back to flak's homepage
spacer
spacer
FEATURES

Archives
Submissions

THE FLAK COMICS INTERVIEWS

Nicholas Gurewitch
The Perry Bible Fellowship

Ian Stacey
Wet Paint

Kevin Forbes
Simulated Comic Product

Benjamin Chandler
The Columbian Museum of Natural History

Eric Uhlich
Treelines

Lev Yilmaz
Tales of Mere Existence

Miles Grover
Thinkin' Lincoln

Winston Rowntree
Subnormality

Rodney Pruitt
Public House

Next week: Adam Rust | Adam's Rust

RECENTLY IN FEATURES

Nostalgia Now: Hauntology's Specter
by James Norton

The Dead Wrestlers Society
by Michael Frissore

The Hanging Garments of Baby-lon
by J.D. Nordell and Darby Saxbe

Rodney Pruitt: The Interview
by James Norton

Winston Rowntree: The Interview
by James Norton

The Satirist Next Door
by Cal Newport

How to Win Friends and Influence YouTube
by Jeremy Foster

Derek Evernden: The Interview
by James Norton

Miles Grover: The Interview
by James Norton

Allis on Allis
by Cal Newport

More Features ›

FEATURES WRITERS WANTED

Flak seeks writers to write reviews, essays and interviews for its Features section. Special emphasis on short, timely takes on major works.

No pay. Some glory. Lots of editorial back-and-forth, and a nice-looking clip for your files. Check out our guidelines for details or contact Features editor Jim Norton.



ABOUT FLAK

Help wanted: Winter Intern

About Flak
Archives
Letters to Flak
Submissions
Rec Reading
Rejected!

ALSO BY FLAK

Flak Sunday Comics
The Spam Blog
The Remote
Flak Print [6mb PDF]
Flak Daily Photo

SEARCH FLAK

flakmag.comwww
Powered by Google
MAILING LIST
Sign up for Flak's weekly e-mail updates:

Subscribe
Unsubscribe

spacer

Derek Evernden Derek Evenden
The Flak Comics Interview

By James Norton

In August 2007, Flak Magazine invited the artists from its Comics page to talk about their work.

Flak's chief artist, Derek Evernden, has been working for the magazine since 2002. A gifted artist, Evernden has, over the years, illustrated books, designed graphics for a cellphone video game, and provided graphics for dozens of Flak stories.

Flak: Let me just start with a really basic question. What city do you work in, and how do you pay the bills?

DE: I work in Toronto and pay the bills primarily through doing online ad design for flash, email, that sort of thing. Illustration is something that I do partly to pay the bills, but it's not reliable work, hence the web design.

Flak: What's the story behind the evolution of your style and your interests, in terms being an illustrator and/or a cartoonist?

DE: Stylistically it took me a while to realize that I have a consistent style. Even when I'm trying to do different genres or whatever. Things have begun to look a little bit more consistent over the years; but I'm pretty ambivalent by nature, so I've never been like a super-huge fan of any one particular person, to sort of obsess over them and make my signature look like their signature, and stuff like that? But the major stylistic influences, if that's the question, I guess would be, honestly anything that grabbed me largely when I was a kid or a teenager. Which is kinda sad, it doesn't mean I've stopped growing; but you know Marvel comics and Archie and stuff like that makes a pretty big impression — Al Hirschfeld made a pretty big impression when I was starting out. Norman Rockwell... You know, I remember looking at his stuff when I was in public school and really wanting to do that. Lately I've just been seeking out more illustrators that I can look to. More like mentor kind of figures, you know, even if I don't get to meet them.

Flak: Absolutely. Are there any sort of stylistic common denominators between the people you get into? You mentioned a number of people who seem more mainstream, or pop art than I'm used to hearing. That was very interesting: You mentioned Archie, you mentioned Norman Rockwell.

DE: I like mainstream stuff. Yeah, sorta proud of it. I do appreciate, I do like low-brow, pretty much anything low-brow. I'd include your Marvel and Archie, even though it's incredibly mainstream, and still considered low-brow. That might be because in high school and public school and university, particularly in high school, there was a lot of disdain cast upon that kind of stuff so it made me almost more resolute in liking it. I liked a sort of classic look to whatever I draw. It just seems to be the default for me. I did caricatures for three summers at Toronto's sorta tourist area. Even there I was the nice caricaturist because I wasn't doing warped drawings; they were just more like cartoon versions of the people sitting in front of me, which I associate with sort of a classic approach to that sort of thing. Similarly with comic books, I'd go to work the way I remember Spiderman being drawn when I was growing up, not the way it's been since Todd McFarlane came along. Then when it comes to caricatures, obviously anything around the time of Al Hirschfeld, or even the cartoons featured on the credits for Yes Minister were a big influence, and that's a classic style as well. Sorta old-fashioned I guess.

Flak: So the question I had for you is, you were doing political cartoons for Flak for a while there: What got you interested in that particular work, and then in a more general note, do you feel that the newspaper editorial cartoon is in a kind of crisis — a dying art form — or do you see hope for it as time goes on?

DE: I got into it because of guys like [Brian] Gable who worked for the Globe and Mail. I just loved that style of illustration, and when I got into caricature when I was a student to make extra money, it immediately seemed the coolest thing you could do with caricature would be to vilify celebrities and politicians, and that sort of thing. And it turned out that I was good at it, and people got sort of a kick out of it, so it was fun at parties, impress your friends, that sort of thing. With regards to whether I think there's a future for it — I think it's one of the few illustrative sort of cartoony jobs that doesn't involve working for Disney that does have a future. Just because, you know, it's so dated already and it's popular like there's just something having that in a newspaper; just, you know, adds a certain amount of, I want to say, cred to it, but I mean that's only assuming it's good cartooning.

So yeah, I think that's going to stick around. It might evolve. I know there's people already doing Flash-animated satire along the same lines on the Internet, so it'll evolve. But you know, there's something about a nice line and pen and ink drawing in a newspaper that won't ever go out of style in my opinion.

Flak: What advice might you give to a, say, promising 15-year-old who's thinking about giving cartooning a serious try as a career, or illustration; take your pick.

DE: Hmm. Well, I'm not a good example of somebody who's made it as a career. So the advice I'd would be sort of what I didn't do, which is draw more, apply for jobs more, get more rejection letters, that kind of thing, if that's what you really want to do. Obviously a good sense of humor is helpful not only for when you're trying to make rent doing it, but also just for the content's sake. Just be aware of the history you're drawing upon. You're standing on the shoulders of a lot of giants, so be aware of who they are.

Flak: Could you name three or four working peers whom you really admire, people who're still putting out new work, whom you kind of look up to, follow and enjoy?

DE: Yeah. Well, as I said, for caricature I really like Gable. His work is really sketchy and sort of unpolished. Kind of reminds me a bit of Jim Unger, the creator of the old Herman cartoons. Without even seeing half the face, he gets an incredible amount of expression, from what is basically a potato with hair. Dan DeCarlo is a huge influence on the way that I draw women, gotta give him props. I guess it's probably predictable to say this, but Art Spiegelman. The fellow who did the graphic novel Palestine, Joe Sacco.

Flak: What's going on with newspaper comics? Do you think that's something that's essentially at this point dying to the point of dead forever? Or is someone reinventing it somewhere that you've seen or heard about?

DE: All they've got to try to do is make them funny for a change. That's really the main thing if they don't want it to die. Again, it's like editorial cartoons: They're in their element, it's their natural habitat to have them in the papers. It's normal; it doesn't look out of the place. People accept it. Art in papers; it's part of the package. You can argue whether or not newspapers themselves, printed newspapers, are going out of style. But what's traditionally benn in them I think will last. The main thing that blows my mind is how consistently unfunny the majority of them are. I really miss Bill Watterson and The Far Side. I know Trudeau is still doing his thing, but it's really incredible; it's like it's almost anti-humour, you know?

Flak: Do you have any big projects on your horizon, anything interesting you're working on that's coming down the pike?

DE: Lately I've been doing stock illustration, to be honest. I've become interested in trying it out, though I know that it's low-brow, and some people think it cheapens your name and everything. My motto was basically: "Make money by drawing," and whenever I can figure out a way to do that, I feel pretty clever, since I don't know very many people who've made it that way. So if I can expore that, that means sort of developing your style and so forth.

spacer

BOOKMARK WITH:

Delicious
Digg
reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
spacer

I've been doing children's illustrative style for a while, but I've been getting into computer-generated work. I've been working on a short comic; it's this close to being finished. It's pretty much a guarantee t'll be published, so that's something I've really been hoping to see off the ground. I can't really say much about it. I'm not the author, wasn't my initiative, so I can't really talk about it 'till it's been published.

Flak: Can you give me the genre at least?

DE: World War II fighting Nazis kind of thing, if that's a genre. It's got a lot of inside jokes and so forth; it doesn't take itself seriously. Sort of like an Indiana Jones-type sense of humour I guess.

Flak: It sounds really cool.

DE: Hopefully it will be.

Flak: Was there anything else I didn't ask you about that you'd like to mention or chat about?

DE: Yeah I've been drawing all day so my mind's a little soft at the moment. Can't really think of much else honestly. The only other thing I'd give advice to a cartoonist on is getting a really comfortable chair at their drawing table. Because my back is still in it.

Flak: Thank you very much, I really appreciate you taking the time.

DE: It was a pleasure.

E-mail James Norton at jim@flakmag.com.

ALSO BY …

Also by James Norton:
The Weekly Shredder

The Wire vs. The Sopranos
Interview: Seth MacFarlane
Aqua Teen Hunger Force: The Interview
Homestar Runner Breaks from the Pack
Rural Stories, Urban Listeners
The Sherman Dodge Sign
The Legal Helpers Sign
Botan Rice Candy
Cinnabons
Diablo II
Shaving With Lather
Killin' Your Own Kind
McGriddle
This Review
The Parkman Plaza Statues
Mocking a Guy With a Hitler Mustache
Dungeons and Dragons
The Wash
More by James Norton ›

 
spacer
spacer

All materials copyright © 1999-2007 by Flak Magazine

spacer