Long John

With the news about Long John‘s development as an animated series at FX dropping last month, I since have had the pleasure of being interviewed by the State Hornet, the student-run newspaper at Sac State, the university where I teach.

Being interviewed in a journalistic context like this is a fascinating process. Most of my interviews are captured conversations, reproduced in full in the form of podcasts or YouTube interviews. Interviews for newspapers or published pieces are unique because they’re a distillation rather than a reproduction of the long conversation you had with a reporter. It’s interesting to see what pieces they grab onto and run with, taking information that came from a back-and-forth question-and-answer session and crafting a narrative from it.

This is a fun piece overall, though it was weird to talk about the comic while on campus, having just come from teaching a class, as well. I do my best to keep my comics world separate from my teaching world––other than mentioning at the beginning of the semester that I make comics, I don’t bring that into the classroom at all. I think it’s because––and I don’t mean to sound pretentious––my comics are an expression of me and my thoughts while the time I spend on campus is completely about my students and what they think and feel. It’s not my job to get in the way of that. It’s like trying to talk about your favorite heavy metal band with your grandmother––two worlds you are a part of and love, but never should they meet (at least, not in my head).

I hope you enjoy the article and expect another Chapter 5 update soon (as soon as I finish grading, that is).