Dave Cooper Hates Comics

Dave Cooper has been our dawg since forever. In fact, we go back with him to days he doesn’t even want to remember (anyone see Pressed Tongue?). We did Pip & Norton with him back in the 80s and ran it in Vice and there were even rumors that we were blowing him. That’s why it hurts so fucking much to hear he doesn’t do comics as much as he used to…

Vice: They say that it’s really hard to find new farmers these days. The sons of farmers today have seen what a hard slog it is and have decided it’s easier to go find a job in the city. The same is true for cartooning. It’s over. And you killed it.

Dave Cooper

:What?

You gave up on the cartoons because it was too hard. Now you “found a job in the city” which is painting. I hate you for that. You make other cartoonists feel Amish or something. Why did you abandon us?

Slow down. Two things happened: I made the best comic stories of my career (

Ripple

and the

Eddy Table

stories) and didn’t feel that burning need to keep making comics. Then, at the same time, galleries and buyers were beginning to take an interest in my painting, something I’d been slowly, steadily working toward for five or six years. I still love comics and the discipline of making comics; I’m just sort of satisfied with what I’ve done (which will suck the motivation out of any artist).

Wait, you suck off other artists?

What?

Why did you abandon us? Why do you hate comics so much?

Ripple

What are you talking about? Look, my time is taken up with painting now, but I do expect to always be making

some

comics. Just not ten hours a day, seven days a week like I used to. The obsession has cooled.

Ripple

, for instance, was total torture to complete even though I was aware while I was making it that it was my best work. Total drudgery. I think I just got tired of drawing the same characters hundreds of times, and having to basically mimic my own style at times when I might have rather been doing something else.

So comics suck? They do don’t they? Who are we kidding? You spend eight hours on a page and people read it in a few seconds.

As a creator, there’s not much going for it if it’s not your irresistible pride and joy. But think of the accumulative worth of a stack of books by your favorite cartoonist. It certainly doesn’t boil down to the minutes spent reading them. There’s a

Krazy Kat

collection that I only have to think of and it will lift my spirits and give me strength.

That’s gay.

That’s gay?

How long did it take you to do Crumple, for example? What was that, like, ten million years?

Most of my 120ish-page graphic novels took around 9 to 12 months to make.

Ripple

was done off and on over a few years, but if the hours worked on it were added up, they’d probably equal around that.

How much money did you get for it?

I’m not going to tell you that.

What was it, like, 0.000000000000000001 dollars an hour?

Something like that I guess.

Comics may be gay and boring but cartoonists are gods because nobody realizes how much work they do for so little. Like, an artist will have a show if he has a dozen or so pen and ink drawings, and when a cartoonist sees that he’s all, “Pshaw, that’s two fucking pages for me.”

Oh yeah, there’s no doubt that cartoonists are the freight trains of the art world. I’m never more warmed up and “on my game” than when I’m making comics. But for me, when I’m warmed up, I make lazy decisions. I prefer to be a bit rusty and be surprised by my drawings. It’s just a matter of what you are drawn to, I guess. Right now there’s a vastly greater sense of excitement and discovery for me in painting and non-narrative drawing than there is in comics. But you have to remember, I’ve wanted to be a painter for 20 years and wasn’t able. Comics I’ve been making prolifically that whole time. So I’ve just got way more beans to get out where painting’s concerned.

I have never heard that expression before. “I have to get my beans out.”

Really?

Can you use it in another context please? I’d like to master this saying, “get the beans out.”

“I’m going to take him to the park to get some beans out.”

“Yeah, he’s really full of beans.”

So you hate comics and you love painting.

Can you get off that, please? Let me put it this way, I still get giggly and twitchy and adrenaliney when it’s time to start opening the tubes of paint and tins of thinner. I lose myself in it. Whereas when I’m making comics I take an awful lot of pee breaks and check my email a bunch.

So comics suck and you hate them.

Fuck! Stop! I don’t hate comics, not at all. I don’t have those kinds of “either/or” feelings about art. Comics are just something I’m not making very much any more. I still admire the shit out of good comics and cartoonists. It’s like I lost a taste for peanut butter and now I really love jam. I’m not going to think peanut butter is a waste of time.

But comics are a shit life right? What would you make per hour as a cartoonist compared to per hour as a painter?

As I said before, I’m not going to get in to that. It’s simply too depressing to reveal. Let’s just say, in the past two years that I’ve focused on painting, I’ve probably made roughly what it took the previous 10 to make.

You are a bastard.

Good night.

Go here to learn more about the Lemmy of tittie drawings.