Indie Edge May 2009: Roman Dirge

This month’s featured creator is…

 Roman Dirge

Roman Dirge is the creator/writer/artist of Lenore: The Adventures of a Cute Little Dead Girl, a series about a small zombie girl with a penchant for accidentally harming small animals and spouting memorable funny catch phrases. Created in 1992, the series has garnished Roman four Eisner nominations and captured legions of fans. Roman has penned numerous other books with Slave Labor Graphics and a Christmas tale titled, It Ate Billy on Christmas (OCT070035), with Dark Horse Comics.

Roman worked as a conceptual artist for Disney, was a staff writer at Nickelodeon for Jhonen Vasquez’s Invader Zim, did commercial design for Klasky Csupo, directed animated shorts for Sony, and was a professional close-up magician.

He is currently working on several new books and developing new ideas for film and television. He collects taxidermy, medical oddities and is a pretty snappy dresser.

So, what are you reading?

Mouse Guard	The Walking Dead

What am I reading? Currently, I’ve been plowing through The Walking Dead (Vol.1: JUL068351D) to get my zombie fix. I’m addicted to these books. I definitely have a love/hate relationship with this title. Yet I’m compelled to read on to find out what will happen next to the rag tag survivors. My little zombie character is mentally challenged and says things like “Oh, gawd! Noodle arms!”, so what do I know?

All I know for certain is that every time a new issue comes out I have to absorb it with my seeing balls. Zombie crack, man. Zombie crack. I also just got caught up on Mouse Guard (Vol. 1: FEB073160). I love this book. Watership Down is one of my favorite all-time movies, and I get a similar feel from this series. It’s like Watership Down meets Warcraft. That’s like putting peanut butter with chocolate. Everybody wins, you know? (Except for people allergic to peanuts…) There’s just something about watching cute little critters dealing with drama and battles that resonates with me. I also respect any title that can successfully pull off a 7-page crab battle.

Roman, what are you working on currently?

I’m excited to be working with Titan. It tugged on the heart-strings to leave SLG Publishing after having such a long relationship with them. I have nothing but love for them, especially their founder, Dan Vado. He gave me my start in the industry and was like family. I regret how we parted ways. Without SLG, I’d probably be asking you what kind of cheese you want on your sandwich and if you want the combo meal. Titan has a lot of things planned for me.

I’m currently coloring all of my older issues of Lenore. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now. Since the series has become somewhat perennial and reprinted so many times, I’ve been embarrassed of the older issues’ artwork. I started the series in 1992 and really had no idea what I was doing back then. This is my chance to clean things up, add backgrounds that are more than a grey gradient, etc. Don’t worry. It won’t be the equivalent to Han Solo stepping over Jabba’s tail or anything. It’ll be “peachy-keen, golden unicorn riding while wailing on a guitar” awesome. Titan has set out a pretty aggressive schedule for me, so you’ll be seeing an increase in the amount of books I sling out. You’ll also see an increase to the bags under my eyes and the hump on my back.

The project I’m most excited about in my new hand-holding, kissy-faces alliance with Titan is my very first art book titled Taxidermied. That almost makes me feel like a big boy grown-up. Almost. That concept is hard to grasp for me. I woke up this morning still clutching the video game controller I fell asleep playing and an empty juice box next to my head. Until this, my paintings have only popped up here and there as fillers for my other projects, so I’m pretty jazzed on this whole endeavor. They’ve also set schedules for me to finally get some other books done, like Samurai Sloth and The Bear and the Belly Lint, that I’ve been working on. This is good for me because I’m pretty scatterbrained and tend to do too many things at once, so they never get done. I’m watching Bones on Hulu.com and reading CNN while I’m typing this. I’m also trying to figure out why my cat is sitting next to me, staring at me without breaking eye contact. It’s disturbing.

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Check out the Comics section for the Previews Exclusive hardcover edition of Roman Dirge’s Lenore: Noogies from Titan Books — presented in full-color for the first time!