ARTIST AT WORK: DEAN HASPIEL

This is the first installment of Artist at Work, something I'm hoping will be a semi-regular feature here at Hero Complex. Essentially, this will be a conversation with a comics artist about the craft and his or her process. I'm very happy to say we're launching this with New York illustrator Dean Haspiel, who has done exceptional work in recent years on projects such as "The Alcoholic" with Jonathan Ames and "The Quitter" with Harvey Pekar.

In October, Dean Haspiel will be one of 18 creators featured in the hardcover collection "The Act-I-Vate Primer," which brings to the printed page the inspired spirit of Act-I-Vate Comix, the routinely outstanding Web-comics collective. Haspiel's contribution is a story with his signature character, Billy Dogma, who this time around is reeling from a broken heart. It was a challenging and special story for Haspiel to put together but not a pleasant one.  Last December, Haspiel's girlfriend of seven years boarded a flight to spend the holidays in her native England and ended up reuniting with an old flame. As you might guess, the pain of all that is splattered on the page in this new Billy Dogma tale. Here's the title panel, which was started in blue pencil on two-ply Bristol board, then inked with Micron pens and brush pen.  

 "All cartooning is a reduction of sorts," said Haspiel, who plans his layouts with thumbnail sketches that are no bigger than 2 or 3 inches across. "If you can understand what's happening in a panel that small, it will totally make sense when it's bigger." His artistic compass points include Jack Kirby, Alex Toth and Will Eisner, and he said, as his career moves forward, his quest for images that are simple (as in elemental, not easy) and pages that have that irresistible rhythm of storytelling achieved by, say, Eisner or Harvey Kurtzman. He finds himself less and less concerned about fashion and pulled toward graceful narrative. "I know it sounds funny, but if you look at old Archie comics, there's a playfulness there and and an understanding in the way the story is presented. It's pretty amazing what are in some of those six- and eight-page stories." Here's the fully inked version of the picture above...

Haspiel has done semi-autobiographical work and reportage pieces in which he himself is the clear voice and visage (such as "Snow Dope," for the New York Times Opinion section, earlier this year) but in Billy Dogma, his square-jawed hard-luck protaganist, he finds he can get to more elemental truths. The guy looks a bit like Lil' Abner crossed with Kirby's Thor, but his creator sees him as something closer to a hulked-out version of himself.  "He's Dean Haspiel to the second power, with a little 2 over the 'L,'" Haspiel said with a chuckle. "There's a sort of truth you get to in the real fantasy pieces. Hey, I've cried at the All-Star Superman stories ... and with an avatar, you have the advantage of 20-20 hindsight and you don't have that accountability to some semblence of the facts, which sometimes get in the way of the truth."

Here in the finished product, Haspiel has used a digital brush treatment in Photoshop that has "a slight crayon pull to it" that he designed to recall some of the "cool, dry-brush effects" he has achieved on watercolor paper in the past. Also, he said, "I like the crayon feel because I think of these as children's stories for the adults in us." This opening shot in the story did not come easy to Haspiel. "I really did struggle with it, as much on an emotional level as in the actual art you see. After I got this one down, the rest of the story was something I could have fun with. It was like vomiting, it can make you feel a lot better afterward."

Haspiel and IDW Publishing have high hopes for "The Act-I-Vate Primer," and they are watching comics-shop orders right now with the expected mix of excitement and anxiety. "Please," Haspiel said, "spread the word!" There was a nice piece about the project by Shaun Manning over at Comic Book Resources, and there seems to be interest ramping up in the hardcover collection. "Good thing," Haspiel said, "It'd be nice if something good came out of the pain I went through at the beginning of the year."

-- Geoff Boucher

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Act-I-Vate, a dynamic force in shaping world of web-comics

"The Alcoholic" is a scabby, subversive masterpiece

"Ex Machina," a graphic novel wired for a wide audience

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"Unwritten," a dark reading of Harry Potter 

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For the past three years, I've gone to Chapman University in Orange, Calif., to speak with students about feature writing, journalism and the art of the interview. One of the students this year took my advice about persistence and followed up on my offer to seniors about writing something for this blog. She did more than that, too -- she delivered a wonderful piece about an online comics series I've been admiring for months. Check out Beth Hartnett's article below and keep an eye out for her name, something tells me she will be writing a lot in the months and years to come. -- G.B.  

  Dead rats and voodoo threats replace the potted plant or newcomer's gift basket at a Brooklyn apartment complex. A little old lady, dressed like Strawberry Shortcake, finds solace with her dolls and cats, and red plastic furniture. Sinister scents and a nervous neighbor make one man wonder what might really be happening on the other side of his shared wall.

These are all snatches of private lives being lived nearby but always at a distance, witnessed through open curtains or over backyard fences. They are also the riveting real-life material documented in an online comic-book project called “Next-Door Neighbor.”

“These are like hallmark cards. They keep us connected,” said Dean Haspiel, editor of the project at SMITH magazine. “We are celebrating humanity, from the kid next door to the raging alcoholic upstairs with the night terrors.”

The 42-year-old Haspiel is an artist of growing acclaim after his comics collaborations with Harvey Pekar ("The Quitter," "American Splendor"), Michael Chabon ("The Escapist") and Jonathan Ames ("The Alcoholic") and many of his most riveting panels have been capturing sad or seedy moments of real lives in ink images. That informs the sensibility of "Neighbor," which is led by Haspiel and SMITH co-founder Larry Smith, whose website previously hosted the landmark web-comics "A.D.:New Orleans After the Deluge" and "Shooting War."

"Neighbor" launched last year and, with the posting of Tara Seibel's "The Vestibule" on May 20, there have been 29 stories, each by a different creator or creative team. It’s comics meets Hitchcock, the grotesque glossed over with a little touch of fantasy and realism; they vary wildly in tone, texture and illustrative style, but they also feel as linked as the numbered doors that share an apartment building hallway.

“They are all different, yet all connected,” Smith said. “They are all personal idiosyncratic experiences. Whether you live in an apartment or a mansion, there is always that neighbor that creeps you out. Neighbors have been an object of fascination, speculation and occasional voyeurism for storytellers ranging from Jane Austen to Alfred Hitchcock.”

"Neighbor" came about after Haspiel noted the resurgence of the comics anthology as a template for storytelling. He began searching for a linking concept that would inspire more than restrict his contributors.

“I have had a bunch of ideas in my mind," he said, "and I wanted to come up with something that would get people talking."

It was on the Internet that the notion of well-told neighbor stories seized his imagination. The conceit was an instant winner with Smith, whose online magazine launched in January 2006. SMITH Magazine is a site that allows its contributors, both amateur and professional, to post their stories, writing projects and other creative media.

“We are a personal storytelling site," said Smith, who added that he gave the go-ahead on "Neighbor" within five minutes of hearing the idea. "As long as it is personal and passionate, there is no one way to write a story."

The series began with “Next Door Neighborless: A True Story,” a creation of novelist Ames and Nick Bertozzi, about a man’s paranoia regarding his lack of neighbors -- at least the human variety.

The sweaty-palm angst of Ames and Bertozzi may feel like a mash-up of "Barton Fink" and Kafka, but "I Heart NY?" by Nicole Kenney lives on a far sunnier street, which is no surprise considering the winking whimsy of the Atlanta native's past work, such as “Boys in my Life Thus Far,” published in Italy’s Fab Magazine.

But even in her upbeat artwork there's a yearning to get past the impersonal: Kenney's installment shows teeming life in little boxes, tenants of an apartment building living alone and apart despite the shared walls between them.

“I wanted to write about a period of my life that I knew other people could relate to,” said Kenney. “There are these lonely people that want to connect, but have trouble connecting.” 

Another contributor was Joan Reilly,  one of Haspiel’s colleagues at Deep Six Studios.  Known for her contributions to the indie comic collective “Hi-Horse,” Reilly’s works often present themes dealing with relationships, city life and absurdity, which plays well into the "Neighbor" approach; her installment, “Hank and Barbara,” tells the story of Reilly and her innocent friendship with Cass in a not-so-innocent neighborhood.

The story climaxes when Cass mysteriously leaves without saying goodbye.

“It was a simple idea that people can latch onto," said Reilly. “She was my secret friend.”

In addition to the professionals, SMITH Magazine launched a contest inviting fans to submit their neighborhood narratives. “Night of the Black Chrysanthemums,” the 28th installment premiered on the site on May 6, 2009, by contest winner Michele Carlo and illustrated by Rick Parker.

That 28th installment was the last under the supervision of Haspiel but the series continues beyond his tour of duty. There are also advancing talks about a print-edition collection of the series, which would fit the trajectory of "Shooting War" and "A.D." as online ventures that eventually made it to the bookshelf in handsome bound volumes.   

Smith said that would be a secondary success to the first achievement of "Next Door Neighbor": "That we found a way to take something so 'top-down' and bring in our readers, that is SMITH's mission manifesting itself perfectly -- professional mashing up with the amateur to deliver intimate, addictive, personal storytelling.”

-- Beth Hartnett

RECENT AND RELATED

"The Alcoholic" is a scabby, subversive masterpiece

Act-I-Vate is making dynamic online comics

"Ex Machina" is the perfectly wired graphic novel

Paul Pope is a busy man

 "Unwritten," a dark reading of Harry Potter 

"Fables," a storybook ending on TV?

Ed Brubaker goes "Incognito" with masked-man noir

Neil Gaiman dreams of Sandman as cinema

All images courtesy of Smithmag.net, except for "The Alcoholic," from Vertigo/DC

The Sunday Review:         "The Alcoholic"

by Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel (Vertigo Comics, hardcover, $19.99)

On Sale Sept. 24.

It was a grim weekend here in Los Angeles. There was a horrific train wreck on Friday afternoon and that same night the brilliant novelist David Foster Wallace was found dead at his home in Claremont with a noose around his neck. The self-inflicted death of any gifted writer starts your mind searching; the natural impulse is to scrutinize their body of work, which trailed behind their lives like the tail of a kite. All of this was circling in my brain this morning when I picked up “The Alcoholic,” the wrenching (and, frequently, the retching) graphic novel written by novelist Jonathan Ames, whose own besotted life inspired the contours of this tale. The book is brilliantly executed with a boldly scabby story that is both demoralizing and relevatory and, amazingly, deeply funny at times. "The Alcoholic" gives us a tortured soul who is bottled up in more ways than one, but that humor and a truly wicked honesty keep the pages turning.

The artwork here is by Dean Haspiel, who put pictures to the words of Harvey Pekar in the “The Quitter,” a similarly paced (and titled) comic-as-confession that was put together with an outsider spirit and a bitterly adept eye for human examination. “The Quitter” was good, but “The Alcoholic” is sublime because it is hilarious and bawdy and deeply distressing.  Ames is a member of the walking wounded of this addiction age and every bar is next battlefield; “The Alcoholic” is so scary and so funny because it’s written with the detached voice of a war correspondent who is so busy taking vivid notes that he doesn’t have the sense to run for his life.