I drew a logo for Deep Green Philly.
Here’s an interview I did with them back in August:
http://www.deepgreenphilly.com/?p=385
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Archive for ‘Interviews’
8 results.
Here’s an article about my work in the Transylvanian online newspaper Transindex: http://think.transindex.ro/?p=9198
Here’s an audio interview with Ron Whyte of Deep Green Philly. We discussed the role of art in resistance movements, the evils of Monsanto, and more.
Here’s an interview I did with SPJ’s “Quill” magazine.
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Thursday, August 04, 2011
Ten with Stephanie McMillan
By Scott Leadingham
To call Stephanie McMillan a cartoonist is like calling Paul McCartney a musician. It’s accurate in all meanings of the word. But leaving it at just cartoonist (even adding “editorial” as a descriptor) comes up short. She might rightly be described as a social activist and agitator, one whose pointed commentary and analysis are conveyed most visibly through pictures and their associated dialogue bubbles. Her incisive work caught the attention of the Sigma Delta Chi Awards judges, who recognized her excellence for the recurring syndicated cartoon “Code Green,” about environmental issues. The Fort Lauderdale, Fla., native studied film animation at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Next year will mark her 20th drawing regular cartoons for newspapers.
What was your first reaction to winning a Sigma Delta Chi Award?
I was thrilled, of course. It means a great deal to me to be recognized by such a widely respected organization. I’m honored to be grouped with journalists who have done such great and important work. Beyond the personal level, I’m pleased that they chose cartoons of a non-traditional style and by a woman, both of which rarely win major awards.
Your cartoons focus — rather bitingly — on “green” or environmental topics. What’s the inspiration behind that theme?
Though my focus was, for a long time, on social justice (which I still care deeply about), several years ago I became very alarmed about the increasing speed and scope of the destruction of the planet. It became clear to me that this problem supersedes all others. Without a living Earth, nothing else matters. Our lives depend on it. I decided to dedicate myself and my work to confronting this reality, in the hope that I could make some difference.
Your website, where you have all of your “Code Green” samples, has a built-in German page, too. What’s the story there?
Last year I visited relatives in Germany, and they helped me translate my cartoons and send them to German newspapers. Not much came of the attempt, but I do have some regular readers in Germany, so I keep them on the website in their honor.
I read that one of your big inspirations was “Peanuts.” Any other artistic inspirations or “heroes” from the editorial cartooning field?
Yes, I’m very partial to the cartoons that have traditionally been run in the alternative weekly papers, such as Matt Groening, Lynda Barry, Ted Rall and others. When I lived in New York, I picked up the Village Voice religiously, just for the cartoons. I loved “Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies,” “Washingtoon” by Mark Stamaty, and Ben Katchor’s “Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like there’s a big gender gap in your field (not just cartooning, but more narrowly editorial cartooning for news outlets). Why do you think that is?
Part of it is that there aren’t very many cartoonist staff positions at newspapers, and the few that exist are often held for life. Some cartoonists have held these positions since the days when certain types of work were considered “men’s jobs,” and women were not considered serious opinion-makers. Times have changed, but these jobs come up so infrequently that many women, noting their slim chances, don’t even bother to aspire to them.
Also, women are often still, for some reason, expected to focus on “women’s issues.” These consist, in some minds, of children, dating and dieting, not world affairs and current events. I would also like to know why they don’t hire more female cartoonists. That said, I know many wonderful (male and female) editors who have valued my work and have never made me feel marginalized in the slightest.
The third factor is our social conditioning. Men and women are expected to behave differently. Sharply critical statements, when uttered by men, are considered bold and assertive; but the same statements uttered by women are often labeled “shrill.”
Did you ever think being female would be a stumbling point for you when trying to “break in”?
I don’t think of being a woman as my main obstacle; succeeding as a cartoonist of any gender is against great odds. However, it is a factor. People say that they would like to see more women cartoonists, but then do not give us work. I like challenges, but it’s a difficult career path, and occasionally I worry that I may have to quit.
What about considering another route in media/journalism? Did you ever say, “Hey, I’d really like to be a reporter or producer”?
I love writing, and I’ve written many essays and book reviews and so on. I co-wrote a novel recently that will be out next year. My motive in drawing, writing and everything else is to further the larger aim of improving our situation in the world. For me, being a cartoonist isn’t the point; the point is to assert opinions about politics and social issues and so on, in ways that might have influence. I do love cartoons, but I would express myself in whatever form or venue where I could build a loyal audience. I think my most valuable skill is honing down an argument to its essence. This is very suited to cartoons, which must be instantly understandable.
You also write another strip called “Minimum Security,” which is much different than “Code Green.” What’s the inspiration behind that?
“Minimum Security” started out as an editorial cartoon but changed to a daily comic strip when it was acquired by United Media. It’s currently a long-form narrative about a group of friends trying various strategies and tactics to save the planet from corporate overlords. It’s a thought experiment. I take readers through various activist schemes and personal crises, and no one in real life gets hurt.
Take us through your typical day or at least from concept to completed product. How does that creative process work for you?
I spend about two hours every morning reading, catching up on current events as well as digging into deeper political analysis. I create the cartoons on a weekly cycle. Each Monday and Tuesday, I write scripts for one “Code Green” cartoon and five “Minimum Security” comic strips. Sometimes this is a lengthy and difficult process; but when I’m lucky the ideas come quickly. If I have extra time, I spend the rest of the days marketing and seeking clients. On Wednesdays and Thursdays I usually do other freelance work, and then Fridays and Saturdays I draw all the cartoons at once. On Sundays, I color them. I post and send them out to all the places they have to go on Sunday nights and Mondays; this alone takes several hours. Then the cycle begins again.
OK, the inevitable “advice” question. To those wanting to get into cartooning ― maybe the young journalism student out there who’s also a kick-butt artist with a knack for humor ― what do you say?
If you love it, and are prepared for a long and difficult road, then you should do it. There are a few quick successes, but for most, it takes commitment, persistence and stubbornness beyond all reason. If you’re the kind of person who won’t give up, and you can work hard and long hours, and you’re willing to sacrifice a great deal to do what you love and believe in, then you can make it. If you want to, you should try. Life is too short, too precious to settle for mediocrity, whether it’s in love or your profession or anything else.
Here’s an interview I did on Terra Verde, KPFA: kpfa.org/archive/id/66270
Topics: cartoons, revolutionary politics, thought experiments through storytelling, the nature of capitalism, the need for a diversity of approaches to defeating it.
This appeared on Discovery’s website Planet Green:
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/work-connect/cartoonist-stephanie-mcmillan-defend-our-planet-interview.html
Cartoons vs. Ecocide: Stephanie McMillan’s One-Eyed Bunnies Teach Us How to Defend Our Planet (Interview)
It’s time to declare: Code Green
By Mickey Z. | Wed Jul 28, 2010 13:20
Action painter Mark Rothko once said: “There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.” That goes quadruple for political cartoonists. Stephanie McMillan has been plying her craft since 1992. She creates the comic strip Minimum Security five days a week for United Media’s comics.com, and self-syndicates the weekly editorial cartoon about the environmental emergency, Code Green. Stephanie’s cartoons have appeared on hundreds of websites and in print publications worldwide including the Los Angeles Times, Daily Beast, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Yes! Magazine, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
A collection of her cartoons, Attitude Presents Minimum Security was published in 2005 by NBM Publishing. She co-created, with writer Derrick Jensen, the graphic novel As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial (2007, Seven Stories). Her work is also included in various textbooks and anthologies. A children’s book, Mischief in the Forest (PM Press, with Derrick Jensen) will be published Fall 2010.
Her cartoons have been included in exhibits at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (New York), the San Francisco Comic Art Museum, the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), and the Institute for Policy Studies (Washington, DC), among other venues.
A graduate of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and now based out of Florida, Stephanie was kind enough to make time for a chat. The results are below.
My Conversation With Stephanie McMillan
Planet Green: When did you start drawing and how early in that process did your radical perspective help shape and inform what and how you drew?
Stephanie McMillan: I loved drawing even as a toddler, as soon as I could hold a crayon in my fist. The first overtly political drawing I did was for my high school paper, during the Reagan era, after I’d read a book about the dangers of nuclear war (The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell). I drew it with a ballpoint pen—it showed a family being vaporized in front of a mushroom cloud. That book turned out to be the doorway through which I began to glimpse the underlying omnicidal nature of the American Empire. After this I read voraciously about history and political theory, and once I understood that capitalism is based on exploitation, I became its enemy.
PG: How did that realization impact both your life and your art?
SM: I spent many years as a revolutionary communist, organizing and agitating against imperialism, and about social justice issues like police brutality, reproductive freedom and immigrant rights. I viewed these issues as interconnected social “fault lines”—contradictions that, under the right conditions, could cause the whole system to crack apart. In 1992, while still an activist, I started drawing cartoons for a weekly paper, and in 1998, frustrated with the difficulty of building a movement during an overall ebb in radical politics, decided to focus my political energies purely on cartooning. That year I started Minimum Security as a weekly editorial cartoon. In 2005, NBM Publishing issued a collection of these comics, and I added regular characters. When United Media approached me about syndication and added it to comics.com, I ramped the pace up to five cartoons a week. This past April, I switched from the joke-a-day format into a long-form narrative. It‘s now a story about how a group of friends goes through twists and turns while figuring out how to effectively fight the system. About a year ago, I started drawing an additional cartoon called Code Green. It’s a weekly editorial cartoon that focuses on the environmental emergency.
PG: Your art and activism seem practically synonymous.
SM: The content of my cartoons is absolutely determined by my work as an activist. Without that experience, I would know much less about how the system works or how to combat it. The purpose of my work is to expose the crimes of the system in a way that’s accessible to readers, and to use ridicule to inspire contempt for those who run things. I think if we can laugh at those in power, we will fear them less, which makes us stronger about fighting back. The stories I tell in my comics, the points I make, are all intended to help inspire resistance, to help people who are on that path to make sense of things, and to cheer them on. Resistance and revolution are at the core of my life’s purpose. Art is merely a means, one way I have found that I can help further this objective. I have recently (especially after the Gulf oil spill), been increasing my work in other areas too. I will do whatever it takes, anything I am capable of and more, to help stop the planet from being killed and to eliminate this murderous system of exploitation.
PG: Your book with Derrick Jensen, As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial, would be of particular interest to Planet Green readers. What would you hope a budding environmentalist might learn from reading this graphic novel?
SM: Derrick and I decided to create this book after discussing Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. We agreed that the film presented the problem of global warming in a compelling, appropriately urgent way. But when it came time to guide people to action, it was worse than inadequate—it was misleading. Gore’s list of “10 Things You Can Do” (and countless other lists like it) directs the audience’s attention away from the source of the problem, industrialization, and it attempts to convince us to blame ourselves instead. It asserts that if we modify our behavior as “consumers” (change our light bulbs, adjust our thermostats), then we can save the planet. This is a lie. What this list didn’t show was the math. We did. If every person in the United States did everything that Al Gore recommends at the end of the film, there would be a one-time reduction of CO2 emissions of 21%. Obviously that’s not going to put much of a dent in the problem. More importantly, it leaves the worst polluters, big corporations, off the hook. Exxon-Mobil alone is responsible for 5% of all global CO2 emissions. The US military consumes 395,000 barrels of oil a day. Do you think dismantling that might be more effective than obsessing about not leaving our refrigerator doors open? Yet the latter is what we are told to focus on. We are told, over and over, that the only power we have is over our own lifestyles, and specifically as “consumers”—how very conveeeeenient for those who profit from the murder of our planet and then profit again from selling us “green” products.
PG: So, we’re often manipulated into acting against our own interests and the interests of our eco-system?
SM: Most of us care about the Earth’s health, understand that our own wellbeing and lives depend upon it, and would like to live in a non-destructive way. No one but profit-oriented sociopaths can enjoy the fact that 120 species are going extinct each day, and that our environment is getting thoroughly trashed. We live under a system that functions by converting living beings into commodities, for the profit of a few. Yet we are told that the environmental crisis is our fault because we consume too much as individuals (at the same time, everything about this economy—its media, its reward systems—push us to consume more and more). We created As the World Burns to help readers see that solutions are not to be found in our individual consumer choices, but instead can only be achieved by fighting against, defeating and dismantling the industrial capitalist system.
PG: Do you feel your message is more easily accessible via the characters you’ve created?
SM: I do. This was my primary concern when I created them. Bitter medicine goes down easier with sugar, so I made the characters as cute as possible, and the jokes amusing, the colors appealing. I know my message is pretty radical and can be difficult to accept (especially for those just beginning to explore the issues), and so I’m careful not to put any additional obstacles in the way, stylistically. I want readers to feel welcomed by my cartoons as soon as they see them, and encouraged to be open to what they’re saying.
PG: Do you have a favorite character? If so, why?
SM: I love them all, and each one is a mix of different parts of myself and people I know. The one I probably enjoy writing for the most is Bunnista, the rabbit, because he is the most unfettered by rules. He doesn’t worry about what others think of him, or if anyone agrees with him, or if his actions are the most practical or effective, or if his way is the best way to build a resistance movement. He just loves, more than anything else, to make industrial infrastructure explode into a million flaming pieces. It’s very cathartic for me when he does that. An adorable cartoon bunny can get away with doing things that I can only fantasize about.
PG: Tell us more about your upcoming children’s book.
SM: It’s called Mischief in the Forest. Derrick wrote the story some years ago and asked me to illustrate it. It’s about a grandmother who likes to knit sweaters and mittens for her grandchildren. She believes she lives alone in the forest, until she discovers that someone has taken her yarn. Through this incident, she gets to know her forest neighbors, creatures of many species. It’s about connecting with and appreciating the natural world.
PG: How can folks find your work and connect with you?
SM: Links to the websites for both my Code Green and Minimum Security comics and blogs, plus information about my books and other projects are at StephanieMcmillan.org. My email address is steph@minimumsecurity.net.
1) I did an interview with Susan Marie on ThinkTwice radio. We had a great, hour-long conversation about ecocide, resistance and cartoons: http://www.thinktwiceradio.com/sue-marie/sue-marie.html
2) I’m participating in an eBay auction of webcomics originals to benefit Gulf cleanup efforts. Get a “Code Green” original and print. At this point it’s pretty cheap! Here’s the whole auction:
http://shop.ebay.com/whirringblender/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686
New webcomic, radio show and Kickstarter results
by admin on March 4, 2010 at 11:18 amPosted In: Interviews
Hi all!
I have three items of news:
1) Seven Stories Press has begun running a webcomic version of my graphic novel co-created with Derrick Jensen, updated Tuesdays and Thursdays, in full color. You can follow it here:
http://home.sevenstories.com/index.php/tag/atwb-serial/
I added the color for the French version of the printed book, which will be published in March by La Boite à Bulles
(http://la-boite-a-bulles.com/”>la-boite-a-bulles.com/).
“A great read, a groundbreaking volume of graphic literature and a political polemic of the first order.” — Ted Rall
2) I was interviewed for the premier show of “Radio Against Global Ecocide,” here:
http://www.rageedm.com/wordpress/?p=19
There are several other inspiring and informative podcasts there that I highly recommend.
3) “Mischief in the Forest” (the children’s book by Derrick Jensen, illustrated by me) achieved its Kickstarter goal and is fully funded! Thank you to all for your support. The book will be published in May through PM Press.
