The Real Thing – ft. Aaron Lopresti (Part 1)

There are a ton of writers and artists working in the world of comics, and here at WCBR, we spend most of our time talking about their products.  Now we’d like to introduce a new, hopefully ongoing, feature where we chat with the real thing.

Aaron Lopresti started in film, but transitioned into commercial art and later, into comics.  His work was first widely seen in Malibu Comics’ Ultraverse, and since then he has done work for both Marvel and DC, including art duties on Gail Simone’s run of Wonder Woman.  Most recently, his art has appeared in DC’s Weird Worlds, a sci-fi miniseries with multiple features.  Lopresti not only draws the “Garbage Man” feature, he also writes it, his first high-profile writing gig.

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If there were a museum dedicated to Aaron Lopresti, and an exhibit for Most Influential Comic He Read, what comic would be put in that glass case?

Wow.  That’s an original question.  Unfortunately I don’t have an easy answer. There have been several comics at different times in my development and growth as an artist that have had a profound influence on me.

I would say first Captain America #113.  Steranko’s work in that book was mind-blowing.  I became a huge Wrightson fan around 1977 and had to retroactively discover Swamp Thing.  His treatment of Batman in issue #7 was incredible.   Walter Simonson’s visual style and storytelling in Thor #337 was inspirational.   But probably my two favorite comic stories of all time came later.  The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland showed me how intricate and clever writing and illustration in comics could be.  Finally, Mike Ploog’s Adventures of Santa Claus inspired me to new heights shortly after my professional career began.

What’s the first thing you ever drew that you’d consider your first venture into comics art?  Let’s say in your museum, this would be the first thing patrons see in the marble art gallery.

I started getting into comics around age 11.  I immediately formed my own comic label with my next-door neighbor.  I did a ton of covers featuring all of the characters we created but as far as I can remember I only did two partial interiors.  Morty the Meatball (my Howard the Duck  rip-off/also stolen from a TV commercial) and Solar Man.  I can’t remember which one I did first but I think they were both around age 12.

You studied film writing and directing at USC, then worked at Tri-Star Pictures for a time.  Did you learn things that influence your comics writing and illustration today?  Do you see any similarities between the two fields?

Film school really helped my writing and understanding of how to put a story together (although some may ague that point).  However, my art suffered because a lot of the wild stuff you might do as a comics storyteller you don’t do as a director. In film school I was trained to devise shots that did not attract attention to themselves.  If you are calling attention to your “cool” shots you are pulling the viewer out of the movie. When I tried to get into comics, I had to look at a lot of Jim Lee’s work to recapture my dynamic storytelling sense that I had as a kid!

There are similarities between film and comics in that they are both venues for storytelling.  But there is a whole lot more you can get away with in comics than you can in film.  Crappy dialogue can be glossed over in comics, but it won’t go unnoticed in a film.  Story pacing and character development can be handled quite differently as well.  A successful comic creator can fall flat on his face trying to make a film (as we have seen).  Likewise filmmakers can struggle just as mightily when trying to write comics.