Zap

GARY GROTH:What was your reaction when you saw Zap #1 for the first time?

VICTOR MOSCOSO:I said "Far out!" I was familiar with Robert Crumb's work because I had seen it in Yarrowstalks, a tabloid that came out of, I believe, Philadelphia. And when Gail and I were in New York in '67, I saw Crumb's work, like "Life Among the Constipated." I couldn't tell if it was an old man drawing young, or a young man drawing old. Just like the old-time comics on acid. Crumb was very enamored of the archaic comics, the early comics and early newspaper strips, just like he was with early music. I was already familiar with his work, but what really got me was the format. Color cover, newsprint inside. Not only that, black and white.

GROTH: What impressed you so much about that?

MOSCOSO: Its cheapness! Cheapness equals availability. Availability equals distribution. You can get rid of millions of them for 50 cents. If we had to charge $5, we wouldn't have sold as many. That's what I saw. I looked at that and I said, "That's it!" Not only that, it smelled like comics when I was a kid. Newsprint has a certain smell, a certain feel. I love that cheapness.

GROTH: It sounds like you thought you could do this without going to a big corporation. You didn't need a huge investment.

MOSCOSO: Yeah, we didn't need a big sponsor, and we could control our work. And the deal we made with the Print Mint, with Don Shenker -- not with Bob and Peggy Rita; that was a different story entirely -- the deal was Don would pay for the printing and the film. Film was ours; copyright was ours and, after he paid off all of his expenses, we would split the profits. Artists would get half, and the producer would get half.

GROTH: Bob and Peggy Rita owned Print Mint. Who's Don Shenker?

MOSCOSO: Don Shenker owned the Print Mint prior to Bob and Peggy. He sold it to them, which I'm sorry about, because they didn't appreciate comics in the same way that Don did. In fact Bob and Peggy hated comics, but loved the money. I wish Don Shenker had stayed on. Bob and Peggy tolerated the comics because of the money. They kept telling us that royalties had to go down because of all of their expenses.

GROTH: Typical new-owner whining. So, you had a second epiphany with Zap.

MOSCOSO: Kind of, yeah, 'cause here I am in the comics. I wasn't a comic-book artist; I was a poster artist. Next thing I know, I change horses in mid-stream.

GROTH: Now tell me how you hooked up with Crumb.

MOSCOSO: He invited us in. He knew who we were. After all, we were famous. Griffin and I were famous in Zap #2. Zap #1 was a sellout on the Haight-Ashbury. He printed up, what, a thousand comics on a multilith machine. The maximum size is probably 11 by 17, max, if that big. Actually, it's probably a little smaller than that, because the first Zaps weren't even trimmed; they were just folded into signatures, stapled and sliced. I have one copy. I gotta get Crumb to autograph it. Make it more valuable.

GROTH: So, he found you.

MOSCOSO: He found me. It was because of me and Griffin being in Zap #2 that made it so easy to get the backing. And where were they distributed? The Print Mint was to be the distributor. They were distributed in poster shops, where Moscoso and Griffin posters were selling like hotcakes. Anything with Moscoso and Griffin on it, at that time, would sell. So, we come out with a comic. Who are these guys? Crumb, Wilson -- holy shit! "Head's First." God! That's disgusting, and then Zap #3, "Captain Pissgums And His Perverted Pirates?" Oh my God! This is going to ruin our children.

GROTH: Your work never had that perverse quality to it.

MOSCOSO: Nah, I'm too normal. I did some sexually explicit stories. "Rumpelstiltskin" was one. That was after I did a Rumpelstiltskin job for a textbook company. It's like drawing in jail, working for a textbook company. So then I did my Zap version, where she fucks everybody.

GROTH: Exorcise those demons.

MOSCOSO: Hey, that's the other side of the coin. So, I got into it, but not the way Crumb and Wilson did. They were taking on the taboos straight on. And at that point I thought the taboos were all illusions, until Crumb did "Joe Blow." Then I realized, OK, you can chop off a guy's penis and eat it. That's all right. But you can't fuck your children. There are limits in this civilized society. It's interesting. That's the way it works. The comics sold even more because of it, of course, but you couldn't buy it over the counter.

GROTH: I think one of the reasons Zap worked so well is because you had so many sensibilities that cohered beautifully together.

MOSCOSO: That's what I loved about Zap. There was another place that it worked really well -- jamming, because each artist had their turf covered so ego didn't enter into our drawings when we drew together. I don't remember any ego problems, because we were all equals. We were not impressed by Crumb, the way some people might be impressed by Crumb, because he was just another artist. I don't give a shit if he created the format for Zap. Rick and I were famous before he was. You're not going to impress me, buster. I was not intimidated. In fact, I did him a big favor, by helping make him a star faster than he would have been otherwise by tying into the poster distribution, which bypassed the Mafia, Marvel and DC.

GROTH: Now, when you say poster shops, do you also mean head shops?

MOSCOSO: Poster shops became head shops. First a poster shop, then a poster/head shop, then a poster/comics/head shop, and then after the posters died off, it was the comics/head shop. I'm sure there are exceptions, but that's roughly the progression of the system of distribution.

GROTH: How did Crumb get a hold of you? Did he just call you up?

MOSCOSO: No, he and Rick ran into each other. Rick showed me a copy of Zap #1, which really impressed me. He says this guy Crumb, whose work I knew, wants us to be in the next issue. We were already doing it. Rick told Crumb, when he invited us in, "You know, we're already working on a comics magazine." And he said, "Well, would you like to join this one?"

GROTH: Where and how, specifically, did you first meet Crumb?

MOSCOSO: I probably went with Rick over to his house. All this time I thought he was a Philadelphia artist. All this time, he'd been on Clayton street, just a few houses off of Haight. He was there all the time. He had been brought there by the posters, like many other artists. The posters were the banners, and they brought all the other artists. And then the comics became the banners, and they brought more artists. The music was doing the same thing.

GROTH: What was your impression of Crumb when you met him? Did you get along well?

MOSCOSO: He thought we were the greatest, man. We were his heroes. After all, "Abstract Expressionist Ultra Super Modernistic Comics" in Zap #1 was his response to Rick Griffin's comic-strip poster. He saw that, he went home and he drew that strip. So, here we are, the big honchos of the poster trip which is what brought him out here. And so we were his heroes. Oh, he was very nice to both of us. Not like now. [Laughter.] Then he had some civility and respect.

GROTH: How soon they forget.

MOSCOSO: How soon they forget.

GROTH: At some point, you must also have met Spain and Wilson.

MOSCOSO: That was later on. First I met Wilson. He showed up in town. I might even have met him before I met Crumb. He came over to my house, again, because of the posters. Here he comes from Kansas, beckoned by the posters, and comes over to my house and he shows me the work that he's doing. I still have that lavender portfolio of pirates he gave me. I gotta get his signature too.

He called me up. That would happen a lot. An artist would say, "Hey man, I'm an artist and I really dig your work, can I come over and show you my work?" I'd say, "Sure. Come on over," and that's how I met Wilson. I think I met Crumb at his place with Griffin.

Comix

GROTH: Your approach to comics is more visually playful than strictly narrative, and I assume that's a deliberate decision on your part.

MOSCOSO: Well, it's a decision, but it's also the way I think, and the way it seems to come natural to me. I finally did get absolutely linear in "Artist and Elves." That's in #12, where I actually wrote the story outline first. It was based obviously on the shoemaker and the elves. Why the shoemaker? Why not the artists? Why can't I go to sleep at night, wake up the next morning and the elves have finished my work, the way the elves had finished the shoemaker's work? And that was like the furthest from the beginning of my development. In other words, one picture follows another picture. After all, in music, one note follows another note. That's the melody. So in a way, I was being very musical, in that sense, in that I was creating a melody in a succession of images, in the way a musician creates a melody by a succession of notes and of chords.

GROTH: It looks like you used a dry-brush technique on that story.

MOSCOSO: I use all techniques. In "Artist and Elves" I'm using a brush, but I use it pretty quick. I do my pencils first, and then I trace over my pencils, and I can go pretty fast. I like that speed. It's not really a dry brush, but because you can see the individual hairs, it takes on that look.

GROTH: It looks spontaneous.

MOSCOSO: Yeah, that's what I wanted. So, I would do them pretty fast, but there was a lot of preparation leading up to that to make it spontaneous. It takes a lot of work to be spontaneous. Sometimes I do my spontaneous drawings, it's not a lot of work but then they're not done for a job; they're done for no reason other than to please me. When I'm doing a comic strip that's going to get published, the audience comes into effect, and then, in order to make it spontaneous looking, it takes a certain plan, and that is you get it to the point where you submit it almost to your subconscious.

In "The Artist and the Elves," it's tracing. I work out all my drawings in pencil on index cards. I then get another index card, a blank one, put it on top, and after everything was worked out in pencil I just go right down with my ink, and I just trace. I try to trace at least a page a sitting.

GROTH: How tight are your pencils?

MOSCOSO: Pretty tight. They're linear and pretty tight, I'll even do the hatching sometimes. Then I will trace the hatching with my brush.

GROTH: Do you design the page as a whole?

MOSCOSO: Yes, and I design them as a spread. You see the right hand first. I don't care if number two comes before number three; you see number three first when you turn the page, then you read number two. The even numbers, although they come ahead, are seen later, but you have to read them first. So I plan spreads. If I want to surprise somebody with a particular image, I try to put it on the next spread, not at the end because it won't be a surprise; you'll see it. Then you'll turn over the page, and there's the surprise. If there's going to be a surprise, like when my studio gets wrecked in "The Artist and the Elves," it's on the right-hand side, so that when you turn the page, "Oops! Holy shit! How did that happen?" and then you read as to how that happened.

I think I improved on "The Shoemaker and the Elves" because I always thought the ending sucked; after the couple stays up and they see these naked elves come in and make shoes for them. So, to return the favor, they make them clothes. Once the elves get the clothes, they split and never come back. I said, "Wait a minute. First of all, the elves can make shoes, they can certainly make clothes. What kind of an ending is that?" So, in my story I have them destroy my studio.

[To read the rest of this interview, please see The Comics Journal #246.]

All site contents are © 2002