Mini-Interview with Tommy Kovac
A new edition of Tommy Kovac's first comic, Stitch,which tells the story of a rag doll who can't remember his past or identity, will be published in March. In Stitch, you'll the moody magic of Autumn and the whimsy of Wonderland. I asked Tommy some questions about Stitch, and here are his answers. There's a mild spoiler in the first paragraph after the last quesiton that I've set in white text -- highlight it to read it. (I know that this tactic doesn't work if you're reading this on a dark background with light text, but you've been warned!)
Stitch was your first published comic book. What kind of stories were you writing and comics were you drawing before you started on Stitch?
T: I had already pitched Skelebunnies as its own comic book to SLG, but Dan said it was awful and nobody would want to read it. So he asked me to create a new storyline, something different. I ended up completely switching gears from total silliness, and a very episodic approach, to an actual linear story in which I'd try to create "mood" and "tone," and other tricky things like that. Before I decided to try my hand at comics, I'd been working for a few years on my writing. I'd written a depressing and unfocused young adult novel that never got published, plus several binders full of short stories. Mostly touching on the horror, sci-fi, or "weird tale" genres. I'm still quite proud of some of those short stories.
The main character in Stitch looks like you. How is Stitch a personal story for you? What is the significance of him not knowing his name?
T: People ask me that a lot, why Stitch looks like me. The simple answer is that I was really still learning how to draw, since it was my first comic book, and whenever I needed to study and certain kind of facial expression, or how a nose looks, I'd look in the mirror. In that way, I think maybe the fact that this character ended up looking like me influenced the story I put him in. The bit about him having sort of a human face with the body of a rag doll came about because I had no interest in learning how to draw a human body at that time, so just for grins I stuck a rag doll body on this character. When I looked at the page and saw that, my brain started to spin, creating a story about why he was like that.
I try not to analyze what I'm doing while I'm doing it, but it seems like the whole quest for identity is obviously my own journey in defining myself as a creator. Whether I intend to or not, I always wear my heart on my sleeve. I wish I knew how not to do that! But there it is. At the time I was securing the deal with SLG, I was also in the process of letting all my friends and family know I'm gay, and trying to figure out how that related to my creative work. I even seriously debated using a pseudonym, but ultimately decided to just be myself. It seemed natural that Stitch would of course be gay, but I didn't want that to be the central point of the story. I wanted to tell a creepy little tale about magic and loneliness, and have the sexual orientation be incidental.
What kind of reflections do you have on this work after nearly ten years since the first issue was published? You added an epilogue -- why did you feel the story needed additional closure?
T: I still have occasional fans who ask me if I'll ever continue the Stitch storyline, and some of them seem to want additional "closure." To me, the whole point of it ending before you know if they get out of that playroom or not is that it doesn't necessarily matter if they do. What's most important is that Stitch has figured out who he is, and he and Simon have connected and are happy together. But since this is a re-issue of previously published material, I wanted to do something special for people who already have the first edition. I thought it would be nice to figure out a way to give just a little bit more closure while still being true to my original concept of the "emotional resolution." (Especially since I've known this stuff in my head, I just hadn't made it clear to my readers.
And how do I feel about this story I did ten years ago...? I'm highly critical of the first ten pages of it, but overall I still feel good about it. You can totally see what a beginner I was to the comic book format and how I develop during the course of the four issues. I can even tell when I experimented with one type of pen, ditched it, and started using another, until I found one I was comfortable with. Looking at Stitch is almost like finding an old junior high diary. Sometimes embarrassing, sometimes, re-affirming.