Broken Frontier

We present our second part out of three of the Adam Hughes interview. Adam Hughes talks about his career, going with the flow and ruminates on how he thinks the internet is changing existing comics companies business models.

Part One

Broken Frontier: Looking back at your career, it seems that you mostly create for existing properties like Star Wars, Tomb Raider, Ghost, various covers for the big publishers and now ASWW. Are you interested in creating your own comic, in producing material that you have complete control over?

Adam Hughes: You know, I just prefer working. Period. I take what they offer me and if it seems that I mostly do superheroes or fantasy oriented stuff or that I mostly seem to do women, that's because one: that's the material people always ask me to draw and two: it's what I'm good at.

I would love to do some more realistic stuff. I would love to do a variety of stuff but I know that an artist's popularity depends on who the artist is and people will follow him whatever he does. And sometimes an artist is popular only when he is drawing everybody's favourite character. And I think I fall into the second category. People like my stuff fine but they really like it when I'm drawing Power Girl or Catwoman. And it's not an awful job and it keeps me in work. I've been doing this for 20 years now, which freaks me out. I have no consistency in my life except for drawing and I realize 'oh my goodness, I have been doing this without a break since 1987' and there aren't many people that can say this. I've never been a superstar like a Jim Lee or an Alex Ross but I've always maintained a sort of even popularity. My burn has never been a bright flash and than disappeared, I always seem to be hanging around.

BF: I think you're selling yourself short here. Ever since your cover work, there 's a real trace-able evolution in your work and you've become immensely popular.

AH: I've been to Jim Lee's house and Alex Ross's house and they are way bigger than my house so I guess they must be doing something better than me. But I feel good about the fact that I have a nice long career and the thing is, especially in American comics, nobody is guaranteed a career for life.

In American comics, as an artist or creative person, you need to have two out of three things, a friend of mine once said. One: you need to be really fast. Two: you need to be really good to balance out the fact that you're not fast. And three: you need to be really personable and charming. Meaning that the people that you work for like you. They will hire you even when you are not the fastest or best artist out there. So my friend said, as long as you have any two criteria you're good. If you're good and fast, it doesn't matter how big off an asshole you are, DC and Marvel will give you work. But if you're just one of the other, you need a second one: very fast and charming or very good and charming. I've been very lucky to get work in comics because a lot of artists emigrate to animation or gaming.

BF: Like for instance Chris Weston. Here's this incredibly great artist and he complains on his blog that all the major companies seem to forget that he exists and he has to do a lot commissions. 

AH: I had a friend that worked retail at an American toy store chain Toys R uS and he had been there for 5 years and they had to let him go. He made the maximum salary in this particular job and they realised that, for the cost of this one employee, they could hire 3 new kids to do the job. And that's sort of the mentality of American businesses and to a degree the comics business in America.

The nice thing about today though is, 30 or 40 years ago, if you dropped off the radar of the companies, you had to find another job. Nowadays because of the internet, if you're in any way web savvy, you can reach your audience in a very direct manner. As long as the fans are seeing you, you're still out there. I know so many people that aren't even buying comics any more; they're downloading them all. But as long as the artist is getting exposure, there will be a point where you are making a profit. People will talk about you, chat about you on forums, read your blog and you can actually have an alternative to actual comics publishing.

BF: The big publishers are still trying to figure out what to do with that whole online comics thing, just like the music industry.

AH: Right, because there is no pre-existing model. Most of us, when we have our computer, we pay no attention to the fact that your computer life is designed to be an analogue of the real world.

When I go to my computer, my computer has a desktop. No it hasn't, it has a special screen. I keep all my information in files and folders like a closet or desk but it's not, it's digital information stored on your computer. But to make it easy to understand people turn it into something they're used to. And that's one of the things about a computer; we're all trying to find analogues for these new things that have relation to things of the past. And there's no analogue for the way music and information and entertainment is organising itself now. A major motion picture, which costs hundreds of millions of dollars to make, the DVD is in your living room or on your computer within two months of its release. These days you create your content, whether it's movies or comics, for broadcast or for the web and if somebody wants the option of a hardcopy than they can order it, just like Radiohead did with their new album. I think there's a good chance that's the direction we're headed in.

BF: It's good because the money goes more directly to the artists involved and it cuts out the big businesses.

AH: And also with the ease of desktop publishing, if you're a musician, you just need a computer and your instrument and you can arrange it yourself. Like a webcomic. You can go easily to the net and you don't need a company. You can easily generate a fan base.  Young guys will come up to me and ask me how to break into comics. And I tell them, I don't know. I got into comics in the eighties and that was very different. I went to conventions and took my artwork and showed it to editors. I asked them what I need to work on and someday someone said that this is awful, it's terrible, your anatomy is awful, no backgrounds, you need to work on this and would you like a job? Nowadays I would create an online portfolio. I would walk up to you and show you my business card and ask you to check out my work. A business card is 20 seconds of somebody's life to check out and they can check your whole body of work whenever they want to.

BF: Which is an analogue for what a lot of industries are going through. The same thing goes for the graphic design industry and even the job interview process is taking its first steps online. Like companies creating virtual reality rooms in Second Life.

AH: It's nice because the world has always brokered on the big businesses and because of the nature of the internet you can sit in the basement and it all becomes very lowbrow. I appreciate that because a lot of people can now get their goods to the market, as they say.

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Tomorrow we present the last part out of three where we talk to Adam Hughes about his favourite novelist, his addiction to gaming and the rise of the computer in his artwork.