[music playing] - Hello and welcome to Comic Culture.

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is the legendary Bill Sienkiewicz.

Bill, welcome to Comic Culture.

- Thank you so much, Terence.

Great to be here.

Real pleasure.

- Bill, you are a guest that I've been hoping to have on the show for the longest time.

I'm so glad that you're here because I really wanted to talk about your evolution as an artist.

And I know you've probably been asked this question many times before.

But you're beginning work in comics is more in a traditional vein.

Your work on the Fantastic Four is very good, but it's not what you would later be known for.

So I'm wondering, where was it somewhere along that Moon Knight run, somewhere in that New Mutants run that you sort of discovered your voice and were able to go with it?

- Yeah.

I mean, I think it was anything that was planned.

I think that I knew that from a very young age, I wanted to draw comic books or be involved in comics telling stories.

So a lot of the comics that I read-- and people who know my work at all are well aware of the fact that my major influence was Neal Adams, at a certain point.

But I've been influenced by comics, in general, and comic strips.

So at one point in my-- at any given point, anybody from Milton Caniff to Sergio Aragonés to Sal Buscema to John-- I mean, I sort of crossed the transom.

I just felt like I was a sponge.

So when I was drawing comics in grammar school for my friends and for myself and then all the way through high school, a lot of the comics that I read were sort of put into the comics that I was drawing.

So when I finally did get into comic books, I think that I sort of passed through all of the influences that I had while I was growing up.

But I still love the medium, so I'd fallen in love with fine art illustration, abstract expressionism.

So that's where my head was at, and that was where I was putting a lot of that stuff into my sketchbooks.

For some reason, I wanted to try to shoehorn that into comics.

And that was when I met with quite a bit of resistance-- or you know, you can't do that, or that's not how it's done-- that kind of thing.

And there was no reason ever given.

It was just simply the standard.

That's not comics, and I'm like, why?

Why not-- that kind of thing.

So that was what had happened at the time that I decided to try it, to try to push things around.

There were a couple of things that really set that off, though.

And I realized I'm taking a long time with the very first question.

I started to get a lot of push-back about my Neal Adams influence, very-negative-type stuff.

That always felt that way.

It's like, looks like Bill Sienkiewicz was influenced by Neal Adams period, end of story, which made me feel kind of invisible and upset, angry, because I grew up in farm country.

So there were no adults around to say learn to be yourself, just follow your dream, et cetera.

I just ended up drawing this stuff.

And when I got into comics and then when I started getting those responses, I thought I'm either going to do comics the way I want to do them, or I'm going to get out.

That's really what it came down to.

That's pretty much was the turning point for me was I'm just going to try all the things that were in my sketchbook.

- It's fascinating because I was looking back at your Moon Knight work which I had not really read.

It was a little before my comic reading time.

And it was just amazing to see, there is that moment when you say, there's the Neal Adams influence that's there.

But then you start to see it changing, and you sort of become this-- I guess, you were working with Klaus Janson on a few of those issues.

And you can see where you're sort of blending your style with his style.

And then things just start happening.

You do different tones.

You start to play with zip-a-tone or duotone patterns, and it just takes on this wild life.

And then when you take over New Mutants after the very accomplished Bob McLeod, it's just a whole new ball game.

And I remember picking up that first issue at the local comic shop and just being blown away and not quite understanding everything you were doing but just knowing it was something special.

So when you're kind of given that free rein and sort of let go, as an artist, how does that help you tell that story?

- Those issues go back to the Moon Knight.

I think, part of the precipitating factor for me to change styles was also breaking my drawing in, which caused a whole life-changing sort of-- I'm going to just concentrate on doing the best work that I can and not allow any impediments or fears to kind of get in the way.

And so when I finally left Moon Knight after 30 issues-- I think it was three years.

I felt like three years was kind of a good place to end it.

And I was also interested in painting.

I started doing a lot of cover paintings for like the Dazzler and Rom and a couple of other ones.

And I turned down the X-Men.

I wanted to concentrate on more expansive, different technical aspects of the work.

And being offered the X-Men was certainly an honor, but I also felt that I wanted to try stuff that might not be conducive to Marvel's flagship book.

I felt like I might drive it into a ditch, and I didn't want to do that because I wanted to experiment.

And there was that could've go either way.

So it wasn't until Chris Claremont-- he came up to me in the hallway.

I remember it was like a 32 pitch, he said, about the New Mutants.

So I'd seen the New Mutants.

I love what Bob was doing, but I had no real interest in doing more issues of anything that was going to be hit and miss.

And I was going to pop in and pop out.

The idea of doing another series after three years on Moon Knight was not something I was looking forward to.

And Chris said, it's a three-issue series, that's it.

It's a demon bear.

It involves a lot of demons and sort of dreams, dream logic, et cetera, et cetera.

And that is what piqued my interest because it felt like I could go-- dreams don't have to make sense, so I could play with illogic or with abstraction or anything.

Plus I was heavily into Hunter Thompson at the time and Ralph Steadman.

And animation-- Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, coupled with Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline.

In the abstract expression-- Robert Rauschenberg.

It was just this collision of highbrow, lowbrow, whatever you want to call it in terms of how people perceive it.

So when Chris came to me and said that, literally offered me a 30-second synopsis.

And at the end of it, to my great surprise, I said, I'm in.

And I thought, well, three issues.

And then we had so much fun, we just said, let's keep it going.

But I do know that the response to my coming on board-- to the great delight of editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, who used to call me into his office and read me the letters, stopping Jim before he kills again-- those kinds of letters.

But yeah, it was a very interesting sort of path.

The 30-second conversations, you never know where they may lead.

- Really interesting, you say that you broke your hand, and you just went with what you were able to do while it was, I guess, healing up.

And you create this style that-- it's like we talk about comics before Jack Kirby, we talk about comics before Neal Adams, and after.

And then it's comics after you because you're at that time when paper is changing, printing is improving, and you're able to do different things.

So I know that you're working in different mediums to do covers.

You're doing these painted covers.

And I'm just wondering, as the times are changing and your style of artwork is becoming, well, capable, I mean, something that they could reproduce on the page that previously couldn't be done, how does that guide you in what you want to do with the next project?

- Well, it's a time that I was doing the painted covers.

When I was in art school, I had also wanted to do movie posters and TV guide covers, Time Magazine covers, sort of the creme de la creme of a lot of my illustration influences.

And when I was in comics and I started to try to do more painted stuff, like with the movie adaptations-- but there were really no painted covers on comics.

Although growing up, with like-- I think, they were Gold Key.

I think like Turok, Son of Stone and there were other ones that had some painted covers.

But I don't remember any Marvel comic covers having painted covers at all.

Everything was line art.

As a matter of fact, when I was doing some of the issues of Moon Knight, I thought-- let's do black-and-white covers with tone.

And I think Danny O'Neil, who was the editor at the time, said, look, let's do it every other cover.

I think doing every cover might be a bit much.

But again, that had to do with my desire to do experimentation.

And the hand breaking had to do with growing up in the country and drinking quite a bit, smoking, and et cetera.

And when I had gotten very, very drunk in my 20s and then I had broken my drawing hand, led me to quit drinking.

I just thought everything I'm working toward in terms of my art career is-- it's amazing how quickly it could just go like that.

So that kind of freed me up, in a weird way, to try this different stylistic approaches.

The printing process at the time for comics was certainly not where it is now.

I mean, I looked at the older covers that I get for the Dazzler and some Rom, and the dot pattern on the covers is so sparse.

I mean, you could drive a tractor trailer through to that.

Whereas now, I mean, with digital, it's amazing.

I mean, I actually would have to construct pieces or paint pieces or scan or take the photo or have it photographed at Marvel.

There was a whole technical exercise that is just taken for granted now, that you don't need.

I mean, everything now could be done right on a screen.

I still love the idea of something be done actually by hand, physically painted.

Although I bounce back and forth, depending on what the project is.

But yeah, at that time, technically, there was really a no kind of blueprint for how to go about doing it.

But luckily, I had great editors and people in production who were willing.

They were looking for challenges as well.

So having people like Anne [inaudible] and Ralph Macchio as editors-- and Shooter as well-- saying, I don't understand what you're trying to do, but hey, let's throw it against the wall and see what sticks.

So it wasn't done in a vacuum, let's put it that way.

I was lucky to have so many really amazing people who were working alongside and push me, saying, OK, try your thing.

Let's see what works.

- Oh, it's interesting.

You talk about Jim Shooter reading you letters, negative letters.

And I imagine for a young artist, that's got to be soul crushing because as you get older, as I get older, and I do work, I can handle criticism because I've been doing it long enough, I know what works, what doesn't work, and maybe what I need to improve.

But as a young artist, is he doing this in a way that's designed to help you improve, or is it just to kind of maybe-- - I should clarify.

That's a great question, and I'm glad-- thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify.

Jim and I, we had this brotherly kind of relationship even though he was my boss.

We also were comfortable enough.

We'd have dinner occasionally.

And because of similarities in our upbringing, we also felt comfortable enough to sort of bust each other's chops, which could have been very, very dangerous in terms of career.

[chuckles] But when he would call me in-- and he took great delight, and it was obvious that he was really enjoying himself.

But at the same time, he was the one who was giving me the green light and the carte blanche to try my stuff.

At the same time, he would also say, damn you and your non-primary color palette.

[laughs] That's not comics.

You're using all these grays.

But he would say it with great affection and also humor.

So again, in the history of Marvel Comics during that era, I think, he gets cast as a villain, which is supposedly-- I mean, for Marvel Comics, to be cast in the villain part, a great role for people to be, in retrospect.

But he was very supportive in a lot of ways for both myself and people like Frank Miller and Klaus Janson.

He was a real cheerleader.

I mean, for no other reason, I like to just get the opportunity to say he was actually a really terrific guy to work with and work for.

- You had the opportunity, while at Marvel, to write your own series, Stray Toasters, and you got to work with Frank Miller on the Electra saga.

And I'm just wondering, you go from those types of stories, and then you also start doing some inking.

So I'm just wondering if you could touch a little bit on your work on Stray Toasters, telling that story the way you want it to tell it, working with Frank, who, obviously, has a strong mindset on how he wants to tell a story, and then working with another artist on their work to help them tell the story but from a secondary role.

- Maybe I'll just take the second part of the question first is that growing up, again, anybody who reads comics knows that in terms of the medium, it's such a collaborative one.

It can sometimes be conceived or perceived as the assembly line procedure.

It's like, OK, I'm going to build a car.

I'm doing the windshields, you do the bumper.

Whereas comics, it's like you've got somebody doing the pencils or the breakdowns and then the classic combinations of great inking, pencil and duos.

Joe Sinnott over Jack Kirby or Klein over Schwann or any number of people that where-- you see the combination of their work as a third entity.

There's the penciling and inking styles.

You put them together, and you get this other level of magic, which is, again, the wonderful thing about comics is that the writing and the art are put together in such a way that you get something that is greater than the sum of the parts as well.

And I always love the idea of looking through another artist's eyes and walking in their metaphorical footsteps so that how they perceive things.

So when I would ink other artist, to me, it was a chance to remain in the world of comics, sort of honor the past that I grew up with, plus it was a lot of fun because I didn't feel like I had my own ego invested.

It wasn't all me.

It wasn't like my layouts, my story.

I felt like I was coming in as sort of an extra set of hands and someone who could work my ego or my-- it wasn't all riding on my shoulders in terms of the productivity of it and the success of it.

I was part of a team.

And I enjoyed that, and I still do, although I don't really ink over a lot of other people now.

Mostly been acting like someone like Denys Cowan, who I've known for years.

And we fit together really, really well.

And that's not to say I wouldn't love to ink somebody else.

Again, I mean, I've been so blessed and fortunate to have people like Sal Buscema and John Buscema.

Jim Aparo-- I mean, some of my heroes.

I would have loved to have gotten the chance to ink over Nick Carty, who became a really dear friend.

There were times when I inked over Joe Sinnott for some of his charity work that he would do.

But that's a whole different world than writing, drawing, painting, determining the whole process.

It's like somebody putting out an album, an entire album by playing all the instruments or a film director directing, acting, writing, producing, starring in, doing the set design, and costume.

It feels like it's a very daunting task, but at the same time, what's lovely about it is that it's the most exhilarating position I've ever been in.

And it's also been the most frightening position.

It's that duality, where I feel like I'm on a tightrope but a little bit more like Wile E. Coyote, where I've walked off the cliff.

And it's like as long as I don't look down, I'm OK.

So it does feel like a wonderful experience.

And to have to kind of go between-- the inking may be a little bit like running back to the cliff and hanging on.

It's a touchstone while I can go off and do crazier things over here.

And then working with Frank was very similar to working with myself.

But Frank is also an artist, so he thinks visually.

And we would challenge each other there.

That's, again, the big umbrella of everything where discussion is sort of collaboration and whether it's collaboration with as a sort of secondary part of the process, in terms of inking, or a true collaboration.

And I've been fortunate to collaborate with writers like Chris Claremont or Alan Moore or Frank-- I mean, so many other amazing writers-- or if I'm even collaborating with myself, which I do look at it that way, because I thought, well, if I write my own work, I can just write what I really want to draw.

And I found that, as a writer, which I did all through my youth-- I wrote and drew my own comics.

But once I got into the business, it was like being slotted in.

It's like, OK, you're going to do the penciling, or you're going to do inking, or you're going to be a writer, whereas I was much more comfortable in the totality of it all.

But when I would write my own scripts, I would take off the hat, and give myself the scripts.

I go like, Bill Sienkiewicz the artist wants to strangle Bill Sienkiewicz the writer.

And Bill Sienkiewicz the writer said look, it needs to be in there.

So it's still the lovely jumble of not knowing quite how it's all going to come together but trusting in the fact that it will.

- I just wanted to go back to your inking because I've spoken to a couple of artists, who have mentioned as an inker.

Klaus Janson said that you never make a mistake because if you make a line that's not right, you're going to find a way to make it work.

He said you'll kind of double down until it works.

And Lee Weeks said, well, you were working with him on a Batman series that he wasn't sure if the two of you would pair up.

But he said, you seem to understand what he was trying to do more than he did.

And you were able to bring out his pencils in a way that made them better than he could have done it himself and still had the feel of both you and him.

So if you're working with someone like an Aparo or a Buscema and you get those pages, whether they're really tightly drawn or really rough layouts, how do you put your own personality into it but at the same time, preserve their, I guess, essence.

- Wow.

That's interesting.

I don't know if there's any way to really put that into words.

I mean, Klaus is phenomenal as an inker and as a penciller.

As a storyteller, he's probably one of the-- if not the most conscientious artists I've worked with when I inked him over the Daredevil, End of Days project.

He really goes deep in terms of what he tries to accomplish.

And in the entire arena of inking over other artist's work is that there is also a level of love and respect and integrity.

I know those are kind of broad and big, big words to use when I'm describing what some people see as a low art form.

But to me, that's where things that I love about seeing about what these other creators do.

They put something into it.

Even with John Paul Leon, who I was fortunate to ink over.

I loved his work so much that when I got his pencils, he was very disappointed with my inks because you didn't change anything.

You didn't build it up at all.

And I'm like, dude, I don't want to do that.

It's like I have such respect for what you do.

I just wanted to honor that.

So he actually convinced me to kind of go back in and do some of what, I guess, this-- some people see as my thing when I kind of go into it.

For me, it's really about the drawing.

I can't-- it's something I can't quite put into words, but I look at what I get in terms of pencils.

And I can sort of get a sense of where they're trying to go.

And so by virtue of schooling and drawing from life, like studying anatomy, that to me, working in any medium is like learning a different language or that it all goes into the pot in terms of helping one communicate better.

So if the more I feel like I know by multiple sources-- if I get something from, say, Lee Weeks, who I adore, and I think he's absolutely one of the most brilliant comic book artists ever-- I also understand some of the world in which he lives and how he tells a story.

I feel like it's partly cerebral in terms of how I'm approaching it, analytical.

And then it's another part of it that is completely emotional.

And it's just simply a gut response that I look at it, and I try to bring all of whatever talents, quote unquote, that I have in terms of inking technique or emotion of spotting of blacks or intent.

That's really kind of the main thing.

It's like not that I'm trying to get into the other person's mind and figure out what they want to emphasize, what to downplay, what to play up.

So it's a little bit-- again, it comes down to that level of collaboration.

And it's not a word that you hear used a lot in terms of comics, that level of-- because I think of the word "empathy" a lot.

It's thought of as sort of on a cultural level, like walking in somebody else's shoes.

But it has a whole heavier, weightier concept.

But to me, it's like, what is he trying to do?

And how do I simply not screw it up?

How do I make this?

How do I plus it?

How do I make it better?

How do I stay out of the way of what he's trying to do?

And in the best case scenario, I actually feel like we walk the path together.

I mean, that's the only real way I could describe it.

I know I didn't really do a good job of that.

But because it sounds like I'm talking out of two different camps, one is the very, very much analytical and process oriented, and then the other part is something that feels very sort of psychic and emotional, plus the fact that I just love it.

I love working with people, and I get to work by myself, too.

So as far as a career goes, to be able to draw comic books, really, it's not a bad one, you know.

To quote Larry David, he said, pretty, pretty, pretty good.

- Well, Bill, I'm going to have to-- I hate to interrupt you here.

But they are telling us that we are out of time.

I want to thank you so much for this half hour.

It has flown by, and it has been a lot of fun.

- Oh, it's been really so much fun.

And I know I went on and on, but I hope I gave you something to work with.

It was a real pleasure.

Thank you so much.

- An absolute pleasure on my part.

I'd like to thank everyone at home for watching Comic Culture.

We will see you again soon.

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