littlemathletics

The first issue of Bear hit the stands in June of 2003, and the tenth and final issue arrived in December, 2005. In between, Jamie Smart estimates that he worked on 300 pages – half of which were collected in 2004’s Bear: Immortal trade paperback, the other half of which will be collected in the upcoming Bear: Demons in June.

The comic is published by Slave Labor Graphics, an American “alternative” company, though Jamie himself is British.

Past articles on littlemathletics would suggest that this is the point that I should start talking about how the work is an example of postmodern genius, but Wikipedia beat me to the punch:

“The stories are marked by a combination of violent shocks, random silliness , and other hallmarks of Dada.”

I could spend a while here arguing that it does not, in fact, show the hallmarks of Dada, but that would be missing the point of Bear. It’s short, sharp and hilariously funny, and for that reason, it appeals to a wider audience than a majority of comics. Storywise, Bear is simply the story of a stuffed bear, named Bear, his owner, Karl, and Looshkin, Karl’s cat, whose life’s work is to torment and maim Bear. There’s no story arcs, or alternate universes, just swearing and destruction. And faeces. It’s got something for everyone.

littlemathletics spoke to Jamie Smart about Bear, his new projects, and much, more more.

What prompted you to pick up pen and paper in the first place? You’ve mentioned in the past that you’re not neccessarily completely aware of what’s come before you in the industry, but there must have been things that infuenced you.

Oh yeah, but my knowledge was very narrow. I grew up reading English children’s comics in the eighties, like Buster and Whizzer and Chips, and Dandy. They’re what made me start drawing, there are a few artists in particular who I used to trace and copy a lot.

Now I find myself working for The Dandy alongside them, which is a very weird experience. But it was only when I got to Art College that I picked up a couple of issue of Deadline, then the Tank Girl magazine that came out. In there was a Milk and Cheese strip, so I hunted the comic down. In finding those 3 things, what I did changed a lot and gradually became what I do now.

Do you have formal training, then?

I went to Art College for 4 years, but it wasn’t really a place to ‘learn’ art. It did afford me a lot of time to do my own stuff though, which was invaluable, because I had supportive tutors (which is weird, most tutors look down on ‘cartoons’), so in that sense it was useful.

What was your first commercial work?

I did bits and pieces for people during Art College but when the course ended, a friend’s dad got in touch and asked me to do a small 6 panel strip for his cookery magazine. That was the first time I picked something up in W.H. Smith and saw my work in it.

What are the origins of Bear?

I’d been drawing greetings cards solidly for about a year, and while it was great fun, I needed to do something a bit less ’safe’ otherwise I’d go criminally insane. I can’t say where Bear came from, it just kinda fell into place at once. I’ve chosen not to question it.

What was the greeting card work?

I was lucky enough to be put onto a large range of cards after doing the odd design here and there, in total I think there were over 300 in the range, so that was great work. I did them all hand painted though and quite intricate, and because I’m just stupid enough to paint standing up, it’s really quite knackered my back…heh…

How did you get involved with Slave Labor Graphics?

Sent them my work, they said yes. People ask for advice on how to get in the industry, but really I’m not the best one to ask.

My suggestions are ‘put work into envelope, address to Slave Labor, send’. I’m sure there are better ways of doing it though.

Do you feel that your time working on Bear has improved your work methods? The writing and inking are both noticeably improved by issue 10.

Oh yeah, completely. The art in issue 1 to 3 looks very different (to me at least) to the later art. It’s natural it’s going to change and evolve, it’s tightened a lot. But there’s about 300 pages of Bear in total that I’ve drawn, it was bound to.

Do you feel like you’ve learnt things from Bear that you can use for future projects?

Oh I’m sure, I know what works and what doesn’t, what my limits are and what limits I’d like to push. I’m toying with moving away from a very strong inked line, to much gentler pencilled work, but it’s trying to find a way to combine the two which is taking me a
while. I need to keep myself amused, otherwise there’s no point doing it…

What would you say your influences in terms of writing and humour are? Because Bear seems to really thrive on its Britishness, in many ways.

I think I saw the Young Ones when I was about 9, and I was totally hooked that something could be so fucked up. I think I absorbed a lot of that. Also as a kid I liked all the usual fare, Monty Python, Blackadder, Bottom, stuff like that. I think TV has been a bigger influence on what I write than any comics I’ve read.

People do tend to compare your humour to things outside of comics a lot – things like, as you say, The Young Ones, or Sam and Max.

Yeah, ha! Well as I just proved, they’re right. Sam and Max I remember seeing but only a couple of times, I think it was shown too early on TV. But it seemed cool from what I saw. Also there were the other cartoons like that, Earthworm Jim, The Tick, they were all really great.

Have you always written and drawn your own work?

Yeah I always have done, to me it feels more natural if you’re going to be drawing something that you should be dictating what that drawing is going to be doing. I’d find it hard drawing someone else’s writings. It would get boring to me I think, no matter how good the writing.

So why did you decide to wrap up Bear after 10 issues?

Bear was only supposed to run for as long as me or Slave Labor wanted it to. But about issue 8 I realised that I should probably be winding it up, for a coupla reasons.

One is I didn’t want it getting tired, invariably if you keep doing a comic series it’s going to get uninspired the longer it keeps going. I thought ten issues would be a suitable enough portion of it to keep it fresh.

And two, yeah, there were other things I wanted to be working on, which was distracting from my full enjoyment of working on Bear. Doing Bear the rest of my life would become very boring, but opening it up to do other comics is more exciting.

It seemed a very conclusive ending, though. Not so much in the fact that it had a sense of finality to it, but more that it wrapped things up more so than any other story in the series.

Uh, there are a few ways of looking at it. One is it was a way of closing up the chapter in Bear’s life, I’ve toyed with the idea of bringing Bear back after this ending, because how it ends doesn’t completely rule this out. But I’m not sure I will. Also for me, it was maybe symbolic as me letting go of Bear as I’d been doing it for about 3 years and it felt right to be moving on. So it’s however you want to look at it.

So now you’ve moved on to doing My Own Genie for The Dandy.

Yes, that’s a real buzz. I was a little nervous to show them Bear, considering the faeces and the swearing and the violence and, well, everything, but they still offered to take My Own Genie. It’s a lot less extreme, but it doesn’t feel any different for me to do.

All the swearing in violence in Bear is just detail, underneath it needs to be funny and crazy and silly. And that’s what Genie is too.

And you’re also working on Hairy Steve with Steve Bright, one of the creators of Bananaman. That must be pretty amazing.

Yeah, I was amazed Steve said yes to working on Hairy Steve (no connection). When I started working for The Dandy, Steve was doing Bananaman for them too. Steve’s art is stunning, I really felt it could fit into more alternative comic books as much as mainstream British comics. So I wrote a story specifically in view of working with him, and approached him with it. He said yes, and we’ve been working on it since.

Is that just a one-shot?

At the moment it’s only a one-shot yeah, but we’ll see. It certainly has scope to be more, and at the moment it’s hella fun to do.

You were doing Space Raoul for the Sunday Times too – is that still happening?

He’s not made enough appearances, no, there’s a lot more to do with Raoul, I think. But now the Funday Times, the comic supplement he appeared in, has ended and moved online, his pages there obviously have ended too. But I think there might be more from him soon, I’m certainly keen to.

Were you surprised by the success of Bear?

You don’t expect success. You can believe what you’re doing is good and funny, but you can never presume that other people will latch onto it. Yeah, I was totally blown away by the success of it, it’s been much bigger than I ever expected. And it’s incredibly gratifying, not only for having an audience you can readily contact, but also for the idea that you might have done something that has become a (albeit small) detail in someone’s life. That to me is the biggest honour.

About the audience – you’ve got your LiveJournal that’s been going for quite some time now, and there’s this whole group of people associated with it who are very, very complementary about what you do. Is that weird at all?

It helps my enormous ego grow larger and larger, and soon I’ll start believing what I’m told and buy a throne made of skulls. Of course it’s great that people are nice about what I do, and most of the Bear audience are really cool people, so it’s a great compliment that they’re interested in what I do.

I don’t think you can start believing your own hype, otherwise it gets dangerous and you become a real dick, so it’s best to take it as it’s meant. Just ‘hey, like your stuff’. That’s always good to hear.

I remember a while back, sitting around with a group of friends – people who would normally never pick up a comic – with all of them reading Bear. There’s something in it that appeals to a lot of people, it seems.

Yeah that’s one of the best things, hearing from people who don’t like comics but read Bear. It seems to manage to escape the typical demographic it often gets labelled as; being goth/alternative, since I think the smarter readers realise it’s neither of those things. It’s just a happy bit of randomness to waste half an hour of your life on, and I think the audience are people who get that idea.

Did you have an audience in mind when you began Bear?

No god, that would be the worst thing creating something solely for a particular audience. That’d be incredibly contrived. You have to do whatever makes you laugh, and if other people get it great, but I’m not trying to please anyone.

There was that story in Bear #4 where you parodied the emo scene – did you worry that you might be offending a part of your audience with that?

It wasn’t intended to, though I was aware when I was doing it that it might, I figured the scenesters known as ‘emo’ would get the joke. I like the emo scene myself, although it seems to be a byword for ‘pretentious nobber’ a lot of the time, for the most part ‘emo’ people are very, very sweet people, and a lot of the bands have some nice stuff going on.

So it’s not like I’m saying hip-hop’s all about shooting people having only heard Snoop Dogg. I’d like to think I know something about emo, to the point that I get incredibly angry when people get it so terribly wrong. Emo doesn’t mean nerd. I don’t get why they get mixed up so much. Emo’s a nice attitude, let’s go with it.

You’ve written a bit in your blog lately about reviews – do you find the best way to handle them is to be bemused by them?

If the reviewers slag me off, I’ll trail them for a few weeks and then when I’ve worked out their routine and movement patterns, I’ll chase them atop a griffin.

Yeah, I suppose you have to take it on the chin. I’ve never been great with criticsm, or indeed with spelling it, but sometimes it’s gratifying that your work is pissing someone off.

Well, the one that you used as an example was:

“Bear’s humor is NOT clever, it is all cussing and violence, some of which is perverted”

Isn’t that the point of Bear, really ?

Yeah, it’s all it was ever sold as. Dumb, silly, crash bang wallop fun. It’s not trying to be a great epic. That’s when I get angry, when people slag it off for not being something they were expecting it to be. That to me is incredibly dumb. Slag it off because you think I draw like a tool, fine. But not because I’m not the same as the other comics you like.

But then again, you did do the takes on things like Pride and Prejudice. What was that all about?

To try and forcibly insert some highbrow humour in to keep the reviewers happy. Pfft. didn’t work. No it was just keeping in the same vein as the rest of the comic, silly fun, but laying it on top of grander situations.

Bear’sback-story fascinated me, the idea he could have been around at important points in history (being a toy), and I wanted to see what it was like putting him into that. Also, it was a small homage to the kind of books or films I was enjoying at the time.

What kind of work schedule are you on?

I used to work 7 days a week but I’ve started taking Sundays off now, which is working nice for me. Usually I try and get up at 6 and work through till the evening, but obviously it varies depending on what else I’m doing during the day. I get incredible guilt if I don’t get enough work done in a day, so that makes me keep plugging away at it.

Oh yeah, and there’s the slaying of virgins and the riding black horses into hellish openings in the dusty ground beneath us, but I figure you’re not as interested about that.