So we had a little bit of conflict with that. So we parted ways.
J - You state your turning point was the 2001 Wizard World convention in Chicago?
E – Yeah [Laughs] it was pretty pathetic. I bought a table for about one hundred bucks, I had been drawing some Buffy comics for Dark Horse but that stuff dried up. I was doing some inking work for Marvel and all that work dried up. So I didn’t have any work coming in. I had this Artist Alley table at the convention and I only did one sketch for twenty bucks so it didn’t even pay for the table. I drove out there by myself and I drove back all pissed off. It was a point where I thought “Is this going to work or should I quit?” It was a six or seven hour drive and I had the whole time to think about it. It was pretty sad but I realized I was never able to do what I wanted to do. So I decided to self publish my book to see what happens.
J - I can really relate to you going DIY and self-publishing. That’s what Calabrese has done with all our recordings and merchandise.
E – It’s really gratifying. I like being at Dark Horse but it was really gratifying when I put it out on my own.
J – You had to take out a loan to self-publish, was it a business loan? I know printing comics can be expensive. Didn’t you have credit cards?
E – I think I had an auto loan at the time and my ex and I went there to take out a small personal loan. Luckily we were able to pay it back with the first two books. That was nice.
J – That was my next question did you ever pay it off.
E - That’s when I actually got excited. Wow, this was going to work. I honestly didn’t believe it was going to work. It was one of those things that I had to try or I’d wonder “if” my whole life. I thought I’d take out a huge loan, I’d put out a couple of books so I could say “did you see my comic I put out a few years back… No?” Then I’d have to get a regular job to pay back the loan.
J – Could you have kept self-publishing when Dark Horse approached you or was it becoming too much work to handle by yourself?
E – I spent too much time doing the busy stuff, the advertising, dealing with the printer. It took away too much from actually drawing the book and because Dark Horse has much bigger distribution, I just jumped at it when they offered.
J - What's your comedy influences? It seems somewhat slapstick- any 3 Stooges influence?
E – There’s a lot of Python, to me anyway. I also think its part of where I grew up, the violent humor.
J – Seriously “Monty Python”? Have you actually laughed at a Monty Python sketch?
E – [Laughs] I do I think it’s funny. It’s absurd, the kinda funny that makes no sense.
J – You’ve also mentioned “The Andy Griffith Show”?
E – Yeah, it’s a weird thing. That’s what I grew up watching, I think that actually influenced my work. Also the “Twilight Zone”, “The Little Rascals” all those old stupid black and white T.V. shows.
J – I can see that.
E – I think it also has a lot to do with where I grew up. I don’t know how to put it, there seems to be this level of cruelty here.
J – Why to you think that is?
E – That cruelty in humor? I don’t know, I think it’s a redneck thing. In a more sophisticated area they treat their dogs like children and here they tie their dog up to a tree and leave him out in a rain storm.
J – [Laughs] Here's a quote from you: "Back in the yester-years when VCRs were a new technology, me and my sister used to rent videos from the back of the Dairy Queen, one horror move and one comedy." Can you tell me more about this “Dairy Queen”, it sounds amazing.
E – [Laughs] When VCR technology really started to click, out here the first place you could rent movies was the back of the Dairy Queen. There was this little addition they built on to the back of it. It was a little ten by ten room with shelves filled with videos. Every weekend we’d go out there and rent videos. We had to get something funny and something scary. We’d sprinkle in the action movie now and then to see shit blow up.
J – What horror movies influenced your psyche?
E – The most obvious influence on “The Goon” was “The Evil Dead.” The Universal Monster stuff was pretty influential early in my childhood like Frankenstein. We used to rent slasher movies, “Friday The 13th” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
J – The cover art of those video boxes back then were amazing. How could you not resist renting a horror movie?
E – It’s kinda a shame they don’t paint posters anymore or the movie box covers. Remember the poster for the first “Nightmare On Elm Street”? That’s a great painting. The one with the claw.
J – Or “Halloween” where the knife morphs into the pumpkin. Based on past interviews, why do you think you cannot draw pretty people very well or modern buildings with details?
E – It takes a subtly to draw a pretty face. A person with character you put lines in there face and you give them a weird nose. That stuff I can scribble out just fine. Drawing something attractive you have to be really subtle with your lines. If your drawing a twenty year old woman and you put a line by her nose all of the sudden she’s forty.
J – So it’s not a product of low self-esteem or a bad childhood, it’s just a style preference.
E – If I was going to read any of that into my art it would be more in the writing than in the drawing. I just like drawing creepy ugly guys. It’s more of an aesthetic thing. I’m attracted to monster movies and Frankenstein. It’s boring to draw the pretty happy person. I want to draw the big ugly guy who’s rejected.
J – What was your influence on story telling? That’s a different talent than drawing.
E – It’s something that just came naturally. I never really studied other than looking at movies. After I started working in comics I started thinking about telling stories more. I was kinda going on instinct before. I thought I should develop the storytelling a little bit better. The best training I think I got was from Spielberg movies like “Jaws” and “Close Encounters”. There is a deliberate pace and visual quality that would work perfect in comics. There are not a lot of quick crazy cuts in those movies and composition was really nice. It’s not the same medium but his movies are a great tool to study storytelling.
J - You have said to break into the comic industry you need to dedicate practically all your time. Are you at a point in your career you can take a breather? Do you work every day, do you take weekends off?
E – It seems like I work every day. Unless I’m at a convention, I do a little something everyday. Last year we took “The Goon” and did it monthly for a year because we had this big story and that burnt me out. I couldn’t wait for that to be over, it was a non-stop workload. After each issue they were on me for the next one, it was a constant rush.
J – Do you have any hobbies? How do you make time for your family?
E – You just have to make time. When my boys come over and I have a deadline they sit on the floor and draw with me or they come in and out. As far as hobbies go, I watch movies and listen to music. I’m pretty much doing a hobby for a living. The only thing I’d really like to do, and I keep thinking about it but I don’t even bother cause I know I don’t have the time- I want to have an old muscle car.
J – [Laughs] No you’re never going to have any time for that. You have to wait till you retire- if you ever retire.E – [Laughs] Screw comics I’m going to work on this old car.
J – The movie coming up looks pretty exciting. I looked up the Director David Fincher and I see he’s directed “Alien”, “Fight Club” and “Se7en”. Your animated movie looks like it’s going to be the real deal.
E – I hope so. I’ve got my fingers crossed that we actually get this thing going. Blur, the animation studio, has been doing some test stuff and it looks amazing. I’ve been having story meetings with Fincher and the Blur guys and I think we got it going in a really good direction.
J – What kind of rating are you going for?
E – I think PG or PG-13. It’s definitely going to be a little edgy, we are not going to tone anything down. We want it to be what it is. Fincher and Blur realize if we start stripping it down and taking the “balls” off it’s going to be this watered down thing, not “The Goon.”
J – Yeah, then what’s the point?
E – It’s not the reason people got into it.
J – The Mezco toys of “The Goon” turned out really cool.
E – Yeah I was really happy with them. I wish they sold better so they would do a second series. [Laughs]
J – When the movie comes out I hope they produce more action figures.
E – Yeah, once we have a release date for the movie I’m sure there be all kinds of merchandise happening.
J - Do your boys play with “The Goon” action figures?
E – Yeah, I gave them some of the action figures and they played with it for a little and then they moved on to their robots and stuff.
J – [Laughs]
E - Again, they are just not impressed. They are a like “yeah it’s just this thing my dad does, whatever.”
J - Do you do any exercises to keep from getting carpal tunnel? Is that even an issue?
E – I haven’t had any problems with it yet. I’ve had a few times where I’ve had to pull some crazy weeks and my hand and wrists start giving me trouble so I put on a workout bandage. [Laughs] I don’t know if that’s good or bad for it but it makes my wrists stop hurting.
J – I assume you are open to a Goon video game especially if the movie explodes.
E – I already talked to Blur about that. Blur does a lot of animatics for video games so we are definatly talking about it.
J – Have you thought about the Wii? You can make it so when you punch your the Goon.
E – That would be awesome. I’m going to suggest that – “Wii Goon.” So you can punch zombies and stuff.
J – So when you listen to music while you’re working have you ever listened to Calabrese?
E – Hell yeah. That CD I picked up at DragonCon, I listen to it all the time. J – That warms the cockles of my heart. E – [Laughs] I wouldn’t have asked you guys to take part in the party if I didn’t listen to your music.
J – They say art imitates life. After viewing your drunken debauchery on myspace I'm starting to think Nortons Pub is a real place in your world somewhere.
E – [Laughs] I wish there was, I need a Nortons Pub. I need some place I can roll out of bed and go hang out in but unfortunately I don’t live anywhere close to a Nortons Pub.
J – I have few last questions about some projects you worked on. I see you were one of the inkers on Brian Pulido’s 1st issue of "Evil Ernie: Returns" on Chaos Comics.
E – Did I?
J – That’s what the internet says…if you want to believe that.
E – I don’t think so? Or maybe I did? I think I might have done a fill in page. If I did, it was like only a few pages.
J – Brian Pulido directed our music video so I was hoping you had some Brian Pulido stories.
E – Actually I didn’t have any contact with Pulido. When I did that I think the editor called asking if I could ink a few pages. Brian Pulido stories…I don’t think I have any. I can make something up if you want?
J – [Laughs] No no, that’s ok we make up enough stories already. We don’t need any more out there.
J - In 2005 you did a spread for “Mad Magazine” where you did a parody video game… is that true?
E – Yeah it was a parody of a pro-wresting video game where the wrestlers are all corporate mascots so you had the Hawaiian Punch guy, the Pep Boys and The Jolly Green Giant. It was a lot of fun.
J – How did you get that? Did they contact you?
E – Yeah one of the guys contacted me to see if I was interested in doing the illustration for them. I jumped at it cause its “Mad Magazine”, if nothing else you can put on your resume you’ve worked for “Mad Magazine.”
J – Your cool points rose in my book when I saw you did that work. So now that you’re living the dream what’s next?
E – Right now making the movie happen is my next goal.
J – I can just imagine how “The Goon” will explode when that movie comes out.
E – Then I can be really obnoxious.
If you want to learn more about Eric Powell and “The Goon” check out http://www.thegoon.com/
BP: My mom turned me on to horror movies and crazy movies. I'd watch shows like Chiller Theater, and Creature Feature as a kid. My childhood really was a blast. We came from very modest means. I think we were pretty poor the first couple of years of my life, but I was a kid and wouldn't know the difference. We never went without a meal.
JC: If you didn’t go through that struggle and hardship, do you think you would still love reading and writing as much?
JC: So growing up around those family businesses, did that inspire your entrepreneurial streak?
Here's my first attempt at a Flash Fiction Horror story (under 666 words) called "Kentucky Moon", it was just published on Microhorror.com. Let me know what you think…
Let’s jump right back into the interview, we last left Eric as he recalled all the rejection letters from when he first started…
