coilhouse interview.

This interview was conducted by Meredith Yayanos for issue 2 of Coilhouse magazine printed in december 2008.

Adventures in Babysitting, an interview with comics creator Andy Ristaino.

Andy Ristaino is the creator of two Slave Labor Graphics titles: Life of a Fetus and The Babysitter. The latter - a glorious visual, textural, and typographical clusterfuck - has just been collected in a glossy oversized collection that includes several full color pages, concept design sketches, and some fascinating insights from its mastermind.

Where did your concept for The Babysitter come from? I know you were pitching your other book, "Life of a Fetus" to Dan Vado over at SLG...

In my original pitch of "L.o.a.F." Dan Vado said that there was one thing that totally stuck out and sold him on the project. It was a drawing of a Japanese school girl/hit-man (hit-girl?) holding an Uzi with a silencer on it and wearing a jetpack (which might have been the first and only drawing of the character I had done up to that point). She didn't even have a name; I just referred to her as "the Babysitter". Dan eventually ask me to do a one shot comic on just that character and make it normal and streamlined so that we could pitch it as a movie or animated series. Naturally, my mind being what it is, immediately veered in the complete other direction (Much to Dan's eventual dismay [He didn't find out about the aesthetic changes to the concept till a few days before the artwork was due]). What I eventually ended up with was a comic about a babysitter with absolutely no babysitting in it, In a Japan (having never actually visited the country) based solely on the pop culture knowledge that I've accrued from a lifetime of looking at far to much manga and anime. A world crammed with demonic possession, giant monster attacks, outta this world type space invaders, cyborgs gone mad, strange and scary mental powers, tenticled beasties, and intense mech battles, to the point where it's as commonplace as having a cup a joe when you get up.

So, basically, the main character is living in a world that never stops assaulting her senses?

Ya you betcha. A world there were no lulls or quiet moments, Just a constant barrage of aggression of all types and flavors coming atcha from all sides. What would it be like to live in a world like that? When i think about it, it doesn't seem to different than what we live in now, but then again, I'm already far to thin skinned and sensitive so I don't think I'm a very good judge of it. But how would someone deal with that sort of overload, especially if they didn't know any other kind of existence? The world Setsuko was forced to grow up in was not only the one full of inescapable claustrophobia and panic attacks but also one where you'd never get to know there was an alternative.

You grew up in a large, artistic family. It must've gotten pretty clamorous at times. Do you think that's affected you creatively?

Growing up in a big family was fun and stressful. I miss it. I've lived by myself twice and both times i kinda went a little bonkers. In a big family there was always something going on whether you wanted there to be or not. It's funny, my brother Mark and I always talk about how we can sleep though anything. I think that has something to do with being in a big family with not that much space. You'd always have to sleep with loud things going on all around you, or the lights on, or in a cramped space, or all three. I would definitely say that my family has influenced my work in obvious and subversive ways. My parents were both super encouraging in anything involving the arts. They sent my brothers and I to special art classes (and eventually helped send me to a good art school). Both of my older brothers are great artists in their own right and when we were all younger we all used to draw together all the time. It was one of the ways we all socialized. My parents bought big rolls of paper that we would roll out on the kitchen table and draw huge panoramas. Usually it would end up being these massive train of thought battle scenes (kinda like what I'm still drawing).

That makes a lot of sense. Obviously, to be as prolific as you are, you've had to find surefire ways to shut out the background noise. Or is it that you just funnel all of that chaos directly onto the page?

I don't think you're ever able to totally funnel out background noise. I think it's always back there somewhere. Whether it's found in the stress in your shoulders, the knots in your back, or some crazy comic about how chaotic this world is. As people get older you see how they become bent and molded by their experiences. I myself have some major back and hand issues…I'm not saying its a result of the stresses around me (more like the result of bad posture) but I'm sure stress doesn't help. I think the majority of my working method, ability to focus, and passion for drawing, was developed from a need to shut out the environment I live in, to escape. It's strange that the escape would lead me to telling stories (however obtusely) about the world I exist in. I am able to work on artwork anywhere and in any situation. When I was younger I was shy and awkward (not much has changed) so in social situations I would draw when I hung out with people. They would talk and I would sit there and draw and sometimes chime in. People were used to me doing it so it didn't seem out of place. And it's not like I wasn't present I actually absorb and listen better while drawing. I guess It's kinda a Zen meditation thing. These days I work on art anywhere and everywhere I can. Actually my method of working has changed and been arranged around being able to work at Coffee shops, at a bar, or on a train or plane, Actually I'm typing this on the Bart train on the way to work right now. I find this is a great place to write or plan out pages as I am trapped in a claustrophobic uncomfortable environment; So It's easy to escape. Also the train is moving and a lot of times thinking works better (well for me) while moving. If only I could figure out a way to draw while riding a bike.

Your work is extremely dense, multi-layered, and not always particularly linear. The layouts for The Babysitter are alternately claustrophobic or agoraphobic. It's either a semiotician's wet dream, or their worst nightmare! In spite of being two-dimentional, the drawings seem almost... sculptrual. Is texture something you obsess over?

It depends on the project. With "the Babysitter" I originally wanted the whole thing to feel like a woodcut but the further I got into the book the goal became more to create artwork that would imitate sculpture and space. The illusion of depth where there was none. Its funny to think that by studying claustrophobia I ended up learning a lot about space, actually. And as far as creating a claustrophobic environment for the characters to live in I decided to err on the side of insanity. Thick and solid panel borders, cramped areas where even the word balloons would be fighting with the characters for space and attention. Horror Vacui. No space left unmarked. The character and the viewer assailed on as many directions and distractions as I could throw at them. I think it's in my nature to focus and obsess over all the many little details. When I work and get really into it usually my eyeball is about an inch away from the page (not good for the ol' back [or eyes for that matter]). By the end of the book I wanted the pages and space to expand. The final section of the book has many more double page spreads and page bleeds. As if the art is pushing and bending the panel border, eventually breaking the barriers imposed on it by its creator.

The Babysitter is rife with secret codes, cross-references, double-entendres, out-of-left-field non-sequiturs... You've gone out of your way to make readers look more closely and extrapolate. What I mean is, you can't just "skim" this stuff if you hope to understand what on earth's going on! Do you ever worry about not being "understood" in a narrative sense?

I've always had a problem with comics you'd pick up and read in a matter of minutes, and maybe never even look at it again (my own books included). So much time and effort goes into making comic books and they are still for the most part a disposable medium. With "the Babysitter" I wanted to create a book that you couldn't just skip ahead and read the last panel to find out what happens before it did (whether on purpose or accidentally). I wanted something you had to translate. Concentrate on. Work to figure out. Like one of those magic eye puzzles. You had to really focus on different areas of the image to get what was going on…but the page still worked on a whole (hopefully). I wanted to create an experience that you really had to spend time with and could find new things going on at every viewing. Something that was so dense that I might hurt the living human brain.
And I wouldn't say I know exactly what's going on with every character in the book... but with a lot of them I do. Some of the fun of putting all those things in the background is "train-of-though-ting" it. Just kind of rolling with it and finding out what sort of weirdness my brain can come up with. A lot of the codes or cross references and craziness is a result of planning and organization juxtaposed with a healthy shot of whoooEEEooo far out improve, then going back and changing and editing and re-editing over and over again until I find I have something that makes sense to me and the kind of ascetic I was going for. Working from the seat of the drawing pants, I feel, helps create something that isn't to stiff and rigid or really predictable with the writing and the art. It also allows for the art to develop in ways you might not have expected. I don't think this book would have been nearly as crazy and out there as it turned out to be if I hadn't left room to experiment and grow and change within the parameters of the project. I think the peak of "out there" were the pages in the auditorium where Nezumi's talking progresses words to symbols and anagrams. The entire story telling breaks down to what might seem like gibberish if you don't look at it right.
As far as being worried about being understood. Hell yes! I've had many a nervous breakdown and spent countless hours wondering and worrying about what people think of the book. Setsuko is a little bit of an unreliable narrator too. So that adds to the confusion of the book. You never know how someone is going to translate anything in his or her brain. It's one of the things I find most fascinating and distressing about this plane of existence we live in. It's one of the major themes of everything I've worked on, and I don't think I will ever truly understand it.

You've been living and working with these and the Life of a Fetus characters for a very long time. Now that the book's done, what's next? Will they show up in some future Ristaino creation, or are you moving on to something entirely new?

All of my comics take place in the same universe so of course there will be some crossover and cameos (especially if there's a big crowd scene.)

Well, L.o.a.F. is far from being done. The storyline I had originally planned for the book was about 50 issues long and since that time it's expanded to about 80 issues. Right now I'm just hoping to finish the first 10. SLG plans on collecting what I have completed in the near future with tons of bonus stuff. I've already worked a bunch of the background characters in "the Babysitter" (such as: Frothy Beveraged Man, the Magnificent three, Detective Sawada, Paco, the Wierdos, and Jonny Go) into some short stories I've drawn which should be collected and printed hopefully in the next year or so. I'm almost done drawing a collection of "the Far Side" type one panel gags. I have some ideas for a collection of short sci fi and horror stories but I haven't really started working on that one yet. I'm self publishing a full color art book which I'll have with me at all of the cons, and I have at least 3 or 4 collaborations planned which I don't want to talk about till they're a little more underway.

If you could give Setsuko any advice, what would it be?

i'm not sure if i have any advice i'm still figuring out this stuff myself.
but heres something:

hang in there kiddo. learn your triggers. find something you love to do and do it. get help if you need it. screw what everyone else thinks...don't worry about it or at least try not to as much.