Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment

The Joke's On You – Elliot Fernandez At MegaCon Tampa Bay

Marco Lopez writes,

I came to know about Elliot Fernandez through my good friend Randall Armstrong (who's also responsible for all the pics in these interviews). He used to own a comic book store and became friends with Elliot who used to come into his store as a customer. So, when the opportunity came up to interview Elliot at MegaCon Tampa Bay I figured it was gonna be worth my time and quite a bit of fun and it was.

But I'll let you tell me what you think after reading the below.

Marco: Tell us a bit about yourself, how you came to love comic books and how you got into the business?

Elliot: I grew up in New York City, I grew up on Electric Company Spider-Man and Super Friends Saturday mornings cartoons and I just caught the bug from there. My first comic books that I ever collected were actually an inheritance, a cousin of mine left them in Puerto Rico and I went down to visit some family and no one could read English so they gave them to the American kid and I started reading and I could only take so many, so I grabbed all the Avengers and Marvel team-ups, anything that had multiple characters, so I kind of grew up on Marvel and as I got older I always appreciated the iconic nature of DC comics so I started to get into DC a little bit more, more like a mature entry into comics.

But I was always interested in the artwork, the first guy I paid attention to was John Buscema, I grew up in the seventies and eighties, and after him was John Byrne so these guy's kind of left this impact on me. I didn't discover Jack Kirby till years later, I didn't like his work in the beginning but years later I understood what he was trying to do. That was the first time I saw comics as an art form and not just something that was aesthetically pleasing.

The New York Post's strips of Spiderman, that was something really big for me and that turned into a passion and later on, I started off first as a graphic designer, twenty years plus at one particular company but after that, just this last year I was creative director for a Harley Davidson product so I was able to kind of channel my passion for the fantastic during the Harley-Davidson product line because it was all these skulls and hot girls and bikes and all this cool stuff so it had this flavor, so that kind of thing was cool but not what I had a passion for. It was always just scratching the surface, never going past that initial stage. But now that I'm doing comics, I had my first work published at DC comics last year and after that, I began to enjoy that aspect of it. It's a challenging business and I did get a chance to do some work for Dynamite and I'm still kind of bouncing around. I'm doing some cover work for Archie and I'm still applying all the same principles but for me it's kind of just expanding beyond comics, just doing everything I can to express and enjoy different types of subject matter.

Marco: What do you love the most about the work you've done and the people you've worked with in the comic book industry and what do you love as a fan in the world of comics?

Elliot: That's a great question because when I came into this I came in strong as a fan. I love comics, I love the form and the best thing I've had a chance to do is to test how efficient I am or not and it has challenged me, and that's probably my favorite thing. When I was doing other things, like I could draw a skull in my sleep but now I must draw things like fire hydrants and trucks which I hate, but those are the things you must do. I love that it's always new, more than anything else but that depends because some people are bored of drawing the same character but I haven't gotten that far yet, it's still fresh. That's the thing that is tricky too, covers are great to do, they're single illustrations but I enjoy that. I've been doing some stuff for Archie and it's been an opportunity on figuring out how to tell a story in a static image. That's what all my favorite illustrators did, Frank Frazetta, Norman Rockwell all those guys, they told stories with one image, that's where you can express your chops in whatever you do.

Marco: You said you're doing covers for Archie. Is sequential work, working on one of their titles. Is that something you'd like to do for Archie as well?

Elliot: Yes, I would. As a matter of fact, I'm pitching my availability to them more and more but there are some interesting conversations going on but they're just conversations right now. I love Archie, I love what they're doing with that brand. I'm a weird collector of the Archie brand, every time I see an Archie digest I must buy it. They still make me smile and call back to a time when at least I was more innocent. Maybe life wasn't that way but I felt that way and I think that's important and I think that for a company trying to restructure themselves, rebrand themselves in the marketplace, they're doing a great job with Afterlife with Archie.

You still have your original stuff but you also have this new stuff, the new Archie has been great, it still has some of that weird drama stuff but it's still more complicated than the traditional material at the same time it shows you can take something beyond what it is and exploit it, take it further so I'm interested in doing sequential work for Archie because I like telling stories where people act, that's where I think my strength is. I'm not as interested in seeing things explode as I am seeing emotions explode or the subtlety of the expression. I always talk about the eyes being the windows to the soul and I believe that, with my artwork I always start with the eyes, I need to feel some sort of emotion from whatever I'm drawing, even if it's a stern, stoic look, beyond that how can I show the person in a different light, what they are thinking.

That's why I love guys like Adam Hughes, Kevin McGuire, those guys are talented and beyond just the aesthetic mind, they make those personalities act and think. They look like real people even though you know they're not so that application to the brand of Archie, making all those characters seem so different and real, that's what I love about that.

Marco: Is creating and putting out your own comic something you see for yourself in the future?

Elliot: As a matter of fact, I feel very strongly about some of the comments that Robert Kirkman made, when he did that manifesto. We're living in a weird time and one of the challenges I have as someone who is breaking into the industry later in life, at this stage of the industry, some of the more established guys are going to last for a long time but if you're just getting in you need to establish yourself. Now that we're in the digital age and we have the internet and we have opportunities to distribute our work, it's not just an option, I think it's mandatory to a degree if you're going to be relevant, if you're going to make something.

The long and short of it is I literally have a bible of concepts and story ideas and characters I've been developing for years, I post some of those characters sometimes on my Instagram account, I try not to explain too much because I don't want to give anything away but at the end of the day I'm interested in bringing some of those things to life because for me it's not just about art, this is my business and I think that's the next dimension for us as creators. It's one thing to be excited to draw and to draw stuff but you must think about the longevity and what this is going to become as you pursue this as a career. If you're self-employed, you're going to have to find a way to make this work for yourself. I literally can sell stuff online and never meet the person who buys it so there are people who might never enter a comic book store but they might encounter my work in another format so the trick is to stay sharp and flexible with those formats. I think one of my goals is to produce online content and then collect that online content.

My biggest inspiration is Mike Mignola, that guy literally made a career out of one character, one he was happy to make every day and he made it his way and every time he published something I bought it. His work is so rich, it was worth the wait when you finally got it so that's the trick, this other format lets us invest in quality, not just quantity, we don't have to put something out every month.

Marco: So, where can people find out more about you, your work, commissions, etc?

Elliot: I'm currently working on building my website, jerkmonger.com, I already have the domain name, by mid-November I'm going to have that all setup, which will have a store where you can buy prints and original art from me. Other than that, you can contact me through Elliot@jerkmonger.com and I also spend a lot of time and energy on Instagram so if you're on there you can look up jerkmonger there, also on Facebook, Elliot Fernadez or Jerk Monger, I have a couple of accounts and I also have an account that I frequently use on Twitch where I do a lot of live demos, people can come on there and ask me questions but it's jrkmonger on there, I couldn't use jerk, but it's a great opportunity to talk to me live and eventually I'm going to have a patreon, so people can invest in my future I guess.

Well, the time has come to wrap things up. I hope you all enjoyed this interview. Don't forget to let us know how you feel below.

Marco Lopez is the co-owner of the website Atomic Rex Entertainment. Where you can find the ongoing weekly webcomic Massively Effective, that Marco describes as Abbott and Costello in tights. Also hosted on the site is Marco's web strip series Orion's Belt that follows an Afro-Latino family of adventurers in space and his anthology series A Shot of Whiskey. Marco has also written for Zenescope Entertainment and Lion Forge Comics.

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