Comics from Austin to Atlantis

Austin's Staple! Con is an exciting look at the indie comic world.  When I attended in March, by far the highest point of my Staple! experience was discovering the art of Boston transplant Paul Maybury, a local comic artist who's worked with Image Comics (the publisher that brought you Spawn) on award-winning comic anthologies like Popgun and Comic Book Tattoo, and the graphic novel Aqua Leung, the result of a two-year collaboration with writer Mark Smith (The Amazing Joy Buzzards). 

Aqua Leung is the story of a young boy named Aqua who discovers he's destined to become the Octopus King and rule Atlantis, and conquer the surface world, too.  Think Anakin Skywalker becoming Darth Vader, except it's underwater and it doesn't suck.

Maybury's style, which has been steadily evolving since he started self-publishing indie comics in 1999 and then began inking with a brush in 2006 while drawing Aqua Leung, is characterized by a loose, kinetic line, vivid textures, and urban/manga influences. 

He also has a history as a painter. He worked as a muralist for Boston Mayor Thomas Menino for many years, helping revitalize the city's rough Roxbury neighborhood, so color is a vivid component of his work as well. 

During a recent phone interview with the artist I mentioned that today, April 9, marks the two-year anniversary of Aqua Leung's publication (at least, according to Amazon).  "Yeah, you're right," he said.  "It's crazy to think that all that time's gone by." 

A lot has changed for the artist since then.  Before Aqua Leung, his first graphic novel, he was a Whole Food Market's resident chalkboard artist by day and an indie comic creator by night. 

Getting a book under his belt took him to the next level.  "I think once you put out a book like that people associate your name with a certain piece of work," he reflected. 

"Then you become a business, and you learn about the business pretty quickly.  This whole comic book business isn't laid out any particular way, it's sort of the Wild West.  There was a huge learning process."

Some of the lessons weren't easy.  Maybury had a falling out with Mark Smith toward the end of working together on Aqua.  It negatively affected some of his ties to the industry. 

"It's never that you have a falling out with one person; you have a falling out with a chain of people.  And sometimes those people are people you need to know." 

Mark Smith was already involved with Image before he worked with Maybury, and had established a working relationship with Image founding father and comics legend Erik Larsen (Savage Dragon).

"I went through a long time of staying out of things, reading, and figuring out what it is I want to do with myself," remembered Maybury.  In addition to doing commissions and smaller projects, right now he's focusing on developing his own creations. 

Party Bear, an urban coming-of-age story set in the Boston from Maybury's childhood, is hosted online by the New York webcomic collective, ACT-I-VATE. 

"[My old neighborhood] has changed a lot now," he said, "I always tell people if you watch that movie Lean on Me with Morgan Freeman, that's what my school looked like."

Another Maybury brainchild, the story of a charmingly pugnacious, chicken-nugget-devouring stuffed toy named Maxy J Millionaire, can be found on the webcomics platform Zuda.  Maybury hopes to get both Party Bear and Adventures of Maxy J Millionaire published. 

He's using Maxy J's transition from webcomic to print as an opportunity to revamp the story.  "It's going to be all ages, but it's never going to be something that's just stripped down for children.  I used Pee-wee's Big Adventure as my model for how far I could push it." 

For now, he's purposefully avoiding the superhero genre in favor of more personal subject matter.  "I try to maintain the same fun I had as a kid when I would draw comic books about cats fighting giant snakes or something silly," he explained, "I try to bring those characters back into my work so it still feels fun while I'm drawing it." 

I asked Maybury, who's said online that he's vegetarian, if he would ever eat chicken nuggets if Maxy J became famous and got his own happy meal.  "Actually, I eat meat now," he confessed, "I've broken down.  It's McDonald's, you know?"

Maybury is also working with actress Charlyne Yi (Knocked Up, Paper Heart) on a comic for Oni Press, a post-apocalyptic story about a girl who has to save the world from Satan. 

It's currently in the scripting stage.  "I e-mailed her the other night because I'd just watched Paper Heart for the first time... It's probably going to be a little bit before it comes out, but it's still going to happen." 

He's also hoping to collaborate with Yi on a webcomic.  "She's great.  She has that funny, playful style of writing that is an asset in a lot of modern comics, where things are very serious.  When I think indie comics, I think of somebody's terrible years as a teenager.  I'd like to see more fun stuff instead."

Although Maybury enjoys the flexibility of the webcomic format and appreciates the possibilities of digital media, he's still apprehensive about a future where it could replace print.  "I'm still gonna be the last holdout," he said.  "We had a few people approach us about doing Aqua Leung for, like, iPhone, and I really don't feel like you can produce some books in a digital format like that because there's something to be said for turning the page. The act of turning the page is part of the storytelling.  It's a different kind of storytelling and it has a place, but I think something pretty fundamental with comics will probably be lost.  But, then again, some people won't care because they'll have grown up with that."