Xavier Guilbert: Do you consider yourself more as a cartoonist or as an illustrator?

Peter Kuper: A cartoonist.

XG: Definitely?

PK: Yeah. I mean, if I had to say where my heart lies, it’s in telling stories. I enjoy illustrating, it’s a great way to — it’s more immediate. (laugh) The thing is, doing any kind of story takes weeks or months or years, while you can do an illustration in one day, and see it in the newspaper the next day. So there’s immediate gratification but I want to tell a real story, most of the time, and that — that’s where comics excel.

XG: What strikes me with your work is the — kind of a journalistic approach. You mention the nuclear disaster film Fail-Safe as a major influence, and that’s something that comes out your work, in Mind’s Eye or The System where there’s a lot of social commentary.

PK: There’s definitely the idea of wanting to have some value behind just doing something for myself — and so I think doing something that feels like an historical document in some way, chronicles of a time period has use. (laugh) You know it’s a strange idea of wanting to have some “use”, in some broader sense. And I think that’s why I keep on moving, cause it lends on me circumstances, politically and where things are at in my own life. When I get to look at a work I want to be able to have some memory of the time period, or have it discuss what is taking place. And that keeps on bringing me to this journalism, or my fear of historical political figures messing up our lives at the time.
With Fail-Safe it was discovering the atom bomb, and that’s worked for me over the years, it’s been a motivating principle. Because I just kept thinking — there’s this thing out there, that at any time could change the whole story. So I gotta have my book finished before that happens and the thing is always sort of floating there. It’s actually a very positive motivator because I feel like there’s this time-bomb, literally. And it also keeps on bringing me back to this focus of talking about aspects like that in the world.

XG: It’s true, but in Mind’s Eye for example, it’s not just “beware of the bomb”. The social commentary is more in the little things of life, it’s more direct.

PK: I think that living in New York has had a big impact on that because walking down the street, you get a little social commentary every time you walk out the door. There’s some homeless person, or you see the contrast between rich, extreme wealth and extreme poverty. And also all those interactions make — I think there’s a closeness to mortality which is also interesting.
The idea of the bomb is a big concept, it’s a worldwide thing like global warming. And to try and personalize that, the only way I think to make is to ... you know, it’s closer examination on the human condition and all that, not to get too heavy. But those are things that I find interesting, but at the same time I’m really looking to make all that entertaining. Like I want to make it either funny or something that doesn’t just have sort of a dead-end to it. Not “This is politics, it’s important and PUNCH!” — just because it’s important. That never appealed to me particularly. I like ... I’ve been drawn towards that experience, that comes out of a certain amount of tension. There is German expressionism for example, works that came out during the war, George Gross, people like that, and they managed to talk about these things in a way — that was really entertaining.
I get bored myself, and this is why I jump around stylistically speaking. I wanna be able to look at these things and turn them in such a way that it doesn’t end up as just one more diatribe.

XG: Yet, in your Eye of the Beholder and Mind’s Eye books, the structure — five panels, with the last one in opposition to the four others — this structure is very efficient. You were talking about having a “punch!” ...

PK: A punchline. (laugh)

XG: Yes, and this is very efficient in getting the message across.

PK: Yeah, that was the idea of trying to have it twist an expectation about something. Again, it’s about how do you communicate ideas. You just try to figure out ways to communicate them effectively, and maybe surprisingly, so that it’s not just ... so that it somehow defies expectation. Let’s hope for — that’s what I’m trying to do, let’s hope that works.

XG: How did that project with the New York Times originate in the first place?

PK: They came to me ... they asked me if I wanted to try. They were starting a new section, they asked me if I wanted to do a comic strip that wouldn’t have regular characters, but each episode would relate, would be a consistent idea. And I met with the editors, showed them what it was that I did, and they started editing the text, and I thought — “OK, get rid of the text”. And also it was the idea of — since people have expectations about what comics are, I wanted to try to show the possibilities ... you can remove the word balloons and all that and it’s still a comics. And it also mixed my illustration and my comics for the New York Times.
So I did that for six months for them, and then they replaced the comics with an ad. Economics took over again. But I liked the idea and so I sent it out to some alternative papers, and then I got enough papers running it every week that I did it for ten years. And so I was doing one a week ten years running and then, that gave me the opportunity to put it together as a book.

XG: Another of your major works is The System, which is another wordless comics. Doing a wordless comics, was it a challenge, or did you want to show something more?

PK: Well, it’s a combination of things. I’ve always been interested in wordless comics. The idea, again, I was sort of taking different worlds, like my illustration world, and merging it with comics and the things I was doing with pencils. There’s also the fact that I was removing the word balloons, going against the expectations of what comics are, and I’ve pretty much spent my carrier trying to reach a different audience with comics. And that’s only recently become a real possibility. During the last five years in the United States, comics have gotten this much larger audience with adults.
So I thought if I could try and defy expectations with something that didn’t have the traditional pieces that had people say “that’s what a comic is” — and in effect that worked with people that I shared it with. I showed it to my girlfriend, that’s the most traditional response, that means it’s gone outside the world of comics that is “all guy”.
But also I wanted to talk about a lot of different characters that I knew I could show, but the exact dialogue — I don’t necessarily know as well as I’d like to, like the detective, that would be a slight variation on something I’ve read, rather than experienced. But the visual experience, I knew quite well.
In the case of The System, the seed of the idea was getting on the subway train and seeing a group of people in a certain car of the train. And on the next day getting on the same car and being in presence of a different cast of characters. And I thought, every time I get on the train I always get on the last car, and there’s all these new people, it seems like a shifting play. And then it made me wonder, which of these people might cross paths at a different time, what interaction we would have. This person here could save my life, this person over here could hit me with a car.
With that sort of notion I started to collect news articles or things over about a year period — you know, I’d read something about a train driver who’s drunk and smashed the train I’d thought "I could stick with that train story". Or I was thinking about when I moved to New York, and there was a murderer called “Son of Sam” and the entire city was inthralled with “Son of Sam”, and so I just put that and started to fill in different pieces.
Again, since I did that for DC Comics when the editor approached me and said “do you have any idea?”, I thought: I want to do something and I really want to make sure that it’s going to be in that world, I really want to make sure that it feels that it’s not, it’s not a DC book, per se.

XG: It definitely looks like it’s something else, especially with the art, the angles and the lines, reminiscent of etchings ...

PK: It’s spray painting. To do the whole thing I cut holes in paper, and then I sprayed paint over it. You know, I was thinking, if they go for it, then I’m gonna really have done something that is in a different area for them. And fortunately they did. So it’s like “okay, no words, done in stencil”, these different factors, so that it could stand on its own in a superhero world and be different.

XG: Speaking of artists that are apart from this superhero world — I’m thinking about Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman who have very strong stances on the political aspects, do you relate to them?

PK: I’ve crossed paths with them, frankly, and they’re both most interested in what’s happening in comics. Joe is bringing journalism in comics in a brilliant way, and Art is always in some exploring and has a fantastic forum for being seen and heard, and actually having it seen by this other audience is the next really big step. That’s started to happen more and more, perpetually knocking on that door of the people who never pick up comics necessarily, or areas that comics can get into like journalism, or parenting, you know, visual areas in comics that are still fresh and barely trodden.
Another exciting thing with the form is that you can do things that are unique to the medium that can potentially step out as an art form, and step out in another area. For instance, photojournalism has that aspect of putting images together, but with comics you personalize it so much, Joe Sacco is a character of his work. A journalist is so often supposed to be on the move.

XG: He is a witness, but not quite a part of the things.

PK: Precisely. And sympathizing is a hugely important facet to discussion and the possibilities of it. And that’s the kind of thing I’m trying to do. And I keep finding new aspects of comics, areas I would like to try out: autobiography, journalism, fantasy, something about dreams, or something about travel — you know, to see what part of it I haven’t messed with that might be another avenue to explore that would be interesting.
To bring back the idea of the socio-political aspect, a lot of it all also has to do with working on a project. I mean, it needs to be sustained — so what can I work on that I will really care about six months from now or a year from now. So it has to be something that I feel matter somehow.
Each person’s own “what matters” is completely relative, and to me it’s always coming up. For example I did this children’s book, Theo and the Blue note, and I did it right before the first election that Bush stole, and when he became president, I just put it in a drawer because I couldn’t just bring myself to do a children’s book — it seemed thoroughly unimportant, and I wouldn’t have been able to give it any kind of omph. And for the second round of elections, I felt so tired from the whole thinking about politics all the time that I needed to work on a children’s book. And then I pulled it back out and it was perfect, it was like getting some air, and I really enjoyed doing it. That’s what mattered to me, going to the moon ... with a cat.

XG: You mentioned earlier staying away from words because you couldn’t get them right, that they were kind of — alien to you. Your upcoming book Stop forgetting to remember seems to have a lot of text. Does that mean you’re more comfortable with that now? Or is it more related to the fact that it’s an autobiography-based work?

PK: Completely. I know what the dialog is because it’s the one I had. I had this strange moment when working on the book, I had just finished doing a story about a fight I had with my wife, and that night we had a fight. And I was like: “is the dialog right?” In the middle of fighting, I was at once watching the dialog and walking the steps because this was a familiar fight.
I was also anxious to do things like, in this case, talk about parenting. There’s information you have at different points, and you can capture, like remembering. Some people are capable, Lynda Barry, for example, has an incredible ear for dialog. I’m not like that, I found out that it passes through, I remember it at some point and then I really have to look at my journals to get back there. So at different points, I had this great pressure to get something down the way they were right then. I felt that, before being a parent, there was a whole bunch of information I knew, and — and after I got married there has been a shift, and after a child there has been a shift, and so ...

It’s kind of a good pressure because it makes for productivity, and you feel that way about — like gotta capture this mood, that was after September 11th. So we edited and published World War III Illustrated. And we clinged together and did this issue within months of September 11th, and it was really created on lot of levels. Because there was the mood that you’re in, that really faded in a lot of ways. My frame of mind at that time was — sell everything, certainly don’t worry about money because we’re going to die shortly. My mindset was — at the same time I was wrestling in telling stories about it. Being funny seemed like the wrong thing, but I was right on the edge and that started creeping into the stories as the time went by. But then later, and that’s what very ironic about it, it wasn’t that bad. But there is so many of these things, the aspects of your emotional state of mind and what you can remember, what you can capture, and some of it also is putting yourself there.
I feel that maybe, having done this very word-full book, I might do something that could be some characters I don’t know very well, and — something between research and listening. I’d be able to do more of that, because I enjoy the process of making characters out of people that I know and seeing where they can go as cartoon characters. You know, the writer’s feel where the characters start actually speaking and oh, they want to do this now. But Stop forgetting to remember was more controlled by virtue of the reality of the time it was captured. But it has a lot of possibilities, at some point my friend’s dog starts talking to me because I needed somebody there to say some of those things, and with any of the other characters it would have been too pedantic, and didactic to ... lay it out there. And so the dog was a good opportunity to fill that blank.

XG: I find interesting that going to Oaxaca, you found yourself again in the place of rather socio-political commentator, things that one can see by reading the entries on your blog. Is that something that you did willingly, or something that just happened?

PK: I don’t feel especially politically — you know, I’m not a political scientist or major, I’m mostly ... we’d prefer that there weren’t so many things to talk about. When we first got to Oaxaca there was this period of time where I was just getting used to being there, and I was aware of the political situation only in pieces that were coming at me by talking to people, and being in Oaxaca just naturally. And then there was this transforming point where I started to feel like “this is my place now, it’s where I am”.
And the situation is part of that feeling, and I had the first reaction of wanting to be away from politics. On the idea that we are leaving America now, and we can get a little breather from Bush and come to this tranquil place. And with the political situation growing — it’s just the deal, you know, like global warming. You can go wherever you want to go, but the weather keeps following you. And I sort of woke up to how much this is my story. I have to participate in this, or I’m missing something fundamental in living in another country.
And so I started going downtown, and doing drawings, and through drawing there was this beautiful aspect of that kind of interaction which is ... It’s very interesting. One day I was sitting and drawing, and first I was looked at suspiciously, then they’d come over and peek at my drawing, and at some point I’d have to put it in my lap and people would be coming back and forth watching it progress. And the drawing started telling something about what their experience was. I walked up the streets and I took photographs of the blockades and I got immediately surrounded, and they were going to take the camera.
And I thought this is very interesting, the difference between photojournalism where it’s always some kind of “hit and run”, and the process of doing drawing where you have to interact. You can’t do it from around the corner, you have to be right there. And it gave me an odd sense of the possible power or importance of that difference and what can be done with that.

XG: Even if you’re not drawing yourself in the picture, you’re still there.

PK: Yeah, exactly. There’d be the passage of time in the drawing. I’m trying to do this drawing, I’m working on this thing, and then some old lady walks in and stands in front of me and I’m like — uh-oh, wait a minute she’s part of the picture now. And then some truck goes by, and that ends up being a story, not just an object. And once I had that transition into “this is my story too”, then I started feeling much more engaged with the experience there, and then I started feeling I’m really in Mexico.
Now there is this other step, I did a lot of drawings of plants and animals, and then the next thing I know I’m back to doing a piece for World War III. And also it’s really interesting to do emails. My initial intent was just to let people know “we’re okay, you might have read about this in the papers but...” And I sent this out to a number of people on my email list, and Serge, my French publisher, posted it on his own website because it made it an easier read with all the files attached. Then, every time I wrote I sent it to him and he posted it, and then somebody else linked to that, and that was linked to something else which linked to a hub, a website called Boing Boing in the States, and then I was getting emails from people, and then a Mexican in Canada found my work — he didn’t know my work at all except from that. And it’s very interesting, it’s this medium, the Internet, which I didn’t go at with any kind of plan, but that happened, and that became part of what I do now too. I’m writing for certain websites, and making it much more of an activity.

I found that the work sometimes, and what I’m doing for myself that I’m not sure what it is transforms into my job. I keep on having to rediscover this aspect that I’d be working on something and say “why am I doing that I’m not sure”, and my wife says : “do you think you could take a break from lamenting for a minute and come and help me?” and I’m like “I’m not really sure why I’m writing all this stuff for the web but it seems important to me now”. And next it might be about my book or whatever, it keeps on happening. It sensetizes me to things like the covering that is happening in Oaxaca and how potentially important some of these things can be, to get them down in their time, while this is going on.
Again, that idea of finding something that matters and putting my energy into it, then it becomes an historical document and that always trancends time. I’m always interested working at work that was done during some period. I get very lost about the abstract expressionism: it tells me something about the time period, but I never really get a sense of who are this people and when did they decide to be sort of vague and a little confused. You know, it’s formal experimentation, and that’s all well and good, but I get very little sense of the time from it. And that’s why what I do is great, and why abstract expressionism isn’t ... (smiling) kidding.

(Interview made in Angoulême, on January 24, 2007)