The time has come for the second entry of Bits and Pieces, Oshkosh Horror’s interview series. This time around John talks with Brian Defferding of Deftoon Comics. I have gotten to know Brian quite well over the past few years as we have traveled around the Midwest together trying to keep up with the horror circuit. Brian is the one and only face behind School: A Ghost Story, a self-written, drawn and published horror comic book. Come along as we talk School, hot lunch, good tunes and so much more.

Has art always been a big part of your life?

Not until I was twelve or thirteen years old. When I was growing up I never had the attention span for comic books, suddenly when I hit the age of 12 I started reading my friend’s comic books. Then I bought an issue of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk and I became hooked.  A year later I started drawing some of my own comics, typically during class when I should have been paying attention to the teacher. It grew from there.

When did your artwork begin taking a darker direction?

It was my senior year at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. I interned at Dead Dog Comics, a horror comic publisher, which was in Minneapolis at the time. The publisher now runs the Crypticon horror convention out there. I started my senior project while at Dead Dog – it’s an art student’s version of a senior thesis – and my project was the first issue of School: A Ghost Story. I always had a fascination with ghosts, the very idea of it intrigued me, and the stories that connect to them. I wanted to write one of my own.

What artists have influenced and inspired you?

Artistically I’m a sponge; I love almost every style out there. However, if one was to find influences from my own style of comic book art, I’d have to say Edward Gorey and Thomas Ott are the closest you’ll get. Thomas Ott’s a scratchboard artist that has some work published by Fantagraphics; his stark black-and-white is utterly hypnotizing.

I also love Geoff Darrow’s art, the detail is just nuts. One could spend all day looking at everything in the panel and still not see everything. There is just so much information and little painstaking details he labors into the page. I could never ever come close to that with my art. No one can, I don’t think anyone ever will.

Classically, I remember seeing Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s The Imaginary Prisons drawings as having an effect on me. The massive, oppressive structures with a dark backdrop, and all the passages one could travel their eye through, it was like looking at the inside of a human ant farm.

Ah yes, Mr. Gorey is quite outstanding if I may say so myself. What exactly is School: A Ghost Story?

School: A Ghost Story is about a 12-year-old girl named Lindsay Buckner whom, one day, wakes up as a ghost inside an elementary school covered in blood. She has no recollection of how she got there, why she’s there, or why she’s covered in blood – it’s like a nightmare come to life for her. Lindsay tries to figure out what exactly happened to her in the last moments of her life while inside the school; but the moment she leaves the school she enters the realm of the dead, surrounded literally in total darkness. And if that doesn’t make matters bad enough already, there are monsters that are ghosts just like she is, but they feed off of the souls of others. To them, Lindsay is fresh meat. This girl is thrown into a claustrophobic horror fighting for her only chance of justice; she sees that solving her own mystery will be the only way she’ll find peace.

What exactly is your role with School?

It’s almost a one-man show, I write it, draw it, publish and send everything to the printers.  I also distribute the book and put in all the ads.

Take us back to the beginning, how did School come to life?

When I was in high school, there was a famous story of a person (not naming names) who went missing, and at that time there was a big divided highway being built that wrapped around my hometown. Well, one of the nasty jokes people were making is that the person was murdered and subsequently buried under that highway, right before they laid the concrete down. I thought that would make an interesting ghost story, so I made a bunch of adjustments to that idea. I wanted to make a world where there was a bit of grey area between life and death, something to catch that stagnant feel.

School has a very distinct look, in terms of artwork and the comic itself. Why did you opt for black and white art instead of color, and why did you choose the square pages versus the stand comic book size?

Black and white is perfect for this story, it really sets the mood, and the scratchy, muddy style I did for the art, along with how I drew the children as almost something like bobble head dolls, worked for me. Then I made the comic square shaped, just to reinforce how our main character Lindsay feels boxed in.  Somebody told me once that reading my comics felt like listening their favorite 7-inch records from a cool indie band. I liked that comment.

Where would you say your influences come for School?

A good part of the influence comes from music, believe it or not. Songs from bands like Opeth, Slayer and Septic Flesh were big helpers for me in crafting the story and pushing the mood of the book. But also the story was a way for me to be cathartic, and route all my demons and greatest fears into the story and onto the page. What started out as a simply ghost story has turned into something far deeper.

What inspires your artwork?

I LOVE looking at various professional art up close, it doesn’t matter whose art it is or what style. I like looking at expert craftsmanship in comic art, it makes me want to be a better artist.

Issue 5 is the most recent issue that came out and it’s enormous, what the fuck?

I know, right? That’s one of the benefits of being independent, I can set the page count to whatever I want and nobody can tell me not to. But the reason why School #5 is so big is because I felt the story just reads better in larger doses, it has more time to develop and the reader gets more invested into the characters and story.

Speaking of being independent, what do you feel are the pros and cons of working independently?

The pros of being independent is that I set my own hours, don’t have another person to answer to when I want to take a different direction with the story. I can set the page count to a book for almost whatever length I desire, I stop when I feel I am at a good stopping point, not when an editor tells me when I should stop.  So there is a  great amount of freedom. The downside is I sometimes misspell or screw up on grammar, so having a copy editor would be nice. But that’s not the biggest downside, the biggest downside is the fact that I work with my own money, and I hardly have any money at all to dispose of, so my means are very limited. The successful self-publishers are diamonds in a coal mine. Few and far between, and they worked their asses off to get where they are.

What future plans do you have with School?

It will probably go to issue, say, twelve or so. Maybe fifteen. I have the ending all written out, have been for a long time now, I just don’t know how many pages it will take to get there. Some scenes require a lot more pages, other times I can jam in as many panels I can possibly muster.

In the last, oh, 7 years, comic book movies have been flooding the theaters. Let’s say the “fine” folks from Hollywood come knocking at your door. They want to take School to the silver screen. What are your thoughts?

I would be all for it. I kinda wrote School like a movie anyway, so a silver-screen adaptation would be fitting.

Live action vs. Animation, which would you prefer?

Animated, definitely.

Would you insist the film be black and white?

Yes, absolutely, this is also important.

They want to drop “A Ghost Story” from the title, would you let them?

Sure, that works.

You pushover.

Your mom is a pushover!

Say they want to change the age of Lindsay, they don’t like her being an adolescent. They pitch you the idea of Lindsay being a recent high school graduate who dies and wakes up in a high school, what do you say?

I would say no. Or rather, “Hell no!” She must be twelve years old. Her age and the date of her trauma are actually congruent to the average age a girl’s menstruation cycle starts, and that element adds another layer to Lindsay’s story. It’s the age where innocence starts to fade away.  The importance of her being twelve during her traumatic incident is all part of an underlying theme.

You have traveled with School all over the country, and have been to both comic book and horror conventions. What do you notice is the difference between the way each view your comic?

At horror conventions, I get to bring my comic to a genre that may not normally read comics, and many are impressed with how the comic looks. I think many out there still don’t realize what comics are like nowadays – they have seen all kinds of comic book movies, but still haven’t walked into a comic book store yet. At horror conventions when they come to my table they get a look into a media they normally don’t know about, and walk away from the table as a new fan.  At comic book conventions, the crowd is tougher, because I am competing with hundreds of other comic creators, so fans are a little more critical. I have to work more to stand out from them.

What is the best convention memory? Doesn’t have to be directly related to School.

I think it was when Corin Nemec from the Parker Lewis Can’t Lose TV show bought my comic for his daughter. He was at Mid-Ohio Con in Columbus and stopped by my table, he was a very laid-back guy.  Another moment was when I inadvertently pitched my comic book to award-winning comic veteran Kyle Baker in an elevator during the off-hours of Heroes Con in Charlotte. I didn’t know it was him. I thought it was some random guy at a comic con; he saw my School shirt and asked me about it. I told him all about my comic and he replied “Hey man, that’s awesome! That’s really great!” and he sounded genuine. When he left, my other friends in the elevator said “Dude…don’t you know who that was?”

What’s the worst school memory you have? (If you don’t want to bring it up again, too bad fucker!)

Not one specific memory off the top of my head, but the fourth grade was definitely rough. I got picked on a lot because I was a bit of a space cadet. I remember all sorts of moments where I said or did something dumb and got laughed at, and I’m standing around with a dumbfounded look wondering what was so funny.

Life is still like that for me. Favorite hot lunch from school?

The pizza. Good God was it greasy. You could literally see your reflection on the greasy cheese. I have never seen such a greasy piece of food in my life. Nowadays if they served that OSHA would shut the kitchen down.  But it was worth every future heart attack I’ll get. Man that was tasty.

Was it a rectangular slice of ‘za?

Yep. A giant rectangle.

Besides School, what else have you done/what else are you working on?

I am also working on something new, this is going to be a graphic novel called Wisconsin. It’s a series of vignettes that connect together, revolving around a handful of people around the Fox Cities area, and how the bloody history of the land has created a supernatural element that drives them mad. Reasonable people of science become neurotic train wrecks. They go crazy. Harmless old ladies commit infanticide. City planners become arsonists. They lose rationality, almost like they were possessed. It’s connected a lot to the Butte Des Morts massacre of the Fox tribe Indians, and the sawdust fires of Oshkosh. It’s in the first stages of creation so it won’t come out for another couple years, but I am incredibly excited for this one. Watch for it in the future!

What are the top five albums you have been listening to recently?

Bacon Fat, Grease One For Me
Bacon Fat was the first major effort back in the 70’s by now-blues legend Rod Piazza; he and a band teamed up with then-living blues legend George “Harmonica” Smith to form this little harmonica old blood/new blood dynamic duo. Rod Piazza proved his chops on this one with a fantastic cover of Little Walter’s “Up the Line” number, and George was his legendary self.

Canned Heat, The Boogie House Tapes Vol.1-3
Canned Heat’s biggest hit, “Goin’ Up the Country” was also probably the biggest departure of their actual sound. That song was for hippies. The rest of their entire song catalog was a vast array of some of the nastiest whiskey-soaked blues you have ever heard come from a group of white guys. The Boogie House Tapes are live recordings made throughout over thirty years of music, listening to them makes you feel like you are in a dingy dive bar in a working class area. You can’t help but stomp your feet and grit your teeth.

Slayer, Reign in Blood
What can I say? It’s one of the greatest metal albums of all time. “Raining Blood” I could listen to on repeat and never get tired of it, same goes with “Postmortem”.

Septic Flesh, Sumerian Deamons
This is my favorite current metal band. These guys have been around since the early 90’s but they didn’t really come into their own until this album came out. This band is from Greece, and they incorporate a full 30-piece choir for their songs. The result is nothing short of epic. “Faust” is probably my favorite song of all time. The chorus, the pounding metal riffs and industrial elements will blow you away. I cannot recommend this album enough. Also give their following album Communion a listen.

Opeth, Damnation
This was my first experience with Opeth, and I do love their metal albums like Blackwater Park et al, but Damnation sets these guys apart from other metal bands – they proved you can evoke feelings of loneliness, death, despair and depression through a quiet melody instead of from blasting out pounding riffs and grunting death vocals.

Alright, this is where you sell yourself (in many ways), give us your pitch.

My art rocks, and everyone should hire me to make some art for them, whether it be for portraits, comics and web comics, murals, storyboards, children’s books and magazine/newspaper/blog illustration.  Find me at www.deftoons.com, I just recently completely revised the site from top to bottom, there are links to my DeviantArt page, a store page to buy all my books and other merchandise like matted prints, you can also find online one-shot comics and other illustrations I have made over the last ten to fifteen years.  Feel free to shoot me an email at deftoons@deftoons.com if you have any questions or you would like to commission me on art for you or your business.  Or if you just want to tell me how awesome and good looking I am.  How YOU doin’?

Um, was that last question directed towards me? Dammit, you caught me off guard. I’m doing alright I suppose. Be a lot happier when this bloody interview is done…thanks for your time and giving us the chance to get to know your work, what care your closing remarks?

Support the arts! Buy from artists, read comic books and web comics, go to galleries and comic conventions, it doesn’t have to be local, just find art you like and buy their prints or the actual art from the artist. Don’t just buy posters from a big retailer, take time to hunt down and find art you can’t find everywhere. It’s a big creative world out there, it’s better to own something unique and outside the ordinary.