Jim Daly draws a very flattering self-portrait.

Even though Jaime Mendoza is an accomplished inker, he's not above drawing the occasional "hand turkey."

Erik draws the showdown between his index finger and Captain Tulane.

ERIK REEVES

A: Did you eat tonight?

E: Nah.

A: You didnt eat? Did you eat lunch?

E: Earlier today, yeah.

A: How many meals do you eat during the day?

E: Aw man. One.

A: One? Thats bad for your metabolism you know.

E: Yeah! I kind of work on an empty stomach because I get so caught up in the work
That I never get back to eating.

A: Jaime was saying that he had to feed you.

E: Yeah, when I was working with him, I would go over to his house and work all day.
I would get so caught up working on my page that I would forget to eat. I guess Im a true starving artist.

A: So whats the longest period youve gone drawing?

E: I work maybe 6 hours then take a break. Ill watch TV for an hour. to see whats on. I watch those judge shows. Judge Mathis is my favorite. Then maybe, some Queen
Latifah.

A: Latifah still has a show on?

E: Yeah shes starting to get trashy to get her ratings up or something. But after watching TV, If Im lucky, Ill eat a bowl of cereal or something and get right back to work.

A: So are you doing comics full time right now?

E: Yeah, Im doing comics full time. Im working on a couple of independent projects, one in Canada and one for this guy in New Jersey. Im pretty much trying to perfect my art before I feel confident enough to submit some stuff to Image or Marvel. Ive got to get my ammunition up before I go in and really kick ass you know?

A: Yeah, So when did you get started?

E. Well I was doing music for about five years. I had my own solo rap thing going but I had some bad run-ins with some record company executives so I decided to do something different. I had a plan coming out of the Art Institute back in 92 or 93. I had my first album out in 91 and my plan was to rap until I was about 30. Then I would retire and live the rest of my life as an artist. So last year, my music was doing all right but I was ready for a break. I went to Jaime and told him I was really tired of the stressful life and that I wanted to get into art. I asked if he needed any help and he said that if I was really serious about it, Hed take me in and teach me stuff to help him out on his projects. So he took me in and showed me a lot of stuff about inking that, in turn, helped me out a lot with my pencils. So I inked with him for maybe 6 months and we started going to conventions and meeting with people. We hooked up with Jim and I told him kind of jokingly that Jaime and I had been looking for a partner to start up a studio with in Dallas.

A: Cool, thanks.

E. Thats good?

A: Good enough.


JIM DALY

A: So you quit your job today.

J: Thats right.

A: Why

J: Well Im a concept artist and theyre starting work on sports game. And sports game doesnt need me. So I left.

A: How did it rank among jobs youve left? I mean they really liked you there right?

J: It went really well. They threw a big lunch and didnt really want me to leave.

A: Cool. Well, obviously you moved on to another job.

J: Right. Im going to Mesa Logic now.

A: So obviously youve got a primary full time job. This Moonrush thing youre doing now must be a hobby thing.

J: Moonrush is awesome. Its all for fun. Well publish it and if ten people buy it, it doesnt matter. Well complete the entire series because once its done, Its beneficial to all of us. Jaimes doing something different because hes writing something in addition to doing inks. Itll be Eriks first major published thing. I havent been doing comics for almost 4 years so itll be my reintroduction into the whole thing. More than anything I enjoy handing pages to Jaime so he can ink them and make them look better!

A: So when did all of this start?

J: Its been maybe 3 and half months since we started working on it.

A: really?

J: Yeah, I remember we were all at Old Chicago drinking by the pool tables? We asked each other what kind of stories we were interested in and what kind of shit we each liked to draw. A week later we had an idea and just started meeting at my place to work on it.

A: On Wednesdays right?

J: Yeah, the whole book is motivated by dollar beers at Old Chicago.

A: Nice, I really dont want to be here to tell you the truth. Lets go and get some of these so-called beers.

J: I think you still have to interview Jaime.

A: Damn it.


JAIME MENDOZA

A: So youre writing on this book.

J: Trying to.

A: How much of your workday do you spend writing? You have a full-time job right?

J: Yeah, working on Superman for DC. But, usually with the writing Im probably not as structured as some people are. I usually get together with Jim and Erik who tell me what kind of stuff theyd like to see and I get a general idea of how Im going to plan it out.
You know some days I wont write at all and just let it save up. I have these ideas bouncing around in my head and Ill just sit down and bang out about five or six pages.

A: Thats cool. Whose writing do you admire in comics?

J: Oh, there are a lot of guys. Alan Moore is really great. I love his stuff. Watchmen to me is one of the greatest comics ever done. Theres Frank Millers older stuff like Dark Knight Return, and I really like that book, Ronin. He does kind of that mix of that Sci-Fi and samurai stuff. I love the Sci-Fi genre because its so open and you can pretty much do anything you want to do.

A: I noticed that the opening panel of Moonrush is a big Spaceship flying through space. So if it was in a movie itd be like Star Wars.

J: Well, yeah, of course!

A: Im wondering how much of a debt we, as a generation, owe to Star Wars.

J: Shit, were a generation weaned on the teeth of Star Wars! People our age that are producing stuff now, got all of their notions of fantasy and epic-scale intergalactic space battles from Star Wars. So I make no bones about it. Star Wars, creatively, is one of the biggest influences of my life. Seeing it as a kid made me now want to draw, you know?

A: I think we all did that. Everyone knew how to draw a TIE Fighter.

J: Yeah or the X wing! It was a triangle with two little Xs coming out of it! Its almost sad today because I think when we were kids, we were a lot more stimulated with our imaginations. Mainly because of the toys we had or maybe because of the lack of video games. We had to sit there with our Transformers or G. I. Joes and figure out a story and how we were going to play. The thing thats sad today is that kids are almost too zombified by video games. I dont really think they stretch their imaginations like we did as kids.

A: This is kind of sounding like that old man rant about in my days we had..

J: No, no, Not at all.

A: Well kids definitely have a different kind of stimulation these days because of technology. Are you noticing that younger kids arent reading comic books?

J: Sure because theyre into video games.

A: Are you bitter about that?

J: No, it cant be blamed on video games. Its the comic book industrys fault because they havent been keeping up to date with cross-promotion or anything like that. They havent elevated their marketing to anything other than a niche. With Moonrush we want to get into everything. We want to make a TV show or even a video game. If a kid wants to veg-out in front of our Moonrush game thats fine with me!

A: All right. Cool thanks.