Katherine Dacey: Tell us a little about your background—when you became interested in comics, where you trained, and who your influences are (comic or otherwise).

Josh Alves: That’s a big question, and I guess I should begin in the beginning… I grew up in Bristol, RI and have been drawing for as long as I could remember. All through school I enjoyed art classes and doodling on every available piece of paper (my high school math teacher gave me “points for creativity” on a test where I illustrated the word problems).

Along with drawing, I’ve always been a fan of the comics page in the newspaper, The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes were my two favorite strips. I really enjoyed the outside-the-box approach that Gary Larson had with the gags and Bill Watterson’s imaginative, whimsical comic inspired me. The comic book I liked most was Spider Man (nerd with super cool super powers… and funny wisecracking personality… I could relate in ways).

In high school I began experimenting more with animation as I began planning my education course to become a “special effects guy” for movies (my goal was to work in Stan Winston Studios). My plan was to take a visual communications course in Providence, RI (for the 3D animation) head to Canada for animatronics (robotic puppetry) training and then out to California for more 3D… I ended up going with the first part of that where I fell in love with graphic design.

The course I took in Providence taught everything from typography to photography, print design to web design, 3D animation to video editing… it was a jam packed course… and I loved it.

I never had any formal art training, but the various other classes I took, I feel, contributed to where I’m at artistically.

Non-comic influences include Looney Tunes, Animaniacs, The Tick and Big Guy & Rusty. My more recent art influences are folks that I’ve come across online. Dan Schoening, Javier Burgos, and Sean Galloway are a few artists whose work really spark and inspire me.

KD: How did you come to create “The Araknid Kid”? Who do you think the audience is for such a story, and how do you reach out to them through a site like Zuda, which features such varied content?

JA: Long story short… “The Araknid Kid” was the result of a progression of characters beginning with my character “Bug Boy.” After winning a Spam molding contest, mild-mannered Brigg Brown receives a mysterious crate. Once home, he opens the crate to find a super-powered bug costume which he uses to fight crime. (This was created back in high school.) The character had always been a “mysterious quiet type” which eventually evolved into a character who communicated with pictograms (rebus puzzles), a trait that also has shaped who the character is and where the abilities come from.

My hope is that it’s an all-ages story in the complete sense of the term. As for reaching out to an audience, the Internet has truly made the world a smaller place. The people I’ve been able to connect and talk with, the feedback and critiques I’m able to get are very valuable to me, so it was a natural progression to explore web publication.

Last summer I read a press release about DC Comic’s new online imprint, Zuda.com, which offered anyone the opportunity to submit their comic, and then have the chance to get paid to create it! Seeing this as a possible way to do what I love while earning money for my family I started preparing a one-shot, eight-page (screen) introduction to the character, the abilities, the picto-speak and one of the villains from the rogue gallery. The editors liked it enough to give it a shot in December 2007’s competition where I competed against nine other comics for a shot at a paid contract. While I didn’t win, it did provide me a chance to get my work out there, get some exposure and give me great feedback for it. Through this I was introduced to Jerzy Drozd’s project SugarySerials.com… a FANTASTIC place chock-full of all-ages comic fun. The “Saturday Morning cartoon” approach and what Sugary Serials was all about really connected with what I wanted to do with my comics and after talking with Jerzy, “The Araknid Kid” was added to the lineup for the first “season.”

I was recently invited back to Zuda for a second shot in July’s Invitational where eight new screens were submitted, starting the first full-adventure. While I didn’t win the contract this go around either, it’s been another great experience and exposure for the Kid. Things have a way of working itself out, though, as I don’t think Zuda is the best home (the audience skews older and the comics reflect that… it’s not very kid friendly). So even though DC Comics won’t be cutting me a check to continue “The Araknid Kid” there, I’m very happy to say you can catch it on SugarySerials.com and once it “airs” there it’ll be available in comic book form.

KD: From your website, it seems like you have some ambitious long-term plans for “Araknid.” What is your ultimate goal for the series?

JA: *smiles* Yeah… I like to dream big. Ultimate goal? I’d like to see it span multi-media. Comic books, cartoons (TV, mobile devices), video games, action figures… you know… the usual “big-kid-dreamer” goals.

KD: What do you find appealing about writing and drawing for an all-ages audience? What are some of the challenges?

JA: I love creating work that can be enjoyed by my four year old and my grandfather. Anything that can be enjoyed together is a big deal for me. I personally enjoy that type of work and want to reflect that. Some of the challenges are connecting with the wider audience. There’s that stereotype that “all-ages” means “kid stuff”, but I think that it’s slowing beginning to shift, I think, a large part, thanks to Pixar.

KD: You mentioned that Pixar has played a big role in re-defining the concept of an “all ages” animated film. How so? Are there any equivalent publishers or creators who are having a similar effect in comics?

JA: I’m not quite sure I can pinpoint it, but I’ll try. Ultimately, they tell really great stories. The kind that work on multiple levels. They engage the imagination of the young and not-so-young… as for their publishing equivalents, I’m not quite sure. I really like what “Kids Love Comics” have been doing and recent announcements from Boom Studios (who will be, ironically or not, publishing Pixar comics) is encouraging as a creator (feeling like there’s a trend toward all-ages entertainment).

KD: Who are some of your favorite all-ages creators? What is it about their work that speaks to younger readers?

JA: Definitely the guys at Blindwolf Studios, Patrick the Wolf-Boy is fun-tastic and the work they’ve been doing for DC’s Tiny Titans is great. Their work has such a fun wackiness to it. Ben Avery’s Armor Quest is a great adventure series. John Gallagher’s Buzzboy is superhero hilarity. Mike Kunkel’s work has a certain magical whimsy to it that is just plain cool. And to bring it back, the work I’ve seen from Jerzy Drozd and his passion for creating comics really re-energizes me.

KD: What other projects are you working on at the moment? Would you like to continue writing for such a broad audience, or do you have other kinds of stories you’d like to tell?

JA: Currently I’m working on syndicating my panel comic “Tastes Like Chicken” (currently self-syndicating online and in local papers). I have a short story being published later this fall in the Parable anthology and I’m hoping to self-publish a collection of comic strips that were published in the Bangor Daily News called “Zeek And Dent.” I’d like to continue telling (and collaborating in telling) stories that are aimed at a broad audience.

Brigid Alverson: What inspired you to write graphic novels?

Misako Takashima: I was really depressed because of my relationship with a boyfriend. I felt that relationship was really horrible, I was really tired, and I thought, “I am going to go to Japan, but before I give up on my life in America, I am going to challenge myself.” So I made 16 pages of Rock and Roll Love, and I drew doodles of Biker Girl, and I started calling all the publishers in New York City. Since I came from Wisconsin, everybody gave me time—“Oh come over, we can talk.” Hyperion and some other publishers really loved my ideas, especially Rock and Roll Love, and then Hyperion offered me two book deals.

BA: Rock and Roll Love is the story of a Japanese teenager who moves to the U.S. to find a rock musician boyfriend—and succeeds. How much of it is autobiographical?

MT: All of it. Have you ever watched the movie Back to the Future? I had a huge crush on Michael J. Fox—in the book they said I couldn’t say the real name—and some other movie actors, and I thought I was going to be their girlfriend. I thought I would move to America and have a cute rock-star American boyfriend. I made those punk rock friends in Missouri, they are still my friends, and my best friend in the book is a school teacher in Chicago now.

BA: Are all the members of your family police officers, like in the book?

MT: Yes. Until last year they still didn’t like what I was doing here. They wanted me to become a cop, an international bilingual cop, and it’s so impossible for me to be like that. Finally they admitted it, and they are proud of my career right now.

BA: Was it difficult to write about yourself?

MT: Not at all. Actually it’s more easy for me to draw and write about myself.

BA: How do you create a book?

MT: I start the outline first. I draw head shapes, really rough panel movements, for whole pages, and then I start adding a script.

BA: Who do you see as the audience for Rock and Roll Love?

MT: Definitely teenage girls. Biker Girl was more for 7 to 10 or 11, but Rock and Roll Love is more for junior high or early high school. Detective Jermain is about American teenagers, so I made it a little bit older, maybe 15 to 17. I like to grow together with the readers.

BA: How are your comics different from manga?

MT: Usually manga is about a girl who is waiting for some special boy and they are going to make her happy, or she is living in her imagination—one girl and 10 really good looking boys surrounding her. I am living in America, and I have a lot of American girlfriends here, and obviously those American girls are not like Japanese girls at all. They are not shy, they have their own identity, they have power. I wanted more focus on girls here, and I wanted the readers to share the feeling with my characters.

I read American graphic novels. My favorite artist is Craig Thompson, who is a friend, and I like Charles Burns, who made Black Hole.

I don’t call myself a manga artist so much. My books are more like a teen graphic novel, like Minx. But I’m Japanese, so obviously I’m influenced [by manga].

BA: How did you dream up your characters and give them all personalities?

MT: I don’t want to put so many crazy characters together in a book—it would be too crazy and too busy. If the main characters are sort of negative or shy, I try to put in a sidekick that is more mature or adult and I try to encourage her.

For my new book, Detective Jermain, I visited an American high school in Madison, Wisconsin, and I talked to the teenagers there. I focused on girls who had a teenage attitude, some sort of ego problem. The sidekick boys, I though maybe if she is a really passionate girl, one boy is really shy and sort of a computer geek, and another boy I made a real heartbreaker, a popular boy. It is going to be a love triangle.

BA: Tell me about creating the Japanese character for Archie. Was it your idea or did they approach you?

MT: Janna [Morishima, of Diamond Comics Distributors] told them I was really good at writing stories, so they checked my website and books and they contacted me.

BA: How did you make her different from the other characters?

MT: Most Archie characters are cute and funny and positive, but I wanted to put in something different, someone who is shy and needs help, so that’s why I created a Japanese exchange student. When Kumi sees Betty or Veronica, she thinks they are teachers because they are so tall. In Archie they are really nice to people all the time, so they welcome her and try to make friends for her, do some activities together. I wanted to show some cultural exchange in the story, so Kumi and her whole family move to Riverdale from Tokyo and she is going to invite Archie people to her house, and her house has Japanese furniture. Her mother is going to bring them some weird Japanese snacks, so it is going to be interesting—the Archie characters never had that before.

BA: What is Detective Jermain about?

MT: It is about this American girl, Jermain, she is 17 years old, just about to graduate high school. She has parents who used to be world famous detectives, and her father died years ago. Now she is acting just like a detective, and she and her mother are always having fights. Volume 1 is not going to be about the mystery of her father’s death. She’s going to solve the mystery later, but in volume 1 I wanted so show off more of a school life story. So it’s going to be about Jermain [and her friends] Andy and Travis, and they are going to solve a school mystery.

It is about a girl who likes to think she is independent, but she is really not. She is a teenager, she has all these fights with her mom, a friendship that will turn into a romantic relationship. So it’s teen drama, plus this school mystery. Volume 1 is going to be up-down-up-down.

I am really enjoying drawing all these characters who wear really interesting fashions—obviously if they are teenage girls they are into fashion.

BA: Did you go to art school?

MT: No, not at all. I have a high school English teacher’s license in Japan. I can be a teacher over there.

BA: What is your family like?

MT: My brother is younger, he is such a typical Japanese boy, always inside the house, always doing something on the computer, always reading a manga, but he became a cop, so he’s a pretty, quiet serious cop. My mom wanted to become a comedian, but she took a test to become a police officer and she passed it, so she did become a cop. She’s more dealing with teenagers. And my father is a detective. Until last year, he was doing more drug [investigations].

Usually people imagine that Japanese parents are very conservative and they don’t want their kids to go away. Usually we live together until the daughter gets married, while Americans live together until the daughter graduates high school. In a typical Japanese family we don’t interrupt each other so much. My parents never say no to me. They never wanted to control me. They are more worried about my brother. When I said I wanted to move to America, they never said no to me. They trust me. I think that is why they let me do whatever I wanted to do.

BA: Are you making a living as a cartoonist?

MT: Yes. I am pretty lucky. I heard that becoming an artist in America is difficult, but I just make comics, and sometimes I teach.

BA: What do you like best about making comics?

MT: I really like when I am inking, that’s the best. I just feel like I am a cartoonist. Pencils are just flat, but when I put ink in with my brush, the characters look like they are moving and talking. And I usually use my friends as the models, so Jermain is my good friend from Madison, Wisconsin. Her name is also Jermain. To me, when I ink my character Jermain, my real friend Jermain is kind of in there.

I love teaching comics to kids. I teach at libraries in Manhattan; they hired me as a freelance teacher. It’s really fun and really good study for me. I think it is important for me to always be in contact with teenagers.

BA: Do you show your books to teenagers?

MT: Yes they read it. Showing my book, which was published, really inspires them, and they are going to be more motivated to create. And it’s fun to see some kids with portfolios. I can help them to make some different shapes or postures. It’s good also to know these days that kids like the old style, they like these stories. Of course the best thing is about teaching comics is I can hear their own stories, what they do every day at school, their relationships with their parents. I’m not a teenager any more but I feel like I’m still living in their world.

Drozd, a comics artist and freelance illustrator, was inspired not only by the cartoons of his youth but also by his favorite classic comics. “My introduction to comics was my parents coming home with a huge stack of Silver Age books,” he says. “We lived in a very small town and there was no dedicated comics store. They happened to stop in a used bookstore where they had a huge bin of dime comics—Richie Rich, Archie, Metal Men.

“There was this sense of earnest wonder in the old ’60s books, and so much value added because you got three stories in each issue and it took you 15 minutes to read a comic book.”

“At Sugary Serials we want to create stories that are not simplified but dense and full of inferential data, so it takes a while to read it even though it’s only 24 pages,” Drozd says. “You walk away with a lot more than a simple story.”

In order to keep the site fresh, Drozd has a group of creators working on different stories, each of which is presented in eight-page installments. That means the site is updated at least every weekday. At the end of the month, the episodes are collected into a comic that is available for download or print-on-demand.

Drozd himself collaborates with Sara Turner on the kids’ webcomics site Make Like a Tree Comics and Mark Rudolph on the Sugary Serials story The Galactic League of Marshals. “As Mark says, in the ’60s, nothing was off the table,” he says. “If you wanted to have a green pirate from the planet Saturn, you could do it, as long as it made sense in the story. It’s not ironic, not tongue-in-cheek, just a sense of wonder—and what evil can we come up with to for our heroes to overcome.”

Drozd has three guidelines for Sugary Serials creators, all based on the elements that made Saturday morning cartoons so successful:

1. Vibrant characters. “In Saturday morning cartoons, as well as in the ’60s comics, you had very limited space to tell the full story,” he says. “How are you going to communicate characters in an economical fashion while avoiding simplifying? You want them to feel like rich characters, but you don’t have much time. So you turn up the volume on the characters to 11.” That means making every word count. “You can’t write whimsical dialogue,” he says. “You have to ask yourself ‘How is it servicing the story and the character?’”

2. Economical storytelling. The old cartoons, which had two commercial breaks in every episode, were written as three acts with a cliffhanger at the end of the first two and the resolution at the end of the third. The comics on Sugary Serials follow a similar structure, with each act lasting just eight pages. “You have to be very economical,” Drozd says. “You don’t dally. This isn’t a Miyazake film, where you have a lot of mood-setting stuff and you can regard the beautiful landscape for two minutes. You have to hit your points fast.”

3. …And good for you, too. “I tell all our creators, you don’t have to have a moral message blaring on the cover, but at least avoid topics that celebrate ennui, hatred, negative feelings—if they are in the story, it should be someone overcoming negative feelings,” Drozd says.

“I honestly think, how can you succumb to despair when you live in a country where you have real opportunities and you have real recourse when something goes wrong?” he continues. “Of course, being raised on Silver Age stuff, which always had earnest optimism, I was indoctrinated as a child, so when Rob Liefeld, came along, I just didn’t get it. It was like another language to me.”

Drozd wants to get Sugary Serials into libraries, but the librarians he has spoken to have told him they want perfect-bound trade paperbacks, not magazine-style monthly issues. “I was in the graphic novels section [of the Ann Arbor library] and I saw a 13-year-old looking for a book,” he says. “I said, ‘Can I help you find something?’ and she said ‘I’m not looking for anything in particular. I read anything I can.’ A light bulb came on for me—libraries are where kids will find out about you. We have a very hungry audience looking for content, and that’s the place to go.”

In addition to his work on Sugary Serials, Drozd, who makes his living as a freelance illustrator, has spent the last two years working on a comics literacy project in the Detroit public schools. “They hired me to go into the classroom as a teaching artist,” he says. “I did an hour a week with kids, teaching the fundamentals of making comics. It ties into reading comprehension and literacy and getting them to think hard about what we know about a character by how we design them, what their inner lives are.”

Many of his students were new to comics. “I really was walking into an environment where you are dealing with kids who have never read a comic book,” he says. “It was astonishing to talk to kids who have never read a comic in their life, because they don’t have access and comics aren’t marketed to them, and teachers have written off comics as junk literature or at best a gateway to ‘real reading.’” In fact, he says, one teacher who started incorporating comics regularly into lessons learned that some children who seemed to be struggling with reading actually had a robust visual vocabulary that they didn’t have in words.

So it makes sense that Drozd would be interested in creating entry-level comics. “I get into debates with other comics creators who say ‘What you are doing is dumbed down, kiddified, not advancing the art form,’” he says. “I think there is a lot of effort that goes into constructing stories that kids and adults can enjoy, but you need comics that can get the entry person hooked. Then they can go on to Art Spiegelman or Phoebe Glockner. Phobe Glockner is not going to get kids into reading comics. Naruto, Fruits Basket—those are great, because they are getting people into the idea of reading sequential art.

“It feels like it’s something that’s beginning to pick up steam, and people are getting hungry for it. A woman with children came to me at the comics store and said ‘Thank you for having content I feel comfortable giving to my nine-year-old. I read it and found it charming.’ If you’re Grant Morrison, that’s death to hear, but I was glowing all day.”