Amy Sits Down With Steve Rolston Pt. 1

You don't have to be familiar with Oni Press's Queen & Country to know Steve Rolston. If you've played videogames or watched cartoons, you've seen his work. The man works with pillars of the industry, handles his own solo books, and still finds time to instruct aspiring comic artists in the ways of the field.



Join me as I grill one of my favorite artists in the industry, as we touch on everything from Rescue Heroes to Spider-Man, from electronic people to Electronic Arts.

First, your style. What was your inspiration when you were starting out? Did you idolize any artists in your studies?

Well, in the early days of my comics obsession, I think my favourite artists were J Scott Campbell, Chris Bachalo and Sam Kieth. Then my attention drifted away from superheroes and I really got into artists like Scott Morse, Jim Mahfood, Jamie Hewlett, Philip Bond, Mike Mignola, Paul Pope, etcetera. I'm sure you could say I idolized a few of them.

I know you've done storyboard work for Sabrina, Rescue Heroes, and even Ed, Edd, 'n Eddy. How did you make the leap from animation to comic books?

My sentiment at the time was "why should I work on other people's crummy stories when I can work on my own crummy stories?" So I quit my storyboard job and started doing my own animated webcomic Jack Spade & Tony Two-Fist for an internet media startup. It wasn't too long before they realized they would never make their money back and they closed up shop. Shaughn Struble, who had been colouring and doing Flash-work on my comic, decided to help me finish our second episode and host Jack & Tony on his own website, http://www.cartoonmilitia.com/ (where you can still view them!).

I believe I then spent a year unemployed while I worked on comic samples, trying to get my skills up to a semi-adequate level. Then one day I got the fateful call from Jamie S. Rich, editor at Oni Press, asking me if I wanted to draw a comic called Queen & Country with Greg Rucka. At the time, I think Rucka's only published comic was Whiteout but he had already won me over with just that. Apparently the idea of giving me a shot came from Oni publisher Joe Nozemack seeing a page from a story I drew for a never-published anthology Scott Morse was putting together at the time. It helped that I had been talking to the Oni guys for a few years via conventions and their message board, so they'd seen my progression as an artist and knew I wasn't a total nutjob.

Queen and Country was your first official gig, and I fell in love with your pencils. The character design, the backgrounds…I found it more impressive then most colored works.

Thanks. My backgrounds are something I get a lot of compliments on. That anthology story I mentioned was actually all about brick buildings, so I suspect the detailed backgrounds were a major selling point.

Q&C earned you a nomination for the Russ Manning award for Most Promising Newcomer, didn't it?

Yeah, that was an awesome nomination. We actually won the Eisner for Best New Series and had a couple other nominations but the Russ Manning nom may have meant the most to me, since it was based solely on my contributions to the comic.

Did you rest easy thinking, "Alright, I made it," or was it really time to go to work now?

Somewhere in between. It definitely validated the path I'd chosen but it's not like I could kick up my feet. "Most promising newcomer" kind of means you're expected to improve and get REALLY good. I hope I met at least some people's expectations with my next projects.

You did Pounded, with Brian Wood. How did that collaboration go?

Pounded was a fun one. Bri gave me a lot of freedom with the storytelling and let me really fill it with shots of Vancouver, the city I live in. I just realized the other day that a good chunk of my favourite comics right now are written by Bri. Maybe I should talk to him about teaming up again some time.



Pounded even had a soundtrack. Did you have much say in that, or were just along for the ride?

I got the ball rolling with the soundtrack and then left it in Avi Ehrlich's capable hands. I'd been drawing some covers for his punk label Springman Records, so it was a no-brainer to do some kind of tie-in project. So yeah, Avi was the one to line up the bands and do all the real work but I did request we use tracks from Pain and King Monkey. Comics connection: Jamie McKelvie, artist of Long Hot Summer and the forthcoming Phonogram, is the drummer for King Monkey.

And then you penciled Mek, with Warren Ellis. Tell me about your design theory here. What was it like working with Ellis?

It was a good challenge, working on Mek. A lot of visual concepts completely different from my previous books. And I doubt I'll ever get tired of drawing stylish cyborgs. Aside from those described in the script, I think most of the mek designs came straight from my head. But some of the clothing was inspired by various fashion mags and the photo book FRUiTS, which covers street fashion in the Harajuku district of Tokyo.



I mean, your first official gig is with Greg Rucka, then Brian Wood and Warren Ellis…how do you do that? Luck? Did they beg for your linework?

Luck didn't hurt. But I like to think doing a decent job on Queen & Country was a major factor. Warren was always a strong supporter of Q&C. So when I was looking for something to follow up Pounded, I let him know I was interested in working with him. I think I'd started talking to Brian Wood because one of us thanked the other for linking to their website. I was a fan of Channel Zero and he dug Q&C, so we looked for something we could do together.

The big dream: you finally achieved your solo project, in One Bad Day. Was everything building up to this, what this your dream the whole ride? How long did it take? What inspired the story? Are you eager to do more solo work?

Doing solo projects was always part of my dream. However the story for One Bad Day wasn't born until after I started talking to Oni Press about doing a graphic novel. There were a couple stories I'd been kicking around in my head for a few years but it just wasn't the right time for those, in terms of both my abilities and the available format.

So I thought about what type of story I felt like doing at the time and realized it would be in the crime genre. I think I wanted to create something in the same realm as comics like Stray Bullets and movies like True Romance. I have a huge file of ideas I write down on scraps of paper whenever they hit me. So I sifted through that file, looking for something that would fit the mood I wanted. I found two ideas, or moments, that I could work together. One was the initial dramatic moment in OBD that introduces all this badness into Marie's average life. The other was a scene about how a character might go about getting a gun. With these two moments in mind, I set about filling in the rest of the story, figuring out what events would drive a innocent person to such desperation.

I wrote the script for One Bad Day over the course of several months, starting while I was still penciling Mek. Drawing it took about ten months. So that was pretty much a year of my life. That's what made me realize I need to draw faster -- an ability I'm still working on.

And I'm definitely eager to do more solo work. That idea folder just keeps growing. Part of the trick is deciding which story I want to and can afford to spend a year or whatever working on. Of course, I also want to balance that with more collaborations. There are plenty of brilliant writers in comics I haven't teamed up with yet!

And now you've got Brian K. Vaughan and the Escapist. How does this compare to your other works?

I couldn't be happier. Brian's weaved a great story with a lot of clever transitions and thematic cues. It's also very much up my alley in terms of characters I enjoy drawing and the types of talking sequences I've developed a knack for. And coming in as Philip Bond's replacement has pushed my art in a good direction. I think my sections will contrast nicely with J. Alexander's pages.

Same question for your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle stint.

The issue of Tales of the TMNT that I'm drawing is a cool departure from my other work. Unless my previous comics included some ninjas getting abducted by alien robots and I just didn't notice. Stephen Murphy's script is a fun one. And I get to continue one of my own trends of drawing characters drinking in a pub.

You teach a part time course, Introduction to Comic Book Production, at the Vancouver Institute of Media Arts. You clearly have a love for the medium, and anyone who's seen your work doesn't need to ask why you decided to spread your knowledge. This is your plug space. Plug away. Make the kids all fly to Vancouver.

Well, I doubt I can convince many people to fly here just to listen to me ramble for 3 hours each week. But it's definitely a useful class for anyone in the area who's interested in the process of creating comics. Over the course of 12 weeks my students create four sequential comic pages as I walk them through each step -- scriptwriting, thumbnailing, penciling, inking, lettering and adding greytones. I show them commonly used tools, techniques and everything else I had to learn the hard way. I also put a lot of focus on storytelling; showing them one-on-one how their pages could be made more clear and effective by using different angles, composition, pacing, etcetera.

If anyone in Vancouver is reading this, they should come down to the VanArts Open House [ http://www.vanarts.com/ ] on Saturday, May 6th (which happens to be Free Comic Book Day as well). I'll be signing comics and answering any questions about my class.



You've even done work for videogames, handling art for Marvel Nemesis. How did you come across this project, and was it a return home to your animation roots, or a whole different animal?

That's right, I spent four months at Electronic Arts working on the cinematic sequences within the game. They had already hired my friend Didier Arpin, writer and colourist of the recent comic Rash. They wanted someone with comic book sensibilities to do the storyboards, so he told them to hire me. At the time I was sort of twiddling my thumbs, unable to turn any of my comic pitches into paying gigs.

It was an enjoyable experience. Maybe not for everyone on the project. I was sort of an anomaly: the guy off in the corner drawing storyboards and prop designs. While the EA campus is much more impressive than any of the small animation studios I've worked in, there were similarities. Having to actually commute to work was an interesting shift to my lifestyle. And having actual co-workers and meetings and structure. I liked it... but only as a short-term deal. One of the other similarities to animation is that I really was just a tiny cog in a giant machine. There's no way someone could look at the finished product and recognize my work. That's why I'm grateful to be back to comics. Although I would be interested in doing freelance design work for video games in the future. You just won't see me in a permanent spot there.

You had a Spider-Man pitch for Marvel, complete with character studies that were some of the freshest takes on the Spidey family I've seen. Would you mind sharing the pitch? Any explanation for why Marvel shot themselves in the foot and didn't do it?

I think that pitch was called Spider-Man High. It was part of an attempted collaboration between Marvel and Oni Press that didn't work out. That pitch was written by Sarah Grace McCandless and was to focus more on a teenage Mary Jane and all the drama of high school and teen love. It turns out Marvel was soliciting similar pitches from some other teams and they settled on one by Sean McKeever and Takeshi Miyazawa, which became the current Mary Jane title.

You also did design work for Electric Girl, the TV show. How big a hand did you have in that?

The designs I have in my website's gallery are pretty much all I did on that. Cartoon Network wanted to see my take on re-designing Mike Brennan's characters. They didn't go with my style but it was fun to give it a shot.

Are there any upcoming projects you're involved with?

Aside from The Escapists and Tales of the TMNT, I'm doing a 5-page comic for Bottle Rocket, a new magazine about comics, art and pop culture. It's launching in July and should be awesome. There's gonna be interviews with Mike Allred, Bruce Campbell, Drive By Truckers, The Briefs, Brian Ewing and Jim Mahfood. It'll also have comics by Shannon Wheeler, Jose Garibaldi, Marc Ellerby, Dean Trippe, Travis Fox and tonnes of others.

What would your dream project be, whether solo or with a writer of your choice?

I guess one of my dream projects would be a comic written by Joss Whedon. A story involving Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer would be best but I'd be pleased as punch working on anything that came from his brain.



Stay tuned for Part Two, as I go more in-depth on Queen & Country, Pounded, and...uh...whatever else comes to mind.