What scares frightmaster cartoonist Richard Sala? Well, judging by his work, normalcy. In tracking Sala's career from doing work for the pioneering underground comic Raw in the '80s and his Invisible Hands cartoon for MTV's Liquid Television in the '90s to his current Evil Eye line of graphic novels and his Ignatz series, Delphine, the one constant is his love of the surreal, the absurd, the strange.
The Grave Robber's Daughter, his latest graphic novel, proves no different; the story of a girl who stumbles across a town overrun by evil clowns, it mixes Sala's trademark macabre humor with brutal violence, using the genre of horror, as Sala discusses below, as a way to examine the nature of cruelty and violence.
PW Comics Week: What monster or horror stories have influenced you as a storyteller?
Richard Sala: I grew up with a real fondness for all the old-time classic horror movies—Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolfman, The Invisible Man and so on. I think that got me hooked on viewing the world as a place of mystery and danger, all dark forests and winding alleys and evil old houses. Then, growing older—and being a serious reader—I found inspiration in everything from Grimm's Fairy Tales to Kafka. And from early on I really responded to black humor—I had all those Charles Addams cartoon collections like Nightcrawlers and Monster Rally—those were a huge influence on me.
PWCW: Why the switch from publishing Evil Eye as a comic book periodical to publishing it as a series of graphic novels?
RS: I'm actually fairly prolific (when I put my mind to it, that is!), so it wasn't a huge leap to go from producing a few 32-page comic books a year to producing a single 96-page graphic novel instead. And this way my publisher and I can sell my books in bookstores and on Amazon—which we couldn't do with the comic book series. I enjoyed the process of serializing stories in my comic book, Evil Eye, but by changing the format to graphic novels, my work has become much more readily available to readers all over the world.
PWCW: How has that switch been for you so far? Are sales better? Is it more freeing?
RS: I don't think I've experienced the change as earth-shattering or anything. I have a vague, almost subliminal sense that I'm getting a bit more exposure and a bit more of a response each time I release a new book—and certainly that can be gratifying. But ultimately I don't have any real control over who decides to buy (or not buy) my books. I just make them as good as I can and send them out into the world and hope for the best. Certainly having a presence online is important these ,days and I'm sure I've benefited from that.
PWCW: What was your inspiration for The Grave Robber's Daughter? You mentioned in an interview at comicsreporter.com that the political climate had something to do with it.
RS: I think I was feeling pessimistic and kind of miserable while I was writing it—a combination of personal reasons and probably watching too much cable news. I had a moment where I kind of went off the deep end from watching these cable news shows—everyone seems so deluded and unreasonable. They either seem hypnotized or like they want to hypnotize you! I had this moment where I lost faith that anything was ever going to get any better, that there was no way out and the country was doomed. So I suppose one may find a bit of that in the story, if one were looking for it. But there certainly isn't any big intentional message about cable news. I was actually thinking more about how hopeless it is to be trapped in a cycle of violence—how cruelty and violence just lead to more cruelty and violence and that those who are victimized will victimize others, and it never ends and can never be stopped. And that seemed like it might be a good theme for a horror story.
PWCW: How much plotting/writing do you do before sitting down to actually tell the story?
RS: I write an outline and then a rough script first. Then I tighten it up and begin working on the art. At that point, I may follow the script, or I may go off in a totally new direction. I like to surprise myself and keep the storytelling process fresh. I figure if I'm bored while I'm drawing it, chances are the reader might be bored reading it, so I allow myself to stay open to inspiration and just throw out the script if I get a better idea while I'm doing the art. If I haven't seen something coming, if something takes me by surprise, maybe it will surprise the reader, too.
PWCW: What is your goal in retelling the Snow White story in your Ignatz series, Delphine? What are you hoping to add to that mythos?
RS: I'm not retelling it in any strict sense of the word. I'm not even sure if I'm "reimagining" it—which is what you always hear people are doing these days. Actually, what I thought might be interesting was if I told the story from the point of view of the "prince," who, in this version, is a modern-day traveler, searching for someone he knew from school. They hadn't known each other long, but he was in love with her. She had to go away to take care of her sick father and deal with her stepmother, who she didn't get along with. But she never returns. She disappears, and after he's wrestled with the idea that perhaps she's dumped him and that's why she didn't come back, he decides to find out for sure and goes off to look for her in this isolated little town surrounded by a gigantic dark forest. There will be elements of the classic story—not the sort of saccharine versions, but the original Grimm's story. There will be elements of horror and fantasy and madness—and, yes, there are absolutely going to be mirrors and apples and "dwarfs."
PWCW: How do you think your art style has evolved since your days at Raw?
RS: It's hard for me to judge the progress (or lack of it) in my own work. Naturally, one hopes that it has grown and improved over time. I am more at ease with the formal aspects of comics and the language of comics than I was at the beginning. I had come out of art school with a degree in painting and a notion that I was an expressionist, so I wasn't taking all the "rules" of comics too seriously at first. But over time, if you want to seriously work in the medium, you begin to learn that many of those rules exist for a reason—to better communicate with the reader and get your ideas across in a clearer manner. So I've learned to rein in my more freewheeling tendencies a bit if they threaten to undermine the story.
PWCW: Why do you think you like using these headstrong young female leads like Judy Drood in The Grave Robber's Daughter and Peculia in your last graphic novel, Peculia and the Groon Grove Vampires?
RS: Actually, the majority of women I've known in my life have been pretty headstrong and independent-minded and smart. I've never actually known any playboy bunnies or anything. So I'm kind of just writing what I know, characterwise, that is. Generally speaking, it's men who are very often the instigators of trouble and dangerous situations. With women characters—you put them into these situations, and they have to react, which can create interesting conflicts. They have to figure out what to do when they find themselves in one of these horrible situations, and that's a lot more interesting to write than if it was a guy who is expected to just shoot his way out.
PWCW: What do you have planned for the next Evil Eye installment?
RS: I'm one of those annoying people who doesn't like to discuss any future project until it's pretty far along, so I must keep mum on the next Evil Eye novel for now. But I can say that Delphine 2 is finished and should be out this spring. There will be six issues of Delphine in all, published simultaneously in the U.S. and Europe. I've got a few other things brewing, too. I've been in a sort of "development hell" with another mainstream book publisher, but there may finally be a light at the end of the tunnel there. And I may do another collection of rare and out-of-print stories if there seems to be any interest at all in that. It would be along the lines of my earlier collection Maniac Killer Strikes Again! but would include color work, as well. For now, it's just a matter of finding the time to put it together. I have a pretty full schedule these days—fortunately!
