Sparkplug Lights up!

The scene at Sparkplug HQ

I ventured out to deep Southeast Portland last week to see what I could learn about Dylan William’s Sparkplug Comic Books. I’ve known about Sparkplug for a while, always happily surprised when I pick up a new book and his logo is on the back. He produces a steady flow of books, as well as distributes others. He runs his business out of a shop called the Bad Apple in Southeast Portland, next door to the always delightful Guapo Comics. Here’s a little of what I found out.

When did you start Sparkplug?

2002.

What got you interested in starting a publishing company?

I had already done one, kind of in the early 90′s and it went for about four or three years. It was called Puppy Pup.

Actually, I started in 1988. I started working with other people doing anthologies. So really, most of my life I was actually helping publish people, but then I took a break to work on my own comics and I got kind of tired of that. I really like publishing other people as much as I like doing my own comics.

Also, I saw a lot of smaller publishers not really taking on new artists and there was no real opportunity for people just getting into comics. In like 2002, there wasn’t really a lot of new opportunity for people just starting, or that ones that were, were mostly people who drew like other artists. So I felt like there was a real hole there I could fill that wasn’t in the middle. It was around the time that Highwater and Alternative were kind of on their last leg and before companies like Picturebox or Alvin (Beauenaventura) had started. So there was this period where were weren’t a lot of options for people.

Were you in Portland at that time?

Yeah, I was. I had moved to Portland in like 1999, or 1998? I moved from Olympia. And I moved from Berkeley to Olympia probably ’96 or ’97.

How do you pick your authors or titles?

Well, the problem is after a few years of  having a high and mighty vision of supporting all these different people and books, I realize I still just only publish things that are my own taste. As much as you say you may have other goals, it always comes down to your own taste. Even if it’s also about making money, its still the case because there are plenty of things that will make you money that are not publishing. I feel like ultimately any publisher is just publishing the things they like

What do you enjoy most about the printing process?

I use a printer now for most of the books I publish, they’re made by a local place called Brown Printers. I’m such a geek for printing though, I love following a book from beginning to end. I love having a place in town because I can go check on press checks and proofs and talk with the pre-press guys. It feels a lot more comfortable for me. When I started out I thought that everybody printed in Canada because that is how it is for comics. So I started out with that but it was always frustrating because they would have to ship me proofs and I’d ship them back, but I started out self publishing mini comics and actually I still do that (I was just stapling some of my own mini comics) and I love that. The whole process of making a comic is really fun, I guess, the promotional stuff that comes after that I’m not as into.

The scene at Sparkplug HQ

How much creative/design work do you do versus the artist?

It’s a combination, it depends on the person and what they want to do. There’s some people with whom I do almost nothing besides just pay to print their book, pick it up and send it out. And there’s some people who I lay out the book for and do all the scanning. It’s just how comfortable the artist is with the work. I like teaching people how to do the work and use InDesign. Chris Cilla and I just worked on a book and he’d used Photoshop before but not InDesign, so I was helping with the scanning and all the manual labor of it, but we were more doing it all together, more collaborative. Ideally I like doing that, it’s a little more time consuming. Generally, I feel like most artists know what they want their stuff to looks like so it’s best to just trust them.

What are you reading right now?

Comics or not comics?

Either way.

I read way too many things at once. The most comics-related thing I’m reading right now is the biography of a comics writer named Otto Binder. He wrote Captain Marvel and a whole lot of comics in the 40′s and 50′s. But then I’m reading a book on old film directors, Edward Said’s Orientalism, and probably too many others.

Lemon Styles by David King.

Tell me about some upcoming projects.

There’s Lemon Styles by David King. It’s coming out for San Diego. (Editor’s note: San Diego Comic-Con.) It’s a sequal to Danny Dutch, which is his earlier book. Anyway, I think we’ve done a book that will make him happy and make me happy. We had a hard time gettting everything just right but I think this one is gonna do it. The next project after that is Chris Cilla‘s and it comes back from the printer tomorrow. And then there’s the eighth issue of Reich by Elijah Brubaker. [I'm also excited about ] Janelle Blarg. Janelle Hessig is her real name. She did a thing called Blarg for a long time she’s from the Bay Area. She’s doing a collection of comics though that I’m really excited about.

Have you seen a trend in comics changing or getting easier to infiltrate?

I think the biggest thing that’s changed is that comics have become a little more respectable as an art form. I was just talking with John Porcellino about how twenty years ago neither of us could believe he could be having a book come out with Drawn and Quarterly and me actually having a company that publishes comic books. It’s changed so much especially in the past ten years where there’s just more and more people doing it. It seems now like every month there’s a new person getting into comics. I think that it’s the result of building more variety. I think encouraging more variety brings in more people to comics. I think Olga’s comics have a totally different demographic than any of the other comics I publish and it’s amazing because people who have never read a comic before will be at a show with friends, and they will inevitably pick up Olga’s book at practically every show I do. There didn’t used to be enough stuff where everyone would have something to look at.

Thank you Dylan.