Minless Self Indulgence Interview
This is a comic I made last year with the band Mindless Self Indulgence for Image comics!
I did an interview with Newsarama but because of someone’s error it was never posted and I never checked up on it cuz I’m a scatterbrain! Anyway, below is the interview, questions by Chris Arrant.
Figures I busted my ass making this comic and the only interview I did didn't get published.
Anyhow, here’s an interview the band did with MTV about the comic which includes some sample pages. They also prove that they are huge dorks and talk about what comics they read:
http://splashpage.mtv.com/2010/12/10/mindless-self-indulgence-comic/
Interview:
1. What made this band’s story something worthy of a comic?
Well I do not want to speak for them, but they are all nerds. Jimmy Urine (the lead singer) has nerded out with me over comics and comic artists before so I think they were just totally excited to do a comic book. Second of all they just have CRAZY stories to tell. A lot of bands have obsessive fans or weird adventures on the road but with MSI that stuff is magnified because they seem to like trouble, going against the norm and just plain putting on an awesome show. Plus all of their fans are just as crazy as they are, they come to shows dressed in fire man costumes or giant fuzzy Elmo suits. They know how to have a good time and everyone has an awesome sense of humor which is why I knew they’d make a great funny book.
2. Can you pick one story in it and tell us about it?
Steve and Lyn-z’s 48 hours was a really fun story to visualize and draw. Basically Steve and Lyn-z are always trying to one-up each other on stage, do something crazier and crazier. So if Lyn-z jumps into the crowd and lands on some people, Steve’s got to climb up into the rafters, jump and land on his face. The night starts off like that at a show and just elevates to heights of insanity with Steve getting people to punch him in the face and Lyn-z getting the bass player of the band they are touring with to beat her up. They have Roman candle fights, they sneak into a metal show and Steve takes a wiz on the stage! Eventually they join forces and just start terrorizing everyone else they are on tour with until it all culminates into a crazy stage show where the whole band gets into the act. I had a lot of fun playing the two characters off of each other and showing the reactions of people around them. Not to mention it’s all freakin true! I’ve even seen pictures from fans who were at the shows.
3. How did you hook up with the band to do this unique project?
I have been a HUGE fan of the band for years, my friend Terry introduced me to them in high school. I remember the Jamie Hewlett CD cover art catching my eye. I thought they were brilliant and hilarious and I just plain liked the sound. My friend Thomas knew how much I dug them and he happened to be working at a record label who did their merchandise. He would talk to their manager, James every month or so and one day, COMPLETELY unprompted by me he told James he had a friend who wanted to do a comic for them. Now, I loved the band but this was not something I had even thought of! It turns out they were totally interested and there was just no way I could resist. So thanks Thomas!
4. Can you tell us how you got the band’s stories and made them into comics?
Basically Jimmy would call and tell me one weird tale after another and I’d take notes. Then he’d send me stories from the rest of the band through email and we’d correspond back and forth about them. Then I’d send some sketches over of the pages and we’d review them over email, pretty simple!
5. For people coming into this book with no knowledge of the band, where do you recommend they start with the music?
Well I started with Tight and then Frankenstein Girls which became my favorite album. I would recommend starting with Frankenstein Girls, it’s such a colorful, sexy, high energy album and it’s just loaded with freaking awesome songs, lots of bang for your buck!
6. Since you took their stories and turned it into comics, when are they going to do a song about your autobio comics from Kids With Experience?
Hahaha I guess that would be fair play huh? I don’t get into nearly as much trouble in my bio comics as the band does in this book so they’d have to write a song like “Jess farted, everyone leave the room! ” …I’m not sure how well that would do…actually, it might do GREAT.
7. You’ve got a busy couple months - this book in November, and then two comic books in December via Top Shelf. Can you tell us about those two?
Yea! I’m a comics MACHINE. The first book Chester 5000 is coming out in December, it’s taken from my webcomic (NSFW) : http://jessfink.com/Chester5000XYV/
Basically it’s a VERY sexy robot love story set in the Victorian era, some like to call it Steampunk but there’s not much steam involved unless you count the steamy sex! Har har. The book collects the first story in the series and we’ve even got Alan Moore quote for the back which kind of blows my mind, I’m very excited!
The second book We Can Fix It is a science fiction, comedy, time travel memoir and it’s also a little sexy. The book involves me going back in time to fix things that bug me about my past and while I’m there I teach myself a thing or two about making out the right way, because, no one gets it right the first time around. There are some sample pages here: http://jessfink.com/kwe/archive/kwe00066-2/
I posted the story on my blog everyday for a few weeks and it got a huge response from people. A lot of people wound up have similar regrets, or just writing me tell them how much it made them laugh or feel better about the crap they went through too. I’m really proud of the work I put into it. WCFI comes out in 2011.
8. Tales of a band on the road is a pretty unique kind of story. Were you ever in a band, or did you ever hang with one intensely enough to get your own stories?
Haha, no no no! I am waaaaaay too stage shy to be in a band. I do sing and play a mean Ukulele though! Perhaps not surprisingly there aren’t that many MSI songs translated into chords for the Uke, believe me I’ve looked! If anybody out there feels like chord charting “Masturbates” let me know!