Comics Bulletin logo
Search
  • Columns
    Random
    • Mondo Marvel #22 - February 1964

      Jason Sacks
      February 23, 2010
      Columns, Mondo Marvel
    Recent
    • Revisiting the Witchblade/Fathom/Tomb Raider Crossover

      Daniel Gehen
      February 8, 2021
    • The Full Run: Usagi Yojimbo – The Wanderer’s Road Part 2

      Daniel Gehen
      December 4, 2020
    • The Full Run: Usagi Yojimbo – The Wanderer’s Road Part 1

      Daniel Gehen
      October 30, 2020
    • What Looks Good
    • Comics Bulletin Soapbox
    • The Full Run
    • Leading Question
    • Top 10
    • The Long-Form
    • Jumping On
    • Comics in Color
    • Slouches Towards Comics
  • Big Two
    Random
    • 2.5

      Team-Up Review: Secret Wars #7 Shambles Along Like the Living Dead

      Jason Sacks
      November 19, 2015
      Big Two, Marvel Comics, Team-Up Review
    Recent
    • 3.0

      Review: X-MEN LEGENDS #1 Delivers A Dose of Nostalgia

      Daniel Gehen
      February 22, 2021
    • 4.5

      DCeased: Dead Planet #7 Presents a Hopeful Future (Review)

      Daniel Gehen
      January 22, 2021
    • Retro Review: Detective Comics #826 Remains a Holiday Classic

      Daniel Gehen
      December 3, 2020
    • DC Comics
    • Big Two Reviews
    • Marvel Comics
  • Indie
    Random
    • Singles Going Steady 5/9/2019: Toying With Emotions

      Jason Sacks
      May 9, 2019
      Archie Comics, Big Two, Big Two Reviews, DC Comics, Image, Indie, Marvel Comics, Reviews, Singles Going Steady
    Recent
    • 4.0

      Review: Beast Wars #2 another chance to change the past

      Stephen Cook
      March 3, 2021
    • 4.5

      Review: THE LAST RONIN #2 Hurts So Good

      Daniel Gehen
      February 19, 2021
    • TIME BEFORE TIME—A HIGH STAKES TIME TRAVEL SCIENCE FICTION SERIES SET TO LAUNCH THIS MAY

      Daniel Gehen
      February 19, 2021
    • Reviews
    • Archie Comics
    • Boom! Studios
    • Dark Horse
    • IDW
    • Image
    • Oni Press
    • Valiant
  • Reviews
    Random
    • REVIEW: Reborn #1

      Jason Sacks
      October 18, 2016
      Image, Indie, Reviews
    Recent
    • 3.0

      Review: X-MEN LEGENDS #1 Delivers A Dose of Nostalgia

      Daniel Gehen
      February 22, 2021
    • 4.5

      Review: THE LAST RONIN #2 Hurts So Good

      Daniel Gehen
      February 19, 2021
    • 2.3

      Review: SAVAGE #1 Needs Taming

      Daniel Gehen
      February 16, 2021
    • Singles Going Steady
    • Slugfest
    • Manga
      • Reviews
    • Small Press
      • Reviews
      • ICYMI
      • Tiny Pages Made of Ashes
  • Interviews
    Random
    • Exclusive Advance Interview: Matt Kindt on 'X-O Manowar: Agent'

      Jason Sacks
      May 24, 2018
      Indie, Interviews, Valiant
    Recent
    • Interview: Jon Davis-Hunt Talks SHADOWMAN

      Daniel Gehen
      June 8, 2020
    • Interview: Becky Cloonan talks DARK AGNES and Her Personal Influences

      Mike Nickells
      March 4, 2020
    • Simon Roy

      Interview: Simon Roy on His Inspirations and Collaborations on PROTECTOR

      Mike Nickells
      January 29, 2020
    • Audio Interview
    • Video Interview
  • Classic Comics
    Random
    • Classic Interview: Thom Zahler Pt. II - A One-Man Band, So to Speak

      Jason Sacks
      April 22, 2016
      Classic Interviews
    Recent
    • Countdown to the King: Marvel’s Godzilla

      Daniel Gehen
      May 29, 2019
    • Honoring A Legend: Fantagraphics To Resurrect Tomi Ungerer Classics

      Daniel Gehen
      February 15, 2019
    • Reliving the Craziest Decade in Comics History: An interview with Jason Sacks

      Mark Stack
      January 2, 2019
    • Classic Comics Cavalcade
    • Classic Interviews
  • News
    Random
    • Edinburgh International Book Festival Part Five

      Jason Sacks
      August 26, 2013
      News
    Recent
    • TIME BEFORE TIME—A HIGH STAKES TIME TRAVEL SCIENCE FICTION SERIES SET TO LAUNCH THIS MAY

      Daniel Gehen
      February 19, 2021
    • Image Comics and TMP Announces SPAWN’S UNIVERSE

      Daniel Gehen
      February 18, 2021
    • SAVAGE DRAGON IS A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH THIS MAY

      Daniel Gehen
      February 17, 2021
    • Press Release
    • Kickstarter Spotlight
  • Books
    Random
    • Review: 'Prison Island' is a Journey to a Close-by Strange Land

      Jason Sacks
      September 7, 2015
      Books, Reviews, Small Press
    Recent
    • Collecting Profile: Disney Frozen

      CB Staff
      November 22, 2019
    • Collecting Profile: NFL Superpro

      CB Staff
      August 31, 2019
    • “THE BEST OF WITZEND” is a Wonderful Celebration of Artistic Freedom

      Daniel Gehen
      September 15, 2018
    • Review: ‘Machete Squad’ is a Disappointing Afghan Memoir

      Jason Sacks
      July 31, 2018
    • Review: ‘Out of Nothing’ is the Antidote to Our Sick Times

      Jason Sacks
      July 23, 2018
    • Review: ‘Bizarre Romance’ Shows Rough Edges in the Early Days of a New Marriage

      Jason Sacks
      July 10, 2018
What's New
  • Review: Beast Wars #2 another chance to change the past
  • Collecting Profile: Blue Beetle
  • Review: X-MEN LEGENDS #1 Delivers A Dose of Nostalgia
  • Collecting Profile: Kraven the Hunter
  • Review: THE LAST RONIN #2 Hurts So Good
  • TIME BEFORE TIME—A HIGH STAKES TIME TRAVEL SCIENCE FICTION SERIES SET TO LAUNCH THIS MAY
  • RSS Feed
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Contact Us
  • Write for us!
  • Visit Video Game Break!
Home
Interviews

ILYA: Reality Can (and Probably Should) Be Expressionistic

Jason Sacks
November 27, 2013
Interviews

One of my favorite recent graphic novels is Room for Love, an intriguing May/September romance by the British writer/artist known as ILYA. Though unfortunately generally unknown in the US, ILYA has had decades of experience in comics, creating his own books, anthologizing others and teaching cartooning.

As you'll see from this interview, ILYA has some fascinating insights into the craft and medium of comics that makes this interview a real delight.


Jason Sacks for Comics Bulletin: What inspired you to create this May/September romance in comics form?

ILYA: I've answered this at some length in a set of blog postings for SelfMadeHero, which can be found here.

In short, it was a radio interview with Germaine Greer in the early 1990s that initially put the germ of a story idea into my head – a story engine, as it were: What would it be like to open up your home to somebody homeless?

The May to September element springs really from my desire to overload the odds, by making the two central characters such complete polar opposites – not only in age, but also class, religion, even sexuality. More than a romance, as such, I think of it as an "anti-romance".

Room for Love

CB: What was your inspiration for the relationship between Pamela and Cougar?

ILYA: They collide, more than anything. The hothouse atmosphere and their loneliness – one of the few things that they actually have in common – sort of drives them together, into each other's arms, seeking a little solace, human warmth, at any price. It is more like a slow-motion car crash. Sometimes, with people getting together, getting it on, it is more down to a lack of imagination on their part than anything else. In their right minds, or in any different situation, they might never dream of doing so, ending up together.

Once they have collided, it was up to me to follow through and work out or explore where they might then end up, or not, as this "odd couple".

CB: What was your approach for the art style and the contrasting colours between the two characters?

ILYA: Part of it arises out of necessity – I had to devise a shorthand cartoon or comics language for the two different worlds of two very different characters, one that is then modified or admixed once they have come together. I also wanted to explore for my own sake something a bit less illustrative, more sketched out, the colour scheme being only a part of this coded simplification. I'm not very into naturalistic or realistic representation. In cartoons or comics, really, that entirely misses the point.

I find it deeply ironic and not a little ridiculous that in the so-called mainstream of comics we've somehow ended up with an entire generation of moody gym grunters in wrinkly underpants or bad leather, instead of dashing and iconic superheroes. And all for being hung up on an entirely misplaced quest for "realism".

This story here is true to life, but even then the depiction of reality can (and probably should) be expressionistic.

Limbering up to go into full production on pages of Room for Love, I took inspiration from a number of existing comic book sources. I could see in my mind what I wanted and as and when an example of that passed me by in my wide-ranging forages, I made notes accordingly.

The following are for the most part very much touchstones rather than outright influences in this respect. Do seek them out if you don't already know them:

  • Helen Lord, UK – Here Comes Everyone (self-published)
  • Michel Fiffe, USA – Zegas (self published)
  • Igort, Italia – Letters from Korea (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)
  • Posy Simmonds, UK – ‘Ask Doctor Derek', faux hospital-set romance from Literary Life (Cape)

CB: The romance between Pamela and Cougar seems fated for failure from the moment these people meet; do you think under other circumstances they could have stayed together?

ILYA: I honestly don't see how. As you say, it is doomed to fail.

For sure they do make some sort of genuine connection – they do get on. But they should never have ended up in a sexual relationship, and there's nothing there that could sustain one for very long. It comes about as a reflex result of their isolation, their loneliness, their desperate and disparate need for love, to love.

Room for Love

CB: I know many of the events in this book are based on real incidents; can you share a favourite story or two?

ILYA: Again I should really point you at the blog on the SelfMadeHero site, but I will say here that a version of their meeting on the bridge happened to me in real life. The events in this book are much more "true to life" than they are "true life", however. There's very little here that is autobiographical, beyond the exercise of my creative antennae and observation of life as it lived. As with pretty much everything that I write I am in all of my characters, and yet none of them. If it feels real, or at least convincing to the reader, then I'm doing my job.

CB: As someone who's been involved in comics for decades, how do you see the artform evolving? Do you think there would have been a place for Room for Love ten years ago?

ILYA: I came up with the basis for this storyline 20 years ago and took numerous previous runs at getting it into print, or on film – for the Japanese market, the American market, Hollywood. I think I might have succeeded with it at any point, yes. But, you know, I didn't. So much of that is down to being in the right place, right time, almos
t regardless of content.

The artform evolves, for sure, yet so very far ahead of the market and what the general audience is aware of. The market progresses – if at all – at a crawl.

There's a lot wider range of materials/genres available now, online, in the bookstores, and self-published, but it remains almost impossible for any creator to make anything like a decent living at it, unless they are at the very top of the sales charts. Getting a shot at publication doesn't get any easier.

We're kind of coffee-table acceptable now, as a medium, but this doesn't necessarily translate into broad sales. We definitely need to be more widely available, better distributed, both in demand and immediately accessible, and unfortunately the newsstand sales don't exist anymore. The web is still finding its feet as a conduit for commercial creation.

Comics or "graphic novels" will remain in a bubble until there's much more in the way of pulp content – sport, sex, biography, crime, horror, and so on – straight up and unashamed, without sophisticated gloss. It's all a bit worthy just now, and that's simply not enough.

CB: What is the most important advice that you give your students?

ILYA: Be original – wear your influences but find your own voice. Make comics that look like they could only have been made this year, and only by you. And don't give up your copyright for nothing. Never, if possible: Grant a license, but always retain your copyright in your own characters or creation. And try and make sure to get paid at least something for your time.

CB: Who are some of your favourite cartoonists in the next generation?

ILYA: Ross Campbell, Sean Gordon Murphy, Richard Short, Asia Alfasi, Katja Hammond, Liz Suburbia, Joe Sparrow, Jim Rugg, Paul B Rainey…rising stars, all, however old and broken they might be!…there are so many, I could happily list them all day. Despite the woes of the market, I don't think there's ever been a better or more innovative time in this medium. Stuff is just busting out all over…what Tom Scioli is doing with Satan's Soldier and the aforementioned Michel Fiffe in his Copra comic shows that even superheroes like what grandpa loves don't have to be predictable.

Room for Love

CB: I know you published several volumes of manga anthologies. This sort of book seems like it would be much more common in Japan. Do you see English speaking comic readers as embracing more types of comics, in the same way that Japanese readers do?

ILYA: There's no good reason why not, just a huge big hole in editorial knowledge within book publishing, and no real distribution channels for it all, no advertising budgets capable of reaching the average reader or new readers. You are spot on with what you surmise about Japan, where comics or manga are happily embedded within the true mainstream of their culture. This is what I was trying to do with the three annual book volumes of The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga (2006-8) that you refer to – the operable word in the title being New. In the mix of styles and genres showcased, representing a truly international spectrum of original creators influenced and inspired by manga – and not just replicating what they saw from Japan. And these books I only edited, not published, that was Constable & Robinson.

Each anthology volume of BNM was really only akin to one of Japan's weekly magazines. What we could only publish once a year, happens about 400 times every week over there! So, we've a long, long way yet to go…

Everything's potential!

CB: What are your next projects?

ILYA: How long have you got?

Foremost I guess is Kid Savage, in collaboration with American writer Joe Kelly, for Man of Action. We're 80 pages done of a 120-page or so first volume of that, planned as an ongoing series. We're spending some of his Ben10 money on producing it, which is a cool, independent place to be creating from. Plus universe-building from the ground up is a ball!

More Mammoth anthologies – The Mammoth Book of SKULLS and The Mammoth Book of CULT COMICS – are in the pipeline. I have my editor hat on for those.

Then there's Dog Eat Dog myself as writer this time, in collaboration with a Bosnian artist Amir Idrizovic, who I met at an arts biennale in Turin, Italy, back in 2000.

Pantheon, a new solo concept. Others that it is too soon to talk about. Possible assignments for Cityreads, for whom I partially adapted Oliver Twist last year; more medicine-based comics (I've done work for comic company for twenty years, although this is something new and different); potentially some reportage about the Syrian situation; I'm also keen to get a lot of my stuff that has fallen out of print – which is most of it, unfortunately – collected into single volumes and available once again. That's probably enough to be getting on with!

I‘m not so very good at self-promotion and especially not when it comes to talking about my work. Although I'm trying to get better at it. Whenever I get asked about what I'm busy on – which is all the time really, you think I'd be better prepared – I just panic and my mind goes blank. Which, considering how much I do, is a tad foolish and ironic. But there you go.

ILYAJason Sacks

Share On:
Tweet
Review: ‘The Madison Square Tragedy’ brings history to life in the sort of documentary form that only Rick Geary could create
TJ Comics Black Friday/Small Press Saturday Sale!

About The Author

<a href="http://comicsbulletin.com/byline/jason-sacks/" rel="tag">Jason Sacks</a>
Jason Sacks
Publisher Emeritus
Google+

Jason Sacks has been obsessed with pop culture for longer than he'd like to remember. Jason has been writing for Comics Bulletin for nearly a decade, producing over a million words of content about comics, films and other media. He has also been published in a number of publications, including the late, lamented Amazing Heroes, The Flash Companion and The American Comic Book Chronicles: the 1970s,1980s and 1990s. Find him on Facebook and Twitter. Jason is the Publisher Emeritus of Comics Bulletin.

Related Posts

  • Reliving the Craziest Decade in Comics History: An interview with Jason Sacks

    Mark Stack
    January 2, 2019
  • Top 10 Thoughts About Jack Kirby

    Jason Sacks
    August 28, 2017

Latest Interviews

  • Interview: Jon Davis-Hunt Talks SHADOWMAN

    Daniel Gehen
    June 8, 2020
  • Interview: Becky Cloonan talks DARK AGNES and Her Personal Influences

    Mike Nickells
    March 4, 2020
  • Simon Roy

    Interview: Simon Roy on His Inspirations and Collaborations on PROTECTOR

    Mike Nickells
    January 29, 2020
  • Interview: V.E. Schwab on revisiting Red London in The Steel Prince

    Stephen Cook
    March 13, 2019
  • Interview: David Foster Wallace and Hellblazer, words on Wyrd with writer Curt Pires

    Stephen Cook
    February 27, 2019
  • “The Night Has Teeth” An Interview with Sarah deLaine, Artist of Image Comics’ “Little Girls”

    Jason Sacks
    February 26, 2019
  • Interview: Caitlin Kittredge talks the future of Witchblade

    Daniel Gehen
    February 12, 2019
  • Interview: Andy Nakatani and the Future of Weekly Shonen Jump

    Daniel Gehen
    December 19, 2018
  • INTERVIEW: Todd Matthy talks robots, princesses, and bridging the divide with storytelling

    Stephen Cook
    September 13, 2018
  • INTERVIEW: Gallaher & Ellis discuss THE ONLY LIVING GIRL

    Daniel Gehen, Thea Srinivasan
    September 7, 2018
RSSTwitterFacebookgoogleplusinstagramtumblr

Comics Bulletin is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for website owners to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com, audible.com, and any other website that may be affiliated with Amazon Service LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, Comics Bulletin earns from qualifying purchases.

All content on this site (c) 2018 The Respective Copyright Holders