Who's Who In The CBU Update 2008
Who are... Park and Barb?
Barbara Lien-Cooper writes the comic GUN STREET GIRL at Panel 2 Panel, was an original founder of Sequential Tart, is the managing editrix of the 2004 Eisner award-winning print magazine COMIC BOOK ARTIST, and was named by Mark Millar (The Authority, Ultimates, Wanted) as one of the three most promising new talents in the next wave of comics writing.
Park Cooper started writing about comics at the now-defunct DC FANZINE website.
Missiles That Could Poke Your Eye Out: Interview with Psy-Comm's Tony Salvaggio
By Park Cooper
We met Tony Salvaggio at Ushicon. He writes CBR's Calling Manga Island column, co-writes TokyoPop's Psy-Comm, and more. Since we're often the Tony Salvaggio of SBC, it seemed like a cool idea to interview this other person in our parallel-evolution-niche.
Oh, and he also is the anime consultant for Austin's Alamo Drafthouse (you can watch old/cult/bad movies AND have beer and nachos at the same time)!
I don't know if he has any idea who we are.
PC: So... do you live in Austin?
Tony: Yeah. I live in North Austin.
PC: Do you have a day job?
Tony: Yeah, I do art for slot machine style games. I used to work in console games and some PC titles… if you check out www.tonysalvaggio.com you can see some stuff… Mainly I modify existing art for the different versions of the games we release. It's solid 9-5 most of the time.
PC: How long since you got involved in comics and/or manga?
Tony: As in the creation of manga or just reading and such?
PC: Uh... let's say creation… except I also want to know how you became go-to guy for Alamo Drafthouse's anime initiative.
Tony: Cool. I'll get into that as well. LUCK!! I mean ummmm… skill and hard work! :) Nah, I'll give you the 411.
Tony: Creating comics, I guess, 2002-2003. Jason (Henderson) and I decided to write a screenplay influenced by manga anime and western stuff too. So we pitched this screenplay, “Clockwerx” (we started that in December of ’99). A mech team in Victorian England. No one knew what the hell to do with it, and “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” wasn't out, and there was no way we wanted to compare it to the “Wild Wild West movie”.The only thing cool about that movie was the crazy giant spider. Anyway, we finally got to pitch that and 3 other pitches to Humanoids publishing. They liked “Clockwerx”, and we've been paid for writing the first 2 books of 3 for them, however, they just now found the right artist, but I don't know if he is signed. Jason started working on “Sword of Dracula” and we pitched mores tuff to Humanoids. One of those was “Psy-Comm”, and they said it didn't work. Luckily we heard that Tokyopop was looking for pitches.
PC: Back up... how did you team up with Jason?
Tony: Jason and I met working for Maxis South. Maxis got bought by EA the day after I left Origin playtesting and got my first art job in games. After Maxis closed, we stayed friends and he even did a script for a martial arts game that I was working on (sadly it got cancelled).
PC: And why did they claim it didn't work?
Tony: Oh they didn't like the war for entertainment/population control thing, there were a couple of other reasons, but I don’t remember what they were off hand.
PC: Ah. Okay, go on…
Tony: So we pitched and the editor at Tokyopop, Mark Pannicia (he went to Marvel eventually), really dug it. He made some minor suggestions for tweaks, hooked us up with our artist, Shane (who was a runner up in the Rising Stars of Manga 2 contest—and is AWESOME) and Stu Levy trusted him to pick good stories, even if Psy-Comm was different than a lot of other stuff they had signed. We got approved and we were off. Incidentally, Paul Benjamin was our editor at Humanoids… He told me after reading “Psy-Comm” that they should have signed it. Well the Psy-Comm thing was good for us since “Clockwerx” was signed in 2002 and is just now getting an artist. Humanoids has had some setbacks and they’ve been trying, but it took until now to get the right person. However, the new artist (from France) they have for it does art that looks UNGODLY BADASS! I don’t know how he gets books out with that much detail. I hope he inks his own work, or someone is going to be cursing him!
Personally, my art skills are really rusty and I could never do a book. Everyone assumes since I went to SCAD that I would be doing my book. Not so, although sometimes Jason wishes I could draw so we could do tons of books together since I'm pretty reliable. He’s had trouble finding reliable artists in the past.
--Incidentally, it's been on some interviews and such, but a piece of trivia is that the influence for Psy-Comm was the imagery I always had after hearing BlueOyster Cult's Veteran of the Psychic Wars. Which, I found out, was written by Michael Moorcock (an Austinite as well... destiny!?).--
PC: Does Jason have a day job?
Tony: Yeah, he is super crazy busy. He is a product manager of broadband gaming (or something like that – sorry if I got that wrong Jason) at Verizon now. He moved to Dallas for the job, and we don’t get to hang out anymore. I miss that, but luckily there is the internet, so we email back and forth for work, and occasionally meet up in online games for broadband stuff he is doing.
PC: So... The Alamo Drafthouse.
Tony: Oh yeah. I used to spend A LOT of time there (less lately because of deadlines and time spent on my “Calling Manga Island” column, and working on other writing stuff). Tim League (the owner of the Drafthouse) was showing a bunch of clips from Japanese shows. I had TONS of tapes of TV shows and commercials a Japanese friend from college sent me, so I put together a tape and gave it to Tim. He emailed me and asked if I wanted to put together what would become the first Monkey Bash. I said Heck yeah! Those tapes were just sitting around. He started asking me about anime and I talked to him and Kier-La (Janisse, one of his main programming directors) and got into anime as well. The anime at the Alamo didn't do as hot though, sadly. We even got a brand new 35mm print of “Gundam: Char's Counterattack” but it didn't do as well. It got a bad review in the Chronicle which didn't help :( “Gundam” is NOT like “Pokemon”, despite what a certain reviewer might say. One of the coolest things that they did was a showing of “Robot Carnival” with a live DJ and a showing of “Angel’s Egg” with this really cool instrumental band, “My Education”. The Alamo is one reason why I never want to leave Austin. It’s one of the coolest places on the planet!!
PC: Let's move on to some more general questions... A common thing I'm sticking in interviews these days is: What's your take on the death of Speakeasy?
Tony: Hmm... I really haven't been keeping up with that as much. I know how crazy the turnaround is the games industry and it seems like it's similar in comics. People seem to grow way fast and spread their time and budget thin. But, I'm not sure if that is exactly what happened to them. I'm always freaked out by stuff like that, being laid off from many companies. Heck, when Humanoids lost their DC distribution, I thought "Uh-oh, what now!!? It seems like being a creator is so much more risky lately. It's easier to self-publish, but it's also really easy to spend all your money and not make a dime. Jason was with Image and I watched him work super hard and struggle to pay his people. I know that there were some comics that I had been meaning to pick up when I had the cash (I heard really good things about “Elk’s Run”) but I never got to. I hope that the artists all get picked up elsewhere, because it sounds like there was good stuff going on there.
PC: What comics/manga do you read most regularly?
Tony: That's a hard one. I read A TON of stuff for my column (and for
enjoyment of course); I try to read everything I can get my hands on. As far as my favorites, I regularly pick up “Berserk”, “Death Note”, “Nodame Nodame” Cantabile”, and Eden, but I try to pick up a lot of OEL, “MBQ”, “A Midnight Opera”, “Van Von Hunter”, and “Steady Beat” (go austin comikers!)… Oh yeah, I really really dig “Cromartie High School”. I could list a lot more, but I’ll leave it at that.
PC: Cromartie! "This is it! Someone's finally going to mention that he's a robot!!"
Tony: HAHAH! Exactly!!!!
I still read some western comics, I borrow from friends a lot. “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”, “Hellboy”. I treasure my Giffen/Maguire “Justice League” immensely. I like “Jonah Hex” and “Enemy Ace”. I love 2000 AD stuff, oh yeah.. “Nocturnals” is just too freakin’ cool too. I read a LOT of stuff when I have money or can borrow from friends. I'm no comic snob, at least not in general.
PC: What's the first comic you can clearly remember reading in your youth?
Tony: Ooohh that is a hard one. I've been watching anime since I was like three – “Speed Racer”, but comics are harder to remember. I know I had some “Richie Rich” and “Casper” comics when I was very little; hmmm, I remember getting my grandparents to buy me some horror comics, the ones with Cain and Abel (man they hated those, but for some reason they bought them anyway),eventually I had “X-Men” as well. Besides a few kids' books and some Marvel stuff, my parents actually let me buy “ElfQuest” when I was in grade school.
PC: "Actually let?" Oh, you mean because “Elfquest” is a little more than grade-school level content sometimes? Do you think your parents understood that, or did you think they looked at the artstyle and felt "ehnh, this looks safe enough"
Tony: Yeah, you had to order it, and it was racier than most super hero books. I had to get my parents to order it, of course, I think it must have been from an “Epic Magazine” or maybe “Starlog” or something. I had an epic magazine that my grandmother found out had naked breasts in it, after she had bought it for me (it was in issue with the creator of “Cyborg 009” in it.. again FATE!). She cut out all the breasts in it, leaving big sqaure holes in all the pages, even if there was art on the other side. I still laugh about that. I actually rebought that issue recently, there was a military story in the back that I realized greatly influenced my 2D work. It was weird to see.
PC: WHY did you want to go to the trouble, then? What sold you on it?
Tony: My parents moved us from Texas to Mississippi. Comics weren't easy to find! They were good about that kind of thing, and I think they just liked the fact I was an avid reader (I read tons of books as well). I think around the time it wasn't as racy; when it was, I was old enough. Wow, I had forgotten how early I got into black and white comics. Once I discovered the Nausicaa manga, though I was HOOKED. I wanted to do stuff like that so badly!!!
PC: So how long have you been in Austin?
Tony: I moved here in early 96. I grew up in Huntsville, Kerrville, and Hearne. I spent every summer I could in Hearne, Bryan, Houston, and sometimes Dallas; with my dad. Mississippi made me miss Texas every year.
PC: I seem to remember Elfquest being available everywhere. How old are you again?
Tony: 33 last month.
PC: Wow, very close to me. So I bet you must have been in on Battle of the Planets.
Tony: Oh yeah, we lived in Kerrville. Every Saturday was Monster Theater followed by “Battle of the Planets”. If I missed it, I was really really sad. I was 5 I guess.
Tony: Also “Space Giants” (Ambassador Magma) -- when all the kindergarten kids wanted to watch “Flintstones”, I wanted to “watch Space Giants”… Guess I had my path set out for me, huh?
PC: Man... I don't remember “Space Giants”… So are you going to San Diego Con? Do you think of yourself as a comics creator now, I suppose?
Tony: Yeah, money is too tight and hotels are long sold out :( I’m creating comics, and I hope to create many more (Please buy Psy-Comm and Clockwerx when they come out so I can continue to do this )
PC: So that's a no then?
Tony: It's a no on San Diego this year. I can't help it, but I really really wanted to go. I think I'm going to A-Kon…
PC: Oh, sure. We may run into each other a lot as far as that goes…
PC: Well I'm about out of questions... any questions for me?
Tony: Hmm, I'm trying to think of some manga and anime stuff, but I'm
drawing a blank. I guess at the end of the day, I always go back to the fact that I do this because I love it. I want to write the stuff that I could give to the me who read “Nausicaa” back in 1984, and he would dig it and want to create as much as I do now. It's not easy, but when people dig your work, it's pretty rewarding. Of course, I always give props to the Antarctic press guys and Eclipse people, Ben Dunn, Tim Eldred (Harlock), and I guess Eastman and Laird as well. For showing us we can do manga stuff here too. It wasn't as Manga-y back then, but it set the tone. I try to give props to all the people who set the pace, like,and Adam Warren and others I might have missed as well. Oh yeah, Shogun Warriors! If Marvel didn't give us that, how would I have gotten a jumbo sized Raideen… The toy with a fist that could dent things, and missiles that could POKE YOUR EYE out. Good times!
www.tokyopop.com