With thanks to David Ferguson and Irish Comics News, we’ve taken up the mantle of their 7 Questions series.
Aaron Fever kicks things off by interviewing the prolific Cork writer Kevin M. Smith.
This interview first took place in August 2023 and was originally posted to our Patreon page.
Q: Kevin, it can feel like you exploded onto the scene with a tonne of comic pages under your belt. Can you remember when you started to make your first comic? What was the impetus?
A: Yeah! I started when I was 16. The Cork City Library runs a program every year where they pair teenagers up with each other. Writers with artists, that is. And then takes them through the process of creating a four-page story together that is then published in an anthology. I did that 3 years in a row and after the second year of it, I funded my own anthology of stories (PATCH!) by getting a part-time job when I was 17. From there, I kind of just kept plugging away. When I was 19 I put out a 32-page anthology (SCRAP!!), 2 years after that in 2021 I released Marco The Demon Dude which was four chapters long and now I’ve just released a collected edition of Tropical Punch which is over 100 pages and counting.
Q: I’m not ashamed to say you’re significantly younger than I am! Manga feels like an alien genre to me but is clearly an influence in your work. Would you say it’s your biggest influence?
A: Yeah, I mean, I think arguing against that would be a tall order. One look at the stuff myself and Ryan make and it’s pretty clear we’re big manga-heads. I try to make a habit of reading about 200 collected comic volumes a year, and I know most of that is manga. I think it kind of just hit me at the right time as a teenager, I guess. A lot of Superhero books at the time had lots of complex continuities that I wasn’t invested enough to understand but most manga just had “Chapter 1”.
I worked for SaturdayAM for just over 2 years and they make comics that are also pretty clearly inspired by manga. They even call their comics manga themselves. I think, from a critical perspective terms like “Manga”, “Dande Dessinée” or Webtoon, are useful. Like, if I tell you I’m reading a lot of French BDs recently you know I’m probably reading something a lot closer to Asterix or Tintin as opposed to Spider-Man or Dragon Ball. But I think when it comes to actually making the things, I think those terms lose their meaning a bit. Or at the very least, the lines become blurry to the point I don’t really understand the point in using them. People make comics at the end of the day. Functionally speaking, Manga, Webtoons, BDs and the whole lot work the same way. Sequential panels and all that. There are different stylistic choices that might have originated in different cultures but they’re all just ingredients and the fun part is that you get to mix and match.
That’s a really long-winded answer, I know. But to answer it a bit more succinctly, yeah, love me some manga. I’d reckon I’ve got about 200+ volumes sitting around me as I speak, 100 of which is just One Piece. They’re a big influence on my work for sure, but certainly not the only ones.
Q: You have a clear relationship with regular collaborator and artist Ryan Ibbotson. How would you describe the process of working together?
A: Myself and Ryan started working together in late 2019. We kind of just found each other online running in similar art forums. I asked if he would want to make some comics and it turned out he was an even bigger nerd about this stuff then I was. Much bigger. We’ve basically been inseparable ever since. Our first project, Demon Dude, was supposed to only be 12 pages long but ballooned into almost four times that. Part of that was poor planning on my part but also we just loved making the stuff. We both shared a love for comics about big men punching each other in the face. Which is kind of an attitude we share towards each other a lot of the time, to be honest. We fight like an old married couple which can be taxing but it’s always coming from a good place. It’s never over anything serious, for the record. We’ve only ever argued about comics and even then it’s usually cause we both want to make the best thing possible and we’re butting heads on how to actually do that but in the end it works out, y’know? We’ve over 100-pages of comics done together and we’ve no plans of stopping soon. Cause it’s kinda the best thing we know how to do, I guess. Like there’s kind of something else about making a book with your best friend. It takes 10-15 hours a week, every week and it takes a lot of back and forth but it’s worth it in the end, y’know? Once you hold it in your hands it’s all kinda worth it.
Q: What’s the best advice you could give another creator starting out in comics?
A: Just make stuff. You’re gonna be bad for a while. I mean, I’ve been making stuff for like 7 years and I’m still bad at it so you just gotta make as much stuff as you can.
Make stuff and keep it short, I guess. Making four-pagers is like hell when you’re starting out as a writer cause you just have so many ideas but they’re the standard for a reason.
Also, chop out like half your dialogue. Speaking from painful experience, but I can guarantee you can find a way to get rid of most of it. I think some of the guidelines about how much dialogue you can have is a bit overblown but to be fair, it’s a visual medium so you should try and lean into that.
Pro-tip: use silent panels if you can sometimes. They’re really fancy. They say “I’m a writer but I don’t need to cram every panel full of dialogue, I can let my story breathe”. They make it look like you know what you’re doing even if you don’t think you do.
Q: What has your experience with the Irish comics community been like?
A: Generally pretty positive? I wouldn’t have kept making comics if there wasn’t a really vibrant community in Ireland. Cork in particular has a lot of talent going on. Post-Covid it’s been really nice to throw myself back into the community and go to cons and fairs to meet other people making comics. You’re going to meet the odd person who you don’t gel with. The odd person with the inflated ego who thinks they’re gonna be the next big thing. (Incidentally, that’s probably the type of person I would have turned out to be if working with Ryan hadn’t kind of knocked the edges off me). But for every one of those, I’ve met, I’ve met half a dozen people who are just really excited to be meeting other people making comics or willing to geek out with you about bizarre, fringe printing techniques.
Q: Do you think there are any under-rated or overlooked comic creators you’d like to shine a spotlight on?
A: Colin O’Mahoney is a good one. I wouldn’t have started making comics if it wasn’t for Colin. He ran the Teen Graphic Novel Project when I started on it back in 2016. He just put out a new 30-page story When Language Fails. It’s been really nice to see that come to fruition.
As for people further afield, I always go back to Nathaniel Dansereau. He makes a series called Benedict Nick the Phenomenal Brick for Saturday AM. I remember reading it when I worked for the company and always being so frustrated at how good it was but even then, I couldn’t be too mad because I was too busy laughing at how funny it was. really worth a read.
Q: What upcoming projects would you like to tell the people about?
The main one is an anthology being made with the Cork Comic Creators. They’re a group that I’m helping to run. We meet every month to talk about making comics and we run anthologies. I’m kind of helping to manage it a little bit, just making sure everything is going okay from a production standpoint but the writers and artists are gonna be producing some really cool stuff really soon that I’m sure you’ll be seeing a lot of.
You can catch Kevin’s latest comic TROPICAL PUNCH posted here on IrishComics.ie with a new page every Thursday.
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