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Interview:
Fly
Interview with Fly
By Frank Reynoso
Published: 2007-07-20
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Fly’s distinctive style and message came to my attention some years
ago on a flyer for a political event at ABC No Rio. Her actions and works speak volumes of the
enigmatic person: a consistent presence in New York City radical
circles, a member of the World War 3 Illustrated collective (founded
by Seth Tobocman and Peter Kuper), and an adamant supporter and
teacher of DIY zines and comics. From the cover of the first issue of
$pread, a magazine by and for sex workers, and PEOPS, her
zine-turned-book by Soft Skull, which chronicles the lives of many
downtown Manhattan residents, artists and activists, Fly hardly shies
away from the controversial and the commonplace. The prolific
cartoonist and illustrator took some time out to talk about the
laborious task of making zines, her artistic growth inspired years ago
by Sue Coe’s powerful work and Fiona Smyth’s techniques, and the
transformation of the Lower East Side in Manhattan.
Frank Reynoso: If you weren’t doing comics or
cartooning, what would you be doing?
FLY: Well I’m actually already doing all the things I
would be doing if I wasn’t doing comics and cartooning, which is
doing a lot of finishing work on my apartment — a Lower East Side
Home(in)Stead — and doing a lot of networking stuff and teaching the
DIY comix and zine-making class at MoCCA. And I really like physical
activity so I just like to get out and go for long hikes. I used to
skate a lot around the city until I broke my back skating in 1997.
That put a little glitch in my skating routine. (laughing) I actually
managed to bounce back from that but I’ve had several mishaps
since then that I won’t get into detail but I keep getting
glitches in the plan. But I would definitely spend a LOT of time
skating if I could. I think I would like to do that. Skating and maybe
some surfing! I haven’t surfed in a while so maybe I would do
that.
FR: You can surf on the New Jersey shore, South Jersey or
something like that.
“It was a happy surprise that
comics could actually be an art form and that they can be very
political and have this amazing message.”
— Fly
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FLY: I don’t want to say how long it’s been
since I last surfed but it’s been a very, very long time and its
not like a was a Surfer. I used to do a lot of extreme sports like
running marathons, snow skiing, water skiing and I jumped out of a
plane once and I got a bronze medal at the world rowing championships
in 1984. But to surf again would really be fun. If I didn’t have
to spend the time doing comics… skating and surfing. Yeah. That sounds
good. (laughing)
FR: What is the biggest surprise you’ve had in
comics?
FLY: Well it depends, I think, on what points you’re
talking about. Maybe the biggest surprise when I first started doing
comics.
(Frank nods.)
FLY: The biggest surprise when I first started doing comics
was how insanely involved it was to actually come up with a story,
research the story, do sketches of the story, design the pages, do
pencil sketches and then do final pencil sketches and then figure out
how to do the inking and then figure out how to put all that together
and then figure out how to copy it or produce it somehow and then
figure out how to give out to people or sell it. If you look at the
whole picture, I think, my biggest surprise was how intensely
involved, how much work it took, how it was so back-breaking trying to
work on this stuff and how I was never going to sleep again in my
life. (laughing)
FR: (laughing) I’m sure that can go for all of us here.
FLY: Yeah. I think other surprises might have come along as
I’ve gotten more deeply involved but that would stand out at the
very beginning of doing comics. Exactly how involved it was but also
maybe another thing I could say was I was kind of surprised at the
potential of comics because I grew up more with mainstream comics.
When I was very young it was Casper (the Friendly Ghost) and
Archie and all that stuff. And then it was the X-Men and
Daredevil and then it was only later when I was out of high
school that I realized that comics could be an art form. And that was
also a little surprising to me. I mean it was a happy surprise that
comics could actually be an art form and that they can be very
political and have this amazing message. That was like when I got my
early politics was… I was really into the punk scene as a very young
teenager but I didn’t fully realize about the potential of
comics being political until seeing Raw Magazine — not that
that’s political — but the one artist that really struck me was
Sue Coe and she was definitely political. She really affected me and
my whole outlook. When I saw her work I realized that “oh, you
can do fine artwork and it can be comics and it can have a really
intense message that actually means something and is giving education
to people in a positive way.” So that was a revelation.
(laughing) I don’t know. I guess you can say surprise but it was
more of a revelation. It was a really cool kind of thing for me to
see. Oh, I also totally loved Gary Panter’s comics! Jimbo! So
hilarious!
“I guess getting more respect for
yourself is something that pushes people to get better material. You
have more respect for the work that you’re producing so you want
it to last longer.”
—Fly
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FR: What would be your dream collaboration? Living or dead.
FLY: Hmmm…. That’s a really hard one because
there are so many people that I’d love to collaborate
with… and lately I have been collaborating more… But
I’m such a control freak. I think my dream collaboration would
probably be not with another visual artist but with a writer.
There’s so many writers that I really love so it’s hard
to… I know: Kathy Acker. She died a while ago but I would love
to have been able to work with her on a comic. (excited) Oh man, yeah.
Kathy Acker. Definitely Kathy Acker. I first read her stuff in the 80s
when my life was really chaotic and transient. I felt like the way she
wrote was like the way I was thinking; it was like the voices in my
head mixed with what was happening in the moment mixed with what
already happened. It was like deconstruction or something… sorry
I’m not much of a literary critic. Her writing to me was just
really authentic — she wasn’t afraid to just put everything out
there. I could feel it in my bones and the thing about it was that
when ever I read any of her stuff I would get so inspired that I would
end up doing a lot of writing and drawing myself and I would also have
the craziest dreams — I used to do a lot of comics based on
dreams too. I just think I could have done some amazing comics in
collaboration with Kathy Acker! Hmmm maybe I should try to do a piece
on her.
FR: That’d be intense. So what art supplies do you use
to make comics? Supplies and techniques… talk us from the
beginning of the cartoon to the end.
FLY: Well it’s gotten a lot more complicated for me.
When I first started doing comics I would draw stuff in my sketchbook
and use a pen to ink it and I always hated how the line was a bit
fuzzy. But I was very influenced by hanging out with this amazing
Canadian artist named Fiona Smyth and she was using a brush to ink her
comics. She had a comic in the 80s called Nocturnal Emissions
published by Drawn & Quarterly. And I thought “Ok, I’m
going to try a brush.” So I tried a brush and really loved it
because it’s different from a pen in the way that you get a
really fluid stroke and it’s a clean line! Without the fuzzies!
It’s more painterly in a way than using a pen. [With a pen]
you’re more restricted in your movement well at least for me.
And then I started doing my final artwork on more illustration board.
Not so much illustration board but more like smooth press, acid free
Bristol board so it’s a little thicker. It was looking a lot
better on the actual board than on paper. Also it’s a lot more
durable that way so if you’re doing a lot of ink work and
you’re working on paper it can start to disintegrate so you have
a lot more life with the thicker paper. And I started doing that after
I started doing work with the World War 3 [Illustrated] people. I saw
them bringing in their stuff to be printed or pasted up and their
stuff was always on really nice paper. (laughing) At the time I was
this crusty squatter and didn’t really have nice materials so I
was doing everything in these gnarly old sketchbooks and then having
to try copy it out of them. I looked at their stuff and I just thought
“wow. I gotta get more professional or something.” I
specifically remember that Eric Drooker’s originals looked
really good!
FR: These are real artists.
FLY: Yeah, they’re real artists and I’m this
crusty person and they’re not going to respect me. Also I wanted
to do that because I felt like it would give a longer life to my
artwork. On paper it disintegrates faster or it doesn’t hold up
as well — the ink fades. I guess getting more respect for
yourself is something that pushes people to get better material. You
have more respect for the work that you’re producing so you want
it to last longer. You want it to be nice. Now the way that I do my
comics is I’ll do really rough sketches on paper and then
I’ll do better sketches on paper as I am working out the page
design and then I will transfer the final pencils using a light-box or
using my window. I’ll transfer that onto Bristol board, which is
very smooth and then I’ll use a brush and ink to do my final
piece. Then I’ll usually scan that and then I’ll tweak it
in Photoshop. Maybe add some grayscale or color and fix up all the
rough edges. I love Photoshop. I have a Wacom tablet, which you plug
into your computer and there is a special pen that goes with it.
It’s like drawing but it’s on a little tablet and I love
this thing. I’ve had it for over ten years.
FR: Really?
FLY: Yeah. And to me it’s so essential. I don’t
know what I’d do without it at this point. Now when I’m
inking, I know I can scan it and fix all the glitches so I’m not
so nervous when I’m inking. I used to get so nervous sometimes
when I was inking really tricky places that my hand would shake so
hard. I would have these little spasms because I was like “oh man,
I’m gonna fuck it up!” and thinking that I wouldn’t be
able to fix it. And now I’m so relaxed when I’m inking
that I do a much better job inking. (laughing) I’m faster and
more confident just because I know it can be fixed so I actually make
less mistakes now than when I was trying to be careful. (lauhing)
Which is kind of cool.
FR: What she makes of the transformation of the Lower East Side?
FLY: That’s a big question. The LES has been
transforming for so long! It’s sort of the nature of the place.
People have been fighting [the latest wave of gentrification] since
way before I arrived here in the late 80s. There was of course the
real estate boom of the 80s that sort of went bust. Anyway, when I got
here it was still pretty rundown and crazy in good ways and bad ways.
I have to say that I do not miss the drug dealers or the people
shooting up on the street but I do miss all the insanely talented
artists and performers and just general characters that used to
populate the area and I also think it is very unfair that so many
people who were born in the Lower East Side now cannot afford to live
here. It used to feel a bit like a small town around here but with all
the options of a big city. Now if I am out in the evening, especially
on the weekend, I am horrified walking along the sidewalks —
even on avenue C! — to see the multitudes of loud drunken idiots
making so much noise and making a big mess. I don’t know what
the hell they are doing but its just so boring! I think a big problem
with the Lower East Side is that it used to be a neighborhood and it
had real character — and you can still find that here but it is
seriously threatened by the dorm mentality of some idiot developers
and the fancy restaurants and hair salons that no one living here can
afford to go to. With the whole clean-up of the area of course it
became safer and so suddenly since it’s considered so “edgey and hip”
everybody wants to live here and the rents have become ridiculous. So
what happens in the long run is that the real neighborhood gets
displaced because people can’t afford to live here and they are
slowly being replaced by a very transient population, NYU students and
other high priced renters who are not interested in working on a
connection to the real soul and history of the place. The LES is just
a stepping stone for them, a place to sleep and to use as a background
for pictures — oh — I could rant for hours about this. I
know I am generalizing but hopefully you get the idea. There are some
books I could recommend for your further edification like the recently
published Resistance, edited by Clayton Patterson and published by
Seven Stories
FR: Where in New York do you look for the kind of
iconoclastic rebels who used to populate the neighborhood?
FLY: Well, I don t really go out on a search for
“iconoclastic rebels.” Basically I do my work and I just
seem to get connected to amazing people. There are still some great
places in the LES for art and culture like ABC No Rio — www.abcnorio.org
— Bluestockings Books on Allen St — Bowery Poetry Club
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www.bowerypoetry.com
— St. Marks Bookshop 31 third
avenue — Sixth Street Community Center — The Lower East
Side Girls Club —
www.girlsclub.org
— the Times Up Space on Houston close to Lafayette (don’t
forget Critical Mass! Last Friday of every month! Just google Critical
Mass NYC) — the MoCCA www.moccany.org. Life is so virtual these days.
There are a lot of amazing groups that don’t have offices or
stable spaces to meet but they have websites like the Icarus Project
—
www.theicarusproject.net
and the Misled Youth Network
www.misled-youth.org
and www.freethe.net and www.punkmagazine.com and
then there are the Killer Banshees of Oakland, CA
www.killerbanshee.com Oh! Also Microcosm Publishing! You have to
check their website www.microcosmpublishing.com! I could list stuff
all night that inspires me!
FR: Where can folks find your comics and cartoons?
FLY: Well, that’s hard to say because I get published
in a lot of different publications. I do a monthly thing in
MAXIMUMROCKNROLL. There’s a zine that comes out called
Slug and Lettuce that comes out quarterly and I do comics in
that. And I do stuff for The Villager, which is a Lower East
Side, New York City publication that comes out weekly. As for my
comics probably the best thing to do is to email me at
fly@bway.net and just ask me because my comics can be found in
different places at different times. If you are in New York City then
you can find my stuff at BlueStockings Books (Allen St. at Stanton)
and St. Marks Bookshop (31 3rd Ave at E 9th St) and Jim Hanley’s
Universe (33rd St near 5th Ave) I just put out a new issue of Dog
Dayz, which is my illustrated novel in the works about these crazy
squatter punk kids in the Lower East Side 1993 and all their
shenanigans and travels. I am about to put out a new PEOPs zine and
maybe a new PEOPs book (collections of portraits and stories). I also
have a PEOPs Show DVD out (produced by Killer Banshee Studios in
Oakland CA — they are amazing!) and I will be working on a new
PEOPs Show DVD soon! I sell a lot of stuff through the mail. People
write to me from all over the world just because
MAXIMUMROCKNROLL and
Slug and Lettuce go all over the world and I have stuff in them in
every issue and I’m always writing “email me,”
“send for
comics.” So people are always contacting me from all over the world
about stuff. (laughing) So wherever you are, send me an email!
fly@bway.net or check out my
site: www.bway.net/~fly.
FR: Thank you so much, Fly.
FLY: Cool.
—CCdC— Images are often used without explicit permission in accordance with the "Fair Use" provision of US copyright law.
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