For the first time, this year our staff voted in a ‘Best Cartoonist‘ category for our Year in Review. We felt it was important to honor folks who are doing all different roles in comics in our Year in Review categories, and no one is doing more in any given book than someone who is the sole, or at least main, driver of every aspect of the story. For “Catwoman: Lonely City,” Cliff Chiang is writing, illustrating, coloring, and lettering the book, making it as close to a one man show as you can get in comics.
I spoke to Cliff late last year about the title, his process, and also how we grew up like 5 minutes from each other (that part has been edited out, as I’m sure you don’t care).
You mentioned in your email to me that you were really proud of the term cartoonist. And so what does that mean to you? Like, when you hear that word? What does that evoke?
Cliff Chiang: I think it’s really owning the idea of comic storytelling, you know, being able to do all the different facets, facets of it, and control how the story is told to me. It’s taken me a while to learn all the different parts of the craft. And then now to finally put it together, you know, it’s like I’ve been building Voltron, and I finally got to put them all together, you know? So, it’s, and it’s been a long time, you know, I’ve been in the industry for, like, 20 years now, and to, you know, finally have a project where I’ve done all the work is incredibly rewarding and meaningful.
Was there one skill that for you was the toughest to get to a place where you were comfortable sharing that skill with the world? You know, I mean, I, you know, I think for lots of us, we do things at home that we’re comfortable doing, but if somebody else was there, be a little bit hard for us, right. So it was one of those skills that you that you were the least willing to show to others, at least until you felt like you had mastered it?
CC: I think writing is the most dangerous. There’s a way in which, when you’re drawing a story, it’s very straightforward. I imagine it’s like trade work, you know, it’s like doing plumbing or electric, you have a script, and you have to execute in a certain way, and you don’t want to screw it up, but there’s something very revealing about writing. You’re you’re trying to connect with an audience, you’re telling them what’s important to you, and what you think is entertaining, what you think is interesting, what you think is funny, or exciting, and you don’t know how people are going to respond to that. I think I have the history and the experience to know if I’ve drawn something, I can tell if it’s okay or if it’s bad. With writing, it’s not as readily apparent. If I draw a bad face that doesn’t look human, then that’s not good, and I’ve got to start over. If you write a bad scene, it feels off, but it could be any number of things. I just didn’t have kind of the instinct, the instinctual experience to know whether something was good or not. So it was a slow process. I was very deliberate and very careful about it. But, I’m proud of that turned out,
Was there something in your mind that clicked that helped you get more comfortable writing? Or is it a story by story basis, where with “Catwoman: Lonely City,” you were more personally poised to tell it, or was it just you got better at this thing you’ve been working on?
CC: A little bit of both, I think, you know, I’ve kind of dabbled in it over the years, you know, short story here and there. We worked kind of Marvel style on “Wonder Woman” and, you know, I wasn’t writing per se, but it gave me a much better look at the process and how some of those decisions were made. So, you know, some part of it was, you know, just slowly getting comfortable with the craft. And then at the same time, finally having a story that I wanted to tell. When DC approached me, the editor at Black Label said, “what’s the story that you want to do that only you could do?” It took me a while to figure it out; it wasn’t like I had pitches at the ready. It took me maybe six months, partly because I was already working on “Paper Girls,” and just the daily grind of doing a monthly or semi monthly book doesn’t necessarily leave you a lot of time for imagination and creativity outside of the story that you’re telling. So it took me a while to come up with something that I felt confident and passionate enough about, and it turned out to be this Catwoman story that combines all my interests and I thought would be interesting to other people.
Continued belowWhy is this Catwoman story, something only you can tell?
CC: I think that may become more clear as the story goes on, but it’s about your viewpoint and what’s important to you. I think if they had come to me with “Hey, do you have, you know, a Green Lantern story?,” I don’t know if I would have been able to do something like that. But to be given kind of th the freedom to come up with something, then it was like, “Hey, I like crime stuff. I like heist stories. I like ‘The Dark Knight Returns,’ I like telling stories with anti heroes, and somehow all these things came together, and in ways that I don’t even know if I was really conscious of. I knew, from the moment that I had the idea that it was exciting. It was a little scary. And, and that was the right one to pitch them,as it combines so much, so much of the stuff that I care about. It’s not just a Catwoman story, it’s also a story about Gotham, and having lived in New York for 15 years, it’s about cities and the people and how we want to live with each other. There’s a lot of observationsof all the things that I love and hate about New York in Gotham City.
You’ve obviously been drawing comics for a very long time, and you’ve done a little bit of coloring, a little bit of lettering here and there. When you are sitting down to work on something like this, because you are doing every aspect of it, is the process still the same? Like for instance, are you writing out a script? And then are you illustrating that script and then are you coloring those illustrations and you know, or does all that get mixed up a little bit more because there’s no one else that is that has their hand you know, on the wheel as it were?
CC: Yeah, I probably not a popular choice, but I wrote it full script. I wanted to be able to evaluate it as a script. When I get a script, I can draw it, and I can draw it in a way that makes sense that reads well. So, the fear then is that when you start thumbnailing stuff, and you’re just kind of flying by the seat of your pants, you run into problems. I had a very specific page count that I needed to hit. I had a big story to tell, I didn’t want to run out of space, so that takes planning. It took multiple drafts of outlining and scripting before I felt confident about the story so that once I started drawing, I wouldn’t have to redraw pages because, oops, I forgot about this character or that [scene] actually doesn’t work at all, I’m gonna have to change it. Which isn’t to say that stuff didn’t change, because you have to be flexible, and kind of see where the story leads you. There were certain parts that pushed, you know, as we went on, just organically pushed for more attention and you realize, this is where the soul of the story is, so I need to touch on that more.
So I wrote it full script and then thumbnail that, lettered it, so that it could be read, even in a very rough form, by all of us, by me and the editors, and we could see if the story as a whole worked. Then, I started drawing it. All four issues have been written, they’ve all been thumbnailed, and lettered, and now, it’s a matter of doing tight pencils and the inks, and you know, and the colors, more than the hard labor. But the conceptual heavy lifting has all been done. So now, it’s just making sure all the pieces fit in the way that I want.
