Of Flowers and Men

Stephen Notley

By Tori Morris
July 1, 2006

I have never met Monsieur Notley.

I have no amusing anecdotes of our mutual hanging out-together of which to speak.

In fact, I did not know him before reading his latest collection of work.

What I know is this: Tachyon Publishing has picked his webcomic, Bob the Angry Flower, to be the first graphic novel they put out there in the persnickityworld. The Tachyon Publishing people are cool, thus obviously, Bob the Angry Flower is cool. It just so happens that it is outstandingly cool, with a manic bent towards giant robots, Godzilla flicks and smashing tyranny in all its many-splendored Republican forms.

I think I'm a wee bit in love.

Sequential Tart: For those who hear the name Bob the Angry Flower and just think of a garden bulb being persnickety, clear the air and tell us exactly who and what Bob the Angry Flower is?

Stephen Notley: *Exactly*? Golly. Well, I guess Bob is a daisy-dandelion-sunflower crossbreed, the kind that walks and talks. And he's pretty excitable.

ST: Why is he so angry?

SN:Angry is more fun to draw.

ST: How much of yourself is in this character?

SN: Well, it's pretty much a diary with a thin veil of metaphor draped over it. Bob is like me except amped up to ridiculous levels and he gets to do all the bizarre things I only get to daydream about.

ST: When did the first Bob The Angry Flower come out?

SN: Consulting ... checking ... beep ... internets ... result! It was 1992, and it appeared in the University of Alberta's student summer magazine The Solstice.

ST: Do you have a definite ending in mind or do you plan on continuing the series for as long as possible? Why?

SN: I certainly have no definite ending. I kind of imagine doing it until I die. I often throw in the caveat of "or until I start really sucking", but I wonder if it wouldn't be worth it to keep plugging away and sucking and ever more rarely but still occasionally getting something decent out.

But who knows? Maybe some crazy thing will happen in my life and I'll decide, "You know what? Screw this."

ST: What is the process of making a Bob cartoon? From the annotations it seems like you do a lot of off-the-cuff writing for this strip. What do you use to illustrate?

SN: First I noodle around with ideas, little doodles or phrases, stuff coming off the TV. Eventually something will make me laugh and I'll build a strip around it, jotting out the dialogue and action, figuring out how many panels it is and how it should be broken up. Then I draw it in pencil on smooth Strathmore Bristol card stock at twice the eventual print size. I letter everything first, then pencil, then ink the letters with felt pen, then ink the pencils with I think a #4 sablette brush. Then I erase the hell out of it.

ST: Most comics that creators work over a long span of time change, including styles of art. Is there anything you miss about the past? Any plans to change the way the strip works in the future?

SN: I still miss the old horizontal format. It just seemed more fit to the kind of flow and motion of the eye I like than the back-and-forth of the vertical style. Not that I have plans to go back to it, but I do get nostalgic. As for plans to change the strip, I never plan the strip. Whatever happens when it happens happens. Perhaps some day I'll straighten up and fly right and set some positive goals for this cartoon, hrm hrm, but I doubt it.

ST: What made you decide to make comics?

SN: I honestly don't know. I mean, when I was little I liked reading them and I liked drawing them. I always did cartoons. I just dug it.

If you mean "make comics" quasi professionally, I just jumped into it. Bob had been running in the Gateway for a couple of years when I finished University, so I just asked the folks at See Magazine if they'd run it, and they did. So I just kept doing it and other things and eventually making books and going to conventions and all the rest.

ST: Which comics influenced you when you started? Which ones influence you now?

SN: I read a lot of Tintin and Asterix as a kid before getting into Marvel with the Shogun Warriors, Godzilla comics, X-Men, Spidey. My aunt got me some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and that lead to Cerebus, the everycomic, the one that showed you could do whatever the hell you wanted if you did it all yourself. The biggest single influence on my approach to expression and gesture is Phil Foglio of Buck Godot and Myth Adventures; that whole ack! boof! visual gag style was hugely big for me. As for now influences ... well, I'm always happy to rip techniques off from Alan Moore or Garth Ennis. These days I'm usually more interested in the writing.

ST: Is there something or someone in pop culture that you've never quite managed to make into a strip? Why is it so difficult to incorporate?

SN: Pop culture is replete with things and people I've never managed to get into a strip, but I can't think of anybody I wanted to put in a strip but couldn't. The closest would be the abortive "Genius George" storyline, in which Dubya gets hit by Smartiac's beam and suddenly sets out to do right. Turned out the world persisted with the unsmartified Dubya no matter how earnestly I cartooned.

ST: What's the hardest thing about political cartooning?

SN: Actually, political cartooning is some of the least hard cartooning I do. If some political thing has my blood boiling it's usually a simple matter to map the issue onto bears or candy canes or whatever and it writes itself.

ST: It seems curious to me that you think the Bush/Kerry strips are the most dated in the book, but for me they were dated in a good time-capsule sort of way. Do you still think that?

SN: They're still dated in the technical sense in that they most clearly show the time they were written, they're the most obvious current-eventsy strips, which is something I typically try to avoid. That's not to say I think they're bad strips. There are some good cartoons in there; I've always liked "Those Wacky Americans", and I think "Kerry Wins" might stand the test of time (if only I'd drawn it better ... sigh ...).

ST: Do you have a favorite politician (to draw, to fantasize sodomizing with a pick-axe, to watch Godzilla 2000 with?)

SN: I used to do Kofi Annan all the time but I lost a lot of confidence in the U.N. after they failed to prevent the invasion of Iraq. I really do need to bring him back. He's funny and fun to draw. Then there's George; I haven't done much with him lately, though I did have Bob grow him as meat and eat him not too long ago. That was fun.

ST: The liberal American fantasy is currently to move to Canada, but you've gone the other way. Does living full-time in America now change your perspective on current events? Do you want to go home, or has America grown on you in some way?

SN: I shot my mouth off a lot about America when I lived in Canada, then one day the opportunity came along to put my body where my mouth was and I had to go for it. It was an easy choice. I've always loved America and long hoped to live here cuz hey! it's the land of opportunity.

Living here now ... I'm honestly not sure what it's doing to me, or more accurately what I'm doing to myself living here. I do know I wanna stick around as long as I can get keep getting visas. There are problems; as a temporary resident I have more restrictions and less freedom than I would if I was a citizen or back in Canada. But them's the breaks.

ST: The Cylons, the Borg, and the Daleks get into a bar fight over which group is the best evil robot metaphor for our times. You're the referee. What happens?

SN: Referee? At a bar fight?

ST: Care to guess why "Bob's Guide to the Apostrophy" is your most popular strip?

SN: Probably because there are lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of frustrated punctuation pedants out there and that strip says exactly what's going through their minds when they see apostrophe misuse.

ST: Okay, seriously: what's with the flower costume?

SN: Seriously, I don't know what you're talking about.

ST: Any pearls of wisdom for the aspiring webcomic people out there?

SN: Draw cartoon. Post it. Repeat. Don't stop for anything.

ST: Where can we get our hands on a hot copy of Bob the Angry Flower: Dog Killer?

SN: Um ... at a bookstore somewhere near you? Borders I am told has them, and you can always bug your local comic store to order them from Last Gasp Distributors, and I think that Amazony-thingermerjigger has 'em too.

ST: For serial completists, where can we get the previous editions of Bob the Angry Flower?

SN: That's a bit tricky. I'm not exactly sure if I'm allowed to sell my books while I'm living here, so until I get that sorted I've shut down the book ordering from the web site. I hope to figure out something out soon; I'll keep y'all posted.

Bob the Angry Flower — Stephen Notley's Homepage.
Tachyon Publications — For your own copy of Bob the Angry Flower: Dog Killer.