INTERVIEW FROM 2009
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Benjamin Marra's comic series Night Business works within a genre he's dubbed "Neon Noir": a homage to late-night-cable movies and Italitan exploitation films set in the Reagan-era '80s.
What do you imagine the average reader of "Night Business" to be like?
The average reader of night business I imagine is like probably a kid that is 10, 11 or 12 and he knows that he's not supposed to have it and he acquired it through some devious means like he stole it from somebody or got it from his older brother or something like that. I guess that’s who I imagine reads it. But I think more accurately, it is that inner kid in a male comic book readers, because that’s sort of like where I'm writing from, which is my own very early adolescent self which is totally enamored with this sleazy, sex and violence and exploitation but thinking that that is actually a true representation of adulthood: that is how people live in cities, that this is what actually happens. So I think that the average reader in reality is a serious comic book fan who can appreciate that.
I guess continuing with that, do you go to Comic-Con’s? What has the reaction been from that specific community of people that goes to those events been like?
Like we're talking about the hardcore guys who are arguing if the Hulk could beat up Superman or something?…I don’t know actually, those guys I haven't heard too much from which is kind of sad because those are the kind of guys I actually want to buy it. But I remember when I put my author photo in the back of each issue as kind of a joke, it's like this character I'm playing. I put that in there and my friends were like, "Don't put that in there because it's too heavy handed, it ruins any sort of subtly that you are trying to convey" and I was like "No. Comic book fans need something in the back to let them in on the joke so that they know that it's actually just satirical." So I don’t know, I hope that those guys would read it but I don’t that think they will. But I think it's more for like comics book fans that are into the medium itself than guys that are really obsessed with mainstream continuity and the superhero universe. I mean I'm a mainstream comic book artist fan, but the stories themselves do not connect with me at all because they are trying to appeal to an audience that I'm not.
I'm interested in some of the source material that you draw upon for your comics. And also, how do you get a hold of that work?
A lot of it is this feeling, like I'm really going for a tone with Night Business. Myself, I'm not sure I'm accurately able to capture it but I think judging by people's responses I've been close. And so the source material that I'm specifically drawn to, they're all movies, its all usually late 70's Italian sex and violence thrillers, called "Giallo". That stuff was like the main thing that made me want to make Night Business. I was living in Philadelphia at the time and I had a really shitty apartment in Chinatown, which was like all linoleum floors, and I think I had 18 doors in a one-bedroom apartment, like I had all of these closets. It was so strange. And it was really uncomfortable environment and you know I was away from all of my friends that live in New York. So I would Netflix like crazy and I also had this really great video rental place down the street that had a total Euro-trash section, and I would just go in there and not know what I was renting and they had this deal where if you rent four you get the fifth for free, and I would pick them just based on the cover art, like "this looks cool, this sounds cool". And just watched tons of those, and they're amazing, and it's basically the template that Night Business is based on which is a mass killer killing hot girls. That’s pretty much it. But I knew that I wanted an 80's action hero in that world, that could regulate and take care of business and so that’s what Johnny Timothy is sort of supposed to be and I am a huge 80's and early 90's action fan like I love Stallone's "Cobra", "Death Wish 3", and Steven Segal movies, "Rambo First Blood Part II". Those are all the movies that I try to emulate: like this weird overdramatic, over-the-top feel. And I don’t know if the palette for people was much different back then, but now they look so ridiculous and so that’s the core that I'm trying to strike.
Yeah, it’s the same with Black-and-White boom comics, if you are in a comic book store and you find some of that eighties stuff it just looks like its from another planet, like the drawing style just looks so insane. Like Tim Vigil or something-
I love Tim Vigil, that is one of my top three guys. He is amazing. Faust, I love that, like 777 The Wrath is one of my favorite comics ever. It is incredible. Like artistically, it is like the one of the zeniths, it is so amazing. It's so funny you brought that up because that guy, I cant get enough of his stuff and I actually met him at the Philly Comic-Con many years ago, like 4 or 5 years go, and he's like a super normal guy but he makes the most fucked up stuff, ever. And I show it to people and their minds are blown and it's funny because he doesn't get really any recognition at all, but like comic shop owners they're like this guys amazing and it goes to places to everyone else is afraid to go. Actually in terms of comic book influences he's one, Paul Gulacy is like a huge influence on my drawing style, and this really obscure guy who only did one book for Vertigo called American Century, this guy Mark Lamming, who was inked over by John Stokes, and that American Century stuff I was looking through this stuff and feeling like this is what I want Night Business to look like. The "Giallo" set this sort of template so you just have to hit these certain notes, and I knew if I had those key elements and if I knew the drawing style it was pretty easy to come up with a story.
It seems like you are having a really good time making it, it doesn't feel overly labored over-
Yeah, it is actually a reaction to my thesis. Part of my schooling was that I got a master's degree from the School of Visual Arts, which is in illustration. You don’t even need degrees to practice illustration but I have two. So, I studied under David Mazzucchelli and I took his Comic Book Workshop class, which is really just like very nuts and bolts fundamentals of comic book art, which is one of the best things I have ever done. He also was my thesis advisor and I created this comic, it was really ambitious you know it was a forty-eight-page comic that I wanted to make that was sort of a homage to Jack Kirby and comics from the 40's but update and his whole idea and the way that he works is very much planning out the architecture of the comic completely in advance. So I spent the entire first semester just doing thumbnails of like how each page was going to work. And that was a great education because then it became second nature to then I think about alright, "What sequence do I need to put the images in to communicate this idea?" and where the words fall in to that space and where the sound effects fall into that space. And I ended up just getting the pencils done for the comic, I think only finished 10 page of the thesis just the pencils. But I ran out of gas. I just lost so much interest in it and was like I can't work this way ever again. So with Night Business I didn’t even plan out anything: there are no thumbnails, nothing. My pencils are just like very abstract, just shapes about where head is going to fall where a body is going to fall and maybe a horizon line. And that is all in an effort to sustain my interest in what I'm doing because if I don’t know what is really going to happen it is entertaining for me when I'm actually the comic to figure it out as I'm making it and I'm able to stoke my own enthusiasm by leaving so much space for things to be created later. I figured out that it is the way that I work best. Plus, the subject matter is just really fun for me and I'm really excited to make not to stuff that is really serious at all and I think that is what I was in school I was really serious about art and making art. In fact, my thesis prior to the comic book was going to be like this illustrated sequence of the 100 days of the Rwandan genocide. And at the same time I was also trying adapt as a comic book "Apprentice of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first book of the John Carter series. My roommate was like, "Dude, this should be your thesis, doing the comic should be your thesis. This is what you do for fun". A lot of time when I was in undergrad I made paintings that I thought that people wanted to see, what art directors would want and it always felt so weird to make. But it's all part of the cycle that you go through making stuff, its always going to change, its always going to change and develop and you just need to let it happen you know and not resist it too much because otherwise you are just going make stuff that doesn’t feel so good. When you feel like you have to make something a certain way or if you have to make something important, having like a masterpiece complex can get in the way and that’s what I had with my thesis.
So I noticed that on the website that you offer custom airbrushed Night Business t-shirts. Who is the woman who does that? What is her story?
That’s my friend Jennifer Gentro, and she is a former grad school classmate of mine. She is a really interesting women: she grew up in Tennessee, and is like a border line professional pool player, she has like blonde hair its really straight and when we were in grad school she had this sort of had this future-goth style (she doesn’t have that anymore). She showed me her airbrush portfolio because she made a living outside of Dollywood like in a strip mall doing airbrushed t-shirts for like years. Now she manages a team of airbrush artists and they do events: parties, corporate things whatever, so she's managing this whole business. But she also does fine-art airbrushed t-shirts, like at fashion week she was working for Patricia Fields who was the fashion designer for "Sex and the City" so she her own store and Jen was there airbrushing t-shirts so she does this cool stuff. So she's like got some real serious skill. When she showed me her portfolio in grad school it was one of the most insane things I have seen in my life, it was so awesome. And her person work is so different from her airbrush stuff, but I actually really like the airbrush stuff a lot more, I don’t know it's weird.
Have you ever done any work with airbrush?
No, but when I color stuff on the computer I always want to make it look like airbrush. I grew to embrace my limitations as an artist and my eye with things a lot of times I'm really dissatisfied with how stuff turns out but I grew to just accept it. And it allowed me to be more productive because I'm not trying over and over again to get it just right. So now when I color stuff on the computer I looks terrible but now I just realized that that's just my aesthetic, its just gonna look like that, its just gonna look kind of crappy and whatever that’s the way it's going to look. I'm not going to worry about it too much now. I used to worry about that stuff, you're taught to worry about that stuff in school, and I think that is a good thing like you are really taught to push yourself, your limits and boundaries and what you know and are able to do. And I think that's good that professors do that because that is when breakthroughs come but after a while, especially in the professional world things gotta get done. And you can work on things for infinity and they will never be done. But if I felt that way then I would never be able to produce a comic, you know?
Do you feel like you have developed an alternate persona that draws Night Business? What is "American Tradition" comics?
Actually I'm changing the name because that guy Jeff Katz came out with American Original, so I'm going to just change my publishing company name to just "Traditional Comics". But it's going to be called "Traditional Comics of the American Variety Publishing Company". I think that I have sort of very formal view of making comics. I have a probably overly educated view of comic books, but I'm trying to produce really dumb stuff. And I think that I'm sort of just tapping into an alternate version of myself, and I don’t know maybe its just two sides of the same coin. That is the stuff that I really love, and what I'm interested in, like I don’t want to see movies that are about serious subject matter, or that have any emotional or political agenda I just want to see a really crappy movie like Transformers 2, that was an amazing movie. That’s why I like comics I guess because they represented for me the best that pop culture had to offer because it was so crappy but at the same time it was so fun. But definitely with the character that is writing and drawing Night Business I want it to appear that this is a dude that doesn’t know what he is or what he is making at all but yet I am completely aware of it.
How do you balance that? It doesn’t seem like its coming from an ironic place, like for instance when you are writing dialogue what is the line between making fun of something and showing that you are really into it?
It's really, difficult, I don’t even know. First of all, everything I write I hardly edit at all, its very much like first draft stuff and I think that that is essential, it's got to be fresh, you can't rework it too much. And that's exactly what I do with the drawing its like, I draw mostly in ink, the pencils aren’t well developed at all. I think that that is definitely a part of it, that first stream of consciousness thing. From the very early stages, I knew that I didn't want to set out to make a satire, even though it is satirical, I wanted to just make a "Giallo" comic. So I think having that mindset going into it allowed me to sell it just as that, if I knew that it was really had the primary intention of really overly dramatic violent movies like late-night cable TV. My mindset was totally set on trying to create something authentic, so when making Night Business I'm just trying to write and draw the story and just serve that and not serve the joke.
G: And in the second issue there is that song mix, were these songs playing in the background while you were drawing this strip?
B: You know what actually, I watch a lot of TV while I'm drawing so I don’t really listen to music at all. But when I was having a release party for the first issue I knew that I had to have a song list. My friends who have read Night Business and have seen it from its idea to materialization, those guys will point out things that they find and be like this is definitely night business style. And its one of the other things that helped me realize that I was sort of hitting the right chord, because those guys would come to me with things and I would be like that totally fits into that world, and that is exactly the stuff that I'm referencing. Also, when I worked in newspapers for several years I used to get lunch with my coworker and he was this child of the eighties, he was this total suburban rebel who was like 40. He drove a Toyota, had a mullet, parked it in the handicap spot, didn’t give a shit, showed up to work an hour late and left work an hour early. And we used to go and get lunch together and he would pop in his Ipod, and they were all of these awesome songs from the eighties that you had never heard of, ever. I would always just be writing down what the song was cause they were so brilliant, it was like I couldn't get a more accurate sampling of that type of music, because he grew up in like Scranton, Pennsylvania listening to eighties rock and it's really stuff that was a hit on the radio for like a week and then it disappeared and that’s what he collected. He was a really insane collector of stuff, like he dealt comics on Ebay and he's got sort of an obsessive personality about that sort of thing but-
What kind of comics would he collect? Was it 80's stuff primarily?
No, he dealt like in the five hundred dollar and up, like really collectables type stuff. But he would scour the Northeast, like on vacation with his wife. They would go to towns that he'd never been to and he would seek out comic book stores and go through all of their back issues and be willing to like lay down like a thousand dollars on just a stack of comics and he would go back and on Ebay would sell them to people for hundreds of dollars. He would make a lot of money doing that actually, but he had the drive to scour comic book shops for those things. Really interesting cat, so I got a lot of the songs from that mix from him, I'd say like half are from his Ipod alone.
I really like that "Night Business" is published in pamphlet form. Could you talk about that choice?
I know that I will always need to publish Night Business as a pamphlet like that is the format that it demands to be in. I think that there will always be a demand for pamphlets, for people to own them as objects I don’t know if its some kind of fetish or if its just a need but I really need to feel the comic and have this physical thing in front of me.
The graphic novel seems like a totally weird working method, like, "I'm going to spend three years in my room and come out this opus."
Yeah, like Mazzucchelli when he was my thesis advisor that was like five years ago he was working on Asterios Polyp that whole time and he's been working on for a decade. He has got a bit of reputation and that goes along so when he releases a graphic novel that is a pretty major event. I don’t think that every graphic novel that gets released gets that sort of attention or the media nothing gets reviewed that much. If you have been working on this thing for years how do you know if its any good and what happens if you release it and it fails. The problem with comics is now they have, as a medium, this ambition to be more literary or arty or whatever, but by having this aspiration you immediately assign yourself this inferior status and if you are just like, "Fuck that shit, I don’t care I'm just going to make that stuff. It is what is" and that’s when you start to develop some serious respect. When your just like "Fuck you guys, I'm just gonna do my thing over here." And maybe when [younger cartoonists] do that they'll be able to achieve the respect that they were going for.
You can find Benjamin Marra's work at http://www.benjaminmarra.com/
previously published in (the now defunct) taffy hips comics and arts magazine issue # 5
-gil
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