Writing Our Own Stories with Jason Lapidus
Jason Lapidus shares how everyone has a story to tell and how an extra 20 years of living before full-time cartooning helped him understand the human experience.
Interview by Raegen Montaque
Jason Lapidus
Group of Seven: a Most Secret tale
Jason Lapidus is the Co-Publisher and Artist behind Peregrines and Group of 7 Comics. Prior to making comics, Jason taught art at the Royal Ontario Museum, and served as a Communication Professor at George Brown College.
MONTAQUE: Tell me about what your cartooning journey looked like.
LAPIDUS: Like most artists I've met so far, we got into things like watching cartoons and animation as kids and would read comic strips in the newspaper. When I first saw a comic book and got a chance to own it and keep it, I was probably around nine. I wanted to shift from writing and illustrating stories as a kid in little writing books at school to comics. Then into high school, I got a little bit more toward doing traditional art, like classical figure drawing and learning oil painting, and less interested in comics as I got more interested in girls as a 15 and 16-year-old. Rock and roll started to take over my brain, so I moved a little bit away from comics.
There wasn't a program like the one you have. I couldn't see a way that my drawing ability turns into a job. I couldn't connect them. I didn't realize, you go to art college, you build a portfolio, you show your portfolio at conventions, you send in samples to editors at companies, and then they hire you or don’t hire you. I couldn't see that connection. I also didn't realize I could write my own stories. I thought I had to follow a script because I bought into the formula that Marvel was telling us kids. They had this thing called the Marvel Try-out Book, and I got it when I was in those formative years. It was called the Official Marvel Comics Try-out Book, and they gave you a script, and you would draw it and then send in your sample. I was so scared to draw on that big paper. It's 11 inches by 17 inches. I knew I wasn't ready, so I just never did it because I bought into the formula that Marvel and DC were presenting.
I didn't realize I could just do it myself, photocopy it myself, print it on my own, and hand it out. Instead, I started getting more into music and making music and then eventually, playing live rock and roll took over my creative energy because I could do that myself. I could play guitar, I had a drummer friend, I had musician friends, we could do gigs, we could record them, and we could sell cassettes. I didn't know how to do that with books. That lasted a couple of decades, just drawing for fun and going to university, becoming a teacher, doing all that stuff.
Comics took a back seat until my buddy, when I was about forty-two in 2016 or 2015, said, hey, do you want to make a comic book together? I know you draw, I know you've read every comic that we always talk about, would you want to make something together? I have an idea for a story; I'd love to do a project with you. Now, the technology had caught up. Print on demand was a thing, It wasn't back when I was 15. I knew that there was an indie scene. I had become aware of it over the years as an outsider and gone to events and always wished I was on the other side of the table, instead of being a visitor, I was like, I am a creator, I should be on that side. So, my buddy’s proposal turned into one issue, and now we just put out 13 or 14, so it just started snowballing and I dove into it bigger and bigger and then got completely committed to it.
In 2020, when things shut down, I was home, and like, let’s just make a studio. Let's kick everyone else's stuff out of this room, let's invest in gear, let's start making comics, and let's make it a full-time thing. And so it's been a really intense journey of active study and trying to up my taste and then up my craft, always. And one never catches the other, your ability never catches up with your taste ever. Your taste is always leaving the atmosphere, and you're always trying to catch it, but you never do. That's okay, that's a healthy thing. So it's just been almost 10 years of trying to learn to make. First you learn to do it, then you learn to try and do it good, then you try to learn to do it good and fast, and I'm somewhere between those two.
MONTAQUE: What would it have looked like for you to be immersed in zine culture back then?
LAPIDUS: If I had gotten into the zine culture in the 90s, I’d be a totally different guy. I would have been living in a very different place in time. My peer group from Toronto at that time had a big impact on comics culture in Toronto. But I always say, you can say all you want about what if, what if, what if, but if you don't do it, you don't get to say anything. You gotta make the thing.
I grew up in the suburbs, and I never worried about going hungry or being homeless. I was never desperate to make stuff. I wasn't heartbroken and I wasn't desperate, so for whatever reason, I didn't feel like my voice had a place. There was no reason for me to speak in the landscape of storytelling. I had nothing to say, I didn't realize that everyone does have stresses and heartbreaks of their own, and they have their own kind of stories to tell. I don't have the soul of a tortured poet and I thought I needed to have that to be worthy of being a writer. Little did I know that you can retell a myth, you can retell a fairy tale, and sometimes it's the lens through which you tell it is the thing that makes it unique.
I think I was being so precious about stepping on a path of what an author or writer is that I was just so hesitant. I mean, I’m almost 50. Maybe I just needed those 20 to 30 years of living and getting a perspective and being comfortable being who I actually am.
MONTAQUE: Would you write your own stories now?
LAPIDUS: 100% Of course.
MONTAQUE: Are you doing that?
LAPIDUS: Yeah, we've turned a writer-artist dynamic into something more collaborative. Being an author is many things. It's not just the one who types.
Chris Sanagan is my collaborator. The fact that we have a collaboration and I want it to be healthy, means I need to leave room for Chris to get a word in since he can't draw, or colour, or do the digital production side. I don't want to step on his toes too much. If I put an idea out there and then guide the idea and let him script it, I still feel like I have a writer's voice in that because I'm controlling the pacing, I control the acting of all the characters, and I can change whatever dialogue he writes. I'm like, ah, that character wouldn't say that word in 1919. We have these characters from different perspectives than the ones we come from, so we discuss how their voices should sound, what words they should choose, and what points we’re trying to make.
So, I do have some control over that, but there are give and takes. The first graphic novel he wrote whole cloth, then I added a few scenes and asked him to script them. The next graphic novel, he wrote whole cloth, and I added some scenes and asked him to script them. Then there were four short stories that I would call myself a co-plotter, and he's script and I'm pictures. The trick for me is not to come up with a story so big that it'll never get done. I gotta stick with short stories for the time being.
I think the further on in the journey I go, the more universal things start to feel. The human experience seems to be the thing that maybe we should all be striving for. And it's through being specific and authentic that things become more universal.
Like when you don't say what street you're on. It feels like you don't know. How can that be a real street if it doesn’t have a name? When you mention your specific street, I can imagine that because I'm also on a specific street in a specific place.
The more experiences you have, the more empathy you can have for more people, more characters, so getting old is good, and good stories are empathy generators. You start to feel what the characters feel, which is a healthy thing.
MONTAQUE: What does your drawing schedule look like?
LAPIDUS: I am a deadline-motivated person, and I procrastinate. So my schedule should be: I wake up every day, get everyone to school, walk the dog, work all day, pick up people from school, work some more, have dinner, work some more, go to bed. But it never works out that way. My goal is that every single day I finish one page of art, but I have yet to be able to do that with any kind of consistency.
For one month every year, I take one month since 2021 and draw three panels, three of the squares that go in length on the page. Sketch them out fast, colour them in, do the black line and then post them on Instagram and then the next day, do three more. That would be my warm-up for the day. They’re loose and spontaneous and full of energy. Most things I would redraw if I had the chance. It’s spontaneous first draft comics, and it helps a person like me learn how to let go and not be a perfectionist. I find that most people don't care if it looks perfect or not; they just kind of want to go along for the ride. It was liberating to do, and I think everyone who reads it kind of knows it's not meant to be perfect, so they give us a huge amount of grace.
So those are fun, but that's not how I regularly would work. I would regularly labor over a drawing for days and days and days, trying to get it better and better and better, which is not healthy.
MONTAQUE: I've been there.
LAPIDUS: That's where having a buddy, or studio mate, or you know an editor, you just show them your bad work and say, right now I don't know where to go with this, any feedback? It gives you something hopefully constructive, but having a chance to look at something different is super helpful. I think everyone has those moments where their work feels stuck, but that's where you’ve got to just do the next page and come back to it. It’s almost like keeping the pace keeps you healthy, and if something’s slowing you down, you’ve just gotta ditch it and come back. The criticism of your soul is not the worry thing. If the objective is to make it good, then it's not about protecting your ego or your feelings.
I've built up a network of comic book artist friends, who I can show stuff to, and they are helpful. Hearing a different point of view is still helpful, and then there's the other big thing, which is, not every one of your pages is supposed to be brilliant. Some pages are gonna be less than perfect, so getting it done and moving on is the goal. Save your genius for the splash page or the most tense moments, moments with the highest emotional stakes.
MONTAQUE: How did you build your network of artist friends?
LAPIDUS: Two things. Social media and going to events. Given that I'm not 19, I'm not shy anymore. I'm not trying to impress anyone. I'm not trying to pick up anybody, so I get to just be a relaxed grandpa-looking dude who can say hi to anyone he meets. I welcome seeing young and old artists’ work. Eventually, the ones who are social enough, or whose work I love, we stay in touch. It's sort of the same as watering your plants. You have to foster relationships, so you gotta check in on people every month, see how they're doing, look at their work, tell them what you like, ask how they're doing, learn who their families are. You have to do all those little gardening things that make a relationship grow.
I’ve mostly been going to events around Toronto because they're amazing. We have an incredible comics community in Toronto. Plus, that COVID thing put everybody online in comics for a year, and everyone joined up on these groups, and we had Zoom meetings.
MONTAQUE: The theme of this specific issue is Explore. So, in what ways do you explore in your creative practice?
LAPIDUS: Exploring style, by first understanding drawing styles and storytelling styles. Then when I'm interested in one, instead of just talking about a style with a friend or reading a style over and over, I try and emulate. So, let's say film noir. Okay, how do I draw in film noir? Or, if I’m trying to look at European comics, like Tintin, the line work is open, there's not a lot of heavy inks on the page, it's gentle lines, and open flat colors. So, if I'm interested in that style, I will explore it through my own practice. Through the repetition of making more and more books and more and more stories, you get to explore different processes of how to make.
MONTAQUE: Whenever I get stuck, I like to go and look at comics and read books to see what other people are doing and see how I could incorporate them into my work, so what you’re saying resonates.
LAPIDUS: You have to kind of pick out key things from that. Whether topic or genre, theme, whatever it is, you pick up what the distinctive elements are to then incorporate them into your own practice so that you can explore them. So, if I want to explore steampunk manga, I have to understand what steampunk manga is and what makes it different from other manga or other steampunk. And so, once I have a better understanding of those things, I can try it. Or, you can even not understand it, try it anyway, and through the process of trying it, realize and come to an understanding. Use your journey of making as a way to understand and explore.
Part of making these Instagram comics was to explore digital comics making because, as an old guy, I'm only used to drawing with traditional tools, and I wanted a chance to explore making comics digitally. So I gave myself a project, like a good teacher, and said, okay, now go explore this new method of making through these new tools.
“I think the further on in the journey I go, the more universal things start to feel. The human experience seems to be the thing that maybe we should all be striving for. And it's through being specific and authentic that things become more universal.”