Sometimes comics are well made, but you don’t really connect with it. Other times, they’re not the best, but you find some emotional truth in them. Other times, like with Michael Cho’s debut graphic novel “Shoplifter”, you find something that’s tremendously well crafted and that you find to be really impactful, and that’s where the magic of art is found. In this work that hits at least this writer on a very personal level, Cho fully realizes his gifts as a storyteller in depicting the tale of Corinna Park, a twenty-something copywriter trying to find her way in life.
It’s a hell of a read, and after getting the chance to review it, I reached out to Cho to talk about the book, his art, his career, and much more. Take a look at our conversation about “Shoplifter” and beyond below, and make sure to find a copy of this book when it arrives next week in comic shops and book stores near you from Pantheon Press.
My experience with you comes from some standout book covers, a slew of notable pin-ups and your book Back Alleys and Urban Landscapes, but the only thing I’ve ever read from you in terms of straight comic book sequentials was the “Batman: Black and White” story you did with Chip Kidd. Obviously comics are an influence for you as an artist, but what made you want to move your art into a longer form, sequential art story?
Michael Cho: I’ve actually written and drawn more comics stories, but they’ve always been sort of outside the “mainstream” channels. I’ve produced several comic short stories for Taddle Creek, a well regarded literary magazine here in Canada, a couple of which have been nominated for the Canadian National Magazine Awards. My story, “Trinity”, about the making of the atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project was also selected by editor Neil Gaiman for the 2010 edition of “The Best American Comics” anthology put together by Houghton Mifflin. Apart from that, a few years ago I also used to put out a monthly webcomic called “Papercut” which featured several of my short stories as part of a collective of webcomic artists called Transmission-X comics. All of those comics were around 4 to 32 pages in length, so Shoplifter is definitely my first long form graphic novel.
As well, along with that “Batman: Black and White” story by Chip Kidd, I’ve worked as an artist on a smattering of mainstream comics stories for Marvel and DC including an “X-men First Class” story with Jeff Parker and a story in the “Age of the Sentry” mini-series with Paul Tobin. I’ve also drawn a few covers here and there for DC.
I’ve been a lifelong fan of the comics medium, and I like to think my work reflects all aspects of comics — I enjoy “indie” or “comics as literature” work as well as “super hero” or genre based comics and I like to move between the two as I follow my own particular artistic muse.
Shoplifter is, in many ways, my first step into a new phase of my work as I feel like I’ve sufficiently developed my skills on those past projects to write and draw longer stories. I’ve worked for a long time as an illustrator, drawing covers for books or editorial illustrations for magazines, but I always knew I’d eventually write and draw graphic novels. Illustration is a fun and artistically rewarding career, but I also love sequential art and wanted to tell stories as well as just draw pictures. Hence, I started work a few years ago on a bunch of different graphic novel projects of which Shoplifter is the first.
MC: Corinna is a woman in her mid 20’s who is creative, intelligent and well educated but she feels like she’s stuck in a rut. She has bigger ambitions than the copywriting job she has currently but is unsure how to move forward. Her story is the story of many people who are smart and well read enough to critique but, for whatever reason, are unable to create. It was something I saw a lot of in my 20’s — in my friends, in myself, and I thought it would be a good subject to write about. I’m always interested in trying to depict the times I live in, and that particular time in life seemed like one with filled with interesting subtleties and choices that might have lifelong repercussions.
Continued belowThe whole book is being brought to life with two-color illustrations, and it’s something we’ve seen from you a lot in the past. What made that the direction you wanted to go with the story, and what does it bring to the book that makes it such a great fit?
MC: I’ve always liked two-tone work because it allows me to focus on things like mood and atmosphere. I’m better at depicting interior states or subtleties of mood in two-tone than I am with a full colour palette, so it was a perfect fit with this story which is focused on one character and is fairly quiet in tone. I often think I can draw a more expressive range of emotions with just two colours than I can trying to juggle harmonies in full colour. I don’t find it limiting in any way but rather the opposite.
On Shoplifter, what tools do you use for your art? Best guess, I’d say you’re more of a traditional illustrator, but when it comes to Shoplifter, are you bringing any new tricks or tools to the table?
MC: Shoplifter was drawn traditionally ”on the board”. I painted the tones with coloured inks and did the rest with my toolbox of brushes, pens and a few brushpens. If you want to get technical, it was drawn mostly with a #2 raphael 8404 brush and a few Pitt brush pens for speedier drawing. I did a few art corrections digitally, with my cintiq (I can work digitally as well as traditionally) but most of the book was drawn with the same tools cartoonists have been using for decades.
As for new tricks, if we’re going to get into hardcore shop talk, I did use pens and linework a bit more than I have in the past. I’ve always liked “line dropouts”, or avoiding outlines and letting the light define forms in my cartooning, but during the making of this book I rediscovered a love for pen lines and developed a scratchier look, which I incorporated a bit into the art.
I also didn’t do any real “pencilling” while working on this but did layouts with markers just to keep the energy up and not get bogged down on little details. I like to vary my approach to the work to fit the project and as well as to avoid boredom.
Corinna is a remarkably well realized character, and some of the things that made me enjoy her were the details that made her feel all the more real. The feeling of isolation in the face of all-time high levels of interconnectiveness through social media. The little person inside you yearning to speak up in groups. The “lonely and fat” comment about her microwaveable meal. Those details are all important in a lead, and you did a great job of putting her together. How much of you would you say there is in Corinna? Or was she more of a pure creation than something of a mirror?
MC: That’s always a tough question to answer. I guess the simple and formulaic answer would be to say that all characters are an aspect of their creator. I mean, I understand Corinna quite well, and I did put myself into her in bits and pieces. But she’s not me. I’ve never worked at an ad agency, I didn’t go to school to study literature and so on. I can relate to her, and in the process of creating her, I drew upon people I knew who were similar to her in personality and in the situation she finds herself. I have a lot of empathy for Corinna so I guess that helped flesh her out. My goal was was to try to create a believable character with flaws and contradictions like any real person – someone who both knows and doesn’t know herself.
I thought the commentary on the ascent of personal branding – people advertising themselves, effectively – was very interesting, especially as a reflection of Corinna, a person who’s biggest problem just might be that she can’t really fake it in a sea of pitch men. It underlines that feeling of isolation she has, as it does for many people in today’s world. I’m curious, what’s your perspective on the subject? Is it a terrible thing like Ben and Corinna suggest, something that is just part of who we are as a society, or somewhere in-between?
Continued belowMC: I don’t think Corinna is unable to “fake it”. She actually does “fake it” throughout the story– she tells little lies and also creates an edited projection of herself that she pitches to people throughout the story. Like a lot of people, she picks and chooses her moments of honesty. Everybody is a little bit fake, a little bit hypocritical. Especially when it comes to admitting something like loneliness. Many people don’t want to admit to feeling alone, especially in an age of “all-time high levels of interconnectiveness” as you say.
I don’t have a big positive or negative view of it, in the sense that I dislike social media or something like that. In the story, Ben and Corinna feel one way, while Candi and Rodney have a different view. I think people have been selling an image of themselves forever, whether it’s through what we wear or where we go to be seen, or something else that’s been around for centuries. I was more interested in showing examples of how we do it today, through the media channels we’ve adopted in contemporary society and within the framework of the corporate and social structures that we live in. We live in a culture where mass communication was, until recently, mostly under the control of large corporations. And while social media has come along to change that dynamic into what seems like a more democratic one, it’s still nascent and we sometimes still use the language and viewpoint of that previous era. I mean, all new media does that in some way – borrow the forms of previous ones until it finds it’s own shape.
I know this is a project that’s been gestating a bit, and I’m curious, did this project change shape and form as you went along? Or did it end up being pretty much what you originally envisioned?
MC: It changed quite a bit throughout it’s creation. Originally, Shoplifter was planned to be 1 of 5 interconnected short stories that made up a larger book. However, as I wrote the outlines for each of the stories, they all grew to the point where they worked better as separate books of their own. Then in the course of writing the script for Shoplifter and laying out it out visually, I expanded it further as I wanted to flesh it out more than I would have when it was a tight little short story. FInally, after showing the manuscript to friends and my editor for feedback, I expanded it still further and added a few more pages to it. So it’s been an organic process of editing and rewriting to get to the final book.
Obviously with projects like Back Alleys and Urban Landscapes, the multitudes of book covers you’ve provided, and something like Shoplifter, you’re someone who doesn’t really fit into just one mold with your art. For you as an artist, what do you think working on a diverse set of projects like those does to help strengthen your work, and how different is your approach for an illustration gig versus a sequential work like Shoplifter?
MC: I liked working in a lot of different fields, though I’m starting to tighten my focus a bit more these days. When I was in my 20’s, I wanted to try my hand at anything art related: film storyboarding, illustration, painting, set design, book design, print making, sign and mural painting, comics and whatever else was available. I think that’s a good thing for an artist starting out – getting exposed to all different disciplines and industries within the art field. My view was that if there was something interesting and art-related, I didn’t want to have to depend on anyone to do it for me, I wanted to learn it and do it myself. I certainly learned a lot in the process – not just technical knowledge and skills but also about what fields of art I enjoyed and didn’t enjoy. Nowadays, I’m trimming back as I narrow my focus to a few different disciplines – including illustration and comics.
Continued belowI do approach illustration differently than creating comics. I think conceptually with illustration and narratively with comics. An illustration job is also over quite a bit quicker than comics as it’s usually a single image or a small batch of images. You can vary up your style with each illustration as well, in keeping with the needs of the assignment, which you can’t do in the middle of a comic story. It also takes a lot longer to draw comics and I think it demands more technical skill in cases. For example, in a comic, you have to draw what the story requires – even if that means drawing a shot or angle that you might not be comfortable with. Sometimes, you just have to draw that 3 point perspective shot of a busy city because the scene requires it to work. In illustration, however, there are more ways to approach an idea, so there’s more room to back out and try a different concept if you’re not up to it. As well, in illustration there’s a lot more throw-away design since it’s mostly one-off work. However, when you design something for comics, you have to be prepared to draw it many times and in many situations throughout the story.
For me, the key element that runs through both my illustration and comics, and hopefully all my art, is my interest in conveying something emotional through the work. In the works that I consider successful, I hope that element comes through.
One thing I really love about your art, especially some of the random superhero pin-ups and the pieces you did of NBA players like Chris Paul and Lebron James, is that your enthusiasm for your subject really shows up on the page. As a fan of both comics and basketball, I appreciate that, but how do you feel that comes out in Shoplifter? Given the length of its development, it’s clearly a passion project.
MC: Thanks. I like to think all my work comes from enthusiasm. Years ago, I used to joke that I work from passion, not from discipline. Of course, I’m a bit older now and have a daughter to look after so I’m a lot more disciplined but I mean, it’s really hard to work on something you don’t enjoy. I think it shows in the final product if you don’t have any love for the thing you’re drawing. And you’re right, it is a passion project and that’s not something you get a chance to do often, so while it was a challenge, it was one I was happy to take on.
Part of the fun of drawing Shoplifter was, of course, that I wrote it and so I was knew exactly what I was trying to express and I could change things as I went along without second guessing myself. And since it was a long book, I had a chance to get into a groove when I was working on it and that’s just the best feeling — when you’re warmed up and rolling and the pages practically draw themselves. I enjoyed discovering how the work evolved as I got deeper into it and feeling confident enough to try new things. I think Shoplifter has some of my best work in it.
This is your first full-length graphic novel, and now that we’re about to reach its release, what surprised you the most about the overall experience of bringing it to life, and how do you think this experience will help you in the future on the other graphic novel projects you mentioned?
MC: Since this was my first graphic novel, I was surprised by pretty much everything! It took much longer to work on than I thought and there were definitely moments of self-doubt, especially at the beginning. When I’d work on shorter stories, or on an illustration, it only took a few days for me to find out if something worked or not. For this, I had to go quite a bit longer on faith. After finishing this book, I had a lot more confidence in my ability to do the next one. A friend of mine used to say learning to draw comics was simple — you just have to draw a hundred pages of comics on a deadline. I think that’s pretty accurate. The kinks kind of work themselves out as do whatever questions you might have about style and approach. I learned a lot about writing, discovered really fun approaches to drawing that I hadn’t considered before and had to teach myself some very valuable time management techniques. Also, I had to learn how to draw cats, and you have no idea how hard that was for me.
