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NORM BREYFOGLE

DANIEL BEST: How and where did you start in comics?

NORM BREYFOGLE: I started as a gleam in my father’s eye. <laughter> Actually, he liked to draw, too, but never pursued it professionally as far as I know ...

In comics, the first thing I had published was a drawing for a ‘Design Robin’ stunt back when I was 15. I sent it to DC and they published it in Batman Family along with a bunch of other Robin costume designs from fans.

The next thing came a few years later when I was a senior in high school. I wrote and illustrated, pencilled and inked, and did the cover for a comic published by the local college (Michigan Technological University) to advertise it to Michigan High School students. They printed 10,000 copies of that, so that’s really my first published material of any real length. I think I only have one copy of that after all these years; it was titled Tech Team.

The next thing was in DC’s New Talent Showcase, after I’d moved to California upon graduating from Northern Michigan University in 1982. I attended the San Diego Con and Sal Amendola’s comics seminar and got a couple of jobs inking stories in that book.

At the same time Mike Friedrich - who was the president of Star*Reach (a talent representation agency in comics) - saw my work hanging in the San Diego Comics Con Art Show. I had a number of pieces in there, some black and white unpublished work (including a Batman story) and a couple of paintings. One of them won second place behind the French artist Moebius’ first place that year. Mike Friedrich’s girlfriend Lee Marrs saw that stuff and pointed it out to Mike. A couple of weeks after the Con I got a letter from him. I was in the process of moving again but once I was settled I gave him a call and he started representing me.

That’s when I got my first regular work: Bob Violence, a six to eight page back up story in First Comics’ American Flagg, back in 85. I did that for a few months while I was still working full time as a drafter at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Bob Violence wasn’t full time; it was just an on-going, the first one I’d done.

My first full time ongoing gig was First Comics’ Whisper, which I did right after Bob Violence. I was pencilling, inking, lettering and hand painting the covers. It’s kind of amazing - when I look back at it now - just how much work I was putting in every two months. <laughter> I did that for two years, then an opening came up on Detective Comics, and I took DC’s offer.

DB: When it comes to Batman, yours was very different from a lot that came before it. The closest I can see to it previously would be Gene Colan’s, with the shadows and darkness. How did you come about such a style and was there any resistance to it at the time?

NB: No, there was no resistance. (Thanks for the comparison to Colan, by the way; he’s a fav of mine.) It was before the Batman movie and there seemed to be a little more freedom; I guess the market wasn’t as tight. Batman was definitely selling much higher than it is now on a monthly basis, and they pretty much let me do whatever I wanted. Denny O’Neil was a very hands-off editor, which I like. I only remember getting editorial guidance for little things. For instance, after designing a bunch of different batmobiles - every time the batmobile appeared I’d design a different one - Denny said, “You should really settle on one design.”

Shortly after that the Batman movie came out and there were more stipulations. We were supposed to draw Gotham City like Anton Furst’s designs, and the batmobile like the movie batmobile. Soon we started drawing Batman’s costume like the movie’s as well (all black). But beyond that there wasn’t much editorial input. As a fan I’d internalized a lot of the conventions of comics so I kind of knew instinctively how far I could I go, and how far not to go. There are certain unspoken rules ... as an example: you can have gore in the DC mainstream superhero titles but - especially back then - it couldn’t be very wet gore. And you could draw blood, but to get it coloired red - and this is an interesting little quirk that I think is still true to this day - if I draw blood in any comics I always have to note ‘blood’ in the margin, otherwise it gets coloured green or something!

DB: Green?

NB: Yeah, even if it’s obviously blood! It’s as if the colourist is hesitant to colour it red, maybe because of the traditional fears brought on by Wertham’s witch hunts in the 50s and the comics code and all that stuff. Things have definitely opened up a lot since then. I mean, boy, the stuff we’re seeing in comics now, it’s just ...

DB: Do you think that’s a good or a bad thing? I don’t know if you saw the last issue of The Avengers, which showed the Wasp and Ant Man having oral sex, along with domestic violence, all in a mainstream book on sale for kids.

NB: No I haven’t.

DB: Is it necessarily a good thing though, or does it reach a point where you say, “bring it back in for a while”?

NB: It’s not necessarily a good thing of course; it’s all in the handling. Blanket rules about what you can see or not see are only good up to a very small point. I don’t think creators cross those barriers too often. I don’t know, it’s a really hairy area, obviously.

First off, I think things are definitely a lot better now in terms of censorship compared to the 50’s; there’s more creative freedom. At the same time, I’ve a very liberal mentality and I can see that a lot of people might disagree with me on this issue.

What’s really curious to me - and it’s something that everyone else notices too - is that throughout western culture there seems to be no limit to the amount of gore and violence we allow in our entertainment but when it comes to sex there are big no-no’s. It’s very strange ... almost as if pleasure is more taboo than pain!

I didn’t see that issue of The Avengers, so I don’t know exactly what was depicted. I don’t know how graphic it was, but if it’s handled tastefully then I don’t see why ... That’s just it, that word ‘tastefully’ is apropos; it’s all a matter of taste. You asked me my opinion, though, and my opinion is that it’s generally a good thing. As a creator, I love having more freedom as well.

DB: Back to Batman. Primarily on Batman, you worked with Alan Grant. What sort of a working relationship did you have with him?

NB: I really liked Alan from the first time I met him. He’s got a heroic personality and a tremendous sense of humour. And yet we exhibit different philosophical viewpoints in a lot of ways. A large part of our relationship, especially when we got into doing Anarky, became a friendly philosophical debate over politics and conspiracy theory; mysticism versus scientism and all this other stuff. We came to really enjoy those debates, even when they (rarely) got a little heated. I didn’t have a computer then, so we were doing it all by fax. In fact, I didn’t even know how to type back then; <laughter> my side was all handwritten fax. So a large part of our relationship was taken up by that.

I hardly suggested any writing points at all. I was given a lot of freedom as the artist, so I designed the pages and designed the look of the characters, and pretty much let Alan create the stuff. When people say he and I are the creators of characters like Scarface (the ventriloquist mobster dummy), I tend to balk at that because I think of Alan as the more creative one there. When he came up with that idea and I saw it in the script I said, “Wow! How come nobody’s done this before?” I mean, the ventriloquist dummy is a classic frightening figure in horror stories. Some of the scariest movies I saw as a kid had to do with that. But it hadn’t been done in any Batman books before and when Alan pulled it out of his hat it was like, “Ahhh, this is great!” I consider it completely his creation, but because I was drawing it at the time - by sheer coincidence - I get credit as well.

DB: You stayed on various Batman books for about six years or so. What prompted you to leave?

NB: For a few years there was a speculation market where people - collectors - were buying and selling huge gobs of highly marketed issues. Of course that market deflated, but I got a little bit out of it. There was some money to be had. Malibu Comics offered me a signing fee to draw their new title Prime and - this was the most important thing - they offered to publish Metaphysique sight unseen. I don’t know if I even had a title in mind at that point, but that offer lured me away from the Batman. So I said, “Yeah, sure!” How could I turn down the opportunity to have my own story and artwork published without even having to sell the project? It was a lot of trust they were putting in me, and I took advantage of it. And I’m glad I did because I’d been on Batman books for a long time - like you said, six years. I enjoyed drawing Batman. I’d love to draw him again in fact, but Prime was so different that it was really fun. It was a big change, going from a dark icon to a bright icon. There’s so many differences between the characters.

DB: What’s the status of Prime these days?

NB: It was bought by Marvel with the rest of the Ultraverse. Marvel apparently isn’t interested in publishing those characters, so why did they buy 'em? Weird. I heard recently that they don’t want to pay the creators of the Ultraverse their … I forget what our contracts call it, but it’s a certain percentage every time an Ultraverse character is published.

DB: Does that frustrate you? Have you ever thought of going to Marvel and saying, “How much would it cost me to buy back my creation and do something with it?”

NB: No, I’ve never considered that. If I had the money I might! <laughter> I’d be curious to know just how much they would want. That’s a possibility; I hadn’t really thought of it before. It is a little frustrating you know, because I’d love to draw Prime again and I think there’s a market out there for the character.

DB: You’re considered to be very outspoken. You wrote a letter to Wizard back in 1993 about the formation of Image in response to Jim Valentino challenging you about your ‘problems’ with Image. Was there any fall out from that?

NB: Nope, at least none of which I was aware. I’ve met Jim Valentino since and he doesn’t even seem to remember it. <laughter> I’m glad that saw print, that’s great; I didn’t know it had! As I recall, I wrote something like, “Just because Alan Moore and Frank Miller work for Image why does that necessarily mean they have no problem with Image?” I wrote that I have some problems with every publisher I work with. I stand by the words of that letter as I remember it, sure. You thought that was pretty outspoken? I thought it was just obvious. <laughter> If a person makes their opinions known, why is that necessarily so outspoken? I grew up believing in freedom of speech. It’s not like I was cutting anyone down, I was just making what seemed to me an obviously rational clarification of my own personal tastes.

DB: I suppose at that stage Image was…

NB: Kind of sacrosanct.

DB: Yeah. There weren’t that many people who were coming out with anything overtly negative not that your letter was negative, nor indeed positive. You summed it up best by saying that the best thing that happened in comics in 1993 was Image and the worst thing that happened in comics in 1993 was Image.

NB: You could say the same thing about all of modern culture. In fact, everything has two sides to it in every realm. You have light and dark even in terms of wavelengths of light. You’ve got morality and immorality; you’ve got pain and pleasure. Everything has polar opposites and I’d be very surprised if we could find any area of human endeavour that didn’t have them. So if you can find good qualities in anything, you’re going to be able to find bad qualities too. I think it’s inevitable.

DB: Do you take co-credit for the creation of Anarky?

NB: Yeah, sure. Anarky evolved as we worked on him, and I’ll take some credit for it, sure.

DB: I ask because earlier you were saying that Alan Grant ...

NB: I had more input on Anarky than many of the other characters we developed because we spent so much time on it and because we were involved in discussions concerning Anarky’s philosophy - which is really Alan Grant’s philosophy. I learned a lot from those discussions and of course I see lots of truth in objectivity (Anarky is an objectivist); I’m a modern western male, after all! Alan was calling his philosophy ‘Neo-tech’ but it’s basically a modernized version of Objectivism, which was Ayn Rand’s philosophy.

Now, I think the very term ‘Objectivism’ implies an outlook that’s kind of one sided because there’s also Subjectivism, and they’re both true in their own realms; they both exist. In our discussions I was always trying to balance Alan’s arguments with the opposite point of view, which in my view also has merits. That did feed its way into the stories to some degree, especially near the end when I had more ideas for Anarky’s life.

DB: Of everything you’ve done, which character was the hardest to draw?

NB: It’d probably have to be some female character. I’d think it’d probably be the lead character in Whisper (for First Comics) because she’s female. Women, especially pretty women, are difficult to draw because you can’t put in a lot of lines as it tends to make them look less pretty. Less lines means each line carries more weight, so you have to be more careful and decisive. Plus, Whisper was at the beginning of my career. I look back at that stuff and I wince, just like any other artist might. I look back on the Batman stuff, particularly on close ups of faces, and I also wince at a lot of it. I wish I’d taken more time. Actually I wish I’d gotten the Batman gigs about five years later, I know I would’ve done a better job.

DB: More than a few people consider your Batman to be one of the definitive versions of the character.

NB: That’s very flattering. Batman was really very much in my heart when I was growing up. Batman and Superman were some of the only comics characters that I really cared about when I was a kid, probably because they were also TV shows. Then I’d go out and buy the comics because of the shows. I was aware of the Marvel characters but I had very limited funds so I could only buy a couple comics.

DB: Did you ever have a desire to work for Marvel on some of the icon characters there?

NB: Sure! Marvel and DC: I don’t see a big difference between them. I know there are supposedly differences but when it comes right down to it they’re producing interchangeable types of universes. That’s why they can interact so well, as in JLA / Avengers. They even have counterparts of each other - similar spandex superheroes - and they’re all living in big cities, jumping over rooftops and fighting super villains. There’s not a lot of difference, kind of like the secret similarity between competing political parties behind their opposing rhetoric. <laughter>

DB: If you could pick a character that you haven’t worked on before, who would it be?

NB: There’s so many characters I’d like to draw, I really don’t feel too particular. I definitely would enjoy drawing the Hulk. But I hesitate to limit myself in any way. I enjoy drawing ALL superheroes. And much more.

DB: So who’s inspired you in comics?

NB: I’d say the first big name was Neal Adams. There was an issue of DC's The Brave And The Bold that Adams drew titled The Angel, the Rock, and the Cowl, wherein a young Batman met Sgt Rock during World War Two. This was obviously a while ago, <laughter> like 1969 or so. That was the first comic that made me realize “I really wanna do that!” In fact, one of the few pieces of my life that I ever copied line for line was the cover of that book, where Adams drew Batman holding an apparently dead Sgt Rock.

DB: It’s unusual because your style is so different from Adams.

NB: It’s been influenced by a lot of other people too, but people have noticed the Adams influence in my work.

I appreciate classically illustrative styles. Jim Aparo in the ‘70’s was also a big influence. Jim’s drawing had similarities to Adams, but with a greater fluidity in his figure drawing. There were a lot of other influences too: Joe Kubert, Nick Cardy. I was a big fan of Nick Cardy’s work. Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson on Superman. Gil Kane was a pretty big influence. Frank Frazetta as a painter as well. Bernie Wrightson. Basically all the big stars in the 70s were my influences. <laughter>

DB: Goes with the age doesn’t it?

NB: Yep. Frank Miller was another influence too, probably the last big influence. It was just when I was coming of age that I saw his Daredevil stuff. I loved the storytelling, the economy of line and of words too.

DB: The Dark Knight Returns, that came out just before you started doing Batman books.

NB: Right. In fact, I received some indication from my agent Mike Friedrich that it’s possible DC was having difficulties finding anybody to draw Batman titles because they felt they’d be in the shadow of Miller. That kind of surprised me. I wondered why anyone would turn down the opportunity to draw Batman? <laughter> That concern didn’t even enter my mind!

DB: Where did you go from Batman?

NB: When I was working for Malibu doing Prime and Metaphysique, I was still getting stuff from DC. Mr. T came along about then, too: my best paying gig in comics to this day!

Then the bottom of the industry fell through when I was halfway through Metaphysique and I had to re-negotiate my contract and do the last three issues for free, otherwise they wouldn’t have seen print. I accepted that because I wanted to finish the story.

Even though I’m proud of Metaphysique, I wish I’d done it differently, taken more time. Again, I’m always wishing I had more time; on Metaphysique I crammed what amounted to three years of story into six issues. I didn’t realize how dense it was while I was writing it - and I should have because I’m an artist and I was writing the story for myself! - but once I got down to drawing it, I was like, “Wow, these are crowd scenes and I’ve got six panels per page. What have I done to myself?” <laughter> Nevertheless, I’m proud of how that story is orchestrated and what it says. It expresses a lot of me.

But like I said, the speculation market collapsed and it was the first time in my career that I had to scrounge for work. And I could hardly find anything! Everybody was clinging for dear life to their jobs. Prime had been cancelled because Marvel bought it and stopped publishing it so I went back to DC and Anarky was the only thing that was offered. Alan Grant pretty much had to be talked into writing it by our editors. Don’t get me wrong; we both love the character but Alan didn’t think it could do well in the market. Actually, it probably did do a little better than Alan expected because we got almost two years work out of it.

DB: How did you feel going through those lean times? You’d worked on Batman and you couldn’t find a job.

NB: I’m still going through lean times.

DB: Why is that? You’re an exceedingly talented artist?

NB: Why, thanks! You're too kind. Simple, short answer: I’m not a marketer and I’m not a schmoozer. I think a large part of getting the best jobs in comics has to do with who you know and although I know some people, I don’t really know them; I’m not good buddies with many of them. Those I did form friendships with are either out of comics now or they’re in the same boat I’m in. Which isn’t a bad boat, really. I mean, I’ve got fairly regular work from Angel Gate Press right now and I’m getting a reasonable rate. It’s not the same rate I was getting at DC, but it actually comes out to more per month because I get to ink my own pencils as well. But the jobs are ... I don’t have two years of work lined up for me anymore; I’ve only got a few months and then I’ll be looking for work again.

DB: That puzzles me, it really does. You’re not the only person in that boat and when I look at some of the stuff that’s coming out now, I sit there and think surely they can find better artists?

NB: A lot of artists feel the same way. A lot of writers, too; I mean, Alan Grant basically gave up trying to find work in American comics. For some reason he got the cold shoulder at DC after Anarky was cancelled. And after he had to be talked into writing it!

I think a lot of it is political and not just who you know or how well you get along with the editors. Alan does have a pretty controversial outlook. You either really like Alan or you don’t, I suppose, just like with me. I don’t know ... I just know that I love the guy! Most people really like Alan, but there are people I think who see him as problematic because he’s got such strong political views. He’s kind of like Steve Ditko in that respect. He has a similar philosophy to Ditko too, though he’s not nearly as eccentric as I’ve heard Steve is. I don't know; I’m just saying that there might’ve been a similar political reaction towards each. We don’t have any conclusive evidence, but Alan and I can’t help but feel that Anarky’s philosophy grated on somebody’s nerves; somebody got a look at it and didn’t like it.

In fact, Anarky isn’t appearing anywhere anymore. He doesn’t even appear as an extra, you don’t even see him in the backgrounds of any books. I think I saw him once, just after Anarky was cancelled, in Teen Titans or Young Justice, but that was all.

When I was working on The Spectre I suggested to John Marc DeMatteis (the writer) that it’d be a great story if the Spectre were to enlighten Anarky, because Anarky is so one-sided - he’s so objective, so rationalistic - and the Spectre is just the opposite; he’s very mystical. (In fact, Alan used the word ‘mystic’ almost synonymously with the words ‘evil parasites’ ... it was one of his neotekian terms. It was odd to me because I considered myself a mystic and it made me rethink a lot of my own terms. It’s all semantic differences mostly, anyway; when you get down to it the characters of Alan and I - and the characters of both the Spectre and Anarky - are all good guys. We’re all on the same good side; we just look at things from slightly different angles.) Anyway, it would have been a really great story. I had it all worked out and DeMatteis was game for it. We proposed it to our editor and got the word back in a few days: no, it couldn’t be done. I asked why and he said, “Well we don’t think Anarky is a big enough character to guest star in The Spectre.” Meanwhile, we had a whole story going on about Abin Sur! I suppose any comics geek might remember Abin Sur, but I don’t think he’s bigger, or more dynamic or well known than Anarky. I did mention that and what I got back was, “Well, Abin Sur has his own website!” Now, I never checked on that but I couldn’t help but feel maybe that’s just bullshit. <laughter>

So I’ve generally gotten the impression that Anarky was nixed because of its philosophy. Especially in this age of post 9/11, Anarky would be a challenge to established authority. He’s very anti-establishment, that’s why he’s named Anarky!

DB: I would have thought that they would have jumped at it, if only so they could squeeze Batman in there as well.

NB: Well, yeah. I was more than happy to put Batman in there too.

DB: I can’t understand that line of thinking, but then I’ve given up trying to find logic in most things.

NB: Well, that’s the birth of conspiratorial thinking. I’m big on conspiracy speculation for what happens on the world stage.

DB: Let’s test your conspiracy theories. <laughter>

NB: They’re not mine, they’re just theories that I pick up from elsewhere. Some do jive with what I’ve felt I’ve learned about human nature over the years, however.

DB: What’s your favourite conspiracy theory?

NB: My favourite? <laughter>

DB: Yeah, everyone has a favourite conspiracy theory.

NB: Boy, that’s very different from which one I think is most likely.

DB: Which one would be most likely then?

NB: Well, first let’s start with my favourite. My favourite conspiracy theory is that this is all a dream, that we’re plugged into some kind of virtual reality kind of like the Matrix and that the worst horrors that we see are explainable because they’re just part of the game. They’re part of the fun. And when you wake up you go, “Wow! That was exciting!” That’s my favourite, and it’s actually been the reality view of Eastern mysticism for eons.

DB: That’s a good one. <laughter>

NB: Apparently the pop culture’s cottoned onto it too and the Matrix is really big.

DB: What’s the most likely?

NB: Boy, that’s a lot more difficult to answer, a lot more difficult. It’s a matter of probability levels. There are different levels, or layers, like an onion; in fact, there are probably infinite layers to reality. (You could say there are infinite layers in an onion, too, although you’d eventually have to get down to the sub-quantum level.) <laughter>

I guess the most obvious one that’s pretty undeniable can be summed up by the phrase ‘follow the money’ which asserts that it’s all a financial conspiracy of the rich to keep the money flowing towards them, while keeping the populace unaware of that fact as much as possible through their increasing control of information. In other words, it’s the financial elite versus the common man. I think that’s the most obvious one, one that’s pretty much undeniable to anyone who’s got half a brain and their eyes halfway open. It might be the real reason Anarky was cancelled.

The weirdest conspiracy book I ever read was titled The Biggest Secret by David Icke. The title ‘secret’ is that the ‘Illuminati’ that control everything at the top of the economic pyramid are actually the Sumerian Annunaki: shape-shifting astral lizards that live in the inner earth and come from the tenth planet in our solar system that has a very erratic orbit. Every three thousand years their planet gets close enough to Earth for them to visit us and take over again.

Crazy, right? So crazy, in fact, that I suspected while reading it that Icke was putting the far out stuff in there so he wouldn’t be considered a real threat or become a target as quickly, so people could just brush it off with “Oh, that’s just quackery.” Meanwhile he was able to get a lot of information published about the financial connections between the elite families throughout human history, and it was very well documented. It was like he was hiding the truth under a mantle of insanities.

The Annunaki stuff is all based on literal interpretations of the oldest writing we have on the planet, the Sumerian Cuneiform Tablets, which contain myths that pre-date Christianity and Judaism. They have crucifixion and resurrection myths, they have flood myths, they have all the myths that got into the later religions. But the question is, are they only myth or is there some history there? They even have the creation of the human race by beings from Heaven. If you interpret it literally - and it could very well be either literal or mythological, we don’t know one way or the other - if you interpret it literally then reality is indeed much stranger than we realize.

DB: I have to admit, I do like hearing conspiracy theories, but not for the right reasons that theorists might think.

NB: What do you mean by that exactly?

DB: I tend to look at some of the theories that I’ve seen over the years and say “No, that’s just too far off the boil.”

NB: They can’t all be true because they contradict each other. For instance, I read two books at the same time; one was titled We Discovered Alien Bases on the Moon and the other was titled We Never Went to the Moon. They can’t both be true! <laughter>

DB: Exactly. The whole moon landing thing, the documentaries and the like, well a friend of mine who’s into conspiracy theories said, “We never went to the moon,” but my response was “You pick that theory because you can’t either prove or disprove it. The only way to prove it is to go there and find the space ships, but even then you’d say it was all planted there.”

NB: Well, if they planted it that means they got there.

DB: I told her that and her reply was “No, they could have sent that stuff up and pin pointed it onto the moon at a later date.”

NB: I’d like to know whether the power of the Hubble telescope - which can pin point the most distant galaxies - is strong enough to pick up any of the Apollo landing sites? Because we left enough material there.

(After the interview was done I thought I'd check this out, mainly out of curiosity - this is the official line: From www.hubblesite.org the official NASA site for the Hubble Telescope:

Q: Can Hubble see the Apollo landing sites on the Moon?

A: No, Hubble cannot take photos of the Apollo landing sites. An object on the Moon 4 meters (4.37 yards) across, viewed from HST, would be about 0.002 arcsec in size. The highest resolution instrument currently on HST is the Advanced Camera for Surveys at 0.03 arcsec. So anything we left on the Moon cannot be resolved in any HST image. It would just appear as a dot.)

DB: I have thought about it but I don’t think they have done that just yet.

NB: They probably would have already if they could.

DB: But then I remember saying that to my friend and her reply was…

NB: They’d be fake photos right?

DB: Yes.

NB: Of course; they can fake anything now! Anything we see on video could now be faked. I mean, Bush might not even be a human being. He might not be a physical object. <laughter> He could be computer generated, not that it makes any difference one way or the other to his administration’s policies.

DB: Isn’t that a Frank Miller concept? The president is on the TV and is shown to be a CGI?

NB: Yeah, I think so. I think that was Miller. Wasn’t that DK2?

DB: Yes.

NB: We’re entering an era now were the technology for image production is so complex, so multi-layered with so many different ways to generate it, that we really can’t trust anything we see anymore, except with our own eyes. And even then it’s a matter of interpretation! If an angel came down to you in your backyard, or say even the figure of Christ himself and started proving that he could perform miracles and other people saw him and everything, it’s still open to interpretation. It could be an alien or magician or demon playing tricks on you. Or you may just be nuts! If I die and I’m standing before the throne of God, and it’s judgment day, and it matches all the stories and there’s angels and pearly gates and all the traditional crap, I would still be questioning just what exactly is going on! I don’t take things at face value.

DB: I know if I were in that situation I’d be looking around and thinking “Hmmmm ok, next?”

NB: The most important judgments I’d make in that situation are moral judgments. Whatever this being is that claims to be God is sending people to eternal damnation? I guess I'd have to rebel against that! That’s the most immoral concept possible: eternal damnation. How can anything anybody does, the worst evil ... Let’s say you could destroy the whole known universe in a horribly slow and torturous death. That’s still a limited amount of time and suffering and in eternity it’s just a blink. How could even that crime merit eternal burning and suffering? It’s clearly and totally whack!

DB: My problem with religion comes with the christening. If judgment day does come then the light gets shined down and everyone with that little cross on their head, be they mass murderers or whatever, automatically ascend. Anyone without the cross enters purgatory, and they might have done no wrong in their lives, but that’s what’s going to happen.

NB: I have some of my most interesting conversations with Christian believers, partly because when I was in high school I was a born-again Christian. Basically I kept an open mind and I thought my way out of it, thank God. <laughter> And I now see a lot of metaphorical meaning in it all; it’s largely symbolic and only when you interpret it strictly literally do you get into really illogical snags.

I love talking to Christians. If I talk to somebody who has my same outlook on life we quickly run through the whole universe and have little more to say. Then we have to go out and party! <laughter> With a Christian I can go on and on for hours and still have an interesting conversation. Or at least I can with the few that want to debate.

DB: I’ll admit that at times I enjoy bailing up the ones that come door knocking.

NB: You’ve got to choose your targets. The best people to argue with are the ones that come to your door and want to talk to you, actually want to debate. <laughter> “Ha! Well, you’re begging for it aren’t ya?” <laughter> I sometimes think these people would debate the most idiotic points until judgment day! They just won’t give up, that’s what’s so fascinating about them. And that’s the potential for their own evolution too, because they can be engaged, just like I was. If they can be engaged in rational conversation then it may slowly open their minds.

DB: Subversive.

NB: Very much so. That’s what art is all about. I mean true Art with a capital A is about subversion. That’s what real thinking is about, too. True thinking is not memorization; it’s really more a subversion of memorization. Memorization or indoctrination is information coming in and thinking is information coming out, literally the reverse! So thinking is like the subversion of simple rote memorization or indoctrination. Funny, I’ve never looked at it quite that way before, but it seems appropriate.

DB: Do you think your art is subversive?

NB: Well, Anarky was. <laughter>

DB: Deliberately so?

NB: Oh yeah. Definitely. Definitely deliberate. Did you read Anarky?

DB: I’ve read some of it.

NB: It was quite obviously subversive. But as an artist I was just drawing Alan’s stories. I wouldn’t say that I was being particularly subversive, although I was a bit when I put graffiti on the walls in the backgrounds.

DB: That’s what I was thinking.

NB: Yeah, that was kind of subversive. Actually there was a letter to the editor in Shadow Of The Bat that complained about that, about my left wing leanings. <laughter>

DB: You can’t win.

NB: If you’re asking about my being subversive I would consider Metaphysique my most subversive artistic statement yet because I wrote it as well as drew it.

I love writing; in fact, I’m working on a novel now and I have been for a long time. It’s touch and go because I’ve got to make money as well, and I’m a very slow writer. My story’s couched in exciting science fiction terms but the real basic motivation is a kind of oblique subversion. A subversion in the sense I put it before. It’s an attempt to reverse the tendency to accept what’s given and bring forth something new creatively. Creativity is the subversion of its opposite. <laughs>

DB: This is going to generate a bit of talk, in the sense that I haven’t seen too many interviews where you talk about this kind of stuff.

NB: I tend to think about this stuff too much, if anything. Maybe that’s one reason I’m not a great schmoozer. It depends on who you talk to, though. I mean, we’ve got real divisions in our countries and in the world. Some people don’t want their world rocked; they want everything in its place and they want to believe that authority, even though there’s problems, is basically good. And then there are people who are very much the opposite. Most people are in between.

DB: Where do you think you sit?

NB: Well I would sit, physically, right in the middle ... for safety. But I would mentally be far left probably. Depends on what you mean by far left. See, when you start labelling things, you get into trouble because it’s all a matter of semantics and how people interpret it. Like the word God, or the word love. The common person thinks the question ‘Do you believe in God?’ is kind of a rational question. They assume that the word God is commonly known to be something universally agreed upon and exact, but everybody’s got different versions of what “God” means. That’s why I tend to focus on the ultimate qualities of God when I discuss him: omniscience, omnipresence, etc. I mean, he’s obviously not this ectomorphic character with a beard if he’s omniscient and omnipresent. He exists in and as every atom, every plant, every animal, every person ... well, God’s not even a “he,” that’s ridiculous. We don’t even have the words to discuss this stuff!

So I’m very leery about labelling myself because words are just not adequate to describe transcendence, and the ultimate quality of a human being is a transcendent quality. I guess I would therefore call myself a transcendentalist. Traditionally that’s more left wing, obviously, which is why I almost said I’d be far left. I am far left in a lot of ways. I do believe in progress, in ideals. I believe we can make a much better world that is physically possible and yet free of fascism and bigotry. So I guess I’m pretty far left.

DB: Have you ever thought about putting all of this down into comic book form ala Steve Ditko?

NB: Well that’s what Metaphyisique was to be. Yeah, that’s what I’d love to do.

I got myself into a situation when I moved to California with regular comics work for fifteen years or so where I basically got onto a treadmill. It was an expensive area to live and I was supporting a family. I was also supporting my girlfriend’s business and when the industry fell through (when the speculation market disappeared) I was caught with a lot of debt. I tried to make it for the longest time out there and all I did was build up a heck of a lot more debt. I ended up having to move to Michigan, where I’m living now. Sold my house and even that wasn’t enough to eliminate the debt!

Neotekians say that the chief means by which the elite keep us under their thumb is through debt, and it kinda happened to me. I considered just declaring bankruptcy, not paying the bills, or even just maxing out my credit cards (because I’ve got a lot of credit as I’ve paid off a lot of debt) and using that to finish my novel and do whatever I want artistically. But I guess I’m not really that much of a radical. I think like a rebel in a lot of ways, but when it comes right down to it, I consider myself an artist and philosopher first. I want the freedom and safety of stability so I can create.

DB: So you’re a pseudo rebel.

NB: Well, no: I’m a spiritual or inherently artistic rebel. The pen can be mightier than the sword. It’s all just a matter of priorities and I’m still working those out. I see the possibility of being debt free soon. I’d like to go that far and get some money in the bank so I could concentrate on my own stuff. But if it stretches out for years and that just doesn’t happen, I’m going to have to re-evaluate what I’m doing. It seems that as soon as I get close to eliminating my debt a job ends, and there’s a period where I build up more debt. It’s almost like ... <laughs> if I was a real nut I would think that it’s planned that way to keep me, personally, in debt. Of course, generally speaking I do think it’s generally planned that way; that’s how capitalism runs. It runs on debt, the chief means by which the elite maintain control.

The depth of contradiction and unknowability of conspiracy theories are the main reasons they ultimately remain just mind-games to me. It’s why, near the end of our conversation yesterday when you asked me if I felt liberal or conservative, or where do I sit in terms of the subversiveness of art and my own art, it’s why I didn’t want to label myself. Well, that’s just self-defence for one thing of course. But it also makes rational sense because I don’t really have almost any hard and fast beliefs.

It’s difficult to come to final beliefs about historical or physical facts that we can’t verify for ourselves personally. More and more we’re being surrounded by a whole edifice of reality that we didn’t create and we can’t even verify. So why take a stance against any of it in a very overt manner unless I’m really sure of what I’m doing? And frankly I’m just not that sure. The only areas that I’m really sure about are basically personal, psychological, spiritual realms. I do have certain beliefs but they’re based on the essence of what being human is all about and what justice and morality is about. But when it comes to actually taking stands on issues that are composed of facts that are remote to me and that I have a difficult time verifying? I’m very queasy about doing that. That’s why I’m a philosopher, I tend to think and speak about things in very general terms. Conspiracy theory is more or less just mind play for me, it’s not like it’s going to lead to any kind of social action on my part (unless you include art as social action, of course!), because I’m not sure what’s true and what isn’t. I also believe that the world will only change for the better - if it ever does - by inner evolution, not through violent confrontation.

I'll only physically fight if I'm certain I have no moral choice. I'd never kill strangers on the orders of strangers, as military enlisted men are trained to do.

DB: I was speaking to a friend of mine last night who doesn’t read comic books but feels that your Batman is probably the best Batman that she’s seen. So I chatted to her about what you and I spoke about and she pointed to an issue of Detective where you had an American flag with a red line through it - like a ‘No’ sign - as graffiti in the background of a cover.

NB: Actually that was a very traditionally patriotic statement and not one that the right wing conservatives would complain about at all. It was a burning American flag with a ‘No’ slashed through it. The conservatives would love that because they’re against burning the flag.

Now, personally of course, I think one of the greatest symbols of freedom possible is a burning flag. If you’ve got true freedom in a country you should be able to burn its flag. I mean, you’re not hurting anybody physically. It’s just a piece of cloth! It’s an example of freedom of speech.

Of course there’s limits on freedom of speech too, I can understand that. I guess if you’re surrounded by a populace that’s ready to get physically ballistic over a word or flag or some other symbol, then you’ve got to take that into account. I mean, you don’t go into a brood of male apes with one female there and stand in front of the female ape and try and prevent them from doing their business without getting into a fight. You don’t even have to attack the apes they’ll attack you! I don’t know if that’s a very good analogy, I probably should come up with something better than that. <laughter>

DB: You’re taking commissions via your website. How is that going?

NB: Slow. It’s not something that I’ve been able to live on by itself. I’ll pile up a few over a period of a six month run on an issue when I don’t really have time to do 'em, then I’ll do 'em when there’s a break between jobs. I haven’t been advertising my site or anything either, though. The only place I have been advertising is in the CBG.

DB: Why is that? I’ve seen the ad in the CBG.

NB: Yeah, it’s the only ad I’ve got running. I’ve been getting published work, so I’m not really pressed to advertise the commissions that much. And I don’t want to get so much commission work that I’d have to tell people I probably won’t get to theirs for a year or something. But then again, having that much work ahead would be nice I suppose. I guess I’m just saying it’s better to get published; more people see it then. Commission work is almost like drawing when I was a child, for only friends and family. Almost no one’s going to see the stuff (except when I post it on my site). It just doesn’t have the prestige of getting into print.

DB: What kind of commissions are you generally being asked to do?

NB: Mostly Batman, but some others as well. I’ve put together a sketchbook filled with commissioned work and convention sketches I’ve done over the years. I’ll be advertising that on my new website, along with a bigger sketch book that’s more my fine arts stuff, with a lot of full colour plates. The bigger sketch book is going to be $50, and the smaller one is going to be $15.

DB: It’s odd that a lot of artists of talent and ability are treated so poorly or generally ignored.

NB: Most artists have traditionally been treated as hired hands, easily interchangeable, like a janitor or something. For every example of a Jim Lee or a Frank Miller or somebody who’s treated really well, there are probably hundreds of examples of those that’ve been … not that they’re always treated overly bad per se, it’s just that they’re not treated with the respect they probably deserve if they’ve really developed a skill.

I remember when I was drawing Batman I would notice people in pop culture that make it really huge on relatively little skills and I would think that considering how much time and effort I put into being able to do what I can do, it seems there’d be a little more compensation than I’m getting. <laughter> Of course, that was before the bottom fell out of the market. Now I look back on those days and I realize those were pretty darn good times for me.

DB: That must be as frustrating as all hell. It’s almost like the Orson Welles syndrome, where you have this great talent but no-one will let you practice your skills, instead they hire people with far less talent.

NB: Makes you wonder, you know? Brings us right back to conspiracy theory. If you don’t get satisfactory answers for your questions then you’re left with more and more questions without satisfactory answers, not just in comics but also in life in general. And we’re then forced to create our own answers. I love the equation I made yesterday, of the subversiveness of creativity, that it’s subverting the conventional flow of energy coming from the outside to the inside. When you become creative you reverse that flow; it’s then coming out from inside. If you don’t receive satisfactory answers, then create your own! Be an artist.

I can understand the danger of having it too cushy, of always having a job and being spoiled. There’s a danger in not really having to challenge yourself. And if nothing else I started my novel and simplified my life because of the slowdown in the comics industry.

Before that, for about nine months in California I looked for work in comics. It was quite clear to me that the jobs just weren’t available and everybody was entrenched in what they had. They were hanging on by their fingernails! So as the debt piled up and I got more and more worried, I had free time on my hands. I had to be creative, I had to do something, but I’d been drawing for so long that I didn’t really have a desire to unless I was getting paid.

So I started writing this novel that I’ve been working on. It probably wouldn’t have happened otherwise. I’m sure it wouldn’t have if I’d been getting regular work in comics all that time. And it’s going to be something I own entirely and created as a multi-media concept. It’d make a good movie, it’d make a good comic book. After I’ve written the novel I’ll illustrate it and then I’ll shop it around. If I have to, I’ll publish it myself. Then I’ll write a comics version of it as well, or maybe hire a writer. And none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been pressured into it economically.

DB: Everything with a downside also has an upside if you look at it the right way.

NB: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, if you’re going to be really creative then what’s the most creative thing you can do? Create something out of nothing rather than just having it handed to you.

(At this stage we started speaking about a certain person who shall remain nameless, hence the transcript jumps a bit. I’ve left this bit in as Norm makes some damn good points on artwork and artists in general.)

DB: As it was told to me _______ was told to draw like Rob Liefeld.

NB: Oh God! Oh man! That’s incredible!

DB: Which to me was interesting because I’ve spoken to a few artists from the Silver Age of Marvel and they always said that Stan Lee would show them Jack Kirby pages and say, “Look at that, study it that’s what I want you to do. I don’t want you to draw like this but get the feel, the layouts” so what he meant was that they should absorb the dynamics but not swipe or directly copy the art. But along the line ______ was told by an editor that Liefeld’s stuff was selling at the time so _______ should draw exactly like him directly swipe the art.

NB: But of all people to chose to name as somebody to follow… Rob Liefeld?

You know it’s funny that you mention Kirby in the same paragraph with Liefeld because my former agent (Mike Freidrich of Star*Reach) did the same thing. When the subject came up, he immediately equated the phenomenon of Liefeld in a lot of ways with the phenomenon of Kirby. He didn’t mean to cut anyone down, but to point out that there was something about both Liefeld's and Kirby’s work that was very appealing to a popular percentage of the comics buying public at certain points.

I was never a fan of Kirby’s when I was a kid because the drawing wasn’t up to the “realistic” standard I was looking for. It wasn’t expressing the type of illustrative qualities I wanted to see. And a lot of more naturalistic artists, those that were more into illustrative styles (rather than into the cartoony drawing style that Kirby had developed by the '60s) were kind of offended that they were encouraged to draw like Kirby. At least this is what I’ve heard. Of course there are big differences between his work and Liefeld’s.

As an adult I see great qualities in Kirby’s work - like you said: the story telling ... that’s one of the greatest things he brought to comics. In fact he was the quintessential storyteller, that’s why he’s the King of comics! And that includes not just the layout of the page and the energy and the vitalism in his drawings, but also the amount of creativity that he brought. The amount of characters that would just trip off his tongue, or off his pen, however you want to put it. I don’t know much about Rob Liefeld but he must have been doing something right otherwise he wouldn’t have been hot for whatever amount of time he was.

Rob was trying to draw in a classically illustrative style but it came across as kind of naïve. And that’s how Kirby’s work looked to me when I was a kid, in terms of his figure drawing and such: kind of naïve. But Kirby’s other qualities are better, they’re much more sophisticated: the story telling, the lay-outs, the energy, the vitalism all that’s very sophisticated. I suppose Leifeld probably had some of that too, I don’t know, but even if he did, Kirby originated it!

I think I’m belabouring the point because it’s obvious you’re a big Kirby fan. I didn’t want to make the equation between he and Leifeld too strong but I can see a connection there.

DB: I think when I was younger and growing up I wasn’t overly taken by Kirby’s work as much as I was people like Neal Adams, John Byrne, Gene Colan, Frank Brunner, Jim Starlin or Gil Kane, but that was the era when I grew up. It was only as I got older that I started to fully appreciate his work and what he’d done.

NB: Same here, but I think we’re probably more like exceptions than the rule. Marvel comics and Kirby in the '60s were obviously selling. So there were a lot of young comics fans who liked what they were seeing.

There are different tastes, with different people looking for different things in their comics even within the same genres. That’s why we’ve got a range of stuff out there.

DB: I think you hit the nail on the head. I didn’t grow up in the '60s, I grew up in the '70s and '80s so I generally gravitated towards the artists I was seeing at the time, and Kirby wasn’t that active by then. I wasn’t a huge fan of Rob Leifeld, that’s for certain. I could appreciate the fact that he was selling millions of copies of his books, but I couldn’t understand why.

NB: Me neither. I hate to be too negative, especially in interviews and such, but one of the main experiences of becoming an adult for me was a complete disillusionment and disappointment with many of my childhood ideals. As kids we just accept what’s handed to us as gospel truth, whether it’s about religion or politics or whatever, and that's been largely crushed.

When I was a kid I believed, generally speaking, all the patriotic slogans about my country: that our leaders were really good guys and they were the pick of the crop. I wanted to be Abraham Lincoln; he was one of my biggest heroes. Now, of course, I realize he presided over one of the bloodiest massacres in human history. <laughter> I’m not saying he’s not a good man either per se (I’m certainly not a confederate!), it all really depends on many things, and when you get into politics ... again, it’s such a quagmire of conspiracy; maybe he was a robot. <laughter>

I think Grant Morrison could do a great story about Abe Lincoln being a robot. <laughter>

DB: And it’d sell.

NB: Is he the one that did, what was it called, 1900? Or 1899, I forget what it was called. A couple of years ago. Actually, that was Bill Messner-Loebs, wasn’t it?

DB: I think it was, yeah.

NB: I thought that was a brilliant idea.

And of course there’s the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore. Isn’t it amazing how bad… did you see the movie?

DB: Not yet. People keep telling me to avoid it.

NB: It was terrible! There’s no pacing. There was no respect for the quality of the story, the literary quality of it. It was just one high-energy “Bang!” scene after scene. It’s like they were trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

DB: It’s funny, because a lot of people I know who don’t read comics are telling me I should see it, yet people I know who do read comics are telling me to avoid it like the plague.

NB: That’s interesting.

DB: What do you think about comic book movies in general? What did you think of the Batman movies when they were released?

NB: I didn’t really like ‘em. Everybody cites the first Batman movie as being the best and I suppose it was, but that’s not saying much because there were such majorly bad editorial and production decisions made that it ruined it for me. And I’m not talking about Michael Keaton being Batman. Actually, when I heard that I thought, “You know, he’s got the quirkiness and the unpredictable creativity to be a great Batman.” But, of course, he didn’t have the build so they gave him the fake muscles and they even immobilized his neck! One of the best characteristics of Batman for me when I was a fan was his ninja-like, understated quality. The fact that he could be in a locked room with you and you wouldn’t even know it; he’s in a shadow over in the corner. They eliminated that entirely!

The Joker heard Batman coming after he crashed his plane; God where do I start? I could go back further: Batman’s firing missiles into a crowd at the Joker’s parade. Even if he’s not aiming at the parade ... those are explosive missiles! And all the Gothamites were standing around like tenpins; it’s ridiculous.

And earlier, Batman dropping the bomb with his remote controlled batmobile inside the chemical factory with the Joker’s henchmen. He killed all those guys! Batman doesn’t kill that readily.

DB: The one that always bothered me was Batman walking through the streets, stuffing dynamite down some guys pants and throwing him down a man-hole and walking off as he explodes.

NB: That was in one of the later ones. Such careless disregard for the characters ruined the movies.

Then they took it all too far out of the real world. They went overboard with creating a memorable Gotham City, but basically they created a Gotman City that didn’t really look like any human city. It doesn’t even feel like it’s on Earth! And one of the best qualities about Batman is that he was the most realistic of the superheroes, if that’s not a total oxymoron. <laughter> He had no super powers and he was a detective, living in realistic environs.

DB: Do you think that a Batman could exist in the real world?

NB: Oh, surely not. If Batman exists he’s a computer hacker today.

DB: So he'd be more like the Oracle character?

NB: Oh, yeah. Well, we’ve really got Oracle characters around. I don’t know if they’re as proficient as she’s supposed to be, though ...

To survive and not be arrested or killed, Batman would have to have technology superior to the rest of humanity. He might be a member of the CIA. Maybe we do have Batman but he doesn’t necessarily have our best interests at heart. Yikes!

Or maybe there are rogue elements in the most black budgeted programs on the planet that do have our best interests at heart? Maybe there is a Batman, but we’ll probably never know. That’s the thing: If there were a Batman then we wouldn’t even know about it! He certainly wouldn’t wear a mask and cape and go out and physically risk his life unless he absolutely had to. I suppose it’s possible to have a Batman today, but generally my answer to that would be no way.

When I saw the Zorro movie (starring Antonio Banderas), it actually brought tears to my eyes because I felt like that was the last time in human history that it was possible to have a real Batman-like character. It was swords against swords, maybe a musket here and there, but they were relatively easy to avoid compared to a machine gun or a silent CIA helicopter. They didn’t have traffic jams, everybody’s on horses.

Zorro is actually a lot more believable than Batman. Batman driving the batmobile through Gotham City; how come he never gets stuck in traffic jams? It doesn’t make any sense. And if he’s trying to keep a low profile, why would he decorate his car and body to be such outlandish eye-catchers? None of it makes any sense when you look at it rationally. And Batman’s supposed to be the most rational of the superheroes!

That’s why I felt the Batman movies totally failed. And it’s because they were going for the lowest common denominator. They wanted to please everybody who thought of Batman from the '60s TV show and please all the violent video game fans at the same time. When you’re trying to please everybody at once the end result is that you get American big budget movie cinema. <laughter> It’s gotten to the point now where if it’s got a really huge budget and it’s really hyped I can be almost certain I’m not going to like it. I have to say “almost” because there are exceptions. I really liked the Spider-man movie. That was fun. And the Matrix.

DB: The X-Men movies?

NB: Yeah, they were neat, too. And the Hulk. I liked the Hulk a lot, although I think Ang Lee tried too hard to make the Hulk a sophisticated movie. I think he should have zoomed to the action faster because my favourite parts of the Hulk - and this contradicts almost my whole tenor in this interview - my favourite parts of the Hulk were just the slam bang fun of it all, seeing him in CGI action. It was great when he was trashing those tanks and taking quarter-mile leaps. I wanted to see a lot more of that.

The Hulk is not a high brow concept but Ang Lee tried to make it a high brow concept. Okay, the closest connection to a literary example would be Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde, of course. But the problem with the Hulk is that he isn’t a bad guy. They’re both basically good guys, Bruce Banner and the Hulk; there’s no contrast between them morally. The only real contrast is that the Hulk can chew steel and Banner can’t. (Okay, so the Hulk is also an idiot; wow, lots of depth there!) So it's automatically in the realm of ‘well, this is just for the fun, just for the muscles, just for the battles, just for the comic book fights.’ That’s really all the Hulk is for, and it should be left that way. It’ll never compete literarily with Jeckyl and Hyde and it shouldn’t try.

DB: I think one of the best comic book movies I’ve seen in recent years was The Mummy, and that wasn’t based on a comic.

NB: At least there’s a reason to fear The Mummy now. When I was a kid it was difficult for me to understand why people were so afraid of him. I mean, he’d only shuffle. <laughter>

DB: I used to sit there and watch the movies and think “Why don’t you just run he’s not gonna catch you.”

NB: That’s right. The problem is, you’re going to have to sleep sooner or later and it’s possible that The Mummy might catch up to you while you’re sleeping. He’d probably have to disguise himself and get a plane ticket to find you. <laughter>

DB: When you started with the Batman were you ever told to follow a style?

NB: Not at all. In fact, looking back on it now I’m kind of amazed how completely free I felt to do my thing. Maybe that’s because I wasn’t really challenging things in any particular way. Like I said earlier: without even trying, over the years of reading comics I’d pretty much internalised what was allowable and what wasn’t, so I just had fun with the parts that I knew were allowable. I suppose the most radical thing I did was some of the graffiti that I put in the backgrounds. But that was very little and later on.

DB: Do you think it’s possible for someone to enter the field and leap straight onto a high profile job, and rise as rapidly as you did?

NB: That’s too big a question for me to answer with any confidence, but I would assume it’s possible. I don’t know how likely it is though. I think it’s possible because comics companies are still entranced with the idea of finding somebody that’s fresh; someone whose art hasn’t yet been seen by many people. It’s not necessarily a question of how good they are, although that’s part of the equation. It’s more a question of how well they follow the present trends in the editors’ eyes. Freshness in comics is an important quality.

I’ve seen ads for new comics now, featuring artists I’ve never seen before, and right in the ad they call the artists ‘future superstars!’ They didn’t do that <laughs> back when I got into comics. It’s ridiculous; it would have seemed absurd. You know, who can predict the future? But they’re actually doing that on a regular basis now.

DB: But is it predicting the future or telling you what you’re going to buy?

NB: It’s coming down to the same thing when it’s in advertising right?

DB: When they sit there and say ‘the next big thing’ I always think that’s just the next big thing they’re going to be pumping down my throat.

NB: That’s right.

DB: Weather it’s any good is moot.

NB: Well we’ve got a fresh crop of new consumers being born all the time, and lack of discernment is one of the shortcomings or unfortunate qualities of youth. They’re going to see what’s plopped in front of them first. It might be why we haven’t been given immortality yet, because it wouldn’t be economically feasible for our elite masters; they’d have to raise the quality of culture every year! I’ve often said the cure for all inadequacies in pop culture and art would be for everybody to be granted immortality. Within a hundred years the whole culture would change, it’d have to.

DB: If everybody were immortal we’d soon run out of spaces to be.

NB: Well, that’s what I’m saying, both physically and mentally.

DB: Either that or we’d have to stop breeding.

NB: Right. If we did stop breeding I would assume even the numbest skulls would become more sensitive over hundreds of years.

DB: Now, you worked on Mr T.

NB: Nice segue! <laughter>

Yeah, that was the best paying job I ever had in comics! And that was because they wanted me for some reason; they really, really wanted me, and I was really busy on Prime and I didn’t really have the time, but they kept coming back with a better offer so I ended up saying, “Okay, okay, I’ll do it.”

DB: Did you ever meet Mr T?

NB: Yeah, actually. I met him at one of the cons. It wasn’t like it was a private meeting. He was in front of a crowd of fans signing his comics and I was introduced to him and he was all in Mr T mode, “Hey, howya doin’?” He didn’t even know who I was, he was just treating me like I was a fan. I told him I drew his comic book and he said, “Hey, that’s great.” I was hoping I’d be able to sell him one of the Mr. T cover paintings that I did, but it didn’t really feel like the appropriate place to ask him ... or that he’d even be interested.

DB: How do you go about getting the likeness down on something like that?

NB: Mr T is pretty easy to do because he’s got such obvious characteristics that don’t relate to his genetically determined features. As long as you’ve got a relatively muscular black guy that’s got the same haircut and the chains, you’ve got Mr T. <laughter>

He’s not a very good example for what you’re asking, but I do know what you’re asking. I guess it would come down to the quality of the artist. I’ve done portraits and caricatures in the past, so I can do it fairly easily myself, but another artist might have difficulty with it.

DB: I’m surprised that Mr T’s comic book even got off the ground.

NB: It probably didn’t make any money, considering the rates he was paying me, and I’d bet Neal Adams got more than I got for the first issue or two.

I think the comic was an advertisement for another of his comebacks. I don’t know if he was disappointed with the results or not, but I assume he probably was. I mean, I doubt he knew anything about comics. Because he’s the centre of his world he might’ve thought they were going to be the greatest selling comics in history. <laughter>

DB: As an artist, what do you look for in an inker?

NB: I look for an inker who can draw, who’s an artist in his own right. They’re almost invariably the best inkers. Other than that, I guess I’d tend to prefer an inker that would follow my lines - but I would adjust to the job if he didn’t. What’s a good example … Alfredo Alcala. With his inks he made everybody’s pencils look like his own work. Now if I had somebody like that working on my pencils, I would probably simplify my pencils.

In fact I did just that; I remember a specific job. It was Batman: The Abduction. I forget the artist’s name ... James Hodgkins. He’s a good inker, but he was changing so many of my penciled shadows that halfway through the book - when I started seeing the inks - I asked my editor Denny O’Neil if I could simplify my work to contour drawings (outlines) for the rest of the book and let James handle the shading. It was kind of a protest statement because I was a little upset at the time, but looking back on it, it was also a very rational thing to do because the inks weren’t following my shading anyway. So we did the rest of the book that way and it turned out fine.

I’m really flexible. If I’m getting paid for a job - this comes back to how subversive my art is - if I’m being paid for a job by a company I’m not going to be subversive. I’ll just be getting the job done. And I’ve had very little chance to produce stuff that’s entirely my own since I started drawing comics eighteen years ago. I haven’t had much of a chance to really explore that, except in my own mind. As an armchair philosopher, however, I’m very subversive.

DB: What traits do you look for in a writer?

NB: One of the basic things I look for in a comics writer is an understanding of the conventions of comics. Somebody that can write for comics specifically, who knows the form well. Somebody who won’t put in too many words or too many panels per page and will realize when it clashes with some dynamic action going on.

I’d also prefer a writer being wedded to a character that he enjoys writing.

DB: When you work is it Marvel method or full script?

NB: Full script is considered DC and Marvel’s more of the plot first method.

DB: I presume you’ve worked with both methods. Which do you prefer?

NB: I’m asked that question a lot and my answer used to depend on which way I’d been doing it for a while; I’d get used to doing it one way and tend to prefer that. But I’ve worked both ways so many times now that I don’t see it as much of an issue anymore.

Instead, the salient point for me now is the amount of copy per page. If there’s a lot of it, if there’s a lot of dialogue or narration, then I prefer going full script because the copy can take up as much as 50% or more of the space on the page. And I design my pages with the copy in mind.

All that said, In general I prefer full script even if it’s got less copy because then I can design where the word balloons and narration fit in; I can blue line them into specific areas. I think in the final analysis full script is a superior form and way to work. Its success is more dependant on the writer being really good, so it encourages good writing from someone that understands comics well. And that also encourages getting a really good artist that understands comics well and can do the script justice.

DB: If there’s one piece of work that you’d be able to look at and say, “That’s completely representative of me,” what would it be?

NB: My pat answer would be it’s the piece I haven’t done yet, but my best real example that’s been in print so far would be Metaphysique. But I was just at the tail end of a long period of drawing comics very quickly where, if anything, I’d gotten my formula down too well, and I felt rushed through it. I also should have told the story in at least three times as many issues. Nevertheless, I guess I’d say Metaphysique is most representative of me because I put the whole package together; I wrote it, pencilled it, inked it, painted the covers, and inserted my own philosophy into it.

If you’re referring to artwork alone without my writing, one of my top answers would be Batman: Birth Of The Demon, the fully painted origin of Ra’s al Ghul, written by Ra’s’ creator, Denny O’Neil. But even that one was rushed. I was basically adapting drawing techniques to colour to give a fully painted effect. It wasn’t what I generally consider to be truly fully painted. Ideally it would have been all oil paintings, every page. But that takes way too long.

DB: Alex Ross manages to get away with it.

NB: Yeah, but he takes a long time. He does like one or two pages a week. I was doing a page a day on Birth Of The Demon!

DB: How fast do you normally work?

NB: Well, it’s easiest to break it down by page. On average, the design part of the page - where I do it as a small thumbnail sketch - takes about half an hour. Then I blow it up with a light box or by eye and that takes maybe another half an hour to an hour. And then the inking - ironically, although the pencilling pays more for me the inking takes me longer - probably takes another three hours on average. So we’re talking about four to five hours on average per page.

When I was working on Prime, I was able to pencil and ink two pages per day. Now, however, I’m always striving to do something unique on the page, to do something better, so I would say it’s more like a page a day.

DB: You’ve an incredible amount of artwork for sale on your site. Did you ever have any problems getting your artwork back from publishers?

NB: I’ve had a problem with getting it back promptly, but I generally don’t even bother with it; I just wait for them to send it. No, I always get it back, or almost always. There’s such a small number of examples where I didn’t that I probably couldn’t even remember them now. A page here or there inevitably gets lost in the shuffle. But no, they’re pretty good about that since what happened with Kirby’s stuff.