IN THE MAGAZINE

THE BIGGEST COMIC BOOK EVER - PART 1

Kramers Ergot Isn't Just "Isn't Just for Kids Anymore" Anymore

BY NICHOLAS GAZIN

In early 2000, a husky Los Angeles fellow named Sammy Harkham threw together a comics zine with some of his friends and gave it the weird, possibly very pretentious name of Kramers Ergot. And it was good. And so were Kramers Ergot 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. But now, nine years on, Harkham has teamed up with Buenaventura Press to produce the seventh issue of his Kramers Ergot. It’s gigantic—16 by 21 inches—and it costs $125 (though we’re finding copies even now on Amazon for like $78. FYI, caveat emptor, etc.). There are a lot of comic anthologies springing up lately, but this one is hands-down the best.

I recently picked a few of KE 7’s 50-odd contributors and needled them about what it’s like to have a hand in constructing the Duesenberg SJ (look it up) of contemporary comics collections.


SAMMY HARKHAM

Sammy Harkham

Let’s start with el jefe. Sammy Harkham and his brothers are a cultural force to be reckoned with. Sammy created Kramers Ergot, and his brother is in charge of a restored silent-movie theater, and some combination of those two and their third brother run the Family gallery and store, one of Los Angeles’s best (and only) outlets for cultural stuff like books and DVDs.

Vice: Can you tell me about the birth of Kramers Ergot?

Sammy Harkham: Kramers was a zine I did in high school—the first issue had interviews with Doo Rag and Will Oldham, some comics by me and my friends, and stolen and found content. It was shitty and dumb. When I was in art school, I started it back up again as a “proper” comic book, printing it with a small-publishers co-op, and it was still bad. Then over time it morphed and changed—first it was only cartoonists I knew, then a few other cartoonists I met through the mail, then it went color, and so on. I think with number 4, things started clicking and the sensibility felt honest and right.

The new Kramers is humongous and beautiful as hell. Have you been wanting to make something this big for a while?

Not really. When we were putting together number 6, I saw this huge reprint book of old Little Nemo comics and thought it would be interesting to see living cartoonists work in that format—the format of old newspaper comics. At that size, every cartoonist, no matter how many times you have read their work, will be a new reading experience. So I could ask anybody I liked—people who don’t normally contribute to anthologies like Geoff McFetridge and Dan Clowes—because this wouldn’t just be the usual thing of collecting stuff people are already doing. This thing would generate comics that wouldn’t exist otherwise. It’s a weird thing, though, because you don’t want to put too much pressure on the artists that they have to do the BEST THING EVER to make up for the cost of the book. I just tried to keep my goals simple. I wanted a book where everything wasn’t superdense or cleverly laid out. I wanted there to be an aspect of pleasure in just reading a simple 12-panel strip at that size. When the book was announced, a lot of people bitched about the price, saying we were making a cynical move, trying to rip people off, trying to make a fancy art book for rich people. I never thought about any of that when I was making the book. It became one of those things where, by talking about Kramers, people were really talking about themselves and their insecure feelings about hipsters, fine art, and weird inverse elitism. They’re not upset at the book based on what it is but on what it’s not. If anything, I saw how cynical people are—they can’t believe the idea of wanting to do something rad in the name of fun. And if it’s too expensive, get a fucking library card.

Do you have crazy dreams of how you’re going to do future volumes? Like make one that’s really tiny and you charge ten cents for, or go even bigger and produce it as strips of wallpaper that people have to paste onto a wall?

After this one, I just want a break from dealing with so many lunatic artists. I think I will do another one eventually, but I don’t think of the anthology as something that needs any sort of hook or gimmick. I get excited about publishing stuff that is great and that I want to see in print.

How’s the silent-movie theater going? It seems like you and your brothers have made Fairfax a great place to hang out. I admire that you have such a close working relationship with your siblings.

The theater is doing fine. I think it’s probably the best revival theater in America right now. The programming director finds amazing stuff that runs the gamut from high art to gutter trash that you can’t see anywhere. It’s really him and my brother’s place. I am one of those annoying types who wants to be involved in the good things other people are doing, and this is another example of that. So they indulge once in a while and listen to my dumb ideas. I don’t know if it’s a good idea to work with siblings, but it’ll probably go fine as long as one person is the leader, like in any collaboration.

So who’s the leader of the Harkham brothers?

Me, since I’m older.


JAIME HERNANDEZ

Jaime Hernandez

Every few years, some mainstream publication does a story on comics that delivers the same info and name-checks Maus, any cartoonist who’s been in the New Yorker, and the Hernandez brothers. Jaime and his brother Gilbert started doing a comic called Love and Rockets back in the early 80s and they still do it today, albeit in a different format. Jaime’s work is set in a Mexican community in LA called Hoppers where his main characters Maggie and Hopey love, live, and grow old. I shouldn’t really have to be explaining this. You should know this already.

Vice: How long did the characters of Maggie and Hopey exist for you before you introduced them to publication?

Jaime Hernandez: Maggie goes back to my prepunk high school days. I wanted to create a female character that I could put in any situation, odd or normal. Her style evolved as my style evolved, and she happened to officially debut during the punk days. Hopey was created during the punk days so she didn’t have to do any evolving.

A lot of cartoonists look and act like some composite of their characters. I don’t know if I’ve ever noticed any characters who looked that much like you. Do you identify with any of your characters?

I drew myself sometimes in the background early on in the series. Maggie and Ray basically handle most of my thoughts, though a lot of times I purposely put thoughts into my characters that I don’t personally agree with. It keeps them interesting and real.

It seems like both you and Gilbert have a lot of gay and bisexual female characters. I’m sorry this sounds like such a therapy-type question, but were there a lot of gay and bisexual women in your lives growing up?

A few. It mostly came from just wanting to fill our stories with second-, third-, and fourth-class citizens. The more society doesn’t want us to do it, the more we feel it our duty to do it, full steam ahead.

How did you like working on the gigantic comic for Kramers?

It was fun. I was a little intimidated at first because I knew my style was old-school compared to the other contributors. But then I said, fuck it, they asked me, didn’t they? My story was a little different from how I normally work. I usually let the characters tell the story, but in this case I had a story that I had to fit the characters into, a story about insecure, competitive types. The two main women in the story were physical types that I had been wanting to use somewhere and this was a perfect opportunity. Too bad one of them had to be a villain.

Do you think there’ll ever be a Love and Rockets movie? Is that something you’d want?

Working on it. I keep my fingers crossed, though, because this stuff isn’t exactly Hollywood material.


RICK ALTERGOTT

Rick Altergott

Rick and Dan Clowes published their first comic together way back when as Pratt students. His comics are about the adorable creeps Doofus and Henry Hotchkiss and their adventures in Flowertown. They are funnily and grossly and beautifully drawn.

Vice: Where did Doofus come from?

Rick Altergott: It’s been so long since I came up with Doofus I hardly remember creating him. I was living in Delaware and drinking a lot of cheap suds, that much I can be sure of. Since then, the character has become more erudite and otherwise changed to fit my needs at the moment, while still keeping his core sleaziness intact.

How do you feel about your page in the new Kramers?

I’m happy with the end result of my page, but I always feel like the other guys are innately more creative than me so I have to overreach with the sleaze factor. I can’t help it—that’s my fallback position. I kind of think I was successful in what I set out to do, which was to explore sexual tension and long-time-relational dynamics.

Flowertown, USA, is amazing to me, in that it’s like a complete, living world that I believe in and kind of want to live in.

Thanks. I’m having fun with the locales in the long-form story I’m working on right now. There are several recurring visits to established places, which makes it tough on me because I hate having to do continuity. I hope no one is going to break my balls about that stuff. As if comics aren’t hard enough for me to draw. I’m not sure why you would want to live in a place like Flowertown, USA, though. Please don’t say it’s the Naked Fishermen.

You and your wife had a baby, right? How are family times?

Ariel and I love being parents, all right, but who could have predicted how much work it would be? It’s kind of terrifying to realize that you have made the commitment of a lifetime, but it’s a wonderful thing. I hope my son, Eddie, doesn’t become a B-list alternative cartoonist like his old man. Then again, I predict that the influences that steered me into the field, such as Mad magazine, model kits, and comic books, will all be gone by the time he’s old enough to be lured in.

What other comics are you into right now?

I have to confess that I haven’t seen a lot of new comics recently, outside the Kramers 7 lineup. Among my favorites in there are Ted May, Dan Clowes, Dan Zettwoch, Richard Sala, Seth, Kim Deitch, Eric Haven, CF, and a large number of European artists who I was not previously familiar with and don’t sign their work. In general, I like comics that are presented in a straightforward manner and are narrative driven, but anything by Crumb is cool. I saw the recent show of his in Philadelphia and was blown away. He is the seedbed of a whole generation of artists working today.

Daniel Clowes		photo: Getty Images

DANIEL CLOWES
Dan Clowes created Eightball and made the movies Ghost World and Art School Confidential. He is the closest that anyone has come to being a second R. Crumb. He is a drawing super-genius.

Vice: It’s rare for you to do comics these days. What made you agree to do one for Kramers?

Daniel Clowes: I was a fan of the previous few issues and I couldn’t resist the big pages. Also, the sheer insane fiscal irresponsibility of the project. I was intrigued by the idea of doing a story on a single page that had a high level of narrative density—it’s a very different thing from breaking something down over six or seven pages. I wanted the reader to have forgotten the beginning of the story by the time he got to the last panel and then have to start over.

Sawdust, the story you did for your page, is really grim. Did anything particular lead to it?

I did that story about two months before I was scheduled to get major open-heart surgery. I had a defective heart valve and, as a result, my heart was twice as big as it should have been and they were concerned I might need a transplant if it didn’t go well. Aside from being so weak I could hardly walk up the stairs, I was really facing the void for the first time and grappling with leaving my wife and two-year-old son behind and pondering with sober grimness the pointlessness of my life. Fortunately, I lucked into an amazing surgeon who corrected the problem and now I feel better than I have in 20 years and have completely forgotten the many resolutions to change my life that I made during this stretch.

Good God. I’m glad that you’re still alive.

As I said, I’m in great shape now. My heart is back to its normal size and ticks like a Swiss watch and I have an awesome 12-inch zipper scar down my chest that frightens mothers and children at the beach, so all is good.

I saw that you named your son Charlie. You don’t meet too many Charlies these days, but it’s a great name. Also versatile. Charlie is the friendliest name there is, unless you’re a Vietnam vet, but Charles is very dignified and sober. What made you and your wife choose the name?

Thanks for saying that. Yes, Charles is obviously the best name. We picked it because of a close friend named Charles, but also for all the great Charleses out there—Schulz, Addams, Burns…

Do you see yourself returning to comics in either the near or far-flung future?

I’ve actually been working on sort of a graphic novel for the past year. Got about 60 pages done so far out of probably 75 or so. No idea who will publish it or when. After that, I will be working on the somewhat-expanded book version of “Mr. Wonderful,” the strip I did for the New York Times Magazine. And beyond that, I have two other book/comic things that I’m anxious to work on and a script for a crazy animated science-fiction film for Michel Gondry.

Can you tell me anything about the movie yet or is it all secret?

It’s called Megalomania, but beyond that I think I’m not allowed to say anything.

What are you seeing in comics that you like?

I like a lot of the stuff that Buenaventura and Picturebox publish. I like Matt Furie and CF and the guy that did New Engineering. My favorite current work-in-progress is Tim Hensley’s “Wally Gropius” in Mome. I’m really looking forward to Crumb’s Genesis and Charles Burns’s weird Tintin-esque book and above all the conclusion to Rick Altergott’s Blessed Be.

Over the years, your lines have gone from angular and accentuating the grotesque qualities of people to a more forgiving curve. Do you like people more now?

Well, neither style was anything I consciously intended, so maybe there’s something to it. I actually think it has more to do with moving to California. People just aren’t as sickly and overweight and grotesque out here as they were in Chicago.


Kramers Ergot 7 is available from the Buenaventura Press website. We didn’t show you any images from it here because these interviews are all really long, but hey, that’s what Google is for.


CONTINUED
THE BIGGEST COMIC BOOK EVER | 1 | 2 |

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Comments

Anonymous, on Mar 7, 2009 wrote: i would buy this, but i need to eat this month
	reece g,, on Mar 6, 2009 wrote: buyable, but expensive man.
Anonymous, on Feb 24, 2009 wrote: johnny ryan is great, but he doesn’t seem a good fit for this, imo. his stuff works best on it’s own. i’m afraid people will take it completely out of context in something like kramers. hell, they take it out of context in vice. why wouldn’t they when it’s lumped into a massive book with fifty other comics?
Anonymous, on Feb 24, 2009 wrote: "a cool but probably unrealizable concept would be for each artist to select a director and have all the pieces put back-to-back in mini movies." that would be horrific and am embarrassment. i hope the watchmen is as good as it should be and then hollywood takes a serious break from comic book adaptations. overkill is getting closer and closer to reality here. remember what happened to westerns?
	imagine a dog eating pizza, on Feb 24, 2009 wrote: I rly wish I could spend $125 on a comic book :(
	Star Wars, on Feb 24, 2009 wrote: The point of making a book of comics is to make comicsm, not movies.
	halzer, on Feb 23, 2009 wrote: a cool but probably unrealizable concept would be for each artist to select a director and have all the pieces put back-to-back in mini movies.
Anonymous, on Feb 23, 2009 wrote: god damn god damn god damn it is so expensive
Anonymous, on Feb 21, 2009 wrote: Not sure who did the cover, but the title text sure looks like Groening to me.
	duck duck goose, on Feb 19, 2009 wrote: just in case you missed out on the mr. wonderful series in the times: www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/magazine/funnypagesClowes .html
Anonymous, on Feb 19, 2009 wrote: ryan is a rick moranis-looking motherfucker, isn’t he?
Anonymous, on Feb 19, 2009 wrote: heads up kiddos - amazon has it on sale for 100 right now if you’d rather not go through ebay. hth!
Anonymous, on Feb 19, 2009 wrote: Who did the cover art for this one? Pretty darn sure it’s not Harkham.
	DabblesInPacifism, on Feb 19, 2009 wrote: wasn’t one of harkham’s intentions with this series, and this edition in particular, to expand the audience of comic book readers? i understand the reason for the high cost, but that is exactly what’s going to keep away the new audience that i think he’s going for.
Anonymous, on Feb 19, 2009 wrote: it’s so obvious that furie uses colored pencils. i don’t know how you missed that. you should have asked ryan about his technique, because the colors don’t look done by hand to these eyes.
Anonymous, on Feb 19, 2009 wrote: matt furie kills me every single time. i love his stuff so much. who else would think of a canadian backpacking toad thing checked out a topless tweety bird lady thing? and the shit that makes it hilarious is that he totally stitched on the canadian flag so other travelers wouldn’t think he’s from america!
	The Host, on Feb 19, 2009 wrote: Johnny Ryan must be doing something right to have you guys so polarized every time his work is featured here. I will say this, he looks nothing like I would have thought.
Anonymous, on Feb 19, 2009 wrote: agreed. johnny ryan sucks.
Anonymous, on Feb 19, 2009 wrote: my god, johnny ryan is exactly as expected from reading his piece of shit comics here on vice: a pretentious half-wit who’s oh so special but reads fucking japanese kids comics. what a fucking asshole!
Anonymous, on Feb 19, 2009 wrote: Just realized Tim Hensley is in Ergot #7 and now I’m even more excited to get a copy. I mean, everyone amazing is in it, I just happen to be on a huge Hensley binge right now. In 10 years when "Wally Gropious, Teen Millionaire" is finally completed and anthologized, people will recognize his genius and maybe the New York Times will pretend to care for 10 minutes or something.
Anonymous, on Feb 18, 2009 wrote: Anonymous, on Feb 18, 2009 wrote: dan clowes has got some great doodles but he looks like someone who touches babies for a living. well, if he’s living through his characters, he’s pretty damn close to it.
	poozer, on Feb 18, 2009 wrote: is gazin himself in this? one of the preview images sure looks like his work.
Anonymous, on Feb 18, 2009 wrote: he also looks like my old landlord that keeps trying to friend me on facebook. dude can’t take a hint that although i’m active on there everyday, i somehow keep failing to notice the friend request emails.
Anonymous, on Feb 18, 2009 wrote: the images provided at the buenaventura site are gorgeous. i was surprised that matt groening is involved in this project. if anyone can tell me who did these, please share: www.buenaventurapress.com/KE7/display.php?pg=7 www.buenaventurapress.com/KE7/display.php?pg=3
Anonymous, on Feb 18, 2009 wrote: dan clowes has got some great doodles but he looks like someone who touches babies for a living.
Anonymous, on Feb 18, 2009 wrote: not only is this book put together very nicely and filled with amazing comics, it doubles as a great way to press large amounts of rocky coke back into powder.
Anonymous, on Feb 18, 2009 wrote: evil marketing genius sez: nike sponsoring a comic book. now that’s an idea.
Anonymous, on Feb 18, 2009 wrote: the ghost world flick was brilliant but art school confidential, not so much. with gondry manning the decks, i don’t see how megalomania could be anything short of wonderful.
	bonerdreamz69, on Feb 18, 2009 wrote: Harkham specifically in his interview says that he wasn’t trying to make an art book for fancy people. The reason it costs $100+ a copy is because that’s the only way for him to get anywhere near breaking even on it. Do you have any idea how much it costs to print regular-size books with full-color illustrations on each page? I will readily agree that the asking price for this book is well past my comics budget but I wouldn’t want Sammy to go into debt just so I could have it for cheaper. Or get fucking Nike to sponsor the thing or something.
Anonymous, on Feb 18, 2009 wrote: i know everyone is into crumb and blah blah but it makes sense that clowes is into him.
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