by Jarrod Jones. I don’t think it’s a reach to call Aubrey Sitterson an iconoclast, at least as far as cape comics are concerned. He’s not here to build on what superheroes have become over generations. Sitterson is here to revitalize something that superheroes haven’t been since the genesis of superheroes. “Judging from the current landscape, it’s easy to assume that superheroes have never been anything more than corporate-owned supercops, reactionary power fantasies cloaked in liberal signifiers,” he wrote for Polygon back in 2020. He continues: “But that generalization obscures the truth: Superheroes used to be about helping and protecting people, not the systems and hierarchies holding them down.”
Sitterson wrote that piece just as his and Tyrell Cannon’s Kickstarted project, the “Leftist superhero” Beef Bros, was unleashed on backers and the general public alike. Beef Bros, a clear descendant of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s original concept of Superman, a “hero of the people,” signified an embrace of Sitterson’s ideologies and the kind of comics he wanted to make—unsurprising, given all this followed his short-lived experience scripting G.I. Joe for IDW Publishing. “The dream wasn’t working on G.I. Joe comics to benefit Hasbro,” he told The Comics Journal back in 2020. “That wasn’t the pinnacle for me.”
So an iconoclast, sure. And he’s a gifted writer, a positive force for all things good and awesome in the comics industry. If I could distill all of this into a single word and couple that with having known him for years, I’d describe Aubrey Sitterson as a force. His energy is unbelievable. And as Aubrey ventures deeper into his current era, writing viscerally joyous and energizing action comics alongside co-creators like Tyler Cannon, Chris Moreno, Tony Gregori, Fico Ossio, and others, he’s yet to display any signs of fatigue.
This body of work—which includes No One Left to Fight, Savage Hearts, The Worst Dudes (all published at Dark Horse Comics), and Kickstarted projects Stoned Master and the aforementioned Beef Bros—feels like a foundation off of which Aubrey can build practically anything, including a template of clear-eyed, honest superhero stories for future writers and artists to study and embrace.
When I ask him where all this energy comes from, he cuts right to the point: “This is what I’ve always wanted. I didn’t feel I had any other choice but to make it happen!”
With Archie Vs. the World in stores now, I’m pumped to share the third part in my longform interview with Aubrey Sitterson, where we discuss a multitude of things concerning comics—not least of which the fires that burn within Sitterson that compel him to make the kind of comics he wants to see in the world.
For part one in this interview series, click this.
Part Two is over here.
1. So, I noticed you’ve taken up whittling, is that right?
Aubrey Sitterson: I’ve always felt like an artist without a medium; I drew and played music as a kid but never really enjoyed the act of either enough to put in the time to get good at them. Eventually, I just lost interest. This is why writing comics appeals to me so much: It’s a way to ideate and participate in the creation of visual art despite not having developed the ability to do it on my own. And that’s a huge part of why my comics writing is so visual. I took up writing comics not just as a way of telling stories but of getting visuals from my head out into the real world.
Whittling, then, is an attempt to do that on my own finally, albeit in a very rustic, primitive format. So far at least! It’s also been a real boon to me relaxation-wise, something I can actually do—as opposed to just watching television slack-jawed—when I’m too mentally drained to read or write. Plus, I’m looking forward to getting proficient enough that I can start making gifts for folks.
What’s more, I’ve been thinking a lot about how fundamentally different drawing and whittling are; the first is an additive art, and the second a subtractive. I think there are some larger implications there but I haven’t bothered to hash them out yet because I’m still enjoying the feel and sound of a knife cutting through wood so much.
2. Is whittling opening up any new creative doors in your mind? I mean to say: we’re getting older, our minds need new challenges, and when we find them and then pursue them, they often change the way we see things. Do you think whittling might alter the way you approach writing?
I certainly hope so! Right now, the largest benefit I’m seeing is my being forced to slow down. For so much of my comics career, it’s been a mad dash: To find collaborators, to put a pitch together, to submit it, to get a response, to promote the book, to run the Kickstarter, to ship the books out… My 2021 in particular was outrageously packed, with three Dark Horse limited series and three Kickstarter campaigns. It was a function of just how hard it is to get a foothold in our industry and, having finally seized these opportunities, I felt that I had to make the absolute most of them. Now, I’m realizing that it’s time to start moving a little slower, a little more conscientiously. Whittling is helping me internalize that lesson because if I rush or move too quickly, the work suffers in an immediate and incredibly obvious way.
It’s too early to say if there’s any benefit beyond that but I’m certainly hoping that spending some time immersed in the act of physical art creation will help me better approach the task of writing for artists. I’m keenly aware that the ceiling for creative success is much higher for people who do everything themselves, so I have to believe that anything I can do to help myself think more visually will be a boon to my comics writing.
3. I picture a cabin out in the dusty pasture, a coyote crooning in the distance, you scraping a miniature canoe or somesuch and going “yup.” It’s about as far from the frenetic stuff I’ve read from you, certainly a full scream away from *hard pivot* to your new Archie one-shot, Archie Vs.The World. Can we talk about this? I’m stunned by this post-apocalyptic Archie Andrews, the leathered Furiosa that is Veronica Lodge, Jed Dougherty’s Fist of the North Star-infused variant cover. What is this beast, and how did it come to be?
The genesis of this project was entirely with editor Jamie Rotante, who reached out to me about doing something else in the wake of Jed Dougherty and my contribution to the Best Archie Comic Ever one-shot, “Jughead the Burgarian.” She asked whether I’d be interested in doing an Archie/Fury Road mash-up, I asked if Jed and I could reteam on it and also bring in some Fist of the North Star, she said yes, and everything else grew organically out of that.
It’s funny; despite the bombastic, over-the-top subject matter and appearance of this stuff, Jed and I are very much using it as a testing ground—a kind of R&D lab—for some new creator-owned work we have cooking that is denser and more complex than anything we’ve done previously. That was very much the challenge we set out for ourselves here: Pack as much complexity as possible into 20 pages without sacrificing the visual-first approach to comics we both advocate for and love. It required us to utilize and develop some new formal techniques and approaches to storytelling, thinking not about how to depict a real-life scene in comics but, rather, how to present information in such a way that the reader is encouraged to do the heavy lifting themself, envisioning a scene, a world, and entire backstory inside their head.
Archie Vs. the World is a taste of the Aubrey & Jed projects to come, comics that are built around the page as a storytelling unit, that expect the reader to pay attention, use their brains to fill in the blanks, and be richly rewarded for it, all without sacrificing any of the scintillating, luxurious visuals you’ve come to expect from us both.
4. What does Archie Comics mean to you? I have an affinity for Jughead myself; there’s something comforting about following the misadventures of this laid-back fellow whose primary concerns are simply “burgers” and “the pursuit of more burgers.” Maybe also a nap. Were you a big reader of Archie?
Archie was omnipresent for me. I would have never considered myself a hardcore Archie fan but the characters are ingrained in my memory, especially Jughead. I love that, even in the midst of all this complicated high school drama, he refuses to be swayed from his singular, passionate pursuit of burgers. It’s a treat to come into a sandbox as well developed as Archie’s, with such distinct characters already established, and then to be given the type of freedom with which [Jamie] has entrusted Jed and me. On top of all that—and significantly—Archie Comics is an opportunity for Jed and I to get our reps in, trying out techniques and approaches that we’ll be bringing to our next project together.
5. I reckon we can’t talk about that New Thing you’ve just alluded to, but I’d like to ask you about your working relationship with Jed. What parts of your brain are flexed when you’re writing a script for Jed? You say this Next Thing is denser and more complex than previous shared works, so when you two are working together, what are you talking about? What movies and music and comics are you encouraging each other to check out to prime your respective imaginations?
I flex every part of my brain when I’m working with and writing for Jed, not because it’s difficult but because I know he engages with the art of comics storytelling the way that I strive to. I think a big part of that is that we have a shared comics lineage in my uncle Howard Chaykin, for whom Jed used to work as an assistant. No hyperbole, Howard is an architect of the modern comic book; he laid foundations so deeply that many creators don’t even realize they’re living in a house he built damn near forty years ago. While I write and Jed draws wholly different from Howard, what we share with him is a belief that comics’ core storytelling unit is the page and that readers are more capable of grappling with more difficult material—and more willing to do so—than many in the industry tend to expect. From that belief grows the entirety of my approach with Jed, which—for both of us—always starts with an eye toward complex storytelling expressed through page design.
As for the fuel that I’ve been throwing on the bonfire of our latest, as-yet-unannounced collaboration, it’s mostly prose: David Graeber, Jack Vance, Cordwainer Smith, Ursula K. Le Guin, etc. I’ve also gotten into the probably irritating habit of texting him photos of passages from these oppressively large and dense Hugh Thomas histories I’ve fallen in love with.
6. It’s serendipity that you mention Chaykin; I’m finally starting American Flagg! and while it isn’t the first work of his I’ve read, it’s certainly my first long-form Chaykin read. There’s a density in his pages that I used to get freaked out by when I was younger, but these days I think that density lends itself incredibly well to the story. But he’s writing his own pages, so he knows just how to construct a page so that it benefits the whole—of the issue, of the story. As a writer who works with artists, how do you apply lessons you’ve picked up by reading Chaykin to your collaborations? How does page design factor into it?
From reading, listening to, and talking with Howard, I’ve picked up a lot of rules that I follow in my work, but those are more about avoiding a bad read than creating a good one. What you’re asking is an important and difficult question, one that any thinking comics writer should be asking themselves with every page they write: How do I, working in the written word, best lay the groundwork for a wholly visual experience?
First, I try to structure issues with the design of the pages in mind. That means starting with page breakdowns that don’t just describe what happens on them but how that information will be presented visually; if ever there’s a page without a visual hook, a design-based element used to convey meaning, I go back to ground on it. Then, I do something that is horribly, criminally rare among comics writers: Thumbnails. I don’t ever send them on to artists unless they ask for them but they’re a crucially important step for recognizing problems that could be missed in a script format, discovering additional visual techniques, and, in a very real way, making sure what I’m asking of my co-creator isn’t impossible.
7. What’s your ideal comic in terms of this approach you’ve laid out? Which comics would you point to that knock it out of the park as far as page/panel structure, splash utilization, and conversational rhythm go?
So, obviously, Chaykin is a big touchstone for this approach. I think American Flagg! and The Shadow are my favorite examples but you can see it across all of his work, especially when he’s writing for himself; it’s a matter of presenting the page as a unit of storytelling, not just a bunch of panels put next to one another, an approach that is closer to design work than a lot of folks realize. I think Asterios Polyp is another great example; people have namechecked it consistently since it was released but I still don’t think creators have fully learned from and internalized what David Mazzucchelli was doing on it. It’s rare to see an approach that is so cognizant of and eager to engage with comics’ formal aspects but that still manages to work as genre comics.
A book that completely knocked me over when I read it was Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond. Absolutely everything on the page, in addition to being so terribly lovely, is clearly the result of careful thought and consideration, such that even completely silent pages reward readers who are willing to go back and reread. It actually incentivizes readers to look at a page as a whole, to read it panel to panel, to focus on the transitions between each, and then to reassess the page once more as a whole. The goal is to create something that readers want to spend that much time with because they know it will be worthwhile.
On the European side, I think Phillipe Druillet is the one who speaks the most to me in this regard. His work reads like an entirely different animal, as it’s less concerned with the discrete panel-to-panel pacing of US-style comics and more with creating an overwhelming visual experience on each and every page; everything else takes a backseat to that. Even his use of text—denser and heavier than what you’d typically find in US comics—is part of that, with long passages from which the reader takes frequent breaks to revisit and reassess the art on the page with additional context and insight.
8. You mentioned you used to draw. Do you try to keep it up?
Every few years I’ll sit down and try to draw a thing, typically in the context of figuring out whether there’s a comic that I can do myself that still works the way I want it to. As of right now, the answer has always been a resounding “No.” One of my biggest regrets is never learning to enjoy the act of drawing itself; I always saw it as a means to an end. That meant that, when I was unable to reproduce what I saw in my head, instead of just trying again and developing those muscles, I grew frustrated and typically just moved on to something else.
At this stage in my life, I’ve come to grips with the fact that I’m, realistically, not ever going to be able to draw at the level that I want for my comics. I’m also fully aware that this limitation creates a ceiling on how good my work can be because—fact of the matter is—comics by a single cartoonist are capable of reaching heights that collaborative work simply cannot. And that’s why I tend to read, study, and take inspiration from comics done by a single creator or, at the very least, a consistent team that clearly works in concert with one another, as opposed to a more assembly-line approach.
9. Would that reason—that cartoonists tend to have their work hit in a way that collaborations don’t—be why you tend to gravitate to co-creators you can work with beyond a single project? Do these professional relationships change how you approach this—like, say, “this is a Jed project, so I need to bring this kind of energy,” that sort of thing?
There’s a few reasons why I work with the same people repeatedly; knowing that there’s a preexisting rapport and the creative synergy that grows out of that is most definitely part of it. But also, it’s a matter of trust and knowing that an artist is not just capable of doing incredible work with me but willing to put in the effort to do so. I expend a tremendous amount of thought, planning, and labor in all aspects of my work, so I always seek out people who do the same. There’s a reason I say, “I write the best-looking comics.” It’s something I’m outrageously proud of—that so many incredible artists trust me and my contributions—and it makes me very picky when it comes to cocreators.
All that being said, the biggest reason you see me working with a smaller core of talent than other comics writers is the type of work that I’m doing. I have done and continue to do work-for-hire comics but it’s never been my dream, focus, or end-game. That means that—being blessed to have established a space for myself to do my very specific take on comics—I have an enormous, truly enviable amount of freedom to do what I want; the downside, however, is that each project becomes incredibly labor intensive without the institutional support of the more assembly-line style publishers, which allows writers to work with a wide variety of different artists at the expense of exact type of collaboration that I cherish.
As for the relationships changing the approach, it’s actually the other way around: While my books typically start with an idea I have, how it’s executed and what it ultimately becomes is informed by my cocreator in ways both direct (e.g., notes, story ideas, character designs) and indirect (my writing to their strengths in terms of substance, tone, formal approach, etc.). Archie vs the World, for instance—despite being work-for-hire—was a book that was built from the ground up in order for Jed to astonish people. Which he proceeded to do!
10. If collaborative comics can only hit so high—if there is a ceiling—what does that ceiling look like? Which creative teams have already hit it? I’m interested in what you consider the apex of collaborative comics.
While there are a ton of collaborative comics that I adore, when it comes to truly impressive comics, the vast majority of them are from full cartoonists, and the ones that aren’t are often edge cases like The Maxx or Cerebus in which, even though there was collaboration, it was with a clear and singular driving creative force. Art is most interesting to me when it’s a pure—even belligerent—expression of individuality, a tangible and distinct point of view, so the collaborative comics that speak most to me tend to be projects in which the creators blend into one another.
On the manga side of things, I think Lone Wolf and Cub and Fist of the North Star most definitely fit the bill; I find it near impossible to see the creative team as individuals in those works and, because of that, they both read as complete aesthetic visions. In terms of Western comics, I’ve started reading Slaine from the beginning and have been absolutely stunned both by how visual the approach is and how much it varies from artist to artist; I actually spend considerable time flipping back through pages trying to figure out how much of what I’m appreciating came from Pat Mills’ scripts as opposed to the brilliant folks he collaborated with. That strikes me as something to aspire to.
Conflict of interest disclaimer: Matt Bors is a dear friend of mine. But I’d be remiss not to mention he and Ben Clarkson’s Justice Warriors, which came out of the gate with its very first issue possessing a degree of visual confidence that I think is exceedingly rare in collaborative comics. If I had to make an educated guess, I think it comes down to Matt being an incredible cartoonist in his own right and the considerable legwork and thought that he and Ben put into the project.
What would that ceiling look like for you, professionally?
The ideal, apex Aubrey comic is one that tells a story in a way that could only be done in comics, that seduces a reader into poring over the pages instead of just flipping through them, that not only has them rereading passages but flipping back through the book. It’s work that gets appreciated visually and intellectually on a page-by-page basis, then a panel-to-panel basis, then as a complete whole. Comics are expensive, so I want readers to not only spend a long time with them but to continue thinking about them even after they’re finished. The goal is work that uses the format to prompt rumination and thought that wouldn’t have otherwise been possible.
Personally?
That’s easy: I want a monthly book that runs forever, something that gives my cocreator and I the space to explore, discover, and perfect new approaches synthesized out of old ones. I want the space and the freedom to create comics worth treasuring and then I want enough of them to fill an entire shelf at the library.
The Archie Vs. the World one-shot is in stores now. To score a copy, click this.
The DoomRocket interview with Aubrey Sitterson will continue.
Check out this wild 6-page preview of Archie Vs. The World, courtesy of Archie Comics:
More comics interviews to get those synapses firing:
10 things concerning Tate Brombal and Nick Robles of Behold, Behemoth
10 things concerning Jon Tsuei and the rebellious nature of Fox and Hare
