Smokebox: Derf Interview (Part Two)

smokebox: I guess in an environment like that you don’t enjoy the anonymity that you have now -- I mean, when you’re walking around Cleveland, you’re not recognized, are you?

derf: Well, actually, I am. A lot of people recognize me from my rather unflattering self-portraits in my comic book story, so yes, I get recognized all the time.

smokebox: That would be your Jeffrey Dahmer cartoon. Now I have to say, that is definitely the most disturbing cartoon I have ever read in my life, and I wanted to ask about what it was like to….

derf: Well, you can read the next two chapters now, in fact I’ve been working on that and I finally finished it up; it’s been a pretty difficult piece for me to deal with.

derf: Well, yes. I had essentially two more stories to tell; it’s going to be a full-length comic book when I get done with it.

derf: I don’t know who’s going to publish it, I haven’t pitched it yet. Someone will publish it; I’m not worried about that.

derf: I’ll probably try -- well, I don’t know, I’m not worried about it right now.

derf: That was actually published by Fantagraphics, that one came out in ‘96, and I just started the other two this year, so you’ve got a four-year gap. It’s really not an easy thing to do. Even the first one, that was done, what, four years after he died? And I said right in the introduction to the comic, if I’m trying to cash in on the Dahmer story then I’m doing a pretty poor job of it -- but you know, it’s just a story that I wanted to tell because it’s a good story.

smokebox: Well, sure, you can’t find a more recognizable name than that. You must get asked about him constantly.

derf: That's another reason to do this, because this is really all I have to say about it, and when I’m done with this story that’s it, I’m done. If someone wants to hear about it they can buy the comic book, you know? Let ‘em go take a dump and read it! I won’t have to talk about it anymore. It’ll pretty much say it all.

derf: It is! I really struggle with it, because I sort of make Dahmer out as a tragic figure. He was, to me, but I had a different vantage point; I knew him before he was Dahmer the monster; I knew him as Dahmer the kid who was put through hell.

smokebox: You put him in the school situation; it seems that everybody knows somebody like that.

derf: Actually my wife was a reporter back when the Dahmer story broke, and she called me at home and said, "Somebody you went to school with killed all these people," and Dahmer was actually the second one I guessed.

smokebox: It doesn't really seem that you would need to; your observational talents are more than enough to come up with new material.

smokebox: Well, that should be enough to keep me awake at night. So, how about your influences? You mention Mad Magazine, Big Daddy Ed Roth; didn’t he do cars and those monster stickers?

derf: He did the cars. Those monster stickers, I think, with the hot rods, were by somebody else. But Big Daddy Roth, he did those hot rod cartoons and he’s enjoyed a real revival lately. I guess he’s a real character, he’s a devout Mormon now, he lives somewhere in Utah in the middle of nowhere, on a road called, I think it’s Ratfink Drive, or something like that (laughs). He’s got all sorts of stuff; you can do a search on E-bay and see all this stuff pop up. More power to him!

smokebox: I know you go out of your way to avoid the influence of other cartoonists, but it was pointed out to me that your style seems to be just a tiiiiiny bit similar to Peter Bagge’s Hate.

derf: I actually didn’t discover Bagge until I dropped out of art school, so I wasn’t even aware of him starting out on my cartooning career.

derf: Well, certainly Bagge was influenced by Mad. I think every cartoonist for the last thirty years has been influenced by Mad, whether they like to admit it or not.

smokebox: It was definitely a "golden age" for cartoons, especially in the sixties and seventies.

derf: I actually like the earlier stuff better, from the fifties; Kurtzman and Elder, and really the only modern one I liked was Don Martin.

derf: We lost [Charles] Schulz and Don Martin in the same year. And nobody even mentioned Don Martin.

smokebox: He really managed to slip away. He was a really reclusive guy, too, I never even saw his face until I happened to see his book by Dark Horse, there was a big photo of him on the back cover. You still can’t see his face, really, he’s wearing a hat and these big dark glasses; I guess he had vision problems…but I sort of lump you and Martin together.

smokebox: By that I mean that you both have very distinct styles that are instantly recognizable, and it pervades your cartoon "universes". I mean, when Don Martin drew an end table, it was a Don Martin end table, you know?

derf: Well, I’m doing okay, I mean, there are no great riches in the independent press, they all pay pretty bad, but, you know, it’s a comfortable living. I’m at the point now where it’s just about all I do, so that’s nice.

smokebox: So is that pretty much a one-man show, sort of a cottage industry?

derf: "Cottage industry", huh? (laughs) That’s it, all right! No, I don’t need any help.

smokebox: So you do your own website too? Oh wait, I guess you have your web-dork.

derf: No, he’s sort of out of the picture, he built it, but I update it. It took about three months to put it together, but then I figured it out somehow, sort of like working on old cars. I managed to stumble my way through it, and it works, you know, so that’s all I care about! (laughs) It’s not that hard. There are a lot of baaad-looking websites out there, and I just wanted something really simple, and to get it out there. And I think the website is pretty good, only the downside is, of course, that people say, especially in Portland now, "I'll just read the strip every week on your website." Well, I don’t make any money from the website, so that’s good for the fans, but it sure would be nicer for them to call up the editors and say, "You fuckers, put The City back in your paper!"

smokebox: Yeah, I don’t know, lately I’ve had sort of a love-hate relationship with Willamette Week.

derf: A lot of people say that. I get that exact comment from a lot of people.

smokebox: Were they in that first batch of weeklies that picked up The City?

smokebox: Back when they first picked it up, they got behind it, they hyped it a bit. I have to admit that at first I didn’t like it much. I’m trying to remember which one actually won me over.

smokebox: It may have been the "He-boobies" strip. Once I saw that and a few "White Middle Class Suburban Man" strips I decided I liked The City after all.

derf: He’s a good character. There’s actually an animation project in the works; there may be anyway.

smokebox: I was going to ask about that, what the future holds for The City?

derf: Well, that's possibility one. I'm trying to get a meeting with an animation studio on Monday [November 20] and there is an agent interested in it, but there are, you know, five thousand steps; step one is to have a completed cartoon, and there are death traps along every step of the way. My attitude is, "Well, whatever," -- if something happens, great, if nothing happens, well, that’s okay, too.

derf: Yeah, he’s the exception, though. MTV has such a short attention span; they don’t really give anything a chance. You’ll see something for six weeks and then it’s gone. Even some of the cool stuff they’ve got, you’ll never see it again!

smokebox: So will you find yourself using recurring characters in an animated project?

derf: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And also, the animator thought something with the True Stories would go over well with MTV, and he might be right on that, with little snippets they could drop in anywhere. And the nice thing about that is, of course, that you're not giving them rights to anything, to your soul, because there are always true stories, you know, they can’t rip off everything. The problem with all these guys, like at Time Warner and Fox, is that they take everything. So, I'll tell you, that can be a real problem. I’m not sure where to go beyond that, you know, I’ll just keep trying to do what I do.

derf: I’ll keep it going as long as I feel I’m doing good work with it; if I start repeating myself then that will probably be the time to make some changes.

smokebox: I saw that you made an appearance at the Akron Art Museum; could you see yourself doing more speaking engagements?

derf: Well, no, not too much. That was an actual show, you know, that was a retrospective of my work. It was actually quite flattering; they called me. I grew up in a small town outside of Akron, so I was sort of a hometown boy. I mean, it’s just Akron, you know, but it was really kind of cool, to walk into an art museum and see your shit hanging on the wall! It’s pretty amazing! It was flattering, it was really nice.

derf: They were very happy, and the museum pulled in a lot of people, a lot of the lunchtime crowd came to the gallery. It ran for probably four months.

smokebox: So do you think you got some exposure to an audience that doesn’t ordinarily see your work?

derf: Oh, maybe a little bit, but I don’t think too terribly much. I’m pretty well read in this area, so I think most people who saw the show were familiar with what I do.

smokebox: Then there was the Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library? I never knew such a thing existed.

derf: I think it’s just called the OSU Cartoon Library now. It was started by Milton Caniff, who went to school there and donated all his papers. The woman who runs it, Lucy Caswell, she’s a professor there, and she’s built it into this incredible museum of all things cartooning; it’s really just an incredible thing to behold.

conclusion | archive index | current issue

the somewhat compleat dialogues of derf part two -- truth is stranger than fiction

the somewhat compleat dialogues of derf
part two -- truth is stranger than fiction