Jonathan Chandler is a comic book maker.  He lives and works out of a tiny apartment just west of Shinjuku’s skyscraper district.  He has self published 7 comic works through his own publishing house Bone House Books, some in conjuction with Famicom Express from the UK run by Leon Sadler. His comics are human drama masquerading as fantasy and sci-fi. Men search for lost love, people engage in listless sex, there is a lot of the boredom of everyday life. To me, trying to explain his books gives you that feeling of retelling a dream, its potency is lost as you begin to explain it away, but the images and timbre are resonant. We talked about a lot of things, comics was one of those things, but we also talked about the process of making, where ideas come from, and why boredom is interesting.  I like the way comic book artists talk so openly and earnestly about ‘art’.  There is no obfuscation or pretension, it is very honest and straightforward.  It is simple, but not in an ignorant or naive way.  The following is the full text from a talk we had, parts of which went towards ‘The Space Between Two Images’ interview for Tokyo Art Beat.

 

 

 

 

What do you consider it is that you make? Your work doesn’t quite fit into a specific genre, it seems to take the idea of ‘comics’ in a slightly different direction.

 

When people ask me what i do in Japan i say i am a manga-ka (a manga artist), and when they ask what kind of manga i make i usually tell them it’s more like geki-ga.  Tatsumi Yoshihiro came up with the term. It signifies comics that are a bit darker, for adults, and not just about entertainment. Basically I just want to use the comic book form for a purpose beyond simple entertainment, in a more free way. 

 

You don’t consider yourself an illustrator, or an artist?

 

My perception of an illustrator is someone who gets a job from someone else; it is not something you want to do and it is driven by money. Comics are neither of those things. I make comics but i could imagine that if i had an idea for another format i would just do that.  So yeah, i suppose i consider myself as an artist, but i believe more in crafting a skill or a trade. I mean, i may have come from a liberal family, but i really have a very standard working class British background.  To my family artists are these people who come from a faraway place, and do things we can’t understand.  I never set out to make art comics. Which raises the question: who do i make comics for, myself or other people?.

 

And?

 

I don’t make them for anybody, i try to make a perfect object.  

 

That’s very idealistic.

 

I suppose. It goes back to ideas around craft.  There are certain rules required for something to be considered a comic: sequential images, things should move, the same characters, and panel borders perhaps. It’s similar to the way you see a movie or a novel.  I think there is a craft in putting together a good scene very well.  I believe more in crafting a skill or a trade like that.  

 

How has the internet changed that craft aspect? The recent rise of self publishing seems to only be connected with a fetishisation of printed matter, but comics are symbiotically tied to print. Where will comics go in the post internet age?

I think its a fetish object, and i don’t  believe they will go online. I mean, in an art gallery no one says, ‘these works, they’ll be gone, they’ll go online’. I think there is definitely a future for the print medium because we spend so much fucking time on computers you just want to sit there AND not have a backlight in your face.  You want to flick between the physical pages, back and forth, and that kind of fetishisation wont go away.  It might shrink but there is a future.

 

Where does your fascination with comics come from?

The first comic that really influenced me was this comic strip called Doom Lord. It was a comic about an alien who had come to earth to judge mankind. I was terrified of him and admired him at the same time. I remember sitting on the landing at home waiting for him to walk up the stairs, and just look at me. I never thought of what would happen next, but it’s just the look, just that point when they see you, that for me was terrifying. In the beginning i was really into anything I could get, mostly sci-fi or fantasy comics and some of all this superhero stuff. I like the idea of collecting comics, ‘Wolverine’, ‘X-men’, that kind of thing, but i just couldn’t get it when I hit my teenage years.  Then i discovered ‘Eight Ball’ and the Gary Panter comics. But i still wanted to draw proper comics.

 

What are “proper comics”?

 

You know, drawing proper backgrounds, shading, all the technical skill and know-how of the stuff i grew up reading.  Those guys who drew weekly adventure comics for kids, or sci-fi comics like ‘Judge Dredd’, and ‘2000AD’, they can draw.

 

But you play around a lot with those rules, you don’t even use panel borders in your comics.

 

I don’t. I suddenly realised i didn’t need panel borders, it is a restriction, but what i am making is still a comic. I have developed a style around this which i call ‘floating fantasy’, inspired by ukiyoe, which roughly translates as ‘floating world’.  It uses a lot of negative space and you are not bound by rules regarding the stylistic depiction of reality. And it was a term they used to reflect some kind of philosophy of transient life at that time, moments, desires, whatever. My latest comic ‘2×2’ uses this style, it wafts in and out of being a “comic”. It lets me only depict what needs to be shown; very stripped down, with no unnecessary words or images.  

 

It is interesting to look at what you do away with and what you keep. I’m interested in the residue that is left. it’s as though you are just adumbrating your story, you are not worried about narrative connective tissue.  it’s just the greatest hits, only the essential moments, minimal narrative. 

 

Do you think its too fast?

 

Are you worried about that?

 

Some people have said that they wanted to stay in that place for a longer time. I like graphic novel length comics because i like to stay in that space for a longer time. Someone like CF who tries to slow down his comics by just showing really banal things like a guy walking around a room slowly, with not much going on, you can just zoom through that with your eyeballs. I think i would like to slow things down more, to keep people in that world longer. Maybe my new comic does that. 

 

Look over there, that guy running.

The Yazuka looking one?  Yeah, short and fat, with the sunglasses on.  He looks like one of the guys in the background of an old Yazuka film.

 

Yeah, and that guy. What is he doing though?

 

He’s trying to stay alive isn’t he. That’s brilliant that is, so old, just muscle. Why hasn’t he got skin cancer though, that’s the real question.

 

I think the Japanese sun is one of the weakest suns.

 

Thats why they live longer here.  I actually heard that muscles don’t deteriorate with age, if you exercise.  I saw a show on T.V. back home, this old grandad was there, and they were saying “yeah, grandad is well fucking strong”. They took him to the fair and he got the hammer and made the bell ring no problem. The reason old people get so weak is because they sit around watching ‘Sons and Daughters’.  Do you know it? 

 

Terrible Australian drama. Good segue, it makes me wonder about the stories you tell. They are not only adumbrated, but your content is often very banal. How do you come to that place where these stories seem important? You tend to show the parts between the action: fantasy characters just ‘hanging out’, scavenging, monologing with a replication of themselves.  I have heard your style described as ‘fantasy loitering’.

Maybe my style is quite banal, but it resonates with people. These ideas just appear, i don’t think about it much.  If you mull over your ideas too long you get further and further away from actually realizing them.  For me the story gets written as i’m doing it, if i have it planned out it bores me, thats why i never use pencil, just because i don’t want to draw anything twice. It’s for my own entertainment as well, i want my comics to show the love of drawing. I guess it depends on your personality, some people can do it, Chris Ware, god, can you imagine it? I mean sometimes i actually can’t read his comics, its overwhelming, the thought of it. I heard an interview with CF where he said he was inspired by a guy who was drawing comics with a big fat marker pens, this guy just didn’t care.  It opened me up to the idea that you can do whatever you want to. Whereas i was thinking i had to use special pens, and had to do perspective, vanishing points and have a light source. Now i often don’t have a light source, the characters don’t even have proper lines around them. When they are having sex they are not even whole bodies, just a mess. 

 

But why are you interested in showing these boring narratives and action sequences?

 

It comes back to trying to capture the real texture of human experience. I would actually like to draw more banal, but often the more banal the comic is, the less you actually slow down when reading it. It’s hard to balance it.

 

What kind of stories do you like to tell?

 

I think they are pretty much all human stories. Even ‘Battle for the Planets’, it looks pretty bonkers maybe, but it’s really just about a bloke who goes up a mountain to get his woman back. He fails, but in the end he is alright, he just moves on. Underneath they are just these simple human stories.  That’s what i am interested in and i think that’s what other people are interested in too.  It’s basically just people, engaged in human relations in a much more obvious way, even if they are wearing weird suits and all that, they are still people.  I draw people.

 

But that monster from your Believer Magazine comic wasn’t human.

 

Actually, he was a mutant. I think he is close enough, he has a face that can depict human emotions.

 

What do your characters desire?

The men desire women, but they don’t always get them.  What do the women desire though?  That’s difficult isn’t it.  My woman are pretty cold; some unattainable ideal.  In the end my characters just want contentedness.

 

What do you think about appropriation in comics? The way characters and stories are adapted from one artist to another seems to extend through all areas of comics.  Everyone seems to appropriate.  

 

In some ways that might make comics looked down upon, because all those pop cultural references seem to appease the masses.  At the same time i like the idea that comic artists are not scared of the pop cultural references that pervaded our lives.  We can put a new mask on them, a new spin on them, they are our actors. Almost our human archetypes, our folk characters, god figures.

 

Are you connected with any other contemporary comic artist’s? I heard Yokoyama Yuichi say that his heroes are Japanese contemporary artists rather than manga artist’s. What about in your case?

 

His heroes might be Japanese artists but who does he fit with? He is a comic book artist.  He makes comic books. But then you have to ask, ‘what is a comic book artist?’  Is it someone who makes art, or is it an entertainer.  Perhaps it’s both, but often it is just straight up entertainment and money making.

 

But that is a lot of art today.

 

Yeah, business is important, some people can do both at once. There are some pretty good mainstream comics.

 

How are Japanese contemporary comics different to U.K. or American comics?

 

In Japan the whole setup is different. If the guy who draws ‘Bezerk’ dies, then thats it for the characters, they die with the artist. But ‘Spiderman’, that character will go on for fucking ever, beyond the death of the characters creator.  Too many cooks spoil the broth, thats the problem with mainstream American comics. They are trash basically. A lot of the comics in Japan, especially those thick monthly comic books for salarymen are just really badly drawn bullshit baseball comics or just horrible sexual titilation stuff. A lot of it is really unhealthy stuff and i have actually taken it off the trains when people leave it there, because i don’t like the idea of people reading it.

 

Your work includes aspects of ‘titilation’ though?

 

Exactly, what is the difference?  I think thats actually a sensitive sex scene i have drawn in my ‘2×2’ comic. It’s a film reference, from the best sex scene i have ever seen.  It’s from ‘Dont Look Now’, with Donald Sutherland and his wife. It shows them having sex interspersed with them getting dressed afterwards, and its the most intimate thing.  It makes my skin crawl a bit thinking about it, it goes beyond a sex act to just show two people being together.

 

Is there anything specifically that you wouldn`t draw?

 

No. But I just don`t think there is any situation or emotion that can`t be depicted in a subtle way.  I don`t think it`s for fear of offending as such, the only way not to offend anyone is to never be born, but it goes back to making a crafted object. Unneeded brashness spoils it, and I went too far with some of my early comics. Swearing has to be handled properly too.

 

Apart from Yokoyama Yuichi, who i know you enjoy, who are the contemporary japanese manga-ka you admire? 

 

Well, a lot of stuff i really like falls into the entertainment side.  Those comics in japan are actually quite good, like ‘Vagabond’, ‘Bezerk’, and ‘Eden’ a sci-fi manga. Its has been quite strange to meet Yokoyama since coming to Japan though. I really revered him. Outside of Japan my other two favourite artists would be Leon Sadler from ‘Famicom Express’ and my father.

 

Your father?

He is my idea of a true artist. he goes out in the woods and finds pieces of wood that he thinks look like something and then he carves them to make them look more like the thing he thinks they look like. When he draws comics they show the real joy in creating and drawing and have so much personal character too. Almost outsider art I suppose. i like his temperament too, pre-videogame generation seem able to take it steadier. I`m opposite, so frantic sometimes, but I think I`m starting to pair simple expressiveness to a more tempered approach. I don`t listen to Lighting Bolt when I draw so much anymore, which is all I listened to for Battle For The Planets. but maybe that was also about losing yourself a bit and getting in a good space to get the work done. With my dad, he`s very busy as a skilled labourer, but when he retires I`d like him to work on a longer comic, or more short comics, and I`d like to get them published somehow.

 

What makes a successful comic?

 

Financially no one really is successful from comics. That depressed me as a young man. I was so shocked to find out about someone like Jeffrey Brown, he is quite big, does a lot of books, but still works in a bookshop.  Now I don`t care so much about it, and I do actually see a way to get by with it.

 

What about in terms of your work, when do you consider your work to be successful or unsuccessful?

 

One example of something i was happy with is a comic i drew recently for Believer magazine.  It is set in L.A. far in the future, a mutant sees a body floating down a river and the comic consists of him pulling the body out of the water and then stealing it’s armour.  He take’s all the stuff, lays it out on a cape he ripped off the body, and then he puts over his shoulder it in a bundle and walks off.  That’s it.  This comic really satisfied me, but i can’t really explain it, or where the satisfaction came from.  It reminds me of what David Lynch said: sometimes you have ideas, and until you follow them you are not satisfied.  I really agreed with that.  Sometimes ideas come and go and you don’t quite know why, you may never know why, but you have to follow them. 

This comes back to the idea of the artist as a medium.  A portal for collective images.  These flashes, or ideas, are like a big rock that has appeared in your head.  You have to do something with this rock, you have to get it out somehow, so you begin the process by pushing it down a hill and seeing where it goes.