1. Please tell us what first drew you to comics.
My parents always had comic strip collections in the house, and read the funnies page with me when I was little. So, I grew up reading and enjoying and appreciating newspaper strips, and seeing them appreciated by adults (my grandfathers on both sides were fans, too). So comic strips were much more my foundation than comic books, which I only started reading as a teen, and then only for a stretch of about three years or so. I got a collection of Jeff Smith's BONE, which to me had a lot more in common with the strips I loved than the comic books in which I had only a passing interest, and going every few months to pick up a new Bone trade collection was what kept me returning to comic shops. In those shops, I discovered the work of the Canadian cartoonist Seth, and then a handful of other titles. But it wasn't until I started hanging out on a webcomics message board with some cartoonists my age, and seeing their work, that I started purposefully crafting my own to share first with them, and then others.
2. What has been one of your most meaningful/positive collaborations in comics?
I've done very few collaborations in comics; as a rule, I don't like them, preferring to work on my own projects by myself, and reading work done by individuals rather than collaborative teams. That's not always the case, and there are certainly exceptions, but even those exceptions tend to be folks who write and draw their own stuff, and who occasionally team up with a peer (like, say, Matthieu Bonhomme and Lewis Trongheim's TEXAS COWBOYS). That said, I've worked quite a few times with my friend Kyle Starks, sometimes coloring the comics that he's written and drawn (I'm doing one of those right now, actually), and sometimes doing the art (by which I mean anything on the page - line art, coloring, letters) for comics for which he's done the script. We've done two such collaborative projects so far and, I suspect, will do more. Both of us have strengths that the other lacks, or at least isn't as proficient at as his collaborator, and it's nice to see us putting forth a stronger project than either of us might do on our own, objectively, although I still prefer Kyle's solo work to the stuff that we've done together.
3. What do comics allow you to do in storytelling and creating?
What DON'T they allow? Well, there are a few things, sure, but really, the reason that comics appeal to me so much is that it's a very efficient way of doing everything. I can write, draw, design sets, engineer, design costumes, act, color and paint, do research, proffer notions, and generally shoehorn in anything I want to do or want to learn. And I absolutely love the formal aspects of the medium, although I am pretty conservative with how I employ them. Most of my formal play revolves around lettering, and designing the page and composition to account for the lettering, but it's the sort of thing that hopefully no one reading notices, except for colleagues and medium enthusiasts who might think that I did something clever.
4. Please tell us about your work with History Comics, Maker Comics, and any other titles/work you'd like to share about.
The Maker and History Comics were both titles that I was assigned. When First Second asked me about the history line, I got very excited and sent a list of probably a dozen subjects or eras that I would love to do a book about; they told me that their acquisitions team had already determined the subjects of the first wave, and that none of mine were on there, but would I be willing to do a book about the Roanoke colony. I didn't know any more about Roanoke than anyone who learned a little in school, but it was an era I felt I could work with, so I agreed. In researching, it seemed very clear that the colony's failure was no mystery whatsoever (though what happened to the colonists is all conjecture, which is why we have so many different theories), but it seems mysterious without context of everything else going on in Europe and the Americas at the time. So while the book is about the Roanoke Colony, the takeaway from it (I hope) is that events don't happen in a vacuum, and that what has happened before, and what's happening elsewhere, have a huge influence on those events, both historically and in the present.
As to the Car Maintenance book, the folks at First Second knew that I did (relatively simple) auto repair, and reckoned that I'd be a good fit for that subject. I was glad to take it on because I knew how to fix stuff, but I didn't completely understand how all of the different parts of my engine worked from an analytical/theoretical standpoint, and I liked the idea of being paid to learn. I love taking on projects about subjects that interest me because that justifies short-term obsessive hobbying, to which I'm prone.
I'm currently working on a swashbuckling fantasy story called OUTLAW'S APPRENTICE, and it might seem that this would rob me of those learning opportunities, but in service to that story I've learned how watermills work, how to make stained glass, visited a couple of farms, and read some books about logging.
5. Where can we go to find out more about you and your work, including websites and social media tags?
I have a Patreon, which is kind of like a blog that folks can contribute money to on a monthly basis so that I can keep making available free work (I put a lot of paper figures and essays and such online, and will be serializing OUTLAW'S APPRENTICE online, too, when I finish the pencils), though you don't have to contribute to read it.
I'm very active on twitter (schweizercomics), less active on instagram (schweizercomics), almost never active on tumblr except for big stuff (schweizercomics), and sometimes livestream on youtube (chris schweizer).
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