Drawing Under the Influence: PLANETOID’s Ken Garing

Interview originally ran on Graphicly’s blog. Graphicly is the parent company of iFanboy.

 

We recently fell head over heels for the dark, treacherous landscape of Planetoid #1. It marks the debut of gifted visual storyteller with a knack for industrial detail and dystopian world-building. What worldly influences inspired the unworldly look of this environment and its formidable inhabitants?

We talked to writer/artist Ken Garing about his ambitions for Planetoid and all the elements that inspired this nightmarish spectacle

From Planetoid #1 by Ken Garing

Graphicly – What is Planetoid?

Ken Garing – I had been doing short story comics for a while, which I love, but I was getting kind of scatterbrained jumping from story to story and experimenting with different styles. I wanted to commit to a longer project. Planetoid has a very simple premise and allows me to go in there and play around with some of the classic science-fiction tropes as well as smuggle in some weird ideas and themes of my own. To answer your question another way, Planetoid is my attemt to get a mini-series published, as nobody was picking up my short story work.

Graphicly – Why comics? What led you to put pencil to paper?

Garing – I’ve always liked the worldbuilding that can take place in comics. Especially creator owned work where the artist has total control of how the world looks. Not just worldbuilding in terms of character design like that, but the worldview –you can be dark and cynical or bright and surreal– depending on how you feel. Also, the mechanics of storytelling are really unique in comics. The reader is supplied with a lot of visual information, but must also be active and put the panels together in order to create the action.

I’ve always liked drawing because it’s so accessible, you just need a pencil and paper and the possiblities are endless. I was probably seven years old when my friend suggested that we draw our own comics… and I just never stopped.

Graphicly – You’re self-taught?

Garing – I went to the Academy of Art for two years here in San Francisco, but I’m self-taught in terms of inking with a crowquill and laying out a comic book page. Art school was more helpful in learning about art generally, which I had been ignorant of. Most of my friends were studying things like graphic design or film making.

Graphicly – Can you pinpoint any writers or artists that influenced you when you were seven?

Garing – When I was really little I remember picking up Erik Larsen and Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man comics at the spinner rack while my mom was shopping. The major bomb however was getting my hands on a full-color reprinting of the first three issues of Eastman and Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which was published by a company called First Comics. Of course there was a huge TMNT craze with all sorts of merchandise, but this was the original underground stuff.

Richard Corben's House on the Borderland from Vertigo

Graphicly – And now?

Garing – Anything by Richard Corben. Eisner and Kirby are gone. Japan has Otomo. France has Moebius. We’ve got Corben. Even though he gets high profile work and is mega-respected in the industry, from what I gather, I think he is eternally underrated. Mutant World, Neverwhere, and House on the Borderland are probably my favorites. Miller’s Ronin. Moebius’ Arzach and 40 Days in the Desert. Gilbert Hernandez’s Love & Rockets X. Jim Woodring’s Frank. Serpieri’s Druuna is epic. Nicolas de Crecy’s Prosopopus is fantastic.

I go to Japan sometimes and grab stuff like Tsutomu Nihei’s Abara, that’s yet to be translated, along with Otomo’s early short story work. I really like Naoki Yamamoto’s erotic comics with his razor-thin line work… really unique.

Only in the last year or so I started reading more current American comics. Brandon Graham and Sean Murphy are great artists and also have really good insights into comics and art. Nate Simpson is unreal. I should say I also get inspired by lots of art outside of comics…

Graphicly – For instance?

Garing – I really enjoy flipping through design and architecture magazines. All sorts of movies. I’m a big fan of Werner Herzog. I read a lot of science-fiction. Sometimes I want to listen to some moody electronic music and then draw while listening to it, so in that case the music comes first. Also, real world events and politics inspire me in a way. Like the abondoned factories have an extra weight to them as visual props because of what they represent in the real world. It’s like if you read about Spain during the time of Goya, and then look at his paintings… it makes them even more disturbing. Art history, in general, is another endless source of inspiration.

Graphicly – In reading Planetoid #1, I was immediately struck by those intricate machines and massive industrial landscapes. What informs the look of this world?

Garing – That comes from the real world. My dad works in manufacturing. When I was a kid he took me to his see workplace which was a massive food-processing plant one of many in central California. Many are no longer in operation due to downsizing and outsourcing. So there’s these hollowed out industrial ruins all over California, all over the U.S. in fact. These are visually interesting to me but they will also form a major theme for readers who stick with Planetoid. For reference I use these Japanese photo books I found that have picture after picture of abandoned factories in Japan. It’s just reality but it looks like science-fiction.

From Planetoid #1 by Ken Garing

You can grab Planetoid #1 exclusively from Graphicly right now.

Comments

  1. Questions. I really want to get Planetoid, but I don’t like Graphicly’s reader, particularly the way pages reveal in blocks at a time, rather than the whole page. Is the app still like that? Is that intentional?

    • You can change the view style to read single pages or spreads.

    • I think I know what you mean with “blocks”. On an iPad 2 it’s barely noticeable, if at all. On a PC I guess it depends on the speed of the PC itself (and it’s graphic card). It’s quite smooth on my wife’s desktop, a tad worse on my older laptop. Still I believe that Graphicly’s image quality is superior than Comixology’s in single panle view.

    • I bought it on the iPad 2 and the app is pretty bad. It crashes a lot, I see no viewing options of any kind, and the pages still reveal in chunks rather than the whole page. I’m officially done with Graphicly till they come out with a better app.

    • That’s weird because I am quite satisfied with Graphicly’s reading experience on the iPad 2, and the app never crashed on me. The store and the library function are Kinda clunky and need serious improvement, but the reading is quite fine. It’s true that the full page reveals in chunks but it’s complete in about one second. Personally I didn’t find it distracting. And the panel transition, if you use it, is smooth.

    • The pages load in blocks to allow for higher rez artwork. And as a result, Graphicly uses higher rez art than other digital comics providers. I honestly don’t even notice it anymore.

  2. Thanks, I’ll have to check it out again when I get home.