Matt Silady Interview

Every summer my friends and I venture down to Chicago for the Wizard World Comic Con to gorge ourselves on all the pop culture we can find. Without fail every year a good amount of time gets spent checking out the DIY projects of many of the creators in Artist Alley.

The talent pool is wide as the projects are varied. Being short on disposable income this year, my typically bleeding heart had to be more discerning. Through the mass of fanboys and Storm Troopers, a book titled The Homeless Channel warranted a second glance and a near audible “huh?”
Why at the time, the concept of a 24 hour cable network focusing on the homeless seemed more preposterous than desperate pleas of the creator that I encountered earlier, whose comic had a superhero with magic dreadlocks that help him battle evil still baffles me. Paging through the book, The Homeless Channel’s creator Matt Silady likened his book to Sports Night, a show he dearly missed and wanted to resuscitate the spirit in his book.

He had me at Sports Night.

The Homeless Channel is really, really good and not just for a DIY comic. Darcy Shaw, Silady’s superhero does all her heavy lifting without the benefit of a cape and the conflicts eating at her would give Superman migraines. After a few pages I found myself wondering how a first time writer/artist had put together a book this polished and well thought out.

Thankfully, Matt found some time to discuss how a junior high teacher learns the ins and outs of producing reality t.v. and how to put a comic book together without taking years of art classes.

Your bio states that your background is in education and that you taught eighth grade. At what point did you start drawing and thinking of yourself as being creatively motivated?

I guess my first serious attempts at writing go back to a couple fiction workshops I took as an undergrad. But once I was teaching, writing was strictly a summertime activity. I did manage to knock out two novel manuscripts in the first couple years. During the breaks, I’d ended up writing every day for a couple months solid. I’d do little weirdo things to keep me on schedule. For example, I pretended like I was getting paid to write. I had my teeny-tiny teacher’s salary spread out over the entire year. So, every two weeks a check would arrive in the mail and I’d convince myself that I could only deposit it if I’d stuck to my schedule. Seems a lot of people get artistically inspired. The ones I’ve always looked up to have had a bit of discipline to go along with their creativity. So, I lied to myself for awhile. Whatever it takes, I suppose.

As far as drawing goes, the last art class I’d taken was back in eighth grade. I wish I’d had time to pursue drawing in high school and college. For what it’s worth, that class back in middle school was great and the teacher, Mr. Mayer, really convinced me I could do whatever I wanted to do if I put my mind to it. But after that, I pretty much put art aside until I decided to draw The Homeless Channel myself.

What comics and/or creators got you interested in creating a book of your own?

Well, I know I’m not the only one out there that’s gotten a good kick in the pants from reading Larry Young’s True Facts. And there’s a whole bunch of creators that I love that have inspired me artistically. But in terms of actually convincing me that I could make a comic book all on my own, I still need to tip my hat to Rob Osborne (1000 Steps to World Domination) and Josh Cotter (Skyscrapers of the Midwest) who convinced me to get something together for the Isotope Award for Mini-Comics.
Josh had just won and Rob was sure I could pull something off. He might have been a little drunk when he said that. But so was I, so I listened to him anyway.

What was the genesis of The Homeless Channel? Once you had the nugget for it did you write a full script for it or construct it as you developed each chapter?

The Homeless Channel was a merging of a bunch of things that had been brewing in the back of my head for awhile. The idea for the cable network pretty much came out of nowhere. But the ideas explored in the story were things I’d been struggling with on a daily basis. The weirdness of the media. The liberal versus conservative approaches to solving social problems. The book became a productive way for me to think about these things.

And the feel of the book really just reflects my fondness for Aaron Sorkin’s stylized dialogue and Tony Harris’ grounded, yet expressive, artwork.

During the entire creation of the book, I relied on an outline and thumbnail sketches of the pages to keep the story straight. It was kind of a loose process by design. It allowed for happy accidents to occur during the photo shoots. As much as I knew what I wanted out of the actors, they always managed to bring a bit of themselves to the mix. I took their suggestions and creative impulses very seriously. That left the final scripting of the dialogue to be done while I was actually lettering the book.

The scenes within the studio and with the cable network heads have a real feel of authenticity. Did you research extensively or was it more of a case of pop culture osmosis?

Yeah, I hate to say it, but I was playing the odds a bit when it came to the behind-the-scenes stuff. I have heard from a couple friends in the television industry that I didn’t do to badly though. The entire book has enough of a satirical edge that I wasn’t really worried about it.
I couldn’t imagine a pitch meeting could be any more ridiculous than a couple school board meetings I managed to sit through back when I was teaching.

By the way, I sure like your phrase, “pop culture osmosis.” I’m stealing that, okay?

The characters, the idealistic conflicts, and without a doubt the dialogue have a definite Sorkin influence, which I really dug. Over the course of creating a book that looks at homelessness, even through the lens of a reality t.v. show what were your own creative battles with characters attempting to solve a social problem?

More than anything, I didn’t want the book to come off as preachy. I certainly don’t have the solution to homelessness in America. And when the idea for the book first popped in my head, it simply amused me more than anything. I ended up developing the story a bit and then it sat in a file for awhile until I moved to California. As I started to work on the book in earnest, however, I was confronted with homelessness on a day-to-day basis in a way that I hadn’t really been before. That isn’t to say there isn’t a serious homeless problem back in the Midwest. The shelters there can’t keep up with the demand for beds and services either. But out here, especially in Berkeley, it’s an issue that was confronted with every time I walked out the door. The book served as a way for me to wrestle with my thoughts on the subject as much as it was simply an effort to tell a good story. Each of the individual characters tackled different parts of my feelings about the issue.

In the book, Darcy and Grady have different ideas of which should be applied first when making a sandwich—, peanut butter or jelly. Provided someone doesn’’t have a peanut allergy, which should go first and how often have you had this argument?

It’s so funny how often I get asked about this! Personally, I’ve never had the argument exactly as presented in the book. But I’ve had a million arguments just like it. I really wanted to create a scene where two people were debating over something that appears on the surface to be trivial. For Darcy though, it’s really all about control.

But to get to your question, here’s how it works: if you are lazy like me, you’re using one knife to apply both the peanut butter and the jelly to the sandwich. If you are using two knives, you’re in the clear. If you’re a one-knife kinda person though, you have to apply the jelly first. By applying the jelly before the peanut butter, you are guaranteeing that a clean, uncontaminated knife goes into the jelly jar. If you reverse the order, bits of peanut butter end up in the jelly before you stick the container back in the fridge and that’s not good. When a person with an allergy goes to put a little jelly on some toast the next morning, they might headed for a pretty crappy day. Turns out, with some extra care, it can all be avoided. So, it’s jelly first every time.

One of the most striking things (especially since it’s your first book) about The Homeless Channel is just how strong overall it is from the cover design, the layouts, to the visual storytelling. Considering that you come from more of a writing background what did you do to prepare yourself for the undertaking of creating all of the visual elements that would comprise the book?

I think writing fiction has always been my semi-secret circuitous route to getting into comics. I’ve spent at least as much time deconstructing comic books as I’ve spent studying fiction. Probably a lot more, in all honesty. I figure, when you look at a comic – you can examine the way the art works on the page, the way the words work, and the way they work in relation to each other. It’s the latter where I believe real comic book “writing” takes place and I had been doing that in my head for years and years before I ever tried to draw the first page of The Homeless Channel.

When I first started reading comics, there was nothing better than sitting back and cracking open an issue of The X-Men. But once I started noticing how comic books functioned in terms of pacing, panel construction, and the dance between the words and the art – I fell in love with them all over again. That’s also about the time I started considering creating stories of my own. Now, I love fiction. I enjoy writing prose. But I’m definitely more comfortable with the language of comic books.

Writing fiction is often an uphill battle. Arranging words and pictures on a page to tell a story just feels so much more natural to me. I really revel in the challenges unique to the comic book medium.

AiT/Planet Lar was very supportive in terms of my creative vision for the book too. The cover, which you mentioned, was designed to emulate something you’d find in the fiction market. That’s certainly an echo of my time spent in the writing program. Larry would also make small suggestions here and there to help with the clarity of the storytelling. But overall, they gave me complete freedom to tell the story the way I had imagined it in my head.

From the initial outline through photo shoots and laying out and scripting the book how long did it take for you to finish?

It took a couple years. But that’s a deceptive number. An entire year passed during the creation of chapter one and another year flew by while I worked on chapter two. Of course, during that time I was teaching, writing a novel for my thesis, and completing the coursework for my degree. If, at the end of the day, I was able to draw a single panel after I finished grading papers and before I went to bed, I was happy. I just made sure to get each of the first two chapters to the copy shop in time for the Alternative Press Expo and the Isotope Mini-Comics Award deadline. Things got easier after that. AiT made the offer to collect the series when I was halfway done. So, chapters three and four were finished much more quickly. I was able to work on the second half of the book non-stop until the day I dropped the final files off to Larry.

Although using Photoshop and other applications to breakdown, manipulate, and layout images have become commonplace in the comics industry, have you ever gotten any flack for not having more traditionally penciled art?

Oh, sure. But I completely ignore most of it. When you spend much time in fiction workshops, it’s usually not too long until you figure out which criticism is worth taking to heart and which criticism just completely misses the point. A lot of the criticism I’ve received concerning the use of photography tends to be the latter.

Some of the criticism is quite useful though. I guess most of the feedback I’ve gotten on the art really falls into three categories: someone loves the art, someone thinks it’s a cool technique that can be improved, or someone dismisses it as not really drawing. The first kind of feedback is, of course, fun and rewarding. The second kind of feedback is fantastic too because it leads to me going back into the studio with new ideas on how to improve the process. That last kind of feedback is just a bunch of crap.

What was one of the best lessons you learned from creating The Homeless Channel?

I learned that this is what I want to be doing!

Believe it or not, that’s actually a huge relief. I’d imagined this as my dream job for so much of my life that one of my big fears was getting here and then realizing I didn’t actually enjoy it. But it’s even better than I’d imagined. I plan on doing everything I can to keep making comic books for a long, long time.

Just attending comic and small press conventions can be a marketing lesson in and of its self. You’ve attended a number of conventions over the last few years. What tips do you have for selling yourself and your work?

I totally agree. There’s nothing better than going to a good indy show and just soaking it all in. Sure, I’d been going to big superhero conventions for years and they were fun and overwhelming and I got to see all of my favorite creators. But when I seriously started thinking about creating and publishing a book of my own, the first thing I did was scope out the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco. You can really get a good idea of what works and what doesn’t work just by walking around an observing the different table set-ups and the way that each artist interacts with the attendees. There’s no one right way to do it. The best thing to do is to find some of the techniques that seem to lead to interest and sales and see if you can incorporate them into your own personality.

The next thing to do is ask a lot of questions. I found the creators at the smaller shows to be really encouraging and full of smart tips for printing, marketing, getting a table, and looking out for potential pitfalls. Sometimes the advice was a simple as, “don’t show up at a convention without a screwdriver, duck tape, and a more change than you think you’ll possibly need.” That sort of practical advice is really invaluable. From Staple to SPX to Stumptown and APE, there are so many great indy shows these days that beginning creators owe it to themselves to get out there and get a feel for the industry first-hand.

What have been the biggest mistakes you’ve seen your peers make?

It would probably be the same mistake that I made initially: underselling myself. Even when I was proud of what I was doing, I would act like making comics was just a hobby and that I wasn’t a “real” comic book creator. That’s like saying that what I’d brought to sell at the convention wasn’t a “real” comic book either. Keep in mind, I certainly don’t think that walking around with a big ego is going to help anyone’s situation at all. But somewhere between “I suck” and “I’m the best ever” is a place where it seems a healthy attitude can exist.

I think attempting to maintain a humble confidence is the way to go. Like it or not, you are selling yourself as much as you are selling your work.

How have your techniques evolved from when you first were attempting to generate attention for the first few chapters of The Homeless Channel?

Well, I don’t think the book has quite hit the “tipping point” yet. But marketing-wise, there’s a lot going on out there now that I don’t really have much do with anymore. AiT did a great job getting the word out when the book first launched and I did round after round of web interviews. But ever since the Entertainment Weekly review, there’s been series of high profile articles and reviews that seem to just pop up out of nowhere. It’s really starting to take on a life of its own. We got a great review on Boing Boing. And then the New York Times just did a piece mentioning the book in their Sunday Arts section. I’d like to think we put in enough hard work at the beginning to lay the marketing foundation for the coverage it’s starting to get on the national level. Beyond that though, I’m still hand selling at conventions, spreading the word when good press hits the streets, and doing my best to work on new material.

Outside of comics, are you reading much? If so who?

I’m strong believer that good comics come from creators who read a healthy balance of both sequential art and prose. In terms of fiction, I have a few favorites that I return to over and over. I love reading Raymond Carver short stories and Tim O’Brien’s earlier work. On the other hand, one of my very favorite places to spend time these days is Builders Booksource over in Berkeley. Non-fiction books have become a real fount of inspiration. From graphic design to architecture, sculpture, industrial design, font and color theory, and fashion, I’m finding I’m really fascinated by the lengths we go to aesthetically shape the physical world around us. I’m also really enjoying the connections I see between these other disciplines and comics. Seems to me, Chris Ware could have been a brilliant architect in another life.

You professed your love of superhero books. Are there any trends in mainstream hero comics right now that you don’t love?

I know there’s a lot of talk these days about “event fatigue.” For me, it’s really format fatigue. I mean, seriously, I read superhero books FOR the big events! But it’s the labyrinth of monthlies, mini-series, one-shot tie-ins, etc. that I just don’t have the patience for anymore.

What I did like was how Marvel collected all the various pieces of the recent Annihilation saga in those nice big, fat, reasonably priced hardcovers. Now, that’s something I can get behind. If I’m reading a great novel, I don’t want to have to stop in the middle of it in order to go back to the bookstore to buy the missing chapter. I know the monthlies are still the ticket for most retailers and it’s the only sure-fire way to get the customer in the shop week after week. But, man, do I love it when I can sit down and just read the whole dang story. So, it takes a lot to get me to buy uncollected monthlies anymore. That said, you can always find me walking home with a rolled up copy of the new All-Star Superman in my back pocket the day it comes out.

Do you hope to continue working solely on projects where you can write and do the art or are you hoping to explore other types of collaboration?

Oh, I fully intend on doing both.

Back when I was teaching, one of the things I really enjoyed about the job was the control I had over what I taught and how I taught it. For the most part, it was really a one-man show. I did, however, work at a middle school that practiced full inclusion, team planning, and co-teaching. So, for one hour a day, I co-taught a class with a very talented special education instructor. We planned each lesson together and often took turns leading the class. As much confidence I had in my own lesson plans, there was always something special about what we were able to come up with by combining our strengths and relying on each other’s expertise. I guess this is a pretty long-winded way to say, yes, I really look forward to working with another artist.

What future projects can we look forward to seeing?

Let’s see… first and foremost, work on my next book is underway. It’s a big project and I’m giving myself a lot of time and space to work on it. I’ll let you know as soon as I have enough of it done to start talking specifics. I’m definitely juggling a couple other things at the moment too. I’m having a ball writing a script for a fun 1950’s thriller for an amazing artist. I’m a bit behind on that one though. So, the first thing you’ll probably see are couple of mini’s that should debut in the spring at APE. They’re both experimental non-fiction pieces that involve some unusual collaborations. Until then, stop by and see me at Stumptown or SPX and check out a copy of The Homeless Channel!