Jeff Seiler: Gerhard & Me

JEFF SEILER:

On November 11, I purchased Heavy Metal # 283, which includes an eight-page story written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Gerhard. That evening, I called Ger to tell him how much I liked it and he sent me an email response that started the following short exchanges between him and me:

Hi Jeff, 

We don’t have long distance calling to the States as part of our phone plan. So this is the best way to communicate. Thanks for the kind words about the cat story. Kinda cool that you were there when it all started, eh? Still waiting for the rest of the script. Have no idea when the other 40 pages will get done. Don’t think it’ll be serialized in the magazine but supposed to be released as a graphic novel (Well... short story, really.) Hope you’re doing well.

Best wishes,

Ger (and Shel)

P.S. Best of luck with your new President.

Hi Ger

Yeah, I just thought that you might like to hear what I had to say about the HM story in my own voice. When it all started? Do you mean my commission [for a drawing of my cat] was a jumping-off point for you doing this story? That WOULD be cool. Or, maybe you mean that I had already been buying Cerebus for over a year when your first issues (the Epics and then #65) came out. Regardless; cool. Let me know, wouldja, about how the rest of the story is to be released, when you find out, please?

Yeah, good luck. At least it wasn’t/isn’t Hillary.

Hope you both are well and all set for your long winter’s nap.

My very best to you both.

Jeff

Jeff,

I meant that you were there when Jeff Krelitz came up to my table [at the Minneapolis Wizard World Con this past summer] looking for someone to draw Grant’s story. You said, “Hmmm... I’m not going to be able to sit next to you anymore.” How much beer were you drinkin’?  :)

Ger

Ger,

Says the guy who can really put it away! ;) Wow! I totally forgot about that! Hey, that IS really cool. I remember now, eavesdropping, and thinking, “it’s about time somebody got Ger onto another big project.” So, you can get Grant to autograph my copy, right? ;) BTW, am I right that he’s kind of writing an homage to “Chinatown”, the movie? Okay, off to the next thing.

Take care.

Jeff

Jeff,

Grant wanted it “film noir-ish” and Chinatown definitely qualifies as that. But the story is based on, and a tribute to, Louis Wain.

-G

[As per Wikipedia, if you don’t want to look it up your own selves, Louis Wain was an illustrator who worked in the late 1800s and the first couple of decades of the 1900s who specialized in drawing anthropomorphized cats. He made a good living at it, but was hospitalized late in his life with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, which most scholars believe was a misdiagnosis. Regardless, as he aged, his drawings became more and more abstract, to where some of his latest drawings only vaguely looked like cats, even though they were meant to. Check out the Wikipedia entry. Very informative and, hopefully, true. I’ve seen some of those drawings by Wain, probably in psychology textbooks. Shoulda remembered them.]