{"id":878,"date":"2013-09-20T13:20:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-20T20:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/?p=878"},"modified":"2023-12-13T12:24:30","modified_gmt":"2023-12-13T20:24:30","slug":"ape-special-guest-colleen-coover-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/ape-special-guest-colleen-coover-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"APE Special Guest Colleen Coover, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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THE TOUCAN INTERVIEW<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

APE Special Guest Colleen Coover, Part Two<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Toucan<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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We continue our exclusive <\/em>Toucan interview with cartoonist Colleen Coover. Colleen and her husband and collaborator, writer Paul Tobin, are special guests at APE 2013, October 12 & 13 at the Concourse Exhibition Center in San Francisco. In Part Two of the interview, Colleen talks about her Eisner Award-winning series <\/em>Bandette, which won the 2013 Best Digital Comics Award. Colleen talks about how she and Paul work on the series, winning the Eisner, and plans for a <\/em>Bandette collection in book form from Dark Horse, coming soon to a comic book store near you. Click here to read part one of our interview with Colleen!<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cover
\u00a9 Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> How did <\/em>Bandette get started?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen: <\/strong>Basically, when the publishers of MonkeyBrain, Chris Roberson and Allison Baker, decided to get started, they asked us if we wanted to do a comic with them and we said yeah. And at the time we didn\u2019t have any ideas. We were both doing other things and we had to finish those. And then sometime in the early spring of 2012 Paul and I were walking down the street and he asked me what I wanted to do and I said I feel like doing something kind of French, and he said okay, we\u2019ll work with that. I had drawn this character on my sketch blog that I had named B. D. Belgique of the S\u00fbret\u00e9, being the French Scotland Yard or whatever. And I was like I want to use that guy. I want to use this character that I had drawn for my sketch blog and then of course we were like there will be a teen girl in it, too. Paul was keen to do something sort of Nancy Drew-like but put Nancy Drew on her head and make her a thief. So that\u2019s really where it came from, and the look of it is totally just everything we like from the \u201960s and from good girl detectives and Tintin and European comics and heist films and things like that. It\u2019s whatever we like, we throw in, like in a blender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> And MonkeyBrain went for it?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> Oh, yeah! They didn\u2019t ask us what we wanted to do or anything, they were just like, okay, that sounds great. It has never been, \u201cWe\u2019d like you to do something for this sort of audience or that sort of audience,\u201d they just said do whatever you want. They trusted us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> So the fact that you were doing it digitally, did that open up a lot more doors for you when it came to the freedom of creating what you wanted?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> Well, it certainly took a lot of the pressure off. We knew that if we had gone to any traditional publisher with something like this, somebody somewhere along the line would have said, \u201cWell, I\u2019m not sure that that will sell, maybe if we did that or this . . .\u201d We never had to worry about that. We never had to worry about whether or not it would sell because if it didn\u2019t then fine, we\u2019re out a couple of months of work, no big deal. If it did, that would be great; in the meantime we were having fun. We both believed wholeheartedly that anything we do should be for the audience of us. We create things that we want to read, and we\u2019re of the firm belief that if you do that, then that will show through and other people will want to look at it too. But if we can\u2019t satisfy ourselves, if we can\u2019t have fun, then it\u2019s not going to be fun for anyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> What\u2019s the collaborative process on this? Is there a full script to start off with?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> It is very much. Paul writes a full script and gives it to me and then I draw it. Occasionally, every once in a while we\u2019ll discuss a way of phrasing something a little differently or a way of telling a story visually slightly differently but mostly I stick to full script. It\u2019s easier that way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> You were nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Coloring this year for <\/em>Bandette. Your pages look like they\u2019re scans of watercolor art on paper but they\u2019re not, are they?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> No, they\u2019re ink. It\u2019s ink wash, which is something I learned in probably high school drawing class, but it\u2019s basically watered down ink and then in Photoshop I have the scans of those inks basically on a layer. Photoshop has many layers; it\u2019s like working on several different layers of paper and some of those layers you can make translucent, and then I color digitally underneath those inks. And yeah, I came up with this coloring style as a way to save time, because I didn\u2019t want to spend a lot of time deciding what shade to make things or what color to make things. So by doing all the work in black and white with the inks for tone and stuff I saved myself a lot of work and it\u2019s been a successful experiment. I\u2019m very pleased, and it got nominated for an Eisner, which is cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Colleen
Colleen Coover, Allison Baker, and Paul Tobin at the 2013 Eisner Awards.\nPhoto by Tony Amat \u00a9 2013 SDCC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> But you won an Eisner Award, too . . . for Best Digital Comic.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen<\/strong>: Yes, we did, which is great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> What does that mean to you guys, besides obviously great?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> Well, it is obviously great. It was very exciting. Basically it meant that we got a little bit more attention for a few weeks. We got a few more offers of jobs from some people for a couple weeks, for a while. It was great. I\u2019m still really excited and thrilled. Obviously it\u2019s always been\u2014since I started working in comics\u2014it\u2019s been this goal to get that sort of affirmation from my peers and there it is sitting on my shelf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> You were nominated for four Eisner Awards, weren\u2019t you?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> Digital, color, penciler\/inker, and best new series. That one was a big deal for us to be nominated as a digital-only comic alongside some really great print comics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Did you see any kind of bump in sales because of the Eisner Award?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> We have not yet received sales for July. We did get a little bump when we were nominated, actually a pretty sizable bump when we were nominated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan: <\/em><\/strong>Is there a schedule you\u2019re keeping to for <\/em>Bandette? So many issues per year?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> Well, I don\u2019t really have a schedule; it\u2019s when we get it done. Because\u2014and again, this is one of the advantages of digital\u2014I\u2019m never going to be able to keep a monthly schedule for anything. Because I did have to take a break, I had a project that I was contracted to do that had me taking some time off, and then I did the Batman \u201966<\/em> story, which forced me to take some time off. So I just put my head down and work until I\u2019m done, and then I turn in the art and then it gets published. So ideally it\u2019s about six to eight weeks between issues. In reality it\u2019s eight to nine, and that\u2019s when nothing else is going on. I occasionally have to do work to make a little money, so I take these odd commercial jobs every once in a while, but mostly I\u2019m just working on Bandette<\/em> full time now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> And do you see doing that for the foreseeable future?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> For the foreseeable future, yeah. We\u2019re in a good spot right now. Paul is getting a lot of writing work, so we are able to have me concentrate on Bandette <\/em>exclusively as far as comics go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The cover for the Dark Horse collection of Bandette.<\/em> \u00a9 2013 Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Let\u2019s talk about Dark Horse publishing <\/em>Bandette in book form. That comes out in November, right?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong>, I think the official release date is maybe November 10th or something like that. I think it\u2019s going to be in November. I\u2019m hoping to be able to have something for some sort of display for APE, but I don\u2019t know. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Does that collect the first four issues?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/em><\/strong> The first five, which turned out to be a nice story arc, so that was handy.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> And there\u2019s a lot of extras in it, too.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> There are a lot of extras. We had\u2014again because I\u2019m not the speediest artist in the world\u2014we had a lot of our friends do guest two-page or three-page stories that were put up on the MonkeyBrain website, and we\u2019re collecting most of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> From what you said before when we started talking about digital and not going to a publisher with this originally, is there a certain amount of irony in this now that it\u2019s going to be published by a major publisher?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> Oh, not at all! We wanted that. That was part of the plan, because MonkeyBrain doesn\u2019t take any print rights. They take worldwide digital rights for a certain amount of time, but they don\u2019t take any print rights at all. So we were free to make whatever deal we wanted with whomever. We have a very good relationship with Dark Horse right now. Paul is doing a lot of writing for them and one of the editors there had seen Bandette<\/em> and very actively pursued us to get it published through Dark Horse and it was the right company for it. Because we went with Dark Horse we were able to get it in hardcover, which was really important for us, and they have their own distribution and a really good marketing department. So we knew that we would get a lot of visibility out of being published with Dark Horse. So it\u2019s good for everybody because they\u2019ve got this year and a half of marketing already done with all the people who have already bought Bandette <\/em>and it hasn\u2019t been published in print yet, but it has an Eisner Award. So that works for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The APE 2013 official poster; art by Colleen Coover.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> You created the official APE poster for this year\u2019s show. Let\u2019s talk a little about that and the process behind that.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> I think you might be surprised at how small the art it, it\u2019s only, it\u2019s like 8.5 by 11 inches. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> And you just scan it at a really high DPI?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> I do, I scan it at 600 DPI and blow it up. I actually really enjoy blowing up my art rather then shrinking it down. For Bandette<\/em> I work at six by nine, I work at print size and then I use air quotes around \u201cprint\u201d because that\u2019s the size that I send the file at, and that\u2019s actually going to be the size that it publishes in print for Dark Horse. So yeah, I\u2019m one of those weird artists that works small, like Robert Crumb. Let me just go ahead and compare myself to Robert Crumb in that way, that one way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> The pages that we see in <\/em>Bandette then are actually the finished pages that are colored. You\u2019re doing them as whole pages, you\u2019re not doing individual panels and scanning them in and reassembling them?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> No, I don\u2019t have the patience for that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> I don\u2019t know why I thought that for a second, but it seems awfully small to do a nine-panel grid.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> I do enjoy a nine-panel grid. For Bandette,<\/em> I think that was a conscious decision for the digital format was that I would do three-tier pages for all the pages and so I have a template now that I use. After four issues I figured out, \u201cOh, I can do a template of this so I don\u2019t have to measure it out for each page.\u201d But because of that it reproduces nicely on a phone. It might not be ideal on the phone, I think it\u2019s ideal on a tablet, but on a phone it works nicely because none of the panels are going to be really, really tall and therefore have to be shrunk down so small that you can\u2019t read them as one piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Did you have to do it differently for the <\/em>Batman \u201966 story, because it seems to me that they work kind of in a half-page format?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> They do work in a half-page format and I did that, but it was griddy. It was a grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Was that a big adjustment for you?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> No, not really. I\u2019m using my clean art style for clean inks and really saturated colors as opposed to the wash and the more pastel colors that I use in Bandette<\/em>, because it didn\u2019t seem appropriate to go into the sort of camp adventure of Batman \u201966<\/em> with understated ink wash. I figured brash was good, so that\u2019s where I went. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Are you going to be selling any of your <\/em>Bandette original pages?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen: <\/strong>I will not be. I\u2019m not a big seller of my original art. Part of the problem is I have a husband who\u2019s an art collector and he doesn\u2019t like to let them go and I don\u2019t like to let them go. Usually, if I sell something I\u2019m like, \u201cAh . . . it\u2019s gone.\u201d I won\u2019t think about it anymore. But he is very possessive of our art and I think rightly so. So it coincides nicely with my reluctance to sell. So no, we hang on to the originals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> What comics and creators do you follow now?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> Oh, not a lot. I find myself doing less and less looking to see what\u2019s current, and part of that is just exhaustion at the end of the day, comic book exhaustion. I\u2019m really, really keen on Jeremy Bastian\u2019s Cursed Pirate Girl.<\/em> They\u2019re so beautiful and unique and wonderful, it\u2019s hard not to fall in love with. I read a couple of webcomics occasionally, mostly Aguas<\/em> because it\u2019s so funny. I just sort of look around and keep my hand in here and there but there\u2019s nothing. Oh and I have a subscription to Batman \u201966<\/em> of course, so I read that every week. I think part of it is that, especially with the superhero stuff, it\u2019s not made for me. I\u2019m not the market they\u2019re after. Batman \u201966<\/em> is me, I am that market, and again that\u2019s part of the reason that I went into it because that\u2019s what I want to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> What do you enjoy about going to conventions and events like APE and Comic-Con?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> Part of it is the whole comic book club, linking up with the friends that you haven\u2019t seen since the last show. But I really do enjoy connecting with the people who come around and particularly the people who have read my work, but also the people who haven\u2019t seen it before and want to know what they\u2019re looking at. I really just like being able to talk about comics with people. But a large part of it is that is it\u2019s also the time that I get to see new things. Whenever we go to shows we will generally pick up a handful of comics from people we\u2019ve never met before, anything that looks interesting, that\u2019s when we\u2019ll discover new things. Like I said Jeremy Bastian; we picked up Cursed Pirate Girl<\/em> at a show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Our last question was going to be what\u2019s next for you, but I think <\/em>Bandette is next for you?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen: <\/strong>Yeah . . . it is for the near future, for sure. Paul and I are writing something but it\u2019s for another company and I don\u2019t think they want us talking about it yet. So it\u2019s one of those interviews where it\u2019s oh I have this thing that I\u2019m working on but I can\u2019t tell you about it right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toucan:<\/em><\/strong> Maybe by the time APE rolls around and you have your Spotlight panel maybe you can.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colleen:<\/strong> Yeah, hopefully that\u2019s true!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meet Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin at APE 2013, October 12 and 13 at the Concourse Exhibition Center in San Francisco!\u00a0Click here<\/a> to buy your badges now!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00a9 2013 Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Written by<\/p>\n\n\n

Comic-Con International<\/div>\n\n\n

Published<\/p>\n\n\n