Monty Kane is the artist and writer of Planet Saturday, a new weekly comic on Modern Tales. With his wife, editor Kelli S. Kane, Monty explores the humor and wonder of childhood–and parenthood. Monty was kind enough to answer a few questions about comics, family, and his childhood encounter with Stan “The Man” Lee.

Shaenon Garrity: Much of your background is in game design. Did your work on video games
prepare you for drawing a comic?

Monty Kane: No, it’s really the other way around- a lifetime of drawing prepared me for working as a animator and game artist.

I started drawing avidly when I was three or four years old. I didn’t become interested in video games until some years later, when they were invented. Pong showed up at my house when I was eight or nine, I guess, but by then I already knew that I loved comics, and wanted to draw them. Of course, after that I got all distracted, and it took me another thirty-odd years to come back to it…but at eight I had a clear sense of purpose!

As a matter of fact, at around that age I sent a letter to Marvel Comics, addressed to Stan Lee. I explained that I wanted to be an artist, and I enclosed a drawing I’d made of the Hulk. It looked like a sack full of basketballs- lumps everywhere expressing MUSCULARITY!!! without any grasp of anatomy. It probably had a word balloon saying “Yarrrrgh!” with most of the r’s written backwards–that sort of thing.

I actually got a letter back from the man, saying that I was on the right track, and that I should send my work again when I was a little older and had done a little more studying. It should have been a great encouragement. Unfortunately what I was hoping to get back was a job offer, so I was terrifically disappointed.

SG: What inspired you to start drawing Planet Saturday?

MK: Well, my wife and my daughter are my constant inspirations in life. As far as being inspired, specifically, to draw comics…

I lost interest in comics as a teenager, and didn’t reconnect with them for a long time. This was partly because I was disappointed at not being asked to draw lumpy people for Marvel at age eight…but I think I also got tired of the standard superhero beat-’em-up fare, and I was too young to buy Heavy Metal, and Dark Knight Returns and the whole “graphic novel” revolution hadn’t happened yet. And Star Wars came out, and I read the Lord of the Rings books, and my taste for wildly imagined fantasy sort of wandered off in other directions.

So it’s only in recent years that I’ve reconnected to comics, through the web. I think Kazu Kibuishi’s Copper was the first thing I saw that lit the light bulb over my head and made me think about publishing online.

SG: What are some of your influences as a cartoonist?

MK: Early-seventies Peanuts paperbacks, Mad magazines, Marvel comics, and Saturday morning cartoons. These are not only my influences as a cartoonist, they’re the basic building blocks of my personality. Frightening but true. As adults we like to pretend that we are deep, complex, and unknowable, but in fact I am one scoop of Bugs Bunny plus two scoops of Charlie Brown.

SG: How much of the comics are based on your own childhood, and how much is based on your kids?

MK: Well, I’m gonna let my daughter maintain plausible deniability about her appearances in the comic, but…the little boy is definitely me as a kid, and the dad is me as an adult.

SG: How do you and Kelli divide the work on Planet Saturday?

MK: Commonly this is how it works: I think something up and take it 90% of the way to a finished story without telling Kelli anything about it. When I finally let her read it, she suggests changes which will greatly improve the comic (and which would have been a lot easier to put in at an earlier stage). I protest bitterly while gradually admitting to myself that she’s right, and eventually do what she says.

It’s frustrating trying to describe her role in all this, because I do all the work that’s visible…but just like 90% of an iceberg is underwater, there’s a vast amount of work that she puts into this that’s never seen, and rarely properly credited.

SG: What can we expect in the coming months of Planet Saturday?

MK: Names for the characters? Seriously–we’re going to be offering the first year’s comics in book form (as soon as I’ve fussed over a couple of them some more). And further down the road, there’s going to be a CD of original music for kids and parents, and some animation featuring these characters.

Read Planet Saturday now!

This entry was posted on Friday, September 21st, 2007 at 3:03 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.