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Jamie Hibdon — featured creator
We recently caught up with local comic artist Jamie Hibdon. This last year he interned for Fanatagraphics, has been featured on the repanleled blog, and has traveled to the Center for Cartoon Studies for portfolio day. He is always working on various comic and illustration projects that you can see on his blog MC.Goodwin’sDoneFor, or on his Flicker page.
What are you working on now comics-wise?
Currently, I’m working on Lingua Franca, a series of strips centered around an extra-terrestrial named Uchu and his adventures on and off planet Earth. I usually confine myself to 4 or 6 panels with these strips, so I can create something a bit irreverent that is very focused on timing. This strip will be ongoing until I get bored or run out of ideas, and is ideal material to be distributed through mini-comics or zines. At the moment, it’s just a matter of accumulating material and finding a good format. Aside from that, there’s a Batman/Zorro story that’s been waiting for its finishing touches for some time, and three upcoming collaborative projects including a one-shot involving some pretty well known characters which I will be inking and co-writing with my cohort at Go For Red Lion, another series based in Columbia written by a good friend with art by me, and lastly a sort of wildcard project with Mary at 2 Smelly Kids That Like Each Other. After I get some headway on these projects, I’m going to venture briefly away from fantasy to work on a short story about deer hunting I just finished scripting. I’m also researching pretty heavily right now for a space story which I hope to submit to the Xeric foundation.
In addition to those projects, I recently submitted a Madman cover to Robert Goodin’s covered blog, and try to submit consistently to Smoke Signal, and plan to Hive and Electric Ant when I get some free time. Whether or not I get rejected, I like the pressure a deadline presents, because I’m a notorious procrastinator.
How’s your comic output been the last year? What’s helped or hindered your output?
It’s been pretty good. As I said before, I’m something of a procrastinator, and that is definitely a hindrance in most cases. Conversely, nothing gets me glued to the table like a little guilt over a period of inactivity. I suppose my love/hate relationship with my table is a hindrance, but I have been trying to maintain a one-page-per-day rate, but this usually means I knock out a few pages in a frantic jam session, then avoid my table like a one-night stand. Despite this, I have produced three short stories, and a number of Lingua Franca strips, in addition to various illustrations and unrelated strips. Also, I’ve been involved in various projects as purely a character designer and, as such, have pages and pages of designs all over the place. As always, it could be better, so I’m constantly trying to develop a good work habit, some kind of constant rhythm. I’ve moved three times in the last year which definitely interrupts that flow, and since I’m doing all this for fun, I have to work part-time to pay rent and afford supplies. This breaks up my rhythm, too, but also makes me miss my table.
Excitement over experimentation definitely drives production for me, and I used to spend lots of time deliberating over page layout, number of panels, size and shape of panels, etc. I was very attracted to the layouts of artists like Jim Mahfood or Paul Pope, but I read in an interview with Alex Toth that page layouts were something he battled with constantly, until he drew inspiration from the newspaper strips of the day, and started working with a more formulaic layout. He professed that working within the confines of a consistent number and size of panels made him grow as a draftsman and develop his sequencing. This inspired me to take another look at older strips. When you don’t have to worry about designing a new layout with every page, but must find a way to make your story fit within the preset confines, suddenly you can be focused on just the sequencing and timing, much akin to working with a specific form in poetry, which is not to say it becomes easier, but presents a different challenge. In addition, I can prepare a number of pages in advance, so there’s less of a break between pages. However, not every story is necessarily suited to this format, but I think forcing myself to work in a formula will help me develop a more intuitive sense of layout, and that is definitely a help. I spend so much more time thinking about the story and art than I do actually drawing.
Read any good comics, webcomics, or graphic novels lately?
I just read a chunk of Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba, Brubaker and Phillip’s Incognito second arc, David Lapham’s Murder Me Dead, Arukawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist, and I wait patiently for Jeff Smith’s RASL, which I think is one of the smartest comics being written today. But, I’m kind of a science nerd. I also just read Dash Shaw’s Bottomless Belly Button, Tardi’s Arctic Marauder, and picked up the first collection of Maakies. Online, I keep up with Superhero Girl, Hark! A Vagrant, re-reading Achewood, and have been really digging Gary Lister’s Morgana of the Borgs. That’s just off the top of my head, but reading is definitely a distraction from working. I have to limit my visits to the public library, because I have no self-control.
How about other media anything good you like lately? (video, music, books, etc.)
In addition to reading the manga, I have been trying to catch up with Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I find the animation to be just as good as the former series, and its pacing and character development is much improved. I recently watched Derrick Comedy’s Mystery Team, and Duncan Jones’ Moon. I don’t read as much prose as I used to, but that will change in the summer. I think the last book I finished was Murakami Haruki’s Kafka on the Shore. Aside from my recent Sinatra kick, I’ve been playing music by my friend Ryan Drane a lot recently, but hip-hop is probably my most consistent drawing music.
You interned at Fantagraphics Books last summer. Did that experience change your perception of the comics industry?
Yeah, I realized that it’s on one hand a much more expansive community, with a number of facets and genres that even avid fans are somewhat unaware of, and all much more tight knit that I once thought. Like a huge extended family, where everyone knows everyone else, and some people are closer than others are, and maybe there are some feuds. Working with Fanta was eye-opening, also, because I realized how much great work is supported by little else but love and maybe caffeine. As a kid, I sort of imagined that Marvel and DC were these huge buildings with dozens and dozens of staff members, and I carried this pre-conception with me into adulthood. I realized that most places are more like Fantagraphics than not, which is a relatively small staff rubbing elbows in a house-like factory. I thought I worked hard on my own stories, but in the Fanta staff, I met and observed people passionately working to bring stories they loved into as many hands as possible. And at the end of the day, after seeing the painstaking process of publishing comics and books, not unlike an assembly line, the love for and allure of comics was still present.
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