In this episode Skottie Young stops by to talk... |

In this episode Skottie Young stops by to talk about not having a nickname (yet).

Topics include being a songstress, Little Marvel pins, Skottie’s first creator owned comic I Hate Fairyland, 15 years in the making, Matt is old, Alice in Wonderland but you don’t wanna be stuck there forever, listening to that dumb cat, being in total control for the first time, deadlines, workshopping nicknames for Skottie, not shoe-horning yourself into any kind of book, getting into cartooning, best 90’s comics, The Maxx, Greg Capullo, OZ, and also what he’s reading.

Links:

Transcription:

Kara Szamborski: Welcome back to the comiXologist coming to you not live from San Diego, it’s Slim and K-Zam. We are here with comics legend Skottie Young. Welcome.

Matt Kolowski: The Closer, as they call you.

Skottie Young: I feel like it’s the first interview that I’ve done where I’m holding the mike like a stand-up comedian, or like a songstress.

Kara: Are you about to karaoke on us?

Skottie: Yeah, I feel like I’m going to get really loud. I’m going to pull the mic very far back.

Matt: That’s what they do.

Skottie: I know.

Matt: Songstresses.

Skottie: They know how to control the mic.

Matt: They do.

Skottie: Mic control, they call it.

Matt: You obviously are a living legend in these parts.

Skottie: Of course.

Matt: “Little Marvel” sweeping the nation.

Skottie: It’s huge.

Matt: They gave away pins yesterday and probably today.

Skottie: I don’t know if they gave them away.

Matt: You had to get in line for it. You couldn’t get them.

Kara: You had to line up. We looped the line on the Marvel booth, which is really close to ours. We just people watched because I looked at that line. I’m like, “I’m not spending four hours waiting for these pins, although they are adorable.”

Skottie: Nice save.

Kara: They’re all Skottie Young’s design. Were you commissioned for those? Did you have to like make some designs specifically, because there was Spider-Gwen in there.

Skottie: They’re all directly from the covers. They just took the characters off the covers that I’ve done over the years and just made pins out of them.

Matt: That’s less work for you.

Skottie: Yeah, yeah.

Kara: I saw that. The first exclusive I saw, I was like, "Oh, so Marvel is basically saying, ‘Come to our booth. It’s the Skottie Young Show.’”

Matt: I saw people getting put into sleeper holds.

Skottie: It was kind of like “Mad Max.” I saw Furiosa pop up at one point, shooting people.

Matt: There was a guy playing guitar and there was gasoline flames shooting out. You are doing something huge. This is your first creator owned book.

Skottie: It is.

Matt: Coming from Image. “I Hate Fairyland.”

Skottie: Yeah. 15 years in this business and I’m finally pulling the trigger on my first creator owned book. I Hate Fairyland will be out in October. It is a book about a little girl named Gert who went to Fairyland one day and was supposed to have an adventure and be home in a couple days like normal little girls and boys do when they go off to fantasy lands.

Matt: A slice of life tale.

Skottie: But she’s terrible at it and she can’t quite complete the mission. We jump into the story 30 years later. She’s been there the whole time. She’s about 40 years old on the inside and six years old on the outside.

Kara: That sounds like Matt.

Matt: I was the case study for this series. I have her hair, I think.

Skottie: You actually do. And it’s quite lock-y right now. There’s a lot of locks.

Matt: I’ve been compared to Richard Simmons, Krusty the Clown, it’s all good. I look great, guys.

You were talking about this book. I think you said the first book you read was “Alice in Wonderland.” You had talked about, you hear this story enough times you’re like, “Well, it sounds great and all. It’s not that easy to read. So, what if you get stuck there and your life is a living hell?”

Skottie: It’s similar to… You’re a parent, yes?

Matt: Yes.

Skottie: You read the books to the child.

Matt: Once or twice.

Skottie: Or a million times. I started to spark the idea from reading Alice in Wonderland or when I really started reading “The Cat in the Hat” night after night. When you first read it, it’s so cute. All the rhymes…

Matt: That first time.

Skottie: Giggles at the rhymes and loves it. The kid falls in love with the book and then I’m the adult. After the 51st time of reading it it’s like, “Why would you listen to this dumb cat? This cat is dumb.”

Matt: He’s a psycho.

Skottie: Yeah, or Alice in Wonderland talking to the Caterpillar and speaking in riddles. It’s like, “Oh, that’s so cute,” if you’re a little girl. But if you’re 40 it’s not cute. You just want the answers. “Just give me the answers. I need a sweet answer so I can get this key and go home.”

Yeah, those were the sparks of ideas. Kind of digging around in that idea of the things that we find interesting or cute or fun or playful when we’re young, if everything’s made out of sugar it’s great when you’re a kid but when you’re 40 and you’ve got type 95 diabetes because all you’ve eaten is sugar for 40 years.

Matt: Or Auntie Anne’s pretzels or cookies right outside our booth.

Skottie: It’s not so great. It’s just me having a lot of fun with those tropes.

Matt: What’s it feel like to you to finally do your own book where it’s all you. Probably pretty scary, I would think.

Skottie: I don’t know. I think because there is no traffic cones around it, it’s all creator owned and it’s all me. I decide what happens. That took away the fear. I was probably a little bit more fearful when I was on “Rocket.” When you start seeing those sales numbers tick up a little bit you almost feel like you have to be as good as each one sold. You’re kind of like, “If it sells OK then I only have to be OK. Now I feel like everybody’s going to judge me because it’s sold a lot.”

I feel like outside of that mechanism, where I get to go sit in a room and I’m making something up from scratch, it’s not as scary. It’s so freeing and fun to sit on that table. This didn’t exist this morning and now it does. This thing exists. I didn’t have to run it by anybody. I didn’t have to ask anybody if I could do it. It’s here and in a couple of months somebody else will be reading it.

It’s way more exciting than scary.

Kara: Are you doing everything on this book? Writing, drawing, coloring, lettering?

Skottie: No, I’m going to be writing and drawing and inking. Jean-Francois Beaulieu has been my colorist for about 10 years. He’s along for the ride again. Nate Piekos from Blambot is doing the letters. Then we’re publishing it through Image. That’s my creative team right now.

Kara: Beautiful.

Skottie: Yeah, it’s great.

Matt: How hard is it going to be for you to stay on schedule without an editor emailing you and being like, “Hey, we need those pages”?

Skottie: Not hard. I’m really, really solid on that front. I’ve been at Marvel for almost 15 years. When we started doing the Oz books, we turned that into such clockwork, Eric and I, and Jean, and the whole team. We turned that into such clockwork that now when they hire me for a book it’s almost… They don’t worry at all.

Matt: Because they’re getting a closer.

Skottie: Yeah, they’re getting a closer. That’s the worst nickname. It means nothing.

Matt: We’ll come up with another one.

Skottie: It needs something.

Matt: We’ll work on it.

Skottie: You’ve got Hickmania. You’ve got Remendo.

Matt: We’ve got Hickmentia. You could come down with Hickmentia while you’re reading his books.

Skottie: You’ve got Remendo.

Matt: I know. You’re right. We need to come up with something. I’ll work on it. It’s got to be organic. It’s got to come to me while I’m eating a 7-Eleven hot dog or a buffalo chicken roller.

Kara: You just started calling some creators by their first names as if people just know. The other day, you were saying, "Grant.” He was talking about Grant like everyone knows who Grant is.

Skottie: Your buddy.

Kara: Grant Morrison is the new Madonna of comics.

Matt: I’ve never spoken with him but we were interviewing Chris Burnham and I said, “Grant.” I just felt like Chris Burnham probably didn’t need to hear his last name because they’ve worked together for so long.

Kara: “You’ve worked with Grant.” Never said the last name.

Matt: Regardless, we need to get back on track with as yet un-nicknamed Skottie Young.

The other thing that I really dug was you’ve been asked, maybe people assume this is an all ages book but it’s not the case. You even said, “I want to make a book that just is fun and makes me laugh. That’s the goal.” Which I think should be the ultimate goal.

Skottie: Yeah. I feel like when, in the late '80s or early '90s or through the '90s I didn’t remember comic books ever telling me what they were. They didn’t say, “This is for kids,” or “This is for adults,” or, “This is for a 12 and a half year old.” They just were a comic.

Some of them felt OK, fine and safe. Then, all of a sudden, a head would get chopped off. It was all over the map. I felt, again, I just wanted to make exactly what I wanted to make. If 10 pages look like it could be out of “My Little Pony” and then the 11th page looks like it’s straight out of “Lobo” or “Tank Girl” where the moon’s brains are blown out and blood is flying through the cotton candy sky. I want to do that.

I don’t know how to label that. I don’t know how to tell who can read it and who can’t. I’ll let somebody else decide that afterwards. I just want to sit in a room and try to make myself laugh and see what happens.

Matt: What was the first comic book that made you want to goof around with cartooning?

Skottie: “Mad Magazine.” I grew up reading Mad Magazine before I ever knew what comic books were. Sergio and Jack… Sergio Aragonés, that’s it.

Kara: You, too.

Matt: Good catch.

Skottie: …And Jack Davis, and Al Jaffe, and all of the great cartoonists in Mad Magazine. It’s just so funny and lively. That was the first stuff that I looked at when I was little and would try to copy and try to do that. I think that’s why humor has always stuck with me all these years and why that’s what I gravitate towards when I make comics.

Matt: Best comic from the '90s:

Skottie: Best comic from the '90s? Oh my gosh. One of my favorites is “Lobo: Infanticide,” I think that Keith Giffen did. He drew it in this really bizarre line pen style. He did a series called “Trencher” as well in the same style.

The whole series was about Lobo and all his bastard children who had been littered all over the planet. Now they’re rallying against him. It was like reading a Looney Tunes comic. Very Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote type stuff with the fights and stuff. It was so over the top and wacky.

I loved “The Maxx.” The Maxx, I don’t understand it at all but I loved it. I love that.

I was a “Spawn” guy. I really liked…

Matt: Me and my brother both collected Spawn. We had two copies each. That was an expensive book at the time. I think it was $1.95.

Skottie: I think it was $1.50. I might have bought them…

Matt: The first issue might have been $1.95.

Skottie: You might be right.

Matt: It was on high gloss.

Skottie: $1.95 might be right. You might be right. But Greg Capullo, I collected Spawn until 150.

Matt: Holy moley.

Skottie: Until Angel left. When Angel Medina left, that’s when I got away.

Greg Capullo’s had a big run on “Batman.” Everybody loves him but I still am like, “He never went away.” That dude was a monster on Spawn.

Matt: “X-Force” he did, too during “X-cutioner’s Song.” I remember those issues.

Skottie: Wow.

Matt: Greg. You know, I said his last name.

Skottie: Let’s just go to talk to Greg, I guess. “Hey, Greg.”

Matt: Greg, get over here. We need to talk. Capullo.

You talked about different styles on Lobo. I’ve been meaning to ask, “Rocket Raccoon” #1. Who colored that? It almost has a painted style.

Skottie: That was Jean, as well. The same colorist that I’ve been with all these years on Oz. Jean and I took a couple weeks, maybe more, maybe a month or so beforehand, before turning it in and bounced pages back and forth. We took about three pages and really took them to task.

There was actually one point that he emailed me and said, “Maybe I just can’t do this.” He was getting down on himself. He was like, “I just don’t know that I’m good enough to do what you’re wanting.”

I wanted to try to do a sci-fi book that didn’t read like what we considered to be sci-fi books. At the time, we’re so used to sci-fi just being grays and blues and metal looking and things like that. I really wanted everything to be a color.

If our gut instinct is to make it gray or blue, let’s make it pink or let’s make it bright red or yellow. Let’s change all that up.

It took us time to figure that out because those colors are funky and sometimes don’t work together well, and the textures and things like that. I called him up and was like, “There’s no way you’re not coloring this book. You’re super talented.”

I’m like, “Look at this catalog of work we’ve done. Look at Oz. For you to ever say the words, 'I’m not talented.’” So I think he just had one of those days where he was… Anytime you want to try to do something new it’s a challenge and it’s frustrating because you have the vision in your head and it’s very tough to get on paper.

It was probably one pass later he nailed it and then it was exactly what the book looked like. We were so close.

It took some time and hit some bumps but then I was so happy with where we landed at on those colors. I thought they were so cool.

Matt: Your Oz series, do you ever see a connection or a disconnection between your Oz fans and your monthly books fans? Didn’t those books sell like crazy in the form that they were collected in as opposed to single issues from Marvel?

Skottie: Yeah, they performed very well. The hardcovers, and then we did digests and trades. They performed very well.

It’s interesting now. I think, with the Little Marvel covers, they seem to hit the similar crowd that an Oz crowd would hit much more but the thing that I started noticing with Oz books is young girls, girlfriends, wives, people that I wasn’t used to seeing come up, not your expected comic book fan that we’ve seen at conventions.

Boyfriends were getting excited because Oz led to the girlfriend or wife being into a different comic book that wasn’t that. It was a gateway for a lot of different readers that maybe weren’t there. They were like, “Oh, I’ve read that book. I see that.”

I think that’s what we see a lot of times with licenses properties or adaptations. We get down on them sometimes but they’re gateways. Again, you have a kid you know. I can show him “Wacky Bear” that he doesn’t know or I can show him “Teen Titans Go!” that he completely recognizes. He’s going to gravitate to that Teen Titans Go! with the hope that when he gets to an age where he’s ready to reach out beyond he’ll make his own choices and he doesn’t need to anchor himself to a cartoon property.

I think Oz played that role for a different audience that was looking for something a little different at first. Then we rope them in and we bring them into our wacky world of comics.

Kara: Come to the dark side.

Matt: Skottie “The Gateway” Young.

Skottie: It’s just brutal.

Matt: We’ll give it a week or so. I need to take some time away.

Skottie: I don’t know. “The Closer,” “Gateway.” No.

Kara: We’ll talk to you again soon and he’ll have something. I promise.

Matt: Maybe. I don’t know. We’ll see how the numbers do on this episode. I don’t know. We’ve got to review the numbers.

I Hate Fairyland, or the original title, “F* Fairyland.” I’m not sure if I can say that word on this show.

Skottie: I don’t know what kind of show you guys run here.

Matt: We try to run a clean show.

Skottie: What kind of show do you guys run here?

Matt: I appreciate you coming on. I’m really excited about your first creator owned book. I hope it’s a huge success so that you can just do that forever.

Kara: Don’t we all?

Skottie: Thank you all very much. I appreciate it.

Skottie: Me too. Cool. Thanks.

Matt: We’ll see you around, maybe.

Skottie: Maybe, I guess.

Matt: Bye.