A String of Talent

Jamie Chase - Forest/Darkness from Warsaw

By Patti Martinson
July 27, 2009

Jamie Chase, a member of the comics cooperative 7000 BC and a contributor to the anthology comic series string, is also creator of the graphic novel Muse. Jamie has worked as a modernist figurative painter for more than twenty years.

Sequential Tart: How did you get started with comics?

Jamie Chase: I grew up with the comics of the sixties and seventies, and back then the stories mostly sucked, but there were some great artists.

ST: Was there any individual or comic that particularly influenced you?

JC: I was more a horror/fantasy than super-hero fan, and the early Creepy and Eerie mags were the best answer artistically. They had Gene Colan, Alex Toth, Angelo Torres, Jerry Grandenetti, Jeff Jones, Gray Morrow, all doing six to eight page one-off stories. Amazing black and white work. More recently I have been most impressed by Kyle Baker, Kent Williams, McKean, Muth, Mignola, Miller, Kuhn.

ST: Which of the Creepy/Eerie artists would you have loved to work with?

JC: Short list would be Alex Toth, Jeff Jones, Jerry Grandenetti, Gene Colan. Toth for his economy of line and bold blacks, Jones for elegance of composition and style, Grandenetti for his intensely psychological expressionism, Colan for his ink wash painterly realism. The original Creepy stable were all top flight, starting with Frazetta's killer covers. I see that Dark Horse got the rights to the Creepy title and are relaunching it. I will of course be knocking on that editor's door with my portfolio!

ST: Do you like humor in horror? If yes/no, why?

JC: Humor can be used effectively to open the reader up emotionally to the characters before the "horror" befalls them. It can also provide a release for the tension after the horror occurs. If the humor undermines the horror itself, then it's a different genre. The conventions of fictional horror are so shop worn, they are tempting to satirize.

ST: Forest and Darkness from Warsaw are very different, art-wise. How did you decide on the particular art style for each story?

JC: Forest was an experiment in brush painting. The story was impressionistic enough not to require tightly drawn detail. Warsaw is set in the 1940s, so film-noir seemed the right tone, but it also features occult phenomenon in post war Poland, so there was a spectrum, most of it dark. It features more post-production computer effects, but I was going for an old-school look.

ST: Is it easier or harder to write/draw a story vs just drawing?

JC: It's easier to draw stories I have written, but writing is hard. I construct the story to serve the imagery I want to draw. When I'm working from someone else's script, I'm more aware of my service to the writer's expectations, and perhaps less familiar with the world he has created. Bram Meehan, the writer of Darkness from Warsaw and Death Cold as Steel, has a minimalist style, which I like.

ST: What other projects are you working on or planning?

JC: I just finished the second issue of MYX, which is my resurrection of the horror/fantasy/sci-fi anthology series. Back to my Creepy roots. The Forest story, which appears in MYX #1, will continue in issue 3.

ST: Are there any conventions fans will be able to see you at?

JC: I'll be at the Bubonicon in Albuquerque on August 28-30 this year, and the Phoenix Con next year.

7000BC — The New Mexico Based group for comic writers and artists
Literate Machine — Download free copies of String
Jamie Chase Arts — For more from Jamie Chase