One of our favorite webcomics (although it’s not really comicky in format) is Benjamin Dewey’s Tragedy Series, a hilarious and often strange series of tragedies that befall poor fictional characters. It’s one of my favorite comics to binge read, but three times a week you can experience the magic Dewey brings to this comic.
Today for Artist August, I talk to Dewey about where this came from, how his desire to tell stories through comics developed, what’s next for him, and much more. Thanks to Ben for chatting with me, and seriously, read this damn comic. It’s awesome.
Can you look back on your life and recall the single moment or work that made you want to work in comics? Or was it more of a natural progression that led you here?
My interest in comics stems from a combination of seeing some cartoon shows like justice league, movies like Richard Donner’s superman, Newspaper strips like Calvin and Hobbes/The Far Side, reading Mad Magazine and then coming across marvel cards and comics as a pre-teen that all underscored and reenforced my interest in drawing by demonstrating an endpoint that manifested rewards and looked super fun.
I loved great book illustrators too like Graeme Base, Dr. Seuss, Richard Scarry, Maurice Sendak, Steven Kellog and Chris Van Allsburg. The combination of words and pictures is an incredibly strong tool for communication and it baffles me to this day that it gets derided more than it gets utilized in expressing complicated feelings, circumstances and concepts.
I gravitated toward more of a ‘fine art’ sensibility for a while because I had no mentors that really did comics/commercial art with an approach that was inclusive of high-concept stuff. Eventually I found my way back around the end of college. I’m super lucky to be where I am now because I wouldn’t have made any head-way in the gallery world due to my total lack of interest in how specialized, political and non-populist it tends to be.
Who or what has influenced the development of your art the most?
My early teachers: Ms. McCool (3rd grade), Mrs. Wooley (5th grade), Ms. King (6th-8th Grades), Mrs. Swazey and Mrs Fannin (both art department teachers in middle and high-school respectively). They all encouraged me and made allowances for my eccentricities.
My father, who taught me almost everything about how to look at and research art before I got to college.
A woman I dated in college named Christa Donner who is a fantastic artist, underground comics aficionado and all-around thoughtful person. I wouldn’t have gotten back into comics if it hadn’t been for her influence.
Lastly the good people of periscope studio (especially Steve Lieber) who helped me become fluent in comics after speaking in fine art for most of my developmental years.
I’m often curious as to how artists create their art. Are they traditional or digital, or some hybrid of both? How do you create your work, typically? Which of those groups do you fall into?
I am mostly a traditionalist in terms of materials, for the moment, but that brings up a larger point: the mindset of work matters more than the tools. If one thinks and has trained with a time-tested approach to making imagery by understanding as much as they can from foundational concepts of structure, lighting and composition then it can function well no-matter what medium is being employed to make the concept come across. I just read a great essay by Patton Oswald about comedians he knew coming up that didn’t develop their act from the ground up, borrowed from other creators, and once they were confronted with the rude glare of genuine success, that required serious work to maintain, their half-assed approach crumbled. This is all by way of saying that fundamentals are crucial and stylizations, techniques and tools should all be subject to the same test: what communicates the most clearly?
For tragedy series, I wanted an anachronistic vibe that evoked 19th century illustration without doing a direct lift or impression of them. Those ‘some-e cards’ do that already and I could have run the risk of people confusing them with that phenomenon or not knowing I had done them if the take was too dead on. I draw my cartoons with a micron number 8 (to avoid getting too precious), a pentel pocket brush-pen and a pentel watercolor wash brush loaded with a mix of water and ultradraw ink on 5.5 by 8.5 bristol board. I then import them into photoshop and use the color sample I picked to tint them sepia; that is the only digital part of this project.
Continued belowIn the future I plan to use a combo of digital and traditional methods because there are some approaches that work well better in one or the other. I like doing the prep work digitally because it’s much easier to fix structural things for a long-form project. I like traditional for finishing off pages because it imposes physical limits on line-weight that I consider cheesy/obnoxious when I see them ignored in comics that were drawn completely digitally. You can’t endlessly rework a physical page. It forces you to commit and avoid getting bogged down with endless potential for editing/correction.
Tragedy Series is, no question, one of the strangest and most entertaining comics you can find. Period. What was the genesis of this idea for you, and are you ever blown away how much people have embraced it?
Thanks! Steve Lieber just described them as having ‘the biggest budget for any single panel gag strip’ that he could think of. I like that. I try to let my subconscious come bubbling up and record the whispered bits like a stenographer. I look around for phrases, contexts, objects or organisms that have the potential for comedy and write down absolutely everything that comes to mind. I sift through my idea list before bed, on the way to work (via bike) and once I am sitting down I get more severe about the captions and imagery. I’m really trying to think in the same mode as my favorite comedy writers: Robert Carlock and Jonathan Swartzwelder. Those two dudes have written some of the weirdest jokes ever and I love that mindset. I avoid ‘rude’ or ‘blue’ humor because it isn’t me and there is a ton of it out there. Some people (like Louis C.K.) are masters of it but many other people who aim for humor go for farts and dick jokes because they provoke a reaction almost no-matter what. It can be hard to get a laugh or generate mirth through purely verbal, situational or surreal means but I try for that because it is what I like best.
The idea came first in college when I was in an enameling course and I made a mechanized box that was ‘shipwreck’ themed. I had vague notions of diagrammatic etchings to that effect and I originally wanted to make a series but I ran out of time and never got around to it. I had been doing a webcomics project with my friend, and long-time collaborator, Nathan Staples, but it wasn’t generating any money or momentum so we put it on hiatus and I remembered that kernel from years back. It seemed a perfect fit for a daily strip that had all the things I wanted to see. I just put a bunch of them up and it started getting shared right away!
I’m continually pleased to know that people like it. I am waiting for the other shoe constantly but that’s just because I am self-critical and unaccustomed to even a modest degree of popularity.
One of the things that entertains me to no end is the dichotomy between the old timey feel of Tragedy Series and the fact it is delivered on Tumblr. It’s a great old school, new school hybrid. That said, could you see yourself bringing it into print at some point, and, if so, how would you envision it being published?
The tumblr platform is perfect for me because it is devoid of the poisonous element that makes youtube comment threads a perfect incubator for the dregs humanity to gestate vile slurs. If you want to say something negative on tumblr in association with content, you need to attach it to yourself like a bumper sticker that shows your sour feelings plainly. I’m not opposed to criticism but I do find time spent battling internet trolls to be a waste of my and my friend’s time. I like that tumblr cuts this aspect out.
I do plan to turn it into a book. I’m in talks with an agent and it has been delayed because I was finishing up commitments on other projects and doing commercial work. I am envious of the beautiful books released via drawn and quarterly by Kate Beaton and Tom Gauld; I imagine a package like that crossed with elements of a 19th century visual dictionary. I want it to feel old and precious. I like intricate artifacts. I’d love to see it on the shelves at Powell’s books and in comic shops too. I’d be very happy and proud if that happened.
Continued belowSpeaking of that old timey feel, why did you decide to base the dress and look heavily in the Victorian style, and how did its signature cover palette come together?
The victorian era and eras before it remove the viewer from the dour circumstance enough to feel like they can laugh without guilt because it isn’t happening right now. I also think it makes use of that principle of ‘kicking upward’ in comedy because there is a dignity to the style of dress that makes everyone, even the hard-up, seem better off because they might be wearing a vest and thus, it’s funnier when their dignity is undercut. I also like the uniformity of it. It sets some limits for what can be utilized and I enjoy the challenge of that.
I don’t remember what I initially eye-droppered to get the tone I use but it may have been a vintage photograph. I’ve used the same value for the majority of the series. I used to pick it at random to vary it but I like the look of consistency now better than the patchwork of earlier installments.
Three tragedies a week. That’s a lot of ironical despair to create. How long do you envision this project going? Is it basically a however long you have fun doing it type endeavor?
It is a lot of despair and it’s getting more difficult to do. I try to come up with Sadness reprieves but they are even harder to generate.
In the long run, I want to stop at 500 images in the numbered sequence. I don’t mind the idea of it morphing into something that shares much of the same themes but I don’t want it to get old for people. I intend to switch up some elements after 400 just to keep it compelling and present myself with new options/challenges. The current math puts the end point of the initial 500 (roughly) around this time next year. I’ll post other content but it won’t be so strict in it’s format or posting schedule.
It is still fun for me but my wife wants me to stop being emotionally invested in the success or failure of the cartoons individually. If I can just enjoy making things and keep putting them up until I reach a natural terminus, that would be the best case scenario. I don’t know how guys like Watterson or Larson did it so well for so many years. It blows my mind.
Have you ever come up with a tragedy that, once you started working on it, it was too tragic even for you to want to bring it to life?
Yes. I had written down ‘custody of chosen one granted to one that didn’t choose him’ and it just seemed too sad and overlapping with a genuinely tragic reality so I scrapped it. I was thinking of Harry Potter. I also sometimes have Ideas that reference known IPs that aren’t in the public domain so I don’t make them. I have a great one that references ‘Legend of Zelda’ that is just sitting in a drawer.
One of the things I came across in my mad googlings of Benjamin Dewey was that you’re working on a comic with Paul Tobin, you’re fellow Periscopean. What’s the current status of that project, as it seems like it’s been in the works for a while?
I just finished the inks for that project! It took a long time for a variety of reasons that parallel the reasons that the tragedy series book hasn’t come out yet; I wasn’t getting paid to work on it, as I went along, and rent comes first. That’s the heartbreak of creator-owned material. there isn’t an infrastructure in place to make the long stretches of time without money doable. There’s Kickstarter but that wouldn’t have made sense in this instance because we have an arrangement with Oni regarding the publishing. It was just a tough time and process to go through. I’m glad it is finally complete. It will be a fun and good looking project that has some of my and Paul’s most dense material on just about every page; I wanted it to be worth the wait. Paul just won an Eisner, along with his wife Colleen Coover, for their amazing work on Bandette and I’m hoping we can keep that momentum going with this Oni project.
Besides your project with Paul, what else do you have on the horizon? Are there any other comic projects you have coming up?
I’m currently in the beginning stages of two major long-form projects. One is with Lori Matsumoto for Thrillbent comics; it is really fun to draw and similar in drawing style to the Tragedy Series but sequential and set in modern times. The second is with Kurt Busiek for Image and, once we have a bit more material generated, I’m sure they will make an official announcement of some kind. It’s basically my ideal project. I couldn’t have asked for a concept that was better fitted to my strengths and interests as an artist/visual storyteller. I’m really looking forward to the release of both those projects. I’m going to do my best to hit it out of the park and make the drawings as cool as possible.
