Socks and Superheroes – An Interview with Jeremy Dennis (The Director's Cut)
Jeremy Dennis is an Oxford-based small-press cartoonist who has self-published numerous mini-comics and whose work has appeared, well, all over the place, including in Naked Magazine, Small Pets and The Whores of Mensa. She is very active on the British small-press scene and has helped to organise the also Oxford-based small-press convention Caption since its inception in 1992. On top of this, she somehow finds time to produce The Weekly Strip, which appears on her website Alleged Literature, on a (not quite) weekly basis. Like a lot of small-pressers, she doesn't get much sleep.
Earlier this year, Jeremy kindly took time out of her hectic schedule to conduct an interview with MATTHEW BADHAM by email. An edited version of this interview appeared in Redeye 4 as a text feature. Below is the original, unedited transcript of the email exchange. Enjoy.
NB: Since the original interview took place, Jeremy has looked at the text again and added a few comments/clarifications. These are presented as endnotes.
MB: How did you first get into comics?
JD: Most kids read comics, don't they? And then you grow up, start thinking that's just kid's stuff and read oh, I don't know, Just 17 or Mizz (if you're a girl). What do boys do then? I'm curious! ... thinking of it, the boys at my school read News of the World (the newspaper with tits in!) ... I used to say to them, you read your comic, I read mine. 2000AD was my comic then, I still read it, even though it's full of variable shit. Would you have me pegged as a 2000AD reader? Probably not. I read my sisters' comics too, Girl's World was brilliant. I loved Fear, a short-lived horror comic. I hated Twinkle and Princess, which my mum would buy for me if I wasn't careful. At the time Princess was all about Lady Di. Its insipid tediousness scarred me for life. Being an outsider at school cuts both ways; you're also free to do what you want. I wanted to read (write, draw) comics, and I did. Transitioning from kids' comics into the grown-up stuff was trivial in the 80s. There were whole magazines full of the stuff -- Escape, Fast Fiction, Heartbreak Hotel, Deadline, and they listed comic shops in the back (even one in Dorset!) where you could buy the hard stuff, and local newsagents had lots of superhero stuff, too. I liked some of the Americana but preferred the quirky Brits: Eddie Campbell, D'Israeli, Grant Morrison, Kate Charlesworth ... A couple of years later I was meeting (some of) them, but that's another story.
MB: How did the weekly strip come about?
JD: That's hard actually. It started off very offhand. I've had a website since the internet began, pretty much (first webpage in 1993) and I'd put stuff online and just forget about it. Three years later, someone says they saw x on my website and I remember, and cringe. Websites ought to have fresh stuff on them weekly (day job = web editor -- I'm not just saying this, they really should, more often if possible). And a website about a cartoonist really ought to have a fresh cartoon on it, weekly. I called it T.W.S. at first, shyly. Didn't think I'd stick with it. I haven't entirely -- certainly I've never managed to stick to a specific day. But it's still going, what, three years on? Have to say, though -- RSS, what a godsend.
MB: You're not just a cartoonist though. Please tell us about some of the other stuff you get up to.
JD: Burning teddy bears and mini wicker-men? The butterfly factory? Running comics conventions? The shelves of glory? Dolly Porn? Queerzines? Temping? Gooseherding? Dyeing my hair? The husbandry of peacocks? I don't know ... maybe we should stick with the comics ... on the other hand, I like wandering off and doing other stuff rather than comics, so maybe so should we.
MB: Tell me about the Nth Testament.
(The N Testament on the other hand is a page-a-day diary that Jeremy kept between 5th April 1997 and 15th November 2000. Instead of writing, Jeremy (mostly) drew, and instead of a diary, she, in her own words, (ab)used a Good News Bible. This became The N Testament.)
RIGHT: NTH TESTAMENT, inside page
JD: Ah, yes. What does drive a person to spend over three years of their life adapting a Good News Bible, day by day? A desire to expand her horizons? Dull R.E. lessons taught by the vicar I later witnessed one otherwise boring Sunday, losing his religion? A fascinated familiarity with the physical experience of books? Deep, burning anger at Lady Di? Reading the Humument? Yes, all these, and more. More details to follow as and when you wish to respond. Pick what you find interesting, ask about that. Or go for something else entirely. Sometimes I just write a strip out without thinking of the plot first, letting it fall as it will.
MB: The Nth Testament is actually one of my favourites things - pieces of work - what does that say about me?JD: I'm glad, and vaguely surprised, that you (and other people) like the n testament. But, it does have its fans ... I have an ongoing offer for space to put it all online, in fact, but the labour required would be huge. It took long enough to do that hacked-up sawn-off version that's up there ...
I don't think I can answer that question! But *I* like the colour and variety, the story that drifts in and out of focus, ... and yes, the hubris, the sacrilege, but it's more than that. It's ... powerful to be wearing your own path through something that's already as well-worn as any text could be.
MB: What do you think the Nth Testament says about you?
JD: As a whole piece, it's got this scary combination of obsessive discipline and absolute chaos ...
MB: Did it develop a rhyme or reason over time? I'm sure on the website you talk about a narrative that emerged. Was it comprehensible to the outside world or just to you?
JD: I think the developing narrative was inevitable, both because there was a journal element (the story of me) and because I built it over a powerful narrative beneath. More eerie was how the Bible's stories would occasionally echo my own. Song of Songs, for example, was drawn during a love affair
ABOVE: A page of the NTH TESTAMENTMB: I dip in and out of the Nth Testament - is this the best way of reading it?
JD: No, but it's the only way it's available currently.
MB: Do you know anyone who's ever read it in sequence?
JD: Apart from me? Stand up and be counted, Alex of Caption [i]. Damian's also read chunks of it, as has Matt and several other of my friends [ii]. It's fragile as an object, though.
MB: Should it be read in sequence?
JD: It works quite well read as books. Book of Rem, Songs, most of them have adapted titles, too.
MB: You said before that you're a 2000AD fan. What's your all-time fave strip? What do you reckon to Halo Jones? Feminist trailblazer or liberal cop-out bollox?
JD: Reading the first episode of Halo Jones was a heck of a moment for me. I'd borrowed it off a school friend and ... wow. I still think it's one of the defining moments both in Moore's career and in comics in the 80s. Feminist trailblazer? Well, not really. He really started 2000AD on having female characters, but it's produced some very mixed results. On the other hand, more than one female character? Older female characters? Female characters at all? That still looks revolutionary, in some circles. Liberal, cop-out bollocks? Yes, maybe. And it looks crude compared to his later stuff. But 2000AD is a crude medium! He did well by it.
“…it's lightning-strike writing, aiming not to draw the reader in but to create resonance, echoes that will chase you through the day…”
MB: Okay, you're given editorship of 2000AD for ten weeks. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make the comic fresh and vital again.
JD: Not going to happen. But you may refer back to Grant Morrison's summer of love [iii] for a good view of how to do it more-or-less right. Includes Rian Hughes' Really and Truly, the most stylish strip ever to grace the magazine's pages [iv].
MB: Wasn't Fear called Scream?
JD: Scream was another comic. I think. Terror of the Cats, The Thirteenth Floor? (Google, google) Nope, you're right. Scream it is.
MB: Why do you still read 2000AD? Out of a sense of duty or is it just a bad habit that, like smoking, you can't give up?
LEFT: Detail from ARTIST'S HOLIDAY
JD: It's a bad habit that I nevertheless enjoy. Reading 2000AD is both cheaper and better for the health than smoking, despite the agony of the tedious full-colour painted bondage strips.
MB: Tell me about Caption and how it came about? Also about your involvement.
JD: This is a very big subject -- there are some histories knocking around which are accurate and mostly written by me. Basically, it started in 1992, and I was a founder member, while still at uni.
MB: Oh, and what's it like to have Alison Bechdel as a fan?
JD: Or Roberta Gregory? http://www.robertagregory.com/ ... Oh, you know. Everyone's polite. My most surreal moment was when a Guardian journalist came up to me and told me they handed my comics around in her office. As yet, I've not become rich and famous as a result of this alleged acclaim. -- makes her moody face -- Ah, I'm just down because I'm hungry, I think.
LEFT: Detail from DENNIS & MINNIE
MB: Do you see The Weekly Strip going on forever in the same way that Alison Bechdel says she visualises herself penning the last Dykes To Watch Out For strip on her deathbed at the age of 108?JD: Well, that's the joy of the generic title, isn't it? Seriously, though, The Weekly Strip's a bit different from a soap-opera strip, where you're never running out of plot because people do just go on living, growing, changing, dying. The weekly strip is about the stories that grow out of me, and it may happen that the format begins to grate or I simply don't feel the need any more. Then I'll start doing something else instead. I never assumed it would go on as long as it has, in fact.
MB: Do you think your influences show - what are your influences? - in The Weekly Strip ?
JD: Stephen Appleby's strips influenced a lot of the proto-weekly strips I did just before I started putting them online; I really enjoy his humour. I love Eddie Campbell's autobiographical strips, from which I nicked the format -- oh, and Carol Lay's Story Minutes are masterpieces of compact storytelling, and certainly an inspiration. But, there's a sense in which it can't help but be intensely individual because it's produced to please one person; me. Of course, that also makes it quite inaccessible/unmarketable, because I'm not trying to be appealing, and I'm not making concessions for the sake of comprehensibility, accessibility, etc.
MB: Does it ever depress you that the small press can do anything it wants and that so many people in it still end up doing sci-fi action a la 2000AD or superhero stuff?
JD: Nope. Firstly, you're not seeing everyone. The people who can hack message boards and the UK's commercial conventions are a tiny proportion of the people out there. But also, it's what they *want* to be doing and that's the essence of the small press -- you can write about what you want to, whether it's socks or superheroes, and (crucially) find other people who like what you do. People that want to do superheroes/SF, more power to their elbow. I'd rather see an interesting superhero strip than another person copying James Kochalka, which is what comes to my mind when I think of the typical small-press comic. But that's just the fashion of the moment. Kochalka's cool, I've got his CDs. But he already exists, you don't need a dozen more of him.
MB: Do you think that's there's loads of, maybe unfairly neglected, stuff out there that's pushing the envelope?
JD: Baby, there is always something out there pushing the envelope. If you aren't seeing it,you're looking wrong.
MB: Boring, bog-standard questions: Who's your favourite creator?
JD: I have to choose? That's evil. William Blake.
MB: What are your politics ?
JD: Socialist.
MB: Chips or salad?
JD: Both, ideally.
MB: Beer or tea?
JD: Both, but never at the same time.
MB: Fruit or chocolates?
JD: I like both, so it would go on whim and quality.
MB: Marxism or anarchism?
JD: I don't believe a single theoretical model can provide all the answers. You're forcing me? Anarchism.
MB: What's in your fridge?
JD: Milk, wine, beer, fair-trade coffee, tonic water, cherries (past their best), oranges, tomatoes, quince jelly, raspberry and lovage cordial, a rather nice sparkling wine and a can of Red Bull for emergencies.
MB: Your desert island luxury item is:
JD: My dictionary blank and shitloads of art materials please.
MB: Your all-time favourite book is :
JD: De Profundis by Oscar Wilde.
MB: Your tune:
JD: "You only tell me you love me when you're drunk" - Pet Shop Boys.
MB: Your comic:
JD: Alec, or How to Be an Artist by Eddie Campbell.
MB: You've had the acclaim, but not the rewards (you're not rich or famous). Why do you think that is?
JD: Well, it's all relative, isn't it? I'm not altogether unknown. I'm not starving.
MB: Would you like to see The Weekly Strip collected?
RIGHT: Detail from HOME AND GARDEN HEROES
JD: I regularly print it up into little booklets -- but though you gain resolution, you lose on the colour and animation. Doing an A4 book of my favourites at some point sounds like a nice idea. But I've still got two boxes of unsold graphic novels (an anthology I was in) in my hallway, and my house is too small to take any more.
MB: Have you ever pitched stuff to the professionals/mainstream? Or even to 2000AD?
JD: I think I last showed something to a publisher in 2003, "nice stuff, very nice stuff" was the response. That and £2.50'll buy me a pint ... then there was the time I showed my portfolio to Stan Lee. Hilarious. I should write that up for TWS, actually, call it "in the 80s there weren't any women in comics". I've not pitched a series/title to anyone, no.
MB: Have you ever taken formal art lessons?
JD: Just at school ... no, wait, I also studied at the London Cartoon Centre. The women's cartooning course, with Carol Swain and Rachel Ball.
MB: Have you always, since you could pick up a pencil, drawn?
JD: Yes. You can blame my mum (also an artist). Always is right, actually. During meetings, school lessons, meals, on the bus. Never managed to break the habit, I'm not good at breaking habits.
MB: Do you carry a sketchpad with you at all times?
JD: "At all times" might be overstating the case slightly. Sometimes I go out without a sketchpad. And sometimes I fetch up having to buy a sketchpad as a result. But you don't necessarily need a sketchpad. There are napkins, trousers, walls, the back of your hand. Far more important is remembering to carry a pen.
MB: Take us through the creation of a weekly strip by way of example. Please.
JD: An example? Very well. This is "poets and revolutionaries" (145) [ABOVE]: On the way to the busstop an idea gets lodged in my head. I'm trying to fish a pencil out of my bag when three buses turn up at once. I finally manage to find some change and get on one without spilling the contents of my bag across the pavement. What luck! My muse is on the bus. I admire his hair and script out the strip on the back of a print-out of the rail times to Bicester. Not with the pencil, I couldn't find one; with a pink fineliner from Muji. I start at the beginning then skip forward, then fill in panels backwards from the rhythm points. There are still big gaps in it by the time I get off the bus. My muse heads off down St Aldate's, I walk down Queen Street, going over the strip in my head. I get to my desk, get out the half-finished script, then set it aside. Wrong. Take a fresh A4 sheet from my enormous scrap-paper pile and script it through properly in a single go. Dark blue fineliner this time (I carry a pack of ten). That's the scripting done. That evening I get out the script and like the rough sketches too much to redraw it. So I get out a tracer sheet and go over it in pencil. As usual, the TV is on, playing MTV recorded so I can fast-forward out the shite. My plan is to fiddle with the levels after I've scanned it to darken the line (usually I do ink, using a dip pen, but a) ink spreads on the tracer, and b) this artwork is already finished, damnit) but when I scan it it looks good in grey, so I leave it as is. Then I colour it on the computer, which takes a fuck of a long time in this case as my computers are all broken except for the seven-year-old mac. But that's the way of these things. They take as long as they do.
MB: Where else can people find your comics/strips? Are you much anthologised?
JD: At the moment: Whores of Mensa, Naked (available from Borders), Ladies Room (upcoming from Girly Comic). I'm ... somewhat anthologised. My back catalogue is a scream: Dykes Delight, Fanny, Naughty Bits, Lezzie Smut ... I can only say in my defence that most of the comics are not as rude as they sound.
MB: How did you get into the UK small press?
JD: Though the university comic book society. One of the guys in it [v] did strips for Fast Fiction or something, and they also did their own comics. The first one I contributed to was a mini-comic version of MacBeth.
MB: You're an insomniac? Does that fuel some of your stuff - late-night sessions bent over the sketchpad?
JD: I generally work at night-time, I prefer it.
MB: You've got an interesting definition of art on your website. Thoughts/feelings on art?
RIGHT: Detail from ALL THIS WAS SEA
JD: I'm impressed/surprised that you read my manifesto, but I don't really have much to add beyond what's there.
MB: What's the way forward for the UK small press?
JD: Diversity, determination, inclusiveness.
MB: I've picked 5 strips of yours that I really like: Numbers 17, 36, 81, 128 and 152. Any thoughts on my selection?
JD: Bicycle Goblins! ... that's a surprise. The strip where I did everything to avoid drawing the damn bike because if I did I'd be there all week ... The Black Planet, from the Under the Ice sequence. Probably some of the least accessible stuff I've done, but then (as I've said before) I don't do it for other people [vi]. "It's a dark, dangerous world" is a direct quote from The Blue Planet (the David Attenborough documentary this is rather obviously inspired by) ... Song for a Sickie is a big favourite of mine and other people's, too ... and so is Tankless Tasks, for obvious reasons! And Golden Years, too. My slacker strip, ode to incompetence. Pretty art, though.
MB: Song For A Sickie is the strip that really got me into your work - the first one I saw and it really blew me away.
JD: Thanks. It's a big favourite of mine, too. The glitter glue in the bed is based on a genuine incident ... and most of the featured creatures do live in my room. Apart from the roller-skating gin-delivering lizard, that's just wishful thinking. Ironically, I was actually really quite ill at the time ...
LEFT: SONG FOR A SICKIE
MB: Which are your faves? Which do you wish you'd never done?JD: Chicken Dance. Poets and Revolutionaries. Sisyphus. Reading Ripley on the Tube. I keep a good friend (on video tape). Sneaking out. Bad Pagan Girl. Brainless Booze Hoover. Ones I wish I'd never done? Well, there's some I wish I'd taken more time over or redrawn (Bicycle Goblins and Three Little Ducks spring to mind), that's all. Why, are there some you wish I'd never done? [vii]
MB: Are you ever tempted to go back and alter the past redo/revise?
JD: Tempted, yes. More for other projects than TWS, though, which is a journal and therefore as imperfect as the experiences it describes. But it's far too annoying to actually do so. It's too far in the past. Bicycle Goblins, funny. I mean, there are a few obvious favourites with my readers (Wildcat Postal Strike was much linked to, as was Dennis loves Minnie, Tankless Tasks, Girl on Film) --- but the ones people pick out as their favourites often comes as a surprise to me --- It Passed as Wisdom Once (149), Where is Jeremy? (92), Jeremy Song (64) -- hardly my finest moments.
RIGHT: WINTER LIVINGMB: Please tell us about your creative process(es)?
JD: If you mean, how do I get ideas? ... well, I just do. From things people say, true stories I read (I read a lot of news, especially the strange stuff, I'm a regular reader of the The Fortean Times), things that happen to me, or that I remember. Sometimes dreams. I keep a dream diary in comic-book form, pretty rough stuff though! Some of the best ideas come out of things stuff I half-remember or mishear -- I have this theory that writers, artists, their senses and memories are a bit rubbish so their brain has to work harder at weaving the world into a coherent story, and it becomes a habit ...How a strip goes from the idea stage to the finished page? From the notes (taken on anything to hand) I go to the backs of old A4 photocopies and print-outs to do a finished script (art and text) which can be very tidy though often isn't. There's not much to say about how I transition from notes to clean scripts -- it's the usual mix of editing down, filling out, checking flow and rhythm, you know. There's usually a lot of re-ordering of scenes and panels at this stage. Then I do the clean final, usually like this: layout, pencils, inks (dip pen and brush), corrections, although sometimes I will draw it out straight in one go, usually when I'm working with a difficult medium like my glass pens or crayons as in http://www.alleged.org.uk/jrd/2004/20040702.html
MB: Are there are any epics waiting in the wings for the right space to realise them?
JD: Yes, of course. Two major ones I'm working on -- not exactly epics, more continuing stories. I drew the first C. Evidence story in 2002 (Black Butterflies, it's in TWS) but I'm planning a more leisured return to the character (that original strip was drawn in a mostly sleepless three days), I'm in the last stages of scripting up a three-parter at the moment. Then there's Blanche Goodchilde, Scourge of the Seven Seas -- for which I will have to learn to draw ships! The horror! If all goes according to plan, I'll have a script and some sample pages by autumn. There are also a couple of what you might call epics ... but I'm not really in a position to commit to a long project at the moment.
MB: Whether you prefer the short form in terms of your strips?
JD: I like the short form. Savage precis -- getting a point across in the minimum necessary, the discipline of paring a story down to its basics ...Get in, make 'em laugh or think, get out, that kind of thing. Exactly, it's lightning-strike writing, aiming not to draw the reader in but to create resonance, echoes that will chase you through the day. But there are things the short form can't do, which I want to explore, hence the longer strips.
MB: Do you ever suffer from creator's block?
JD: Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha. No. Though occasionally absolutely nothing seems appealing that's just me being miserable and sluglike -- and though I sometimes can't figure out where something goes next, that's usually down to having made an error at an earlier point. Sometimes I can't think of what to say, but that usually means that what I'm saying is difficult, and needs more time spent on it, or it's a story I'm not ready to tell, that needs setting aside. Occasionally it means I shouldn't be telling the story at all.
MB: If so, how do you break the block ?
JD: Just do something else.
MB: Tell me about Oxford. About the comics' community there - is there one?
JD: Sure, we pub-meet weekly on Tuesday nights at the All Bar One on the High Street [viii] and shop at the local Comic Showcase on St Clements. We organise Caption. We go to conventions and comics retreats. We read shedloads of comics and make a few, although less than we used to. 2000AD is based here, and there are a few pros locally (though they don't pub-meet, so forget about having your portfolio scrutinised!) and out-of-towners visit a bit, people we know from London and other towns, for Caption and other events.
MB: Feelings about your own work - do you feel like you're chasing perfection or are you pretty happy with the stuff you produce?
JD: Chasing perfection. It's never as good as I imagine it, though that doesn't mean I hate what I produce, even though it's just a flawed echo; I like broken and damaged things.
MB: I've noticed that you're branching out into comics journalism (or is this something you've always done?) - there's an article by you in Indy magazine. How did this come about? Are you planning to do more of this kind of thing in the future ?JD: I do the odd bit -- here's a report I did on Grant Morrison's talk at the ICA, for example http://www.livejournal.com/users/cleanskies/136637.html -- but I don't feel any real burning urge towards comics journalism. Which is a bit of a shame, really -- I mean, there's so much good stuff to celebrate and report on and there's no doubt that writing about something makes you pay better attention. But the problem is always the time -- and not just the time to write the piece either, there's the hawking it round editors and stuff (painful, time-consuming, dull).
MB: I also saw a recent issue of Naked, which includes a collaberative strip with you on art chores. How did the strip come about? Are you enjoying the experience?
JD: You've seen that! Ha! I've yet to see a copy ... Sindee Virtue in Hollywood's the first of some collaborations I'm doing with Andrew Richmond at the moment. It's not a very tidy sort of collaboration -- Andrew calls or emails with a bunch of ideas, I bash it out into some sort of script, send it to him, he calls me to explain where I misunderstood him ... then we start carving up the art chores ... for the Sindee strip, I sent him clean layouts, which he put pencils and inks over, but for the next one (a ten-page story full of monsters and magic and aliens and things) the art is 100% his, I just worked up the script and wrote dialogue. That's coming out soon, I think, but it's for his anthology so I don't know all the details. It has been quite fun, just doing the writing, but you have to be working with the right person; Andrew's very soothing to work with and his art's got this really nice filthy/gorgeous feel to it. It's also really nice getting the chance to play with other people's characters ... though there are fights, inevitably! And he's not local, which means we don't see each other as much as maybe we should. It could be much worse, though -- one of my friends is collaborating with an artist in Spain.
MB: What are the plans re: the next year? Future projects?
JD: More Whores of Mensa, with more artists involved and a brand new theme, the aforementioned strip with Andy [ix]. Mildred Curfew will return in Sunny for girls and there's a strip of mine in an anthology about toilets forthcoming from Girly Comic. As far as the personal projects go, it's hard for me to talk about them until I'm sure they're going ahead. However, I can reveal that I'm adapting another book. It's a very bad novel by a ranty right-wing author who published some very unpleasant opinions online last year. I'm turning it into gay porn ... all very tasteful, of course. Do you want to see some? [x] Anyway, back to work *sigh*
stuff n' stuff.
JeremyMB: Jeremy Dennis, thank you.
FOOTNOTES:
[i] Alex Williams .
[ii] Damian Cugley and Matt Brooker AKA D'Emon D'Raughtsman D'Israeli.
[iii] Looking at the evidence, this may have actually been called the “Summer Offensive” --- 1993 --- however, it was celebrated at UKCAC [UK Comics Art Convention] by Grant inviting the audience of a slow Sunday panel to come down and sit on the stage with him, where he proceeded to feed us smarties and champagne – bought by shoving a handful of notes into a couple of fans' hands and sending them down the offy – and this very love-in moment for me defined this time in 2000AD's history.
[iv] As I told Rian, through the champagne.
[v] Alan Jeffrey.
[vi] “Under the Ice” is a sequence about the internal experience of depression.
[vii] I didn't get a reply to that.
[viii] We now meet in The Mitre, a cheaper pub just across the road.
[ix] Andrew Richmond.
[x] I didn't get a reply to that, either.
