Cotter Reaches New Heights with Skyscrapers

This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week May 20, 2008 Sign up now!

by Wil Moss -- Publishers Weekly, 5/19/2008 4:54:00 PM

One of the most notable alternative comics releases of the year is the collected Skyscrapers of the Midwest, Joshua W. Cotter’s beguiling story of a boy growing up on the plains of the Midwest. While parts of it are autobiographical, Cotter packs the story with beautifully depicted fantasy elements, darkly comedic observations of daily life and loftier sequences about life, religion and death.

Skyscrapers started out as a minicomic. It won the 2004 Award for Excellence in Mini-Comics from the Isotope, a comic book store in San Francisco, and shortly thereafter was picked up by AdHouse Books, where it expanded to a four-issue limited series.

With his story now complete and a gorgeous hardcover collecting all four issues due out soon, Cotter spoke with PW Comics Week about the origins of the story, how he worked over the years to maintain a consistent art style on the book and why his characters look like cats.

PW Comics Week: Tell me about the genesis of the story of Skyscrapers—did you know it would be the story it is now, or did it start out smaller?

Joshua W. Cotter: I’d just finished a three-part minicomic called FUN—it was the first thing I’d ever done in comics. It was a little experiment that grew into a 72-page narrative. After finishing a story that long, I was interested in writing some short stories. There were a lot of issues about childhood that I wanted to address and [so I] decided to do a little one-man anthology-type thing. It took me about three months to create the first Skyscrapers mini from concept to execution, and I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

I wasn’t actually certain if I was going to do any more Skyscrapers minis after completing the first one, but once it started getting some positive feedback from the outside world, I figured I’d go ahead and do one more. Chris [Pitzer, AdHouse publisher] and I decided to collect the first two minis into one large issue, and at some point we decided to make Skyscrapers a four-part limited series.

I have reservations about calling the collected Skyscrapers a “graphic novel.” There are consistent themes and characters throughout the four issues, but I just don’t feel right about calling something that wasn’t initially conceived as a novel a “novel.” Not for me to decide though, I suppose.

PWCW: Why did you make the decision to go with anthropomorphized characters?

JWC: I’ve always been drawn toward stories told with anthropomorphic characters. Growing up, my favorite shows were The Muppets, Sesame Street and Looney Tunes. I was obsessed with books like Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, Aesop’s Fables and countless Little Golden Books. I guess I went with anthropomorphic characters because the stories that had the greatest and deepest impact on me utilized them so well.

PWCW: Any particular reason you went with cats for the main characters?

JWC: Cats were abundant in the farmland where I grew up. I almost had a deeper connection with them than I ever did with people. My grandmother and I would always go out to the old barns and sheds in the springtime looking for kittens. There are two fat ones lying on the table next to me under the lamp right now.

PWCW:A lot of these childhood experiences seem pretty universal, but how much of it is drawn from your own childhood?

JWC: I started most of the stories in Skyscrapers with something that actually happened to me as a narrative armature and just kind of built around it with these fantastic elements, kind of like I would when I was a kid. Or like any of us did as kids—real life is pretty boring, so we create these strange little fantasy worlds. Things like not getting picked for kickball are pretty universal, but most of the base stories are autobiographical; relieving myself in the woods at scout camp, the robot backpack my mom bought me for my birthday, the girl I had a huge crush on in fifth grade kicking me in the groin with cowboy boots after the chili supper—those are all real. The side characters—like the abused robot, the unhappy couple in the trailer, the old man and his dog—they’re all kind of composite characters based on different people in the area where I grew up.

PWCW: On that note, can you tell me a little about your upbringing? Do you have a brother or siblings?

JWC: My upbringing was pretty much like how it’s portrayed in the book (I’m the protagonist for the most part, and the little happy guy is my brother). My family was lower-middle-class. I grew up on some farmland in between a couple really small towns (the landscapes in Skyscrapers are based entirely on where I was raised in northwest Missouri).

My little brother and I were always social rejects, and while we had hundreds of acres to play on and explore, we somehow still managed to stay inside most of the time, watching cartoons (on our three or four channels), playing with action figures and drawing all day, every day. We never really got along very well growing up (he was disgustingly cute, and I was angry at the world), but we’ve become really close over the past few years. Our brains work in similar ways.

PWCW: How did you get into making your own comics in the first place?

JWC: I graduated from college in 1999 with a B.F.A. in illustration and started working as a production artist for a sticker/poster factory in Kansas City. (They invented the bumper sticker!). I started [doing] some freelance spot and cover illustrations for alt newsweeklies here and there, but for the most part I was working 50-60 hours a week at the sticker factory.

Right before I graduated from college, I had a friend that introduced me to indie/alternative comics (growing up in the country, I didn’t even know such a thing existed), and I had seen the Crumb documentary a couple years prior to that. All of that kind of rekindled the comic obsession of my youth and I started reading a lot of alt/underground stuff.

So I’d been working at the factory for a year or so when a friend at work handed me a minicomic that he and some other guys made in their spare time. Up to that point, it didn’t even occur to me that you could even do something like that (I’m kind of slow). I saw it and something just clicked.

Within a couple months I was making minicomics.

PWCW: Now that you’ve finished the story, what are your plans for the future? Is this Book 1 of Skyscrapers, or is this it?

JWC: I’m pretty sure this is it for Skyscrapers. If I was to continue on with the characters (which I don’t have any plans to do at the moment, and don’t anticipate happening any time soon), it would have to have a different title. I feel like, the way I ended it kind of makes it so the title wouldn’t mean what it was supposed to mean if I went on.

I don’t think I’m going to start any major projects any time soon, though. I lost a good part of my mind working on Skyscrapers and I need to work on some personal projects for a while, try to get my bearings if they’re still there.

I did just finish a minicomic so I’d have something extra to take around to conventions this year. I did a quarter-page in my sketchbook, one a day, every day in March. I pretty much did whatever I felt like from day to day, so there isn’t a narrative or anything (as far as I can tell). Lots of quick strips, figure studies, experimentation. I’m calling it March Hare, and I think I might start doing it every March from here on out so I can eventually collect them into a larger book. Or until I get sick of it, anyway.