Creator short profile:– Name: J Marc Schmidt.
– Location: Australia.
– Location: Australia.
– Creative style: Comics, ligne clair. Sometimes I put plastic eyes on pebbles and make a comic with those.
– Website/s: www.jmarcschmidt.com
– Bragging rights(Featured work/collaborations): All You Bastards Can Go Jump Off a Bridge, Test Your English, Secrets of Popular Culture, Egg Story, Eating Steve.
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Creator continued profile. Let’s get a tiny bit personal:
– What are your goals as a creator?: Get better at it, feel satisfied by doing it (in all the ways one can be satisfied by the making of art), connect with people; move into some other field some time as well as comics.
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– Where there any defining moments in your life that have influenced your creative style?: Reading Tintin aged 7 made me a comics fan for life. Watching Akira just before attaining majority showed that I didn’t have to set aside the childish things like cartoons, and made me want to do a comic. Bloody Katsuhiro Otomo. Maison Ikoku was a big influence on me, and I was reading it at the same time I was drawing my first comic book. My first San Diego Comic-Con was alarming, fascinating, too much, jolly good. Someone offered me vodka a minute after I walked in the front door on the first morning. What a wise one he turned out to be!.
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– If you could have any power from a Comic character, what would it be/why?: Invisibility always seemed a bit kinky to me, as one has to get naked to do it properly and it’s great for peeping, stalking etc. Therefore I’ll say flight, the Superman kind rather than the Archangel kind. Who would want giant metal wings sticking out of their back? What a freak. I’d hate and fear someone like that. Besides, he’d fall backwards all the time with all that metal on his back, surely. Realistically, Archangel should wear KISS-style high heeled boots, to recenter his balance. I wonder why none of the X-men are into rock music. You’d think one or two of them would sublimate all that angst into music, make some money, touch some hearts, but no, it’s all ripped bods and tights and supersonic jet planes and elegant mansions and ‘I’ve got to go to Canada to be alone for a while’.
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– Favourite Comic artist of all time/why?: Serpieri is pretty great, but can one own up to liking him without sounding like a hentai? Then again, after the age of about 15, can anyone be in comics and not be some kind of hentai? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Eleuteri_Serpieri
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– Favourite Comic writer of all time/why?: Writers can be so annoying. I think in the days of cuneiform they would have been a bit more bearable. “Dude! Have you read my latest clay tablet?” Grant Morrison is good, I like his mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Morrison.
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– What do you prefer to snack on when creating a masterpiece?: Blood sausage, pumpkin kernels, raisins, walnuts, outer space.
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– What’s the strangest thing you have ever seen in a toilet?: Who knew I would ever be asked this question? I used to see long paragraphs of pseudo-intellectual gibberish in toilets in the university library, proving either that university students should be banned from using toilets, or that people who need to use toilets should be banned from being university students, or that all university students should have both hands replaced by metal claws. Let them crow about their so-called higher education when they look like human crabs!
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– Where there any defining moments in your life that have influenced your creative style?: Reading Tintin aged 7 made me a comics fan for life. Watching Akira just before attaining majority showed that I didn’t have to set aside the childish things like cartoons, and made me want to do a comic. Bloody Katsuhiro Otomo. Maison Ikoku was a big influence on me, and I was reading it at the same time I was drawing my first comic book. My first San Diego Comic-Con was alarming, fascinating, too much, jolly good. Someone offered me vodka a minute after I walked in the front door on the first morning. What a wise one he turned out to be!.
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– If you could have any power from a Comic character, what would it be/why?: Invisibility always seemed a bit kinky to me, as one has to get naked to do it properly and it’s great for peeping, stalking etc. Therefore I’ll say flight, the Superman kind rather than the Archangel kind. Who would want giant metal wings sticking out of their back? What a freak. I’d hate and fear someone like that. Besides, he’d fall backwards all the time with all that metal on his back, surely. Realistically, Archangel should wear KISS-style high heeled boots, to recenter his balance. I wonder why none of the X-men are into rock music. You’d think one or two of them would sublimate all that angst into music, make some money, touch some hearts, but no, it’s all ripped bods and tights and supersonic jet planes and elegant mansions and ‘I’ve got to go to Canada to be alone for a while’.
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– Favourite Comic artist of all time/why?: Serpieri is pretty great, but can one own up to liking him without sounding like a hentai? Then again, after the age of about 15, can anyone be in comics and not be some kind of hentai? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paolo_Eleuteri_Serpieri
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– Favourite Comic writer of all time/why?: Writers can be so annoying. I think in the days of cuneiform they would have been a bit more bearable. “Dude! Have you read my latest clay tablet?” Grant Morrison is good, I like his mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Morrison.
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– What do you prefer to snack on when creating a masterpiece?: Blood sausage, pumpkin kernels, raisins, walnuts, outer space.
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– What’s the strangest thing you have ever seen in a toilet?: Who knew I would ever be asked this question? I used to see long paragraphs of pseudo-intellectual gibberish in toilets in the university library, proving either that university students should be banned from using toilets, or that people who need to use toilets should be banned from being university students, or that all university students should have both hands replaced by metal claws. Let them crow about their so-called higher education when they look like human crabs!
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– Do you believe in the 3 second food drop rule?: Isn’t it five seconds? Everything is so much faster in the modern age. I suppose it depends on how valuable the food is, and how likely it is to have bits of floor stick to it. A cookie is okay, but spaghetti bolognese is a no-no.
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– If you were to sleep with a Comic villain, who would you chose/why?:
I don’t know, they all sound like psychos. How would it go? Meet at a speed dating thing, connect, go out for drinks, barriers slowly come down thanks to connection, mutual desire for intimacy and alcohol, get deep and meaningful around 2am, ask, “So why do you really want to murder humanity with outer space death rays? What’s all that about? That’s pretty messed up, actually. And yet you’re into speed dating.” Cut to the next morning and she’s frying eggs wearing one of your old Plastic Man t-shirts. Then if you ever broke up with her she’d very likely go all Circe on you and break out the death rays after all. Both you and humanity lose. One’d really want to make sure it was going to last forever before doffing the longjohns for a girl like that.
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I don’t know, they all sound like psychos. How would it go? Meet at a speed dating thing, connect, go out for drinks, barriers slowly come down thanks to connection, mutual desire for intimacy and alcohol, get deep and meaningful around 2am, ask, “So why do you really want to murder humanity with outer space death rays? What’s all that about? That’s pretty messed up, actually. And yet you’re into speed dating.” Cut to the next morning and she’s frying eggs wearing one of your old Plastic Man t-shirts. Then if you ever broke up with her she’d very likely go all Circe on you and break out the death rays after all. Both you and humanity lose. One’d really want to make sure it was going to last forever before doffing the longjohns for a girl like that.
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– Likes: Optimism. Peeping. Conversations with strangers. Driving cars. Water in all its forms. The violin. Peanuts. The Black Thunder chocolate bar (ブラックサンダ). A day. Joy. Dogs. Bicycling. Those dreams where you can fly.
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– Dislikes: Pretend optimism. Getting caught peeping. Social media. Those white things that people stick in their ears to prevent me from saying hello to them. Calvin & Hobbes, unless there was a comic which I missed where the little girl character Susie rips off Hobbes’ head and laughs at Calvin’s shock and misery for the next four panels, then his parents join in in the fifth. That would redeem it a bit.
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– Favourite joke: Q: What do you do when you see a spaceman? A: Park in it, man.
– Any thank you’s/shoutouts?: My publishers, Messrs Vado, Lee and Andre.
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Thank you to J Marc for his entertaining interview – Ness 🙂
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