There is only one thing good about Twitter/X. And that is, each day, you will never know what you discover. I guarantee it will be something new. I first learned of American artist Jason Novak’s talent when one day (Nov 22, 2022 to be exact), I saw a tweet from him asking for a prose tweet to turn into a cartoon. How cool is that? I checked out his comics and I love his minimalist style straightaway as I had grown up reading Nancy and Sluggo, Peanuts, Beano, that kind of thing. I tweeted him back immediately because coincidentally, I had written 140 characters and it was my dream the night before. He turned my story into this:
Without further ado, let’s hear from Jason who is from Oakland, California but has spent some time in London in his youth (North London) and hung out at the Washington pub in Belsize Park.
IN: How old were you when you started cartooning? How did you get started? Are you self-taught?
JN: I was 27 when I started cartooning. I remember it well because I’d dropped out of art school the previous year and had been bumming around London for months, unsure of what to do next when I found myself doodling in a pub one day and my friend noticed and said it was quite good. So more pub drawings followed, and I started submitting them to places. My first rejection came from Private Eye. So I guess I was self-taught in the sense that my formal instruction had been pretty exclusively in life drawing.
My first rejection came from Private Eye.
IN: What themes/stories do you like to focus on and why?
JN: The stories that have always appealed to me most involve characters in situations that are doomed to failure. I like exploring how characters handle things that have spun out of control, how they behave in the face of inevitable loss. There’s something very beautiful about people handling failure with courage or grace. But there’s even a kind of poetry to giving up or throwing a tantrum. When you squeeze a person, their essence comes out. I like seeing that.
When you squeeze a person, their essence comes out. I like seeing that.
IN: I can see why my tweet would appeal to you, as my stories often focus on the drabness and anticlimaxes of life. What advice have you for those who would like to turn their stories into comics or to start drawing cartoons?
JN: The advice I have for beginners probably reflects my own progress. I started out by drawing standalone images for years before I started arranging sequences of them, and it was more years after that before I finally started putting the images in panels and drawing dialogue bubbles. But I’m a slow learner. I think I’ve always been wary of taking on projects that are too far beyond my ability, so it’s been a slow steady process of growth for me, in which I also learned how to be patient.
it’s been a slow steady process of growth for me, in which I also learned how to be patient.
IN: Very sensible advice as slow living shows the finesse and maturity in the concepts. Developing and growing the ideas is how I work too. Do you have any links to share?
JN: I don’t have any links, but I do have a wordless novel coming out later this year from Fantagraphics called “Kafka’s Manuscript” that I’m pretty excited about.
IN: I can’t wait to hear from you when Kafka’s Manuscript is ready later in 2024. All the best to Jason.
You can find him here: https://x.com/hackcartoonist
You can buy him a coffee here: buymeacoffee.com/Hackcartoonist
