An Interview With Thom Zahler - Making Comics With Love (and Capes)
/Written by Bryan Stroud
Thom Zahler at Baltimore Comic Con 2018.
Thomas F. Zahler is an American comic book artist best known for his superhero romance comic, Love and Capes. He attended the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art where he learned from instructors like Irwin Hasen and Hal Campagna. In 2006, Thom debuted the first issue of his popular superhero/romantic-comedy series, Love and Capes. Zahler wrote and drew 24 issues of L&C (across three series) before moving on to find further success in other creator owned titles such as Long Distance (IDW), Warning Label (WebToon), and Time and Vine (IDW).
Thom has frequently contributed (as a writer and artist) to the My Little Pony comics from IDW and (as a writer) to the Disney XD cartoon Spider-Man: Web Warriors. He also wrote the pilot episode of the "Knights of the Zodiac" Netflix anime series, set to debut later in 2019.
Thom Zahler might seem a bit out of place in my roster of interviewees and he was actually suggested to me as a potential interviewee by a friend and I'm so glad he was brought to my attention. A successful graduate of the Kubert School and a man influenced by some of the comics I loved as a boy, he fit in pretty nicely, I think.
This interview originally took place over the phone on December 24, 2011.
Love and Capes (2006) #1 by Thom Zahler.
Bryan Stroud: You mentioned in our preliminary e-mails that you grew up on Bronze Age comics with a little Silver Age thrown in. Which titles did you enjoy?
Thom Zahler: I was a huge Justice League fan. I loved Superman. I read mostly DC. I went through my phases on all of them. I think I was drawn to the books because they were never as continued as Marvel. Marvel books just didn’t seem to end. When you’re getting comics based on when your parents decide to buy them, it’s important. You don’t know when you’re going to get that next issue of “Flash.” So, the fact that a story would end cleanly was kind of important.
Stroud: A man after my own heart. I was going through the same thing, but in my case, it was whenever I could scrounge a quarter somewhere.
Zahler: My parents had comics as a reward program for me because I was reading from a pretty early age. So, if I cleaned my room, I got a comic. That kind of thing. It would be like a comic a week and it worked out pretty well. I enjoyed Justice League a lot and I went through my Legion phase for a while. Shazam! Captain Marvel. And then I started retroactively buying them. Because comics used to be where you bought them at a convenience store and then went to a comic shop. When I started going to comics shops, I realized that DC published those 100-page for .60 collections and some of the giant treasury editions, so that’s where I started getting the Silver Age and some of the Golden Age stuff. They would reprint that stuff kind of relentlessly. You’d get a new 16-page Justice League story and everything else would be a reprint and I just ate that stuff up.
Stroud: It was like finding buried treasure. How else would you ever run across those stories unless you had an older sibling who still had their collection?
I suspected a strong Justice League influence when I looked at your work online (loveandcapes.com). I thought, “Hmmm. A satellite above the earth for a headquarters; the Liberty League, hmmm… I think I can see an influence here.” (Mutual laughter.)
Love and Capes (2006) #1 pg1 by Thom Zahler.
Zahler: Exactly. I love that era.
Stroud: At what point did you decide, “Hey. I’d like to try this.”
Zahler: Honestly, I have known all my life. There was never a point where I didn’t think I was going to be a cartoonist. I knew when I was 8 or 9 my Aunt Alice got me a copy of “How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way,” and that was the first book that really kicked things into gear.
Stroud: Ah, John Buscema.
Zahler: Yes. My Dad did art a little bit before he went off to Vietnam and when he came back, he ended up working for the post office. My aunt did some art and my grandpa did some art. That whole side of the family is pretty talented as far as art goes and drawing was encouraged and it was never looked at like it was a novelty. It was just something you did. But when I got “How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way” it was the first book that started to really take apart the process and I started learning how things were made. I remember reading where you need to have a compass to draw circles and I asked for a compass from my Dad’s art supplies and he said, “Why don’t you just use my ellipse guide?” “No, it says here that you have to use a compass, so I’m using a compass.”
But it was the first book to explain how to draw characters beginning with stick figures and basic shapes and how to do construction and while there are a bunch of books like that now, but at the time that was the only one of its kind as far as I know. And I still think it’s one of the best.
Stroud: I got a copy not long ago and it does appear to be a wonderful resource, even though I lack any kind of artistic talent, though what is it Joe Kubert says? Something like if you have the desire and put in the time you can do it, but I suspect I’m the exception to the rule. (Chuckle.)
Zahler: Well, he asked me for some money when he was teaching me, so maybe that’s part of it. (Mutual laughter.)
Weekly World News (2010) #2B, cover by Thom Zahler.
Stroud: I think it’s fantastic that you weren’t discouraged during your early interest. I had the privilege of interviewing Ric Estrada shortly before he passed away and he remarked, speaking of his time as one of the original instructors at the Kubert School, that quite often he’d run across the typical scenario where the words “art” and “starve” automatically go together while he tried to explain to people that there are the Walt Disney’s and others who have proven otherwise.
Zahler: There is very much commercial and fine art. I was always able to find regular meals. My Dad was very okay with the whole idea. It was my Mom who was more resistant, but it was an education process. Because of the notion of the freelance lifestyle and the way comics work and so forth. Freelance art work is very different from most people’s experience. To a certain degree it’s like, “Hey, I want to go to the NBA,” or “I want to become a rock star.” People succeed every day, but it’s a pretty rarified number who do. And it takes a great deal of education to help them understand that there are a lot more places where art and cartooning are used than what you might think, because when you tell people you’re a cartoonist, they will automatically think Disney, newspapers or comics. I’ve got a friend who’s redesigned Willy Wonka for the Willy Wonka Chocolate bars and I‘ve done stuff for Prilosec for one of their TV ad campaigns and there are just a lot of places where cartoons are used and people miss it. But it’s still there. There’s a lot more work out there than people give credit for.
Stroud: Precisely. I think it was Don Perlin who told me he used to do technical drawings like those exploded diagrams for repair manuals and such and it had never occurred to me that, yeah, someone has to draw those. I think it’s absolutely right that we see it every day, but don’t see it. Another example struck me when I saw a billboard and realized, at some point, someone had to lay that out. When we lived in Japan, I took note of their heavy use of cartoon characters instead of human models in advertising.
Zahler: Wasn’t it Scott McCloud who hypothesizes that one of the reasons cartoons are so successful is that they strip away so much information? With something complicated if you break it down into a cartoon, you’re left with just the basic concepts of it. It’s more like a direct line, where your brain isn’t processing, “Oh, this is a person and that’s his reaction,” whereas if you see a smiley face, two lines and a smile, you instantly know what it is and what it means and it gets to you faster that way.
The Green Hornet (1991) #32 pg17, penciled by Rich Suchy & inked by Thom Zahler.
Stroud: That makes very good sense. Did you have any favorite creators from your days as a fan?
Zahler: Curt Swan was one of my favorites. He was the not the first artist I recognized. The first artist I recognized was Kurt Schaffenberger, because he drew the “S” shield just a little bit differently than everybody else, but afterward Curt Swan was the one I got into because his style was just so solid. It may not have always been the most interesting layouts, but he never made a mistake.
I went through my George Perez phase, and of course I still like his work. That’s when you got into the whole detail thing and George executes it very well, but a lot of times people will look at very detailed art and think that’s what makes it good whereas I have since gotten more into the Bruce Timm/Darwyn Cooke school and their stuff is so simple, but it has everything you need in it. So clean and oh so perfect. But yeah, early on it was definitely Kurt and Curt as the main two and I’m a big fan of Gerry Conway’s writing. Roy Thomas as well.
Gerry created Firestorm and he was the first new character to come out while I was collecting. I think the first issue #1 that I ever picked up was his. Probably Steel #1 was the second because I think they came out the same month. But Firestorm was the first new character that came out and the first where I got in on the ground floor of the character. A lot of it was bringing that Spider-Man sensibility to DC. It was nice seeing a second-tier character and I know I’ve said it somewhere else before, but I loved it when Firestorm came to the Justice League. He was the screw-up. I think as far as a writer goes, it was a very brave move for Gerry to take his character and make him the dumbest character on the team. But it also gave the character…Superman is going to be Superman and isn’t going to make rookie mistakes or see things the wrong way. Generally, he’s going to be right. So what was nice is that Firestorm is the one who would react to a problem with, “Oh, we’re completely hosed. There’s no way we’re going to get out of it.” The Justice League takes him aside and it’s “We’re the Justice League. We’re going to figure this out.” I thought it was really interesting to see that dynamic and I think it’s something that gets lost in some team books.
Love and Capes (2006) #2 by Thom Zahler.
In the 80’s you’d have situations where half the cast was characters who had their own books, but the other half of the cast existed only in the Justice League with Green Arrow, Elongated Man, Black Canary, and what that let you do was have a core of characters that you could actually play with and have stuff happen to them in the course of the book and the main characters, the bigger characters were still in the book and interacted with them, but you wouldn’t get a revelation in Superman’s life in the Justice League title, it would happen in the Superman books. You would get a revelation in Hawkman’s life in Justice League, because it was the only place he was appearing.
Stroud: An astute observation. You’re right, too on Firestorm that he did become something of comedy relief for lack of a better term. The Marvel sensibility observation is dead on, too. Al Milgrom confirmed to me that his cover on Firestorm #1 was his attempt at vintage Kirby.
You graduated from the Kubert School. What stands out in your mind from that time period?
Zahler: All of it is a bit of a blur. It was very much boot camp for artists. I enjoyed the people I went to school with and I had as good a time as you could for as hard as you were being worked. It wasn’t always completely pleasant, because it’s a factory. You do 10 classes a week and each is about 2-1/2 hours long. At least this is what it was like when I went there. So you do 10 assignments a week. By the time I came home I think I’d done a hundred projects, which was kind of unheard of, at least to me.
Stroud: Holy cow.
Zahler: It was amazing how much they got you into the process of getting it done. There wasn’t a lot of coddling like you sometimes hear about. You know, how artists have to be inspired to get the work done? No. It was more like, “It’s due next week. Go!” And there’s a lot to be said for it. I hate telling up and coming artists that practice is important, because that’s what everybody told me and it’s not that I didn’t think it was true, it’s just that I understand that I need practice, but what else can I do besides just practice? I’ve heard that it’s the part that I have to do, and it’s amazing how much better you got just because of the repetition of working every day and late into the night, although I never pulled an all-nighter at Kubert. I knew a lot of people that did, but apparently, I had either low standards or a good work ethic. I probably didn’t pull any all-nighters until after I graduated. I’ve pulled a couple since, but not when I was at school.
Love and Capes (2006) #4 FCBD by Thom Zahler.
Stroud: Fascinating. I’ve spoken to a few of the instructors like Dick Ayers, Hy Eisman and Irwin Hasen.
Zahler: Irwin was one of my teachers. Hy was at the school and I don’t have any proof of this, but my last name begins with a “Z” and during my classes my first year it feels like the typical instructors got the first four classes because they’re held Monday and Tuesday and they teach A, B, C and D and we in E got the weird instructors, meaning the ones who didn’t fit that mold. Hy Eisman taught lettering and he’s legendary for how he taught lettering at the Kubert School. He was not my lettering teacher. Hal Campagna who did “Bringing Up Father” was. Oddly, I’m one of the guys out of my class who got a career as a letterer out of school. So, everybody talks about, “Oh, yeah, Hy Eisman is the lettering teacher,” and it’s “No. I’m the guy who didn’t have Hy.” I didn’t have the same animation teacher as everybody else, either. My instructors for some reason seemed to be different.
Stroud: I’ve forgotten what Irwin’s curriculum involved.
Zahler: I think he taught Basic Drawing 2 and 3. It was basically an illustration class. Some of the course descriptions got a little vague. I had Bart Sears as a teacher for story adaptation where we ended up drawing a lot of comic book pages. We illustrated some Doc Savage stuff, but it was a lot more comic book storytelling class than the class it was actually purported to be. There were teachers who took advantage of things, in a good way, to teach you something beyond what you were being taught, just by virtue of the class. So, in storytelling, for example, I remember doing some wash drawings because we had to buy some gray paint to make it really work. We were doing wash drawings and paintings that weren’t really typical, but it was what Bart wanted to teach us. In addition to these assignments and stories it was something he wanted to teach us during that time. Irwin’s class was Basic Drawing for the second and third year and he was one of the few teachers who…when you draw on a chalkboard it’s very different than drawing on paper. The angle of the board is wrong and the medium is different. You can’t finesse it the way you can with a pencil and it was interesting how he could just walk up and draw something on a board and it would look the same as if he had drawn it on paper.
Stroud: Were there any particular lessons that were more valuable than others or was it just a grand whole?
Zahler: There are several, but one is that I took a caricature class and I didn’t like it and I didn’t see why I had to take it and I didn’t want to do caricatures for a living, but I had kind of based my life off a line from a Batman comic, from Dark Knight when Alfred is trying to tell him that hey, you’ve got to have a backup plan and Batman says, “Can’t have a back door, might be tempted to use it.” I was one of those irritatingly smart kids in high school. Phi Beta Kappa, National Merit Scholar, all of that stuff. But I wanted to make sure I didn’t have anything to fall back on. I wanted to be an artist. It was either that or live in a refrigerator box. Those were my options.
Stroud: (Laughter.)
Zahler: I made sure I went to art school to where that was all I could do. I took caricature class because they told me I had to, but I thought, “Man, I’m never going to use this stuff.” Well, first thing when I got out of school, I was doing caricatures in an amusement park because I had cleverly structured it so that it was all I knew how to do.
That was just a lesson in the idea that if someone wants you to learn something it’s probably not a bad idea to learn it. Even if you don’t think you’re going to need it. It’s been a pretty invaluable skill in my toolbox. For a while about a third of my income was from doing caricatures. When you’re starting out it’s great to actually manage to make a living. Ever since I graduated, I have managed to make a living as an artist. I was always using the skills from school to do it.
Mike Chen taught the business of art and he taught narrative art and he had a very professorial way of teaching, but there was also a lot of learning how to give a client what he wants. It wasn’t that you were doing the drawing you wanted to do, it was that you were doing the drawing based on an assignment he was giving you. Learning how to fulfill the needs of a client is a very important skill to learn in the actual narrative storytelling you were learning.
Love and Capes (2006) #6 by Thom Zahler.
Love and Capes (2006) #7 by Thom Zahler.
Love and Capes (2006) #8 by Thom Zahler.
In the same way I’ve done some teaching. Usually after school programs or little day classes. I don’t think I have the patience and the temperament to teach long term. But Bart Sears was drawing “Justice League Europe” while he was one of my teachers. We were second year students and I know that among the continuum of students I went to school with I was a pretty good utility infielder, but I was never going to be the million-dollar franchise player. You’d show your work to Bart and he knew it wasn’t as good as it should be and you just felt very aware of the difference in your skills as compared to Bart’s. Bart would look at a page and say, “Oh, I really like how you did…” and he’d point something out where you had a really interesting composition, or you drew something particularly well and then he would tear the rest of the page apart. But the thing that would happen is that he would tell you the one good thing that you had done. He’d let you know that you had redeeming value.
Love and Capes (2006) #12 by Thom Zahler.
There are those teachers who will just tear things apart. They’ll say, “Well, I shouldn’t have to tell you all the good stuff because I shouldn’t have to prop you up. I’m just going to tell you the stuff that you need to fix.” And it becomes kind of relentless and you end up questioning the value of the product you’re doing. His teaching style was the kind that helped you see that, “Hey, I realize what you’re doing, and then make sure that you’re on the right path and then I can tell you everything after that.” That’s something I’ve tried to do, because I was just really impressed with how well he did that.
Stroud: That certainly seems to me like a much more viable method, particularly in an artistic environment. I noticed that you’re basically a one-man band. You write, do the art, letterer, colorist, publisher…do you do windows, too?
Zahler: I do them around the house. I’m the only person I know who will work for my own crappy rate. (Mutual laughter.)
Stroud: Is it more satisfying doing the entire project or does it create its own frustrations?
Zahler: I think more satisfying, at this point, for lack of a better term, is that it’s become more incestuous. Because when you’re learning traditional comic book work, you’re taught to make your pencils as clear as possible for the inker. And I’ve been doing my own stuff for so long, especially with Love and Capes, that it’s become very hard for me to break out the process. I know people who have encouraged me to get an intern or an assistant to help speed up the process. There are times when Love and Capes, as much as I love it, is not necessarily an immediate source of revenue. It’s generally a back-end source of revenue and it’s one of those things I’ve done to promote myself as a creator, but it doesn’t make my house payment. At least not at this point. So, I’m taking on other client work and it’s important to get that stuff taken care of along with everything else. With the book I don’t have a clear point of demarcation any more where I can just hand it off to somebody.
Love and Capes: Ever After (2011) #1 by Thom Zahler.
I started out as a letterer, so I doubt I’d ever give that up anyway, but I write the script when I write the book. I dialogue when I’m lettering it, because I’m both the letterer and the writer. I can do that. The effort of having to section out one of those tasks so I can hand it off to somebody would likely take me as much time as just doing the job myself. But also, it’s a project which I decided to try, because I thought it would be a good idea. I didn’t have to worry about taking anyone else down with me.
When I did Free Comic Book Day, there’s a point where you say, “Hey, I’m going to take this brand new book,” because I did an original for every Free Comic Book Day, “and essentially give it away for free “, and there might be a lot of people who would say that was a bad idea. I didn’t have to convince anyone, because I’m the only one who works for me and I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to pay everybody else in this chain not knowing how well the book was going to do. It sets me up so that I can take the risk myself. It’s not only a product I can put out, but it makes it easier for me to decide things without having to worry about providing for other people along the way.
Stroud: So there are definitely some liberating aspects to it.
Zahler: Very much so. It allows you to take the risks and also my inker is never waiting for pages from me. It’s a remarkably streamlined process. Since I don’t have to give out anything to anyone else it’s just easier. Communication is obviously internal. It’s just me and the mirror. I don’t have to worry about messing up somebody else’s schedule. If the client comes in at the last minute and I have to do a caricature for them, I’m not messing anyone else up. It allows me to fit it into the parts of my day where it will fit in without having to worry about messing anyone else’s world up.
Stroud: I imagine it’s nice, too, to not worry about someone not catching your vision of what you wanted to happen on the page. (Mutual laughter.) Love and Capes began in 2006, correct?
Zahler: I think you’re right. I started the book the year before and it came out in February at MegaCon and it was in stores in June, I think. It was originally released to the public the same week that “Superman Returns” came out, which I think was ’06. It just gets a little blurry because I know that I was doing work on it before it was published, so it had been with me a little longer than it has everyone else.
Love and Capes: Ever After (2011) #1 Cast of Characters by Thom Zahler.
Stroud: Of course. I imagine it’s been gratifying with how well it’s been received.
Zahler: That’s just been amazing. It’s not the first project I wrote and drew myself, but it’s the first one that people noticed. One of the things I did was to do a bunch of guerrilla marketing techniques, especially with the first issue. I worked with Mid-Ohio Con and got them to advertise in the first issue to help pay for the printing, but part of the deal was that I would give out 100 copies at each convention I did that year so they would get their ad out. I would find whatever the longest line was. So, at Comic Con I went to the line waiting for Joss Whedon and I just gave out a bunch of them figuring that people want to read comics. They don’t generally turn down a free book. They’re going to check it out. And people would show up at my table afterward and say, “Oh, I read this and this part was so funny and I love how you did this.” It was the first book I started getting that kind of reaction to. People had read the book I’d done and I knew they liked it, because it was causing people to come up and talk to me afterward.
I’ve also been impressed with the number of people who are much better than me that seem to like the book. When I found out Kurt Busiek was a big fan of the book it just seemed bizarre. I know Mark Waid had been giving him copies of the book, but I never actually had any proof that he was reading them. Because when you give somebody copies of a book for free, you generally don’t quiz them on it afterward. I like Mark’s stuff and if he’s reading, great. I didn’t know if he’d like them or not and we’d see each other for such little periods of time that I wasn’t following up on it. We were at MegaCon and we were talking about the sixth issue and he’s talking about how he really likes this part and he’s squeezing his fist which involved the last panels in issue six, and what I thought was cool was that I realized he was doing it so that he didn’t spoil the book for anyone else who was in the line. That’s when I realized, “Oh, my god. He’s reading the book and he’s enjoying it.” It was great.
Love and Capes: Ever After (2011) #2 by Thom Zahler.
Stroud: I know this isn’t news, but I see Tony Isabella praising you to the rooftops at every opportunity.
Zahler: Yes, he is. Tony’s a friend of mine, but most of my friends don’t have any problem telling me when I’m screwing up.
Stroud: It looks like you have a wonderful mix of topical humor along with hero clichés. Does it seem to flow together pretty naturally? What’s your creative process like?
Zahler: The latest arc is a little bumpy for me because every iteration of Love and Capes is getting farther and farther away from my area of expertise. The way Love and Capes is set up is that every 6 issues is essentially like a TV season. I write in 6-issue arcs. That’s my commitment when I start the project, because a lot of independent publishers will go, “I’m going to do this 52-issue Magnum Opus,” and then get 3 issues in and run out of money. So, I did the first issue as a standalone and if I do issue #2, then I’m going to do issue #6. Every time I start up, I look on the horizon and say, “This is a reasonable amount of work that I can do and this is the amount of work that I’m going to do. As a self-publisher, I can afford to do it.
So, the first 6 issues are about them dating, and I’ve dated people before. The next 6 issues are about them being engaged and I haven’t been engaged before, but I’ve thought about it and when your friends get engaged, you’re very involved in that process. Then this third arc is about them being married. I haven’t been married before, but I’ve seen other people be married and I have friends my own age who are, so I’ve got some good reference. But now, Abby is pregnant, and I’ve got no idea. My friend Colleen lent me her book, “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Being Pregnant,” so I burned through that just trying to get a better feel for everything that’s involved and to try to come up with story ideas that you wouldn’t necessarily think of.
I tend to write page by page. I will know where a story is going to begin and end, but I don’t necessarily know the middle. Recently I’ve had a couple of books where the ending kind of changes based on what I initially planned. I killed off a character in the most recent issue from IDW; Love and Capes: Ever After #5. I know I said 6-issue arcs, but I had done a Free Comic Book Day issue as #13, so 13 issues plus the IDW make that 6-issue arc. I’d killed a character off and originally it was going to be a lot funnier, but then the ending wound up being different. Because I was at the funeral of a guy I’d gone to school with. It was just monumentally crowded and there was honestly an hour and a half wait to get up to see the body and the family. So I had a lot of time to think, and I thought, “Man. It had to be really rough being a superhero when somebody dies, because you go the funeral, but you can’t say ‘How do you know him?’ or you have to come in with a cover story.”
Love and Capes: Ever After (2011) #3 by Thom Zahler.
That’s kind of how I arrived at wanting to do some stuff about death in comics and how transient it is. So there’s a scene where the superheroes are actually checking out the body and they’re going through a litany of the ways people get resurrected. Just make sure that none of those are actually in play for this case. I think in terms of comic book storytelling the reader empirically knows that everything is transient, especially in a world where we’ve brought back Barry Allen and Bucky. That nobody is actually dead forever in comics, but the important part is to make the characters think that the character is dead forever. Or you can play against that if you really want to. But it’s kind of the same way you know that Superman is probably going to take care of whatever menace he’s facing. It’s just a matter of making the ride interesting enough and making the story engaging enough that you’re not as concerned about the fact that you kind of ultimately know how it all ends. So, in the same way I wanted to deal with superheroes who get them to the point that they’re not worried about it being a real death. It is a real death, now what are we going to do?
Past that, I write on Post-It notes, because every Love and Capes pages is 8 panels. There are two 4-panel sequences. My friend Bill Williams who does the books for Lone Star Press in the days before the iPad pointed out to me that a comic book page is vertical. A computer monitor is horizontal. So if you’re going to do a comic that you’re going to put on a website you might as well cut the comic book page in half, turning it into a monitor size because the act of scrolling down is kind of an unnatural reading act. So, part of Love and Capes comes from things like Bloom County, which I’m a huge fan of, but just that 4-panel gag format.
Also, when I did the first issue I didn’t know if it was going to do well enough for me to keep doing print books, so I wanted a way to keep doing it on the website. Just because Love and Capes tended to be 3-panel, beat, 3-panel, beat format, so I write it on Post-It notes and put it on my kitchen wall because it’s the longest wall in the house that doesn’t have anything on it. Then I can move the book around as I need to from there. Sometimes the note will be, “Something funny happens here,” which I hate when I write that, because eventually I have to do it.
Stroud: (Chuckle.)
Love and Capes: Ever After (2011) #3 pg1 by Thom Zahler.
Zahler: There’s a little bit of music to it. It will be, “Okay, I’ve got this scene with Crusader and Abby and there’s another scene of Crusader and Abby later on and I need to have something happen in between so I need to have this beat happen where I focus on these two characters and…better.” But it allows me to see the book and say, “Okay, page 15 is the last of the first page of the Mark and Abby scene, page 17 and 18 are going to be a Darkblade scene and page 19 at the end of the book is going to be the final scene, so it’s a good tool to write visually. Originally being trained as an artist makes it my natural wheelhouse.
Stroud: I presume you produce your work on the computer? It seems hardly anyone does it on the board much anymore.
Zahler: It’s half and half. I pencil by hand and I ink by hand. With Love and Capes, I’m inking on marker paper; layout paper. Through a light box. Then I scan it in and I color it and I composite it very much like an animated series format where I’ve designed the bookstore and once I’ve designed the bookstore I don’t have to keep redrawing it unless the characters are directly interacting with some element. I’ve gotten better and better at creating sets that are much more useful. Mark and Abby buy an apartment building at one point and the original beat up apartment that they were remodeling for a couple of issues, the banister up to the second floor was one piece of artwork, so when I’d draw them I’d have to redraw the banister because it had to be in front of the characters. When they finally remodeled it, I figured out my lesson and just did a second layer on Photoshop and now I don’t have to redraw the banister every time somebody goes upstairs. Stuff like that just makes it…for doing a full color comic and doing every part of it, realistically I work at a quarterly pace. That’s why there’s a delay between every series I do for IDW because I have to work monthly. So, I have to work ahead to get to the point that it will come out monthly, but I’ve been working on it for about a year before the first one comes out.
Love and Capes_ Ever After (2011) #4 by Thom Zahler.
Just in terms of things like that I’m using the computer as best I can to make it do as much and as complicated as far as the things I do. I’ve started doing the covers as blue lines. I’ll get a fairly tight pencil and I’ll scan it into the computer, do whatever computer modifications I need to whether it’s putting on a logo or drawing something technical, which works really well on the computer. Anything from a building to just doing a giant circle, where it would be a pain to get a compass to work it that large. I’ll have that stuff inked in black, but the actual artwork will be in blue pencil printed out on my printer and then I will ink by hand because I’m looking to have more original artwork. As a businessman I’m cutting off a revenue stream if I don’t have originals. I could change the process with Love and Capes, but at this point, 20 issues in, it just feels like, “Why mess up a good thing?” But any project from here on out I’m going to be putting a little more ink on board to make sure that there is more product that I have and will be able to sell.
Stroud: It makes good sense, because it’s incredible how the market has just gone bananas the last several years, I’m sure for the more modern stuff, too, but it’s rapidly getting to the point that most mere mortals cannot afford the average Silver Age page, never mind older stuff. There seems to really be a demand out there. Digital comics seem to be the future and I sometimes wonder if something isn’t being lost in the process.
Zahler: I’m a big proponent of digital comics, mostly from a television point of view. I’ve found that…like I have a Kindle and I love it because there are books that I want to read that I do not need to own. At a certain point your bookshelf becomes a bunch of animal heads. “Hey, I read this book and I read this book and I read this book.” I read “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and I enjoyed it, but I’m probably never going to reread that book. I don’t need to physically own that book for the rest of my life, so it works just as well on a Kindle, whereas I love the art of Pixar and every time a movie comes out and there’s something particularly neat that isn’t going to work on a digital display.
The thing I like about digital comics is that it makes it easy for me to get an individual issue. I would love to have a subscription format because… like DC did “Blackest Night” and it was something like a 60-issue crossover by the time everything was factored in and I don’t know that I needed to buy all 60 issues. I think I would have been just as happy reading it in digital format and just buying the collection afterward. But I think you’re right in that there’s part of the process that’s getting lost and it may be possible to find a middle ground where, for instance the same way I watch Castle on TV. They give it to me for free by putting in some ads, but I still buy the box set at the end of the year and the season because I like the show so much. I don’t do that for every show, but I’m willing to pay more of a premium.
Love and Capes: Ever After (2011) #5 by Thom Zahler.
Getting back to comics, for something like All-Star Superman, which I’m going to go back and reread because it’s just so gorgeous and I’m going to have to have every issue of that, but there are other projects where, say, I read the Simpson Comics and I actually think they’re pretty brilliant, but I don’t need to have an Absolute Edition collection. It’s more than the artwork requires and the Simpsons are a little bit more disposable long term, but it’s the only one I can think of that I enjoy at the moment and it goes in the collection, but I’m probably not going to necessarily touch it again.
Stroud: It may be because my very first interview was with Gaspar Saladino and I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for letterers, but one of the things that stuck out for me was your use of translucent word balloons. Is that an original innovation of yours?
Zahler: I’m not going to say I invented it, but I don’t recall having seen it somewhere before. The reason they came about is personally embarrassing to me, because I did come up as a letterer. I did a test page to conceptually see how I would lay out and design the characters and I didn’t leave enough room for the lettering. And that’s horrible, because as a letterer that’s one of the things I complain about.
So, I was doing a sample page and I didn’t leave enough room for the dialogue and I didn’t want to have to make room to redraw it, so I said, “Oh, what happens if I make it transparent?” I found I really liked that look. I like being able to see a little bit of the art behind it. I think the first issue has a little bit different translucency than the rest of the issues because some of that was experimenting with printers and how it would look when it actually prints, but yeah, I like that and I like the upper and lower case, which is something I never thought I’d care for.
Lettering is one of those great invisible arts. If you do it right, nobody’s going to notice and if you do it wrong, everybody’s going to complain. I take great pride in being able to lay out this dialogue-based comic and make it very readable and be able to have natural, conversational cadences because of the way you letter it. I know there’s an example in the second or third issue that... I have a group of friends who read every page after I get it done because their job is to tell me when I start screwing up. They’ll catch dialogue errors and I’ve actually had friends catch continuity errors. I think that’s pretty insane, given that they’re my characters.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (2012) #32 Sub Variant cover by Thom Zahler.
One of my best friends has an 8-year old daughter and she loves the book. He has read it to her over and over and over again and we got into a discussion over how old Abby is. He won it! I was like, “Wait. How can you win this discussion over how old Abby is? She’s my character!” But I couldn’t win. He’d made his case flawlessly.
Getting back to lettering, you can tell the people who know how to letter and you can tell the people who know how to type. I have this theory that you should learn how to do things the old way so that when you learn the new way you know the steps that you’re skipping. When I was at Kubert, comics were still being separated by hand. So that was a process we had to learn. It was on the tail end of being useful. It was a 3-year program, so by the time we finished our third year DC was starting to do digital coloring and you knew that was going to change everything. But it was still important to be able to learn color separation because when you’re working on a page and trying to figure out how to make a black a rich black to it prints right or how this is going to print being able in your head to break it down into CMYK and getting the plates right in your head is an important skill to have.
In the same way I computer letter most of the stuff that I do. I have my own font that I’ve used on occasion. A lot of clients really like the Comicraft fonts and they’re lovely fonts that I don’t have any problem using, but knowing where to place a balloon and how to fit the copy in it right; those are skills that I think are best learned by doing it by hand. Then when you go to computer lettering you know what steps the computer is doing for you. And it makes it easier to integrate it into the process.
Stroud: I could see Love and Capes easily being turned into an animated format. Do you see that possibly happening?
Zahler: I’ve had a lot of people tell me that. I honestly see it as a live action sitcom. My fear…and I can be talked out of this, by either a very convincing case or a truckload of money, because I’m not a proud man, is that most of the animated cartoons that are successful on television these days have a bit of an edge to them. Even the Simpsons, which has a very nuclear family that love each other, but a lot of the jokes have a spark to them. They’re really funny, but I don’t know that an animated TV series that has at its heart an honest-to-god relationship would work as well. I just think that might be a bit much to ask of the viewing public based on current buying trends.
Love and Capes: What To Expect (2012) #1 by Thom Zahler.
I think Disney and Pixar seem to be able to do it, but I’m worried that in a serious format people wouldn’t respond to it in the same way. The structure of Love and Capes is actually very heavily based on sitcom where most of the superhero stuff takes place off camera; the same way that in most sitcoms the characters have jobs, but you rarely see them go to them or do any actual work. It actually brings down the special effects budget. It keeps a lot of the expensive stuff happening off camera as far as special effects and production work goes.
In terms of what I’m doing I like it because it lets me focus on the characters. I’ve had a couple of fight scenes in the book, but it’s not what the book is about. If you want to read a book with cool fight scenes DC and Marvel publish a bunch of cool comics every month, but if you want to read a relationship comic there are very few of those out there. I figure it’s important to stick to the parts that are unique and by virtue of that it makes a lot of the other stuff fall by the wayside.
Stroud: Keep to the niche and run with it. I see you’re planning to be at Emerald City Comic Con in the spring. Are you a regular on the circuit?
Zahler: Oh, yes. Last year was legendary. I think I did 16 shows. I just decided that there were a bunch of shows I’d put off doing for one reason or another and last year I got kind of carried away. I think I did them all. I like doing the convention circuit and I’m trying to cut back just a little so that it’s not as hard to get other work done as I’m traveling the country. But I’ll be doing, just in the first quarter of the year, Emerald City in Seattle; MegaCon in Florida; and Wonder Con in Anaheim this year, which is a little disappointing because I wanted to go to San Francisco this year. And then I do the big shows in New York and San Diego. San Diego, at this point, I feel like I can’t not do. Part of it is that if you’re not there, people think you’ve left the industry. The other part is that I have a booth and it’s a very well positioned booth. It’s #2000, which, in terms of being able to give people a location is one of the better numbers to have. It’s been there for 8 or so years at this point, so I know if I give it up I’ll never get it back.
Love and Capes: What To Expect (2012) #2 by Thom Zahler.
For a show like San Diego, it seems counter-intuitive, but you see more people if you stay in one place. Because eventually whoever you want to see if probably going to walk by. Whereas if you’re a moving target and they’re a moving target you’re probably going to miss somebody. Having a booth has got me more conversations and contacts than when I would wander the floor separately.
I also like the travel. I try to book the trips a couple of days on either side so I can enjoy the city, especially if it’s one I haven’t been to. I’m lucky enough that I have a lot of friends in a lot of the cities, so I stay with them or extend my trip that way. On my trips to San Diego I’m always up in LA for a week afterward. It works out well.
Stroud: Very sweet. As I wrap things up here is there anything I didn’t ask that you’d like to bring up, Thom?
Zahler: There’s a new Love and Capes series coming out in either June or July of 2012. It will pick up where the last one left off; the pregnancy that I alluded to. I can’t talk about it because there’s a lot of stuff in play, but there is going to be a Love and Capes Valentine’s Day thing that will happen. From a purely marketing point of view it’s the best day to promote my kind of book, even though I don’t have an actual physical issue coming out. There will be one or more things happening to promote the book, because that’s the day people will be paying attention to it. And of course, the website is loveandcapes.com. That’s the big stuff.
If you would like to see Mr. Zahler in person, he has several more convention appearances planned for 2019. Thom will be at Comicpalooza (May 10-12), Denver Pop Culture Convention (May 31-June 2), HeroesCon (June 14-16), San Diego Comic Con (July 18-21), Fan Expo Canada (August 22-25), DragonCon (August 29-September 2), Cincinnati Comic Expo (September 20-22), Mighty Con NOLA (September 28-29), New York Comic Con (October 3-9), Baltimore Comic Con (October 18-21), and Grand Rapids Comic Con (November 8-10)!