Gary Dumm

GARY and LAURA DUMM
Interview of GARY DUMM

How / when did you start collaborating with Laura?

It's only been fairly recently that Laura and I have been constant collaborators: with the making and promotion of the American Splendor movie (2003) a large body of artwork that required color (and usually fairly quickly). She stepped up and met the color challenge, allowing me the freedom (and time) to do all the black and white art and not have to concern myself with anything else. I trust her incredible color sense (which is also in evidence in her acrylic painted work), and all I might do is make a suggestion here or there; she handles it.

Back in the prehistoric days of Harvey's self-produced issues of the American Splendor comic, Greg Budgett and I used to cut rubylith shapes that attached to acetate overlays, indicating color for the printer (on which Laura sometimes also helped). But it's all on the computer now: scan in the b/w art and Photoshop the color...it's a thing of beauty in its simplicity and the fact that any mistaken color choice can be changed, and as long as you save what you're working on you can always retrieve it.

Now everything in color--from American Splendor to Zombie Moon--is done by Laura. I just peep at her while she's working and smile at what she does. I'm a lucky guy.

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Text & Art by Gary Dumm, Color by Laura Dumm

How did you and Laura meet and begin your relationship?

Some would have it that I was the demon spawn summoned by Laura at a witches' sabbath, but actually we met at a taco party given by a friend of friends in 1970 in East Cleveland near Coventry. Since we both liked tacos, art and each other, we thought we'd hang out... and we're still hanging out doing art and eating tacos.

What do you guys put on your tacos? And it's twelve cats you have, right? How do you manage it?

I totally agree with your subject matter header: tacos and cats, they go together hot dogs and buns...yummy! But almost seriously, folk, Laura likes cadmium red on her tacos and I likes thalo blue and burnt umber, I'm kinda earthy, but with my head in the clouds.

We have only ten cats presently: Sam, Bogart, Mr. Gray, Bongo Monkey, MOMA, Luna, Gert, Emmett, Homer and Smudge. The attrition rate here can be high in any given year (particularly if we're lacking meat for our tacos). They're all foundlings, all fixed and all fine beings of the feline persuasion. It's only the litter box duty that hangs heavy around my neck. Feeding and loving the little bastards is not only a pleasure but--it seems to me--hearing and feeling them purr must be one of the things that gave them their god-like status in ancient Egypt. It's kind of but not quite like holding a lover. There's lots of love here (and four litter boxes for all their crap).

How did you start collaborating with Harvey Pekar?

Ah, Harvey! I'll try to make a very long story only somewhat long: Laura's friend from high school, Robin East, worked at the VA as, of course, did Harvey. In 1972-73 I did a silk-screen print using the images of genius cartoonist / writer E.C. Segar's creations Popeye, Sweetpea and (Eugene) the Jeep (a dog-like critter with a bulbous snout that could turn invisible and go through walls). My take on this was that Popeye was a vegetarian (as he obviously loved spinach) martial artist who espoused compassion even for ones "emenies" although he was not against fighting, so a legend on the print read "Sufi Mystic and Zen Master", and I titled it I Yam What I Yam...

Robin liked the print and proudly displayed one in her office at the VA. Harvey saw the print and asked, "Can he draw anything besides Popeye?" She answered in the affirmative and thusly a long term collaboration was begun...only of course after Harvey and I had met and he appraised that I could actually draw him, and not just Popeye. Greg Budgett and I went on to draw most of the first issue of American Splendor, and one page ("A Mexican Tale") actually appeared in the comic "Flaming Baloney" in that same year (1976). The rest, as they say, is history (or hysterically quotidian).

Has there been any evolution in the way you've thought about or approached your art?

Certainly. On the technical side, the selection and changing of tools (pens, markers, brushes) to find those that do the job well...and in inking the work, the spotting of blacks for "color" and dramatic effect. Most of the evolution has been internal...I don't take myself as seriously as I once did, and that's lifted a great weight from doing the artwork. I used to work in pencil at large size, directly onto the boards, but I've found that by doing thumbnail roughs (small sketches to some) almost all of the design problems are solved. I then xerox the sketches up to final size, use a light box to project them onto bristol board and the fun of drawing and inking are greatly increased, because most of the remaining problems to be solved are minor.

Also, in my "Unreal Comics" series (of covers to imaginary comic books) I've felt free to plumb the depths and hit the heights of sex, drugs, politics and religious subject matter. In "Lust In Space" the xenophobic fears of aliens wanting earth women are delineated; "Adolph Hitler's Comics & Stories" presents the re-animated führer as a guest on the Letterman show; and "I Love Lucifer" is a take on the old love story comics with Mary Magdalene dumping Jesus for Satan, making him walk home across the water, just to name a few.

I've thoroughly enjoyed working on the Harvey Pekar's mundane-to-the-max American Splendor for lo these many years. It's been a great training ground, and I identified fully with what he's tried to do from the very beginning (including the inadvertent deconstruction of the superhero genre) by showing what superhuman effort it takes to be a "mere" human being.

What are you working on now?

We're between big jobs, which is a good thing with our current problems. I was so debilitated I couldn't even deliver a few pieces (from my "Unreal Comics" series) to Doubting Thomas Gallery's usual "Stupid Cupid" show for Valentine's day. At the moment though, I'm working on a couple new music bios for Music Makers, some single panel cartoons (with Greg Budgett) for possible use for an American Greetings produced day-by-day SI sports calendar, and some zombie comics stuff.

I agree with Dennis Hopper's character in Romero's Land of the Dead movie: "Zombies; they give me the creeps." Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, ghouls and the odd witch or demon I can take with equanimity, but zombies...sheesh! Perhaps it stems from my dislike of just being another cog in the machine of consumerism...not that there's a way to get around consuming unless one can become a master and live off sunlight. Don't think that's going to happen this lifetime.

Do you harbor any special story you want to illustrate or do you have any special projects you want to do for yourself if you had unlimited time/resources?

Laura and I would like to do a cat book or two to illustrate and tell the stories of some of the felines that we've known and loved. I have several ideas for graphic novels, one of which would derive heavily from the inspiration I've taken from the likes of Chandler, Hemingway and Heinlein writing-wise, and artistically from Dali, Magritte, Miro and Max Ernst... all I have to do is quit wasting those eight hours per day sleeping. And I would like to go back to painting, which I haven't done any of for way too long, as I've fortunately had a lot of b/w work (with Laura coloring it).

What's your favorite comic of all time? Favorite artist? How has the genre of "underground" comics affected you, your work?

My favorite comic of all time... why that would have to be George Carlin! My favorite comic book character would be Batman, because I like the idea of the "non-super" superhero, and Batman as detective (sort of a Sherlock Holmes in mask AND cape), using his wits, fists and the technological edge of the contents of his utility belt always appealed more to me than the science-fictional ability to move worlds of someone like a Superman or Green Lantern. Also, Batman was often drawn (uncredited) by the great Dick Sprang, whose attention to detail and dramatic flair were unparalleled amongst the Batman artists, especially including the creator of the feature and the artist whose name was omnipresent, Bob Kane.

My favorite artist/(writer)/creator would have to be E.C. Segar whose "Thimble Theater" brought the indefatigable spinach-eating sailor Popeye into the public's consciousness. Segar's deceptively simple and direct (like Japanese calligraphy) "big-foot" style of art was perfect for the task of bringing to life the often turbulent and sometimes poetic relationships between Popeye, Olive Oyl (his girlfriend), Wimpy (his glad-handing hamburger- loving mooch of a friend), Roughhouse (who ran a restaurant) and many other memorable characters. Segar's ear for dialect and cadence added greatly to the characters' "life," and reminds me much of Harvey Pekar's similar abilities. The animated cartoons (although approved by Segar before he passed away in the late 1930s) were a lowest common denominator sort of distillation of the more complex comic strip. The cartoons did give a long life to Popeye's competitor for Olive's affections as the Bluto/Brutus character lived long past his less than a year's appearance in the strip.

Underground comics (and Crumb in particular) opened things up, and in the early seventies got Harvey to think about writing a "different" sort of underground comic: an "alternative" comic, mainly biographical that espoused the daily life of real human beings, not super-heroes. And his somewhat zen-like approach held a fascination for me, interested as I was In drawing Cleveland (and other) cityscapes and the lives of the un-super, who, mainly unrecognized with oft times herculean effort go about their unsung lives. And I'm still happy doing some of that.

Sometimes I wonder about the "artistic" value of comics (whatever that means), but it's all I really know how to do. And I still really love doing them. The wedding of words and pictures, right brain and left brain used simultaneously to perceive and interpret: a powerful mnemonic device. Add to that that my mother helped to teach me to read using books and comics (Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge being one of the most memorable), and I was seduced by reading and admiring the genre at a very young age.

What constitutes the core of your being? Who are you and Laura?

I thought that it would be easy to answer this (not for Laura, but for myself)...we orbit each other, like the moon and the earth, influencing each other in some ways subtle and some ways gross...but usually in ways that support creativity. I feel that I'm a sort of conduit/sieve that works best (and makes art best) when my ego and artifice recede, when judgment and technique are suspended and at the core is only quiet: the void from which everything springs. If existence implies non-existence, then does not the void imply (the Big-Bang of) existence? I dunno, I thought of that while sitting at the doctor's office recently and it seemed apropos here, although I may be mistaken.