The Comics Journal: Interviews

Steve Rude
Interviewed by Tom Spurgeon
excerpted from The Comics Journal #248
Painting © 2002 Mike Baron and Steve Rude

Being Worthy

TOM SPURGEON: There's a phrase that you use as far as your artistic upbringing, that you wanted to be worthy of those who taught you. Can you explain what you mean by that?

STEVE RUDE: I hope that I can say it the way I know it inside. It means that I should be worthy of the great artists I've learned from and pass on the baton accordingly.

SPURGEON: In what areas would you apply this maxim? I know you feel it's important to be professionally responsible when you're conducting yourself in public, like at a comics convention, so I can see that it might apply there.

RUDE: Especially at conventions. I've heard one too many stories of people mistreating other people at conventions, of professionals doing unnecessary damage to a very young and impressionable fan who is there because they like a pro's work and would like nothing more than to meet him and go away feeling that they've met a very decent person. When you hear those stories about professionals, it makes you know what not to be.

SPURGEON: Have you heard these stories a lot?

RUDE: Enough to know that I have to do the reverse.

SPURGEON: Do you think that comics and cartoonists in general lack for that sort of professionalism?

RUDE: I usually just look at one individual at a time. I once had a talk with my friend Mark Evanier about companies, and he mentioned that even if there's a good person working at a bad company, he won't work for them. I don't do that. To me, if you're a good human being, then it's unnecessary to punish that good person for the sins of the company that they may work for. How else could I work for Marvel?

SPURGEON: Can you detect any change in your two decades in comics? Do you think there is more or less pride in that kind of professionalism? How has that climate changed?

RUDE: I don't believe there is a significant change in human behavior since we ran around in bearskins. There are good ones and rotten ones.

SPURGEON: Are you suggesting that people fall into one of those two camps?

RUDE: No, those are the extremes. It's easy to see extremes. Most people don't fall into those extremes -- the normals, I'd call them.

SPURGEON: With your specific outlook, how tough has it been for you to negotiate comics' historical mistreatment of artists?

RUDE: It's not. Because, knowing how crappy people can be, none of it surprises me. Everyone makes their personal choices about what they're going to do. Most people like to hide behind company policies when they don't want to own up to something. We hear it every day. People who are really responsible in their life don't do that. They'll find their own integrity over a company policy that they have to recite. That's a terribly difficult way to live; it makes your life miserable and ten times as hard as a person's who doesn't follow those moral rules of behavior. By the way, if you are wondering where all of this talk of mine comes from, it comes from comic books. And the extremes are always the most visible in a comic book. The extremes of human beings. I focus on them because they are of personal interest to me.

The comic books that I read as a kid -- I mentioned Master of Kung Fu and all the Jack Kirby books -- got me through high school. They're all about these intense things, and my life was very intense back then. What does a guy do when he's tense? He seeks out things that are likewise intense and maybe gets some sense of peace from reading them. Did you get that when you read comic books?

SPURGEON: I think comics were just another arena for fantasy. Not so much reflecting on my own reality, but as an absorbing place to spend time, a place that wasn't filled with the less exciting day-to-day realities that I found myself in. I'm sure that because I read them when I was younger, there was a moral imprinting, but I don't think that was exactly what I was looking at them for when I was a teen.

RUDE: I wonder if my particular audience is similar to the way I was. I guess if I'm doing the artwork and Baron's doing the writing, we attract readers who like what we like. I'd like to believe that the people who are reading Nexus are not a whole lot different from the way I was and are getting some kind of consolation from reading it.

SPURGEON: Can you describe exactly what was troubling about your teen years that you got some consolation, guidance and excitement from comics?

RUDE: I had very deep feelings and I had no idea what to do with them. I was shy around girls. I didn't have a whole lot of friends, no peer group. There's obviously a process that happens with adolescents where they feel a little lost. What do you do with it? Confiding in friends doesn't work sometimes; I was more likely to hear "What the hell's your problem, Rude?" or "Grab another beer and relax." It's weird, because my mom and dad were nothing like me. Lucky them.

SPURGEON: Can I ask what your parents did?

RUDE: My dad was a salesman and my mom was basically a homemaker. She stayed home, like a lot of moms during the mid-'50s, and just took care of her kids, me being the first. We'd have Boy Scout meetings and Cub Scout meetings and play games with scoutmasters and den mothers and all that.

SPURGEON: This was a suburban-type setting that you found yourself in?

RUDE: Yeah. A nice neighborhood. Every adult was an adult. Every kid was a kid. Every mom was a decent mom -- not all of them [laughs]. Yeah, for the most part I think that explains some of my problems: when I was a kid I thought of adults as adults. You called everyone "Mister." In my neighborhood now, there isn't a kid around who calls anyone "Mister." They call adults by their first name.

SPURGEON: I don't know when that stopped, either. I don't know if you're like me -- I have a tendency to still call someone "Mister" or "Ma'am" and they'll usually look insulted because I've just decided that they're 20 years older than me. Often I'll get that "humph" from the lady at the grocery store.

RUDE: Well, I had a fifth-grade teacher that taught everyone in our class to say "yes ma'am" to her. So consequently I still use that word, even though I do get that same reaction. They say it makes 'em feel old.

SPURGEON: You've talked about childhood being a very good time, in part because of the types of popular art that you were able to run across. There was something very safe and comforting about that.

RUDE: It was a perfect training ground for the life I was about to have when I grew up.

The Voice

RUDE: I think people are born, pretty much, with a path, and along that path there are doors to each side of you as you walk; I personally like to open those doors.

SPURGEON: If your life has been a path with doors, can you give me an example of opening one?

RUDE: This is how weird it can get sometimes. When I first moved to California, I was going to a movie by myself in Pasadena. Suddenly, this truck pulls up next to me. Inside of this pick-up Ford are what looks like the Hayseed family. These guys are genuine rednecks and they looked like they had had about two years of formal education between the three of them. They say, "Hey, come over here. We want to talk to you." And so I go over there and I see this dad, this mom and this girl in her teens, and they start giving me this story, like: "Listen, we just got back from shopping at Sears, and Sears said that we couldn't apply for a credit card to buy our merchandise unless we get a co-signer, and the co-signer has to be someone who lives in Pasadena here, because we're from out of town and we would like to know if you would help us out getting that co-signed."

Now, anyone in their right mind would just laugh it off and walk away, right? To me, the situation was such an oddball, bizarre thing that for some reason I decided to do it. Just out of pure curiosity, to see what life was about to give me, I got into the car. I told the dad, "Look, I'll do this wacky thing for you but I've got to make a movie in 15 minutes, so I want you to drive me back when we're done here. I hope this won't take long." And he said, "No. This won't take long at all. In fact I guarantee that we'll get you back in time for your movie."

So we go to the shopping center. I'm accompanied by this teenage girl who looks like she's had about four generations of inbreeding. We get up to the person that she's supposedly talked to at the customer service desk and we go through the motions of telling her what happened and that I'm here to help these people co-sign so that they can take out a credit card so they can buy their merchandise. At the last minute, the lady told me there was some kind of hitch -- even if I were to co-sign, it wouldn't do any good. I said, "OK, I guess that's that. I tried."

So we're walking out, and I remember the girl was trying to tell me how to leave the building - this is a shopping mall that I had been to at least a dozen times already, and knew my way around. But here's this stupid, little stupid girl, who has never been there before, trying to tell me which way to go out. I know it's the wrong way and I started to get a little annoyed at her presumptuousness about knowing an area that she's only been in once. We got out. I got back in the truck. They drove me to my movie and I went off on my merry way and I've never seen these people again, of course. But that's the kind of thing that happens to me sometimes. And mostly I will open those damn doors and invite myself in, whether it's going to be to my advantage or not.

SPURGEON: You met your wife while hitchhiking. You're able to find a lot more doors hitchhiking than you might find sitting in your studio.

RUDE: Yeah, I would say to all artists out there that the answers to life lay only partially in your studio. The second part is when you are out there walking the walk.

SPURGEON: I'd like to hear you talk about that experiential outlook where you get out and forcefully, I guess, press yourself up against the world.

RUDE: Well, my art comes from the person that I am inside, and I'm only as good as what I am inside. Your life is your work and your work is your life, and all that. The trip you are talking about with me and my wife was something that my conscience told me that I had to do. That came, I think, when I moved to California in 1988.

I had already hitchhiked once, and that was to see Paul Gulacy. I had to go, even though he told me over the phone before I'd actually left that I should not come because he was too busy. I went anyway, of course. But when I moved up to California, something inside said, "You have to go out one more time." The older I get, the less I even think twice about these little whispers. In '88, these whispers said "You better do it, Rude. Because if you don't, your life is going to be pathetically short-changed." Well, I met my future wife -- the most decent person, the most beautiful girl I have ever met in my entire life -- on that trip. I still think that, even after ten years. I go to the Playboy conventions where I meet the Playmates. You know what I talk about with them?

SPURGEON: Your wife.

RUDE: [Laughs.] I get out the picture of Jaynelle and I say, "Look at this girl. Isn't she the prettiest girl you've ever seen in your life?"

SPURGEON: Wait a minute. What are these Playboy conventions? I've just been going to that piece of crap in San Diego.

RUDE: Have you ever heard of Glamourcons? They feature dozens and dozens of Playmates. I find them immensely interesting to go to, because I like to find out the character of these girls who have these beautiful façades -- what's incredible is I meet the same diversity in personality and character as I would if I were to pick ten people off the street at random. Some Playmates are very intelligent, some are as dumb as a brick and some seem very unhappy to be at the conventions. Playboy makes them pay their own way, I guess.

Jaynelle just walked in right now. She's pregnant with our soon-to-be second child. You've never met Jaynelle, have you, Tom?

SPURGEON: I have not.

RUDE: Sometime before our mortal lives are up we'll see to it that you meet Jaynelle.

SPURGEON: I want to meet the woman who gets talked up at the Glamourcons.

RUDE: Getting back to the second hitchhiking trip, all I can tell you is that it started with that thing inside me that said, "You have one more trip." What does that mean? What does that crap mean when you hear that inside of yourself?

SPURGEON: I don't know! How often does this come up?

RUDE: Whenever it needs to.

SPURGEON: I don't know if it expressed itself in a voice -- but when you were trying to sic your lawyer onto Mike Richardson about the Nexus license. Was that a voice appearance?

RUDE: The voice there was submerged, but it was like a thorn in my side. I knew there was something wrong about it, but it wasn't a very clear voice. I felt nagged. It felt like a bad hangnail or stepping on a thorn. It was just under my skin enough to irritate me.

SPURGEON: You seem pretty clear about leaving Marvel. Was that a clear voice?

RUDE: It was. And this is something that in spite of what they may tell me to my face, like, "Steve, we wish you'd stay and do more." The voice tells me that my time there is up.

SPURGEON: Please finish the hitchhiking story.

RUDE: Right around the time that the voice told me about the trip, I was driving down Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, where I lived. It was a Saturday afternoon. It was a beautiful day out, as it usually is down here. And I happened to look to my right to see a sign that said "Psychic Fair. Weekend Special. Readings for $10." Pure impulse, I just whipped over.

I knocked on the door and said, "Hi. Are you still giving readings?" And this fairly young, Italian-looking type said, "Yeah. Wait a little bit. I'm with somebody right now." So I waited a little bit and I got in and the first words out of her mouth were, "You have a pink aura around you." And I said, "What does that mean?" And she said, "That means you are in immense emotional pain." Well, she had my attention. So I sat down and she said, "What do you want? You want your palm read, you want the cards?" I said, "Well, give me the palm reading." And so she looked -- this is for the record, OK? -- and said, "You will live to be 81 years old." You see why I want that for the record, right? [Spurgeon laughs.]

I don't remember if this is from the palm reading or if it was from the cards that I picked on, but she said, "You're going to be going on a trip this summer." And of course, I knew what that meant. I was being called to hitchhike once again and see what the hell's going to happen out there. By the way, I knew the destination of this trip. I knew where I was beginning and I knew where I was going to end up. And she said, "You're gonna meet someone on this trip. You're going to meet someone who's going to take all of the pain out of your life." I said, "What does that mean?" Again without leading her on with her answers, she says, "You're going to meet someone that's marriage material." I said, "What does that mean?" After all of those years, I had completely given up on meeting someone. She said, "Marriage material." My impression of what she said was that I was given a chance to have free will about this -- which is good because I'd hate to think that I'd have to marry her.

So that's the way she left it. When I actually met Jaynelle, on the last night of the last leg of my trip, what that fortune teller had said was the last thing on Earth going through my mind. In fact, it didn't occur to me until probably a month afterwards, her words and what had happened to me. Interestingly, my childhood friend Fool was going to be the one to give me the final decision about what day I should come up. I called Fool and said, "How about if I come up on this weekend?" And Fool said, "No. Come the weekend after that because that's when my band is going to be playing at this bar." I probably never would have met Jaynelle if not for Fool. It's a really strange world. I think we perceive about half of what is really there, if even that.

SPURGEON: Am I right in thinking you're mistrustful of organized religion?

RUDE: I don't tend to think a whole lot of it. I think most people need to think for themselves, and they are letting other people think for them.

Oh, hang on a second. Mr. Silly's coming in here. He's a crocodile right now. He's always playing -- trying to be a crocodile. Oh, Brandon. He's the silliest baby. You don't have babies do you, Tom?

SPURGEON: No, I don't.

RUDE: Well everyone -- first, if you ever find yourself about to have a baby, everyone will tell you what you are in for, like what you're going to feel when you see your baby being born, things like that. That's the first dumb thing I don't like. People should stick to their own experiences. It won't be the same for you. Also, having a baby was nothing in any way resembling the fears that I had. At least not so far.

SPURGEON: Fears for the child?

RUDE: No. Fears for me; I thought he was going to be some angst-ridden, hyper kid like I was and I'd have to relive my whole life through my kid. If that's not hell, someone should give me a better one. Brandon is his own human being. He's a combination of me and Jaynelle and a thousand things that no one can tell where they come from.

SPURGEON: Do you think that that kind of life-altering experience has shown up in your artwork?

RUDE: Yes, it has. In God Con, it very directly came up. Being agnostic as far as what a god is, I can't tell you if there is one or if there isn't, but I do feel something immensely powerful within the human spirit. Certainly within myself and because I believe that, I was able to put that philosophy down in God Con.

SPURGEON: So do you think that the birth has had any effect on what has shown up in the latest projects, or will show up?

RUDE: No. I haven't had a chance to do it. When I go back to Nexus with Baron, we can pick up where we left off and tell stories of our perceptions of life.

[To read the rest of this interview, please see The Comics Journal #248.]