Original interview no longer online - it is now hosted here, but can also be seen at the WayBack Machine.
Greetings all. We’re pleased to announce that we have yet another guest artist coming to this year’s NerdFest. An amazingly talented writer and artist he creates adventure books with a very familiar style! Please welcome Garen Ewing to the stage!
How did you start in comics and what was your "big break"?
I've been writing and drawing my own comics for as long as I can remember, but starting to draw comics for publication probably began around 1986 or so (self-published). I don't feel as though I had a big break as such - it's been a long process! In about 2004 I put the first few chapters of The Rainbow Orchid online and it started to build up quite a following, then I got some publisher interest from Gollancz and that started the ball rolling into mainstream publishing (though I was eventually published by Egmont).
I love your art style, very Herge-esque (ligne claire), was he a big influence on you and your work?
Absolutely, though also the other ligne claire artists, Edgar P Jacobs in particular, as well as Roger Leloup, Yves Chaland, Floc'h, etc. Comics are very hard work so I wanted to do something that I'd really enjoy - so I just went for everything I love - classic adventure in the style of Verne, Haggard and Doyle, Franco-Belgian comics, a stylish 1920s setting - but all very British.
What are you working on at the minute?
I've mostly plotted the next Julius Chancer adventure, though I still have two or three big story points to work out. At the moment I'm standing on the edge of the project, shivering slightly ... building up the courage to dive in!
What comic books (if any) do you read?
I've been lapping up the recent English translations put out by Cinebook - especially Yoko Tsuno, Blake and Mortimer and Leo's Aldebaran series. I had some old translations of those but it's terrific to now have so many! I love Lewis Trondheim, the last of his I read being the excellent Ralph Azham. Gary Northfield's Teeny Tinysaurs and Hubert and Kerascoet's Miss Don't Touch Me books are other recent favourites. My first and most lasting love is probably Asterix, closely followed by Tintin, and I also really adore Miyazaki's Nausicaa volumes. I could go on ... there's so much good stuff around, both new and old.
What can we expect to see from you at your table at Nerd Fest Comic Con 2013?
I'll have The Complete Rainbow Orchid - 117 pages packed with big adventure, plus 17 pages of extras in the form of sketches and research notes. I'll also bring The Rainbow Orchid Supplement - for true Julius Chancer nerds, which contains full annotations for the story as well as interviews and more sketches and extras. As a special Nerd Fest offer I'll be selling The Complete Rainbow Orchid for a clean tenner - a third off the cover price.
Anything else you want to say/plug? The floor is yours…
It's really exciting seeing the diversity and range of fantastic comics published in the UK at the moment. The next thing to do is to grow the readership and it's marvellous that events such as Nerd Fest exist to help do this, so I'm really looking forward to it.
Looking forward to meeting Garen in October. Come get his books and some original artwork. GO GET YOUR TICKETS!