What is Frank?
Frank was born of the desire to create a cartoon character; not a cartoon mouse, or cat, or dog, or human, but a pure cartoon character. I thought about him for weeks then drew him, essentially as he is now, in a few seconds. I wanted him to be of a time and place unspecifiable; that's why there's no dialogue. I wanted Frank to be a catalytic element in the stories, an agency whose curiosity makes things happen. For this to go on, he must never get wise, never be touched by his experiences. I guess you could say he is in large part composed of a necessary amnesia that lets people live sanely.
You've said that as a child you often had terrifying hallucinations and heard voices. Do you still experience hallucinations? Do you use them in your work?
When I was a young child my mental state was very confused. If I'd been born 20 years later I'm sure I'd have been put on Ritalin and antidepressants and God knows what else. I did have visual and aural hallucinations, but worse than these was an inability to get a handle on consensus reality. I just could not figure out what everyone else was doing, and it made me a pariah. I grew up being glared and scowled and screamed at constantly. Very unpleasant. The hallucinations diminished over time. Now I have one a year or so. Actually, I haven't had one in more than two years, now I think of it.
Have you ever shown your work to a psychologist?
Yes, years ago. I had these ugly voids in my memories; black, blank areas that radiated pain and suffering. I went to see a Jungian analyst. I took some copies of the first homemade issues of JIM, my illustrated autojournal. She showed great interest at first, and I left in high hopes for the future. Then she called and said she'd rather not treat me. On the face of it this story makes me sound like a shrink-killer, someone too toughly weird for the mental-health pros; but I think the truth is she realised from my work that I would play games with her and try to outsmart her, try to show how clever I was. I think she just didn't want to deal with a self-aggrandising, clueless smartass who would waste both our time.
You combine horror with great beauty. Is horror beautiful? Fun? Cute?
That is one of the things that tripped me up most as a kid. All those emotions and reactions were mixed up for me. Innocuous things like clocks terrified me; monsters touched my heart tenderly; love sickened me. Personally, I think predictable emotions are uninteresting. Discrimination is the key to everything.
It's difficult to describe your work. Can you explain it yourself?
The quality I like best in my work or anyone else's is that soul-stirring sense of having a glimpse of the hidden forces that do the heavy lifting behind the scenes in our lives. Or at least that's what it feels like to me. It's a familiar feeling; surrealism produces it. Or rather, the best surrealism does. It's significant that some does and some doesn't. How is it that of two irrational, unprecedented images one will inspire that sticky mood and the other will not? The difference can't really be explained. Something is triggered by the one; that ineffable nostalgia for the infinite, that sticky mood, that forgotten promise.
*The Frank Book is available now from Amazon.co.uk or direct from Fantagraphics Books at Fantagraphics.com
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