At the 2009 Birmingham International Comic Show in October, the Comics Daily team had the chance to chat with Marc Ellerby, artist on Oni Press’ “Love the Way you Love” and creator of numerous small press works. We dragged him away from selling comics for 20 minutes to talk about the thought processes behind his diary strip, the intersection of pop culture and comics, how he broke into the industry, and, of course, what work he’s got coming up next.

Marc against the colourful backdrop of BrumCon 2008.

So, you’ve recently launched a dedicated site for your diary comic, Ellerbisms. What was it that got you into the idea of doing a diary comic, initially?

Well, I started to read a lot of Jeffrey Brown. It’s a cliché answer, but I think there’s a group of underground cartoonists who all picked up Unlikely at the same time, and were all really inspired by it. Reading other people’s diary comics definitely inspired me to think differently, and want to create comics about myself in a fresh and innovative way. Autobiographical comics have a history of being quite melodramatic, but then I read Brown and I found quite a lot of humour in his work. Obviously there’s a lot about girls and his trouble with relationships, but it was initially him – and Liz Prince who does Will you still love me if I wet the bed? – her stuff’s really amazing. I just got really inspired by that Top Shelf movement. [Craig Thompson's] Blankets, too, is a huge thing, when you’re sort of 21 years old and doing comics.

And were you already doing comics before starting Ellerbisms?

I was doing a lot of comics that were like Jim Mahfood’s. There was a zombie comic [as seen in Sad Girls for Life] a pirate comic and one about some mad girl at a gig that was heavily super-violent, a bit like Corey Lewis [creator of Sharknife] that sort of thing. It got stale really quickly and I thought I was drawing, well, shit really! I thought “there’s got to be more to my comics than this emptiness” and diary comics opened up a new avenue for me to explore.

By their nature, diary comics can be quite demanding, so how rigidly do you stick to the frequency?

It’s hard because they don’t bring in that much money. I work a part-time job, so it’s now and again… when I started doing Ellerbisms it was every day, for a month, maybe month and a half, but it started to spiral out of control. I kept getting delayed and delayed. Each one takes a couple of hours and I got to think of an idea, thumbnail it, pencil it and then ink it. I used to colour them as well! I’d spend a whole day doing this comic then I’d just put it on my Livejournal, then I’d have pages of Love the Way You Love to draw and I’d be like “Well, now I’m behind on that!” These days, I aim to do two a week, but I have a backlog too. I quite like having the backlog, because it lets me look at the ideas and think “Do I want people to see this?” – either because I need to make sure it’s good enough, or because it’s too personal.

Comics?

Since you mentioned Love the Way you Love, let’s move onto that – was it your first professional work?

No, I did a strip for Put the Book Back on the Shelf, Image’s Belle & Sebastian anthology, and that was with Jamie [S. Rich] as well.

So how did you get together with Jamie?

It was weird! When Bryan O’Malley started to draw Hopeless Savages, I was getting into it, and I started writing into the letters column. Jamie used to edit it, and we’d talk about the comic, and Oni books in general, and he added me to his Livejournal friend’s list – I don’t recommend this as a way to break into the industry at all – and later I starting updating with my old diary comic that I used to do in college, and he liked it, and showed it to the other guys at Oni, and they agreed that I should draw Love the Way You Love. So yeah, a matter of Livejournal.

Not exactly the traditional way to break into the industry then?

No! But then again, I do tell people to get a Livejournal now.

And Love the Way You Love has finished now – was that a mutual decision?

I was going to leave after Issue 6 anyway because I started to get a bit tired of the series – not in a bad way, but just after 2 years of drawing the same characters… I’m really pleased of the last volume, it looks really good, it embarrasses me to look at the first issue. You can really see the progression, each volume looks different. I decided to finish at #6, and someone else was going to take over, but in the end Oni decided not to renew the series.

Does it wrap everything up?

Well, there’s not much to wrap up! I think the first volume wraps itself up, and the second collection is a different beast. Analysing the relationship, it’s a nice companion piece. It is actually like a B-Side to the first’s “single”.

And your use of music terminology brings us nicely to the next topic, which is the musical references you insert into your work, including on Love the Way... How much is stuff you like, and how much is stuff you’re asked to put in?

Jamie likes a lot of lame britpop. There’s one scene in #2 where he lays out the bedroom of Tristan, and it’s got a lot of references to the Who, and I was like “this is fine, this is good…” but I wanted to put my musical personality in there, so I put some characters in Slayer t-shirts to just redress the balance a little bit. I have to respect that these characters are mainly Jamie’s creations, so I can’t really stick a Pig Destroyer t-shirt on Tristan, but if it’s a background character, or me that appears, or the Polar Opposites, I try and get my personality across as background gags.

Cover of Phonogram: The Singles Club #1

So now that series is over, what are you hoping to do? Your own stuff, or work with another writer?

Both, I guess. I started ‘bisms because I was getting really fed up of drawing the same thing, so it was a release for me to draw something different, and I found I liked doing that. The idea was for me to pursue my own work, which I am now doing, but I’ve also worked with Kieron Gillen on a Phonogram b-side, and I am open to the idea of working with other writers. It’s strange, because I do like to draw comics for myself, but it’s much easier if someone says “here’s a script that’s already been written” as opposed to spending 2 weeks trying to get it out.

And how was Phonogram handed to you? Was that a script, or did you contribute ideas?

Gillen wanted to do a humour strip, so he had a few stashed away already that he had people in mind to draw. It’s been great, it’s nice to get more recognition, because obviously Phonogram is …not huge, but cultish. The second volume’s gonna kick off, Especially now it’s in colour! There’s a special buzz around it, and I’m really excited to be part of it. And I’m in the first issue! So the sales of that will be amazing. Though I’m not in the trade. There is talk about the b-sides and rarities trade some years down the line, though, which I would be in. But yeah, I’m chuffed to bits. As much as I hate to admit, I do quite like those guys, despite the fact that they’re total nobs.

You’re actually here with Jamie [McKelvie, co-creator of Phonogram] now – how did you guys meet?

I met Jamie on the Oni board, and met him in person at San Diego one year. It was actually at Birmingham last year when I met them both properly. Kieron always says he remembers talking to me because he just started to insult me like he’d insult Jamie. There was no politeness. So yeah, it was just through Birmingham and conventions really.

Okay! So, back to anthologies – do you have properties in mind that you’d specifically like to get out there?

Yeah, I’m doing two at the moment. One is – it’s been announced so I can talk about it – it’s an anthology [This is a Souvenir

• download the black saint sinner lady charles mingus

] based on a band called Spearmint. Never heard of them. They’re not the most immediate band. It’s gonna be the same size as the Tori Amos one, 12″ by 12″. I’m writing and drawing that story, which is great. Hopefully I’m also doing something for Popgun. There’s a series I’m trying to get off the ground called “Tara Noonan, Monster Hunter” which is less about monster hunting, and more about getting the bus to go monster hunting. It’s a tongue-in-cheek Scott Pilgrim-ish series which I want to develop, but I’m hoping to do 15-20 pages in Popgun just to like get the idea out there.

So are you a fan of the manga/Scott Pilgrim format?

Yeah, definitely. I work in a bookstore as well, and you can see that manga kids don’t just buy one volume of say, Naruto, at a time, they buy three, and if you can do like seven books, financially that’s great for everyone, as long as it sells in the first volume. But yeah, I really want to do a multi-volume arc. I’m still getting ideas and planning it as a 5-volume book. Scott Pilgrim has been great for Oni, and Wet Moon too, but there have been a lot of series with only having volume 1s that haven’t continued. And it’s been, say, a year on since they came out. It’s weird for us, in England and America, to have to wait that long, because Naruto comes out every 3 months. The Japanese audience get a new trade every few months. Admittedly, it’s drawn by like 17 people, but it’s a much smaller turnaround than Scott Pilgrim, which has a new trade every 14-15 months.

A lot of the stuff you do is themed around music, which puts it in a growing niche alongside things like Scott Pilgrim, Phonogram, Greatest Hits and so on. Why do you think comics creators seem to be drawn to that particular area as opposed to writing comics about characters that are into, say, film or TV or something?

I just think music has that crossover. It’s got such wide appeal. Phonogram, it’s the music nerd’s comic, because it’s got all those references, and Kieron’s a journalist in that field too. It’s just got that amazing reach. Black Metal is another example. There’s enough interest in these cults, like britpop and scandanavian metal, and indie rock that people are interested so they go “hey, a comic about this! awesome.”

Yeah, I remember the thing that initially convinced me to pick up Scott Pilgrim, beyond word of mouth, was the Monkey Island reference. I couldn’t not buy it after reading that because it seemed to be aimed right at me.

Yeah. I always try and get people into bands that I like, so in Ellerbisms it’s Les Savy Fav, or Rolo Tomassi, and people google that, which is great. I learnt that from Jim Mahfood, in Grrl Scouts and Clerks, there’d be like obscure t-shirts, notes in the margins, and a soundtrack of what he’s listening to. That’s great! And if they get it, then it gives you an instant, personal connection to the reader as well.

And that’s a nice statement to end on, so let’s wrap things up there. Thanks for talking to us!

Thanks!