Talking ‘Cindy And Biscuit’ With Dan White
by Rachel Bellwoar
Pity the monster who goes up against Cindy and her best pal/dog, Biscuit, in Dan White’s Cindy and Biscuit: We Love Trouble. In this new collection of White’s comics from Oni Press, Cindy has to fend against everything from aliens to mermaids. With letters by Jim Campbell, see what White had to say about the series and Cindy’s fearlessness in the interview below:
Rachel Bellwoar: For fans who already love Cindy and Biscuit, We Love Trouble will be collecting some of your previous stories, including “The Bad Girl.” How did you decide which of your darlings to leave out?
Dan White: The new collection is a bit of a primer to the world of Cindy and Biscuit, so we wanted to include a mix of stories that represent their core elements: Cindy and Biscuit is a comic about the thrill of fighting monsters, the pain of fitting in, and the simple truth that nothing is more important than having a best friend.
It’s an all-ages comic that introduces kids to the darkness lurking in the corners and reminds adults about the light peeking through the clouds. With loads of hitting.
So, we wanted to pick a selection that introduces new readers to Cindy and Biscuit and demonstrates the formally playful ways their stories are told. For long-time fans the stories are newly presented in vibrant colour and re-lettered beautifully.
In terms of leaving stories out, well we had to keep something in the bank! There’s some great stuff that I’d love to see presented as gorgeously as this volume in the future, not to mention all the other new stories currently bubbling in my brain…
Bellwoar: Having self-published in the past, why do you think Oni Press was the right fit for this collection?
White: Oni Press has a fantastic history of publishing brilliant all-ages comics. They also have great design sense and know how to get their books under the noses of the right audience.
Self-publishing gives fantastic freedom to create, but reaching a wider audience can be difficult. So being published under Oni is an incredible opportunity to get my babies out into the big wide world.
The experience of working with them has been quite frankly, a joy. Zack Soto, my editor, provided a steady hand in helping shape the collection; he totally gets the characters and understands their appeal, and has an innate understanding of storytelling and aesthetics. The strips have been brilliantly lettered by Jim Campbell, who completely glommed to the style of the comic with style and sensitivity. The whole book looks beautiful thanks to the amazing design of Sarah Rockwell. It smells great too (very important!)
Bellwoar: To me, Cindy & Biscuit in “Pests” epitomizes what Cindy and Biscuit is all about. Cindy pokes a blob with a stick. It turns into a monster. Cindy gets blown away. Two panels later, Cindy is back, poking the blob again. Where do you think that game-ness to fight monsters comes from?
White: Cindy is completely fearless when it comes to tackling monsters, aliens and assorted weirdies. She struggles more with school peers, her Mum, and the routines of daily life. Her indomitable spirit, reckless abandon and love of a good scrap is at her very core though. She’s braver than I ever was as a kid and is inspired by a long lineage of fearsome characters from Minnie the Minx and Princess Mononoke through to Tank Girl.
I also have a six-year-old daughter who basically *is* Cindy. She’s terrifying!
I love those one-pagers, like ‘Pests’ as they are a great way to tell a story in limited space. You can get wildly creative by imposing rigid limitations on yourself, something I love to do with the strip. Also you can boil character interactions down to their essentials and I think you rightly identify that strip as almost a condensation of the whole comic.
Bellwoar: In a similar vein to the adults in Peanuts, you never see the adults’ faces in Cindy and Biscuit. What made you want to foreground their words (and the impact they have on others) over their facial expressions?
White: It’s very important to me that the strip is always from Cindy’s viewpoint and that stretches to the whole way the stories are told. Visually, therefore I think it makes sense that adults remain a slightly removed presence that nonetheless intrudes on Cindy’s world (often in an unwanted fashion).
The other key element is that you never get to see what Cindy is thinking. Despite the strip being all about how she views and responds to the world, I wanted to keep an air of unknowability about her. There’s so much going on inside the minds of kids, but they aren’t always able to elucidate that and Cindy, with her blank Max Fleischer-style eyes has a certain inscrutability that gives the strip some of its ambiguity.
Bellwoar: Unlike the adults, eyes are a dominant feature of many of the monsters in Cindy and Biscuit. Do you feel there’s something inherently scary about eyes, compared to other body parts?
White: Yes! Nothing like a good glaring, bug-eyed beast! Eyes can be so expressive, and my style on Cindy and Biscuit is pure cartooning. As I said previously, with Cindy’s eyes having a certain blankness, I often use other character’s eyes to do the expressiveness and emotional heavy-lifting. Biscuit acts as a Greek chorus to Cindy, often using only his eyes…
I try to make the monsters in Cindy and Biscuit visually distinct and cool-looking, but I also want them to be a bit scary. Multiple eyes in weird places is one great way to achieve that.
Bellwoar: For all that Cindy is against giving aliens the benefit of the doubt (see the first story, Cindy & Biscuit Save the World (again)), she does befriend a few monsters in this book. Why do you think she’s so much more compassionate towards Manwolf?
White: I think the Manwolf is slightly different from most of the monsters Cindy encounters. He represents a certain wildness, and even freedom that appeals directly to her, rather than the usual threat and peril. They’re kindred spirits and they look out for each other in the woods. Plus, she has a bit of a crush on him!
I’ve always adored werewolves – forget your vampires and zombies – so I knew that there would always be a werewolf type in the strip. I don’t think I originally realised that he’d become such a key part of the story, but it happened organically and made perfect sense. And I love drawing him!
Bellwoar: The word “again” usually is associated with sequels. What made you want to open this volume with Cindy & Biscuit Save the World (again)?
White: That’s the very first Cindy and Biscuit story I did, and the original idea that tickled me about the strip was that of a small girl and a dog fending off supernatural and extra-terrestrial threats with just a stick and a load of attitude.
So when I introduced them, I thought it was funny to suggest that defeating potential invasions of earth was something that they could regularly handle before dinner time.
It also sums up the tension between the mundane and the fantastic that characterises the strip; saving the world might be incidental compared to the telling-off she gets from her Mum for staying out late!
Bellwoar: Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Dan!
Cindy and Biscuit: We Love Trouble goes on sale August 9th from Oni Press.
