Most readers will be familiar with Brian Andersen’s self-published comic, So Super Duper. The superhero parody follows the exploits of Psyche, a flamboyant character who everyone knows is gay except for himself. It’s been published online and in print and, in its most recent and probably most-seen incarnation has been reproduced a page at a time on the Blog@Newsarama. As a creator and a small publisher, though, Andersen has a number of projects out this weekend in time for Comic-Con International. He sat down with us to discuss them.

There was so, so, SO much more to our conversation, but in the interest of keeping it San Diego-centric, I’ve trimmed to just cover the material that’s hitting this weekend. Another interview or two will probably roll out over the next couple of weeks looking at Andersen’s in-depth perception on gender and sexuality in comics, and the future of webcomics versus traditional publishing. To check out more from Andersen himself, click on his Blog@ link above or surf over to his site for more information on all the books he writes, draws or publishes.

Blog@Newsarama: Give us a little overview of the projects you’ve got hitting in time for San Diego this year, if you can. Apparently there are three?

Brian Andersen: I have a few books out right now. The first one is So Super Duper. I started that two years ago now, and originally was going to have it done as a daily webcomic. So I spent about four months just writing all these pages, and I tried to keep the story flowing so that it would be one, continuous story and you wouldn’t have the abrupt stops and beginnings that webcomics sometimes do. Then I decided, because APE was coming up, that I would collect the first 25 pages or whatever of the stuff I’d been working on and take it to APE to see what the response was. I was shocked to find out that people actually enjoyed it! Because, you know, when you’re in your own world and you’re creating something for so long, you have no idea what the response is going to be. In your brain you’re like “This is great,” but you never know what the response is going to be. And so I decided to change over to just a print version, and I’m up to issue eight now. Newsarama had contacted me because I occasionally write reviews for them, and asked if I’d put it up on their blog and I was like, “Hells yeah!” So there it is.

Blog@: I know I’d seen a few copies of So Super Duper out there before you started contributing to the Blog@Newsarama, but I didn’t know how it all came together.

BA: Yeah, I actually pursued them initially, too. When Troy Brownfield was writing for just the Best Shots before and he was doing Shotgun Reviews but not the Blog@Newsarama, I wrote to him and said, “Hi, I’d like to do some reviews for you. My name’s Brian Andersen, here’s some samples.” Thankfully he liked what I did so he included me to be part of the Best Shots team. When he took over the Blog@ team, he invited me to bring my book on there so it all kind of worked out well for me.

Blog@: So I know not everyone reads the pages even if they’re right in front of them. What’s the pitch for So Super Duper?

BA: It’s basically my sunny and comical, but still kind of with a serious undertone or a heartfelt undertone story of this everyman, kind of loser character named Psyche, who is empathic. He’s barely that at all, his powers are kind of questionable. He’s part of a superhero team and on top of all that, he’s flamingly gay and it’s painfully obvious to everyone around him except himself. So it’s kind of a story of him coming to terms with who he is, and then all the members of the team who either love him or hate him because he’s either worthless, or not really somebody that they enjoy being around.

Blog@: What are the other two books you’ve got coming out this week for San Diego?

BA: My next one is called Reignbow and Dee-Va, and the first issue came out a year ago, and it was originally going to be a one-shot. I worked with an artist called Celina Hernandez whose work is amazing. It’s very clear that I’m not much of an artist and I’m very open about that. Most of the reason that I drew So Super Duper in the first place is that I didn’t even know where to begin looking for another artist and so I decided to just give it a shot with my meager talent and so far it’s worked okay for me. I found Celina and basically Reignbow and Dee-Va is the story of another gay character, who is a secret agent. And his partner, whose name is Dee-Va (his name is Reignbow) are kind of these secret agents who are going on a mission. And at first in the book you kind of think that they’re just going out to this club to party but soon you find out that the club is actually full of vampires. So they have to fight their way through this sea of vampires—because why not?—and they have to get to this missing treasure, who actually turns out to be Reignbow’s boyfriend, Agent Treasure, who’s being kidnapped by the vampires. The book is really kind of a takeoff on my love of action movies. I always wanted to put my twist on it and I always thought it would be fun if an action movie had a really, super-flamey gay character who was very just stereotypically gay, but really kicked ass and really took names and was really just confident and strong and loved who he was and didn’t make any apologies for who he was. And just in pop culture every gay guy needs his best gal pal, so I put in Dee-Va as his secret agent partner.

Blog@: What do you think it is about vampire stories that attracts a homoerotic subtext—or in this case, just text?

BA: I think it’s because vampires are depicted either as terrifyingly scary—and a lot of gay people that I know love horror movies especially, it’s just something that we enjoy—but on the flipside I think that vampires are often portrayed as these kind of beautiful, attractive in a dark and scary way…I think that attracts us because there’s that whole male beauty thing and the whole bad-boy thing. You shouldn’t like this person, and yet…he’s undead but he’s so alive, right? He’s so in the known and he’s so cool.

Blog@: Do you ever worry about being “the dude who does all the gay stuff?”

BA: I don’t know. I guess I feel like there’s not a lot of mainstream gay comics out there and I initially started creating comics because I wanted to create comics that I wanted to read and being an openly gay person I thought “Why not create comics that I’d like reading?” And I decided to do things like action movies and superhero stories, and I decided to put the main characters as gay characters. I get a lot of flak, believe it or not, from both straight readers and also my fellow gay readers because they feel like I’m kind of perpetuating a stereotype or whatever by having these overly flaming characters—but these characters are things that I feel like I kind of am to some degree. I’m pulling from myself. I don’t mind being pigeonholed as a gay creator because that’s who I am. My comics don’t just have gay characters—there are straight characters as well so I don’t feel like I’m just writing necessarily “gay comic books,” even though they are gay-themed. I think everyone should be able to enjoy them even though the main character is gay.

Blog@: So what’s the third book? We never quite got there, because we got kind of sidetracked talking about the actual book of Reignbow & Dee-Va.

BA: Well, Reignbow and Dee-Va #2 is the second one I’ve got out, and it’s kind of the continuing story of Agent Reignbow and Agent Dee-Va and Agent Treasure. They’re on the beach on a vacation and this mermaid appears—a giant mermaid on a sea beast—to kidnap Agent Treasure, and it turns out there’s this evil vampire queen who’s trying to make him straight so she can have him for her mate. So Agent Reignbow and Agent Dee-Va have to save Agent Treasure again from the mermaid, the ancient sea beast, the vampire queen and a bunch of zombies that come out of the ocean that the mermaid controls. So it’s totally like an absurd comic book and it’s everything I love—action and humor and characters that are having fun and fighting, and you don’t really get a sense of danger, but it’s more kind of a lark. Again I worked with Celina and the reason we did the second one is that she had so much fun on the first one that she said we should do another—and so we did a second one and we’re planning on doing a third. But the third book I have for San Diego this week is not mine. I actually sometimes publish other people’s work for them—I printed a book called This Gay Existence. It’s an individual who I met online, he lives in Georgia I believe and he writes kind of like a daily comic strip on gay characters and their observations on the world—stereotypes and sex and religion and culture and all that stuff. It’s really humorous and it’s very indie. I don’t know if a lot of people will like his art, in the same way that a lot of people don’t like mine, you know? It’s very indie or underground kind of art. But I find it to be very indie and very humorous and very enjoyable. I think sometimes people put too much emphasis on that—I think definitely if you’re at DC or Marvel or something that you should be in their style but I think part of the beauty of doing an indie comic is that you don’t have to have every page be perfect every time. There’s so many elements that make it fun—the art is really only a part of it. So I published a collection of his webcomics that are available at prismcomics.org—I think he posts them weekly.

Blog@: Are you going to continue collecting that one as he goes, or is that up in the air still?

BA: We’ll have to see what the response is. For me it’s not about making money because let’s be honest, as an indie creator I don’t really make money on my books and I don’t ever expect to really make money on them. It’s more for me just the love of creating comic books. I’ve always loved creating comic books and I’ve always wanted to create comic books. I think there’s a big void for gay-themed comic books that other queer people can enjoy as well as straight people. I just want to be the type of publisher that lets other things have a chance to get out there so people can discover it. I only want to print people’s work that I believe in and I think his work is really great and I think that it should have a chance to get out there. So if it’s well-received and I hear positive feedback then yes I would love to print more. It’s the same thing with the other book that I print—I’ve published another individual, his name is Rick Worley and he does A Waste of Time. And I printed his work because I found him to be such a talented individual that I thought he deserved to have a book so that people can discover him. We’re just going to play it by ear, to be honest with you. I only do very small print runs, to be honest with you. I’ve gone back to print multiple times on my own comics, but not as much with the other people I’ve published yet, so as I make it through what I have, I’d be happy to make more.

Blog@: Even when you’re dealing with comics the exist mainly on the Web, how important do you think it is to have a paper copy, to have that artifact that a collector can hold onto at a convention and maybe discover the characters and creators for the first time?

BA: I think comic books are such a physical and visual medium, that even though it’s branching into online and webcomics, we enjoy holding a comic book. There’s a lot of movement toward the web because we should diversify, but it’s just like books. People who love books will always love books and people who love comic books will always love comic books. I think there’s something to be said for having a tangible piece of media in your hand that you can flip through and pull out whenever you want and read it again. I don’t think that’ll ever go away and you’ll have a really hard time making it as a webcomic without having some kind of print to go with it so that people who don’t know about it on the Web can find it. That’s kind of their doorway into your Web presence.

Blog@: Do you also think that people with no money but a lot of talent also need the Web? It’s certainly the cheapest way to publish.

BA: Oh yeah absolutely. I think the problem sometimes with webcomics is that I think there’s kind of a stigma on it—some people who don’t like webcomics, just don’t like them period. I think that they need to be able to separate themselves to realize that comic books can be made on several plains. I mean, there’s even comics being made just for iPhones and stuff and I think that’s great—I think you need to have a presence in both—a web presence and a physical presence. And I’m not asying you can’t succeed with one or the other, but I think that having both really improves your chances.

Blog@: For those people who want to ghettoize webcomics, do you think that having Jeff Smith and Todd Dezago making iPhone comics is essential in changing the face of that community or do you think that even having guys like that involved, you’ll still see people are just people and they won’t buy into it?

BA: Yeah, I think both. I think some people will just be people and they’ll have opinions one way or the other. And their opinions are what they are and they’re not going to change it. But I think that having professionals diving into the online medium only helps to legitimize it. I think a lot of the problem with webcomics is that a lot of people think, “Why should I take the time to read it if he can’t get it printed?” But when you have a professional who moves into the medium it gives some credibility and people are more likely to say “Oh, maybe there’s something here.” I think just like with printed comic books you have to go through the bad stuff to get to the good stuff. Some stuff’s good, some stuff’s bad and you can’t judge all webcomics based on a few bad ones.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 25th, 2009 at 8:56 am and is filed under News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.