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As an artist, it seems like the landscape is ever-changing from simply the tools, to the aesthetic. I intend to be an artist that never wants to stop learning, and as such, I find more and more interesting artists every day. Each artist has a unique insight and point of view, no matter the experience level. New views help open my mind and teach me there are many ways to utilize my skills and I hope that sharing our stories will help others in the same way. I believe there are many paths on an artistic journey, and each interview will help to show the stories of the artists that tread them.
Today we'll be interviewing Tony Max.
Kaminski: Let's just jump right in: what makes Tony Max keep on annihilating art supplies? What got you started and what keeps you motivated?
Max: I learned to read from comic books, so they've been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. The comic realm taught me my vocabulary, my moral philosophy, and how to create art. It was always a given that I would have to return the favor, to give something back to that community. I've got more stories in my head than I'll ever have time to illustrate, but that won't stop me from trying. I've always operated under the philosophy that if you make enough art in your life, time can't possibly erase it all after I'm gone.
Kaminski: It sounds like you and I share some very similar sensibilities when it comes to the reasoning behind making art. So it reasons to be, that your ability with line must transcend to both medias because of your tattooing background. Do you find there to be a difference in approach when it comes to the tattoo gun vs. a pen / pencil? What's some strategies you use when jumping back and forth? And/or what's some similarities between the two?
Max: Tattooing is much more like painting than drawing. The techniques used for blending and saturation are similar to watercolor. Each stroke must be deliberate and colored in a certain order. Drawing comics allows me to work looser, allows me to lightly sketch an area until I find the perfect pose or perspective. Because tattoos are so permanent and unforgiving, creating comics has become the perfect therapy for unwinding after a long day. I get to create art on my own terms without having to please a client. The only similarities lay in my sketch process when I'm creating designs. But for my last three series, I've gone completely digital, and that's an entirely different beast. The only time I use a pencil these days is for tattoo sketches. I use a light blue Japanese soft lead that vanishes after I Xerox it. Maybe my tattoo and comic styles look similar. I can't really tell because my comics are a real world to me. They've ceased being drawings and feel more like I'm filming a documentary.
Tattooing is much more like painting than drawing. The techniques used for blending and saturation are similar to watercolor.Kaminski: Well! You just changed my perspective!
Max: Haha, how so?
Kaminski: I honestly thought that tattooing in general was like drawing and painting with ink, not painting in washes like watercolor.
Max: It is in some ways. Or maybe it's more like using Copic markers. But It's definitely not like oil or acrylic because there's no way to alter the color once it's laid down. You can tint it, but there's no do-overs. Every mark has to be purposeful.
Kaminski: Whoa! So cool! Switching gears: What's it been like to work in comics thus far?
Max: Working in comics is my dream job. It's so exhilarating to sit down at the desk and create an entire world from scratch! I started off illustrating a couple of issues of Bethany's Song by Donald Juengling. I had so much fun on that project that I couldn't wait for another project to come my way. I immediately started writing my own graphic novel set in a futuristic Memphis and found that I was very satisfied with the mystery I'd come up with. I called it The Golden Silence. It was sort of a hodgepodge of every old detective show I'd ever seen, but I crammed it full of personal experience and emotion. And when I say crammed, I mean it. My first draft was 456 pages. I edited it down to 416, which ran for 16 issues and took a year and a half to illustrate. I published it myself under the banner of Memfamous Comics. The reception was warm and people seemed to enjoy the main characters, so I didn't waste any time writing its sequel, The Crimson Hand. This time I shortened the tale down to 6 32-page issues. I'm right in the middle of that one right now. I also created a third series called Memfamous Comics Presents that tells short stories set in that same world. And I've got a few dozen scripts ready to keep it going for a while. Illustration comes natural to me, but learning to write, edit, publish, and market a book took a lot of reading and practice. I've really learned a lot about how to run a business myself. It would be nice to have some other artists involved in the process, but I just haven't had the extra funds to hire anyone. The profits are meager, especially compared to tattooing, but that will never stop me from telling a story that needs to be told. I'm anxiously trying to finish The Crimson Hand now so I can move on to my next project. My next title is a really fresh idea that I think people haven't seen before. I'm very excited about it.
Kaminski: Let's jump right in then: what spurned your interest in your Golden Silence project? And in that vein, what's a good summary for folks of the story as a whole?
Kaminski: In that vein: Was there anything in particular that seemed to drive you towards or away from your project initially? Do you still feel just as driven about the project all these years later?
For me working on a comic project has been a very slow process because of the daunting amount of work, so I can only commend you on your dedication.
Max: The Golden Silence happened because I wanted to do something cyberpunk, but also something local. So I jumped ahead two hundred years into my own neighborhood. I created this scenario where a world war between religions had broken the United States and left Memphis to fend for itself. The entire city is surrounded by a wall to control who enters from the wasteland beyond. The police force is now corporate-owned and called The Public Eye because they use technology to spy on every inhabitant. The reluctant hero of the story is a disgraced former cop named Filadelfo Burden. Burden, with the help of his assistant Lola, now operates a Finder Service. He uses his experiences as a cop to track down various people, places, things, much like a modern day private eye. The only problem is that he has this monstrous addiction to sex, drugs, danger, or anything else that could get him killed. In The Golden Silence, he has to solve a missing person case without becoming one himself. He knocks on death's door almost every issue. That's the gag.
I was driven to do a detective story because of my love of old crime shows. I just threw Mike Hammer, Jim Rockford, and Sam Spade in a blender and added a pinch of myself. As I started writing, I poured more and more of myself into the story. I used a lot of personal experience with addiction, with psychedelics, with religion, with casual sex and used the book to explore how I really felt about those ideas. For instance, if a good friend died in real life, I would put that into the story and let Fil Burden work out his feelings toward that. Because his feelings are pretty much my own. So I stayed very focused and forced myself to get the work done. I didn't let anything pull me away from that project. My friends and family can attest to that. And I'm still that driven. But I just had a baby daughter born in December, so I'm finding that I won't have that much free time again for a while. But yeah, I live for work. The harder my day, the happier I am with myself at night.
Making comics is soooo exhausting. It takes forever. I can see why most are done by large teams of people
Kaminski: Oh I hear that! That is part of what maintains my trepidation of diving in headfirst. Once you start, you can't stop! So you better make sure you're fully committed once you start!
If you were to start over as a creative, what are some things you would tell yourself?
Max: First thing I would tell myself is to not release a brand new series a week before a presidential election. It turns out that people have their attention diverted and social media totally loses its marketing power. And social media is another lesson. I'd tell myself to not underestimate the prep work needed to launch a book in a way that the public can easily find and consume it. I also wish I could tell myself to start producing comics a lot earlier. I wasted at least a decade daydreaming about it before I did it, and I really missed out on this indie comics renaissance that happened about ten years ago. It's still happening, but now the market is so oversaturated that it's becoming increasingly more difficult to stand out in the crowd.
Kaminski: I can hear that... but in that same vein, it's all about grass roots, right? Once it starts to take off, there's no stopping it. Do you ever find your inner voice competing with the two sides of your artistic ability? Or do you view them as two parts of the same whole?
I know that working a day job, I have this tendency to come home feeling drained from dealing with the normal ins-and-outs of graphic design work, so it makes me wonder if there are also days where the same thing happens to you with tattooing vs. comics.
Laziness in art is a cardinal sin. That's the quickest way to get sent to Art Hell.
Kaminski: Definitely what art should do! I'm glad to hear that it's doing it's damn job instead of being all lazy and whatnot.
Max: Laziness in art is a cardinal sin. That's the quickest way to get sent to Art Hell.
Kaminski: This one is completely optional, but do you have any questions for me?
Max: I love your cyberpunk art. It reminds me of those old Shadowrun covers. Do you think you'll ever do a comic or graphic novel? Or do you prefer one-off illustrations to the sequential stuff?
Kaminski: Hilariously enough, my first influence is actually the ShadowRun second and third edition books. Because of that, Elmore definitely has a huge influence on my as well as John Van Fleet and Timothy Bradstreet. It makes me very happy that you recognize my influences as that means that I feel like I'm getting closer to being on point with that type of art.
Ultimately the whole project is actually part of a bigger world that Ashley and I continually work on and off - Honor: [De]Coded. The marionettes (all of my robot women) are part of this world as much as the displaced archetypes and foundlings, etc. etc. It's actually a world that is slowly building, but coming out none-the-less.
We have parts of the world and characters, but have yet to really find a way to piece it all together. Eventually it'll become a cohesive project though. I just have to stop getting lazy about it hahaha. That and I don't know if I could work on a comic project outside of my own work. I would have a seriously hard time on another's IP - making sure that every angle lined up to their expectations and things...
But yeah, the short answer is that it's all part of a bigger world that will eventually surface into a graphic novel form.
Max: I'm looking forward to seeing that happen. Cyberpunk is my favorite genre. I grew up feasting on cyberpunk comics, movies, art with these big cumbersome headgears and wires protruding from everything, but when I sat down to make my own universe, I had to modernize those ideas. I had to keep reminding myself that the future is wireless with smaller technology. It was hard!
If you could have any gig drawing an established character, which one would it be?
(Personally I'd like to revive Ghost Rider 2099)
Kaminski: Ooohhh.... that's a GOOD question!
It's hard to narrow down to one specifically... but if I were to dive into one character only, it might have to be Tank Girl. She intrigues me for so many reasons, but the one thing that I haven't really seen out of her is absolute depth. She just seems to be the embodiment of angst, and punk (which I'm okay with at face value).
Max: Oh yeah, Tank Girl definitely needs an update. They're always trying new artists, but the story never really progresses.
Kaminski: What goals do you have set for yourself in the immediate? What about long term?
Max: My most immediate goal is to finish up my current series. The Crimson Hand only has half of its six issues out. But I desperately want to start my next series, so I'm about to shift it into high gear. My long term goal is to keep all these titles running long enough to make them popular. I'd love to see the Memfamous comic universe as a tv series, reaching a much wider audience. I would love to write for television, and it would be exciting to have a decent show set here and filming locally.
I don't have a retirement fund, and Hollywood money is about the only way to strike it rich with comics.
Kaminski: And of course, the final question: what's the best piece of advice you've received or best piece of advice you can give to upcoming artists?
Max: The best advice I could give to other artists came from my college painting teacher. "Just work." Don't feel inspired? Work anyway. Don't have an audience? Work anyway. Broken arm? Work anyway. Never stop working because each and every attempt makes you better at creation and safer in knowing your purpose. And a lot of the good stuff in art happens when you're not paying attention.
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THANKS FOR READING, AND UNTIL NEXT TIME!
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