GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
JUNE 19, 1998
Evenings Out
The boy with the thorn in his side
Cartoonist Robert Kirby discusses drawing, publishing his first book, and Morrissey
by Christine Hahn
A self-described compulsive doodler since he was in junior high, Robert Kirby is the creator of Curbside, a comic strip which has appeared for the last three years in the Gay People's Chronicle and is also in other GLBT newspapers across the country.
Kirby has just published a collection of his strips with his own publishing company, Hobnob Press. The endeavor was funded by a Xeric grant, awarded every year to promising new cartoonists.
During a recent trip to New York City, I had the opportunity to talk with him.
Christine Hahn: Do you see yourself more as a storyteller or as an artist?
Robert Kirby. I don't really see a distinction. A cartoonist is both an artist and a writer. And I actually prefer the word cartoonist to either artist or writer. Cartooning is a blend of words and pictures and that's just what I've always done. Artist is such a
Robert Kirby
loaded word; it has all these pretentious connotations. So . . . I'm a cartoonist.
Do people expect you to be "funny" when you tell them you are a cartoonist?
People either look at me kind of funny when I tell them I'm a cartoonist, or they have the right reaction and say, 'Oh, cool,' and ask me what my comic strip is like.
I have a hard time describing my cartoon because people are used to Garfield, Peanuts. I tell people it's a "comedy drama.” In a perfect world I would just give people a
whole batch of my strips when they
GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
asked that question. Not that I'm doing something so avant-garde, but reducing it to sound bites just doesn't work.
How did you start doing a comic strip?
I was a blocked artist for years. I had always done cartoony art and stuff but I
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didn't know how to channel it. I couldn't really come up with characters. Then I started reading cartoonists like Aline Kominsky-Crumb; I discovered that you could put yourself in the strips. That was my catharsis. And I was reading more 'zines like Holy Titclamps and the lesbian comic book Lana's World. Those were some of the big influences LEEANN MCGUIRE
on me. It made me want to start doing my own strip. Is it ever a grind to draw your strip every week?
It's a grind only when I have to come up with a strip and I'm not deeply inspired.
I think it's reflected in my work. I can look at certain strips and know when I was really on to something and other times when I was just coasting. Although, doing the kind of strips I do, it's easier to coast 'cause I can always have my characters reacting to their emotional state for an episode.
Do you like doing a serial comic more than a "gag" sort of comic?
I do, but there's a part of me that always wants to go
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back to doing simple gag cartoonsbut the grass is always greener. Lately I have been doing more “snapshot” sort of pieces on Nathan and Drew's relationship. Like 'here they are in a bar going out drinking just for a night'—that doesn't have anything to do with the continuation of the story, but it all goes together.
I like that strip a lot because it gave the characters some depth and you got to find out what Drew was thinking, how he felt about the relationship.
Readers love that sort of strip. They write and tell me that they fantasize about Nathan but feel like Drew. I want to keep my readers on edge. Readers tell me they want things to work out with Nathan and Drew, but they're not sure. They're wondering what's going to happen.
If Nathan and Drew fell in love and lived happily ever after, there's no drama in that, no one would want to read that.
Tell me about your new book.
I could not get the book published. I even had a high-powered agent, a very well respected lesbian agent in New York try and sell the book and she was not able to do it. I think these days you have
CURBSIDE
HOLD THAT POSE! THAT'S IT! YES!
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By ROBERT KIRBY
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FABULOUS.
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to have a huge readership. I have a very respectable circulation, but it's just not really near what big publishing houses are looking for. So, I'm publishing it myself with Xeric grant money. I'm starting my own little press called Hobnob Press.
The book is the first 41⁄2 years, the best episodes from one to 108. It's basically the autobiographical strips with Tony and I. [Tony is Kirby's boyfriend of ten years.] I should say semi-autobiographical.
Looking over them, they mean a lot to me. Although it's funny, they're not nearly as personal to me as the story I'm doing now. I'm able to go deeper with Nathan and Drew. I'm taking the "I" out of it. I can let it all hang out a little more.
Does Tony ever get upset over anything you put in your strip that he might find too personal or wrong?
No, no, he actually eggs me on to make him more unsympathetic. He wanted me to show warts and all. His brother did get very angry with me once. He thought that I was maligning Tony, when it was Tony that told me to write the strip a certain way. Tony is always very supportive.
Does he look like his cartoon version? Yeah. I think Tony actually looks like his cartoon version. I don't think I do at all. Speaking of your personal life, how old were you when you came out?
I was 17. My oldest sister Holly knew that I was gay, drew me out and fixed me up with
her best friend Allen who was gay. He was my first boyfriend for a brief period.
I had it real easy. I didn't have to do the scary 'going to a bar' thing. My family was very supportive, they're very liberal, secular humanist types of people.
Are there any mainstream comic strips that you like?
I really loved, loved, Charles Schultz [Peanuts creator] when I was a kid. Back in the '50s '60s and some of the '70s, he was brilliant. His strips mean nothing to me now, but I've started getting some of the old paperbacks. The really old ones. They were Continued on page 17