Interviewed: Matt Bors on his comics
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Joe Macare of Truthout interviews editorial cartoonist Matt Bors.
JM: Your work, as the book showcases, includes editorial cartoons, graphic journalism and prose essays. Can you talk a little about why you do each type of work?
MB: I consider comics a writing job and I’ve always wanted to stretch out and make longer arguments in my work. The writing in the book came about as I started to think about a collection and realized I had a lot left to say that I didn’t touch on in my short little comics. A lot of political writing is painfully unfunny, dry and self-serious. I wanted to write about serious issues – reproductive rights, dronin’ Muslims, the economic death pit of hell – and actually have it not leave the reader in guilt-ridden despair.
Part of where I’m going with my work is trying to do more comics journalism about real people and real stories, not just react to the news with opinion cartoons. In comics you have to have all these skill sets: write, draw, tell a story, be funny. Comics journalism adds reporting (and time) on top of that. But some of the work people are doing in this field shows the results of more in-depth, longer pieces are worth it.
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