[heroic music] ♪ ♪ ♪ >> 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 Dennis Kitchen.

Dennis, welcome to Comic Culture.

>> Hey, good to be here, Terence.

>> Now Dennis, you have done just about everything in comics.

You are a cartoonist, you've been a publisher.

You are the founder of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Also, you will be soon the subject of an upcoming documentary.

So I just wanted to touch base a little bit about perhaps the most unexpected part of your great legacy in this industry, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

So I know a little bit about the foundation of it, but was this something that when that one case happened, were you planning on it being an ongoing thing that has helped so many?

>> Well, not initially, no.

I jumped in because a series I published called Omaha the Cat Dancer was part of what the police confiscated from the store.

He lost at the first level, and that's when I got really indignant, and I thought this can't stand.

And so that's when I raised money, was able to hire the best First Amendment attorney in the Midwest, won the case on appeal, and there was still money left over.

And at that point, I had to decide, do I give this to another charity, or maybe the comics industry needs this as a permanent organization?

So obviously, I picked door two.

And yes, there were many other cases, but who knew?

Because back then, these things weren't publicized, and there was no national network.

The CBLDF became the umbrella organization after that.

>> In the late 80s, it's a very, I remember Ed Meese being the Attorney General and really clamping down on adult content.

And I guess at that point, it's tough for a comic publisher to reach a large number of people to raise money because you don't have the Internet.

So how do you sort of rally the troops and raise the funds in an era that isn't as simple as it is now?

>> What I did is I reached out to some worthy friends to contribute to a portfolio.

So I called Frank Miller, Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, Richard Corbin, a dozen people like that, they all agreed to do an original for the portfolio.

And then to sell the original, and all of that went into the fund.

So it basically, yeah, for the pre-Internet era, that was all you could really do was create a product that could sell and then use those funds.

>> That's fascinating too, because you're using something to raise money that is within this great, I guess, hobby or pastime, creating, reading, enjoying comics to get people to contribute to something that they might not think is important.

I mean, the First Amendment is, it's the First Amendment for a reason.

Sure, somebody like a Frank Miller or a Will Eisner, they're on board with this.

But do you have a hard time maybe saying to a comic shop owner in the Midwest, who might object a little bit to a book like Omaha Cat Dancer, that you wanna sell this portfolio so that you can raise money to defend somebody who sold a book that somebody wrongfully accused of being against the First Amendment?

>> You never wanna force anybody to carry anything in their store or to read anything that makes them uncomfortable.

I totally get that.

So we did not need the support of people who felt queasy about Omaha, for example.

But it had enough supporters.

To this day, it's one of the things I'm very proud of having published.

But the First Amendment is a bigger picture.

And I would hope that in principle, you could support it without a specific example that you might object to or not.

It's protecting really a fundamental cornerstone to what democracy is.

And people like some of the artists who contributed, like Will Eisner, Sergio Ergoni, for example.

Sergio's never gonna personally have to deal with his art being busted.

But he sure as hell cared that somebody else was.

So it was a camaraderie among professionals initially.

>> One of the things about Kitchen Sink Press was that you had a variety of books, different styles.

I mean, we were talking before we started recording about Kings in Disguise, which is this great tale of railroad tramps.

And then you've got a book like Omaha Cat Dancer, which is semi, I guess it would be like Cinemax After Dark, but with a real story behind it.

So as a publisher, how do you sort of curate the books that you not only want to publish, but that you think someone will read?

Because in the end, publishing comics is a business.

>> Absolutely.

I was once at a convention on a panel and there was Q&A.

And someone in the audience said to me, what do you tell your artists to do?

And I said, I tell them to make great comics, because that's what ties it all together.

Whether something is for children or X rated and anything in between.

I want a good story, I want good art, and that's at the core of it.

I never got hung up on genres other than I wasn't interested in doing superheroes.

Why try to compete with Marvel and DC?

I wanted stories about real people, history, autobiography, or just plain funny.

I treated artists the way I'd like to be treated myself, which is with respect.

Do whatever you do best as well as you can, and chances are I'm going to publish it.

>> And as a creative yourself, how do you switch between someone who enjoys making comics, someone who enjoys reading comics, to someone who is now got to put on that business hat, that other sort of brain side.

Where you're saying, okay, we've got this many books that have to be printed.

This is the budget for it, this is the distribution.

We got to make sure we hit this, we got to get it to the, so how do you balance being a creative and being a publisher?

>> It's a very good question, because it's an ongoing battle always between art and commerce, and commerce usually wins.

What I tried to do was find a balance.

When I was lucky enough to convince Will Eisner that I should be able to publish The Spirit.

The Spirit was something that in the market sold very well, and it was profitable.

In my head, I allocated some of those profits to books that I didn't think would do as well, and maybe it was a newcomer or something that had been untested.

I was willing to gamble part of my working capital on things I believed in.

And lucky enough to have things that made money that lasted 30 years, so the formula worked.

>> You mentioned art versus commerce, and I think of the way our society has sort of commodified things that used to just be an expression.

So I think of singing shows like The Voice or American Idol, where if you sing in your kitchen, you should get enjoyment out of it.

But we've sort of made it this notion that if you don't sing well, if that British guy doesn't tell you that you did well, you should stop singing.

So when you are dealing with artists who might say, I don't know if it's good enough, but you think it is, how do you kind of tell them, to heck with what the mainstream thinks, you're going to find that audience?

>> Yeah, look, the toughest part of the job as a publisher was to tell someone who was kind of on the cusp, it's not quite good enough yet, in my opinion, but that's just my opinion.

And oftentimes, when I look back, I was a little too demanding or a little too, I set my expectations a little high because I turned down Chris Ware, for example, or Dan Clouse, or a handful of people who turned out to be amazing.

But they crossed my desk when they were a little bit too young or not fully developed.

At the same time, I mean, I think I discovered some people at just the right time too, but it's a certain roll of the dice always, you never know what the market will support.

Look at Hollywood doesn't even know with millions to spend on marketing, they don't know if a movie's going to bomb or be a big hit.

It's you have to trust your gut instinct.

And ultimately, that's what I did.

If I said I enjoy this, and I am confident, at least a few thousand others will agree with me, and it's my dollar if I'm wrong.

>> And when we think about people looking for different types of comics, we tend to kind of get into that, what flavor we enjoy and we don't necessarily want to expand into, it's the same reason if you take a road trip, people don't get off the highway to find the local restaurant, they'll go to McDonald's.

So as you are working on a comic, and I guess now if you work on a comic, the end goal is always for it to be IP.

It's going to be another thing that we can sell to Hollywood because comics are really just that greenhouse, and then once we get it into Hollywood, they're going to turn it into that forest.

So have you ever come across something where you've got to explain to somebody when you're publishing, this is your product, but at the same time, it's a really good comic, let's not worry about what the next step could be?

>> I never personally would get hung up on those kinds of expectations.

We had our share of successes.

I published The Crow, that was obviously a franchise.

From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, that became a Johnny Depp movie.

Mark Schultz's Xenozoic became a Saturday morning TV show called Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, and a lot of things get optioned and you get that money, but of course it's never made, but I never looked at comics as a stepping stone toward a Hollywood adaptation.

That was a bonus, and you can never ever count on that.

I only cared, is this a great comic book or graphic novel?

Let's win an Eisner Award or a Harvey Award, and if it goes beyond that, great.

But they're very different worlds.

>> I'm imagining if you were just getting started now, you might not have the latitude to be as selective or rather as broad minded.

This is a comic I want to read because you might be thinking, again, there's that American Idol style mindset that people have.

Whereas if it doesn't look like a duck, I'm certainly not going to give it a try.

>> Well, you're probably right, and for that I'm grateful I'm not a startup today.

I'm glad I worked in a different era for some reasons, not for others.

You can't pick and choose.

I was starting as a long haired hippie and there was an opportunity to do underground comics that were not distributed through newsstands, it was way before the direct comics market was created.

And so I had to create my own distribution system, which ended up being through head shops.

And it was a very effective and efficient system actually.

So you do what you have to do at any given time.

If I was starting today, I would say, my God, Diamond is bankrupt.

I have to stop right now, there is no future.

There are always obstacles, you have to figure out how to overcome them.

>> One of the things that a lot of creators are doing now is crowdfunding.

And I know that you are, or someone is working on a documentary about your work in or your career in comics, which is going through the crowdfunding stage.

So can you talk a little bit about this documentary?

>> Sure, it's called Oddly Compelling.

So if anyone's curious, they can go to Kickstarter, look up Oddly Compelling.

And I have been interviewed a number of times for other documentaries about other cartoonists, I think seven or eight times.

But when I was approached about one about me, I have to say I was skeptical and my first thought was I'm not worthy.

But they convinced me they were willing to put their own energy and capital and skills into this.

So I did consent after talking to my family.

So now it's well underway.

I'm still a little nervous, but I do respect the skills they're bringing to it.

One of the filmmakers is an animator who's taken my voice and lip synced it with the kind of weird creatures I draw on chipboard.

So I see my own voice in this hideous creature.

And it's fun, I have to say.

I'm getting the unique approach they're taking to it.

But again, I can't be very objective, can I?

>> Well, I think it's fascinating.

There's a humility in saying I don't know if I'm worthy.

And yet you have had an enormous impact on the industry, both American international comics.

Just from the books that you've published, the books that you've promoted.

To think that you aren't interesting enough, not necessarily that's what you're thinking.

But to be concerned that maybe, you know what, I don't know if this is going to be a good idea.

There's something to be said about that is more endearing than somebody's like, I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread, and let me tell you why.

>> Well, I guess, yeah, it's not my nature to be boastful or whatever.

And I think the film, as the title Oddly Compelling implies, it's not just about comics.

I collect a lot of strange things.

I've created a thing in my woods I call the Valley of the Dolls, with thousands of dolls lined up along a path.

And I collect a lot of politically incorrect postcards from 100 and some years ago, and all kinds of things.

They went through and they opened drawers and cabinets.

They filmed things beyond comics.

So, Oddly Compelling hints at a broader context for the film.

>> Artists are creators, but as a collector, it also speaks to what they are inspired by.

So when I saw the trailer walking through the dolls in the woods, it is beautifully creepy.

Because I guess from years of Chucky films or Poltergeist, we've learned to be afraid of dolls.

But there's so many of them out there and it's so lovingly done.

So as a collector who turns something like that into art, I mean, how do you sort of, is it a conscious thought that you're going to do this?

Or is it just, you know what, today I'm just doing this.

>> It started as a total lark.

I had a path in the woods and somehow I had two or three doll heads.

I just put on stakes.

I didn't know what to do with them.

And I found a couple more dolls and I thought, well, put them with their friends and the next thing I knew there were dozens and then hundreds.

And now I'm looking for them, flea markets, eBay, friends give them to me.

And yeah, I turned them into what I call Frankenstein dolls.

I modify a lot of them.

And I did this all just for myself.

It wasn't until somebody with a video camera came along, then now I guess it's no longer a secret.

But like the comics, I did it for myself.

It was my own aesthetic.

It was my own choice.

And I didn't have to share it with the world.

And it's still not going to be open to the public, I assure you.

But I'm going along with where the camera points, because now it's too late, you know?

>> [LAUGH] >> I've discovered things that other people have pointed out about me.

And when I realized that either I can say it's crap or I can say there's something to it or I can think about it and then decide either there's something to it or it's crap.

So being flexible with making decisions as we move along through this journey that we're on, it's both scary and fun to do.

So as you are working on this documentary, have you rediscovered maybe some book that you didn't think much of in the day or maybe you thought something should have been a bigger hit or has it been just something maybe more private that you weren't thinking about but now you've opened it up and they're giving you something new to think about?

>> Yeah, I guess all of the above.

I mean, you mentioned Kings in Disguise.

That's a book, it was a comic series that was collected into a book and it's one that I'm very proud of.

It won awards in like 1990, but like a lot of things, the culture moves on and it's still in print if any of your listeners are curious.

But I'm rediscovering things all the time.

I have a warehouse with boxes that I packed.

I found one recently, at the top it just said packed June 1978 and I had no clue what was inside and I said, what the hell?

So it's like a surprise gift to myself in the future and I opened it up and it was just all kinds of odd books and zines and some correspondence.

And so I love that when that happens.

I'm a saver, an organized pack rat.

Making discoveries like that for me are par for the course, because I've been around a long time and I've saved a lot of stuff and I keep rediscovering things in drawers and boxes from 1978.

>> It reminds me of Andy Warhol's time capsules that they will open up and it'll just be something from 1978.

But the mindset of a collector is an interesting thing.

I'm a comic collector, I collect toys and whatnot.

But I've really restricted what I collect to things that I really enjoy.

And as a collector, when you're picking something out at this point, I'm sure it's the same sort of thing.

You're thinking about something that you really enjoy.

Are you moving towards the newer distribution models for comics?

Are you embracing the digital medium because you can read something on your phone or are you thinking, I'd really much rather take it off the shelf, feel the paper, I can smell the ink, I can look at the art in detail, I don't have to worry about eye glare.

>> I definitely am old school, read a graphic novel or comic that I can hold in my hand.

I think it's great that the Internet has opened up other possibilities and for some people, reading a digital comic and storing that comic without taking up shelf space, I get it.

It's just not for me.

And I'm not sure it's for even everybody from the younger generation, because I meet a lot of young collectors who definitely want to put stuff on the shelf and pick it up and open it.

But it's great that there is an option.

And as a publisher, you get to sell it in paper and you get to sell it digitally, that's another revenue stream.

So I try not to be a curmudgeon.

I'm open to all new technology and if it helps comics in any way, I'm all for it.

>> We've seen people who will take a comic and they'll encase it in a slab.

And now it becomes, it's the same thing as buying IBM.

How do you react when you see people who are taking something that should be read, something that should be cherished because of the experience and just saying I'm going to never read it.

I'm just going to seal it up like it's something on a shelf forever.

>> Yeah, I have to say that's something that I instinctively don't like.

I understand if I'm going to sell my Zap number one to a collector in California, and I tell him it's in mint condition, he's not going to believe me until CGC says it's a 9.8, right, then I can safely send it to him.

I understand that grading service.

I don't understand permanent encapsulating.

I mean, unless I guess you can afford it and you just want perfect copies and maybe you have a less than perfect one to read, but it goes against my own sense of collecting.

In my case, I like to enjoy what I collect and that means picking it up, holding it, showing it to other people.

>> As you are at home when you're not working with the dolls or going through, finding different postcards here and there, are you sitting down at a sketchbook or the drawing board and maybe putting together some comics?

>> Absolutely, well, comics in terms of six or eight panels on a page, less so.

But I am drawing a lot.

I'm drawing a lot of what I call chipboard drawings that are spontaneous.

A blank piece of chipboard, I just take a Sharpie pen, which is an unforgiving thing you cannot erase.

Chipboard you can't retouch.

And these things just come out of my subconscious.

So the last book I had published from Tinto Press was Creatures from the Subconscious.

And the next one is taking 20 some images like that.

And Fantagraphics is going to do it later this year in 3D with the 3D glasses.

And so that's gonna be my first book of that nature.

And then I'm talking to the New York Review of Comics, which is a publisher of more historic comics.

And they're gonna take the Oddly Compelling art of Dennis Kitchen that Dark Horse did about 10 or 12 years ago.

And they're gonna do an updated version of it with maybe two thirds intact and a third new material.

So yeah, I would say I'm still active.

I am trying to semi-retire so I have more time to be creative.

And there's books I wanna write too.

So my publishing days per se are over, thank God, cuz the market these days is a very challenging one.

But I like to say I'm coming full circle.

>> Now Dennis, they are telling me that we are just about out of time.

The upcoming documentary is Oddly Compelling and we can look for that on Kickstarter?

>> Well, I mean, the trailer is up on YouTube and Kickstarter.

I guess you can go to my website, there's all kinds of things for sale there.

I don't think it's too hard to find things, it's spread out all over.

>> Well Dennis, I wanna thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

The half hour has just flown by and it's really been an eye opening conversation.

>> My pleasure Terence, thank you.

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

We will see you again soon.

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