Comedians And Comics: A Marriage On Paper

Many comedians love comic books. It’s also a given that cartoonists love comedy. So what would happen if you put the chocolate in the peanut butter? Well, if you’re Starburns Industries Press, you make it an editor’s job to mix up comics who tell jokes with comics that have pictures and you get Comics Comics Quarterly #1 (AUG182206), a quarterly anthology teaming comedy's best with funny books' brightest. Check out this interview with Patton Oswalt, Jackie Kashian, and Sara Benincasa, the people behind the magic which is coming to a comic shop near you this October!

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PREVIEWSworld: What is it about comedians and comics that gravitate toward each other?

Patton Oswalt: I’m thinking fellow shut-ins crying out to the world through art and jokes?

Jackie Kashian: I think that comic books, much like standup, has (previously) been very underground. And it is about anything, written by anyone. There’s superheroes but there’s also the lives of dogs. Or the life of an Iranian woman in Tehran. And it can be a specific sociopolitical take on racial, ethnic, gender, insert-something-else level that can’t be censored — and no one even thought to because it was just “funny papers” and, often, self-published. Stand-up is like that. Personal, unique to anyone willing to stand on stage and talk, and people take or leave it — relate or don’t — in the moment.

Sara Benincasa: Comedians are storytellers, so storytelling through sequential art is going to be as appealing to many of us as, say, film, television, or plays. Because a lot of comedians grow up feeling like outsiders, and comix used to be — and to an extent still can be — an outsider’s realm, I suppose comix fandom can feel like a home for weirdos. I should say “fandoms” since there are so many passionate sects within the broader world of comic book readers. Mainstream though a lot of the comics world now is—obviously San Diego Comic Con is basically a huge launching pad for all kinds of corporate popular culture offerings now—there are still so many areas of the comic book world in which oddballs and freaks can celebrate oddness and freakishness in a glorious way.

Also, comic books require a very careful use of words. One must be sparing and choose wisely, because there’s not that much room on the page for text. And I think there’s some connective tissue here for comedians, since you’ve only got so much time onstage and you’ve got to craft a joke within certain constraints. It’s true in humor writing for television or film as well. The aim is more often to trim the fat rather than to stretch for time. Most comedians don’t have a problem filling time (or the space on a page.) But editing us (or noting us, or whatever) can be a hassle.

PREVIEWSworld: How has your own comedy career intersected with comics before? Did you seek out the connections, or did they find you?

Patton Oswalt: Well, I was always very vocal in my comedy about how the comics I read bled into my real life. Guess someone heard me?

Jackie Kashian: I didn’t read comic books for many years. In junior high, I read some Spider-Man (I liked the team-ups). Then I did online dating and started dating a man who is now my husband/partner. He is monumentally into comics. We now have a pull list, and it’s like being married to a long box. But he really liked the superhero comics, and I didn’t know what I liked, so we read a fair number of independent or non-super titles that I turned him onto. He left the comics in stacks around the house and I just started reading them and now I, too, love comics a lot.

Sara Benincasa: I’ve contributed to a couple of Marvel humor issues before. These were edited by Tom Brennan, who is himself a comedian. He was there for years and who did a really great job of bringing comedians into the fold. I got to work with Steph Buscema and Tania del Rio, two great artists. I’ve hosted a talk show in a bathtub since 2006, and I do episodes whenever I feel like it. It’s called Getting’ Wet with Sara B. Several years ago, I interviewed Neil Gaiman and his then-girlfriend Amanda Palmer. That was a delightful intersection of comics and comedy and also bathing, the finest of fine arts. I’ve also done Kevin Smith’s podcast a couple times, and where Kevin goes, comic books are sure to be present. As a Jersey kid watching his films, I definitely came to see comics as a world with more to it than I’d been led to believe as a child.

I got the immense honor of doing the podcast Go Fact Yourself with the great Len Wein before he passed away. That’s how I met my wonderful friend Christine, his wife. She’s an extraordinary person—a lawyer, a photographer, a mother, and more. Len knew so much about musical theatre, as I learned on the podcast.

PREVIEWSworld: When you had the opportunity to create whatever you wanted for Comics, how did you decide what story was right for comics?

Patton Oswalt: It’s this memory I have of something I experienced on Hollywood Boulevard that I always wanted to see in comics form.

Jackie Kashian: I was intimidated because I had never written a comics script, so I decided to take a long story/bit from my stand-up. With the addition of an artist, I could flesh it out and make it more poignant than just a story peppered with punchlines. 

Sara Benincasa: I decided to tell a story I know very well — an autobiographical tale of being raised Catholic with a dad who worked in a birth control factory. I didn’t realize that was weird until I was older. It’s certainly unexpected.

PREVIEWSworld: How was telling this story different than it would have been telling it on stage?

Patton Oswalt: Uh, cuz you have to write it out and then someone draws it? I guess?

Jackie Kashian: The real need to provide more information about where, when, and how the situation is happening, the details of needed to make the images.

Sara Benincasa: The visual element adds a lot, since we’re dealing with some forms of birth control technology with which a mass audience is familiar, and other things some modern readers have probably never seen (for example, diaphragms). I also wanted to make sure some ’80s and ’90s details were apparent in hairstyles and clothing.

PREVIEWSworld: How does doing Comics Comics make you want to engage with comics in the future? 

Patton Oswalt: Makes me wanna do more comics, for a start.

Jackie Kashian: I really feel like this was a way to dip my toe into the process. I want to write other scripts and see what stories I can make up just for comics.

Sara Benincasa: I’ve wanted to write a graphic novel for a long time, and I still do. I've considered a couple offers, but it hasn't been the right timing with my other deadlines — and obviously you want to make sure you’re getting paid enough and that your vision aligns with the editor’s idea of what you should produce. I’ve had this character in my head for a while who is the very average, entirely human daughter of a troubled retired superheroine. It’s really about having to parent your parent.

I would also love to write Swamp Thing. I’d like to write Spider-Man in an alternate universe in which the Jets have won several Super Bowls. That one would be for my dad. 

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