In your seminal comic Dork #7, often referred to as the "break down issue", you reveal an awful lot about your own neuroses, the pain of being an artist, the strains and demands it takes on you, the toll it takes on the people you love and the affect is has on your work. It is, at the same time, both heartbreakingly beautiful and utterly tragic. It is naked and raw and leaves you emotionally exposed. To say the least, it transcends genre and style to stand as a shining example of comics as "Art." Do you think that as an artist you have to have that pain in order to make art?

I think you probably need to feel pain in order to write effectively about pain, but some creators have exceptional observational skills, so perhaps you can pull it off without being a loon yourself. I really can't say. I can only speak for myself, and my own experiences, and what's in my own head that I've used as a springboard for material. That beings said, there's plenty of art out there that has nothing or little to do with pain, emotional or physical. Not that I'm someone who can speak with authority about art with a capital "A". I don't create "Art"; if I ever did, or I ever do, it's a happy accident. I'm happy to hear you speak so highly about what I did in Dork #7, but it's not how I see it, and I don't think I can agree with everything you said about it. I'm primarily an entertainer and storyteller and complainer. To me, Dork #7 is just a joke book with occasional delusions of relevance. It wasn't an average issue of the comic, but it wasn't The Rules of the Game or anything. 

Do you ever worry about revealing too much or do you feel that by revealing all, it helps you to shed these behaviors and insecurities that all artists feel? 

Neither, really. I mainly worry that the comic will be terrible, or boring. You don't want to overload the material with your own bullshit; at least not in the way I present the bullshit. I tried to alleviate or puncture the self-absorption and self-indulgence with humor and some sense of narrative so it wasn't just a whiny navel-gazing experience for the reader. Dork #7 was cathartic in some ways, but I never fooled myself into thinking it would be curative. I just felt I had an interesting take on what I was experiencing, prompted by an earlier strip I was riffing off of, and I told it in the best way I knew how. Some folks liked it, some found it funny, some thought it was crap. That's show biz.

Who or what influenced you the most and made you want to make comics for a living?

Earliest on, I'd have to say Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Also Harvey Kurtzman and his collaborators on the 50's MAD comics, which were reprinted in the 70's MAD Super Specials. I was especially drawn to Bill Elder's work on those comics, although I didn't know who any of the creators were at the time. Don Martin was a big influence when I was young. Charles Schulz. As I got older, I became enamored of the work of Jaime Hernandez and Gilbert Hernandez in Love and Rockets. I'm sure there were others during my formative years. Which ended about seven years ago.

As far as writing goes, whose style and work influence you as a writer?

I'm still influenced by a lot of my pop culture intake as a kid, for the most part. I've never sat down and analyzed my writing influences; in comics, they're not often as readily identifiable as someone's art influences, I'd say. Stan Lee and the 70's Marvel writing staff who aped his work. I particularly liked Steve Gerber's work, which was not like Stan Lee's work at all. Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Ray Bradbury, Rod Serling, Charles Shulz, Kurt Vonnegut, Tolkien, Richard Matheson, Stephen King, at least I assume they influenced me as those were folks I read heavily. I'm probably most influenced by a lot of the television comedy I watched growing up, Monty Python, SCTV, early Saturday Night Live, Ernie Kovacs, The Goodies, a lot of British comedy shows aired on PBS and local NYC syndicated channels, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, Abbot and Costello, a batch of stand-up comedians, sketch writers and performers, people like George Carlin, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Bob and Ray, and on and on. Old showbiz, old movies, old cartoons, monster movies, professional wrestling interviews, punk rock fanzines and alternative comics of the 80's. It's all in their somewhere. Even some actual literature. Maybe.

I still can't put my finger on how my writing brain functions and who or what truly influences it. It just seems like everything I see or read or listen to works on me in some manner. I wish I had a great, impressive answer to this. If I was a more important figure in comics I'm sure somebody would have written an essay telling me who my influences were. Until someone does that I have to fumble around trying to nail it all down when someone asks me. It's embarrassing.

Whose style and work influence you as an artist?

Jack Kirby, Bill Elder, Harvey Kurtzman, Don Martin, Jaime Hernandez, John and Sal Buscema, the 70's Marvel bullpen, a lot of newspaper strip artists I grew up on, and a number of animation directors and artists whose cartoons I grew up on. For all I know, I was influenced by the Archie and Harvey cartoonists, when we were kids I read all my sisters comics after I was done with my superhero books. These days I've fallen under the influence of a lot of long-dead newspaper cartoonists whose work I'm reading and collecting, as well as some of the European clear line artists like Herge and Yves Chaland and Joost Swarte, and manga artists like Tezuka and Shigeru Mizuki and Junji Ito. I don't hold a birthday candle to any of the cartoonists I've mentioned, and my work doesn't reflect much of their direct influence—save for perhaps Elder, and that's only superficially—but that's my list and I'm sticking to it.

I'm also influenced by a lot of graphic art and design, poster art, 50's animation background and character design, punk fanzines, album sleeve and flyer art, old fonts and typefaces and vintage commercial design. I don't study, unfortunately, I just absorb a little bit from everything, a sort of casual osmosis, which is why my style is a bit underdeveloped and why I can't rattle off the names of standout designers besides someone like Saul Bass. And again, you can't really see these influences in my work beyond the typefaces I've used and adapted for some title designs and whatnot. I'm not much of a designer, although I have a lot of interest in graphic design; but it's not something I ever learned anything about and I feel out of my league in that regard. I just cobble things together and hope for the best, no real reason behind them other than what I think works. I have no idea if any of the fine artists I like have influenced my work. I sort of doubt it. As far as I know it's all MAD and Marvel and Merry Melodies.

Conversely, when I look at some of Jim Mahfood's Stupid Comics, I can't help but see a little Dorkin influence in his work. Also, I can see your influence in Angry Youth Comics by Johnny Ryan. What young artists do you see your work in?

I don't see my stuff in Johnny Ryan's work. We both do humor comics you can't show off in church, but that's about all we have in common, I'd say. He'd probably spit blood if he heard anyone say my work influenced his. I really have no idea what kind of influence my work may have had on anyone in the business, if it's had any at all. It's not something I think about. I've been influenced by cartoonists, I don't influence cartoonists.

If you don't see your work in any of the young guys and gals, which new cartoonists and/or comics creators are you into?

I'm fairly ignorant of most of the new crop of cartoonists. I just don't have the time or resources to stay on top of such things anymore. There are just so many books and web comics out there, I don't know who could keep up with it all. I stay in touch with the field as best as I can by reading The Comics Reporter and Journalista every day and a few other websites if time allows. But I have to admit I don't pick up many books by the younger set. Almost all the comics I'm buying these days tend to be by dead cartoonists, because of all the amazing archival reprint series being published these days. Right now there are beautiful reprints available of work by Osamu Tezuka, Elsie Segar, George Herriman, Jack Kirby, Charles Schulz, Frank King, Winsor McCay, Milton Caniff, Hank Ketcham, Tove Jannson, and others who I'm pretty crazy about. And more reprint projects being announced every few weeks. I can't keep up with all of that, not to mention various one-shots and art books by old and dead masters, so how do I find the time and money to keep up with the untried youngsters? I don't, unfortunately. It was easier in the 90's, when there were fewer cartoonists and fewer comics being published, and no internet. And younger cartoonists would mail their comics and mini-comics out to half of the cartoonists out there, including us. These days I'm all excited about the complete Black Jack and Little Orphan Annie and Scorchy Smith, I don't have time for the whippersnappers. I think the last thing I bought by someone who wasn't on Medicaid or in the ground was Ganges by Kevin Huizenga, which I liked. Is he "new", though? I like the Perry Bible Fellowship strip, I can't type the creator's last name, though. [Nicholas Gurewitch] You'd have to throw some names at me, everyone I try to think of as a new cartoonist has actually been around for a few years, if not longer, like a Brian Ralph or Jim Rugg or...um...uhhh...someone else. Maybe I'll catch up to the current crop when I'm in the Old Cartoonists Home and they can transmit comics directly into your brain via Tachyon beam for ten cents a pop.

I hate this question. I feel really fucking old now.

Looking at your work, there is a strong punk/ska influence in many of your strips. Since Playback is primarily a music magazine, who are your favorite bands and/or musical artists?

The Pixies, The Clash, Madness, Blondie, X, Talking Heads, Stereolab, The Electric 6, My Bloodie Valentine, Portishead, The Chemical Brothers, Louis Prima, The Specials, Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Rocket From The Crypt, Devo, The Aquabats, The Replacements, Fishbone, John Barry, Henry mancini, Bernard Herrman, The Buzzcocks, The Dead Kennedys, Billy Childish, Tommy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Puffy (AmiYumi), tons more. I listen to all sorts of stuff, I like standards and big band and swing, soundtracks, novelty records, old country and western, classical, hillbilly music, doo-wop, pop, power-pop, j-pop, new wave, no wave, post-punk, alternative, plenty besides ska and punk. I mostly listen to WFMU.org, they play everything and anything, it's a listener supported freeform station I swear by and it's turned me on to hundreds of artists from the past century or so I wouldn't have heard otherwise.  

You have created a litany of characters and comics strips from Milk and Cheese to the Eltingville Comic-Book, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Role-Playing Club to Little People's Theatre, the Devil Puppet etc. Who is your favorite character that you created?

I guess I have to go with Milk and Cheese, because they make the least sense and have been the most enjoyable to work with. In some ways I owe a large chunk of my career to their creation. And they're the easiest to draw of all my characters.

What is your favorite comic strip that you've done?

I wish I had an answer for that, but I don't. | Carlos Ruiz  

Keep up to date on all things Dorkin at Evan Dorkin's blog, Big Mouth Types Again, or by visiting the House of Fun!

---