Mome moments

Jeffrey Brown, Paul Hornschemeier and other contributors to Fantagraphic's Mome anthology answered questions posed by the BBC's collective magazine:

Collective: Paul Hornschemeier says in MOME 1, "We all have this ... need to push comics forward somehow." How do you feel MOME helps progress comics?

David Heatley: MOME means talented people with little publishing experience have a platform and a printing budget to experiment with story ideas. That's always a good thing. As an artist, I know it makes me work harder than I would on a self-produced mini comic, since the audience is larger and the expectation is higher. I think what Paul is getting at is the sense among a lot of my generation that we're artists first and cartoonists second. We can bring any influence or idea from art or literature into making comics (since the door was opened by Crumb, Clowes, Ware, Panter, etc.). We don't have to "apologize" that we're making comics by using hokey formats reserved for mainstream comic strips, ie, splash panel, gag ending, over-the-top announcer narration, etc.