Kevin Huizenga Makes The Every Day Adventurous

Kevin Huizenga has produced a rich body of artistic work, including fiction and nonfiction, literary adaptations, self-published minicomics and ongoing comic strips.

His work has appeared in the Best American Comics anthology, received an Ignatz award for “Outstanding Series” and appeared in numerous recommended and top-ten lists. His comics can be best described as accessible and experimental, thoughtful and playful, which make them an excellent choice for readers who want to explore something new.

Both new readers and longtime fans of Huizenga’s comics can look forward to Drawn & Quarterly’s upcoming Gloriana, an expanded edition of earlier work featuring his best-known character Glenn Ganges. We spoke with Huizenga about Gloriana, his creative process and plans for future comics.

PREVIEWS (P): Tell us about Gloriana. What does this book collect?

In 2001 I was still self-publishing my minicomics, and I wanted to make a fat, dense book and try out some more unusual ways of drawing comics. I guess you could call them "experimental," but I don't like everything that word suggests, like somehow being weird and difficult is scientific, or that reading the work is going to be a chore. But I was still stretching my legs. I set out to make some adventurous comics about everyday things - groceries, a sunset, the moon.

There are three interconnected stories. My character Glenn Ganges unpacks some groceries, watches the sunset and then talks to his neighbors about why the moon looks very large and red. And then there is another story about where I grew up and about playing basketball in high school. It was in the original mini comic, and even though it's unrelated, people told me they liked how it felt alongside the Glenn Ganges stories.

P: Would this book be accessible to someone unfamiliar with your other work?

Yes, definitely. It totally stands alone. My other book, The Wild Kingdom, contains some material that is older than Gloriana, but really this book is my first published work. Everything else came after.

After I gave the original minicomic to Chris Oliveros, publisher of Drawn and Quarterly, he asked if I'd be interested in doing some work with them, so this is kind of where it all started.

P: Your comics bring together many different ideas and influences. Do you process and explore these ideas through the act of creating comics, or have you already figured out what you want to say and the comic is more a means of communicating it?

I usually figure it out as I go. Gloriana was not planned out at first. When I drew the first few pages I had no idea where it was going. I was reading the comics of John Hankiewicz and Ben Jones at the time, among others, and their approaches to storytelling opened up some possibilities in my head, as well as the ideas of Chris Ware about comics and musical forms.

Another influence was classical choral music, where bits of phrases are repeated, and you get things like changes in tempo and volume and key changes. I wanted to try to do a comics version of those kinds of musical forms.

The moon section of the book, the part with all the diagrams, came from a day job drawing diagrams. I was thinking a lot about the relationship between diagrams and comics (also influenced by Ware). As I got working, one thing led to another, and I tried to put it all together more or less organically, while keeping the whole thing physically small enough to staple and also fit a foldout in the middle.

P: Your work encompasses many different formats and styles, while remaining unique and recognizable. What do you do to keep the work fresh and creatively challenging, and what limitations do you impose on yourself to keep it manageable?

That's a tricky question, and I'll have to think about it for a minute.

About a minute has now passed. I don't think I've ever had a problem keeping the work fresh for me. I have a lot of ideas, and I want to try a lot of things. I'm okay with quantity over quality, because I think you get more quality that way. I just like the work, the problem solving, and the variety of possibilities. But to keep it manageable, you have to know that there's a point at which you have to trust your gut feelings and pick a pen and get to work. That's the limitation that allows you to not get bogged down with perfectionism or self-doubt, but it's risky because eventually you finish something and now it can be judged.

P: You've done a lot of self-published comics, and have helped showcase other great minicomics through the USS Catastrophe website. Can you talk a little bit about that? Where else can readers look to find out about unique new comics?

In my experience many interesting cartoonists are not very good at self-promotion or career decisions. But it's a lot easier now with the Internet to get the word out, to link to each other, both for readers and shy artists. I try to link to a lot of people in my blog links, but I'm fairly out of the loop these days. When I was younger, John Porcellino's Spit and a Half and Quimby's (a store in Chicago) were how I found out about good stuff. Both are now on the Internet, and there are many more places to look, such as Global Hobo or Profanity Hill.

P: Is there anything specific that you would like to do with a comic that you haven't been able to yet? Anything you would like to see someone else do?

I've been able to do a lot, such as hardcovers, color comics, Simpsons, Marvel, that I'd never have thought I'd have a chance to do. It's more important for me to do consistently interesting work than to try everything, like check off a career "To-Do" list. Mostly I'd like to do more of what I've already done, for instance I'd like to do more non-fiction comics. I don't think most non-fiction or educational comics are done right. I'd like to do more color comics. I'd like to make up more characters.

P: How do you feel comics and graphic novels stack up to great literature? Are we at the tipping point where comics can be considered on par, or do we have a ways to go?

I don't know if it's productive to make these kinds of comparisons. I can't even imagine how you would do the math, or how you would graph the equations. American comics are young, hundreds of years younger than the many kinds of literary traditions, and comics has evolved in a peculiar cultural habitat, with its own strengths and weaknesses. But I think we're doing pretty well, considering! I think we're in a relatively healthy time for comics, judging by the quality and quantity of work in the piles of books I've accumulated in my house, and considering how dysfunctional the business of comics has been over the years.

P: What's next for you? What can we expect in 2012 and beyond?

I have a story in the new Kramers Ergot #8, and a story in the anthology No Brow. I'm a few chapters into a science-fiction story named "Rumbling" which I hope to finish, more "Fight or Run," more minicomics, more blogging, more Glenn Ganges. I'd love to do a comic book series again like "Or Else," but I haven't figured that out yet.