The first time I remember seeing Mickey Zacchilli in person was the summer after high school outside of what was, for me, THE show of the summer : The Body w/ Angels of Light Choir, Worms in Women & Cattle, Humanbeast and Arcing (June 26, 2011 at AS220 baby !!!!!). I’m pretty sure it was the fourth concert I’d ever been to so I was already in very high spirits when I noticed Mickey and realized she was up to something. There, on the sidewalk of Empire St., she gathered a wall of women around her and started peeing, and all I could think was “oh my god, she’s even cooler than I thought.”
You see, I was a teenaged Mickey Z fangirl. I’m not ashamed !! It’s hard to explain the amount of amazing work she was producing at the time: chaotic screen printed show posters around the city, tapes by her and other noisers from Providence on her Price Tapes label, COOL DOG stickers everywhere, patches and t-shirts, TONS of comics !! It was overwhelming in the best way possible and I was super deep in it. Fangirling can be such warped, deranged behavior though. I don’t think I ever once tried to talk to Mickey when I was growing up in RI. What’s up that ? What the heck was my damage ? I moved away from RI shortly after that show but this May I was back in town to see my folks and be a groupie for my girlfriend’s band at Providence Popfest so I reached out to Mickey for an interview and finally met her. We got coffee and talked for a while and it was really nice, obviously.
After a long hiatus, she’s got a new comic called GAR (first issue also available in print here) that’s a total blast to read and something that I hope will introduce Mickey’s work to a whole new audience. Even though it really wasn’t that long ago, during that incredibly productive time the internet was more of an accessory rather than the place where we all lived and a lot of what she was making was never documented and uploaded in the way that’s become custom. As things went out of print and became “rare” and expensive, a slippage of memory occurred where Mickey’s work was not easy to come by while the printmaking medium that she helped introduce to the art world (Risography) became a whole industry unto itself. I may not be convincing you that I’ve graduated from my fangirl status by saying this, but I think that anyone invested in underground comics should take the time to really appreciate GAR and everything else Mickey has done. She’s truly one of a kind !
- Ana Woulfe
ANA WOULFE : I mostly want to talk about GAR and what you've been up to recently. I had thought maybe we could talk about older stuff but then I was like ... "WHY BOTHER ?"
MICKEY ZACCHILLI : (laughs) We can talk about whatever !
It feels more exciting that you're working on something new ! As opposed to just talking about stuff that everyone already knows about. But I feel like there was a break for a while...for me the last comic I remember reading by you before GAR was I think in like Lovers Only 2 ? It was a dog one ? Does that sound right ?
Was it like someone was working for a dog ? I looked at that recently and I was like "oh yeah that's still good."
(laughs) I remember really liking that one.
But yeah I took a break because I moved to New York in 2019 and...well there were just alot of reasons why I couldn't do anything or I didn't wanna do anything...
What brought you to New York ?
I just had been living here for so long and I just kinda wanted a change. I moved there late summer or fall 2019 and I worked a bunch of jobs for like 6 or 7 months or whatever and then the pandemic happened in March 2020 as you know. And then I stayed for like 5 more months or so isolated in my apartment by myself because my roommate had left, and then I moved back to Rhode Island. So that was the end of my New York trip.
Yeah that'll do it, that'll get you to come back to Rhode Island. Wait so when did you move here ?
I moved here in 2002 for school and then I just stayed and 2019 was pretty much my first attempt to leave and it didn't work out so well.
Do you think if the pandemic hadn't happened right then would you have stayed in New York ?
I don't know ! I really liked it. I was having a lot of fun...but I was kind of having too much fun ? I felt like I was eventually going to become totally cracked and out of my mind because I was just working a ton and running around being crazy.
Yeah, that sounds exactly like New York to me.
It was great ! It was a lot of fun ! But yeah then the pandemic just screwed with me like I'm sure it did with everybody and then I just couldn't really make anything. I had a bunch of false starts...I kept trying to make stuff but couldn't really do it. The first chapter of GAR took me like a year to make ! And then I got the ball rolling and now every 30 days or so I can do like 30 pages.
And that first chapter feels so different than all the rest !
It feels stiff to me. I was just out of practice. I am out of practice, so it's just like trying to figure out what I want to do.
Well it's interesting because I know the first issue of RAV is just like erased from the history books. Not saying that should happen to the first chapter of GAR but like, maybe you're just not good at the first chapter ? Maybe that's not your strong point.
I mean maybe it isn't ! It's not, but I feel like RAV was different because I didn't have an overarching story in mind so I could just erase the first chapter. With GAR I do so I would have to redraw it...but it kinda has to stay around I guess.
So you do have a mapped out story for this ?
It's really loosely mapped out, but there is sort of like an arc that's supposed to happen. But we'll see if it even does happen, I don't know.
And you're trying to get it done like every 30 days you said ?
Yeah I was just trying to put out a chapter every 30 days like how they do with manga. They put out 30-40 page chapters every 30 days so I figured that would be kinda fun to try and do but this month I had to take off because I had other stuff I had to finish. But I hope to continue !
Do you have any plans to try and print it ?
Yeah I do ! I just got a Xerox machine from a Greek church in Newport. So I was thinking...I have to re-tone all the pages because I don't like the tones and then I'm gonna print.
What's your process for putting tones in right now ?
With RAV I had all these scans of Zip-A-Tone that someone gave me and I would copy and paste them and put them in a multiply layer over the drawings. Then I would color select the dots and gradiate them and erase or whatever. With GAR I couldn't find my tones so I just used a clip studio brush but I think it looks like SHIT.
(laughs) It definitely looks a lot less chaotic, it feels cleaner.
Really ?? I think it's the opposite, I think it looks really messy. And like the lines are already messy and the loose kinda non-contained dots make it look messier and fuzzy and harder to read I feel like.
Interesting. I'll pay more attention specifically to the dots.
I mean, you don't have to !
I feel like I was looking at scans of RAV and scans of GAR and it just looked a lot cleaner to me.
The lines I think are cleaner. It's just sort of like I'm re-teenaging or whatever with my drawings because I'm so out of practice.
Right. How long was it that you weren't drawing ?
Like eight years.
Damn, yeah.
I mean I tried a bunch of times and I did a little couple of things but it was pretty much a solid like seven years or something.
Sometimes it is really good to take a break like that.
No it was really good ! I don't regret it. I'm glad I took a break because I was doing other stuff that was important and is still important.
And you did so much for so long you know, you can't keep up that pace forever.
Yeah. Some people can, like Michael.
But not everyone can ! I feel like something I've always had to struggle with is like, not looking at someone else's pace and being like "I have to do that." You know ? It takes a weird amount of work to be like "This is how I need to be right now, it doesn't matter what that persons doing."
Right, totally.
What were you doing when you weren't drawing in that period ?
I was massaging alot. Before I moved and when I moved back I was a massage therapist, but in NY I couldn't do massage due to a license transfer mix up with New York state. I was also doing Jiu Jitsu, I got my Jiu Jitsu black belt in that time. Not in 8 years, more like 15 years. What else was I doing ? I don't know I was just doing other stuff.
It's nice to do other stuff !!
It was probably mostly Jiu Jitsu.
In your essay about your pen, I saw you talking about how you tried to draw digitally and that wasn't working ?
Oh yeah ! Yeah it just wasn't working.
What about it wasn't feeling right
I guess the lines felt a little more constrained. There were less natural accidents that were good...happy accidents I guess you can call them. Yeah it just felt tight, it didn't feel good. And also the page size really fucked me up. RAV and GAR is all in this exact same 5.25 by 8 size moleskine, and the like infinite canvas kinda fucked me up. And even if I resized it to fit it still didn't feel right. And I didn't like being at home all the time drawing, I like to go other places.
Interesting. I've never tried it.
You've never tried ? It's fun !
It doesn't sound fun to me (laughs). I feel like I really like drawing as a way of not engaging with screens and trying to use screens as little as possible when I'm making zines or whatever. So that feels counterintuitive to me. But I also feel like a lot of people who draw digitally are like making comics for social media, and I think that makes more sense for that format.
It's faster too if you're good at it, it's so quick. You don't have to scan stuff. But yeah that's another thing that changed in the 8 years of not drawing is that the internet totally changed. How people engage with it and stuff.
Definitely. What's the change that you see ?
It just got so much more prominent. Instagram became totally central versus like, it felt like it was more decentralized before.
Yeah. I haven't been on there this whole decade and it's been amazing. I like to think I'm keeping that more decentralized tradition alive. But people get really confused when they find out I don't have an instagram, and that bums me out because that's not even like a good way to read comics most of the time.
Yeah it's terrible. Substack is kinda terrible too, so is Patreon. They're all fuckin' terrible.
I like the site that Jacob made for GAR.
Yeah it was really nice of him to do that !!
Ok so you got a Xerox printer...
Yeah after I re-tone I'm gonna print them
Did you find the old files ?
Yeah ! I had everything in my google drive and I was trying to get off Google Drive and all the files went everywhere, I didn't do a good job of organizing. So I couldn't find anything and used those stupid clip brushes, but I was looking at RAV again and just thought "these tones look so much fucking better and cleaner and more professional." Or, they just make it easier to read I feel like. So I spent like a day trying to find them and finally found them.
Cool !! OK that's exciting I'm glad there's gonna be print versions !
Yeah me too ! I feel like it's not the kinda comic anyone wants to read on the internet you know what I mean ? It's not that kind of comic. It's not something you look at and think "oh I wanna read that !" It's something someone gives you and is like "check this out !"
I don't know about that, I feel like if I had stumbled across it I would be like "Oh I wanna read this." But also I don't know I'm so biased at this point, I don't know what it would be like for someone who's never read any of your stuff. It's funny because I feel like there's a whole new world of comics people and I wonder if they're even aware of you because a lot of your stuff is out of print.
And there's so much stuff coming out now.
Yeah it used to be alot smaller. It's been interesting to see like, I started going to Comic Arts Brooklyn in 2011 - oh, when it was the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest ! And it's been so interesting to watch everything change and escalate over the years. But yeah I wonder how many people are even familiar with your stuff right now because so much of it is out of print.
Probably not many.
Yeah ! So it's exciting to me that there'll be something that people can read, because - I don't know how you feel about this - but I know a lot of people credit you as like introducing them to risograph printing. And there are so many people I know who are obsessed with risograph printing who don't even know ! When Xander's essay on that came out I was like sending it around to people being like "this is the origin story of what you're into !!!" So I'm excited that there'll be some new print stuff from you out there.
But it won't be risograph !
But that's cool ! Xerox is great too.
Yeah I mean Risograph is really beautiful but...it's just too bad that everything's really expensive and it's just an art print thing. It's supposed to be a cheap way to make color prints and hand out your stupid zine, you know? But people do whatever with everything.
I learned how to Risograph on Will Laren's machine and when we would be changing colors he would be like "I just wanna get that disgusting Mickey Z two colors at the same time style !!"
Absolutely !!! Hell yeah.
I loved that his goal was to get a disgusting color because no one's going for that. But you can ! When you're changing the inks you can get just truly gnarly colors.
Yeah it's cool !
What kind of Xerox did you get ?
It's just like a small office printer, so it's like normal width and not very tall. It's just a Kyocera and it's a toner printer. So it's kinda lighter ? Like it's not solid black, not vantablack. But it's dark enough.
Are you gonna do individual issues or collect them into one thing ?
I don't know, I thought I would do individual issues. Oh and one thing I wanted to say about Risograph is that, I don't know if you remember but I screenprinted all the Bullshit Frank and Gorrilla Joe covers. And then I was screenprinting the first RAV cover and Xander was like "oh you know you can just print it on this color machine ?" And I think that's how it happened, so the reason why I switched was because it was less effort to print the colors on the risograph then it was to screenprint them. But you can always still screenprint in your basement or whatever if you don't want to pay someone to risograph your shit.
Yeah I feel like screenprinting is out of style right now - I feel like aside from t-shirts I don't see many people doing screenprinted covers or anything.
Yeah and the thing about Risograph is that because there's no true opacity - or maybe there is, I don't know - it just kinda all looks the same. Like I'm not trying to knock on it, I think it's amazing I think it's gorgeous but there is this sort of generic look to it. Where as with screenprinting you have control over the opacities you can just flat color out if you want to.
Once you've started printing the zines are you gonna try and make it out to conventions or anything like that ?
I applied to the new Brooklyn one because I just saw it and just thought "oh maybe I'll make a zine !" so I applied to it and went and got the photocopier and thought "ugh I've got re- tone all this shit now." So that's one of my deadlines for at least one issue but I was hoping to have at least three out by then, I don't know if I'll be able to print them all. I don't know how many to print ! I don't know if people buy zines anymore...not that they really ever did !!
I think people do !! Are there any plans to reprint some of your old stuff ? Or are you not interested in that.
I don't think so. I mean I have 10,000 copies of Space Academy so I don't think that needs to be reprinted. And I don't know if RAV is worth printing if I'm not gonna finish it. It's just sorta dated.
Is it unfinished ?? I guess it could just go forever.
Yeah there was an 11th volume that I half finished but never published. I reread that though and was like "I had no idea where this was gonna go." But the secret about GAR is that it's in the same world !
Oooo ok cool !! It definitely feels similar. Even just name-wise, three letter name. What was the process for choosing the name ?
Well I guess I thought it would be funny if it was also three letters but it's kind of a spoiler so I don't want to say any more.
Yeah, don't say more !! I like how it took like the third issue to do the classic like "here are the characters of GAR" but then most of them aren't even named yet.
Yeah they're still not named I don't think !
Haha yeah but I appreciated that, it was just a bunch of guys with question marks. Because that's supposed to be like...helpful ? And it just doesn't answer any questions. Like one of the few characters that's named is the baby.
Oh yeah Obblyn ?? God bless Obblyn. Yeah it's funny because the rule is if no one says the name in the story the viewer doesn't know the name. That's my rule anyway.
That's a good rule !! So it's set in the same world as RAV but is there going to be overlap ? Is anyone from RAV going to appear in GAR ?
I think definitely but it won't be a narrative requirement. But there'll be some overlap.
I'm curious about the town it takes place in, there's no mayor. What was the thought process behind that ? Were you just trying to imagine a town that didn't have a mayor ?
No the town is sort of like a cult like community, which is mentioned in the tag line of the story. My like Netflix summary of the story says it's a "cult like community."
Oh I don't know if I caught that !!
I think because it was on the internet...and you're not there !!
(laughs) I'm a little bit on the internet !!
I'll read you it, I'm really proud of my Netflix one-liner !
"Strong female lead"
Not at all...worse !! Think lower. Oh god what was it...OK, this is my own funny joke: "Youths raised in a isolated cult like community are exposed to the outside when two strangers cause an incident."
(laughs) OK cool that does actually help me understand, not that I was confused about the plot or anything but it gives some good extra details.
So that's why there's no mayor. But there's still like ... kind of a mayor.
Is it Obblyn ?
(laughs) Yeah Obblyn's the mayor...the best mayor there ever was !
I reread some old interviews with you to prep for this one, an in an older one with Annie Mok for the Comics Journal you were talking about empathy for even the "bad" characters..
Oh really ?? Wow !
I still felt that with the person in GAR who's all masked up and getting some water for Lampren but also stepping on his toe. Like there was some humanity shown. Is that still something you're thinking about when you're writing this story ?
I mean it is yeah, but I think there's now ... it feels like there's less empathy. There was alot of empathy in RAV even though alot of people did some really horrible things, and the way I remembered RAV...I hadn't read it in years ! And I was just like "oh yeah it's just a comic about how everyone's friends" and then I was reading it and I was like "oh god ! People do some bad things to each other in this comic !!" But in my memory everyone was nice. I think I just cared about all the characters. And I do care about all these characters, but I feel like...no one is good and evil or whatever but the lines are drawn in ways that they were less drawn...either because of me or because of..I don't know !
Yeah, it's cool to try and imagine a more traditional comic narrative where there's supposed to be good and evil...but actually that's not true ! Obviously there are these people who intrude on this society, but then they very quickly kill one of them. So it makes you feel like, I don't know if I trust any of these people !
Right ! The whole thing is a kind of grey. Everything is kinda grey and I have empathy for everyone in that way but it's sort of like everyone's doing worse stuff. There's a little more edge to everybody.
Than the characters in RAV ?
Yeah only a couple characters had true edge I feel like. I did intend for this one to be a little more brutal, but I also didn't remember how brutal RAV was !!
Five years from now you're gonna be like "Oh GAR ? it's just like a bunch of friends hanging out and eating spaghetti !"
Exactly !
Are there any specific politics going into the development of the story or characters ?
I just feel like you can't be totally disconnected from that sort of stuff, but generally things are extraordinarily brutal right now and that's sort of reflected in what I'm making. I'm making a brutal comic. Maybe it's not that brutal, but that was my intention because of how things have been going.
AW: It's hard not to make something brutal right now. Inevitability it's going to be reflected. Space Academy came out under the first Trump administration but...I just feel like we live in a vastly different world than when you were last publishing comics.
MZ: Oh absolutely yeah.
AW: Do you still make music at all ?
MZ: No I haven't made music in a long time.
I can't remember the last time I saw you play a Dungeon Broads set or anything. Probably like 2013 or 2014 ??
Yeah I think the latest was probably 2016 or 2017.
Do you ever feel drawn to do that again ?
Yeah but it was just sort of a time where there was more free time. So that's probably something to do with it!
Yeah it can be hard to find time for music, and space ! I just ask as an old Bloodhuff fan.
(laughs) Fuck ! You know I was in a Pixies cover band and a Sheryl Crow cover band the last few years. That's the last time I've really played.
How was the Sheryl Crow cover band ?
It was so awesome. It was with my friend Sam, who painted backgrounds I think on Tuca and Bertie and I think on Long Story Short, he was playing drums. And Ciana was playing guitar, and worked it out somehow that they were able to play the guitar parts as well as the bass parts just on the guitar, and then I was playing keyboard and singing.
AW: Was that for Halloween ?
Yeah !
Not just an everyday Sheryl Crow cover band.
I wish !!
The post OBBLYN FOR MAYOR : An Interview with Mickey Zacchilli appeared first on The Comics Journal.
Hello, my name is Jack Sparrow. I'm a 50 year old self-employed Pirate from the Caribbean.
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