Q and A

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What was your first experience with comic books (or comic book culture) and how do those early memories influence your current interests and role at Albatross today?

JEFF

I had an on and off again love affair with comics when I was younger. Like most youths I liked com­ic book char­ac­ters, but more the idea of them rather than their pub­lished work. It wasn’t until the Nin­ja Tur­tle craze that I start­ed to get comics on a reg­u­lar basis from the Cub Foods gro­cery store in the next town over. When­ev­er I had a dol­lar I would get a 99 cent com­ic to which Dad would con­stant­ly state, “There is sales tax. This isn’t enough.” My blank stare would usu­al­ly be my only response. Dad, how­ev­er, did get the last laugh when he felt after a time that these comics were not the best influ­ence on a young bud­ding coun­try kid and stopped pay­ing my sales tax (i.e. stopped let­ting me buy them alto­geth­er). So, from ele­men­tary school all the way to 7th grade I did not get any comics. Until…

I became friends with a fel­la by the name of Chris Graunke who rekin­dled my love for comics as well as matured my tastes from TMNT and Archie books to Hulk and X‑Men at Mar­vel. I then found myself at Cub Foods look­ing at their lim­it­ed com­ic selec­tion again while Father did the shop­ping as a par­ent should. Pag­ing through I noticed one clear thing — I had missed a lot over the past few years. I skipped a good piece of the com­ic book boom of the 90’s, and I felt a lit­tle cheated.

When the old man final­ly came to get me, I looked him in the eyes like a man and told him how it was gonna be. “So…ummm…you think I could get these?”

As he took Incred­i­ble Hulk 451 and a Hulk/Pitt crossover from my hands to look them over, he replied will a slow drawn out “…Sure. You have cash for them?” I dug deep into my bag of tricks and pulled out the old sales tax blank stare, putting my all into it because I didn’t have any mon­ey this time. Not sure if it worked or Dad just real­ly want­ed to get the Hell out of the store, but I got them. For free. From my Dad.

It’s been years of comics and fun since then with Chris, then Nolan in col­lege and Moose and Ayla in the years since school. I’m real­ly hap­py that we have been able to come togeth­er and pool our love for this craft into what is now Alba­tross Comics. My hope is that some­day a young boy will want one of our issues from a gro­cery store…because I put it there.

 Nolan

I think my expe­ri­ence with comics is quite stan­dard. My inter­est in comics began as a kid but unfor­tu­nate­ly they were rel­a­tive­ly too expen­sive for me to afford. So, I would usu­al­ly end up with one book a month and I would read the poop out of that one book. I con­sid­er myself to be a self-taught artist because I would take my favorite page from each com­ic and draw it over and over until I was able to recre­ate it from mem­o­ry. This has def­i­nite­ly made an impact as one of Alba­tross’ artists today.

Chris

My first expe­ri­ence with com­ic books that I can remem­ber, or bet­ter stat­ed, that I remem­ber the clear­est, as it gets all a bit mish-mashed on a jum­bled time­line the fur­ther back I try to remem­ber, I believe was a set of three issues of G.I. Joe when it was pub­lished by Mar­vel. I believe it was pur­chased in a set of three at Pami­da by my old­est broth­er on a sum­mer vaca­tion at my Grandma’s house. I remem­ber lik­ing G.I. Joe at the time, prob­a­bly because my broth­ers and cousin liked it (I even­tu­al­ly tran­si­tioned into a Nin­ja Tur­tle kid). Snake Eyes, Storm Shad­ow and the B.A.T. Troop­ers were prob­a­bly my favorite. I watched the car­toons. I had some action fig­ures of my own. Great bat­tles were won and lost in the base­ment and on the stairs and in the pot­ted plants through­out the house. I even­tu­al­ly got my hands on those com­ic books, and wow, that was a whole dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence from what I was used to.

The sto­ry arc intro­duced the SAW Viper, he smoked cig­ars and wore pur­ple body armor. This guy was a bad guy. He was some­thing new. He meant busi­ness. I remem­ber in those pages he killed one of the Joes, and that was a pret­ty big deal for me. He didn’t fire a corkscrew arc­ing mis­sile only to have the Joe eject from the plane before explo­sion. He mowed ‘em down with a big ass machine gun and an evil grin. That was pret­ty big. And a cou­ple pan­els ear­li­er that doomed Joe ran head­long to his death, throw­ing his dog tags to his bud­dy before his sac­ri­fice. That was pret­ty big too.

This com­ic book upped the ante. The draw­ings were cool­er than the ani­ma­tion. The hero­ism was grander. The vil­lains were more cut-throat. The stakes were high­er. The sto­ry con­tin­ued and each issue did not end with me know­ing that know­ing was half the bat­tle, it end­ed with me not know­ing what would come next.

The com­ic book took a for­mat and idea that I already liked and notched it up to a whole ‘nother lev­el. That’s prob­a­bly what I take from that expe­ri­ence and try to bring to my role in Albatross…I also still like nin­jas and robots.

 Moose

First of all, I grew up in the mid­dle of nowhere.  Seri­ous­ly.  And when I was young, I loved the Teenage Mutant Nin­ja Tur­tles.  We often went to vis­it my aunt and uncle in a sub­urb of Saint Paul, MN.  One day while we were there, we went to a gro­cery store and as usu­al I wan­dered off (the man with the can­dy and trench coat is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry).  I found myself next to the mag­a­zines and there on the bot­tom shelf were some books with amaz­ing cov­ers.  One of the books was the Teenage Mutant Nin­ja Tur­tles and god­damn I had to have it.  God­damn I had to have it!  My mom bought it for me and I read the hell out of that book.  I didn’t know what an East­man and a Laird were, but I knew I loved that book.  It was a greasy, tat­tered wreck after the num­ber of times I flipped through it.  Just wrecked.

Today, I have much bet­ter access to books.  I know who artists are.  I know who writ­ers are.  I know where the man with the can­dy and trench coat is.  I wash my greasy hands.  But I still see some cov­ers, flip through some books, read a dust jack­et, and god­damn I have to have it.  God­damn I have to have it!  The guys at Alba­tross have done and are doing some amaz­ing work.  We all get bogged down with life, so the cre­ative work we do some­times slips.  Some­times it doesn’t get done.  We all need that irri­tat­ing lit­tle voice push­ing for results and cre­at­ing dead­lines.  That’s my role.  I help push the cre­ation process so we can pro­duce great books.  Because when it’s good, god­damn I have to have it.