Geof Darrow’s work can be described as a forerunner of the Fusion that Frank Santoro and I like to talk about. His work is a mix of Moebius mixed with the frenetic energy of the finer Japanese Manga. I first got into his work, like most, with the excellent Hard boiled. He always grabs me with images that are full of the most ridiculous ideas that under most hands, would probably be a mess but Darrow is able hold it all together. The work available by Darrow is few and far between, but his impact as a cartoonist can be found in the work of many young cartoonists that would stare transfixed on a given image studying every nuance.
This interview was conduct back in February of 2011 when he was set to appear at the Emerald City Comicon and was originally aired on the Inkstuds radio show. When we did the interview, he was pretty close lipped about Shaolin Cowboy. Since then it has been recently revealed that Dark Horse will be publishing future volumes of the series.
Special thanks to Charles Bottomley for continued support in providing excellent transcriptions. Charles also did the transcription work on the Inkstuds book.
Robin McConnell: I guess to run down the comics work, Hard Boiled, Shaolin Cowboy, Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, Bourbon Thret, as well as a plethora of other goodies that came out in France that I have not been able to get my hands on.
Geof Darrow: [laughs] That’s about it, to tell you the truth. There’s a lot of fake titles I came up with that people seem to think exist but never ever…it was joke.
They’re kind of … hopes? Comics you want to do one day, you just know you’ll never have a chance?
No. It was just a joke. The first book I ever did over there…I always liked the Tintin books, because on the back they had this nice drawing of all these titles of Tintin you could buy. So on the first I did, I put all the titles of books of these books that didn’t exist, so it seemed like the character existed as long as Tintin. But you read any of the titles, I can’t believe anybody would think they actually existed. But people didn’t! People would try to order them. The bookstores were kind of annoyed that I’d done that, because they were getting orders for these things. It was funny. I thought it was funny.
Was that something you were doing with Bourbon Thret (said en francais) as well as …
Yeah yeah yeah. Bourbon, actually.
Okay. Sorry, I was trying to be all proper.
No, it’s okay. Bourbon Thret actually is The Shaolin Cowboy in England.
So it’s an earlier incarnation of it or is it the exact same character?
Yeah. It’s basically the same guy.
I want to get a little background on you, because in the time I’ve been putting together this interview, I couldn’t really find very much on you as far as info online, interviews, so I don’t know your background and what got you into comics and what excited you about comics.
Well, like anybody, I grew up reading them and I wanted to draw them because I just loved…I mean, I grew up reading, well, the beginning of Batman and Superman. I was into dinosaurs and stuff, so I used to buy anything that had a dinosaur or monster on the cover. Then I discovered … actually, it was by mistake, because I was at the dentist and next door there was a pharmacy and they only had about three comics and one was like Sugar & Spike or something … some girlie comic. The one they had was a superhero comic that was the Fantastic Four annual where Sue and Reed get married. So it was the whole Marvel universe in one book and I had no idea what that was and I bought it and I became a huge fan of Marvel comics, especially Jack Kirby. That was actually the launching part of my great passion for comics.
I think Kirby’s a good launching point.
Yes, he is and I was fortunate enough to work for him at Hanna-Barbara.
I was going to ask about that.
Gracious! He would come in and just the sweetest man. Just a really sweet guy who should have been treated way better than he was by Marvel and th[...]
