NEWSRAMA INTERVIEW conducted by Brian Wood The following interview is still up at Newsrama, A comic news and information website.
Jacen Burrows on Avatar, Porno, Grand Theft: Auto Vice City, Zombies, and Grindcore. Brian Wood Note: this interview was conducted prior to the San Diego Comic-Con. Ah, I’m just fucking around with him here. Jacen is a great guy, and a superior artist. But too often when news of his work hits the online sites, its dominated by big names like Alan Moore or Warren Ellis, or overlooked in favor of endless debates about Avatar as a company and the sexed-up nature of some of their material. I figured he needed some “me” time to get some info out about who he is and the work he’s been doing. Brian Wood: I know you a little bit. We worked together for a while once, but I don’t really know a whole lot about you. For the record, give us an overview. Who you are, what you do, where you live, where you come from, a work history and anything else you can think of.  Jacen Burrows: Alright. My name is Jacen Burrows. I'm a penciller and illustrator and I am best known for the Warren Ellis and Alan Moore projects at Avatar Press, including Dark Blue, Scars, Bad World, Bad Signal, The Courtyard, and the new Yuggoth Cultures but some people out there might actually know that I did a decent amount of the 2D promo art for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Prior to the Ellis gigs at Avatar, I'd done King Zombie at Caliber with Tom Snigoski, some random small press stuff at Avatar and elsewhere and a bunch of Role Playing Game art for TSR and West End Games but I generally look at it like my career started for real when I started Dark Blue. Right now I'm living in Champaign, Illinois but I've lived everywhere. I am from San Diego but I have done a tour in Dallas, Atlanta, the Bronx, all over. And I went to Art School in Savannah, Georgia. I'm a SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) graduate from their Sequential Art program. BW: You work largely for Avatar, then. They catch a lot of heat for being a "titty-book publisher". How do you feel about that? I'm sure it must rub off on you. You know, guilt by association? JB: Honestly, it doesn't affect me much at all. The company started up as the boom was ending and yet they survived when virtually every small press publisher from that same era has vanished. They knew and understood what their niche was and catered to that until it was time to make a change and with professionalism and smart business sense they have been able to bring the biggest names in comic writing over to them by offering great creator ownership deals with no editorial interference. It seems to me that most publishers out there are gearing their books, even "mature" titles toward the "PG', "PG-13" crowd. The hard "R" is becoming more and more rare but Avatar allows these writers to cut loose with anything they can come up with. There needs to be a place in this industry for that and it doesn't bother me a bit that having a line of "bad girl" comics helps supplement the funds needed to do these projects. Much like the Eros/Fantagraphics dynamic. 
BW: What’s on your drawing table now? JB: I'm doing a bunch of covers and a handful of shorts before I start my big, new, top secret project with an A-list creator I've never collaborated with before. It's going to be the biggest, most talked about project I've ever been a part of and I am dying to get started!! Till then I have an awesome Alan Moore story, adapted by Antony Johnston, that I'm doing for the Yuggoth Cultures book. BW: Why work for Avatar exclusively? JB: They offered, first of all. I gave it some serious thought. I knew it would be possible to get work at a more mainstream company now but I would have ended up being a very small fish in a big pond and, odds are, the projects I'd end up getting wouldn't be with the level of writers Avatar has given me the chance to work with. At Avatar I get to pick and choose from an amazing line up of projects. I might make more money, maybe, but no other publisher in comics could offer me a chance to work on high end creator owned projects with nothing but A-list writers, guaranteed to be collected and kept in print. I really care about these projects because I know the writers themselves care about these books and that is really important to me. At this stage of my career it is far more important for me to be a part of projects that are important and unique and, above all, the kind of books I want to read! Avatar gives me that. Personally, I think I am in one of the most enviable positions in comics! BW: What are your thoughts on the Avatar - Vivid Video thingamajig? Back in the day I used to like Kobe Tai. Is Aurora Snow on Vivid? Am I talking too much about porno goddesses? JB: I think it is a brilliant business move. Vivid has a massive clientele and a PR machine that rivals every company in comics combined. Some of their stars are as famous as mainstream movie stars and the adult bookstore market place could be ripe for this kind of new project. I think the whole thing sounds like fun. It's the world's biggest adult film company (so far as I know) doing comics with their biggest stars as OGNs going directly to the adult video/book store outlets. This could be huge. Never a dull moment working at Avatar, let me tell you! BW: I think that means I was talking too much about porno goddesses, yes… Moving ahead - describe your typical day. JB: I think like most artists, I am highly nocturnal and most creative at night. I tend to get up around noonish, give or take an hour. Take care of the pets, bills and start laying out what I'm doing that day. Then I generally work with music or DVDs going till dinnertime. After that I break for a while, be social, go out sometimes but I am usually at the board again by midnight and I work in silence or just music till 3 or 4 AM which is when I get most of my work done. I am trying to get my schedule set so that I can get enough done in a day to take a day off every week but right now I work seven days a week, and yes, it often feels like a job even though I love what I do. BW: I hooked you up with a ton of work on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. How was that? That was pretty much the epitome of work-for-hire. JB: Well, now I look back on it and it's all puppies and roses. I just remember it as being a lot of fun. Fast paced character illustration stuff done in Stephen Bliss' style, for the most part, with a nice hefty Rockstar paycheck but I know there were a few headaches along the way. Thankfully they are mostly blocked out. It's impossible to express how cool it feels to be a part of cultural phenomenon, particularly when you help create the visual face for said phenomenon. I'd do it again in a heart beat even if the pay was a fraction of what it was, not that I'd say no to that rate! Brian Wood Note: Stephen Bliss is an in-house Illustrator at Rockstar Games, where I spend days as a print and package designer. We needed someone to back Bliss up on Vice City, and I got Jacen in on that. You can see his illustrations for Vice City in hundreds of magazines, on TV, the sides of buses, and billboards, on t-shirts and fly-posted all over major cities. He’s easily one of the most visible comic book artists working today. BW: Do you have plans for when you get done with your commitment at Avatar? In a perfect world, what would your dream project be? JB: Oh, I don't really think that far ahead. I have a bunch of things being set up right now at Avatar that will fill my schedule for quite a while but these are projects I'd kill for so it's hard for me to think beyond that right now. They keep dropping amazing jobs in my lap! As for a dream project, I think like all creators, I have some ideas I think could be fleshed out into something unique and entertaining. I think if I ventured into doing my own projects, I'd still want to collaborate with writers but I'd want to have some hand in plotting it out and using some of my ideas on different storytelling techniques we don't often see. I really want to push the boundaries of what we expect out of certain genres and explore the possibilities of visual storytelling in ways that are unique to the comic format. BW: Give me a "Jacen Recommends" list of music, comics, books, film, etc. What moves you, what rocks your world? JB: I'm a music fiend. I devour stuff from every genre and can appreciate almost anything if it was created from a place of true artistic expression. Lately I have been listening to a lot of Mogwai and Godspeed You Black Emperor but I collect everything from Turntablism (DJ Shadow, Q-Bert, Rob Swift, etc) and underground hip hop (Anticon, Slug, Eyedea, etc.) to Art Rock, Indie, Grindcore to Experimental Electronica (Aphex Twin, Subvulture, Ohgr, etc), Drum n' Bass, IDM, EBM, Industrial....you name it. My collection is up to like 700 disks now. My tastes in movies are pretty similar. I love the experimental art flicks and indie projects but I also have a fine love of cheesy horror movies, particularly Zombie movies and the old John Carpenter stuff. I have no idea why, really, but I love the pulpish, fun, splatter stuff. I wish my schedule allowed me more time to read but I am down to about a book a month so I don't feel nearly as informed in that regard but I buy them as if I had the time. I have an ever-growing stack in my room of books mostly recommended by friends. As for comics, I am one of those modern fans that follow particular creators and buy almost exclusively trades because I just never enjoyed the collecting aspect of comics personally. I wanted to read them and set them aside somewhere in case I decided to read them again later so I have spent the last few years building my library of graphic novels up. It just seems like a better way for me, personally, to enjoy the work even though I realize the catch-22 of not supporting the issues leading to cancellation and a lack of trade collections. I do still pick up a random issue or two to see what is going on with new creators or artists but most of what I buy these days is collections from my favorite creators. I suppose my current favorite series, still going, is 100 Bullets. BW: Next week is San Diego Comic-Con. Excited, or dreading it? JB: I actually really enjoy cons. I'm not that well known still so when I get to talk to someone who likes my stuff it is a really cool experience. I find that cons re-energize my love of the medium usually, because you get to talk to a lot of people that genuinely love comics. And then there is the fun post-con fraternization with the pros you only get to see a couple times a year. I really enjoy that aspect as well. Nothing like getting drunk with your peers to make for a fun trade show! Final Brian Wood Note: at San Diego, this very nice sweet girl came up to me and asked me to do a drawing of some kitty-cats in her sketchbook. Before I started, though, I flipped through the pages to see who else had done drawings. They were all adorable, of course, all cutesy and shit, except for one. A pair of large bony hands were gripping a terrified cat in this particular sketch, and a huge bite has been take out of its back. I could see the severed spinal column and guts coming out. It was signed “Jacen Burrows.” |