Brightest Young Things

Evan Keeling is the illustrator for our Tales From the District comic.  This is his first, and hopefully not last, interview for the site.  You can see out SPX Guide here.

SPX 2005 was the year for firsts. First year that I was there with the comics’ collective, DC Conspiracy, the first year I had comics for sale as an artist at SPX, and the first year I read Street Angel by Jim Rugg. I had seen the shockingly pink covers of the Street Angel issues at SPX before but never glanced through them. Over the previous year, I heard a lot of buzz about Street Angel, so when I saw the Street Angel collection sitting on Jim Rugg’s table from across the room, I made a B-line straight for it and have been a dedicated fan of Jim’s art ever since. Jim Rugg is the co-creator of Street Angel, a.k.a. Jesse Sanchez (the world's greatest 13 year old martial artist and homeless skateboarder), and Afrodisiac. He is also the artist for Plain Janes, and the recently released sequel Janes in Love from DC Comics (recently canceled imprint of girl’s graphic novels) Minx.

Jim will be at the Small Press Expo this Saturday, October 4th promoting Brian Maruca’s and his Street Angel story in Adhouse’s Superior Showcase and selling his mini comic Afrodisiac #1.

Jim kindly answered a few questions of mine.

BYT: Are you looking forward to coming back to SPX?

RUGG: Sure. SPX is a lot of fun. Great place to be a fan of comics.

BYT: How many years have you been coming to SPX? Of those years how many have you had a table for?

RUGG: My first SPX was 2000. I’ve come to all of them since then, but I haven’t had a table at the last couple. This year I’ll be sitting at the Adhouse Books table with Superior Showcase #3, which has an all-new Street Angel story. I’ll also have copies of my mini-comic Afrodisiac #1.

BYT: Are there any creators or books you are excited about seeing at SPX?

RUGG: Yeah. A lot more than I can afford.

BYT: Your style is very distinctive. Whether you are doing clean line work like in Plain Janes or retro style work like your Captain Kidd story for Fantastic Comics it is always recognizable as your own. What influences helped mold your artistic style and do you still set aside time for developing you technique?

RUGG: I’m not sure at this point what influences are going into my work. At some point I started to look at older comics a lot. And they have certainly filtered into my own work. Also, a lot of the indie cartoonists from the 80s and 90s like Clowes, Chester Brown, Doucet. It’s hard to distill whose influences are strongest because there are so many cartoonists that I really enjoy. I’m sure I’m stealing as much as I can from everyone.

BYT: You do a lot of work that is artistically very reminisant of older comics from the Golden and Silver age as well as the Blaxploitation era of filmmaking. What attracts you to these ethstetic elements?

RUGG: I think in genre storytelling, especially pre-postmodern work, there was a certain technical proficiency that I respond to. And at the same time, there’s a certain amateur quality that makes it feel very real, like I could draw that, or that low-budget movie kind of looks like someone’s home movies. There’s something realistic and visceral in that aesthetic, like the veneer has been stripped away and we’re seeing a more honest, exposed work of art. Another thing I like is that lack of editorial control, in a lot of the low-budget films and old comics it feels like anything might happen. There’s a terrific sense of wonder and nervousness, an energy. One of the elements I like in blaxploitation movies is their mythology. They feel a little like superhero comics, and the roles are so clear of heroes fighting a huge, evil entity. They also crackle with a terrific energy and enthusiasm. I’m kind of a deadbeat, personality-wise, but I love to see people filled with genuine enthusiasm. It’s such a nice contrast to the usual cynicism around me.

BYT: Street Angel is one of those comics that I look at and think… I wish I had thought of that first. How did you and Brian Maruca manage to work so many different story elements and styles into one series and have them still flow together as a whole?

RUGG: I don’t know, we fought about every detail, so maybe just a lot of editing?

BYT: The short horror Street Angel story in Superior Showcase #3 is great and feels like you and Brian Maruca never took a break from the characters. Is this the beginning of new Street Angel stories?

RUGG: I don’t know. Brian and I have a volume 2 of Street Angel planned out. And it’s something I really, really want to do because I think it can be way better than the first volume and still be fresh and enjoyable and unexpected. When we stopped doing the book, it took a while before we came up with ideas that seemed to be new to the character. Finally, in the last year, we’ve put a concept together that will really challenge us as creators as well as the readers (hopefully). But it’s going to take a lot of work and time, and I’m not sure where to find that time.

BYT: I like how the 5th issue of Street Angel was basically a pilot episode for Afrodisiac, who you have since produced a bunch of short stories for. Why did you and Brian Maruca decide to introduce the character within Street Angel? What were the main characters that you are referencing?

RUGG: That character grew out of that story. When we started writing that story, we had no plans to create Afrodisiac or to use that issue as some debut for a new character. But as we wrote and cut things out, and developed the character more, it just started to expand. I don’t know who the main characters we reference are. If anything, it’s more of a reference to the blaxploitation films of the 70s as a whole, than any one character. Those films have such an atmosphere of cool and tough and defiance and humor. At some point we discovered Chester Himes, a great African-American writer who wrote a series of detective novels set in Harlem. I’m not sure you’d see his influence directly, but his work is something we’ve looked at. Some of the movies I like from that era are Coffy, the Mack, Human Tornado, Superfly, Truck Turner, Willie Dynamite. The weird Marvel books of the 70s like Brother Voodoo, Son of Satan, ROM, and Masters of Kung Fu are kind of influential too. I like that era of Marvel where they began to expand and Stan Lee couldn’t manage everything any more and fans were entering the field. For a few years, it seemed like no one was paying attention and things just went crazy. It’s that sense again, that anything might happen. No one was following any rules. A lot of those comics suck to read, but the best thing ever is when someone loves a particular story from that era and tells you about it - why it’s great, what happens in the story, etc. They’re descriptions are always better than the actual story (except Captain America 144, it lives up to the hype), but it’s that enthusiasm for some bizarre story or character.

BYT: Are there any plans on collecting together all of the Afrodisiac shorts into one book?

RUGG: Eventually we plan to do that. We’re probably 100 or so pages away from that goal though. So we’ll see. We don’t have a publisher for it yet.

BYT: I was drawn to Plain Janes because of your art and found that it really complimented the story Cecil Castellucci wrote. How did you get involved in the project?

RUGG: Shelly Bond, the editor of the Minx line, and I had talked about working together. So she had my artwork on file. Once Cecil began working on the PLAIN Janes, they looked at a few artists, and decided to contact me. I read Cecil’s first novel and the Janes proposal and decided to try it.

BYT: With the demise of DC Comic’s Minx line are you interested in perusing more Young Adult comics work?

RUGG: I’m not actively pursuing it at this time. But I’m not opposed to doing more Young Adult work.

BYT: What comics are you enjoying lately?

RUGG: Let’s see, the last comics I purchased were Steve Ditko’s Shade the Changing Man, a few Mexican Historietas, the new Love and Rockets, the Rory Hayes collection, and an old Malibu collection of comics that appeared in pulps. I’ve been looking at Eightball back issues a lot recently, Kirby’s 2001 series, and a collection of photocopied Ogden Whitney romance comics that my friend Frank Santoro gave me.

BYT: Besides comics what are you really digging right now?

RUGG: Exploitation movie trailers.

BYT: Are you doing comics full time now or do you still maintain a day job?

RUGG: I quit my day job about a year and a half ago. But at the moment most of my time is spent doing storyboards for a video game company. I do comics and freelance illustration. I haven’t really gotten into a routine yet, and I’m not sure I ever will with this type of work. Sorry if that doesn’t answer your question very well.

BYT: What is your dream project?

RUGG: I want to do a quickly produced one-man anthology series, in the vein of Eightball but more low-budget, where I draw it relatively quickly and it’s mostly genre stories.

BYT: What are some of your upcoming projects or comics that will be coming out soon?

RUGG: Janes in Love just came out. After that, I’m not sure. I’m working on an Afrodisiac monster story but that won’t be out until next year. I have a story in the Marvel indie anthology, also due some time next year. That’s about it at the moment.

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You can see more of Jim Rugg’s art and find out what he’s up to at his website. Also, remember Jim will only be at SPX on Saturday, so if are like me, jonesing for a copy of Afrodisiac #1 make sure you get over to Rockville Saturday, Oct. 4th and visit him at the Adhouse tables W36 and W37.