Stephen R. Bissette has been someone who has a collection of work that I have followed, mostly because of I was of the opinion that he was someone who was talented, but also, filled with informed opinions about the comic book industry. His artwork had a quality about that is odd, it can be beautiful, but it can also be uglier than anything you could imagine. It is kind of like life, his work has a great diversity about it that mirrors the mood involved in the setting he depicts. I wrote him to join the October Halloween group horror interview, and as a result our communications back and forth I became convinced that he needed greater presence in the comic book industry. This interview is about him, his work and the comic book industry.
Alex Ness: What are you? Writer Artist Creative Talent? How do you define yourself via career and talents?
SRB:I gave up defining myself as or by what I DO long ago -- a necessary part, really, of the process of
stepping away from comics. So, I'm a man and a parent and a husband who happens to write, read, draw, paint, and teach, among many other things. It all adds up to a life, and sometimes a living, and that's good enough for me.
Alex Ness: What creative people would serve as the influences to your work?
SRB:Other than many of my friends, I'd have to name Ray Harryhausen, Joe Kubert, Sam Glanzman, Mario Bava, Sergio Leone, Greg Irons, Nicolas Roeg -- artistic mentors all, and in the case of Joe, a real-life mentor -- and many more than I can name here. There were, of course, so many storytellers whose work shaped me and my work, from Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London and H.G. Wells (read at a tender age) to Ray Bradbury, H. P. Lovecraft and Richard Matheson and others. The comics influences are plentiful, including the touchstones of my generation of comic readers Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, but for me, personally, it was Kubert, Glanzman and Irons whose own work most directly informed and affected my own.
Alex Ness: What life influences have particularly influenced your work?
SRB:Well, being raised Catholic, certainly -- though I abandoned the church by my 13th birthday, it inevitably shaped me and my work. Other than that, growing up and living in Vermont, particularly my years in and around Duxbury... there's a lot of those years, which I spent in the woods quite a bit, informed TYRANT and much of my art.
Alex Ness: Your influence vis a vis geographic station in the world is an interesting one. Vermont and New Hampshire are relatively isolated from ongoing popular culture yet close enough to New York to be in touch with the popular culture stream. Do you see yourself as being able to swim in that stream while also having an outsiders perspective upon it?
SRB:More and more, I draw strength from my native state and prefer to focus locally. It was a stunning turn of events when James Sturm told me he was opening the Center for Cartoon Studies here in Vermont. More and more, New York and all that is peripheral and unimportant. “They” decided I was of no importance long ago; I’ve made my own way since, and am doing fine in Vermont, thanks very much.
Alex Ness: The Kubert School has produced some great artists, but the early classes in particular. How have you all done in terms of carrying out the Kubert legacy through your own work?
SRB: Interesting question. I could identify certain keystones, I reckon -- use of inset panels, an orientation toward page rather than panel as the unit of storytelling and design, a certain form of dramaturgy -- but I think those are more characteristic of our generation rather than "the Kubert legacy" per se. It's a difficult case to mount, really, as you're talking about my immediate classmates (like Rick Veitch, Tom Yeates, Ron Zalme, Rick Taylor, the late Cara Sherman-Tereno, etc.) as well as those who came afterwards (including John Totleben, Tim Truman, Jan Duursema, Tom Mandrake, Craig Boldman, Marc Vargas, Todd Smith, ad infinitum) -- a pretty diverse group of creative individuals, and hardly classifiable as a 'movement' with definable characteristics. I guess I'll leave this one for the historians to sort out, eh?
Alex Ness: The comic book medium was your first choice of medium?
SRB: No, actually, film was my first love. But in the mid-1960s, with only silent 8mm or silent Super8 as alternatives, I couldn't find a satisfactory inroad creatively there, so comics became my primary focus and, eventually, my preference as a storyteller and artist. Had I had in reach what film and video students do today, though, amid this digital media revolution, it most likely would have played out quite differently for me. I shot a lot of 8mm film, including some crude animation experiments, but it added up to very little, and required so much time, money, and mobilization of others (actors, etc.) that comics were infinitely more accessible. I needed time, focus, pen and paper; the rest was hard work and the acquisition of the necessary skills.
Alex Ness: Where did you begin your career in comics? Who published your first work?
SRB: I had early work -- illustrations, primarily -- in a few odd zines: Japanese Fantasy Film Journal, the Johnson State College newspaper The Basement Medicine, etc.ipt>
