Hotshot Showcase: Pete Toms

Tonight I'm going to share with you a little bit of awesome and that little piece of awesome is called Pete Toms. He has a solid tongue-in-cheek-with-a-grain-of-salt type style mixed with scandalous meta-metaphors. Without further ado, let's get it on.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and how you got into this field?

I'm Pete Toms.  I work in the cut-throat world of the sequential graphic narrative arts.  Some mornings I actually sit and think about whether or not I love the idea of my dog's existence more than I love my actual dog.  Some mornings I sit and think about whether or not I love the idea of loving my dog more than I love my actual dog.  Then I think about how much of my dog is just my idea of my dog anyway.  Then I contemplate thinking about the abstract definitions of love, but usually decide it's too overdone. Then I worry about the fact that I'm thinking about these things.  I am available for commissions. 

I got involved in cartooning like a lot of people do.  I grew up in a neighborhood in the Bronx called Devil Hoof.  I had been reading Marvel comics since birth, but like most children, felt decidedly too mature for them by the time I was 7 or 8 years old.  By then I was running with a group of kids (what would probably now be referred to as a 'street gang') called Electric Stocking.  Though they later became a performance art collective, we'd basically sniff glue, and throw bricks at people, and argue about our favorite New Mutant, and scream Joyce quotes at women and children. 

One night I was yelling 'Well, what's cheese?  Corpse of milk!' over and over again to a group of frightened families outside of a church when I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head.  Everything went dark and I had the sudden image of myself standing in front of a bathroom mirror, with blood pouring down my face forming the outline of a Spider-Man mask.  I woke up in the church's basement.  A young priest named Father Eduardo had decided to save me from my life of sin.

He got me a job in the New York Aquarium as a janitor.  I worked there for a few years.  I was miserable.  I became convinced that the dolphins were tapping on their tanks to communicate with me in Morse code.  I was certain that they were attempting to collaborate with me on an escape plan, that would involve purchasing their freedom from our marine biologist overlords.  It wasn't until years later that I realized I was delusional and the dolphins were actually just tapping out Public Enemy lyrics.

I performed my janitor duties while slowly stealing and collecting rhinestones off of old women's blouses and purses.  I had planned to save enough to find some dolphin-safe-transport and a place for us to live after we broke free.  Then Father Eduardo discovered my plot, claimed it was my 'rhinestone covered path to hell' and called the police.  As the cops carried me out of the aquarium, over the sound of my gnashing teeth and through my tears, I stared at the tanks of fish and began to see life as nothing more than a series of panels forced upon a blank page.

My aquarium janitor career was over, my cartooning career had begun.  I was 10 years old.

Can you tell us about some your projects you're working on? What are your favorite genres to work in?

I'm currently drawing my comic PAWS, a good portion of you can read here: http://ifeelawesome.net/paws
It's a horror story about watching TV. 

And, as usual, I'm working on about 50 other things at the same time.  A couple of other comics, some music, a few constitutional amendments, my musical about drug addiction called 12 STEPPIN', a website that's like YouTube but for Vaudeville, a book about the entire history of Ireland as told through the inner monologues of a satin vest, a hip hop dance piece about the Great Lakes, finding my biological father, ECT.

My favorite genre right now is 'existential dreadomedy'.

What are some of your inspirations that influenced your work?
 

I spend a lot of time reading and enjoying a lot of comics, books, and movies.  It's one of the many reasons I live in terrible poverty.   Sometimes when I wake up covered in the foot prints of rats and other vermin, with black rain water soaking the bed I've made out of boxes of 80s Marvel comics, I look over at the copy of ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY I'm cradling, and wonder if I could ever get a real job.  Then I laugh with the knowledge that no one would employ a guy wearing a He Man costume, except for He Man himself as some sort of body double, or ruse to throw off Skeletor, or weird sexual fetish, and he is probably already fully staffed and is definitely not real, and I run my fingers over my Jim Jarmusch DVDs, and 70s Sci Fi novels as a tear falls from my eye.

Is there an underlying message or theme that you have in your work? What is it you want the audience to get out of your work?
 

I'm mostly interested in the construction of public and private identity, the fictional construction of reality, and jokes.  I'm also interested in creating stories that new readers aged 6 to 12 could pick up and enjoy.  Something that's not mired in continuity or edgy sex and violence.  When I was a kid, BATMAN was a book that any child could pick up and read.  And the kids that really loved it would continue reading it for the rest of their lives.  Then they would become kind of socially awkward and possibly emotionally and intellectually stunted, and spend much of their adulthood with some rage issues and talking about how the comics they now read as adults should be for made for kids.  Who wouldn't want that for a child?

Can you tell us a bit about your creative process? What are some challenges you face when you're creating?

I live in a house boat off a pier that's not too far from a small farming community in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey.  Normally before I start working on a comic, I head out there to be among the people.  I hear stories from farmhands, and listen to the concerns of day laborers, and sing Woody Guthrie songs with cattle ranchers.  Then after buying them as much beer as my meager savings can afford, I ask them if they have any ideas for 'graphic novels.'  They usually have no idea what I'm talking about.  Then I'm like 'Comics?'  And they nod and pitch me stories.

After I transcribe their stories into my own by adding punctuation and removing the Jersey-accent, I do layouts and dialog in a notebook using the right page for thumbnailing and the left page for dialog.  Then I draw, color and letter it on a vintage 2006 laptop, with a antique, almost restored Wacom tablet from the early 2000s.

What do you think about the publishing industry vs. self-publishing?
 

I worked for a large professional publisher for  a few years.  My job was essentially formatting and some design work.  The publisher, as well as books, sold wholesale snacks to school and office cafeterias.  One of the guys that was a potato chip salesmen contacted me out of the blue one day and asked me to describe my job duties to him.  I blew him off as 'possibly insane.'  He called a vice president of the company and let him know that in his time off from selling chips he compiled a list of over 400 employees that were 'non-essential.'  Two weeks later my professional publishing career ended.

What do you think about the comic scene currently?
 

Every time I think I might be 'over' or tired of comics, I realize I'm just 'over' or tired of people that talk about them.  Myself included.

I should also mention that I've honestly seen some of the most exciting and best comics I've ever seen, recently.  And I say that as someone that has read comics for the past 55-ish years.

and then RAPID FIRE ROUND:

When you're in an artblock you: Try to entice strangers on the street into violent and/or sexual confrontations that end in me crying.
Your greatest fear: Artblocks.  Also artblocks in the form of cancer.
Something you've always wanted to do but haven't: Get paid.
Favorite book/movie/comic: Burroughs/Muppets/Ware
Your darkest secret: I'm not kidding.

You can find more of Pete's work on his site and  blog.