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Ahh yes, the Troggy book. I came up with that format from sitting around and folding paper, measuring things, messing around, experimenting with paper. The idea formally was to be somewhere between a toy, a sculpture, and a book. The book is the body of one character "Troggy," it changes into other things, other characters, as you open it.


We all went to school together. It started out very small, just a group of people interested in comics. We would get together and draw for a couple of hours and then print whatever we had finished.Now it's a blog. Just kidding, we make a new physical book every once in a while, issue nine is coming soon.

We aren't involved with Wham City.What's with the pony tail?
I'm a man of simple solutions.Where'd your drawing sensibilities come from?
It's a mix of Heta Uma, pre-code comics, and matisse. I think of painting and sculpture also.How do you make money?
I sell my time under the title of "Security Officer" at a museum.Outside of the CCC guys who do you like in comics right now?
In no order: Jesse McManus, Carlos Gonzales, Mickey Zacchilli, Anya Davidson, Sam Gaskin, Leon Sadler, Ben Stiegler, Lizz Hickey, Austin English.Who do you not like?
I avoid things that I do not like, my mind is void of these matters. But my tastes change rapidly. If I don't like something, I might be a few steps away from liking it. I can also convince myself that I don't like my favorite things. Being constantly critical is key.
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I am a mostly happy man. I can experience the full range of human emotion, but I tend to "hold it together." I have been told that I am calm.Tell me about all the cool different stuff you made. There's the Troggy book. Did you make that record that comes with cobwebs?
NO NO NO, I didn't make that record with the cobwebs, the art and design on that record is all by Erin Womack.

She's the real thing when it comes to Star Wars. Ask her to lend you her bootleg VHS copy of the "Star Wars Christmas Special." It's a made-for-TV Christmas movie starring the Chewbacca family, the entire cast of the first film, and Jefferson Starship. Along with the artwork for that spooky LP, some of my other favorite things she's made are these masks called the "root magi" that remind me of some of the "The Parliament of Trees" in the Swamp Thing series. Really beautiful stuff.

The latest books that I've completed are "Mr. Cellar's Attic" and "Black Colour." A formal issue I enjoy working with is printed color. I have a background in screen printing and that is how I approach my work, whether it is printed or not. In these two newer works I focused on how I (Mr. Freibert) color comics. The style is "painterly" and it builds from a book I made two years ago called "Prowla" that used a brushy technique in a two-color process. A hybrid of painting and screen printing.
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The idea of "Black Colour" was to take the layers that would normally be printed as cyan, magenta, and yellow and printing them black. The line art that is normally printed black is void. All one sees is color in black.I have "Prowla." I like how it surprises you by being a pop-up book at the end.
I learned a lot from making that book. One thing that stands out is that a lot of people didn't realize that the book was handmade. Many people thought that it was a print-on-demand book. It was frustrating in a way, simply because that is the most labor intensive project I've printed, but in hindsight maybe it's a good thing that people thought it was pro-printed.What does E.T. stand for?
I think of it as a roaming acronym, or that it stands for "Every Thing." I also like simply "EntertainmenT." The first idea was that it was a play between "Extreme Troglodyte" (a creature that lives deep underground) and the more commonly known "Extra Terrestrial" (from outer space). I had to make sure that I had all ground covered, from the core of the earth, to the far corners of space. I knew that I needed something similar to EC. I wanted the public to know that they could expect the best.I also have a record label "Educational Tapes."NICK GAZIN
