Howard Hardiman Interview

This inter­view has taken a little while to get to us, it was inten­ded to run oh I don’t know, maybe six months ago or so, but I’m just glad it is here now!

1 / Can you intro­duce your­self? What is your background?

Why, are you inter­view­ing people you don’t know? How very promis­cu­ous of you, Dan. What will the gos­sip columns say? I don’t know how to intro­duce myself without it sound­ing like I’m writ­ing a per­son­als
advert or an escort advert, which in itself prob­ably says quite a lot about me.

Me, well, background-wise, I grew up in a lovely sub­urban house­hold on the cusp of Sur­rey and Lon­don and I think every­one in that hin­ter­land goes one way or the other, either going out to tractor shows and
coun­try fairs every week­end or bor­row­ing their mum’s car to visit their friend down the road and instead driv­ing up into Lon­don to get into as much trouble as pos­sible. I’ll let you work out which type I was.

I stud­ied in Nor­wich, where most of Nor­wich seemed to study me because it seemed like they’d never seen a tall skinny boy with bright red hair before. I was a long way from Lon­don. I some­how wound up study­ing Cul­tural Stud­ies with a view to doing poetry and pho­to­graphy, then I did my dis­ser­ta­tion on moral philo­sophy around cos­mo­logy and quantum phys­ics and became a sign lan­guage inter­preter instead when I graduated.

Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time pre­tend­ing to be other people for that job,  trav­elled about a little bit, got back to Lon­don, had more adven­tures, got into and out of more trouble than I think I can begin to describe and through a series of mis­haps am now back in South Lon­don, back at art school and still get­ting into trouble.

2 / What drew you to comics?

When I was little, I used to read Trans­formers, but I remem­ber best the issue 100 story “Dis­tant Thun­der” about Optimus Prime hav­ing a little emo moment in that altern­ate real­ity place he was in while all the other mar­ket­ing ploys were time-travelling about and tak­ing his place in the timeline. I think it was mostly because I wanted him to be my dad or something.

Oh, and I think every­one knows I had a major crush on Panthero.

I stopped buy­ing com­ics for a while when I was try­ing to be ‘ard in my teen­age years, which I think meant buy­ing Choose Your Own Adven­ture books instead for a while, then got back into them in a big way with Sand­man and when a mate who worked at Ran­dom House sent me a copy of Shut­ter­bug Fol­lies I was prop­erly blown away. Then I picked up People I Know at a Christ­mas Fete and it was fate.

I star­ted dood­ling on post-it notes and put­ting them on Flickr, then I star­ted draw­ing a Badger wan­der­ing around in Brockley and then I real­ised how badly I’d fucked up my arms from inter­pret­ing and had to stop work­ing and sud­denly the little badger became a lot more real and someone sug­ges­ted put­ting it together as a book, so I sort of thought I’d give it a go. I’m a bit of a knob really, for not think­ing prop­erly about how to tell stor­ies or any­thing like that, but I’ve been think­ing about it a lot more ser­i­ously lately.

But what drew me to com­ics? I dunno, there’s some­thing nos­tal­gic and fresh about them at the same time, and some­thing that’s really per­sonal about the way you read those stor­ies. I think Nick Abadzis’ Laika made me cry almost as much as Dan­cer in the Dark did, and I saw that just after being a wit­ness in a murder trial, so I prob­ably wasn’t cry­ing for the film.

3 / Who do you count as your influences?

When I was inter­pret­ing more, I worked for lots of art gal­ler­ies, inter­pret­ing gal­lery tours, so I spent loads of time with paint­ings and pho­to­graphy and I think that’s really bled into the stuff I love to think about, espe­cially with The Lengths, where Cara­vag­gio and Map­pleth­orpe are as con­spicu­ous as Frank Mil­lar in how the story looks, but there’s prob­ably a chunk of some of the theatre stuff I love in there as well, with a bit of Sarah Kane’s timeline mad­ness going in as well. I don’t think I’m going to be nearly as hor­rible to
the char­ac­ters as she was, though, I think that would be really dif­fi­cult to manage.

Comics-wise, though, in more main­stream com­ics, I com­puls­ively buy the BPRD trades, The Walk­ing Dead, loved the Cat­wo­man reboot until they had to shoe­horn in the cros­sover events, but I’m a bit bad because I tend to look more at the char­ac­ters and the stor­ies rather than remem­ber who the artist and writer was, which is a car­dinal sin in com­ics. I tend to like most stuff from Ed Brubaker, though, look­ing at my shelf. Stuff where sad things hap­pen to cute things will also win lots of points with me, too, which is pos­sibly why Laika and Fluffy are con­stant favourites.

4 / Can you describe your work­ing process?

A bit chaotic, to be hon­est. For Badger, it’s a bit more straight­for­ward. I’ve drawn him often enough that I’ve got a pretty solid men­tal con­struct of him and I know what he does, so I can pose him without need­ing to work too hard on pre­par­at­ory sketches. What I’m doing with his story now, though, is that I’m not plan­ning on mak­ing another book, I’m just mak­ing a web comic of moments in his life, so I’m draw­ing, paint­ing or mak­ing the pic­tures on whatever I want to use, and I’m lov­ing hav­ing given myself that free­dom to play and exper­i­ment. It also keeps me from think­ing about how to sell a book and just makes me con­cen­trate on mak­ing pic­tures and little sequences I like and am fond of.

In terms of work­ing pro­cess, though, it’s mostly a case of tak­ing lots of pho­tos of streets in Brockley when I take a walk around Hilly Fields or wherever myself just to give myself prompts, then get­ting too excited in art sup­plies shops and wast­ing hours and lots of money on buy­ing things to make pic­tures on and then hop­ing I can sell them at the end of it, but ulti­mately I’m not too fussed about it.

For The Lengths, though, it’s a bit more com­plic­ated. The story was based on quite extens­ive research inter­views with male escorts that I re-worked and spent years work­ing on until I’d got a set of char­ac­ters
and back-stories I was happy with and then I got the storyline together and put together the story arc and script. There’s a lot of loc­a­tion research — again, my iPhone is really handy for tak­ing snaps - then loads of fig­ure draw­ing to get the poses right and then, and this is the bit that took longer than I thought, fash­ion research for the char­ac­ters. I got a friend of mine to sit with me and help to dress the char­ac­ters, based around their build, age, income and per­son­al­ity so I know where they shop and what they’re likely to be
wearing.

It’s kind of sad that I’ve learned so much about high-tops for Eddie for this.

Lay­out thumb­nails are done next, and they’re kept really simple to stop me from los­ing too much time and san­ity on this stage, just match­stick men and blocks to work out if there’s room to tell the story how I want to tell it and if there’s breath­ing room around the images.

Next step’s pre­par­at­ory sketches if I need to intro­duce some­thing I’ve not drawn before, or if it’s a scene I’m okay with, I do warm-up sketches in my sketch­book of some­thing I just think is fun to keep myself from going mad.

Then I draw by hand, and I think it’s import­ant for the story that it’s done this way, onto Bris­tol Board, doing out­lines in feint blue, then in 2h pen­cil to build up the detail in the image and then I ink with cal­li­graphy pen, tech­nical pen, brush pen and marker pen for the big­ger areas of black.

The pages are scanned in and then I use pho­toshop to smooth out the black areas and to make any cor­rec­tions I want to make at this stage - there’s usu­ally quite a few — then I put them into the InDes­ign file
for the comic to build it all together. Once it’s all in, I get a friend who’s bet­ter than me at typo­graphy to help check over the InDes­ign file before it goes to print and then I have a long chat with the printer about paper, mood and feel and all that to check we’re on the same wavelength.

Then I have a little cry.

5 / What does your workspace/studio look like?

Right now, I’m about to move into a new stu­dio, in the back yard of the Old Police Sta­tion in Dept­ford, where from the win­dow of the tiny little metal box I’ll be in I can look up to where bet­ter comic artists than I work in The Fleece Sta­tion and I can dream of the day where I can be as good as them.

Once I’m moved in, though, there’ll be a desk and a lot of gay porn, pic­tures of dogs, art books and things like that. I’ll send you a pic­ture once I’m in, I promise.

6 / How do you earn a living?

I did think about pros­ti­tu­tion for a bit, but I can’t be bothered with hit­ting refresh on that many web­sites all day to tout for trade. Now I get some money from com­ics and some from doing bits of sign lan­guage
inter­pret­ing, the occa­sional bit of work with art gal­ler­ies and, hil­ari­ously, some modelling.

7 / What are you work­ing on at the moment?

Badger and The Lengths are the main things I’m work­ing on right now, but I’m also doing an MA at Cam­ber­well in Illus­tra­tion and I’m tinker­ing away at writ­ing a new comic that’s a col­lab­or­at­ive pro­ject
and thus top secret for the time being. I’m think­ing of try­ing to do some other arty things when I can find the time, but the main thing is to get The Lengths sor­ted and to get ahead with that.

8 / What are your ambi­tions for the future?

Get a dog.

9 / What advice would you give to an aspir­ing ama­teur cartoonist?

Hmm, I whole­heartedly approve of the gen­eral advice to make the com­ics you love to read, but I think there’s also a lot or mileage in look­ing out­side of com­ics for things to bring into the mix. Read, watch and listen vora­ciously and think about what you can pull together into your work to make a new mix with a fla­vour that’s your own.

The other bit of advice is: watch your back.

Not: other artists will pull you down — if any­thing, they’re the people who will catch you every single time you feel your­self fall­ing. What I mean is more phys­ic­ally — if your body fucks up, you can have all the skill in the world, but if your hands are pain­ful claws, your com­ics will fall apart. Get a decent chair and a draw­ing space that pro­tects your spine and hands and eyes and you’ll go a lot fur­ther than hunch­ing over your­self to burn your spine apart. As much as you obsess about get­ting the right pen or invest in a decent com­puter, look after the most import­ant tools, which is your body, eh?

You’ve been warned.

Also, I’m not sure there’s any such thing as ama­teurs. You just make stuff you love mak­ing, some of us get to sell it, some just love mak­ing it. We’d all still be doing it any­way, whether or not the was money in it, I’m pretty sure.

10 / What do you think of the health of the UK com­ics scene at the moment, and what do you think it can do better?

I think it’s good — there’s enough tal­ent in the UK scene at the moment that it’s intim­id­at­ing enough to make me want to con­stantly look at what other people are pro­du­cing and I’m always impressed and I’m always learn­ing from every­one else as they’re devel­op­ing. We don’t have TCAF or any­thing quite on that scale, and we’re not organ­ised into the kinds of dis­tros and car­tels that you see com­ing up when there’s that kind of crit­ical mass achieved, but I don’t think we’re far off when you see the vis­itor num­bers at places like the Com­ics Vil­lage at MCM expo, Kapow! or Thought Bubble and when you see how many of our num­ber are hav­ing the choice to make the switch over to big pub­lish­ers else­where. I think, if any­thing, what we’re not doing well enough is real­ising quite how far we’ve developed as a com­munity and we’re only slowly start­ing to wave flags in the main­stream about the wicked stuff we’re involved in and we’re all just tent­at­ively begin­ning to have a bit more faith in ourselves, but I think that’s com­ing. I’m see­ing there are so many choices ahead of people at the moment it’s a bit baff­ling know­ing which path to choose, but that’s a real lux­ury prob­lem to be faced with to have too many choices for how to set out a career when you think of how lim­ited options seem to have been in the past.

11 / Where is the best place to buy your work?

The Lengths is avail­able through your local comic shop — if they’ve sold out, they can order it in (see the grow­ing faith I’m try­ing to cul­tiv­ate!) or you can get it through www.thelengths.com or http://cutebutsad.bigcartel.com which also has some Badger stuff, older com­ics (although some have sold out, so I guess it’s not just the shops!) and I’ll be put­ting The Lengths issue 2 up soon. If those things scare you, you can stalk me at con­ven­tions and in the street and whichever bin you see me scav­en­ging in.

Thanks very much Howard! Please take some time to click the links, buy some books and fol­low Howard on twit­ter.