Comic-Artist Zander Cannon

                                                                                                                  by Jose Carlos Neves
 

Hi, Zander!  Your age, where did you born, grow up and lives today? Is you name Greek? Are you 
married? Sons? What's your academic record? How did you get started?  Have you been to Art School?

I was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in the US, on November 1st, 1972. My father's job moved us a few times, but I mostly grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and Denver, Colorado. I went to college in Grinnell, Iowa, and graduated in 1995 with a degree in English Literature. By the time I graduated from college, I had drawn three issues of "The Chainsaw Vigilante" published by New England Comics Press and one issue of "The Replacement God" published by Slave Labor Graphics. After college, I moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and lived there for seven years. I got married to Julie Fogelstrom in 2001, and in 2002, we moved to Utsunomiya, Japan, where we live now. We will return to the US in 2004, and plan to live in Minneapolis again.
My name is Greek, I suppose, but the name Alexander is common enough in the US. I couldn't pronounce it very well as a child, since my parents called me by my full name, so I ended up shortening it to Zander.
I've never been to art school. I have no formal training to speak of. It's all been practice.

-What is it that attracted you to art and drawing? What were your influences?

I was first interested in cartooning by animated movies and TV shows, and didn't start reading comic books until I was in the 6th grade or so (age 12). Probably my main influences early on were Chuck Jones, Sergio Aragones, Alan Davis,David Mazzucchelli, Bill Sienkiewicz, Fil Barlow (an Australian cartoonist), and Don Bluth (who created Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, as well as The Secret of Nimh).

 -Do you use a lot of photographical references or prefer to draw by  your own ( mainly figures concerning) like the departed Burne Hogarth?

I rarely use photo reference for things like faces, just because it takes more time than I care to spend, though very occasionally I will use it for clothing wrinkles or (especially) cars and machinery. I use a great deal of reference for research, such as for kinds of trees or flowers, or architecture, etc. It's usually more to give me ideas than it is for accuracy.

 -How did you first become interested in comics? What are your earliest  memories as far as that goes?

I didn't read comics until I was about 12 years old, so my memories up to that point had been of perhaps a handful of DC comics that my grandmother had at her house for visiting grandchildren. When I was in middle school, my next door neighbor introduced me to comics, especially Frank Miller's Daredevil, Groo the Wanderer, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and of course, The Dark Knight Returns, which had just come out. He also collected Watchmen, which was just coming out as well, but I thought that was much too violent.

 -What was the first comic you read that had been written by Alan Moore?

Probably DR and Quinch, the collection of stories he did in 2000AD. They were funny, and science fiction, and were drawn by Alan Davis, so I thought they were pretty great.

 -Did it have a special impact on you? Why?

I liked them a lot. I guess the first story that I read that I really got a sense for the way Alan Moore wrote was The Killing Joke. I liked the ideas he put into it, I liked the frightening aspect of it, I liked 
the fact that before the accident, the Joker was just a regular guy.

-What do you think is his best work, and why?

My favorite work by Alan is probably V for Vendetta or From Hell. I think that each of them gives a great sense about someone who is an outsider, and considers themselves to be above the laws of men, which is basically what all superhero books are about. I think it's particularly interesting that his best books on the subject are non-superhero books.

-If you know it What do you think about Big Numbers? What do you  think Alan intended to convey with this very promising story ( Big Numbers is, for me, his magnum opus, which has reached the status of a mythic work )?

I'd love it to be finished-- I bought the first two issues right when they came out, but ...well, if it's not going to be done, it's not going to be done. I don't really know what he was trying to accomplish 
with it, but I hope to find out someday.

-Do you agree with Chaos theory that our world (and the Universe as a whole, by extension) is ruled by fractals, strange attractors and so on, where a minor alteration in initial conditions can cause major, and irreversible, alterations in final conditions? Could a comic book ( or a graphic novel, as some describe them ) aspire to detail this  complexity of human existence, common life, the whole Universe, and  so on, as an unique, united system, as AM intended to do with Big  Numbers?

To answer the second part-- sure, I think a comic book could do that quite well. As for whether I agree with the theories, I suppose I'm too much of a pragmatist to think about that sort of stuff day to day. It's certainly an interesting theory. I love reading about fractals, and so forth, and how those patterns emerge from something so simple as folding a piece of paper in half, but I guess I don't normally think about it all too much.

-Do you think that one day Alan might change his mind and think about  it, again?

Perhaps. I suppose he ought to just write the script, put it in a vault, and figure someone will draw it a hundred years from now.

 -What are your thoughts about Watchmen´s innovations in the way it tells it's story?

I think that what's interesting about Watchmen is that for all its innovations, it's really a pretty traditional looking comic. There are no difficult panel transitions. Everything is in a grid formation. 
It's about as accessible as a comic can get, which I think is as much a reason for it's popularity as its subject matter.

-Do you think From Hell could be considered to be a history of the  birth of the 20th Century - with it´s elements of paranoia, conspiracies and corruption?

Sure. But I don't have anything else to add to that. Alan covered all of that pretty well in the book itself.

 -What are your impressions of Brought to Light and it´s denouncements  of the illegal C.I.A. operations around the world? Do you think  comics can be a political instrument - that they can appeal to a  wide audience for this purpose?

Actually, I've never read Brought to Light. I read the section that Bill Sienkiewicz drew, but I never bought it-- the last time I saw a copy I was in high school and not really into politics at the time. I certainly think that comics can have a impact on politics. Look at the editorial pages, or Doonesbury. And you get enough people to read a comic book, that will have a big impact too.

 - AM´s debut in mainstream literature, Voice of the Fire ( it has been just published here in Brazil, if you did not know) - do you think it accomplished it´s intention to tell the history of Magic, witchcraft, shamanism and so on, through the history of Northhampton?

I thought it was an incredible story, and I felt as if it was one of Alan's more personal works. I think sometimes in his comic book work, he keeps a bit of an ironic distance from the reader, where in Voice of the Fire, I felt like he was putting more of himself on the page.