BY JENNIFER M. CONTINO
Before Will Pfeifer was dialing H for Hero, introducing an all new Swamp Thing, or watching Amazons Attack, the comic book fan was making his own mini comics. Pfeifer recently decided to collect some of his early works in a great little tradepaperback that shows you the evolution of this comics fan and creator. Late Nights at Kinkos includes comic strips, spoofs, color commentary and a few more surprises. Pfeifer told us what it was like getting the chance to reexamine his work. So click the link, gentle PULSE reader to find out how a six foot frog and Violent Man affected the psyche of this writer.


THE PULSE: I think a lot of our readers just know you for your superhero work and don't realize you ever created ANY independent comics. Was that one of the reasons you wanted to collect some of your indy work in Late Nights at Kinkos?

WILL PFEIFER: It was partly that, and partly because the superhero work had dried up for a bit. I wanted to do something comics related, so without any new projects in the works, I decided to return to some of my oldest stuff. Plus, the Windy City Comic Book Show was in October, and I figured this would be something fun to sell at my table. Naturally, I blew that deadline completely!

THE PULSE: Hah! Why was it so hard to meet your self-imposed deadline? Couldn't have anything to do with the fact that you juggle so many different things on a daily basis, could it?!

PFEIFER: Well, that’s part of it, of course. The job and the daughter do take up a bit of my free time. Mostly, though, it was just gathering all that stuff together. When I got the idea to gather all my old small press material in one place (and I was doing it as much to have a handy copy for myself as anything), I figured I might as well get every last thing I could find – all my old mini comics, any ads I’d done, Christmas cards, one-page strips, the works. So once I dug out every last piece of original art I could find, then the best copies of whatever art didn’t exist anymore, I had to scan it all in, which took a bit of time as well on my cheap-o Epson scanner.


Then, naturally, I had to write a long rambling intro, and even longer, more rambling annotations explaining all the hopelessly out-of-date jokes. Then, of course, I had to make some sort of cover. So while I’d like to blame my lateness on my busy life, the truth is, I designed this project to blow its own deadline. But, even if I didn’t get to sell it at the con, I’m pretty pleased with the final result – and I can bring it to next year’s show!

THE PULSE: A lot of comic creators who have gone from independent to mainstream comics creator don't like to show much of their earlier work. What kind of trepidation, if any, did you face when you were considering collecting some of this 20+ year old work here?

PFEIFER: I felt a bit, of course, because obviously some of this stuff is a tad crude, and like any writer, you always cringe a bit when your older work comes back to haunt you. I could see plenty of missteps, both in the writing and (especially) in the art, but I also thought some material I thought worked pretty well, or at least showed a bit of wit and potential for future growth, as they say. The jokes are beyond dated (could I have fit in one more reference to Soviet Russia?) and the comics are obviously based on what I was reading at the time (could I have fit in one more reference to WATCHMEN?), but as cultural artifacts, I think they’re still interesting.

And heck, every so often, there’s a joke or a line of dialogue that still, against all odds, makes me chuckle. As for the art, well, obviously I’ll never be a professional comic book artist, but like a dog walking upright, it’s not so much that I did it well, but that I did it at all.


What it comes down to, I suppose, is that combination of insecurity and ego most writers and artists have. I can’t stand the sight of my old work, but I can’t resist looking at it, either.

THE PULSE: How old were you when you decided to go for it and create your own comics? What sparked you to go the indy route originally?

PFEIFER: I’d been creating my own comics, in one way or another, since I could draw (and probably before I could write). Eventually, I starting working on a series called FROG about, well, a six-foot frog, who was human in every way (but, being a frog, he was easier to draw). That lasted for more than 60 issues of quarterfolded typing paper, each issue about 8 to 12 pages encompassing whatever pop culture fad I was enjoying at the moment – bionics, STAR WARS, spy movies, you name it. I finally stopped doing that sometime in early high school, then when I went to college, I read an article in a magazine called SMALL PRESS COMICS EXPLOSION where mini-comics god Matt Feazell laid out, step by step, how to publish a mini comic. I was looking for a creative outlet (stuck, as I was at the time, in mind-numbing graphic design classes), so I dug up a character I created for AMAZING HEROES old “Silly Cover” feature (that they never printed, the bastards), dusted it off and published the first issue of VIOLENT MAN.

That was in 1986, which was a heck of a time to be a comic book fan. WATCHMEN and DARK KNIGHT were coming out, Frank Miller was back on DAREDEVIL, Eclipse was printing the first issues of MIRACLEMAN (aka MARVELMAN), I was reading my first copies of LOVE AND ROCKETS and the whole idea of comic books seemed so I exciting that I wanted to be a part of it in some way. Plus, just being a freshman at college and having all that freedom at your finger tips was addictive. The fact that I had met both Craig Russell and Jay Geldhof – a couple of real comic book artists – didn’t hurt either.

THE PULSE: Were you selling a lot of copies of your indy comix at that point in time? Did you have a store that really supported your efforts?


PFEIFER: I never sold a lot of these comics, to be honest. I’d sell them through the mail, advertising in SMALL PRESS COMICS EXPLOSION, COMICS FX and other low-circulation magazines and newsletters until they inevitably folded. I’d also take a stack to the Chicago Comicon every year and sell or trade them to other comic book makers or innocent passersby. Jay briefly had a comic book store in Kent, Ohio, after I’d graduated and moved to Illinois (there’s a flyer for it and a picture of it in LATE NIGHTS AT KINKOS), and he was always willing to put a copy of my latest comic on the shelf. (I should stress, by the way, that calling these “indy comix” is probably inflating them a bit. They were just mini- and digest-sized books I printed up down at the local Kinkos.) But, best-sellers or not, they helped me meet a lot of fellow comic artists, let me hone my own talents and, eventually, I suppose, led to getting work in the world of professional comics.

THE PULSE: What kind of advantage do you think starting out making your own comics gave you that those who never went the indy route had?

PFEIFER: Most of all, it gives you the luxury of total freedom. Not only is there no editor or publisher telling you to do something a certain way, you’re not even really (or ideally) trying to appeal to any specific audience, so you can put whatever you want in those panels. Naturally, you’re going to make some mistakes, or go off on some weird tangents that mystify any readers you might actually have, but it’s all part of the learning process.

THE PULSE: What was the most valuable lesson you learned as an indy that helped you when you were working on projects in the "mainstream"?


PFEIFER: Probably the basics of putting a comic book story together. I won’t defend those old issues of VIOLENT MAN as great comics, but I think by the end I definitely knew how to tell a story in a comic book format – how to pace it, how to vary the panel sizes, how to balance action with dialogue, how to avoid telling in favor of showing, stuff like that. When I sat down to write my first “real” comic book script for the first issue of FINALS, I at least had a general idea of what I was doing. Of course, translating your thoughts for someone else to draw is a whole other area of discipline, but I think my years in the mini-comics trenches prepared me well. I often hear editors talk about first-time writers doing things like putting multiple actions in one panel or describing in the dialogue exactly what’s being show in the art. At least I learned not to do that.

THE PULSE: Any thoughts of revisiting Violent Man now and doing a one-shot or something? Or are you satisfied to leave him in the '80s?

PFEIFER: That might be fun. By the end of the series, VIOLENT MAN was as much about the crazy world around him as about the crazy guy himself, and it’s not like the world has gotten less crazy in the past decade or so. Back when I’d finished FINALS, I played around with an actual VIOLENT MAN mini-series proposal for Vertigo that would’ve updated the character, but I could never quite get it to work. Still, now that LATE NIGHTS WITH KINKOS is poised to top the New York Times bestseller list, the time might be ripe for a return. I still think I could find something interesting for him to do, and I know I’d have fun writing him. Not sure I’d want to actually draw him again, though…

THE PULSE: If you could get anyone you wanted, who would you love to see draw Violent Man?


PFEIFER: Anyone else? Well, since the late, great Bill Elder has left this world (he’d be the perfect artist for all that pop culture satire), I’d go with someone like Duncan Fegredo. First, I love his art. Second, he’s got that rough-and-tumble style that would work well with scenes of Violent Man inadvertently destroying the world.

THE PULSE: I liked the inclusion of your annotations. Were these notes you always had on the issues, or was this something you went back and deliberately wrote?

PFEIFER: No, that was something I went back and deliberately wrote for this book. I always like reading annotations in the back of a book, especially one that reprints work from an earlier period where you might not get the jokes or references otherwise. (Fantagraphics’ new HUMBUG reprint has a good section of annotations explaining all sorts of arcane references to the 1950s.) And I’ll be honest – for me, that was the most fun part of putting LATE NIGHTS AT KINKOS together. It gave me a chance to look back at my earlier work one step removed and remember what inspired me back then, which led to recalling a lot of fond memories of those long-ago days. Plus, it gave me a chance to write about myself – which is what every writer really enjoys doing the most.

THE PULSE: What were you the most surprised to recall or see again when you were going through these issues again?

PFEIFER: I think it was how much I incorporated my own life, friends, etc. into my comics. For some reason, I’d assumed it was all Violent Man fighting the commies, but as I read through them again, I saw my own damn face on just about every page. Not to mention my friends and college roommates show up again and again, my brother cameo-ed as a bartender and my old apartment was captured in obsessive detail, right down to the bootleg videotape of IRON MONKEY under the TV and the original Dan Clowes page hanging on the wall. I had forgotten how strangely autobiographical my comic books were – and that’s not even counting the issues of SLICE O’ LIFE FUNNIES, which was supposed to be my autobio comic.


THE PULSE: What kind of response has this volume gotten from the masses?

PFEIFER: Well, “masses” is overstating things, but the people who’ve seen it seem to like it. Most had no idea I could draw, even as roughly as I do in this book, so they’re at least mildly impressed by that. And they seem to like the jokes, too, which is nice. (They also seem impressed with the physical book itself, which is praise that should go to the fine folks at Lulu Press.) My friend Mark Ricketts had the best line. He said today’s kids should “follow this book’s example, put down their videogames and mock society.”

THE PULSE: How could PULSE readers get a copy of this collection?

PFEIFER: They can go to my blog, xrayspex.blogspot.com, and click on the LATE NIGHTS cover at the top right side of the page, which will take them to the book’s page at Lulu.com. Or they can follow this direct link: http://www.lulu.com/content/5164174

It’s 233 pages for a mere 12 bucks, plus shipping and handling.

THE PULSE: What other projects are you working on?

PFEIFER: Right now, I’m putting together a pair of proposals, one for a graphic novel (or graphic autobio), and one for a (hopefully) continuing series. They’re both well in the “working on it” phase, so I can’t say much more. As for any mainstream superhero work, I’ve got nothing on my plate at the moment, so if any big-money publishers read LATE NIGHTS AT KINKOS and want to launch a prestige-style VIOLENT MAN series, that would be fine with me!