“Who makes comics?” is a simple enough question, but with many variable answers. In general, though, people will answer with the names of writers, and writers of Marvel or DC publications. They are better known among casual readers and fans alike. I can guarantee you the number of people who picked up Nemesis in the shops and declared, “Oh cool, it’s the guy who did the art in Civil War” is in single figures. Steve McNiven is listed as the co-creator of Nemesis, in the same way that Bryan Hitch is for The Ultimates. Superheroes, comics’ main representative in popular culture, are just the most visible part of the fractal. Jonathan Cape Publishers, along with Fantagraphics and Self Made Hero, are putting out a lot of interesting, non-superhero work at the moment, where the art and the story are the work of one person. While sales are on the increase in general, new writers will still find their work shifting fewer units than a sub-par Batman comic. Then again, as Stewart Lee has shown with his stand-up, a small and loyal following will give you all the time, money and acclaim you need to keep going. It’s a smaller section of fans who would buy something purely for the artwork. The very nature of these one-person, literary graphic novels is different enough from mainstream comics to make the artwork alone a reason to buy. The ideal, obviously, is a perfect marriage of storytelling disciplines where the story is king. I feel, though, that the credit given for the final story is skewed in favour of writers. One of the main areas of snobbery surrounding comics as a whole is that, because it has pictures instead of words, it is somehow a lesser form than prose. This is essentially saying that the Mona Lisa would work better as a paragraph detailing the pose of a smug woman with no eyebrows. I don’t consider this hyperbole. Comic book art is still art. Drawings are another way of telling a story, and require a different talent from prose writing, not a lesser one. Is the prose of Stephanie Meyer better than the artwork of Jack Kirby automatically, because of its form? In cinema, the writer is considered important, but really it’s the director and the cast that people generally look out for. In comics, the artist is in control of nearly every comparable cinematic discipline other than writing the structure and dialogue that the tale hangs on. So says Bryan Talbot, anyway. Are artists not held in the same esteem as writers? That depends upon the writers and artists concerned – and the country they’re in. Writers such as Grant Morrison and Alan Moore may be regarded more highly than their artists in the American superhero genre, but in France, for example, artists like Moebius and Schuiten are valued far more than their writers. As they come in at the end of the process, do inkers get the credit they deserve? Probably not, though in superhero comics, most of them are simply doing perfunctory commercial work with no personal involvement. They’re just part of a production line. As the workload is so much greater for the artist, has your experience of payment been equal or skewed towards the writer or the artist? Not naming figures, but when you were starting out did you find things skewed in favour of the writer? Is this similar on publications with a larger readership? What do you see the role of the artist as in terms of storytelling? The artists obviously have to do all the visual storytelling. They are the equivalent of the actors, cameraman, costume designer, lighting technician, and so forth in a film. In the “Marvel style” of writing, they even have to break the story up into individual panels and, sometimes, pages. To a large extent they control the pacing and atmosphere, not to mention the surface quality. Of course. As you’ve been drawing from your own scripts for a while now, do you ever find yourself adding in things while making the artwork that you hadn’t thought of while writing? Having performed both roles, would you say that people respond more to the writing than to the art? I’d say that they respond to the story, which is a combination of the two. So, potentially, am I getting worried about something which is not really a problem? Are artists writing Anglo-American superhero comics getting fairly represented? Let the healthy, well-informed Internet debate ensue! Thanks to James Robertson, webmaster at Bryan Talbot’s fansite, for his assistance in arranging this interview.
