Broken Frontier

Every self-respected comic book fan has heard of the name Harvey Pekar. Someone even those people may not have heard of as of yet, is Ed Piskor, Pekar’s collaborator on Macedonia, a mammoth graphic novel released through Random House’s Ballantine imprint early next year, once the DC/Vertigo American Splendor series has wrapped up.

Piskor talks about Macedonia, working with Harvey Pekar and how he hopes his young career will unfold.

BROKEN FRONTIER: As the title of the graphic novel suggests, Macedonia deals with Macedonia, a very small, stable/unstable, country in the Balkans. What is the entry point to the story?

ED PISKOR: The book starts off with the protagonist, Heather Roberson, off campus in Berkeley debating with a professor about war and its inevitability. She uses Macedonia as the crux of her argument and eventualy realizes she should travel there to get an accurate idea of how things are progressing day to day so that she can prepare her thesis.

BF: What are Heather and her professor debating about? And how heated does the argument get for her to want to travel halfway across the world?

EP: I'm reasonably sure that Heather had it in her mind that she was going to Macedonia to research the territory by the time she got into these arguments with her classmates and teachers. These old jaded professors basically have it in their heads that there is nothing we can do about war, it’s a part of life and we should just deal with it when it comes up. Heather has a more Berkeley California view of the inevitability of war meaning that it’s possible that war can be avoided even when tensions are high and Macedonia was a compelling piece in her monologues.

BF: Have you taken a special interest into the history of the country now that you've spent a considerable amount of time illustrating a story about it?

EP: The place definitely interests me. I've found myself keeping up with the regular happenings of the region and Macedonia is on my mind a lot. At this point I’m not so interested in researching the sordid past of the province, but I certainly am very aware of its current state.

BF: The preview pages that have been released suggest that there are a lot of panels with not much more than—at risk of sounding belittling—'talking heads'. How hard was it to keep things interesting and fresh for 150 pages?

EP: Once you see the final product, you'll realize that this 150 page book is dense with story, for better or worse. It probably should have been a 300 page graphic novel. There were some instances where a conversation spanned 10 pages or so and I used every little trick I could think of to present the written text in an interesting way. I'd be lying if I said it was and easy thing to tackle day in and day out for the year I worked on the book.

BF: I can only imagine! Can you elaborate some on a few of those artistic tricks you pulled out of your hat?

EP: The way Harvey writes the stories, there aren't always details about what the characters are doing besides filibustering towards one another, so in one particularly long scene of back-and-forth I had the characters basically drive home, cook dinner, water the lawn, clean the dishes, and hang out in front of the TV all within the same conversation. It wasn't my most subtle little bit of personal humor I injected for my own amusement, but I don't think the readers would have put up with 2 people standing stationary while talking to each other for 12 pages.

BF: To what extent can the book be compared to other docu-graphic novels like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, Joe Sacco's Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde, or Craig Thompson's Carnet de Voyage?

EP: First off, this is not an autobiographical tale, so that immediately liberates us from having to be compared with these heavyweights. I have enough confidence in our readers that just because of the location of our story they won't confuse it with a Sacco book. I've barely left Pittsburgh in my 23 years of life, so I was completely drawing this thing from the seat of my pants.

I relied totally on the reference that Heather provided me and "Google image search" filled the rest of the gaps. Hopefully I pulled it off convincingly, but I'm sure I'll hear about it from some unruly, jaded fanboys.

BF: As an unknown artist, it must have been a thrill to hear that Harvey Pekar of all people wanted to work with you on a project of this stature. When did you find out he was really interested?

EP: On the American Splendor: Our Movie Year book they needed to add a 24 page story fast and quick because it was in the contract to have the volume a certain size. The end of production was rapidly approaching and Harvey called me up and said "Ed, do you want to do a lot of work in a very short amount of time?". Of course I obliged and produced the strip in under a month. When he saw that I produced this reliably he didn't hesitate to offer this book to me and I'm very thankful for the opportunity.

BF: As you said, Macedonia isn't the first time you've worked with Harvey. How would you describe your working relationship?

EP: My working relationship has grown leaps and bounds since the Our Movie Year book. When I did my first work with Pekar he required that he saw every stage of production on my end, so when I pencilled a story I had to send it to him, and then I could finish the thing with his approval.

With Macedonia, I sent him 2 packages over the course of production. 1 package was 100 finished inked pages and the second package was the final 50. He has total confidence in my work and he knows I’m not going to draw him with a cape and cowl or anything like that. He also gave me carte blanche to break his panels up in any way I saw fit, which was kind of necessary on this project.

BF: A project such as this, like much of Harvey's oeuvre, is far more personal than, say, a superhero story. Has the personal emotions invested by both sides led to something beyond a sheer professional collaboration—perhaps an actual friendship?

EP: Harv and I get along pretty great. Through the whole process we've been in constant contact and we've been through a lot with the higher-ups at the company, and enough stuff that I don't want to get into. We still talk regularly and plan on continuing our working relationship.

Harvey is a very easy guy to get along with and I'm learning a lot from him.

BF: A lot of times, a creator doesn't get industry-wide recognition—not in the eyes of your typical comic book fan anyway—before he's done mainstream work. Still, do you consider Macedonia your breakthrough moment? No one can deny that it's a huge graphic novel to be published by one of the bigger companies in literature overall.

EP: It’s hard for me to think of this as a breakthrough moment in my cartooning career. On one hand I didn't write the thing, I just drew it so I don't completely consider that cartooning. On the other hand, this project has provided the seed cash for me to keep myself full of Ramen noodles while I work on my own stuff, and if any new work I'm doing gains recognition through Macedonia that would make it a breakthrough moment I guess… I can't think clearly in these terms. I'm not going to give it much thought. The physical act is the most important part of the process for me. It's kind of a hoot to see the final product, but working on comics provides me the closest thing to peace that I've found so far.

BF: You're only 23 years old, with a whole career ahead of you. How do you see it playing out, ideally?

EP: I just would love to keep going on to produce a respected body of work comfortably. There's not a sign of me relaxing anytime soon and I have a million ideas that need to hit the comics page. I really hope I don't turn into one of these stories where the young upstart had so much potential and died of ass cancer before he produced his masterpiece. That honestly is a constant thought on my mind, unfortunately…

BF: Where should people look for some upcoming work of yours? Has Macedonia beefed up your résumé in that it has directly led to other projects?

EP: Off the top of my head I'm going to have some stuff in Mineshaft magazine over the course of the next few issues. Other than that I think it’s going to be a smart idea to take some time and try to fatten up the ol' illustration portfolio and parlay my skills towards some magazine work to facilitate the creation of more deplorable comic strips of my own.