1.- First of all,
congratulations for your work and thank you for so many good,
wonderful times. Lost Cat is your longest story ever. Was
it harder than before? Did you make one script or did you improvise
as usual? Did you feel more comfortable working with four-cartoon
pages?
No, it wasn't really
harder than before, even though I find making longer stories a
challenge. It's still a fairly short graphic novel. Counting the
panels, I don't think it's longer than a Tintin album. Yes, the story
is improvised, as I always do. I worked in sequences, some from the
beginning, other from the end, and then had to put all the pages in a
correct order when finished. One problem with that, is that it's
difficult to improvise a plot, especilally if you have to give
different clues throughout the book. So the plot isn't really that
important, and some readers might be disappointed that I don't have
all the answers at the end. Yes, I like the four panel grid, the
visual style it has.
2.- Lost Cat is your
first work after your collaboration with FabienVehlmann in Isle of
100,000 graves, if I’m not wrong. How was backing to work only by
yourself? Did this previous oeuvre à quatre mains (colorful
and even humoristic) change your way of writing or drawing? Is
possible to find any new elements now in Lost Cat?
I believe I did
Werewolves of Montpellier and Athos in America after Isle of 100 000
Graves. There wasn't any problem going back to doing a book all by
myself. I enjoyed doing the album with Fabien and it was fun drawing
pirates, but I also realized the most fun of doing comics for me is
not doing the drawings, it's telling the story, creating the
characters and writing the dialogues. The drawing is actually the
boring part! I don't know if my storytelling has changed after the
piratebook. I don't believe so. But I don't analyze my books after
they're done. It's up to others to do that.
3.- Which were your
influences in Lost Cat (movies, crime novels)? Are you interested
in comic noir panorama? Is Dan Delon (and Athos, The Last Musketeer
or many other main characters yours) a dazed hero in a tragic
world, like anyone of us? Why do you think it’s so easy to connect
with your stories? Which are Jason’s fears?
I was mostly influenced
by Raymond Chandler's books, the Philip Marlowe novels, and also The
Big Sleep movie version with Humprey Bogart. The Maltese Falcon as
well. I like the old pulp writers like Chandler, David Goodis and
Charles Willeford and the film noirs from the 40s. Yes, I suppose I
have a pessimistic view of the world, but at the same time some room
for hope. I don't know why it's easy to connect to the stories. I
hope they are well told and well drawn. I try to capture the reader's
interest. Hergé was very good at that. Three pages into a Tintin
album and you were hooked. My fears? The usual ones, I guess. As an
cartoonist, I guess blindness would be pretty bad. Or losing your
drawing hand.
4.- Searching for a
twin soul: is love the main shelter is this melancholic,
absurd, permanently in crisis world?
I guess it could be. It's
definitely a theme in the book: the search for a soul mate, and what
do you do if you find it and then lose it?
5.- Crossover as one of
your strong points: sci-fi, historic, terror… How challenging is
it? Do you follow any method for doing that?
No method, really. I like
reading books and watching movies. I like genres. I like playing
around in those worlds. There are certain rules, but you also have a
lot of freedom to talk about whatever interests you. And I like
mixing things up, to be able to see things from hopefully a new
angle. It's fun. To tell a strictly socialrealistic story , about
drugs or unemployment or something, I find less interesting.
6.- How is Jason’s life
in Montpellier? Have you ever been in Spain? Do you know any Spanish
comic author?
It's a very simple life.
I draw most of the time, or I go out to find a bench in a park to
read a book or meet someone for playing a game of chess. The weather
is better here than it is in Norway. Yes, I've been to Barcelona
several times. It's a city I like a lot. I wish I could speak the
language. I know the work of some of the Spanish cartoonists at
Astiberri, like David Rubin. I like the work of Jordi Bernet.
7.- How will be your next
comic book? What are you working on at the moment?
It will probably be
another collection of short stories, like Athos in America. I have
different short stories I'm working on right now. I hope to be
finished by the end of the year for a publication in the summer of
2015.
8.- Just curious:
Charlotte (anthropomorphic dog) having Kitty (nonanthropomorphic
cat) as a pet? Paradox, a joke or just a resource to give the
appearance of normali?
No, it's not meant to be
a joke or a paradox. To me the characters are people, not animals.
People – with animal heads, that's all. I had the idea for the
opening of the book, with the detective that finds a cat and brings
it back to the owner. I never thought about changing that opening,
just because the characters also appears to be cats or dogs. To me,
they're not.
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