by Ash Aiwase

Anyone who's seen The Homeless Channel in mini-comic form or on your website knows that you've got a unique art style. Could you describe your process? What was your motivation for developing your style?

The motivation for developing the style was one of necessity. Simply put, I didn't know how to draw. But the story really starts with Rob Osborne giving me some advice back at the second annual Isotope Award ceremony. Now, when I say "advice," I should be saying COMMAND. As in, "I command you to stop whining about not being able to find an artist and go figure out how to do it yourself!" When a man who is only 938 steps away from World Domination tells you to do something, you get off your ass and do it.

If you flip through The Homeless Channel, you'll get a quick idea of how those efforts have progressed. Basically, I start with photos, break them down into blacks and whites in Photoshop, print them out on 11 x 17 paper in light cyan, and then ink over the pages with a brush and acrylic india ink. With each page I work on, I'm getting more and more confident with my "drawing" ability. While I still use the photos, I don't feel like I am as limited by them as I was in the beginning.

I don't know if it's really all that unique though. Tony Harris, Alex Maleev, and Tim Bradstreet all seem to pull it off pretty damn well.

Oh, and I hear there's some new kid named Alex Ross who's used photo reference to put out a couple comics too.

Where were a lot of the photos used in constructing The Homeless Channel shot?

Oh gosh. All over the place. You know, any given panel can be made up of four or five separate photos. One shot for each actor. A couple for the backgrounds. I've used photos taken in Davis, Berkeley, San Francisco, Las Vegas, New York City, and Chicago. The cover is a photo I took in Oakland. I got in trouble snapping photos down in a BART station once. The security guard started getting all Homeland Security on me. But by the time I was halfway through my explanation that I'm a comic book creator and I take these pictures for backgrounds and I use Photoshop and it's about a woman starting a cable network, the guard just rolled his eyes and waved me along.

Some of the shoots have been a lot of fun though. The girls would dress up like they were getting ready for prom and I'd reimburse everyone for their time with food and wine.

I've heard your dialogue compared to Aaron Sorkin's (Sports Night, The West Wing), and I see a little of Amy Palladino-Smith (The Gilmore Girls) in the banter as well - did any of those shows have any bearing on the way you write dialogue? How do you get inside your characters' heads?

Gilmore Girls, eh? Now that I think about it, I can see where that comparison would come from too. I don't think I've seen a full episode of the show (although, I've stumbled on it a couple times flipping through the channels.) From what I watched, I'll take that as a compliment. The thing about these shows is that while there is a ton of "banter," it's not just empty speech. Sorkin writes some thick scripts for an hour of television. But when these television writers are on their game, all that banter pays off in the end. Each bit of dialogue adds something to the overall effect.

This is one of the reasons I hold off on the final scripting until I've finished the art. I know what I "want" the characters to say. But when I step back and look at the scene honestly, I can figure out what they actually do say. This helps prevent me from trying to impose "clever" dialogue on characters who just want to say what they mean. Sometimes the actor's expression will point me in the right direction. Sometimes dialogue just emerges from the natural rhythm of the scene.

It's less about getting inside the characters' heads and more about getting myself quiet enough to listen to what they have to say. Sounds pretentious, I know. But it seems to work for me.

Does it completely weird you out that Darcy Shaw looks eerily like your girlfriend?

Yeah, it was pretty strange at the beginning of the process. Because it's not just my girlfriend. It's cousins and colleagues and friends. At one point, I called up my Mom before she came out to California for a visit and I said, "I need you to pose as a homeless woman and Dad to be a newspaper editor."

She said, "Sure thing, I'll be the editor and your Dad will be the homeless guy."

Since you don't argue with Mom, I rewrote the script.

But as the project progressed, the actors started to morph into the characters. And the characters also inherited certain qualities from the actors. Sometimes, as was the case with Darcy's protege, Peg, the model really defined the character for me. All I had to do was step back, take the pictures, and the job was done.

For an independently published book by a first-time creator, The Homeless Channel has had an incredible amount of buzz. How do you get your book into people's hands?

Well, the buzz has had a nice, slow, healthy build. It's only in the last couple months that it's really started to take that exponential turn. It's not good if all the publicity peaks too early. We've really tried to time our promotional pushes with the pre-ordering period and the week of the actual book release.

Before working with AiT, the only way one of the mini-comics got into a person's hands was if I put it there myself. I hand sold the book at conventions like the Alternative Press Expo. I also made the first chapter available at my website for free right off the bat. And my leg work early-on seems to have paid off because when AiT made the offer to publish the book, they also opened a lot of doors in terms of marketing and promotion. I was able to walk right in.

There were some nice breaks along the way too. Warren Ellis has mentioned the book on his blog a couple times. We got our story picked up by the Contra Costa Times. Fortunately, we had the promotional infrastructure already in place to take advantage of these sudden spikes in interest.

What does the future hold for you? Can you tell us anything about your next project?

My next project is actually already underway. I'm doing some preliminary background shoots and casting the characters. It's a whole new story going in a whole new direction for me both thematically and artistically. I don't want to say too much more than that. I'm trying to let it grow sort of organically and whatever I tell you now probably won't be true anymore by next week.

Beyond that, I hope the future is full of surprises. And it looks like it's going to be a great summer. I'm heading to the San Diego Comic-Con and Wizard World Chicago. I can't wait to get to the theater and see Knocked Up. We've fired up the grill once already and probably will again this weekend on Memorial Day. Life's good. Heck, I've got my first book coming out tomorrow. It doesn't get any better than that!

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