 |
|
 |
| |
Posted on Apr 23, 2004 - 01:39 AM by Admin |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 
Azad is the creator of one of the world's greatest thieves and unluckiest souls: Sammy. After the critically acclaimed Sammy: Tourist Trap miniseries, Azad is now set to bring the hapless hero back to comic book shelves with A Very Sammy Day! Recently, Azad found the time to sit down and talk to The Comic Fanatic.Com about Sammy, Lucky, why he is NOT the Rupaul of comics and much, much more! Read on for a Very Azad Interview!
The Fan Man: Thanks for taking the time to talk to The Comic Fanatic.Com!
Azad: No, thank YOU. It’s been a lonely 2 weeks and I could use the company.
________________________________
The Fan Man: For the uninformed, tell us about this loveable character named Sammy.
Azad: He’s a kind hearted but utterly pathetic soul, plagued by bad luck. A shame really, considering he’s otherwise one of the world’s greatest thieves. His only saving grace is a black cat name “Lucky” that seems to keep him out of trouble.
________________________________
The Fan Man: Where did you come up with the idea for Sammy? Please, tell me Sammy isn’t based on Azad!
Azad: To a degree…a lot of moments in Sammy are based on or around something autobiographical. I can’t say I’m any more unlucky or clumsy than the average person, but I’ve had my fair share of “WHAT THE F--?!” moments in my life.
The rants, however, are pure me.
As for the stories, they’re either based on urban legends, or strange stories I have heard of. Fun stuff like kidney thieves, alligators in the sewers, and serial killers with hook hands.
________________________________
The Fan Man: So is Sammy a trouble magnet, or is he always just in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Azad: A little of both. There’s a quote by Don Marquis on the inside front cover of “A Very Sammy Day” that sums up Sammy perfectly. It’s “now and then there is a person born who is so unlucky
that he runs into accidents which started out to happen to somebody else”.
_________________________________
The Fan Man: Since it seems that bad luck and Sammy go hand in hand, is it more than a coincidence that his faithful sidekick is a black cat named Lucky?
Azad: I remember getting mail from someone after issue one convinced he’d figured out that Lucky was actually the cause of Sammy’s bad luck (being that Lucky is a black cat, after all). When the new issue comes out, he’ll find out if he’s right or not I guess.
_________________________________
The Fan Man: For those coming in late, fill us in on Sammy’s biggest adventure to date, the Image miniseries Tourist Trap.
Azad: Sammy and Lucky travel south of the border to Acapulco Mexico for a museum heist. Everything goes fine until Sammy becomes the unfortunate victim of a blackmarket human organ selling mafia. He can’t contact the local authorities because he’s a wanted man, so he sets out to do the only rational thing (in his mind) there is to do…steal his own kidneys back from the same bastards that drugged and violated him in the first place.
__________________________________
The Fan Man: When reading Tourist Trap, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh my butt off or cringe in horror. Exactly what kind of genre would you place Sammy in?
Azad: Although it isn’t a genre per se, I guess “black comedy” would be in the right ballpark. Every Sammy story I have is so dissimilar to each other, it’s hard for me to classify it. Crime-lite, maybe?
__________________________________
The Fan Man: The thing that really creeped me out in Tourist Trap was how you delved into the urban legend of kidney thieves. This miniseries was worlds better than that Urban Legends 2 movie! Fascinated by urban legends? Uh, not the movie…
Azad: Funny story about that flick. I remember I was 2 months into production on Tourist Trap when the movie came out. I was pretty ticked off and thought the world was conspiring against me. That paranoia was confirmed a few weeks later when NBC launched a prime time comedy called “Cursed” about a guy with really bad luck and a prime time animated series called “Sammy." I had to check my phone lines for wiretaps after that. I refused to watch any of them just on principle…and from what I’ve heard, I wasn’t missing much.
Aside from the crappy movies, the stories themselves ARE compelling! In many ways, urban legends are akin to the “Twilight Zone” TV show…something bad happens, and there’s a moral. Gone seem to be the days that stories had MEANINGS. I love parables, fables and fairy tales for that very reason…there’s consequences to your actions, and people have purpose in those stories. A lot of modern fiction doesn’t. Stan Lee understood that, and embraced those ideas when creating his landmark characters. Spider-Man’s a cautionary tale about understanding that your actions (or inaction in his case) effects others. “With great power comes great responsibility”.
___________________________________
The Fan Man: Will the further adventures of Sammy involve anymore urban legends?
Azad: Yes and no. Some of the stores I have in mind don’t revolve around any particular myth. I have one slight reference in A Very Sammy Day to one (which actually almost got cut to make space) but a major twist in the next mini series I want to do is based around a specific Hollywood urban legend. But Subway Stories (my online serial) has no reference to any.
___________________________________
The Fan Man: Critics - including yours truly - seemed to love Tourist Trap. Considering the topic - organ thieves - did you have any negative feedback?
Azad: Not from critics. There was the odd mention about the font I used or my choice of doing a black and white book, but not as far as content. I did get one letter from someone who had lost a family member to kidney disease and felt that sadistic speeches by one of the villains about dying painfully hit a little close to home. But in the end, acknowledged that bad guys do and say bad things. That’s their job.
___________________________________
The Fan Man: Around the time Tourist Trap was released, wasn’t there also a Sammy Valentine’s adventure? Did our hapless hero find true love?
Azad: Not in that story. I want to explore a little about his crappy love life in the next mini series. It’s about time he got laid, don’t you think?
___________________________________
The Fan Man: This May, Sammy returns to the scene with a new one-shot. Tell us about A Very Sammy Day.
Azad: Well, Sammy’s been sleeping with one eye open for the past 6 months. He’s ratted out his old crew (for reasons to be explained in the book) and is hiding in the local church rectory. He’s slowly trying to re-assimilate back into regular society, but it’s proving difficult with bounty hunters and local ht men on the look for him.
___________________________________
The Fan Man: Since A Very Sammy Day is more or less an origin tale, where does this story take place in comparison to Tourist Trap?
Azad: About 2 years earlier. He doesn’t even have Lucky at this point so his Luck is REALLY in the crapper.
___________________________________
The Fan Man: Will A Very Sammy Day reveal how Sammy became such a bad luck magnet? Maybe how Sammy and Lucky became a “team”?
Azad: Very little of the former, and a lot of the latter…
___________________________________
The Fan Man: A Very Sammy Day will also have a somewhat different look that seems to fit in with an origin issue. Tell us about this one-shot’s unique look.
Azad: I find the market is getting pretty polarized. On the right, you have superhero books. On the left, you have ALT/Indy work. And very little in between that makes money or has an audience. Sammy’s tales are probably more indy than superhero, so I’m embracing that by doing something a little more adventurous with the format like a lot of independent titles do. It's digest sized and has brown as the primary ink rather than black. At the very least, it tells people who are unsure where I plant my flag. I’m sure people will say just because it looks like a duck, doesn’t make it a duck, but that’s where my head is at with the title, so at the very least I’m trying to be honest and give people a heads up visually.
Plus, it just looks cool!
____________________________________
The Fan Man: Why go the route of a one-shot, while Tourist Trap was a four issue miniseries?
Azad: Well, it’s a good jumping on point for new readers, and cool story for fans of Tourist Trap.
I’ve also been getting some offers to work with a few writers and artists lately, so it was convenient to do a shorter one-shot to allow me to work with others sooner rather than later. Namely, B. Clay Moore from Hawaiian Dick.
____________________________________
The Fan Man: For those who can’t wait until May for more Sammy, you have an online comic strip featuring his latest misadventures. Tell us about Subway Stories.
Azad: “Subway Stories” is a loose anthology of short stories that take place on a subway trip. Sammy has to successfully deliver a package for the local Thieves Guild in the allotted time to join their club. Unbeknownst to him, the guy who’s set him on this task is actually trying to trip him up. So every subway stop is a new short story chronicling Sammy’s misery.
____________________________________
The Fan Man: Does this story take place after Tourist Trap?
Azad: Actually it takes place before “A Very Sammy Day”. Dunno why I’m working backwards…damn my muse!
____________________________________
The Fan Man: How often is Subway Stories updated?
Azad: Every month on the first of the month. Some strips will last a week, some 3 weeks depending on the story.
____________________________________
The Fan Man: Anymore Sammy projects on the horizon? Maybe an ongoing series somewhere down the line?
Azad: Aside from “Hollywood Hell” (which would be the next mini series if Image will have it), there’s nothing planned specifically. I’m going to keep doing Subway Stories for the next little while…we’ll see how well A Very Sammy Day does then move from there.
____________________________________
The Fan Man: From a writer’s perspective I have always wondered, which is more difficult: writing the story or illustrating it?
Azad: Writing a good story is harder than drawing, but illustrating is FAR more time consuming...at least in my case it is. Then again, I find it hard to gauge my abilities as a writer because I draw my own stories. I more often than not, rewrite my comics as I draw them. Dunno if that’s indecision on my artistic side of the brain or incompetence from writer’s side.
____________________________________
The Fan Man: Typically, how long does it take for you to put together a Sammy comic book?
Azad: Too long, as far as I’m concerned. When I first started on “A Very Sammy Day” I was doing about 4 pages completed a week, for about a month, but that was atypical. Usually I can pencil and ink a page a day, but the computer work can take up to an additional day. It can get pretty frustrating for me because I do everything myself. I would love to delegate responsibilities to some other people to free me up to do just the nuts and bolts, but it’s not possible. Other people want money I don’t have to give.
____________________________________
The Fan Man: When it comes to the look of Sammy, the art reminds me a lot of Mike Allred. How do you best describe your artistic style?
Azad: Thanks...I think Mike is Awesome! Um…I try to keep my style pretty fluid, so if I want to go all manga-ish and have Sammy’s eyes bug out, I can get away with it. That’s one of the reasons I love Bill Sienkiewicz's work and Jamie Hewlett’s work on Tank Girl so much. It’s liberated. I don’t take it as far as they do, but it’s a nice reference point for me.
____________________________________
The Fan Man: Give us an idea of what goes into putting a Sammy comic together when you are writing and illustrating the whole shebang.
Azad: Writing is the "cerebral" part. I typically write the script, and rewrite it a couple of times until it’s usable. The meat and potatoes needs to be there. Then, when it’s at about the 80% finished mark, I start drawing the book and start filling in the rest of the 20% as I go along. Kind of like sculpting. This way, I have some breathing room for happy accidents and surprises that can come out of working on the "visual" part of the book. The dessert.
On Tourist Trap, I penciled the entire miniseries before I started inking it. However, I found that way of working was very discouraging because it doesn’t feel like you’re progressing. You’ll work for 4 months and nothing is inked! GAH! So this time around I worked one page at a time, so every 3 days or so, there was a sense of accomplishment. Much more rewarding.
____________________________________
The Fan Man: What kind of environment to you work your magic in?
Azad: I have a basement studio near the furnace room with fluorescent lighting and a lava lamp. It may not sound terribly appealing, but after 16 years of drawing there, I’m totally used to it.
I’m not big on "quiet." Sometimes, when I’m having a tough time scripting, I might turn the music off, but that’s only if things are really bad. I can listen to pretty much anything while I script except comedy albums because I want to LISTEN rather than write. But when I draw, I can (and usually do) have Howard Stern on.
On the other hand, distractions (phone calls, Fed Ex packages, breaking news reports about major world events, unexpected visitors, UFOs, etc…) SUCK! I can be very productive if you leave me alone and I’m "in the zone." But if I’m interrupted, even slightly, it can mess up my rhythm for the whole day.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: Which did you discover that you wanted to do first, be a comic book writer or be a comic book artist?
Azad: When I was 9 years old, I didn’t want to be Jim Starlin, I wanted to be George Perez. Drawing definitely came first, which I think is natural in a visual medium primary geared towards kids. But as I got older, I started appreciating the other side of making comics. I’m an artist by trade FIRST, and a writer second…but i’m trying to become a good STORYTELLER (in both aspects) overall.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: Were you a Comic Fanatic as a kid? Remember that first comic book?
Azad: Of course! How could I not be? The first comics that were given to me were a “Tom and Jerry” comic and an “Electric Company: Spider Man” comic, both of which were not very good. A few years later, I saw Micronauts: New Voyages #9 by Kelly Jones on the shelf, and I fell in love with the art. So I bought it and started on this road from there. I literally think I traced every page of that comic book 10 times each. I was about 9 years old at the time.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: What were some of the comics that you followed as a kid?
Azad: Well, I had a couple of Star Wars comics to start with and some Spider-Man comics lying around. Micronauts was technically my first comic and series. From there I went onto X-Men, Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man, Batman, New Mutants, Thor, Punisher and Excalibur.
I think I was 12 or 13 at the time when Dark Horse’s first and second ALIENS comics came out. Those books made a big impact on me. Aliens used to be my favorite movie, so it was totally inspiring to see someone other than Marvel or DC doing non-superhero stuff and it looked like no other comic I had ever seen. The first series was black and white with screens, and the second series was a photorealistic airbrushed comic series. To this day, it’s still one of my favorite comics to look at.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: Do you find the time to read any comics today?
Azad: I read in bed every night to tire me out. I have trouble sleeping so the small print in comics is great for tiring out your eyes. Unfortunately, if you’re reading a TPB, and it’s good, sometimes you can’t fall asleep because you want to read the next chapter!
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: As a writer, who do you count among your inspirations?
Azad: Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis come immediately to mind. Preacher and Transmetropolitan are two of my favorite comics of the past few years.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: Who are some of your artistic inspirations?
Azad: Well, I always wanted to be Jim Lee as a kid, but more recently, I guess artists like Mignola, Milo Manara, Moebius, Herge, Mike Allred and Paul Pope are more relevant to the kind of work I do now.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: Any creators out there today whom you admire?
Azad: I’d have to say Dave Sim and Erik Larsen. Not so much for their skills, but for having the longevity and integrity to stick with their projects through thick and thin for the long term. There’s lots of talented people out there that flake out. It’s inspiring when you see people doing what they love, and doing it well consistently. There’s always a better artist around the corner, it’s what artists DO with their skills that make them admirable.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: Are there any artists or writers that you would like to work with someday?
Azad: As far as writers…Garth Ennis comes to mind. His run on Preacher got me excited about buying comics back when I had all but given up on collecting. Robert Kirkman and B. Clay Moore are two of my new favorite writers, so anything with them would be keen.
For artists, I’m digging the whole Darwyn Cooke/Catwoman crew. J Bone would be at the top of my list. He’s a really talented artist, and all around nice guy. I think he’d be fun to jam ideas with, and he could kick my ass as far as funny book drawing goes, so it’d be nice to learn something. Jim Mahfood is way cool, too.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: How about with Sammy? Would you feel comfortable with another writer or another artist on a Sammy project? Or is this strictly an Azad only character?
Azad: Maybe a guest artist. Another writer would be too weird for me. Kind of like reading the Hellboy Tales comic series…The stories are great, but it's not REALLY Hellboy. The only ones that seem to work are the ones not trying to imitate Mignola. If someone was to write a Sammy story, I’d expect them to do something totally left field...otherwise, what’s the point?
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: Are there any characters that you would love to work on someday as a writer, artist or both? Maybe a dream project?
Azad: I don’t fantasize too much about other creators' work. I have a ton of respect for other creators, and about 95% of the industry can probably out-write, or out-draw me, so anyone else added to the mix would be an asset.
As far as a dream project, I’ve been toying with a comic called MYTH that I’ve been working on for years that I’d love to do as a long term, Vertigo-type series. It's sort of a mix between Brian Wood’s Channel Zero and a Tom Clancy novel . I’ve been scripting and doodling parts of it on and off for 10 years, but have never actually sat down to do the book. That’d be awesome to write and have someone else do the artwork for.
Or maybe do an ongoing ALIENS comic that’d blow everyone’s mind. When I was younger, a friend of mine and myself came up with a really great story and idea for an Aliens comic. A real epic. That’d be great.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: When you aren’t laboring over the next Sammy adventure, what does Azad do in his spare time? Any hobbies?
Azad: I wish I had something noble to say like “ I volunteer at the burn unit at the children hospital on the weekends”, but I don’t. I guess I’m pretty boring. I chase skirts, play videogames, read, and try to get out of my basement dungeon once in a while to get some exercise.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: Do you have any pets?
Azad: No...I don’t have any now and I don’t think I will ever. I get too attached, so if the bugger dies on me, I’ll be crushed. I always wanted one as a kid, but was never allowed to have any because my mother’s allergic. So my parents got me a goldfish when I was 7 as a compromise…However, after two months, I came down one morning to find the fish had committed suicide. It had leapt out of the bowl in the middle of the night (I dunno how), landed and dried up on the wood floor. I bawled for a day. No note goodbye, no videotaped message…nothing.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: Will you be hitting any of the cons this year?
Azad: Yup…definitely the Toronto and Montreal cons. And short of divine intervention, San Diego.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: Got any good “con horror stories?”
Azad: Dozens. My favorite one of late is a guy in Toronto who has a particular fetish. He pays all the industry pros to illustrate barely clothed women in his sketchbook, stuck together or bound by the feet to the floor with glue. GLUE. Last year, he left behind his trophy book of drawings with the guy at the table next to me, and we took digital photos of all this drawings. It was disturbing.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: Any advice for the struggling writers and artists out there?
Azad: Like I need the competition…pheh! Let them learn the hard way like I did: on my knees in the Marvel parking lot behind a trash dumpster. You wanna make it, you got to really want it.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: How exactly did you hit the big time with Image?
Azad: See the above .
Just kidding…Um…It was basically a simple submission that got accepted. It took a while for them to get back to me because, stupid me, I forgot to include contact info on my artwork so they had no idea who I was or how to contact me. My proposal apparently sat on Jim Valentino’s desk for 2 months before I contacted THEM to find out what happened.
There’s a lesson for you kids out there…don’t send proposals when you’re drunk. You’re likely to forget stuff.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: Tell us again, when does A Very Sammy Day hit shelves?
Azad: Originally solicited for May 26th, I ran a little late with delivering my artwork so it’ll probably be out a week or two later than that. Just in time for the summer cons (whew!)!
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: One thing that I have to know, you are a one name creator. Is “Azad” the comic book equivalent of Madonna, Cher or Fabio?
Azad: I’m just relieved you didn’t lump me in with Rupaul.
Um, the short answer to this is it’s easier to remember my first name. My last name is INJEJIKIAN. The last thing I need in my professional life is to have my name misspelled ad nauseum for the next 15 years, so I went with the lesser of two evils for my credits.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: With that out of the way, the last word is yours. Anything else coming up that you want to plug? A message you want to send to all of the Comic Fanatics out there?
Azad: I have someone working on a 3D animated Sammy short and I’m in negotiations to have it ready for broadcast. More details about that and other stuff (including free comics and deleted Sammy material) as they roll in on my website Guerrilla Comics.Com.
_____________________________________
The Fan Man: Azad, I loved Tourist Trap and can’t wait to see A Very Sammy Day! Thanks for taking the time to talk to The Comic Fanatic.Com and best of luck this year!
Azad: Thanks, bro. Great site by the way.
*********************************
Big thanks go out to Azad, not only for agreeing to do this interview, but also for introducing me to a character whose luck is almost as bad as mine! For more information on Azad and Sammy, check out Guerrilla Comics.Com or drop by Azad's Image Messageboard.
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
