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 Chris
Romano is a cartoonist who doesn't fit any definitions that the
general public has for cartoonists. In other words, he's like
countless other talented cartoonists: creating original, personal
work, in a medium that is not associated with such work.
Romano writes
and draws a strip that is entirely computer generated, called "Dreamboy".
The strip creates a bizarre fusion of images and dialogue, which
at first glance do not seem to fit together, but ultimately cannot
be separated. The strip is (in Romano's words ) "autobiographical",
and while this fact may not be obvious, the personal themes and
raw emotion presented within cannot be mistaken.
 Romano
publishes his cartoon online at , but he has also done work for
MTV, and also published a book. He is a skilled in a variety of
mediums, and it was a pleasure to interview him over a series of
e-mail.
DREAMBOY
FUNNIES
(Austin
English for *spark-online) Where and when were you born?
(Chris Romano)
I was born in New Jersey, in 1968. And lived there until my family
moved to Los Angeles, when I was 16. In August 2000, I'll have been
in Los Angeles for 16 years, too, making me 50% east coast and 50%
west coast.
(A.E.) What
kind of place was the area you grew up in? What was it like to live
there?
(C.R.) It
was very suburban and middle class, with a good dose of white trash
thrown in. I didn't realize it then...but within 5 years after having
moved away, it became very apparent. It was all right growing up...there
were a lot of neighborhood kids. I played a lot of sports and wasted
a lot of money on video games and bad music. When I was 14, I liked
the Scorpions! That's not an easy thing to admit.
(A.E.) What
was your first exposure to comics?
(C.R.) I had
an Uncle who'd drop off shopping bags full of beat up comics every
few months. A lot of old Marvel stuff. I remember being around 11
or 12 and thinking "The Vision" was really cool. I didn't collect
comics then, however. I just read whatever was in the bag and watched
a lot of superhero cartoons on television--A lot of SuperFriends.
My little brother and I had a lot of those old Mego superhero action
figures. I remember Thor had long blonde hair, like Barbie.
I didn't start
actively read comics until I was 16. In the months before I moved
to Los Angeles, my best friend Brian Barclay started pushing comics
on me. I was interested in a lot of science fiction-ish type of
stuff. I remember reading GRIMJACK and AMERICAN FLAGG! and DC's
STAR TREK.
I didn't have
any friends when I moved to Los Angeles...it was right before 11th
grade...so I would spend a lot of time reading comic books. I think
within a few months of living in Los Angeles, I was buying and reading
around 30 different titles a month. That's a lot of comic books!
For some reason
I was a huge GREEN LANTERN fan. Within a two year period, I bought
all the Silver Age GREEN LANTERN comics.
(A.E.) Dreamboy
seems to me to have certain political leanings, although I may be
wrong. What was your first exposure to politics as a kind?
(C.R.) Politics,
huh?
I just rifled
through all the comics I've posted to see what might get you thinking
that way, but I can't really see it. I'm an ardent capitalist...that's
for sure. And when I was in college, doing my undergraduate studies
at UCLA, I was a big Libertarian, but that was a long time ago.
I recently read through all the platform positions posted at the
Libertarian Party web site, and I just had to shake my head in disappointment.
But that's a whole can of worms in and of itself.
I'd be interested
in what makes you think this way. Unless, of course, you're talking
about politics in the more general sense...like the politics of
relationships or the politics of art making or something like that.
I'm very reactionary and I've always been a bit of a trouble-maker.
I'm obsessed with my short-comings and flaws and insecurities, along
with everyone else's, and I find myself trying to poke fun at anything
and everything I can.
Politically,
I'm a bit of a fascist. I believe in a lot of personal and economic
freedoms, but only for those who deserve it! Most people don't.
(A.E.) What
I meant in reference to politics, was that the issue the characters
discuss are so basic, and I though some of it was meant as social
commentary...like it was meant to mirror modern society, etc. Any
thoughts on that take?
(C.R.) I'm
reluctant to say that I'm socially minded. I have to be honest.
Although I do speak in metaphor a lot, even in casual conversation.
I have a tendency to indirectly refer to people or things, particularly
when something's bothering me or if I'm launching a criticism.
I'm pretty
openly against political correctness and socialist ideology, too,
so that might find it's way into what I'm spouting. I'm a product
of "modern society," certainly, so at least to that extent I mirror
it.
Social commentary
and politics aren't something I have on my checklist when I'm writing.
(A.E.) When
did you begin drawing, or become interested in art?
(C.R.) I grew
up in an advertising environment. My father worked at J.Walter Thompson
for most of my youth, and then moved on to some smaller ad agencies
in Los Angeles. My father went to art school, of a sort, and my
mother was kind of a Sunday painter. They really encouraged a lot
of drawing from my earliest days. In high school I took a lot of
art and some computer classes, so by the time college came around,
studying art seemed like the most obvious option. I did my undergraduate
fine art studies at UCLA and then studied fine art in grad school
at ArtCenter in Pasadena.
My father
made me swear to him that I would never get involved with advertising.
(A.E.) When
did you decide you wanted to be a cartoonist? What were some of
the things you did before Dreamboy? Where does the inspiration for
Dreamboy come?
(C.R.) I've
never made that decision, really. I've never considered or thought
of myself as a cartoonist.
I wanted to
be a painter, and only very recently abandoned the notion. Even
through my first few years as an animator...I've been a working
computer animator, now, for about 6 years...I thought I'd one day
emerge as a painter. I had a loft space downtown and generated work
like nobody's business. But I failed when it came to shopping myself
around (I couldn't and didn't do it), so I stopped painting mainly
because I ran out of room. I still have hundreds of paintings in
storage.
Back in 1990,
right before grad school, I started writing my dreams down in diary
form. Every morning I'd strive to remember any dreams and I'd scribble
down whatever I could. After a year, I had over 200 pages of dreams
in short instalments. I tried to be as straightforward as possible,
and didn't waste any time on interpretation or explanations. I wasn't
interested. So, given all this text, I decided to self-publish the
volume. The book is called DECEMBER 22, and there are still copies
of it floating around.
I continued
to write my dreams down for the next 5 years following, and stopped
with about 800-900 unpublished pages, which are now tucked away
on some CD-ROM somewhere.
I should point
out that a very large percentage of my painting in and after grad
school was comic book related or derivative. For instance, I have
a lot of large-scale paintings of comic book explosions. I always
thought a good comic book blast was like some kind of pre-teen,
orgasmic release. And it was the part of comics which most resembled
the interviews with DeKooning or any of the other abstract expressionists.
Now, my paintings where very illustrative, but the effect, I had
hoped, was something along the lines of a DeKooning or Franz Kline
painting or something.
But even earlier,
the summer before grad school, a large part of my work was centered
on girls. Or women, or whatever you want to call them. I was 20,
post-UCLA, pre-ArtCenter. And I had two jobs...one as an art handler
at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and another at
HiDeHo Comics in Santa Monica. Around that time I was painting bellybuttons.
Large, round canvases with these flesh colored, abstract imagery.
I was playing off of a lot of eastern philosophies of the navel
as "your center" and relating them to a lot of abstract painting
conversation...all the while keeping my true attention on girls.
WooHoo!
Anyway, one
day while at the comic book store, I saw a copy of Archie's BETTY
AND VERONICA, and I was hooked! I thought Veronica Lodge was the
absolute hottest thing on the planet and I decided to dedicate my
work to her...so I started doing paintings and drawings of Veronica
Lodge (my real life girlfriend just rolled her eyes at me). I had
always been a pop art enthusiast...I was always looking at Warhol,
Lichtenstein, Wesley, Ruscha, Stuart Davis, Rosenquist and Jeff
Koons (who was doing his Ciccolina work at the time), so the shift
to almost pure comic book style imagery wasn't that big of a leap.
It's all coming
back to me!
I had A LOT
of work about Veronica and decided that it wasn't enough...I wasn't
getting close enough to her, so I hunted down Dan Parent, who was
drawing VERONICA comics for Archie Comics at the time, and I paid
him to draw pictures of me and Veronica together. Images like the
two of us walking hand in hand on the beach, me reading poetry to
her in the park, the two of us in a row boat...very innocent and
romantic. And then, to top it all off, I got him to slip me into
ARCHIE AND FRIENDS #5. I still have a few copies of that issue,
too. The second story in the comic is about a party at Veronica's
house, and in the last panel, you can find me dancing with Betty
Cooper. She wasn't Veronica, but I was dancing next to Veronica,
so that was good enough! In the lower right hand corner of the panel,
Jughead is eating a drippy hotdog, which pretty much just sums the
whole thing up.
From that
moment on, I was obsessed with being a cartoon character in my own
right. I did a lot of performance work where I would assume this
"CHRIS!" personality, with accompanying cartoon imagery, and I would
hand out newsletters which were about "CHRIS!" I wanted comics and
cartoons about "CHRIS!" All the performance work got under everyone's
skin, as it was supposed to, and I intentionally ended up making
a fool of myself in many ways.
UCLA had a
high Asian population and ArtCenter had an even higher one, though
at ArtCenter, it's like Asian-female central, which became this
really weird obsession (both for me and others). That's really where
the asian-female element worked its way into my work. One week,
I wrote a one page personals ad about how "CHRIS!" wanted to meet
nice Asian girls for love and friendship, and I walked around the
entire campus handing the newsletters to all the Asian girls, personally.
"Hi there, this is for you!"
It was perfect...I
was standing around one day with some friends at school and this
little Asian girl walked up to me and asked, in broken English,
"Are you Clis?" When I said, "Yes," she just giggled and ran away!
My friends were absolutely flabbergasted!
But yeah,
I wanted to be a cartoon character, yet I was too lazy to draw them
myself. That's why all my work is a product of the computer...I'm
too lazy and too impatient to sit and draw. Plus now, I'm really
out of practice. At the time there was no computer animation like
there is now, so I tried recruiting Asian girls to draw the comics
for me. I had two who were willing, but neither one actually produced
any work. :(
Boy, I'm all
over the place.
Now it's after
graduate school. I'm at my first computer graphics company, working
on a MORTAL KOMBAT cartoon, which I ALSO make a brief appearance
in. Out of boredom, I design about 20-30 little cartoon faces. Heavily
influenced by Hello Kitty and all that Sanrio stuff, I put the heads
together in Fontographer and Adobe Illustrator. This is where the
sources for DREAMBOY and BRIMSTONE and KLAUS all get designed.
Fast Forward
a few more years. I've been a computer animator for some time, now,
and I have a pretty good handle on it. I'm supervising on the movie
VOLCANO, and I find myself with a lot of time on my hands. I'm best
at using a software program called Prisms on the SGI. Once day I
find out that Prisms can easily read in sound files. Around the
same time, within about a month, I see SOUTH PARK'S "A Spirit of
Christmas" for the first time...this is probably about 9-12 months
before it gets picked up for television, I think. I also remember
seeing a film festival for The Quay Brothers at that time. After
seeing all that stop motion and low budget animation, I decide I
should do something of my own, but what?
To advertise
my book DECEMBER 22 over the internet, I produced 20+ issues of
a monthly e-zine called "dreamboy!" which was basically two weeks
worth of dream info. So I figured, given the 800+ pages of text
I had written, I could get some stories out of there. I then dusted
off the little characters I had designed during the MORTAL KOMBAT
years. Since Prisms could read in EPS, I just used my Illustrator
files. I bought a book on animation, made different mouth positions
for my character, and I was off! I recorded dialog on my Mac, emailed
the sound files to work, and then started animating.
That's how
DREAMBOY got his start. The first cartoon was just a joke I heard.
The next ones were 30 second dreams, and later appeared on MTV.
(A.E.) What
I notice the most about Dreamboy, is that (and you mentioned this
to me), it doesn't read like it looks. Why did you choose to use
the computer generated type graphics to illustrate a series with
more everyday, ordinary dialogue? Why not illustrate it in a more
traditional way?
(C.R.) Call
it a horrible sense of irony.
I think there's
something very funny about cute cartoon characters contemplating
their short-comings. Comic books and cartoons, with all their heavy
outlines, are about idealization. Mickey Mouse is about as idealized
as a mouse will ever get. No one has ever seen Mickey totally depressed
because he has a small penis!
I think that's
funny. Maybe I read too much Ziggy growing up?
After all
that art school, I can't help but think about how to subvert any
given thing. SOUTH PARK is as popular as it is because it's 180
degrees away from Charlie Brown. Snoopy caters to the innocence
of our youth, while Cartman appeals to the angry adult who's unhappy
because Snoopy's idealism isn't real.
I'm not a
SOUTH PARK fan.
As I mentioned,
I'm a computer animator by trade, and find myself working very easily
on computers. Drawing is a chore. Besides, I originally started
the comics at www.dreamboy.com to keep the characters in the public
eye while I worked away on my most recent animated short, DREAMBOY
AND THE CLAM. I finished THE CLAM about a month ago, and it took
17 months to complete. It's 24 minutes of fully animated CGI, featuring
all the characters at dreamboy.com and then some. Producing a weekly
strip at the same time allowed me to grow an audience and practice
writing. The trailer for the short can be viewed at www.dreamboy.com/trailer.html.
(A.E.) Do
you think this style might be confusing of off-putting to some people?
What are it's benefits, disadvantages?
(C.R.) I don't
really care. I mean, people are always going to be put off by something.
If they're unable to get passed the look of the cartoon then they're
not going to enjoy any of the content, either. As far as I'm concerned,
I think the comics and the animation look pretty damn good. The
writing might stink...but that's because writing is a lot harder.
I'm very secure in the overall look of both the comics and the recent
animated cartoon.
(A.E.) Dreamboy
seems very personal. Is it at all autobiographical, in the themes
and emotions it expresses?
(C.R.) It's
completely autobiographical. I mean, I take everything to the extreme,
of course, but it all stems from my own problems or issues. All
that "fuck art" stuff comes out of jealousy. I still really want
to be a painter, but I know there's no way I could lead the same
lifestyle. Computer animation has been very good to me, financially.
But mentally it's quite unfulfilling.
The cartoon
is very self-absorbed, in that it reacts very much to itself. When
DREAMBOY jumps in to yell "CUT" it's because I hate the story I'm
writing and need to change it completely. Even if it's right in
the middle. When the waitress cuts in a conversation to tell everyone
to shut up, it's because I realize I've done something wrong that
needs changing. And whenever Ivan is crying over women, it's because
I've screwed something up in my personal life. It's all probably
too auto-biographical, but at least now it has a cute cartoon face,
as opposed to me walking around, handing out newsletters!
(A.E.) Dreamboy
seems to me like you're trying to express emotion. Is this what
you're getting at?
(C.R.) Sure.
I'm sort of
obsessed with insecurities and people treating each other badly.
I mean, I'm not interested in seeing people treat each other badly,
but I am interested in how the victim feels. Particularly in the
subtle ways, like when a friend or girlfriend says something that
rubs you the wrong way, but you don't feel comfortable to say that
your feelings have just been hurt. That interests me a lot. Or those
embarrassing secrets you might have that no one knows and then someone
casually hits on one in conversation and you have to pretend like
it's funny when in actuality it's sort of hurtful.
(A.E.) How
do you feel the strip progressing as you work on it more? It has
a much more refined look now.
(C.R.) The
look of things always progresses. I try to make each chapter look
different than those which have came before it. Sometimes it's only
subtle. But I like to play with the way the frames land on each
page and proportions and that sort of thing.
Writing-wise,
I'm just trying. I'm just trying to get a feel for it and figure
out a way to work. I'm not terribly comfortable with it. Stories
sometimes hit me and other times it's a total dry spell, but even
when they hit me they're a chore. I sometimes try to produce something
which will appeal to a larger audience, but I quickly become disinterested
and disenchanted, and rush back to some kind of self-directed rant.
Plus, the raving's of dreamboy or whomever generate the most responses...not
that I get a lot of feedback, mind you, because I don't, but the
babbling hits a chord with some people. That's at least something.
(A.E.) How
do you produce the strip? How is it drawn...how much do you use
a computer in it's creation?
(C.R.) The
images are all done in a software package called Houdini (www.sidefx.com).
There's no drawing involved. All my characters are already built,
so I just position them and set their facial positions, animate
a couple of frames for when I need motion blur, and then render
them out. The still images are then taken into a program like Photoshop,
where I add word balloons.
The comic
is 100% computer generated.
(A.E.) What's
it like having the strip on the Internet, as opposed to a regular
print comic?
(C.R.) I very
recently contemplating producing a DREAMBOY comic book, but abandoned
the idea after talking with Jesse Reklaw (www.nondairy.com), who
produced 6 issues of his own CONCAVE UP. The print runs on comics
are too low and they're a total loss, financially. I reach a much
wider audience on the Internet and it's all free. Plus, I can make
the comics as long or as short as I like, as opposed to a 24 or
32 page format.
My comics
are available to anyone with Internet access and a browser. AOL
has something like 20 million subscribers, worldwide. I've never
seen that many people at the comic book store. Essentially, my print
run is greater than the X-MEN, SPAWN, and BATMAN all rolled into
one!
v (A.E.) How
did Dreamboy become involved with MTV?
(C.R.) An
intern at MTV saw some animation at the D.Film festival in Manhattan.
I gave her my number and they called me.
(A.E.) What
was it like working for MTV?
(C.R.) Nothing.
It was like nothing, really. I sent them a video, we argued over
some contract details for a short period of time, and that was it.
They sent me a few checks, and then Cartoon Sushi got cancelled.
(A.E.) Can
you talk about cartooning versus animation?
(C.R.) Well,
I produce the comics the same way I animate; only I'm generating
just a frame here or there.
Comics are
better because there's less work involved. And it's more dynamic
because there's more freedom in the direction of things. With animation,
you can't really work stream of conscious. In animation, I write
dialog, re-write it, record it, lay it out, and then animate to
the dialog. So by the time animation starts, everything is pretty
much set in stone. But with comics, I can change any given storyline
at any time and take it in a different direction. Less work means
more freedom, in a way. Had Chapter Seven of the Internet comics
been animated, I would've either finished the original story or
shelved it, never to be seen again. The comics are made public before
the end is even started! Animation has to be finished before being
released.
That's a big
difference.
(A.E.) What
do you think about the status comics achieve in mainstream consciousness?
Does it upset you that the work you do is lumped alongside Superman
and Cathy?
(C.R.) The
comic book industry is floundering, at least in the United States.
The simulacra has taken affect, in that, people are more likely
to enjoy parodies of comic books than comics themselves. You won't
see my mother reading Captain America, for instance...yet she would
read a Captain America parody in the newspaper or PEOPLE magazine,
or something.
I think newspaper
comics are great...they deliver humor and ideas in the quickest
way possible. Plus their idealism is soothing. WILLY N ETHEL is
a riot. I would give everything to be like Charles Schulz (except
for the being dead part).
I wish people
would lump me together with Superman and Cathy. Or Archie Comics.
Instead, and it's obvious why, I conversationally sometimes get
lumped in with Beavis and Butthead and South Park. That bothers
me more. Well, I actually like Beavis and Butthead in small doses.
I'm just trying to be a little smarter, which is probably my big
flaw!
Comics will
never be movies or animation because there's too much reading involved.
Reading is off-putting in and of itself.
(A.E.) What
do comics need to do to make themselves a respected medium? What
do you do to help this? Who are some of your influences, or people
whose work you're reading currently?
(C.R.) Newspaper
comics are a respected medium, I think. Charles Schulz is a perfect
example. If the Calvin and Hobbes guy didn't quit, he'd be right
up there.
Comic books
don't have a prayer. They're mired in adolescence. The only comics
I still read are EIGHTBALL and MADMAN. EIGHTBALL because it's the
best thing ever put out in comic book form and MADMAN because it's
the epitome of comic book fun. But why Dan Clowes is writing comics
over animation or TV is beyond me.
I like reading
SCHIZO, too. Because it's so self-obsorbed and self-deprecating.
I'm so into self-deprecation it's harmful! Comics are a catch 22.
The best comics, like EIGHTBALL, are too alternative to appeal to
the mainstream...which is one of the reasons why Clowes does what
he does. Unfortunately, mainstream comics are too weak and boring
to maintain their following. I picked up a CAPTIAN AMERICA comic
at the newsstand in Target, just the other day, and it was painfully
boring. BORING! It's a shame.
I have no
idea if I'm helping comics. I don't think about it. I'm very self-absorbed,
like a large majority of the dwindling, independent comic book market.
Only I'm not writing and drawing bikini-wearing samurai teens battling
ogres. If I can produce some great looking material with some interesting,
atypical writing that speaks a mutually felt aspect of our lives,
then I'm helping. If I can produce some entertaining material that
makes people laugh and have fun and relate, then I'm helping. As
long as I'm not producing utter garbage, there's no harm being done.
(A.E.) What
are your future plans for Dreamboy?
(C.R.) As
I mentioned, I just finished a 24 minute, animated short which my
manager is shopping around town. I like it, but if I could do it
over again, I would. It's my first effort at the longer format and
I think it's a little slow in a few parts. It was a great learning
experience. I have some more SHORT dreamboy cartoons on the drawing
board, along with A LOT of other, non-dreamboy stuff. I'm also currently
putting together an animation site, called SatanTV (www.satantv.com),
which will feature 30-60 second animation from a stable of talent.
I hope to have that up and running in full force by the end of the
year.
Copyright
© 2000 Austin English All Rights Reserved
Austin
English was born in San Francisco where he continues to reside
to this day. His interviews with alternative cartoonists have
appeared throughout the Internet, most notably at www.indymagazine.com.
He also has a self-published mini-comic entitled The Tenth
Frame available for just $1.00. You can contact him at three1145@aol.com,
or P.O. Box 460584 San Francisco, CA 94146-0584.
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