Image (c) copyright Matt Wagner.
Matt Wagner is a comic book writer and illustrator, best known for his original comics Mage and Grendel (winner of three Eisner awards) and a five-year run on Sandman Mystery Theater, as well as for recent stints on Batman and on Trinity, a three-issue miniseries featuring Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.
This is the first half of a two-part interview. Be sure to also check out the second half, in which Wagner talks about how Mage is like a Zen journey, and what makes for good comic-book storytelling.
Matt Wagner on the Web: mattwagnercomics.com
Cecil Vortex: Were you a storyteller as a young boy?
Matt Wagner: I was. My father, and this dates him quite a bit, used to say I was vaccinated with a Victrola needle because I was very talkative…. My parents like to tell a tale of when I was quite young. I must have been five or something like that. We had literally — I kid you not — a door-to-door Bible salesman come to the door one day selling these lavishly illustrated Bibles. We were going through it and I was pointing out all the illustrations and saying, “Oh, look this is Noah, this is Jonah, Jesus” etc., etc., and we got to a picture of Adam and Eve in their loincloths in the Garden of Eden and I turned to my dad, apparently, and said, “Dad, Tarzan!” [laughter] So I think I was doomed for this profession from the very beginning.
My mother was an English teacher before she became a full-time mom, and a huge proponent of reading, so she made sure I was an early and vigorous reader. Coupled with that was the fact that I was an only child. I grew up in the middle of Pennsylvania in Amish country — we lived out away from most other houses…. I drew to entertain myself because there wasn’t much video entertainment in those days. I think we had probably three or four TV stations initially. And so I was a vigorous reader and I drew. And comic books were both writing and drawing all rolled into one and just became the magic quotient for me.
CV: So you were headed for comics from the start?
Suddenly (Flight of the Conchords edition)
Suddenly all I want to do is listen to Flight of the Conchords. And I don’t even have the HBO.
Already there
At the airport today, the Aloha Airlines employees were wearing Hawaiian shirts and lovely flowers in their hair, all designed to send the message: “You’re already there.”
And I was struck by the idea that a flower in someone’s hair can be all it takes to lift your feet, to change the temperature, to shift your sense palette and drop you on the far side of a wearying journey,
And then later on, I’m waiting to go through security, and I’m looking around at some of the smiling folks, blissed out, and I thinking, “You bastards! You’re already there!”
Me, I’m off to Boston. Would it have been too much trouble for the JetBlue employees to sport Samuel Adams wigs?
Call for Auditions and General Exhortation of Theater Folks: Mankind’s Last Hope
This fall (specifically, late October/early November), Virago Theatre will be staging an evening’s worth of sitcom good-times that I cowrote with an old pal. The aim is to film it, 3-camera-style, before a live studio audience. You can read all about the show, including a character list and a little more background on the show’s premise, here.
If you’re a Bay Area actor or theater person and you’d be interested in learning more, and either working on the production or auditioning for a part, consider yourself formally exhorted to drop me a line.
Travel blog postscript: #1
I have a few notes from our trip that didn’t make it into the heart of the travel log. I’ll be posting them here over the next few days because, quite frankly, these are important observations, too important for me to keep to myself.
For example, here’s one:
Is it possible that the wall of traffic we hit when we entered Luxembourg was part of a coordinated effort by Luxembourgians to give travelers the impression that Luxembourg is a really really big country (that is, one that takes a long time to drive across), when in fact it’s quite tiny?
Could it be that they’re under state orders to take to the road at 9 am and drive slowly until 5 pm before returning to their extremely tiny homes? I mean, is there any chance at all that this is exactly what’s going on?
Because, if so, that would be crazy.
My One-Word-Review of Harry Nilsson’s “Nilsson Sings Newman”
Poffertjes. (and I mean that as a compliment)
“About-creativity.com, I choose you!”
Woke up this morning to find that some wonderful human being over at Yahoo had selected us as Yahoo Picks’ “Pick of the Day.” If you’ve discovered this site through that review, welcome!
The artist interviews to-date include: poets Kim Addonizio, Maggie Nelson, and Bob Holman, web innovator Ze Frank, musicians Jonathan Coulton and Van Dyke Parks, choreographer Natalie Marrone, authors Lemony Snicket and DyAnne DiSalvo, visual artists James Warren Perry and Tucker Nichols, clown and playwright Jeff Raz, standup comic and sitcom writer Howard Kremer, cartoonist Dan Piraro, columnist Jon Carroll, and screenwriter/director John August. Scroll down to peruse the interviews from most recent to least-most-recent.
You can also subscribe to future interviews — I’ll be posting a new one every week or two. Upcoming interviews include comic book creator (Mage/Grendel) Matt Wagner, musician Adrian Belew, and World of Warcraft storyteller Chris Metzen.
Thanks a lot for dropping by. If you get a chance, be sure to leave a comment to let us know what you think,
-Cecil
An Interview with Kim Addonizio
Photo credit: Joe Allen.
Kim Addonizio is the author of three books of poetry from BOA Editions: The Philosopher’s Club, Jimmy & Rita, and Tell Me, which was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award. Her latest poetry collection, What Is This Thing Called Love, was published by W. W. Norton in January 2004. A book of stories, In the Box Called Pleasure, was published by Fiction Collective 2. She’s also coauthor, with Dorianne Laux, of The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (W.W. Norton). And her new novel, My Dreams Out in the Street, has just been published by Simon & Schuster.
Addonizio’s awards include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, a Commonwealth Club Poetry Medal, and the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award. She teaches private workshops in Oakland, CA.
Kim Addonizio on the Web: kimaddonizio.com, My Dreams Out in the Street, What Is This Thing Called Love
Cecil Vortex: When did you first start to identify yourself as a writer?
KA: I remember my first unfinished work. I wanted to write a novel when I was around nine. I wrote ten pages. It was a mystery, I think. I don’t remember why I stopped — probably because it was too hard. I remember writing a short story at fifteen and being eager to show it to my dad, who was a sportswriter.
CV: Do you remember what drew you to writing poetry?
KA: I wrote down my feelings in lines in high school and after, but it was hardly poetry. I seriously started trying to write it in my late twenties. I think poetry drew me to it — I think I was always meant to find it.
CV: How has your creative process changed since then?