FOLLOWING HIS OWN BEAT: LANCE TOOKS

[MattBrady]

by Daniel Robert Epstein

I have really been enjoying the Graphic Classics comic book adaptations of stories written by people like Bram Stoker and Mark Twain. The series seems to really be trucking along. The best thing about is that it introduces comic book readers to whole slew of relatively unknown artists all at the same time.

One of the stories that most impressed me was the adaptation of "A Dog's Tale" by Mark Twain, drawn by artist Lance Tooks. In fact I was so enamored with Tooks’ art and strong storytelling abilities that I took it upon myself to discover more about him. That led to me the amazing book, Narcissa, which really flew under the radar for me. It was released by Doubleday along with Jason Little’s Shutterbug Follies.

Narcissa is the tale of a female African American filmmaker named Narcissa who is struggling to keep her new film pure even though the asshole producer keeps trying to make it more commercial. But then soon before the final cut is due she finds she only has a week to live. In a daze she boards a plane to Spain. Along the way she meets and older woman with a zest for life and a gorgeous Spaniard who helps her to renew herself.

After a short stint at Marvel Comics as a young man Tooks’ eventually got into the animation industry and from there started self publishing his own work. After finishing Narcissa for Doubleday, work from Tooks’ has been sparse. But now he’s gearing up to do muLT:iple projects for NBM Publishing.

Newsarama: What are you up to lately?

Lance Tooks: The editor at Graphic Classics, Tom Pomplun, is an admirer of Narcissa so I did the Twain story and then did “The Bottle Imp” by Robert Louis Stevenson which is coming out in another Graphic Classics collection in June.

NRAMA: Do you have an affinity for these writers?

LT: Absolutely. They’re the ones I grew up reading. I read just about everything but you can’t go wrong with Mark Twain because he was so great. For me it’s an honor to work on an adaptation of his work. Also there was an opportunity to bring back some of the characters from Narcissa because of the approach I took. "A Dog's Tale" is an anti-slavery allegory that Twain had written about 100 years ago.

Since Narcissa’s mother ran a theatre company I did it as a piece with three people including Narcissa playing the main characters using puppets and masks. They act out the play for you as if you are attending the theatre. I’m from a family of artists, my father and my uncle collaborated in the New York theater scene. That’s how I grew up, with musicians recording in the house. I poured all that into Narcissa. Back when it was happening I never realized that it would pop up and wind up in my work.

NRAMA: What was it like bring back characters from Narcissa? It doesn’t seem to be that type of book.

LT: What it was that I wound up doing a prequel where Narcissa is six years old and it’s not long before her mother passes way. I’ve just been dying to use the characters again. I had pitched a second book to Doubleday but they weren’t even that hot on doing the first book. Waiting around for them to do another book was not going to happen.

NRAMA: I thought they invited you to do Narcissa?

LT: The editor, Deborah Cowell, did because she loved comics. She had been trying to interest them in publishing comics for about three or four years but Doubleday is still your standard publishing house with no interest in anything but what they’ve always published. She didn’t get a lot of support while she was there. To me it was just a miracle that the two books they did publish, mine and Jason Little’s Shutterbug Follies did come out at all.

NRAMA: Jason Little’s book I know sold pretty well. How did yours do?

LT: It’s especially hard getting answers out of Doubleday after my editor left. I really don’t know how well it’s done. I get letters from people and I know it’s in libraries all over. It seems as though someone is reading it but you can’t get anything consistent from anyone at Doubleday.

NRAMA: Your book is definitely much different than Jason’s book.

LT: Yes, I think that has a lot to do with Deborah. She was very interested in putting out things that were individual works by folks that aren’t necessarily ones that the public was accustomed to.

NRAMA: How much freedom do you get when you do a story for Graphic Classics?

LT: The editor gives me two different versions of the story. One with his severely edited version of it, not severely in a negative way but slashing out everything that isn’t essential. Then he also sends a copy of the original text. He left it up to me to decide what to use and what to leave out. He definitely chooses a variety of different artists so he will have a variety of approaches to the material. He also selected which story I was to do. To me it’s a thrill because it’s a challenge to adapt a story that I am not familiar with.

NRAMA: You do quite a bit of commercial work, too, don’t you?

LT: I did but right now I’m living in Madrid [Spain] and I’ve had time to work on my comics pretty exclusively. I’m also looking for work over there but without the proper work papers it’s difficult. I worked in animation for 14 years.

NRAMA: What projects?

LT: Just about everything in New York. The first place was Broadcast Arts who did the titles for the Madonna movie Who's That Girl? with Betty Boop as Madonna. It was a heck of a lot better than the movie. I have a lot of fondness for that because it was my first job. I also worked at Liberty Studios, Pan Productions, MTV, Nickelodeon, Curious Pictures and one called Critical Mass. Some of them were big with a lot of resources and some were individual animators working with small crews out of their apartments. I wound up working on over 100 animated projects. I also did album covers for a lot of reggae artists like Sly & Robbie. I’ve managed by some jerk of fate to have worked pretty steadily since graduating high school 24 years ago.

NRAMA: Narcissa is obviously a very personal book. Where did it come from?

LT: Deborah Cowell had seen some of my political and romance comics.

NRAMA: Romance comics?

LT: Yes I really like the genre of melodrama. It’s been disparaged over the years because generally critics use the word melodramatic to put something down. Something is melodramatic as opposed to saying it’s poorly acted or poorly written. But in reality melodrama is a genre just like comedy or horror. I’ve always loved old Bette Davis movies and the like. The comics that I had done came out of that. The only direction that Deborah Cowell gave me is that she wanted me to write a comic book novel that deals with themes that are universal. A story I had wanted to do for many years was basically taking the classic melodramatic story of a woman with a week to live. So I took an African American and placed her into a completely different context to the one she is accustomed to. At first I thought it would be Italy but over the last few years I had been going to a lot of comic conventions in Spain and I’ve always had an affection for that country so that’s where I placed Narcissa. I had complete freedom to come up with the story.

NRAMA: Spain is obviously a big part of your life because you split your time living there and in New York City.

LT: Yes it’s half my time now and all of my time hopefully soon. I’m working towards that. I want to work out of Madrid.

NRAMA: Did that come from doing Narcissa?

LT: No, as a kid I was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Laurelt on Queens. I was in a class in junior high school called EGC which was a program where all the students were taught by teachers from York College. One of our professors was a Mr. Nuevo who came from Madrid; he had pictures and a lot of stories from there. Just from his description of Spain I wanted to at least visit. The first place I visited, more than ten years ago was Barcelona for a comic convention. Since then I’ve gone back to Grenada for another convention talking about American comics.

NRAMA: Are you a creator that is much more popular in Europe than you are in America?

LT: In a general sense, I don’t know if in an artistic sense. I feel a lot more comfortable over there. I like the people, the food and the culture. But I’m definitely unknown in pretty much every country in the world [laughs]. I don’t need to be famous in Spain; I just love it so much.

NRAMA: Are your drawings all done by hand?

LT: The figures definitely. I always wanted to work in collage and I use a lot of zipatone. Zipatone is something a lot of older cartoonists used back in the day. Its strips of adhesive with lines of dots on it. I love the most graphic shapes possible. Maybe that comes from animation where the foreground characters are separate from the background and composited later. But zipatone is very difficult to find now and when I go into the few stores that have it the clerks always say stuff like “I’ve never seen someone your age buy this before. Usually its 70 year olds.” Now a computer can give you a similar effect but I love the tactile effect of collage the cutting and pasting by hand.

The process of doing Narcissa was to draw it on the page, then scan it into the computer and then I took a lot of photos and used a lot of abstract shapes.

NRAMA: What influences do you have besides comics?

LT: I love fine art by Jacob Lawrence. He did figurative art.

NRAMA: At the beginning of the book Narcissa is wrestling constantly with the producer of her movie that wants to take away control of it from her and make it more commercial. Has anything like that happened to you?

LT: I’ve definitely seen it happen many times to artists of every race and gender. That’s something that every artist has to deal with when they are in collaboration with others. I love film as well and there are million stories of that happening. I guess that’s why we have all these director’s cuts of movies floating around. They can repair what they consider what was damaged about their work by actors, producers or the ratings board.

NRAMA: What about to you?

LT: No but I’ve always been very particular about the projects I’ve done. When I do work for other people I retain the trademark and copyright. I try to keep a level of control. Narcissa is not my story, there are definitely parts of my DNA in her like any child I might have but it’s not a story that happened to me.

NRAMA: You worked for a while at Marvel, but were later fired. Why?

LT: It was when I was a kid working there. Just through a series of events I wound up as an assistant to an assistant. It was a difference in personality between me and my editor Tom DeFalco. It didn’t last that long and leaving there was definitely one of the best things to ever happen to me. I immediately went on to a variety of projects.

The first couple of years were great because I was a kid right out of high school. I was able to take my artwork and show it to very patient elder artists who gave me critique and encouragement.

NRAMA: Did anyone’s words stick with you?

LT: Absolutely. Marie Severin was terrific. She told me “It’s not what you put into a drawing but what you leave out.” John Romita Sr. was very instructive; he used to always tell me to draw everyday. Also my father, in addition to being a songwriter and composer, he was also a painter and photographer so I grew up in a very creative environment. My father felt that an artist’s work should represent what he believes in. What I saw from him is that it starts with an idea and you work on it until it’s finished. I got to see a lot of projects brought to completion.

NRAMA: What’s the next book we’ll see from you?

LT: I’m working on four graphic novels for NBM Publishing over the next two years. I’m hoping they will get published because even though we have a contract but I’m having a bit of trouble executing them. It’s a difficult book and whether it’s a success or failure I will find out when it’s done.

NRAMA: What are they?

LT: Its four romance novels that involve the devil as either the protagonist or the antagonist. The first one is called The Devil on Fever Street and it’s about how a week before Armageddon the devil is really depressed because the past 1000 years he hasn’t had to do anything because mankind has outdone him. He has doubts about whether he could fulfill the role he was chosen for so his henchmen come to him with a proposition of doing an old fashioned temptation to get himself up to speed. He chooses the most pious and religious woman in the world but what winds up happening is that he is tempted by her thereby becoming completely useless in hell because he’s in love. So he wonders whether he should end the world or go to church. It’s an enormous story that if I don’t do right this time maybe I’ll try it again in five years.

Check out Lance Tooks’ official website here:
http://www.lancetooks.com/

[evilrobo]

Lance Tooks is amazing and such an awesome guy. He came to my school and was so nice and gracious. Wish he could've stayed longer.

Narcissa is also a fantastic book. He definitely deserves more recognition.

[Village_Mystic]

I met and chatted with Lance a couple of years ago at a convention. He brings his zines and self-published works with him too.

Narcissa is still available a chain book stores.

It's great to hear what's new with Lance's career. Nice interview!

[Stoonad]

Those preview pages are gorgeous.

I've seen the Graphic Classics books on Amazon and they have definitely piqued my interest.

[Deborah Cowell]

For the record, Lance Tooks was an absolute dream to work with. When I decided to take the idea of publishing comics to the editorial table it was with the purpose of getting artists like him and Jason Little exposed to a wider audience. Working with Lance was an honor because I had been following his work forever and had been dying to meet him. Narcissa was indeed a dream come true for me both as a learning experience publishing wise and with the final product. While the people at Doubleday were extremely short-sighted in terms of the world of comics and their readers, Lance is definitely a star writer with talent and vision way beyond an editor's wildest imaginings. Though I continue to pull a Bobby Fischer as it relates to the wonderful world of publishing, should I ever go back to take over the empire (heh, heh, heh), Lance would be my five star general. Just so ya' know.