Jason Franks
What have been your personal cartooning/comics highlights of 2012?
Without question, the highlight for my own
work has been McBLACK TWO SHOT. It's not the first time I've worked with
Bruce Mutard but it's the first of our work together that's seen print.
Putting his highly polished and traditional art style next to Luke Pickett's brilliant crayon-and-notepad sequence, then Rhys James'
super-modern digital painting and J. Stew's atmospheric, underground
nightmares... I am ridiculously proud of this combination of artists.
Who are some of the comics creators that you've discovered and enjoyed for the
first time in 2012?
This
year has been all about Image for me. I've been mates with Justin Jordan
for many years, so Luther Strode probably doesn't count, but a lot of
my favourite new mainstream books have been Image stablemates. Green
Wake by Wiebe and Rossmo. Who Is Jake Ellis? by Edmondson and Zonjic.
Also this is the year I finally cottoned onto Locke and Key by Hill and
Rodriguez.
My other big find has been Naoki Urasawa. I tried Pluto a couple of
years ago and it wasn't my cup of tea; but this year I discovered that
three of the manga books I was most interested in (old and new) are by
Urasawa. Monster and 20th Century Boys are every bit as good as they are
reputed to be, and I'm dying to get my hands of an English version of
Billy Bat.
What is something non-comics that you have
enjoyed this year?
I've probably found
myself reading more prose than I have for the last few years. This year
it's been a lot of Richard Morgan, John Steinbeck, Greg Palast, Evan
Wright, China Mieville and Richard Stark. Some of these are old
favourites, some are something new. On TV the only thing I've really
cared for has been Breaking Bad.
Have you implemented any significant changes to your working methods this year?
I'm trying to put out a bit more prose fiction than I have in the last
few years. Publishing my first novel has sort of opened my eyes to the
opportunities in that world and the comics business is a bit sickly
right now. I mean, when using Kickstarter to avoid the entire
traditional marketplace is the great white hope for original comics you
know there are problems. That said, I have a LOT of comics projects in
the works and hopefully a lot more of them will drop in 2013 than we've
seen in the last 2 years. I'm focusing on longer work--graphic novels
and miniseries, as opposed to short stories and anthologies--and it
takes a lot of time to get these bigger projects up and running.
What are you looking forward to in 2013?
Putting
out more comics. There should be more McBlack and more Sixsmiths, but
also, if things go well, a bunch of completely new stuff in a variety of
genres. Hope to sell my second novel, too. I'm also looking forward to
watching the continued growth of the local scene and to reading awesome
new comics from local publishers.
