front page  ·  comicbook reviews  ·  interviews  ·  comics  ·  merchandise  ·  columns  ·  contact  ·  newsfeed: rss xml

Interview: Wes Abbott   Dogby Flat Out Rocks: An Interview with Wes Abbott By Adam White Published: 2006-09-19

I picked up Dogby Walks Alone on a whim, simply because I liked the cover and it sounded interesting. While I’ve covered many of Dogby’s merits in my review, I wanted to get to know the mind behind such a hilariously irreverent story. Dogby creator Wes Abbott graciously consented to an interview, so let’s just get right into it...

ADAM WHITE: What was your first job in comics? Tell us a little about what all it entailed.

WES ABBOTT: Around the time I was beginning college, I started working at a comic shop. It sounds like a simple thing, but it really exposed me to a lot of obscure (to me, at least) things I never would have looked at if I had just been a customer. Kitchen Sink was reprinting Will Eisner’s postwar Spirit stories at the time, and that was a major revelation for me.

Combined with the fact I was also making weekly trips to the Japanese bookstore to buy Young Magazine and Young Sunday, I felt like I was getting a pretty rounded education in comics.

Sometime around 1989 or ‘90, I got my first actual job in comics after I sent some manga-style art samples to Malibu Graphics. I guess they liked them, and they offered me a book called Shuriken.

When I look at my old Malibu stuff now, I want to stick my head through a wall to stop the pain.

I ended up penciling and inking a six issue miniseries and one special. When I look at that stuff now, I want to stick my head through a wall to stop the pain. It’s awful. What’s worse is that for the second half of the series I was shamelessly trying my hardest to imitate JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, which I was completely obsessed with at the time (still am). In my defense, I was still really young at the time. I went back to art school following that period, and hopefully I’ve improved some.

AW: Were you always interested in writing and drawing, or did it come about at a later time?

WA: I always loved drawing. I was really fortunate to have supportive parents and teachers as a kid. In my first grade class, my teacher used to photocopy dinosaurs I would draw, then hand them out to classmates to color. That kind of early validation shaped my life more than she’ll ever know (thank you, Ms. Merz!).

Another big thing from around the same time was that my dad, knowing I loved comics, used to bring home this excess paper from his work

I was really fortunate to have supportive parents and teachers as a kid.

which had six panels printed on it, like a grid layout common to a lot of American comics of the time. So I’d spend many Saturday mornings drawing my own comics onto these six-paneled pages.

Somewhere around the 5th grade, I really developed a love of creative writing. Strangely enough, it wasn’t until years later that I thought to combine those two loves into writing and drawing my own material.

And since I mentioned my first grade teacher, I better also mention my high school art teacher, Mr. Westmoreland, who managed to teach me everything I know, despite the fact that I thought I knew everything already. Luckily, he was smarter than I was.

AW: I see you were first published in Tokyopop’s Rising Stars of Manga — how did you get involved with that and were you pleased with the results?

WA: I was lettering a lot of American comics at the time,

If you are an aspiring writer or artist, you owe it to yourself to enter the Rising Stars competition.

and beginning a project with Claudio Sanchez from the band Coheed & Cambria, but I saw the first volume of The Rising Stars of Manga and I just really wanted to enter the next contest. It was an excuse to finally write and draw a story for myself.

When you’re doing work for other people, it never seems like there’s enough time in the day to do anything for yourself on top of everything else — so doing it as part of a contest provided the motivation I needed.

And I was very pleased with the results, since it led to what I’m doing now... I can’t recommend it enough: if you are an aspiring writer or artist, you owe it to yourself to enter the Rising Stars competition. It’s a great venue to get your work in front of a lot of people. You never know what will happen!

AW: As an artist/storyteller, has manga always been your preferred style or did you move towards it from something else?

WA: As a little kid, I loved superheroes. I couldn’t get enough. But by the time I was in junior high, I was seriously burning out. Everything was starting to seem the same. Then fate stepped in and I discovered Japanese comics. That saved me. There was so much variety, and I found characters who had concerns I could relate to — which at the time was girls.

I devoured everything I could get my mitts on; my two biggest early favorites would probably have been Matsumoto Izumi’s Kimagure Orange Road and Kamijo Atsushi’s To-y. Those two books in particular had a very big impact on me at the time, on how I drew and on what kind of stories I wanted to tell.

Now I’m in a place where I enjoy and can find inspiration in everything from all around the world.

AW: What is manga to you? It is obviously more than doe eyes and speed lines, so what elements are most important in making something "manga?"

WA: The number one most important aspect of manga in my opinion — more than any surface style elements — would have to be pacing. The pacing of the story in Japanese comics is done in such a way that it really magnifies the emotional connection with the reader. It’s one thing to read some character’s thoughts in a thought balloon, but Japanese comics are paced in a way that lets you really feel what the characters are feeling, even without words.

An example of that emotional connection for me would be the last chapter of Okada Yukio’s Refrein (I really recommend this comic).

When I read Okada Yukio’s Refrein it depressed me so badly I wanted to step into traffic.

I was teaching English in Japan at the time, and picked up the latest issue of Monthly Young Magazine while walking on my way to work. I read the story before my first class, and the thing depressed me so badly I wanted to step into traffic. I think I must have walked around all day with my mouth open, staring at the ground. People kept asking me what was wrong. It sounds completely crazy, but that’s the kind of emotional impact a good comic can have.

AW: What, if anything, inspired your creation of Dogby Walks Alone?

click to view full size

WA: The idea came after reading part of a proposed movie screenplay. It was a romantic comedy; well-constructed, but completely forgettable [Editor’s Note: Aren’t they all?]... very by-the-numbers in a way we’ve all seen a hundred times. All I could think about was that if I were writing a screenplay, I’d want to try to do something to make it stand out... some kind of incongruous combination... so that good or bad, at least people would notice it.

I was thinking about this on the drive home, and “murder mystery/theme park mascots” just popped in my head. By the time I got home, I had the basic outline already in my head, along with a couple of the signature images, like Dogby Shoryuken-ing a cat mascot, which made it into the Rising Stars entry.

I forget now if it was a couple days before or a couple days after, but I saw the first volume of The Rising Stars of Manga and decided to try my luck in the contest for Volume 2. Dogby seemed like a good fit to me.

AW: Given that Dogby is absolutely hilarious, do you have any background in comedy or was this something new to you?

WA: I’ve always thought I was okay in the funny department, and I guess I used it to get around the fact that I was a skinny, annoying little kid... but people’s mileage may vary. Probably developed more as a defense mechanism than anything else. But as far as a professional comedy background, other than using it to make a boss forget he was mad at me... not so much.

AW: I enjoyed how you were able to parody a variety of works and genres without being jokey or forced — how do you find the line between what works and what doesn’t when it comes to spoofing something in a scene?

WA: It’s kind of a cliche, but the book was completely written for myself. If I liked it, in it went. The only restriction I put on myself was that no reference or spoof could be vital to the story — meaning, the story had to be coherent even to someone who got none of the references. Beyond that, it’s mostly just whatever feels right to me. Of course, I may revise something from the original draft if it feels too much like it’s banging the reader over the head.

AW: Well, let me say that you got it absolutely right, so you should definitely trust your instincts.

Did Tokyopop approach you about doing Dogby as a graphic novel, or did you have to send Dogby in to smack some people around?

WA: I was very lucky in that response to the Rising Stars short story was really positive, which led to talks with my future editor, Luis, asking me what kind of book I’d like to do. And what I really wanted to do was tell the original full-length Dogby story as it had first come to me.

AW: I saw that Dogby will return in Dogby Stands Tall (which I cannot wait to read) — do you plan on Dogby being an ongoing series of OGNs or is there a finite number you have planned?

WA: Dogby was originally pitched to Tokyopop as a trilogy: Dogby Walks Alone, Dogby Walks Tall, and Dogby Walks Home. Each story stands on its own, but together there is a character arc for Dogby that continues through the books. I also have a story worked out for a fourth volume, if support for the series stays strong, but right now, all my energy is just completely focused on taking Dogby through the end of the original trilogy.

AW: What writers and artists inspire you as a creator?

WA: Sugimura Shinichi is a constant inspiration, especially Tokyo Puu.

Will Eisner did things in the mid-1940s that, as far as atmosphere and storytelling go, have not been surpassed, or even matched, by anyone...

I was really lucky to discover his work in the second chapter of his debut work, Samurider (the original series) in Young Magazine way back in the late 1980s, and it had a HUGE impact on me. More than any artist I had seen before or have seen since, he draws things the way they feel (I can’t explain it any better than that...).

Will Eisner is also way up there for me. He did things in the mid-1940s that, as far as atmosphere and storytelling go, have not been surpassed, or even matched, by anyone, really. Certainly not in American comics. He would often let events be told through sound effects or silent panels; closer in a way to manga than to other American comics of that period. He was so far ahead of his time, it was ridiculous. It’s really his post-war stuff, after getting out of the Army in 1945, that his work really makes a leap.

Italian artist Hugo Pratt rounds up my top three huge inspirations. I discovered his Corto Maltese character almost by accident, and even though the English translations had gone out of print by that point, I managed to get a couple of stores’ last copies. I re-read these books at least once a year, and I have a full set of Italian editions (including all the stories never translated here) in case I ever get around to learning the language.

AW: What do you think is currently great work in comics?

WA: “Currently” is hard to say for me, because I’m always reading a pretty equal mix of new stuff and older things I’ve just discovered. But for currently-running things, I'm enjoying Araki’s Steel Ball Run a lot; The Hernandez Bros.’ Love & Rockets is always the greatest thing I’ve read all month whenever it appears; and I think Morrison and Quitely’s All-Star Superman has to be the best mainstream superhero book currently being published. Also Beck, by Harold Sakuishi, who is another huge hero of mine.

AW: What manga can you recommend to the uninitiated?

WA: That’s really hard to say. Manga is so varied, it really depends on the taste of the individual... which is really the beauty of it. No matter what interests or hobbies you might have — from skating to gambling on horses at the racetrack, from horror movies to hospital dramas — there is something made just for you.

Out of the stuff that’s been translated into English and is currently in the process of being brought out here, my favorites would have to be JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure by Araki Hirohiko, Lupin III by Monkey Punch, and Beck by Harold Sakuishi.

AW: Do you have any projects (of your own or in existing universes) in the works? Are there any projects/series you want to work on, or creators you would like to collaborate with?

WA: Right now, Dogby is my main focus, but I always

I’d really love to do is a 200-300 page book featuring all the short stories I’ve written over the years and never had a chance to draw.

have a hundred ideas for new characters and stories playing through the back of my head. It can be distracting. I have to jot them down and file them for later. What I’d really love to do is a 200-300 page book featuring all the short stories I’ve written over the years and never had a chance to draw.

As for creators I’d like to work with: way too many to list... Obviously, I’m a huge fan of Japanese comics, and would love the opportunity to work (in any capacity) with my heroes, Sugimura Shinichi, Araki Hirohiko, or Kamijo Atsushi (although I don’t think he’s still working in comics), just to name a very few.

I’m also a fan of comics from Europe and the U.K. — I think I would have traded a finger for the chance to work with Hugo Pratt, another of my all-time heroes. I’d also love to do something with 2000 AD alumni Pat Mills, John Wagner, and Alan Grant. And I’ve lettered a couple comics by Alan Moore, but of course I’d really love the chance to draw one at some point.

AW: When can we hope to see Dogby Stands Tall?

WA: Unfortunately, it’s a ways off yet. We’re looking to have it in stores Fall of 2007. I’m putting a lot of work into Stands Tall to try to live up to (and hopefully exceed) expectations set by the first book. The plots of all three books were set when I pitched the series to Tokyopop, but I want to make sure the emotional impact is there for Dogby, especially with Snack Girl gone...

I also had to leave room in my schedule to continue promoting the first book. For example, anyone who sees this in time living in the Los Angeles area, come stop by the 5th Annual West Hollywood Book Fair on Sunday, September 17!! Myself and a few other Tokyopop creators will be doing a panel from 12:15-1:15pm (how’s that for shameless?). Things like that do take time away from the drawing board, but it’s great meeting people and I think it’s important getting feedback in person, not to mention raising awareness for the book.

On that note, I’d like to say thank you to all the people I’ve met and talked to at the various shows, and to everyone who has read and enjoyed Dogby.

While I’m at it, I’ll thank all the people who may read Dogby in the future... I am living a dream, and it is completely due to you people. Thanks...

* * * * *

And that means “you,” people, because if you haven’t read Dogby Walks Alone then you need to go buy it right now. Because if you don’t, Dogby is going to come to your door, suplex you, and give you the People’s Elbow. And you wouldn’t want that, trust me...