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Brian Stelfreeze has attended AggieCon so many times at this point that he is in danger of becoming an A&M Tradition. He is one the friendliest and most articulate guys working in comics today, as well as extraordinarily talented. I think you'll enjoy his interview as much as we did.
NOTE: Brian is the one dressed in yellow in this picture.
Paul:
What character would you work on if you could?
Brian Stelfreeze:
The nice thing is, because I've been in the industry for so long, I've hit just about every one I would want to work on. I still wouldn't mind doing something for Superman. I'm sure I'll get to him sooner or later, I'll track him down.
Paul:
What are you working on right now?
Brian:
Right now I'm working on a creator owned mini-series for Wildstorm, with a character called The Matador, with Devin Grayson.
Paul:
Sounds interesting. I understand you've been doing a lot of covers lately. What do you like about doing covers?
Brian:
I have a really, really short attention span, so doing covers is really suited for me because I can just jump in there, do a cover, and jump out. Doing monthly comics, you have to work on the same thing for an entire month, whereas doing a cover take me days.
Paul:
What's the different kinds of challenges you find between painting and drawing?
Which do you prefer?
Brian:
It's two completely different things. When approaching a painting, you're really representing more values, representing more colors, it's more of a traditional way of working when you're working with painting. I believe that on a single image you can express more with painting. I really enjoy doing that, but with painting, you really wanna stop somewhere. You really want them to look at the piece, you really want them to enjoy all the values, everything that is going on. Painting is what drew me to art in the first place, some of the old Saturday Evening Post covers, a lot of Norman Rockwell pieces, Leyendecker pieces. So, I'm really into painting. Drawing is something that I sort of discovered while reading comics. Drawing has more of a sense of urgency to it. You're doing things more quickly, you want people to understand what you are doing and moving on. Drawing is almost like designing a series of logos (laughs,) it's a lot of fun.
Paul:
Have you ever thought of working in other parts of the comic industry, like writing, editing, thinks like that?
Brian:
Yeah, I'm pretty bad. I enjoy working in absolutely every part of the comic industry. I mean, I'd get a job editing if I could for a little bit. It's a fun industry, and every part of it is a lot of fun. Right now with The Matador, I'm penciling, inking, coloring, and co-plotting the story, so I'm involved with it as much as I possibly can.
Paul:
With some many folks crossing over to the comics field from the movie/tv industry, have you ever thought of trying your hand in Hollywood?
Brian:
I've got really no big interest in jumping in and working in Hollywood. I say that now, but if someone offers me a million dollars to do something, all of a sudden I will have a massive interest and it will suddenly be a life long quest of mine to work in Hollywood. But really, right now, I really like comics a lot. I really enjoy what I am doing in comics, I really enjoy the storytelling, and to a certain extent, there's so much more in explore in comics, as far as a medium is concerned. It's absolutely endless, and I think I can spend the rest of my life just working in comics. I have no massive interest in Hollywood right now, because I'm enjoying comics so much.
Paul:
The comic industry is undergoing another renaissance, do you think it's because of Hollywood, or something else?
Brian:
I think there's a lot of factors at play. One of the major factors is when comics are at their best, when comics are doing great, when there's a lot of sales and there's a lot of people buying comics, the actual material being produced is crap. It's the worst stuff you could possibly imagine. In the mid 90's, when comics were selling millions of copies, most of that stuff was just garbage and that's because people would get into it as a money making venture. And when comics do awful, like in the late 90's and early 2000, and you really couldn't make any money in this industry so what ends up happening is that the only people that are in the industry are people that really love doing it. So what ends up happening is all the garbage kind of goes away, because it's not making any money any more and then the good stuff gets produced. Right now, some of the best stuff is being produced in comics, and what ends up happening, because this stuff is so good, it's starts drawing people into comics again. And I'm sure, with this renaissance that comics is enjoying, it's going to get really big and it's going to get major sales and we'll produce a lot of crap again. (Laughs) So, yeah, it's kind of a cyclical thing.
Paul:
Do you have any personal goals that you haven't achieved yet?
Brian:
Right now, I like Brian. My goal wasn't really to become a comic book artist. My goal was just to be an illustrator. When I did a comic, just kind of as a joke, "Hey, hey! Just let me do a comic!" that wasn't a planned career. I just really had a great time doing it and because I had a good time doing it, I kept doing it over and over and over again. It's kind of weird, this is not a goal related career. This is just I'm having such a good time right now.
Paul:
I understand that you lost your badge last night in some sort of tragic bar hopping accident. (Brian starts to laugh) Would you like to tell us something about that?
Brian:
No, we were jumping back and forth from car to car and my badge got left in somebody's car. So it wasn't as exciting as bar hopping or anything like that, but you know, I'll see what I can do about it tonight.
Paul:
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