Is it a McChicken? No! Is it a McFish? NO! It's a McCloud!
This interview was made more than two months before, and most part of it was published in Portuguese in the newspaper I work for (check it out here, only for UOL subscribers). Obviously, for lack of space, many questions and answers were left out and so...since now I have this marvelous and infinite blank web page, here it goes, McCloud, the master of Understanding and Reinventing Comics (both published here in Brazil):
ZUPER – What did Will Eisner leave us all to think?
SM – I think Eisner was like a lighthouse that guided us for a very long time. There was this very strong light because he kept pointing us at the direction of thinking not what comics have done but what comics could do. He felt these things decades before others did, it was many many years before the rest of us caught up to what Will Eisner already felt back in the 50s, in the 40s even. And it was a very lonely cause at the begining. If you lived here in the States, you’d see that many saw comics just as business and entertainment and Will Eisner thought they could be so much more. It's very nice to know that he lived long enought to see a whole army of other artists that felt the same way he did, finaly. American comics in the 20th century...well, he saw it all, he was there for it all.
ZUPER – Are you familiar with any Brazilian comic artist (I know that you worked with Aluir Amâncio in the edition of “Superman: Strengh”)?
SM – Over the years I've seen some Brazilian comics but I'm not that good with names. I think it's an interesting scene, I'd love to see it explode in the coming years. I've actually followed behind a number of international comics lately as I'm becomig more and more interested at computers, my eye for other aspects of comics are increasing. I hope I'll sharpen it in the future so that I can get a better view of what's going on over there.
ZUPER – Do you believe that the sucess of movies based on non-super-heroes characters can change the idea that comics are just for kids and male teenagers?
SM – It can, although it helps that people know that there were based on comics. Unfortunatelly, many people know that Spiderman or the X-Men were based on comics, but not as many people know that the new Cronenberg film, A history of violence, or Road to Perdition (directed by Sam Mendes) were all based on comics. So, it can help our perception but only if those people know that those movies were originally comics.
ZUPER – Are the girls mores interested in reading comics those last years?
SM – I don't know in Brazil but here in the States many girls are now reading japanese comics.
ZUPER – Almost daily you update your weblog writing about pages of web comic artists. How much of a day do you spend doing that research?
SM – Only a couple of hours in the morning. I just finished up my morning surfing and reading. When a new good comic comes along on the web often they send me an e-mail so I’m very luck I have a shortcut. Also I read other sites like Comics Reporter.
ZUPER – I guess you have the best network…
SM – Yeah, I’m very lucky in that way.
