Who? Comic-book artist Josh Sullivan
Sphere of influence: Sullivan, 26, is arguably the most well-known, prolific comic-book artist in Tampa Bay. Since moving to St. Petersburg from Saginaw, Mich., in 2000, Sullivan has self-published over 100 comic books, and his strips of cartoony characters doing very uncartoony things have appeared in several local and national publications. He also fronts the local ska band Can't Do It, and up until recently, slung coffee at the venerable Globe Coffeeshop.
How he makes a difference: Sullivan says his goal is to make people laugh and push Tampa Bay creatives to express themselves. He is a constant promoter of other local artists and musicians and regularly hosts art shows. He's currently moving toward painting and other forms of art.
CL: When did you start creating comic books?
Sullivan: The real start of my comics was the first comic convention I went to in Detroit in March 2006. The friend I went with had picked up this book — I forget what the name of it was — and he had left it in my backpack. So, the next day at school, I was going through the book and I told myself, "I can do this." So, I started drawing comics. I wasn't mass producing them, but I was handing them out at school. And they were making people laugh. As soon as I figured out I could make people laugh through comics, it was a given that was what I was going to do.
Later on that year, I was doing a flier for the comic shop I worked at and my dear friend Lisa said, "Well, my dad's a doctor. He has a copy machine in his office. Do you want to make free copies?" And a light bulb just shot off. I was like, "Uh, yeah." So, I scrapped the whole flier idea. I never ended up making copies of the flier for my boss. What had happened is, people had known me for the comics at school because of me passing around these one-page scripts. This had been going on for a few months, and so I decided I'm going to do a book. So, what I did is I drew up a cover, and I walked around to everybody at school, and I'm like, "Hey I'm doing this book, it's going to be a dollar, do you want to pre-order one?" So I ended up selling out and I was like, "Wow. I just made all this money and I don't have a book." … So I stayed up all night drawing the first book and the next day my friend Lisa wasn't in school, and I was like, "Aw, damn, I wanted to make this book." But the next day she was there and I was like, "We're going to your dad's office." I didn't know anything about copy machines or any of that stuff, but my friend Stu did, so he's like I'll take care of it, don't worry about it. So he made all these books and distributed them the next day and that's how it went. That was my sophomore year of high school.
… It sort of helped me be a part of every little clique. I was friends with the football players. I was friends with the stoners, the punks. It was cool because I was doing that with my art, with my humor, with something I was making, something I was doing that no one else was doing. Every once and while, I was telling my friends, "You got to do something for this." I kept pushing them. I wanted nothing more than to make people laugh, but past that, I wanted to get other people's art out there. That was high school pretty much.
Have any of your comics created a stir around town?
I was doing art for this St. Pete arts magazine called Stash Magazine. I ended up writing a column for them, too. But the first thing they ended up putting in there was this comic called "Jump, mutherfucker, jump." It was the first comic of mine that I had a swear word in. For years, I didn't have swearing in [my comics], because I was doing them at school and I didn't want to get in trouble. So I did this comic "Jump, mutherfucker, jump." When all the condos were first going up, I looked up at one that was pretty much done and I thought, "Man, that'd be really crazy just to see somebody jump off it right now." So, I did that comic, and then I got a hold of the Stash Magazine people. They're like, "Oh, we want to put your comics in our magazine." "Oh, OK, which one do you want to use?" And they go, "Oh, that jump, mutherfucker, jump comic." And I'm like, "No. I'm telling you, you're going to get hate mail." So he goes ahead and puts it in there and he ends up getting all this hate mail from all these old people. Apparently they're like, "How could you use the word 'mutherfucker' in an arts magazine?" And so he had to have a whole retraction the next issue, and apologizing left and right for it. And that comic, probably more than any other one, has gotten me some weird e-mails. I got an e-mail from some girl who was not pleased at all about it. I had it sitting up front [at the Globe] with all the fliers. She said, "My dad jumped off the Skyway and I was not amused by your comic. And I wanted to let you know that." I'm thinking to myself, "I don't know you. I'm not doing this to piss anyone off. It's not your personal story in this comic."
The punk comic was probably the most influential, talked-about, famous one I had ever done. It was the first comic I did when I moved down here. It was just this one-page script about this guy, he's going to some show and he sees some other guy that is the epitome of punk. He's got a mohawk, tattoos, piercings, leather jacket, and [the first] guy runs off to go get more punk. And he comes back and he's like "I'm more punk than you." And the original punk guy hits him in the head with a brick and he's like, "Was that punk enough for ya?"
So I was constantly printing these up. I didn't know anything about punk music at the time; I was just going on stereotypes. I'm handing them out after shows, record stores, wherever. So many people, especially punk kids, were really into it, really identified with it. I thought I was going to be annihilated, because I was just making fun of their culture and their music. That one ended up in tons and tons of magazines, zines, comics. And people still talk about it nine years later.
What's the advantage of a zine or mini-comic over a blog or website?
It feels a lot more personal if you have it in your hand. It's something that you can keep re-reading. You don't have to book mark it and go back later if you want. The funniest thing people tell me about my comics is they have them on their toilets.
I think that there's such an allure to drawing something or writing something, taking the time to make copies of it, putting it together, having a finished product in your hand and putting it in other people's hands, as oppose to putting it online and kind of knowing who might be looking at it, but not really the full scale of it.
Plus, online there is so much you're competing against. People reading the news, listening to music, all that stuff. It's such a different experience when people can go somewhere like the Globe and check out what's up front — fliers, newspapers or something — and then they see something and they're like, "Wow! This is cool. I'm going to take this back to my seat and read it." As oppose to them sitting on their laptop, "Oh, hey, my friend sent me this link."
It's the whole mystique of it, too. There seems to be a lot more memories attached to stuff because I have print copies. I can look at something online and be like, "Oh, I read that once, but there's nothing really to remember. It wasn't like I was out somewhere doing this, I was on my damn computer like I am right now."
The thing with stuff online too is it's so easy. When MySpace started you could put like four pictures on there or something; now, you can put whatever the hell you want. So one day I uploaded everything of mine that was on my site and it took 10 minutes. I got all these great memories of being in copy shops at 3 a.m., sitting on the floor, putting these books together and then I just put my whole past 10 years of work on MySpace in 10 minutes. It's sort of like the same mentality of getting music for free online. I just got 12 CDs by this band as oppose to at their show before they hit it big.
The Internet has been amazing for me for getting my stuff way out there. But it's just such a homogenization of everything.
What advice would you give people who might want to make their own comics?
Just go into it, you know? I learned everything through trial and error, and that definitely was a lot of the fun of it. My first mini comic, I printed like half of it upside down and it was stapled all horribly. I didn't worry about that. I wasn't trying to be a perfectionist; I just wanted to put out a stupid little book.
I say just make a ton of copies. Sell them if you can or just give them away to anywhere that would take them: CD shops, coffeshops. Hand them out at shows. Make fliers, mail stuff off. Making fliers is single-handedly what got me in places — on TV, in the newspaper, making friends, getting my name out there and stuff.
What's the advantage of self-publishing versus submitting to established publications?
Say you had this huge distribution and I want to get the latest issue. I'll go to Borders, or the comic shop, or order it online. But finding something on a real small scale in the bowels of some place, in the corner of some shop, I'm so enamored with something like that. … I think the advantage of doing it yourself is you're definitely on your own terms. You're not compromising anything; you just want to do it.
I think what the coolest thing about it is, hey, I just did this book, I'm gonna hop on my bike and go to the copy shop. And an hour later, my book's done. As oppose to waiting and waiting, all right my book is finally done.
A lot of it goes back to being really personal.
Do you think they'll always be a future for underground printed comics?
There definitely will be, because comic conventions will always be around. I've seen it [at conventions] where people will set up a table at a convention and just have their laptop and say, "This is what I have. Here's my portfolio. Here's what I do." But that's not going to sell books or get their name out there. When you go to comic conventions, you can walk around, you can browse that stuff. I think it's always going to be there, because as much as the Internet has encapsulated everything, there is always going to be books. And if there's books, there's always going to be mini comics, zines and whatever else.
Some people still don't take comics seriously. Do you think comics have the potential to impact culture and politics?
There's always going to be some people that don't take it seriously, because a lot of their exposure was Archie Comics, or Mickey Mouse comics, or any of that stuff that's geared toward kids, and they can't see past that. There's an amazing world out there, having this medium combining art and words, and have it be a way to get something across. I mean, it's slowly seeming like it's being more acceptable. But I have said before, I think comics are always just going to be on the [fringes]. You can name the most famous comic artist and say it to a person on the street and they're not going to know. But say Paris Hilton and everyone knows. It's always been a weird world. And I've been really happy to be part of it.
What is your next project?
I'm thinking of doing a zine — I want to call it 52 Friends — where I go all over the country and spend one week with a different person and do a zine about it. You know, my experience in the town, history of the town, interviews with my friends, comics with my friends, photos, wherever. And by the end of that week, I have the zine done. I want to do 52 copies of each particular issue and there's going to be 52 issues in all.
Read Josh's picks for Top 10 Underground Comics here.
This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2008.
