"Jill Thompson interview"
JUN 2001 Product
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In her career in comics,
Jill Thompson has drawn DC’s Wonder Woman, DC/Vertigo’s
Sandman, Invisibles and Finals,
and more. A few years back, Sirius published her first
creator-owned project, Scary
Godmother, who has now appeared in 4 hardcovers, 3
specials, and one mini-series. This month, Jill returns to
Sirius to tell her longest Scary Godmother story to date. Worlds
of Westfield Content Editor Roger Ash recently spoke with
Jill about this new mini-series.
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Westfield:
For those who aren’t familiar with the world of Scary Godmother, how
would you describe the book and who are the major characters?
Jill
Thompson: Scary Godmother is like your fairy godmother, but for
Halloween. There’s really nothing scary about the Scary Godmother.
She’s fun and macabre; reminiscent of childhood with a little bit of
social commentary mixed in. The major players in Scary
Godmother are Scary Godmother herself; Hannah Marie, the little
girl who she is the scary godmother of; Mr. Pettibone, the skeleton in
the closet that lives with Scary Godmother in her house on the Fright
Side; Bug-a-Boo, the monster under the bed who also lives in Scary
Godmother’s house. He lives in the basement. There’s the vampire
family, Max, Ruby and their son, Orson, who live down the road from
Scary Godmother in Belfry Manor. Max is a traditional, old-timey,
bald-headed, long black cloak-wearing vampire, and his wife is kind of
like a 1950s monster movie hostess in her style. She’s a bit more
modern in her tradition and her ways. Their son Orson is a bespectacled
little vampire boy who kind of combines the best features of both of his
parents. He is Hannah’s playmate. There’s also Harry the werewolf
who lives with his fortune-telling mother in a cave in the forest.
He’s rather a fanboy. He’s a loveable, mischief-makin’, selfish
little guy. Well, not too little.
Westfield:
Will people need to be familiar with the previous Scary Godmother books
to understand the new mini-series?
Thompson:
No. What I try to do in all the Scary Godmother books and comics is make
sure that you don’t have to have read what came before it to enjoy
what’s coming out. The fact that this is going to be a mini-series
will mean that, if you pick up #2, you probably should pick up #1
[laughter]. But you don’t have to pick up any of the other comics to
know what’s going on because I try and make sure the first time you
see the characters, they’re fairly well explained as far as their
names and relationships to each other.
Westfield:
What can you tell us about the new mini-series?
Thompson:
The new mini-series is a little bit of a departure from the way Scary
Godmother comics or books usually go. It’s 6 issues instead of one.
The longest story I’ve told so far has been a three-issue mini-series.
It’s got a bit more drama in it than the other comics have had.
They’ve been more humor based. There hasn’t been much soap opera
involved. This time, we’re going to learn a lot about where Scary
Godmother came from and how she became the Scary Godmother. Some people
from her past will come into play. We’re going to have Orson going to
summer-ghoul and Hannah going off to camp. Both of which can be pretty
scary experiences.
Basically, we have a running thread where
Scary Godmother is invited to a witch’s convention. In going to the
convention, you learn about where she grew up, where she went to school,
who her classmates were, why she has the job she has, and how she met
some of the other monsters that are part of the regular cast. Hannah
finds that she can’t rely on the Scary Godmother as much as she
thought she could. And we’ll find out why. Everybody has to do a
little bit of soul searching and growing and dealing with, heaven
forbid, responsibility. [laughter] Except Harry. [laughter] He never
will have to deal with responsibility. Harry does make some appearances
in the mini-series, but because it would be very easy to write almost
every story where Harry starts everything, or complicates everything,
I’ve kept him in the background in this story because he just had a
mini-series. There actually are repercussions from that mini-series
amongst the other monsters in the Fright Side as far as their jobs are
concerned.
Westfield:
Are there any new characters who’ll be showing up that you’d like to
mention in particular?
Thompson:
Just the people from Scary Godmother’s past, the people that she went
to school with. There are two headmistresses of the school that she
attended, and a lot of her little classmates: witches and fairies who
are training to be fairy godmothers. But I don’t want to give out
their names yet.
Westfield:
Why set a book with such a Halloween theme during the summer?
Thompson:
Because it’s convention season and because I like that kind of stuff
all year round, it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s Halloween.
I’ve wanted to do a story that’s a lot more in-depth that I
couldn’t tell in one of the Scary Godmother books and it was a lot
more complicated than just telling it in a special. I wanted the
episodic nature of it. I wanted to have a convention issue coming out
during the convention season to play up the things we all love and hate
about conventions. Everything that I work on in the regular Scary
Godmother books, I work January through the summer for it to come out in
the Fall. I’m always asked why don’t I have anything out in the
summertime. It’s because I’m working through the summer. It’s
easier to produce a comic that I can have come out while I’m still
working on it than a book that is a lot more labor intensive as far as
production and printing and getting it all set up and ready to go.
Westfield:
Scary Godmother, especially the hardcovers, is very young reader
friendly. Do any children’s authors influence you?
Thompson:
Oh yeah. I wish I had tons of money so I could buy not only copies of
all my favorite books for each of my seven nieces, but also an extra
copy for me. I’ve always like Charles Adams, which I wouldn’t say is
a children’s author. I’m a big fan of what I was read to by Captain
Kangaroo on TV, so one of my very favorites are the Francis books by
Russell and Lilian Hoban. I still pick up children’s books because I
love the illustrations and the stories. I like Holly Hobbie. That’s
actually the name of the woman who created Holly Hobbie, the little kind
of prairie doll character. I’m also a big fan of her Toot
and Puddle books, which are these two little pigs that live in a
place called Woodcock Pocket. She’s an amazing watercolor artist. She
has a freshness and design I really admire. I do have lots of
children’s books lying around for reference and inspiration. Because I
am really steeped in comic books, I’ll pull out a book and re-read it
just to get the flavor of single-page illustration. I like all the J.
Otto Siebold and Vivian Walsh books like Monkey
Business. Two Bad Ants by Chris Van Allsburg is one of my favorites.
William Joyce, Rosemary Wells. There’s a really great children’s
book by Piotr & Jozef Wilkon called The
Brave Little Kittens. It’s some of the best illustrations of
these three little kittens going out and doing cat things like jumping
at a bug, running through the grass. The expressions on these almost
primitive looking drawings are so dead on it’s really delightful.
That’s the problem. I can walk into a children’s bookstore or even a
big Barnes & Noble or Borders and realize I could easily walk out
with $500 worth of books and go back tomorrow and get some more. But I
try to pick up some like at Halloween. Unfortunately, in many years
past, there’s nothing that’s caught my fancy. Which is one of the
reasons I started Scary Godmother.
Westfield:
So it was your intention to make Scary Godmother young reader friendly?
Thompson:
Oh yeah. I wanted it to be something that I personally would enjoy and
people in their 20s or 30s wouldn’t feel stupid reading it, especially
if they had children and they wanted to read it to them over and over
again. I wanted something that bridged the gap between children’s
books and comic books because a lot of the comics I remember from my
childhood were all ages friendly. Comics are so segregated now. It’s
hard to go into a comic book store and find a good amount of books that
are good for all ages; books that I could read and have and good time
but then I wouldn’t feel creepy passing them on to a kid. I think that
the fact that there aren’t many comics for kids just makes our
industry dwindle. People always try and make comics specifically for
kids, but I’ve found that when I would look at those, I would never
have picked them up if I was a kid. They were fairly insulting and
really insipid. I wanted something that might be good for everybody and
that’s what I’m actually trying to do. I really enjoy when little
kids come up to me or when I get letters from kids saying how much they
like the Scary Godmother. The best thing is that lately I’ve been
getting letters for the Scary Godmother, which is really cool. At first,
it was “Dear Jill Thompson, I like the Scary Godmother. I think
she’s cool.” And now it’s “Dear Scary Godmother, I think
Bug-a-Boo is neat. He can live under my bed. It’s stinky under there,
but he might like the stinky part.” My day is made when I get a letter
for Scary Godmother herself. It’s pretty cool.
Westfield:
Are there any plans for more Scary Godmother-related merchandise on the
horizon?
Thompson:
Not that I know of. With Scary Godmother being optioned for animation, a
good deal of that kind of stuff is tied up in the option agreement.
There’s stuff that we can do, but because there are so many things
that are just almost going to happen that we don’t want to kill their
license. I’ve been really caught up in getting the mini-series put
together and doing some other stuff at the same time.
Westfield:
Are there any other projects you’re working on you’d like to
mention?
Thompson:
I’m working on a Little Endless storybook for Vertigo. That’ll be
out in the summer. I’m writing and painting that. I’m working on a
12-page Dazzler story for Marvel. I’m probably going to be doing a
couple pages of a Transmetropolitian
story. And I’ve been working on a series of children’s books with a
friend of mine, but that’s all the info I can tell you about it
because it’s one of those things where nothing’s hashed out with the
companies that are dealing with it.
Westfield:
Do you have any closing comments you’d like to make?
Thompson:
If you’ve never picked up Scary Godmother before, this might be a good
place to start. It’s going to be very multi-faceted compared to what
you might expect it is. Hopefully you’ll pick it up. |