Cartoonamania Written and Photographed by Adam Ritter

Since World War II the comic book has weathered the storms of human chaos and tethered the souls of men to a perpetual state of adolescence.   Let me preempt that blanket of creeping doubt; the male mind somehow musters a surplus of immaturity NO MATTER the devices to which we are left.      

In fact, "Men never grow up!" is a lament that commonly slips the bonds of those well-preserved enclaves of women having their nails polished by indentured Asian servants at the Bergdorf Goodman day spa.  And by lament I mean, "sigh of relief".

Thankfully the nation rests assured in the knowledge that frat-housing, good-ole boy fecklessness won't get you far in this country.

Comic books and the inspiration they conspire to create still have the power to hearken back to years past, when between parental beatings, one could simply lose themselves in the pure velvety nougat goodness of a fertile and exotic netherworld.   Only in those dark dimensions sprung from the recesses of artistic madness could degenerates, thanks to atomic fallout, become gods among men, but without all of that unpleasant, patchy hair I remember seeing on The Day After (where curiously not one person became super-powered).

Matters of war and social merit have long graced those color-saturated pages that catered to the appetite of the greatest generation and have, in dwindling numbers, to their posterity.   Parents of crazed Sixties's hippies, none of whom will be reading this, would nonetheless be happy to learn that comic books have long ago been replaced as inducers of the kind of homicidal teen malaise that we now know is actually caused by video games and MTV.    

Now with the marvel of CGI, and the modern-mythology likes of X-Men, Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk among a steady procession of motion picture permutations, the comic industry has seen a contemporary rebirth.   It was green-screen genius that propelled these live-action adaptations onto the voluminous tail of graphic novella cognoscenti-giants, the caliber of Alan Moore and Frank Miller.  

Though conformity has since proven to be the more alarming menace, in days past comics were largely the purview of social outcasts.   Today the pilgrimage of adult comic fans carries them safely through chat rooms where the conversation threads read like the flow chart of parties to which they were not invited as kids and at which their ass was pummeled if they had the audacity to attend anyway.

Against this digital backdrop unfolds the achingly analytic treatises of all those incongruous story arc details, the trivial errors of continuity, elaborately outlined movie gaffes and why they never got laid in high school.   Well, nobody speaks of the latter. This they bury in their psychic backyard along with memories of swirlies and their humiliating encounters with tranny prostitutes.  But enough about me.

In this portrait of young artists, we meet three interpreters of comic expression as they forge their way through an art form that's screaming into its sophomore season.  

Dave Fox, 24

Dave Fox has a tendency to over-plan things.  Today alone, he has this interview, then band practice, then a party to go to.   He's a part time teacher and an all-the-time freelance artist with half-a-dozen projects and one epic in the works. Where does he find the time?

"Even if nobody was telling me do something, I would HAVE to do something," Dave informs me.   "I can't really sit still.  I need to be stimulated in some sort of way otherwise I'll really start losing my mind, and, killing people." 

Fittingly, we're at a Queens Deli on the "Boulevard of Death", that's closing, oh, five minutes ago, and between the furtive glares of its proprietor, Dave Fox fires semi-automatic musings like a trip-hammer directly from the artillery of his soul.

"I'm a New York native. I've always lived in Queens.  I love Queens because it's the perfect combination of hidden and tucked away and close to the city. Queens has a stigma that perpetuates creativity."

Dave Fox

Dave Fox

Of the perceived dangers he says, "I've only been mugged once.  It wasn't so much a mugging as a severe hassling. People think I'm intimidating.   I think it's the sharp hair, the sharp sideburns, the shifty eyes...people usually back off."

As though life in the tumult of this borough were not enough, Mr. Fox had many early (and continuing) art influences which among others include, Frank Miller, Robert Crumb, Mike Mignola and a Renaissance-era woodcut artist named Albrecht Durer.   "He's almost like the first comic book artist in a way," Dave explains.  "He had a very comic book style.  He did a fantastic series of woodcuts based on the Book of Revelations.  This was stuff that was very real to them at the time so people must have been terrified of the stuff that he was doing."

After summers at the Art Student's League, Mr. Fox was admitted into the Adult program as a pre-teen.   While some of us were forced like animals to leer through a neighbor's window, Dave recalls "I was doing well in the kid's program and they're like 'Maybe he's mature enough to look at some nude models.' It's really strange to be a twelve-year-old looking at naked people for the first time."

That's exactly what the police told my parents.  But Dave had a more urbane interpretation; "You'd think it'd be more exciting, but it wears off really quick when you have to draw."   Though he does confess, "The models are mostly people off the street.  There's not many Angelina Jolie types."

Mr. Fox has since graduated from the School of Visual Arts with a degree in Illustrating and Cartooning.   Of that experience he explains, "My first view of the college, I was obsessed with being real specific about my art. All I wanted to do was comics.  Since graduating I think I've done only one comic book related thing. I got really into it and then I got far away from it."

As he got older, drinking age to be more precise, Dave was able to frequent the shadowy locales where artists have been known to lurk. "The seedy underbelly of New York," where Dave jokingly reveals you can "…meet more of the artsy-type people.  They hang out in the back of the bar going 'Oh why did I become an artist? I should've been a doctor!'"

Now a freelance artist, his works have included storyboards for small movies, tattoo art, spot illustrations, a magazine cover and video game concept art, where his instruction may be strenuously elaborate or as ambiguous as "'Draw what the character would look like so we can show it to a developer.'"

Seventy-five percent of these projects he says are from people he has never met; visitors to his website (Davefoxart.com ) where his portfolio reflects a myriad of genres and a discernible noir influence. "A good artist," Dave says "will nail that emotion into you right away. I feel the goal of the artist is to get their message across the quickest way possible."

As for the solitary nature seemingly conjoined to the profession, Dave confirms, "It's really just you and the drawing board, or you and the computer for 8, 10, 12 hours a day."   He additionally allots a portion of his fractured time writing for and performing in a punk band, Dead On A Friday (Deadonafriday.com ) adding, "When you finally get to go out and play a show and actually interact with people it can be a very valuable thing for your mental stability."

While the uncertainty of a next paycheck would loom too ominously for some, Mr. Fox has a different take; "I like the excitement of not knowing where my next client is coming from.   It can be stressful too, obviously…I'm not gonna lie. That's probably where that edge comes from, that tenseness…what's coming next? I really would like to say I'm an artist and I make a living off of that, which is a really tough thing to do."  

Of future success Dave conjectures, "The day some crazy fan breaks my legs, though I will have no more use of my legs, I will know I've made it."

Ariel Zucker-Brull, 20

Is it exploitative to begin with "Ariel has two mommies"?  Well, naturally.   But in this case, it's not a reference to a similarly titled children's book that sent delicious embolisms through the collective puritanical mind. 

In an arrangement that would likely be considered unusual, if this weren't New York where nothing is unusual because everything is, Ariel Zucker-Brull spent his formative years in the company of his biological mother and her very close, though strictly platonic friend, the pair of whom he refers to fondly as "My parents."   Ariel adds, "Both my moms live in Queens with two husbands. I did have two moms, just not lesbians."

We just lost the crew-cut readers….another casualty in the perpetual search for the propulsion of the creative mind.

Ariel Zucker-Brull

Ariel Zucker-Brull

Of Chinese and Mixed-European descent, Ariel has spent his two decades of existence entirely in Manhattan where he began informally learning drawing techniques at an early age, influenced by both of his artistically-minded mothers. More structured lessons came later at La Guardia High, a specialized school whose famous alumni are a who's who of the performing arts.   "I probably drew the LEAST while in art school," Ariel admits.  "I got more interested in athletics, like Brazilian Jujitsu."

Since most interviews end with subjects wanting to choke the life out of me, this was an especially grave revelation, what with my genetic predisposition for easily snappable bones.

Such training is constructive (for art's sake as well as breaking interviewer's necks) Ariel says, "…because I can draw the fight scenes better. That's one of the things I want to put in my comics because I noticed that most comics don't have any realistic fighting."

Ariel, who pencils the comic based on a writer's story, notes, or vague direction, says of the process, "It's like a movie script and the pencil is like the director. I have to be able to draw whatever (they) want me to draw."   He occasionally writes himself but reveals his philosophy on the craft; "I'd rather be really good at one thing than be okay at a bunch of things. I usually concentrate on something and then get better at it."

Though his passion remains comic book art, Mr. Zucker-Brull is two years from a Bachelor's Degree in Fashion Illustration at FIT.   "I'd rather do illustration in college, it has more opportunities," he explains. "I like fashion illustration because it's similar to comics.  I'll draw a model wearing a suit or a stylized version of it.  You're drawing a figure but you're stylizing the figure."

"And," Ariel adds coyly, "I was already good at drawing women."

Be certain to have some art school credentials before trying a line like that on women you proposition in bars on Avenue A.   Typing with one arm isn't so bad though.

Life after college can be a daunting prospect.  Ariel isn't panicking.   In fact, he is imbued with the serenity of meditative calm.  "I don't worry too much.  It comes from my parents.   The work will speak for itself."

He is pragmatic though, in his understanding of the fierce nature of the industry to which he has psychically committed his future; "It's not like other art forms.   It's more interpretive. In comics, people are very critical.  The skill levels in different areas have to be pretty high.   It's very competitive.  I feel pressure, but the way I see it is just to challenge myself."

What is the appeal to the intrepid few who confront a K2 of competition and criticism but who are unlikely to reap the financial rewards of their equally-artistic brethren in other fields?   "You can do whatever images you want to tell a story.  It has unlimited possibilities," Ariel explains.  "I think any story that I draw I can make interesting (visually) even if the plot is horrible.  You're telling a story.  I find it more challenging that way."   He concludes, "I just want to be able to produce really good art."

Ariel can be contacted at ariel.zuckerbrull@gmail.com and further examples of his work may be viewed by visiting http://ariel-zb.deviantart.com/gallery/

Matthew Volz, 23

Matthew Volz is the kid that teachers would have dreaded and students would have loved.   He is a living stream of colorful digression, a constantly amusing, always interesting curiosity. At any given moment, he is interpreting the world through a fantastic kaleidoscope of dancing ribbons that never ceases to amaze and delight. If Matthew were a movie, you'd watch it constantly.

In an interlude that is as revealing as it is microcosmic of the Matthew Volz experience, he tells of a graffiti artist he once revered; "The sewers around here, on the grates they spray-painted two white dots with a black dot in the middle that looked like two eyes.   I was like, 'fuck! Why didn't I think of this?'  That's so cool.  I took some pictures of them actually.   I thought, 'Wow! This is so nuts.'  It's spanning miles of neighborhoods in Queens.  This guy's sick!   I'm almost embarrassed, this guy's so awesome. How cool is this guy? He's drawing two eyes!  Then I saw a sewer worker spray painting them and I said 'What are the two eyeballs?'   He goes, 'Two white dots and a black dot means it needs to be replaced.'"

Matthew Volz


Matthew Volz

Mr. Volz's bedroom springs to life from a childhood fantasy; The Pink Panther perpetually plays on a 13" Zenith.   You recall the kind with the rotary dial that was stripped within 10 minutes, subsequently requiring plier-manipulation?  Direct from the era when "remote control" meant the kids.  

Then there's the original Nintendo System, and a wall rack that embraces within its bounty, the classic likes of Double Dragon, The Legend of Kage, Excitebike, and Mike Tyson's Punchout.

And that's only the beginning.  The Burt Reynolds wall laminate, the Lampchop embroidered pillow, the Polaroid camera, the Casio keyboard, the Lava Lamp and the vinyl record collection are but a few of the LESS strange oddities that furnish Matthew's sleeping quarters.

You get the sense that here in fact, is a spirit that will not be bridled, no matter what bus life may throw them under.   As for a linear dialogue, consider symmetry nothing more than masturbatory collateral damage and you will recognize in the afterglow the frivolity of foreplay.

If the point is the journey, meet the Sherpa.

"I did graphic design for a record company.  I designed the posters and tee-shirts. They set up tours for artists. Do you know Lee Scratch Perry, he's a reggae guy?  He did music for Bob Marley.   He's the fucking man.  He's doing a tour in the United States on this label.  They (the record company) turned to me, they're like 'Can you drive Lee Scratch Perry around the east coast?' I was like, yeah sure."

At the airport (Lee's) wife asked him straight-a-way, "Do you have… the amulet?"

Matthew hesitates before continuing, "I don't want to get involved in voodoo and shit, but his wife took me aside later and said 'Don't say anything about the Mad Professor.'"   Matthew explains, "The Mad Professor is another reggae artist who apparently put a curse on him.  I was supposed to procure an amulet for his United States tour, which I didn't have.  And it's like, 'You DON'T have the amulet?!  You know we're cursed?!'"

Concerns for brevity constrain me, though the tales of this tour beg to one day be documented, as each is more bizarre and entertaining than the previous.  

Mr. Volz's non-touring creative endeavors are equally varied; a comic series called "Laces" ("…basically just the same drawing with different haircuts"), a Queens public access television show, a children's show he is writing that will feature him with one of his cartoon characters ("I just call them creatures, I don't have a real name for it.") and a My Dinner with Andre type of unscripted conversational video series called "Critic's Castle" that is filmed late nights at the nearby White Castle and during which a friend was once punched out ("…that was a crazy episode.   People in White Castle weeknights at 4 am are maniacs.").

Among his pantheon of literary muses, Matthew counts Classy Freddie Blassie's autobiography (Listen Up, You Pencil Neck Geeks, available at Amazon) and Gumby's Winter Fun Special, about which Mr. Volz proclaims, "Gumby saves Santa by going into HELL – I'm not even playing around.   This blew my mind when I read it.  This sort of changed everything for me." 

Incidentally, he assures me that Robocop II the book, is far superior to the movie.

The spring on which his blossoms of inspiration float remains an enigmatic one, though of its preservation Matthew assures, "I write everything down.   I have boxes of scraps. My plan was to sit down once a week and go through them and weed them out.  But…I just got another box."

Additional amusements abound and beckon to your inner-child at Matthew's website: http://www.atticinthebasement.com/ and episodes of his Public Access show can be enjoyed on YouTube at the following address: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=matthewvolz