Carla Speed McNeil has been self-publishing Finder
since 1996. Over the years she has gained critical
and commercial acclaim. The dramatic book takes
place in a future world that is uniquely Carla's
making. I met Carla at the Toronto Comic Arts
Festival in March of 2003. We agreed to do an
interview via e-mail.
Jamie:
Where did your middle name Speed come from?
Carla Speed McNeil:
Bestowed upon the family by James II, for services
to the Crown. The first James Speed was a
surveyor. Back then the word 'speed' denoted
'success', as in "Good luck and godspeed."
In other words, it's my maiden name.
Jamie:
I understand you went to University prior to
doing comic books. Where did you go and what did
you take?
Carla:
I attended my state university, LSU, majored in
Fine Art/Painting, and obtained my BFA in 1991.
College was well worth pursuing; I got a lot of
figure drawing and composition out of it, aside
from the basic get-off-your-butt-and-work college
stuff. But my degree didn't give me even half of
the skills I needed to do what I do now. I never
touched an ink bottle until years after school was
over.
Jamie:
Did you grow up reading comic books?
Carla:
Sort of. There was no comic shop in my town, and I
didn't care for the stuff on the newsstand.
Jamie:
If so, which ones?
Carla:
What I DID have was a huge box of tattered old EC
horror comics that were given to me by a cousin.
Scared the poo out of me. I loved them.
When I was about fourteen I went through my brief
fling with X-MEN. That was when Paul Smith was
drawing the book, and after he left, I just wasn't
interested anymore. Right about then I dug CEREBUS
#53 and ELFQUEST #13 out of a waterlogged box at a
flea market, and just couldn't believe how
absorbing they were... when I went back, I found a
Pacific Comics catalogue, and from there, there was
no turning back. I ordered black-and-whites by the
pound. Best of all was Bill Messner-Loebs'
JOURNEY, with CEREBUS a close second.
Jamie:
In Finder, your main character is named Jaeger Ayers. Is he based on anybody real?
Carla:
He's based on quite a lot of real people. Not the
least of these is an uncle of mine who, at the age
of seventy-six, caught a live hummingbird in his
bare hand, and let it go unharmed. You can't not
write about people like these.
Jamie:
I can't help but notice that Jeager heals
quicker than 'normal' people and is a
loner/rebel. While I feel like a geek for asking
this, would Wolverine be one of the influences
behind him?
Carla:
Can't help but be in there, can he? That poor
blown-out sock-puppet character does cast a long
shadow.
It's not really hard to understand his continued
popularity. For many a long year, he was really
the only GUY in comics. Plenty of males, some
good, some bad, but only one GUY. Strange.
Jamie:
Where did you get the last name Ayers from?
Carla:
Sort of randomly. One of my instructors had that
name, and I liked the sound of it. A very minor
character in a book had that name, spelled
differently. When I remembered that Uluru, that
enormous sacred rock in Australia is called Ayers
Rock by the non-natives, it really seemed to fit.
Names, for a guy raised the way Jaeger was, are
fairly fluid. He barely HAS a last name, and knows
nothing about his family.
Jamie:
With Finder you won some awards, particularly
in 1998 from the Ignatz and Friends of Lulu
organizations. Did these awards help your sales?
Carla:
They certainly help with visibility, which boosts
sales to an amazing degree.
Jamie:
By the way, Congrats on your recent Eisner
nomination for Best Writer/Artist.
Carla:
Thank you.
Jamie:
When did you get interested in making comic books?
Carla:
All through college, once I realized I didn't
really want to be an animator.
Jamie:
Was there one particular book that made you
say "I want to do comics too."
Carla:
No. It was the obvious course of action. I wanted
to draw and I wanted to write. One of my art
instructors described his gallery show as being
'narrative art'. 'Narrative'? He took the class
downstairs to have a look at it. His show
consisted of many large canvases full of (to my
eye) extremely murky abstract imagery with titles
drawn from world mythology. He stood over each
painting and explained in detail the myth figure
he meant to depict.
Botticelli it wasn't. I've seen many, many single
images that did indeed tell a story for anybody to
see if they put two and two together. Whatever
this artist's intention, those images did not. I
wanted to tell stories in a visual medium, and
that afternoon cemented for me the fact that a
single image can't do that, even with the perfect
title/caption. It can evoke a complex story, sum
it up in a brilliantly clever way, but not really
tell one.
Jamie:
How did you learn the details of self-publishing?
Carla:
First and foremost, from Dave Sim's rants in the
inside front cover of CEREBUS.
Jamie:
Did you have any help in getting started?
People you talked with that walked you through
the steps?
Carla:
My first friend in the business was Michael Cohen,
who wrote/drew/published STRANGE ATTRACTORS,
MYTHOGRAPHY, and THE FORBIDDEN BOOK. I met him at
my first SPX back in... yee. Must have been '93,
'94. I had half the boards for my first ashcan to
wave around. At San Diego the following year, he
introduced me to a lot of the distribution folks.
I talked their ears off. I apologized in advance
for the frighteningly long list of questions I had
to ask.
Jamie:
I understand your family has a strong
entrepreneurial background. What did you pick up
from them that is not found in most 'how to self
publish' texts?
Carla:
Hm... I haven't read most 'hts-p' texts. Sim's was
great for clearing out mental wool. That two-week
page-a-day boot camp idea was and remains an
eye-opener.
My folks were there to give me more of the same
practical, hardheaded it's-a-job
save-the-artistic-meandering-for-the-story stuff,
and a lot of advice on taxes, pricing, and keeping
receipts. They helped me learn to look ahead two
years, three years, five. I might've tripped over
a lot of dollars trying to pick up pennies if they
hadn't intervened from time to time.
Tax returns financed the first three TPBs. Sound
advice.
Jamie:
One of the more financially dangerous things
about self publishing are returns on bookstore
sales. How have they been?
Carla:
I'm still working on getting into the returnable
market. I can't say the returns process has cut
into my sales thus far.
Jamie:
I understand, even ardent self publishers
like Dave Sim have a Gerhard helping him,
allowing for a monthly schedule. Does doing
Finder bi-monthly allow you to do everything
without burning out?
Carla:
More or less. Putting a little extra pressure on--
as I'm doing with the Oni project now-- forces me
to streamline. Every work method acquires craft
over time. A little blind panic over deadlines
scrapes off unnecessary steps and laziness
admirably.
Jamie:
If you could afford to publish Finder in color would you?
Carla:
Would all my readers be happy with getting half
the number of issues per year? It'd slow down
production quite a lot.
Jamie:
With all the comic book stuff in the theaters
these days have you had any Hollywood types
sniffing around for the rights to do Finder?
Carla:
Not so far.
Well, not Hollywood, anyway. Cinar did come
calling. At the time, they were working on a
cartoon version of AKIKO ON THE PLANET SMOO. I've
no idea what's going on with that one. At any
rate, they asked for samples of FINDER to look at.
I was bemused-- this is a company that makes shows
aimed at rather young children, after all. RICHARD
SCARRY and things like that. AKIKO itself would
have been aimed at an audience older than their
usual, but nowhere near as old as the audience for
FINDER. The more I talked with them about the
possibilities, the less interested I was.
FINDER's not a kid's show. Sure, it could be made
into one; you could make THE TEXAS CHAINSAW
MASSACRE into a kid's show if you really wanted it
to be one. Just take out all the chainsaws.
I'm picturing THE TEXAS CHAINSAW JAMBOREE.
Jamie:
Would you want some sort of creative control
over other media versions of Finder?
Carla:
Depends on who's doing them. If Peter Weir came to
me and said he wanted to do a FINDER film, I'd
kiss his feet and let him do whatever he liked.
Jamie:
Regarding your trip to Canada, did you have
any problem getting back to the states without a
passport?
Carla:
Actually, no, thanks to the miracle of the fax
machine. I had my mother send me a copy of my
birth certificate, and breezed on through.
Anybody who had a Chinese passport was in for it,
though.
Jamie:
How did you make out at the convention?
Hopefully our low Canadian Dollar didn't hurt
too much.
Carla:
Pretty well, for a one-day show, I think. Can't
say for sure, 'cause I still haven't gotten it all
converted. Everybody told me not to do it on the
Canadian side or in the airport, and frankly, I
haven't figured out what bank to try first.
Dope-de-doe...
Jamie:
Do you like our multi colored monopoly money
and funky coins? :)
Carla:
LOVE the coins. I heard some people complaining
about how heavy their pockets/purses can get, but
I loved having change in my pocket that was
actually worth something-- reaching for a coin
FIRST instead of a bill was great!
I'd far rather have a roll of two-dollar coins in
my briefcase than that huge jersey-roll of ones
I'm sadly resigned to carrying.
As for the multi-colored monopoly money, I can
tell you, you've got nothing on Argentina.
Blinding bills they have. The Powerpuff Girls
aren't as brightly colored.
Jamie:
You said you used a Canadian Cartoon called
Sawing For Teens in your note in the back of
Finder: Sin Eater Vol. 1. While in Canada, did
you get a chance to check out more Canadian
Cartoons?
Carla:
No, but I did get a lead on where to find a copy
of another Richard Condie film, called THE PIG
BIRD. Been looking for that one for years.
Condie's the KING.
Carla's website is
,
where she has several issues of Finder online to read for free.
