Today on the site Sean T. Collins interviews Simon Hanselmann. Here he is on the characters he's most associated with:
Meg, Mog & Owl, I’ve discovered, are not very well known in America. It’s British, from the Seventies. Huge in Australia. I adored them when I was learning to read. I recall drawing some comics in a mock Jan Pienkowski style in my teens.
My Megg, Mogg & Owl were kind of an accident. I drew a one-off thing of a witch and cat for a gallery show in 2008 and just kind of liked them and wanted to draw more. I was in the middle of my stupid graphic novel and needed an outlet for fun, quick stuff. I added “Owl” in as a roommate and it just kind of exploded and became my main focus. I love these characters. Sometimes I forget that those old kid’s books even exist. And there really are zero similarities beyond the names and the “classic grouping” of a witch and her familiars.
I do worry about the legal side of it sometimes. Are those extra “G”s enough? The fact that the characters are completely lacking in any similarities? Is that enough? I was stoned and I mashed together my life and a blurred, beloved memory from my childhood. Is that a crime?
Somebody wrote me up into that wiki entry about eight months ago, dubbed the comic a “pastiche.” I edited it out of the entry, paranoid it would ruin my book deal negotiations with a cease and desist order. I ended up signing a deal and they don’t seem to think it’s an issue. I guess as long as the title on the cover isn’t Megg, Mogg, & Owl there shouldn’t be a problem. It’s “art.” It’ll say: “for adults.” TW: many, many things.
Last year I did actually write a script to pitch to Cartoon Network with all the names changed. “Steven” kind of works for Owl but I could never nail the others. I really really don’t want to have to change the names. Not at this point. It would be so fucking weird.
Dammit, I want a TV show. Actual serious goal: Get a TV series picked up at some point in the future. It doesn’t seem impossible at all. Oddly realistic. Just work hard. Attention producers: live action. Lindsay Lohan as “Megg,” cat puppet voiced by Nick Bakay, Eddie Murphy in an Owl suit. Special guest Robert Downey Jr. as “Werewolf Jones.” Half bong jokes, half pit of despair and depression.
Elsewhere:
Brigid Alverson covers some recent graphic novels for teens.
The San Francisco Bay Guardian on the "triumph of queer comics".
And Gilbert Hernandez interviewed on the CBC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0l3CHXk5CCY
