Visiting Artist: Noah Van Sciver

Noah van Sciver is the 2015-2016 fellow at The Center for Cartoon Studies. He was raised in a Mormon household that was full of comics: Ren and Stimpy, Ralph Smart, and Bone. His brother Ethan, another cartoonist working for The Big Two, convinced Noah to give up fine arts and go into comics. And then Noah saw the movie Crumb. Before this movie, Noah had thought comics were restricted to superheroes and Ren and Stimpy. But here was this guy making personal comics.

Noah van Sciver in front of Fante Bukowski as drawn by Luke Howard.

So Noah started drawing on his lunch breaks. Then he made come free photocopies of his comics and would sell them for “$1 or a coffee” or “$2 or some ramen noodles.” Anything to get people to read his work. For a time, Noah thought the stapled floppy was the coolest. Then when he had that format figured out, he thought the graphic novel was the coolest. This series of comics is what became his serialized Blammo collection.

Noah looking dashing for the audience.

Always the marketing man, Noah harassed radio stations (even am!) to get on to talk. He was obsessed with getting his name out. Through all this work, he found a zine guy to distribute his work. Then Sparkplug said they would distribute his work but not publish it. Later he would take his comics to bars to sell them, setting up a table in his own little one-man comic convention. He was always thinking of ways to get his comics into people’s lives.

Noah is a very entertaining speaker.

After a while, Noah wanted to try a new way of publishing a long-form comic. With his friend Joseph Remnant, he created the website The Expositor where both of them serialized the long-form comics they were working on. In Noah’s case, this was Saint Cole. This comic is about what Noah feared his life would become, starring an alcoholic waiter. This comic was easier to sell because he already had a relationship with Fantagraphics.

Attentive and knitting (Hedj and Kotaline Jones).

And if all that weren’t enough, AdHouse put out Youth is Wasted, a collection of comics from Blammo; Fantagraphics recently published Fante Bukowski where Noah makes fun of the artists he knows; and soon a Johnny Appleseed comic will be published for which Noah was the artist. After all his hard work on a comic he didn’t write, he is excited to get back to his own work. He already has 3 books he’s ready to work on!

Noah talking with Steve Thueson (’15).

Noah works both traditional and digital. He does wash and ink before taking it to the computer to color. He uses wash, or sometimes colored pencils, to add texture before digital coloring. He doesn’t work to a set schedule. But with Fante Bukowski, he realized if he could make a page a day, he would have a complete graphic novel in 3 months.

Noah with his favorite book in the Schulz Library: Black Lung by Chris Wright.

Photos courtesy Abe Olson.