Broken Frontier

Broken Frontier: Your work, particularly Happy Town, has been a total critical success amongst its relatively small audience. Is it frustrating to you that it receives such small circulation?

Justin Madson: I think the main goal of anyone in this business is to gain as many readers as possible. To kind of spread your infection to as many people as you can, so, yeah, it is ultimately frustrating to realize Happy Town has such a small audience. I feel that it's a book that will appeal to such a wide audience, too, and that's the part that gets to me. There's something for everybody in Happy Town, so it makes sense that everybody should be reading it. But, a lot of comics readers out there have the philosophy that if they can't buy it off the shelf of their comic shop, then they want nothing to do with it, and that is just the sad frustrating truth.

BF: As a self-publisher, which methods of spreading the word about your book do you think work best? How do you drum up interest in a book that is, basically, a total unknown to the customer?

JM: I've just concentrated on keeping the name Happy Town out there, fresh in people's minds, both by consistently cranking out new books and by hitting the show circuit every summer. I am not a great seller, by any means, and therefore, have had to rely on the books to kind of sell themselves, which, luckily for me, they have. I just make the best-looking comics I can and hope that the customer realizes that they are worth his or her attention.

BF: Happy Town goes between several genres, from science-fiction to drama. How difficult is it to interweave such varying genres into one coherent story?

JM: I think it's this mix of genres that make Happy Town stand apart from other comics out there. It has never been a struggle to work within any number of genres at the same time. I think if anything, it has made the storytelling even easier. If I want to throw in some robot stuff right after an intense conversation about suicide, I can and it'll still work. I never think about genres. I just think about Happy Town.

BF: You have been working on Happy Town almost exclusively since 2001. What inspired you to also work on other projects, like Sorrel and the web-comic Late Winter Days?

JM: The basic reason for doing these other projects is to tell some different stories, but also to expand myself as a writer/artist and, in doing so, reach a wider audience. Sorrel is quite different from Happy Town in art style and emotion, and it fills an artistic need that Happy Town just doesn't. It's important to mix things up so you don't get stuck in a rut.

BF: Personally, I have never seen an art-style similar to yours in comics. How did you develop such a style and do you have any influences?

JM: My art style has been evolving since I first started drawing comics and I really can't pin-point where it came from exactly. Back in the day, I took a lot from artists like Tony Harris, Guy Davis and Michael Lark, especially his Terminal Citywork.

BF: Happy Town is a long, intricate story. Do you ever worry about it becoming impenetrable to new readers? Where is the best place to start with Happy Town?

JM: I always tell new readers to start at the beginning, for the simple reason that if they don't they'll be completely lost. But, I think you could read a later issue and get the same feel as if you tuned into a TV show you had never seen before. You could get an idea of what's going on and who the characters are, without knowing what went on before. I plan on collecting all the issues so far into 2 big meaty books. The first will collect issues #1-6 and the second will collect issues #7-12. I should have those done by the end of September, in time for SPX.

BF: What prompted your decision to separate The Waiting Sun from the regular Happy Town series?

JM: I felt that I had too much going on in the series as it was, but had this extra Happy Town story I needed to tell, so I just figured doing it as a stand-alone story was the best way to go. Plus, some people are scared of continuing series (especially in the small press world since most times they dissipate before completion), so I wanted to do something for them. Happy Town is one of those series that a comic reader might share with anon-comic reading friend. What does it say about the industry that the approval of a non-reader is perhaps the highest acclaim a book may receive? The comics reading community is such a little closed door community. If you're in it, you know all about whatever's going on and coming out from this cartoonist or that. There's so much going on and yet it's so small and most readers have their set books they read each month and that's it. So, if a book appeals beyond that little circle than that's really something. If someone who has never read a comic before can get into Happy Town, then I'm more than happy.

BF: Happy Town has a lot of significance, personal or otherwise, to all those who have read it. What does Happy Town mean to you?

JM: I really wish someone else was doing Happy Town. I wish I was just a reader, 'cause it would be the perfect comic book for me. But, as it is, I have a hard time looking from the outside-in. I live and breathe this crazy world. It is my happy place.