22 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE MAY 19, 1995
Eric Orner talks of Ethan Greene's past and future secrets
Continued from previous page
EO: My all time favorite is Rho Chast in the New Yorker, Sylvia by Nichole Hollander-and now I have to admit, she plugged my first book on the back-but I liked her even before that. I love Lynda Barry, Jennifer Camper. I love Alison Bechdel. I always describe the difference between Alison Bechdel and I, as Alison is like a camera, you zoom right in, you're there at that bookstore. I'm like an old-fashioned fairy tale book. "Lets gather around and I'll tell you what we're going to talk about today." I think it's harder to do what Alison does.
Alison thinks the paper I draw on is kind of dumb. I mail order it from Ohio Graphic Arts in Cleveland. I'm addicted to it. Because it's ... uh, well there's special cartoonist's tricks
I can't tell-but you'd be surprised, sometimes kids call me with questions and I tell them, "I can help you in any way but I can't tell you what paper I use." Alison will say, "That company is going to fold, then what are you going to do?"
CH: Stock up on it!
EO: That's what she says! But it's expensive and I've got party blouses to buy!
CH: Does your family read your strip? EO: Yes. I have a little brother, Peter. He's wonderful about it. He's straight and has been very supportive. He was the only person I was worried about telling I was gay. You know, a younger sibling, he was always in college. I was convinced his fraternity friends would give him a problem but half of them turned out to be gay. I worried about him. Our parents are divorced, we're the only siblings, and then he
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My mother runs the state cultural agency in Illinois. She's surrounded by a bunch of really queeny gay guys who come running into her office each week with my strip in the Windy City Times yelling, "Rhoda, Rhoda, look at this!" My father is kind of a hard-bitten Loop lawyer. The strips don't resonate with him much. He says there's too much writing.
CH: Does your history background affect your writing?
EO: In Ethan it does, and I try to encourage it. I think we end up being a tribe of people who really do have a history. Much of it reminds me of the history of the Jews, and it's been a history of repression. I think it's critically important that we as gay people are versed in that history, especially when we are so enormously lucky to find ourselves alive now, considering when we could have been alive. I myself am not at all religious, but I am of Jewish heritage, and fifty tiny years before and they could have gotten me on two counts. I try and weave into my strip references like books on Ethan's bookshelf like The Story of Harry Hay I think its important. Knowing our own story is critical. Especially since there are enormously powerful forces who would take it all away from us.
CH: Are you interested in getting syndicated?
EO: Sure, I would love if King Features picked up the strip, but the bottom line is—and they told me this-they like my stuff but it's too dicey for them. A mainstream paper just isn't going to print Ethan.
CH: Adam and Steve maybe?
EO: Adam and Steve is something that's kind of sitting on my back burner. I haven't figured out what I want to do. Actually that's the prescription for breaking into syndication. Something very simple, something maybe about the domestic lives of gay people. I don't know whether I'd be the one to do it. I'd like to try. I made some feeble stabs at it last year with Adam and Steve. I'm going to try it again.
CH: They weren't bad.
EO: Thanks. They are just so different. People expect Ethan, they want red meat, something to sink their teeth into. They want lots of drawings and tiny jokes and big themes and little talking cats. There were some people that were supportive of Adam and Steve, and then there were other people like my editor in Toronto: "Well I just don't know what this is at all! Let me tell you something, sister, this is certainly not what we pay our twenty-five Canadian dollars for!"
CH: What about merchandising? Where are the Ethan Greene T-shirts, the coloring books, ties, lunchboxes?
EO: I'm glad you asked. I've been very lazy about that. I don't know why, except there's not enough hours in the day, but I'm working on that. There's a company in Atlanta that's offered to help me with it. It's just a matter of me doing the designs and I'm hoping to do that real soon. I think people would like a T-shirt or a mug.
CH: Are you interested in ever doing animation?
EO: Yeah. I would love it. I'm never going to stop cartooning. Whether it would be an animated Ethan I don't know. I think Matt Groening is a good example. Life in Hell is where his heart lies, he addresses things in that strip that he doesn't in The Simpsons. There are some things that newsprint was made for. Sometimes it's something that you may be a little embarrassed to see on a TV screen.
CH: How many newspapers does Ethan Greene run in?
EO: That number bounces around like crazy because a lot of these papers don't always stay in business. I just keep a running total, it's over sixty-five in terms of how many I've been in. But I'm currently running in over half of that number.
CH: Do you have another collection of comics coming out soon?
EO: Yes, it's called The Friends and Exlovers of Ethan Greene or Ethan Greene's Friends and Ex-lovers. I would like it just to be called Friends and Ex-Lovers, but then the half-wits in the world wouldn't know it's Ethan's stuff and they wouldn't buy it.
CH: As a final question, are there any exciting developments coming up that we should know about in Ethan's life?
EO: There is a development that I care about.
Ethan's going to have a nasty affair with this guy he's beginning to see from Montreal. Bucky seems to have adopted this teenage lesbian. I like it so far. It's funny because I had to find pictures of what a fourteen-year-old queer girl would wear. I couldn't find pictures anywhere. Then one day at my day job, right outside was a young queer people's protest. It was just perfect. You should of seen me. I was taking pictures.
CH: What were they wearing?
EO: Well, you can't wear pants that aren't drawn on. They were wearing low key sneakers-like Keds or Converse-overalls, rasta braids, little shirts showing their bellies, and buttons. Anything that kind of made a statement. They looked at me like, "Who's that old guy taking pictures?" They didn't read the papers so they didn't know who the hell I was. I was not dressed in a way that was... CH: Cool?
EO: (laughter) Yeah. I look kind of like Opie Taylor, and they wanted to freak me out. They don't know that I've been around the block a few times. So they had one guy, who doesn't know it but is going to become this fabulous drama queen, but doesn't understand it yet. They said, "Michael, show him it! Show him it!" They were like, "Yes, you have to, you have to, it will gross him out, he'll be so freaked out!"
It was a nipple piercing, and I didn't want to take away his moment, but I thought, "Sweetheart, I've sucked on more of those than you have years on your driver's license, and in places that are not as polite as your nipple." But I played along and said, "Oh, my." I wanted to empower them, give them their opportunity to freak out an old guy.
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