{"id":28788,"date":"2023-12-13T14:50:33","date_gmt":"2023-12-13T19:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irishexaminerusa.com\/wp\/?p=28788"},"modified":"2023-12-13T15:09:44","modified_gmt":"2023-12-13T20:09:44","slug":"visionary-artist-creator-paul-kirchner-celebrates-the-weird-and-psychedelic-in-his-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irishexaminerusa.com\/wp\/?p=28788","title":{"rendered":"Visionary Artist\/Creator Paul Kirchner Celebrates The Weird And Psychedelic In His Work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Q&A by Brad Balfour<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I began my career in the world of graphic novels and comic book art, I could not have foreseen that it would bring the excitement and talent of Paul Kirchner to my attention. Kirchner is a featured artist spotlighted at The Big Apple Comic Con\u2019s Christmas Con at the New Yorker Hotel on Saturday, December 16. For info go to: www.bigapplecc.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any case, I landed an editorial gig at \u201cHeavy Metal,\u201d a fantastic magazine built around a vast library of French and European graphic art stories. I soon broadened beyond the foreign stuff by drawing on art from the \u201cNational Lampoon\u201d and other hipster publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the special artists I got introduced to was Kirchner. He\u2019d created the \u201cDope Rider\u201d for \u201cHigh Times and the comic strip \u201cThe Bus\u201d for \u201cHeavy Metal.\u201d He penciled stories for DC’s horror line and wrote and illustrated occasional short features for Marvel’s \u201cEpic Illustrated.\u201d And he illustrated the graphic novel, \u201cMurder By Remote Control.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting out in comics during the 1970s as an assistant to the late, legendary innovator Wally Wood, the young Kirchner could not have had a better mentor. [Wood was a signature artist who was part of the team that created the wildly innovative EC comics in the ’50s]. Kirchner left comics to work in editorial illustration, advertising, and toy design. But he returned in recent years, resuming his “Dope Rider” strip, a collection of which has been published as “A Fistful of Delirium.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has created a second volume of “The Bus” and a new series, “Hieronymus & Bosch,” which has appeared at the Adult Swim website and in book form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born in New Haven, Connecticut on January 29, 1952, Kirchner has worked in diverse areas, from comic strips and toy design to advertising and editorial art. He attended Cooper Union School of Art but left in his third year when — with the help of Larry Hama and Neal Adams — he began to get work in the comic book industry. At one point, he had left comics behind. But in 2002, Kirchner returned to freelance illustration, working primarily in advertising. He now lives in Connecticut with his wife, Sandy Rabinowitz, an illustrator specializing in equine art. They have three adult children.

Given his involvement at Christmas Con this Saturday,  I was excited to learn more so I conducted this email Q&A recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: When and how did you decide the life of an artist was the right thing for you? Talk about some moments of revelation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PK: The decision to pursue a career as an artist was gradual. It solidified after a series of validations made me feel that I might have what it takes. As a child I\u2019d been praised for my artistic ability. Since I loved praise \u2014 and still do \u2014 I stuck with it. In high school, I was the class artist and did posters for dances and cartoons for the school newspaper. I was also a comic fan, a card-carrying member of the Merry Marvel Marching Society, and hoped to work in comics some day. 

The parents of my girlfriend (now wife) Sandy Rabinowitz were artists and her mother was a graduate of the Cooper Union School of Art. In those days Cooper Union was tuition-free and acceptance was highly competitive. Sandy encouraged me to apply there and when I got in, she gave me additional confidence. While in art school I worked on my comics. When I finished one that I thought was good enough to use as a sample, I showed it to Neal Adams. He called Joe Orlando at DC and recommended me. Orlando gave me a script to pencil and that was when I decided, \u201cI can do this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Psychedelia has a big part to play in your work. Can you describe when this style came to when, how and why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PK: I\u2019ve never been able to get excited about the kind of art that sells in galleries — what people term \u201cfine art.\u201d I may admire the technique, but generally it doesn\u2019t move me. I\u2019ve always been more attracted to \u201cpeople\u2019s art,\u201d the art you see on record album covers, concert posters, pinball machines, tattoos, graffiti, pulp book covers, and of course, comic books\u2014art that packs a punch. I\u2019m particularly attracted to surrealistic art, which juxtaposes the images of dreams, visions, and hallucinations with the world of concrete reality. It adds a layer of meaning and visual interest to a scene that might otherwise be mundane. This is what I like to do in my \u201cDope Rider\u201d comics and what I did in my graphic novel, \u201cMurder by Remote Control.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Your drawing style is clearly influenced by artists who had their roots in EC comics such as the late Wally Wood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PK: I was certainly inspired by the work of EC artists like Jack Davis, Frank Frazetta, and Al Williamson. But the one who had the most influence on me would be Wally Wood, since I assisted him for several years. It was not only his approach to penciling and inking that I picked up, but his whole way of breaking down a story and laying out pages. For a time my work looked like an imitation of Wood\u2019s, so much so that \u201cFantagraphics,\u2019 in its anthology of his erotic art, attributed to him some illustrations I had done for \u201cNational Screw.\u201d (Fortunately, I got them to correct that before publication.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside of Wood, I took some storytelling influence from Steranko, particularly from his \u201cAt the Stroke of Midnight\u201d story from \u201cTower of Shadows #1.\u201d I was more attracted to European and underground comics than to the superhero fare of Marvel and DC, so other influences included Philippe Druillet and Rick Griffin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: What comes first script, then drawing? Or the opposite?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PK: I start out with just an outline of a story in my mind. The first thing I do is break down the story, laying it out into rough frames on a standard-sized sheet of paper (or papers, if it\u2019s going to run more than one page). During this process I get an idea of what can be communicated visually and where I will need captions or dialogue. By the time I am penciling the frames, I have a rough idea of the dialogue and leave space for it. I only write the script when the art is completely done, as I keep rewriting it in my mind as I work.

In indie comics it\u2019s expected that artists hand-letter their pages, as it\u2019s integral to the art. But I do the text and balloons on a separate layer in Photoshop because I continue to rewrite and edit until the moment I have to turn in the work. I understand that this is considered less authentic, but so be it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: How do you split your creative efforts now between your various series and developing new series?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PK: I have two ongoing projects, \u201cDope Rider\u201d and \u201cThe Bus.\u201d I spend most of my time on \u201cDope Rider\u201d because it appears every month in \u201cHigh Times\u201d magazine and I have to meet a deadline. Also, they pay me for it. The two most motivating things for a cartoonist are a deadline and a paycheck. For an alternative cartoonist to actually get paid nowadays is almost unheard of. \u201cDope Rider\u201d is only one page a month, which doesn\u2019t seem like much. But I try to do something different and interesting each time. And though I don\u2019t always meet my highest expectations I put a lot of thought into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The process of laying out the page, penciling the frames, inking them, then scanning them to add color and lettering in Photoshop takes a whole week. I don\u2019t mean a week of 12-hour days like some cartoonists put in, but a week of normal workdays. As far as “The Bus,” I have trouble buckling down to work on it due to the absence of 1) a deadline, and 2) a paycheck. That is, I won’t see any money from new strips of \u201cThe Bus\u201d until after I have completed enough strips for a book and that book is published. Also, with \u201cDope Rider, I have free rein to draw almost anything I want. With \u201cThe Bus,\u201d I have a constrained format and a lot of repetitive elements, so it feels more like work and less like fun. I have 40 pages of new \u201cBus\u201d strips and have inked only 14 so far. I need to complete at least 48 for a book. Another challenge is that I have to keep up the quality. I would rather just end the strip than do a book that I felt was not quite as good as the first two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Do you dream of seeing your concepts and creations become films or animation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PK: Yes, I do, whether or not it will ever actually happen. If you are a creative person, your creativity does not only apply to the work. It imagines ideas of how much success and reward the work might bring you. For example, if for some reason I was asked to be a guest on Joe Rogan\u2019s show, he might ask, \u201cDid you ever imagine this could happen?\u201d To be honest, I would have to answer, \u201cYes, I\u2019ve imagined it many times, what you ask me about, how I would answer, whether you would want me to smoke weed on the show with you, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I dream of many fanciful things that are unlikely to happen, but I can\u2019t help daydreaming. On the plus side, the dream helps motivate me to produce. BTW, I have been approached by guys in Hollywood to partner up with them to develop a \u201c\u201d movie. Then I check them out on IMDb and see they have no credits besides assistant producer on a short-running cable show or something like that. In other words, if they are people who don\u2019t have much of a foothold in the industry and are hoping to attach themselves to some intellectual property that they might sell, but they have nothing to contribute to it. These are not people whose phone calls are returned. That sounds arrogant of me, I know, but I have to be careful. My characters, my intellectual property, are all I have and I must try to avoid being exploited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: How autobiographical is your work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PK: I\u2019m in the world of indie comics, where creators are often their own main characters, but I\u2019ve avoided the autobiographical approach. The characters I\u2019m known for are \u201cDope Rider\u201d and a commuter who rides the bus. But I\u2019m not a chronic weed smoker and I rarely have occasion to use mass transit. Rather than focus on myself and my own opinions, experiences, and relationships, I do comics as a way to get out of myself, to escape from my day-to-day life and let my imagination roam. Of course, my work reflects some aspects of myself such my absurdist sense of humor and my interest in mysticism and alternate realities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: What did your parents think of your work? Talk about their reaction or reactions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PK: I had a good relationship with my parents but it had to be managed. They were fine people but rather straitlaced and judgmental and it was best not to tell them things about which you knew they would disapprove. In my 20s, I was mostly working for \u201cHigh Times,\u201d \u201cScrew\u201d and \u201cHeavy Metal.\u201d I didn\u2019t want to tell my parents that, mentioning only my work as an assistant to other artists like Ralph Reese and Wally Wood. Naturally, this caused them concern, as they wondered if I was doing much of anything at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One time my father, who was a doctor, asked me how much this Wally Wood fellow made in a year. I guessed about $18,000. \u201cMy God, the orderlies at the hospital make that much!\u201d responded my father. Okay, but it was not my ambition to be a hospital orderly. After the art director at \u201cScrew\u201d moved on to the \u201cNew York Times,\u201d he gave me regular illustration assignments for that prestigious publication, which made my parents happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1980s, I began applying my comics to more commercial work, such as doing comics for various toy lines, so I became completely respectable. Sandy\u2019s parents, who were rather Bohemian in their outlook, were enthusiastic about my comics all along. So my relationship with them was always closer and more open than my relationship with my own parents.<\/p>\n

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