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So you think the presence of this new media could be good for print?

Potentially. In the long run, I think the vast amount of printed matter will dwindle. I think in the short run the digital distribution of comics might actually have a positive effect on the comics industry because it can increase their visibility and, lets face it, the comics industry is so pathetic and miniscule right now, that it's really hard to imagine it getting any smaller. We're at a point now where many alternative comics producers could stand at the corner of 42nd and 5th Avenue and double their print run in two hours. So the sort of publicity and informational exchange that could occur over the web could be a positive influence on he industry in the short term. My local comic store I found on the web. I would not have known this one existed I was just a little too far out to be in our local yellow pages. It wasn't in our local community, but it was close enough to drive to. I wouldn't have known it existed if it wasn't for the web.

It's interesting hearing you talking about the comic industry being as small as it's going to get, because from an Australian perspective, we are so overshadowed by the American industry. There is no Australian comic industry in the sense of their being people who publish comics. It's a really small country, and when you talk about economy of scale, that sort of thing hits here hard when it comes to niche markets like comics. There isn't even the equivalent of something like smaller publishers like Slave Labor Graphics. In some ways it seems like Australia is crying out for something like that, but in other ways it seems like it would be economic death to take it in. And then we're overshadowed by Spider-Man and Captain America. Most people aren't even aware that there are Australian comics outside The Phantom, which is considered an Australian comic.

Well, let's take a hypothetical case for a moment. Let's say there was a creator living in Australia that had twelve potential fans living across the globe. Twelve people who wanted to buy that book. Now, if they were selling that book for two dollars, then by rights they should be able to make twenty-four dollars. It doesn't work that way, as you know. In order to make it available to those people all over the world would take you many thousands of dollars, to get the pre-press done, to get the printing done, to arrange to have it delivered to the appropriate stores where the people happen to be. On the web, the equivalent could cost - well, it could be entirely free, but more likely it would cost you about twenty-five dollars. That's a very different economy.

I wanted to ask about your approach to story-telling over the years. Not so much with form, but with content. Most of the stuff on the site is tending toward more autobiographical, whereas you got your start with things like ZOT!, which was more of a take on the superhero genre.

Well, it's a little tricky with me attempting to draw some kind of straight line between projects... The thing is that my career as a whole, when it's all done in fifty years or so, you'll find it's a very scattered pattern. Wherever I haven't been is usually where I want to go next. I think if I have a role model in film-making it would be someone like Stanley Kubrik, who virtually never did the same thing twice. He seemed almost incapable of it. So yes, I have started to do some autobiographical pieces on the web, but I don't know if it's a direct connection for me. I may want to come back to straight-ahead fiction, or fantasy, like I did in ZOT!, or I may want to do contemporary fiction of a very down-to-earth sort.

From ZOT!

I have a list, literally as long as my arm, which I've been keeping for a while, and gradually I've been able to get to these different sorts of stories. Every one of them is completely different - The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln was one of those, My Obsession with Chess was one of those. These things are just - they're impossible to categorise. One of them is a story in code, where everything int he panel is not what it seems - every element int he panel is a code that you have to decrypt in order to understand what is actually going on. I want to do some adaptations of works of literature, including a version of A Christmas Carol, and a version of The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis, another story about chess. I want to do some stream of consciousness surrealistic comics. I have a power fantasy that doesn't involve superheroes, that I've wanted to do for a while. There's just so many things I want to do. One of the nice things about the website is, that if some of these don't seem like they have to be full-blown graphic novels, I'll just do them. If they are destined to be very short pieces, I can do them. There's no particular length requirement, whereas in the print world there are very specific packages you're expected to shove your dreams into.

You couldn't do something that was under a page...

Exactly. Whereas I can. I can do a self-contained piece that's very short, that has its own identity on the web. That was true of My Obsession. I don't even know how to think of it in terms of pages. I guess it would come out to about fourteen pages or something, if it had to be all chopped up and laid out like so much hamburger on the page. But what do you do with a fourteen page story? What good is it in the print world?

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