LCCAF 26: He Fights Monsters And Crap — Discussing ‘Shaolin Cowboy: Staying A.I.Live’ With Creator Geof Darrow

You can’t look at a piece of writing or art and a business process and not wonder if it’s been influenced — or even created — by artificial intelligence. In the latest entry of his popular series, Shaolin Cowboy: Staying A.I.Live series, artist and writer Geof Darrow takes on AI, or a version of it anyway.

I caught up with Darrow at his table at the Lake Como Comic Art Festival last weekend to talk about the series, which comes out in July from Dark Horse Comics. During the Comicon exclusive interview, Darrow remembered that this is not the first time in his career that he’s taken on this subject of AI.

 

 

Tom Smithyman: So are you getting into AI?

Geof Darrow: No. The main bad guy is artificial intelligence — but in the most stupid way.

Smithyman: How do you draw artificial intelligence?

Darrow: It’s just the chip. And it has a voice coming out of it. They’re robots, but they’re not robots…

Smithyman: They’re Geof Darrow robots.

Darrow: Well…it dates back to the first book I ever did in France. It was just reprinted. And Dark Horse just did a reprint of the first Shaolin Cowboy called Start Trek. I had them put my first comic book in there. It’s called Bird and Friend. It was printed in 1987 or 1988. And one of the bad guys in it is in this new story.

It’s artificial intelligence — and it’s a Coca Cola vending machine that basically runs the Coca Cola Company. The Cowboy infuriates the Coca Cola Company, and they want to get their pound of flesh. So you can tell…

 

 

Smithyman: You’re taking yourself very seriously.

Darrow: As usual! So that’s about as far I get into artificial intelligence. I don’t have anybody stopping and looking at the camera saying, “The danger to humanity is in blah blah blah.”

Smithyman: It’s better that way, isn’t it?

Darrow: Oh yeah! It was Walter Hill who said you can show people’s motivations through their actions. I’m not going to have someone stop and say, “I’m going to beat the heck out of you because justice here in Wayback, Indiana is just not what it should be. And I must stick up for the weak and the widows.”

I’m not into the talky stuff. There are pages that go by with no sounds. I didn’t even put sound effects in any more. You see a car hitting another car. It looks great. But I figure if I put lettering in there, I’ll cover up that I drew a dog pooping in front of the car getting hit. And I think people would rather see that than a “bang” or a “crash.” And trust me, there are a number of dogs relieving themselves in this one.

Smithyman: You did something similar in Hard Boiled. I’ve always wanted to ask you why there was such a gap between issues #2 and #3 being published.

Darrow: I was drawing comics in Europe, and if you did one volume a year, that was huge. On the last cover of Hard Boiled, he shoots the guy through the head and says, “Sorry I’m late.” I though Frank Miller meant that (the main character) Nixon was late for an appointment. I was visiting my folks years after it came out, and I said, “Wait a minute!” He’s making fun of the fact that the comic is late. Because in my head, I was never late.

 

 

Smithyman: I always thought that it was you making the joke.

Darrow: No! I didn’t think I was late. It wasn’t the ending I wanted to do… It bothered me. I didn’t know that Nixon was going to give up in the end. That’s a sad ending. I’d rather he went down swinging, trying to others.

Now that I think of it, it just occurred to me that I’ve done AI stuff before. Originally, he was supposed to be human with cyborg parts. But Frank saw the drawing I did of him with glass embedded in him and said, “There’s no way he could survive that.”

Smithyman: Your pages are very detailed. How long does it take you to draw a page or a spread?

Darrow: Maybe a couple of days.

Smithyman: That’s a lot.

Darrow: Well, when I was drawing Hard Boiled, I think I spent five days drawing it and another three days inking it, because the pencils are really tight. They probably could have shot it from the pencils.

Smithyman: How do you approach your stories as a writer?

Darrow: Some people say I don’t approach it like a writer!

I don’t know. I just come up with an idea. I storyboard it, and the dialogue comes later. It’s just punctuation marks to a lot of action scenes.

I saw a Robert Altman movie called Nashville. I was really struck by the fact there was no real story in it. You just follow people in a day in their life. For me, it’s a day in the life of Shaolin Cowboy. He fights monsters and crap. Things just happen to him; there’s no grand plan. He happens to be in the wrong place and the wrong time. He makes the wrong decision, turns down the wrong street. It could happen to anybody. I’m sure you’ve had those feelings where you’re like, “God, if I only I hadn’t done this, this wouldn’t have happened.” And that’s kind of my approach to him.

Smithyman: Do you have other ideas for Shaolin Cowboy planned?

Darrow: Well, I have one coming out, and I’m drawing another one. I never know if I’m going to finish it, because I always get distracted and think, “Maybe I should do this instead.” A series is good because it gives people something new. I don’t know if they want to see something different. I draw to amuse myself anyway.

Smithyman: And if it sells, great! Thanks for taking the time to talk about this new Shaolin Cowboy series!