ComiXology Conversations
At SDCC this year, Tia & Matt interviewed New York Times bestselling cartoonist and comiXology favorite Simon Hanselmann @girlmountain (Megahex, Megg & Mogg In Amsterdam, both from @fantagraphics):
Matt: Tia welcome back.
Tia: Thank you.
Matt: We’re here, we made it again.
Tia: It’s another day.
Matt: It’s another day in the wilderness, the sweaty wilderness that is San Diego Comic Con, and we have a colossal guest with us today.
Tia: 10 feet tall.
Simon: well that’s flattering.
Matt: Megg and Mogg in Amsterdam is probably maybe more recently what people might know Simon’s work from, but Simon Hanselmann, welcome to the show.
Simon: Thank you, thank you for having me.
Matt: Simon Hanselmann.
Simon: Yep, Hanselmann.
Matt: [that’s what you prefer to be called].
Simon: Handsome man.
Tia: That’s how you say it in the American accent.
Matt: You grew up in Tasmania?
Simon: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt:
How does one get into comics in Tasmania? I think most people in
America probably have no idea what that area is like, let alone an
island.
Tia: Maybe just from a cartoon.
Simon: I’ve
moved to Seattle now and it’s actually very similar there to Tasmania,
just rainy, a port town. It’s very similar. There were a lot of comics
there when I was growing up, in sort of the mid to late 80s, a good
little comic shop opened up and had all the mainstream stuff, all the
alternative stuff. There was no shortage of comics. I think since the
internet ’s really exploded there’s less comics down there, you can’t
find as many print comics, but it was kind of a wonderland. I was
reading all the European stuff, your Mad magazines, all the newspaper
stuff, Dan Clowes, all that Fantagraphics, Drawn and Quarterly stuff.
Matt:
Maybe you’ve been lucky to have those available. When I grew up I
didn’t know what the heck does comics were. The shop that I went to was
like the most American one, they just had Marvel and DC and they like
closed in year because that’s all they sold, and like action figures.
Simon:
These Tasmanian comic shops were run by weirdos, just very weird
hippies. They had all the weird stuff, good hangout places, so I had a
good education on a lot of different types of comics. Go back now and
it’s not like that anymore, it’s really hard to find comics there, but
we’ve got the internet now and comiXology so you can just download them
all straight to your iPad or other device.
Tia: Come by anytime.
Simon:
I started very early, I started self-published zines when I was 8 years
old. It’s like I’m Peter Pan, I’ve never grown up, I never stopped
making comics. It’s shocking to me that I actually escaped Tasmania and
I’m here at San Diego Comic Con. It’s very surreal.
Tia: You’ve made it, you’re a big deal.
Simon: I’m on a trading card.
Tia: You’re on a trading card.
Simon: It’s ridiculous, I’m tradeable.
Tia:
Very big deal. Megg and Mogg seem decidedly more geared toward an adult
audience, but you talk a lot about how comics were important to you as a
kid, and I don’t know, I feel like kids deal with issues like
depression and loneliness, and like trying to figure out who they are
and what to do. Do you ever think about making a more all ages comic
dealing with some of those themes?
Simon: I’ve tried, but it’s
hard. It’s like I need to work blue. I need to just have the freedom to
just say and do anything. I find it hard to write for kids and for a
younger audience. It’s difficult.
Tia: I feel like it may be
one of those books that like a young adolescent needs to find and read
knowing that their parents wouldn’t want them to read it, and they would
get a lot out of it from that context.
Simon: Yeah, I had
someone come to my signing yesterday and say, “This book got me through
high school.” It’s kind of like cool, that’s cool, but you may be a bit
too young, there are heavy themes. I was in Valencia in Spain last year
and a 6 and 7 year old, couple of kids came up with fan art for me. I
was like you guys are way too young. I said to their mother I feel like I
should call child protective services.
Matt: She’s in jail now.
Simon: She was like, they watch Family Guy.
Matt: Tangent, we went to the Eisners last night and Matt Groening was there-
Tia: No big deal.
Matt:
NBD, we went to the Eisners. Matt Groening was there and I grew up on
The Simpsons. It’s hard, I have a 5 year old son and it’s hard to find
TV to watch at the end of the night, so we just replay The Simpsons.
He’s started like 7 years sooner than I have, and I wonder that will
eventually do for him, having that kind of comedic storyline in his life
at such a young age, just like those kids who’d read your work.
Simon:
Yeah, Simpsons is less hardcore than Megg and Mogg, but it’s still
quite subversive and adult. I re-watched Simpsons from when I was a kid
and there’s so much stuff in there that you didn’t get. You get half the
jokes and you enjoy the colors.
Matt: We’ve watched it like
every night, and maybe I’ll see an episode for like the hundredth time
and we’ll laugh at something we’d never seen before. I don’t know why
that wasn’t funny the first hundred times, but it is now.
Simon: They’re densely packed. I met Matt Groening for the first time the other day.
Matt: Oh yeah, I saw that on your Instagram, he was holding the book.
Simon: I nerded out. That was like the one person here that I really flipped out about meeting. I tried to control myself.
Matt:
I think it’s easy for a lot of people to forget that he had a pretty
extensive strip work before The Simpsons. Most people forget about that.
Simon:
Yeah, years and years of Life In Hell. That’s the story about The
Simpsons, he didn’t want to sell his rabbit character, so he just drew
his family in the waiting room of the network, and then the rest is
history, Simpsons. I’ll see what I can do with Megg and Mogg. I’ve been
taking weird TV meetings here all weekend, and having people sort of …
It’s very stressful.
Matt: Yeah I was going to ask you, the
work seems like it lends itself super strong to a late night adult
swim-ish, whether it be like 8 minute segments or what have you, it
feels like it’s perfect for that.
Simon: Yeah, people say that.
For a while I’ve been talking to all these TV people, different
networks, but I don’t know if I want to do it. I love comics. Like I
said I’ve been making comics since I was 8 years old, I’m nearly 35 now,
it’s kind of all I’ve ever done. I love the autonomy of comics, that
it’s just you alone, or in a team. I have a friend that I co-write with
sometimes, but I love the beauty of just being alone with comics and
it’s just your vision, whatever you want to do. Working with a network
things would really change.
Matt: Yeah, maybe you’d have to
find someone that you really trust there so that you could be
comfortable hands off and not worry about it.
Simon: Yeah it’s
been stressing me out. Do I do this? Do I do this TV thing? I kind of
just want to keep making comics. I just love Fantagraphics. I had a
Fantagraphics poster on my wall since I was 13, and it was kind of
always my dream down in Tasmania to get published by them, and it
actually happened.
Tia: Do you think that part of your
hesitation about adapting to a TV show is that the work that you have
out right now is really personal? Maybe down the line if you do
something that’s a little lighter or less really like just baring your
soul, do you think maybe you’d be a little more open to other people
getting their hands on it?
Simon: Yeah probably. Megg and Mogg
are my babies, they’re my children. Everyone keeps saying that you
should try and sell something else, but I can’t draw anything else at
the moment. I try to do non Megg and Mogg stuff and I’m just so in that
zone it’s just all Megg and Mogg. I’ve got 5 years of material written
for it, I’ve got a lot of books planned. If I did TV that would derail
it all.
Tia: It sounds like you don’t really get burnt out with
these characters, and that they’re really a fruitful sort of outlet for
you to do things with.
Simon: Yeah, despite being characters
that just sit on the couch and don’t seem to do much, they are very
versatile to write for. I feel like I could do a sci-fi story with them,
and just put them into that setting, and I’ve considered doing that.
Tia: Megg and Mogg in space.
Simon: Yeah.
Matt: You just want to see the owl get so annoyed at them in space. I want to read that.
Tia: Have you ever seen Red Dwarf?
Simon: Oh I love Red Dwarf.
Tia: I can see a sort of Red Dwarf, Megg and Mogg situation.
Simon: Very much so.
Matt: That’s a motley crew.
Simon: When I eventually run out of ideas for them around the house, I’ll just take them to space.
Matt:
That’s the logical path I think for most things. Now how did your
column at Vice come about? Most people, maybe people listening to this
remember reading the Sunday strip obviously, but I feel like what you’re
doing at Vice is almost like an updated version of that, where they
come to Vice and see your work maybe once a week. How did that come
together?
Simon: I think Nick Gazin there who’s the editor of
all the comics, he just sort of wrote to me, seen my work on Tumblr and
liked it, and yeah he just wrote to me and said do you want to do it. I
was like yeah sure, that’ll pay my rent every month, let’s do it. Like
you said, it is one of the only outlets now, the alternative weekly, so
like Matt Groening and Tony Millionaire, people like that used to be in
there. They don’t really exist anymore. I think Boing Boing run some
comics sometimes, but Vice at the moment is the only, the main outlet
for that kind of stuff. I think Nick there is doing a good job, there’s a
really diverse array of things that he puts on there, lots of European
stuff. There’s a good gender split, it’s not just a big sausage fest,
there’s a lot of cool girls doing stuff on there.
Matt: Have
you noticed an intersection of, you have Vice readers and maybe you have
Fantagraphics readers. Do you see any strange correlations, or even
differences between those audiences?
Simon: Yeah, there’s not a
huge difference. They’re all somewhat similar. A lot of people come up
to me and say I discovered it through Vice, but they’re all the same
type of scumbags. They’re my people.
Tia: I was reading about
you and you talked about loving Spider-man when you were a kid. If
Marvel called you up and was like, we want to take Spider-man in a
different direction.
Simon: Well maybe. Pete Bagge, a
Fantagraphics guy who did Hate, he did a Spider-man comic like 10 years
ago, and it was pretty good. I’d probably tackle it. I’d do like a sexy
Spider-man.
Tia: You know what, I was so happy that you say
that because whenever I look at Spider-man I’m like, this is the
porniest comic I’ve ever seen and I want to actually write a paper
comparing the webbing to pornographic money shots, and just like the
inherent power dynamic and like spraying a villain with your white
[CENSORED].
Simon: When Todd McFarlane started doing the webbing it was so ropey and wet looking.
Tia: Then you always get Spider-man bending over these like -
Simon: Strange poses.
Tia: Yeah, like split crotch shots.
Simon:
I think the interview you’re referring to, I was talking about how I
found Spider-man erotic when I was 5. He was tied up by Doctor Octopus
and it stirred something within me. It was strangely erotic.
Tia:
It is. I think that as a subtext it’s really interesting because I feel
very conflicted about that, but maybe pulling it out of the shadows
would help us work through these problems.
Simon: Yeah, embrace
it, embrace the sexiness. It’s costumes, it’s dressing up, it’s like
eyes wide shut or something. It’s like a sex party with a crystal bowls
full of keys, all the superhero put their keys in and team swap.
Tia: Oh my God, you have to make this comic.
Matt: Keep their masks on. That’ll be your Strange Tales Marvel issue.
Simon: Yeah, well hit me up Stan Lee, hit me up, I’m here.
Tia: You have ideas.
Matt: I would love to be a fly on the wall for that phone call, when Stan Lee calls you up and asks for that pitch.
Simon: I’ll do it.
Matt: Hanselmann, let’s hear it.
Simon: Excelsior.
Matt: What do you read? What do you relax with if you do relax to read, or what do you seek out or try to seek out to read?
Simon:
I go to a lot of festivals, so I end buying a lot of sort of hip
risographed stuff. A lot of it I find the writing’s not very good, but I
love the styles, all this crazy risograph stuff. There’s not enough
people doing crazy narratives, like Megg and Mogg’s so narrative driven,
and it’s The Simpsons basically but with dick jokes. All the stuff I
end up reading is just this arty kind of nonsense. I’m obsessed with
Marie Jacotey, a French artist. She does these strangely sexual kind of
pencil things on plaster. I really like Leon Sadler, a British guy, it’s
like noise comics. I’ll read traditional stuff as well. The stuff on
Vice is good. Maybe Olivier Schrauwen, he’s very good, a Belgian artist.
All sorts of weird stuff.
Matt: Right yeah, it’s always
fascinating to me to find out you have a different vibe for creators
that make books for Fantagraphics, you have a different vibe for folks
that make image books and Marvel, so it’s always interesting to see what
they seek out as opposed to like, “Ah, I read Spider-man every month.”
Or, “I just met this artist at a convention in Angoulême and that’s what
I’m reading.” They’re so different worlds.
Simon: There’s a
lot of crossovers now, like I find a lot of the alternative kind of guys
are really obsessed with Rob Liefeld now.
Tia: Mannerism.
Simon:
My buddy Chuck Forsman, him and Michele Fiffe who does Copra, yeah
there’s like a resurgence of nineties love in that crew.
Matt: Yeah, Benjamin Marra’s been doing it for a while, and yeah that’s a whole style thing that’s happening.
Simon:
There’s so much stuff out there it’s hard to keep track of it all, but
yeah I gravitate towards the weird, noisy, European comics. I want more
narrative stuff, I’m surprised more people aren’t ripping off my kind of
meat and potatoes. Pete Bagge a big hero of mine, Hate was just
amazing. A family drama that’s long running, and you get to know the
characters, that’s what I like, and I want more of that. I want more
people to start ripping off Megg and Mogg.
Tia: I think it’s an
investment, you just were talking about how you’ve got 5 years of
stories planned, but that’s a real commitment that maybe are a little
commitment-phobic when it comes to their comics.
Simon: I want
to grow my characters up, like Love and Rockets, it’s been going for
like 35 years and the characters grow and age. Megg and Mogg make
mistakes, they do horrible things to each other, but I want them to
learn from that, like life. It’s a silly comic about a witch and a cat,
but I do try to make it very realistic and true to life, and put real
emotion and pathos in there.
Matt: How about in 10 years we
come back and chat again, and then we’ll reevaluate to see who ripped
you off and how did it well.
Tia: How Megg and Mogg are doing.
Matt: Well Simon I appreciate you taking the time out to chat, I love the book, I hope people check it out.
Simon: Thanks so much guys.
Matt: We’ll talk to you in 10 years.
Simon: Yeah, hit up comiXology, Megg and Mogg, thanks guys.