FRANK HUSSEY: One thing I was thinking of is how you could look at previous artistic comics generations and schools and see how they've been inspired by and reacted against previous ones. You have underground cartoonists who were very familiar with the EC work, and yet clearly did work that was very different from that. You've got the early '80s generation of alternative cartoonists that were very familiar with the undergrounds, but were going in an opposite direction. And even art-style-wise, you look at the underground stuff, and the exemplar is Robert Crumb or Gilbert Shelton. It's more that Wolverton-ish spaghetti-type drawing, and then you get to the '80s and, of course, these guys are still the top sellers, and there's a huge diversity of styles and story techniques, almost all of them have that perfect, precise line: Los Bros. Hernandez, Clowes, Ware, Burns, of course there are several others. Now what I'm seeing is this new generation that is very different both in story and art from that group. What are the elements that either of you would see that as reacting against?

CRAIG THOMPSON: Well, I think my generation of cartoonists worship the Hernandez brothers, Dan Clowes and Chris Ware. Ware might be the most revered of them all, partly for his inventive formalism. For a lot of young cartoonists, Acme was the book that got them "hooked on comics." But I'll confess to reacting to what I perceived as a certain bleakness and cynicism in alternative comics. I deliberately aimed to produce something more lighthearted -- to steer away from the bitterness.

HUSSEY: Because you see it as so prevalent in the previous generation's work?

THOMPSON: To some extent. Of course, no one can read Jimmy Corrigan in its entirety and call it bleak and bitter -- in actuality, it's humane, sincere and wondrous! But my point of view has matured. All good cartoonists are aiming for honesty.

HUSSEY: Beto, I've got the sense that the younger generation of cartoonists in general are big fans of your generation. They're extremely well read of those cartoonists, but that the reverse is not necessarily true. How aware do you think your generation is of the younger generation's work? And how much do you think it's accepted or dismissed?

GILBERT HERNANDEZ: That's hard to say, because I don't really talk to anybody. [Laughter.] I'm not the perfect panelist. I come across stuff mostly in The Comics Journal. I never heard of a lot of the younger artists, until I read The Comics Journal, because I just can't keep up with it. I go to cons and I get stacks of minicomics that people want me to look at, which is great. But sometimes, I look at them, and they're really the beginnings of art, and I could see that the person wants to get into comics, and that's fun, right? And then they say, "I want a back-cover quote," because they're going to sell this thing. Are you fucking shitting me? [Laughter.] Like I said, at first it looks like they're just having fun, just banging off this comic. OK, great. But then it turns out that it's their magnum opus. So, I guess I put up a wall toward that after a while, because you meet so many people and get stacks and stacks of stuff. And since I am an ancient, old cartoonist, I gravitate toward the old style of doing comics -- mostly the art, not necessarily the writing. But the writing now is, from the younger people, at least an attempt to be adult or at least to communicate with people. My generation is still leaning a little bit toward a lot of stuff we read as kids, you know, those Jimmy Olsen things we were goofing on today [referring to a slide-show from earlier in the festival, in which Hussey mocked old Superman comics]. I like those comics. That might be hurting me, in a way.

THOMPSON: What about Chester Brown?

HERNANDEZ: I think Chester's a real good artist, but I think he's become a little full of himself in the last ten years. The Playboy and I Never Liked You are probably the best graphic novels next to Maus and Jason's Hey, Wait... so far. They're so complete and right-on. He was dicking around with Underwater: He said, "Oh, in ten years you're going to say it's the greatest thing!" Well, it's ten years later, and I still don't think it's the greatest thing. I have nothing much else to say about that, because I'm not reading Louis Riel; I'm waiting for the collection. I started buying it, this little tissue paper thing, and... I'll get the collection. Like I said, he's a great artist, but he's one of these guys who becomes lazy because he thinks he's so great, that he just has to do a panel once a month like Joe Matt. Joe Matt makes himself look like a turd in every issue, but that's because he just loves himself so much: "I'm so controversial!" His comic should be called Joe Matt. [Laughter.] But then again, these guys are good enough where I still look at their stuff... Mr. Contradiction covers his ass once again. [Laughter.]

HUSSEY: I've heard that Crumb feels this way to some degree, that he was the master, the one, and here's all these young turks coming up getting lots of praise and critical acclaim. Do you or Jaime have some sense of that between yourself and younger cartoonists?

HERNANDEZ: When we met Crumb, he was a little standoffish. All of a sudden, Crumb's not the meek little, "Oh, poor me" guy. He became the bully because he'd pick on Jaime a little.

THOMPSON: What'd he do?

HERNANDEZ: Well, he'd look at Jaime and...

THOMPSON: Push him over or something? [Laughter.]

HERNANDEZ: He basically wouldn't talk much to Jaime, just stare at him and laugh. It was really weird. "You're half my age and can draw really well. You're the guy they talk about all the time." Crumb's very competitive that way, which makes him strong in other ways, but I felt that tension, and it might have been that his wife was really flirty with us, too. [Laughter.] He pretends not to care, but I can tell...

THOMPSON: They have that open thing...

HERNANDEZ: Yeah, but you can feel the tension. Crumb goes, "Yeah, whatever." But Aline's pretty flirty. She's a real nice lady and I love her stuff. Anyway, so I do wonder, if I have resistance to younger artists, if it's the same thing. That I might have a little envy, or a little "Oh, they're taking my space!" There might be some of that, but it's hard to tell when you're there. Only a psychologist can rip it open and tell me. I can't tell myself. I just tell myself, "This is mediocre work: Why can't they draw as well as Mike Sekowsky?" or "This person isn't ready." I'm second-guessing myself. I do that all the time: "Am I finished?"

HUSSEY: Craig, let me ask you the previous question. How aware do you feel like the old generation is of this school's work in general, and how much do you feel that it's accepted or dismissed?

THOMPSON: To be honest, I don't think there is a big enough generation gap to warrant an entire panel discussion. [Long laughter.] OK, maybe there is, but we're really only about ten years apart in age. And on an immediate surface level, the older generation has been quite supportive. I recall meeting Chris Ware for the first time when I was a nervous, insecure fanboy with a single minicomic, and he had plenty of encouraging words.

HUSSEY: I don't expect there's acrimony...

THOMPSON: No, but there is often a fanboy/girl distance maintained by the younger generation. You'll witness alternative cartoonists lapsing into fanboy stupor when someone whose work they really respect is around. Of course it's silly, but I've still been too intimidated to talk to Dan Clowes. I've seen him a couple times, and I still can't do it.

HERNANDEZ: Well, you're safe because your work isn't like his at all. If it was a little closer to his, he'd be upset with you. [Laughter.] He's very competitive that way. But, it's healthy. He gets fired up to be the best cartoonist around.

THOMPSON: Jordan Crane and I were just talking at the last show and he said, "You know, Craig, it's weird: We're already 'old school' to these young new minicomics kids," which I thought was hilarious.

HUSSEY: Craig, do you see a problem with the ways in which comics like Love & Rockets have definitely been influenced by the commercial comics that their creators grew up with? I'm thinking of things like the continuing characters, the comics generally made with more of a focus on series than on the collected version. Those are qualities that Love & Rockets has. What do you think of those things?

THOMPSON: Well, because of its serial quality, it's impossible for a new reader to pick up a single Love & Rockets volume and comprehend the entire universe. There's an advantage to the self-contained graphic novel. And sometimes, because of the limited page count, the art/pacing in a serialized book can be overly dense, even cluttered. Newer comics tend to be more spacious and casually paced, because of the flexibility of the graphic-novel form -- often to a fault, though! Some graphic novels can be read in half an hour. More trees have to die...

HUSSEY: It seems readers are becoming more decisive. I know a lot of readers who completely dismiss the Top Shelf-like school of cartooning, period. I also hear people who say, "Dan Clowes is terrible. I used to like him. But he's horrible. I only like James Kochalka, Jordan Crane," pretty much down the list. I don't quite understand that whole reactionary thing they're going through. But I certainly hear that.

THOMPSON: Well, the European cartoonists, for instance, went through a much more dramatic overhaul from the traditional approach of spending a year on a meticulously rendered, 48-page album to the Trondheim revolution of churning out over 500 pages in a year. This was an obvious reaction to the "slow-poke" style.

HUSSEY: What strengths and weaknesses do you see in Gilbert and Dan Clowes' generation?

THOMPSON: I think draftsmanship and craft is vital; it's the skeleton of the drawing, what makes it worthwhile. But the "classical" cartooning style can also come off as over-labored and stiff. Ideally, we'd lay down a solid composition and dash off loose inking. That's what a lot of young cartoonists are aiming for. Unfortunately, we only have the "dashed-off" part down. [Laughter.] It's like people trying to be Picasso before they learn how to draw.

KIM THOMPSON: [From audience.] Like Frank Miller trying to be Hugo Pratt.

HERNANDEZ: It's funny; Frank Miller's gone so far that he's even more abstract now than a lot of these kids.

THOMPSON: I think there's something, too, from that generation, and this doesn't apply to Love & Rockets, so I can say it: Definitely Chester Brown -- who I love and is my favorite cartoonist -- and Dan Clowes, their earliest work is sometimes shocking or disturbing for disturbing's sake. Similar to the undergrounds. And now that that ground's been broken, it's no longer shocking -- it's boring, even -- eating boogers and bizarre freaky imagery...

HERNANDEZ: Dan used to draw humorous stuff, and once a nutty cartoonist becomes serious, they stay serious and their art tends to become rigid. I noticed his men are really bland and the women are like spaghetti and their lips stick out. They're all like that now, because he's being serious.

THOMPSON: I think his anatomy is amazing now. It seems like it's more based on active observation of the human body, as compared to those early Eightballs, where figures are abstracted, almost clunky.

HERNANDEZ: But they all have the same build, the same expression on their faces. He used to draw really ugly, funny people, and you can apply that to a serious story. You apply the nutty drawing to a serious story. But it seems like when a funny guy gets serious, like Woody Allen, everything has to become sane and restrained.

THOMPSON: Will Eisner.

HERNANDEZ: Will Eisner?

THOMPSON: He got serious.

HERNANDEZ: He got serious and, for a guy in his 80s, he does really well. He puts that stuff out, but I prefer The Spirit.

HUSSEY: At SPX, it was very obvious that there were definite factions: There's the Fantagraphics/D&Q clique, which was mostly talking to each other, and there's the Top Shelf/Alternative Press crowd, which was mostly talking to each other -- with some exceptions, of course. I wish I could remember the exact quote -- I think it was Kim [Thompson] who was trying to define what the difference between the groups was. It was the attitude, and it was like the Top Shelf crowd was very upbeat, very happy. Whereas the Fantagraphics/D&Q crowd was very downbeat, very pessimistic and kind of gleeful about it. [Laughter.]

GARY GROTH: [From audience.] You guys should bring Scott McCloud's name into the discussion at this point.

[-- which they do. To read the rest of this interview, please see The Comics Journal #258.]