From the Land of the Impossible: An Interview with Jeff Lemire

The following interview was conducted by Joel T. Lewis at DiNK Comic and Art Expo 2018 in Denver, Colorado. This interview has been slightly edited for clarity.

Let’s remove all pretense for a moment. I was scared to meet Jeff Lemire last weekend at the Denver DiNK Convention. Back when my favorite author was Charles Dickens or Charlotte Bronte I never had to worry about what I would say if I had the chance to meet them. Death has a funny way of preventing those kind of conversations. But after reading his work, Lemire leapt to the top of my list. His compassion, the poignance of his work, and the seemingly inexhaustible stream of new and diverse projects hit me all at once and I had to think about it. What do you say to your hero? To a man who’s made you laugh and cry and made you happy there behind the printed words of a single issue that could’ve been read or written by anybody.

But even then, the thought was merely cathartic fantasy. Sure, it was possible that I could meet him at a signing and have that brief moment of awkward chit chat, with me telling him how much his work meant to me, and him making polite small talk as he signed the issues I sheepishly pushed towards him. But the intimate conversation, the mild interrogation, the fevered gushing that I was planning wasn’t possible. It would never happen.

But it happened dear readers. I got to interview the man. I got to sit a foot away from a man whose work spoke to me, shattered me, and put me back together through the thin glossy pages of a comic book and ask him whatever I wanted. He was cool, he was kind, and he was very generous, both with his time, and with the answers he gave me. Here’s what I asked him and what he said to me. I hope you enjoy it.
 
One of the things I really like about your artwork specifically is your character’s facial expressions. They’re very expressive and I was wondering when you start a project with a new character is that where you start?

Jeff Lemire - Yeah, it's always faces. It’s the thing I like to draw the most. Usually with a new project it usually starts in my sketchbook and there’ll be a character like Sweet Tooth or something, and you create a little character and you don’t really know what it is and it might start re-occurring in your sketchbook and you start to build a story around them. My artistic style is very unique I think and kind of idiosyncratic and I have strengths and weaknesses. So I kind of play to my strengths and one thing I try to do is communicate a lot of emotion with my characters and their faces. So I think it’s one of my skills so I kind of build around that.  

For sure, it definitely comes across. That’s awesome. I notice a lot of trinkets in your work.

JL - Oh really?

Well there’s the stopwatch, or the pocket watch in Underwater Welder, and the vintage radios in Royal City. So, I have a collection of little things like that and I was wondering if you did too, if that’s where that comes from?  

JL - No, I’m not much of a collector at all. The only thing I really collect is books.

Same here.  

JL - But you know cool little objects like that can tell a story too. It’s not just characters. There’s something about those old radios that just evoked a time and a story that’s kind of supernatural to me you know? I don’t know why. Or that stopwatch. Those just cool sort of old things that have a story themselves, they can be really interesting. You can kind of fall in love with drawing certain little objects, different things that for some weird reason stick around.  

Very cool. Awesome. So I’m a massive Moon Knight Fan.  

JL - Oh Cool.  

So I’ve got to take a second to say your run was spectacular. It meant a lot to me. Issue nine is my favorite comic of all time.  

JL - Which one’s that?

That’s where he reconciles with his other personalities and kind of lets them go.

JL - Oh yeah, I like that one too. Where he hugs the one guy.

Yeah, it was really cool to see you treat a character I care about so much with such seriousness and compassion. That was really cool.  

JL - Thanks.

So the question I had was: when you’re coming into a character that’s been established and they have this kind of nuanced history, how do you balance your vision for the character’s arc and the history that’s come before?

JL - Well usually that history’s really inspiring, and inspires new stories for me. So if I’m working on an existing character from Marvel or DC or something I haven’t created myself, the first thing I’ll do is collect everything on that character. Every run, every story, every comic I can get my hands on and I’ll just read everything and as I’m reading, I get story ideas like, ‘Oh this is a cool idea, but what if it went further with this idea or that.’ So, with that stuff you take advantage of the fact that it has this history that you can use. Especially with Moon Knight, I mean I made his whole history kind of part of the story. Sometimes it works better with certain characters with the idea that you have. Like the Moon Knight idea that I had, that stuff just lent itself to pulling from those different eras and characters. So when you can, that stuff’s a gold mine to use. Even with Black Hammer, those are my own characters but I’m obviously drawing from 80 years of superhero comic book history. Why not use it when you know it’s there? Like I was never a huge Moon Knight fan but I was a big Bill Sienkiewicz fan so I always respected and kind of liked that version of the character. So I started there and then I found other things along the way that I liked. You know for a character that hasn’t really had an ongoing series regularly over the years there have been some really good stories. The Sienkiewicz, (Doug) Moench stuff is obviously classic, it’s amazing and the Bendis stuff was really interesting I thought and especially the Warren Ellis stuff was a great jumping off point for me. He really kind of repositioned things. You know you use all that stuff and you build off of it as much as you can but I mean if you can’t bring your own idea, your own point of view to it then there’s no point in doing those things.  

I noticed that you did that too with Old Man Logan with the Past Lives run, that was cool that you kind of paid homage to all those tragedies in Logan’s life.  

JL - Yeah, you try to evoke the feeling of the stuff that everyone loves without just retelling those same stories and you can. It doesn’t always work but when it does it can be fun.

Was it always your intention to have several different artists for the different perspectives of Moon Knight?  

JL - No (laughs) Greg (Smallwood) just kind of got behind schedule. But again, it's one of those things where the story lends itself perfectly to that so just embrace it. Yeah but it really worked out. Greg’s pretty versatile himself. He can kind of do different styles but it was kind of seamless with what we were doing so I kind of got lucky there.  

Yeah, you got Francesco Francavilla on there which was awesome.  

JL - Yeah and Wilfredo Torres.

And James Stokoe.

JL - Yeah we got really cool people on there.  

So, speaking of collaborations, I love After Death (A.D.). That was such a cool synergy of writing and your artwork. I was wondering how you worked with Scott Snyder and how that writing process was.  

JL - Yeah, it was really unique and I had never drawn anything before that someone else had written. I had done a couple of short stories that Damon Lindelof had written but those were just 10 pages so it's not like a huge commitment but I’d never done something big like this that I hadn’t written myself. I’d written for other artists but never drawn for other writers so it was really intimidating and we kind of felt it out as we went along. I think Scott really trusted the fact that I also am a writer and visually I know how to tell a story. It kind of just evolved as we went but what it ended up being was Scott would spend the majority of his time working on the prose sections because those were pretty labor intensive for him and while he was doing that I would do the comics sections. And we really didn’t have a script for those. We would just have conversations where this happens and that happens and I would just start thumb-nailing it and drawing the comics. And when there were dialogue scenes I would just try to leave room for dialogue and then draw characters talking and hopefully get it sort of right and then he would go back and letter the stuff afterwards. And if in those dialogues I needed to tweak a facial expression or an emotion to match something he’d come up with I would do that but for the most part we kind of made it work. So it was sort of a unique collaboration.  

Yeah, it’s such a unique book from those prose sections and then you have panels and panels with no dialogue. It was really playful. I loved it a lot. You’ve gotten to work with a lot of great artists, great writers: Andrea Sorrentino, is outstanding, Gideon Falls is really good, Smallwood on Moon Knight, so I was wondering if there was somebody in the industry you haven’t gotten a chance to work with past or present, living or dead who that would be?

JL - Oh boy, so many. I don’t know. There’s so many amazing artists it’s hard, oh god there’s so many! One guy that I’ve always felt like I really wish I had done more with was Rafael Albuquerque. We did a few Animal Mans together at the end of my run and we really clicked. I felt like we really had something, so I felt like he and I had like a similar sensibility kind of like the same way Dustin (Nguyen) and I had a similar sensibility. I feel like he and I could do something special together, but our schedules have never worked out so he’s someone I’d like to do something with someday. But I mean there’s dozens of artists just working today you know I’m drawing a blank of course but there’s so many talented people out there.  

Do you know if, I know its early stages, but you were talking about a collaboration with Matt Kindt, do you know if you would draw, or if he would draw?

JL - No, we were both talking about that this morning, I think we decided we’re just going to write it together and we know what artist we want to work with. Because we both have so many projects already lined up that we’re drawing we know that if we waited it might never happen and we want it to happen.  

Another question I had specifically about your work, is you have a lot of characters under water. There’s a lot of submerged kind of cold moments.  

JL - It’s like a definite motif.  

Yeah, so I was wondering what inspires that?

JL - I don’t know. It’s just subconscious. I just love being underwater. I always have since I was a kid. There’s just something so peaceful about it. Whenever I can I love being in the ocean. So I’ve always had this weird connection to that and I don’t know, symbolically I think water is so rich. It can mean so many things, life, death, rebirth, and I love drawing it. It’s just a weird motif that I’m drawn to. I try not to overthink it. Because when you start over-analyzing stuff sometimes it can go away. But yeah, it’s definitely a motif in a lot of my work. You know surprisingly not a lot of people have pointed that out. I mean it's in Royal City, Underwater Welder especially, it’s all over that stuff. 

That was something about After Death (A.D.) that I noticed: that even though it was Scott writing, he talks about the ice over water and it always being there. So it felt like you were writing it too in that sense.

JL - Yeah, I never thought of that but yeah it’s definitely something very symbolic and I think it probably started with the Welder. But even in Essex County there were scenes where the old man would walk out into the water and sink below. So I’ve always been kind of drawn to that.  

So, you’re going to be on Sentry soon.  

JL - Oh yeah.  

Which is really exciting for me as I’m a big fan of the Jae Lee stuff and Paul Jenkins. It’s kind of like you’re cherry-picking all of my favorite characters it's really cool. Do you know when that process will start?

JL - I think the series starts in June. I’ve written four of them and I know Kim the artist is finishing up the first issue so it’s coming along.  

I think I was reading something you were talking about him (Sentry) in contrast to Moon Knight, about kind of the cerebral nature of their madness.  

JL - Yeah, well they’re both characters that suffer from mental illness, but I didn’t want to just redo the Moon Knight story you know because it’s a different character, it’s a different illness, different way of seeing the world, different history. But I think there is a little bit of a link between the two in the way that I’m approaching it. But I want to tell a Sentry story that’s a Sentry story the way the Moon Knight story had to be a Moon Knight story.

Do you know if it's going to be on-going, or is it going to be 14-ish issues or?

JL - I’m not sure. I don’t know how long my run will be on that to be honest with you. I’m so busy right now so I’m definitely signed on to the first arc, and then we’ll see from there where it goes.  

So I just have some rapid fire ones here to close out: What if any comics are you currently reading?

JL - My favorite kind of ongoing book is Paper Girls. I love Cliff (Chiang)’s art so much. There’s a lot in that series I just find very entertaining and I like that a lot. Nate Powell has a new graphic novel coming out called Come Again which, it’s not out yet, but I got to read an advance copy and that was fantastic. I always read Matt (Kindt)’s stuff. He’s always doing great stuff. Of the more mainstream-y superhero stuff I don’t read a lot to be honest but, I try to keep up on Jason Aaron’s stuff because I really like Jason’s writing a lot.  

Mighty Thor’s been outstanding.  

JL - Yeah, his superhero stuff and his creator-owned stuff is always so strong, he’s just such a great writer. I follow more creators around. Those are the ones that pop in my head of the stuff that I’m into right now.  

If there’s a single issue or series that you’re most proud to have written what would that be?

JL - That I haven’t drawn myself? Yeah, that’s tough. I sometimes look at that stuff and sometimes it’s hit and miss you know. Some things work better than others. I don’t know if I could pick one, but I think the ones that I’m most proud of would be Green Arrow with Andrea (Sorrentino), Animal Man, Moon Knight, and my Bloodshot for Valiant. Those are probably the ones that pop up. I mean that’s not counting any of my created stuff. Obviously Black Hammer and Descender are much more dear to my heart than any of that stuff. I'm just thinking of the more freelance work I’ve done, it would be those runs.  

So same question but with drawing.  

JL - That’s tough too. To me they’re all like documents of where I was as a person when I was doing them so they’re all special to me in different ways. You can’t pick one you know but, I mean Essex County was sort of like the first project where I found an audience, where I found a voice as a writer. So it’s always going to be special to me. Sweet Tooth’s always going to be special to me because that was the longest project I ever did. It’s like four years of writing, of drawing those characters everyday so they’re always dear to my heart. And it’s usually whatever I’m working on now is like the thing I’m most engaged in so that’s like my favorite. Yeah it’s hard to pick between that stuff.  

What’s the strangest request for a commission that you’re ever gotten?

JL - Oh god. (laughs) I don’t do a lot of commissions anymore. I haven’t done them in about ten years but I used to get some weird ones. It’s just weird where you know my art style is so specific and you’ll get people will ask you for something that clearly like plays against all my strengths. If you can ask me for all the things why would you want like, whatever, Donna Troy? I’m not going to do a good beautiful woman you know. Sometimes you get some pretty weird, infamously weird commission requests that all artists get from these certain people all the time that are like these weird kinky things. So there’s some strange ones.  

And just the last one: if someone was new to comics, and wanted a starting point what would you recommend?

JL - The two entry points for all my work always over and over I always say are Sweet Tooth and Essex County. I guess one of those. Those would be my starting points for my stuff.