[Austin-ghetto-list] Jaxon's Rant Part 9

[jaxon41]

Hi Folks,

Here's the interview that Gary Groth ran in his house organ The Comics
Journal concerning Lost Cause and the Chron's censorship.  I call it GG's
"house organ" because he also runs the alternative publishing empire called
Fantagraphics Books (in Seattle), and I don't think anyone is oblivious to
how nice it is for a publisher of comics to have a monthly journal that
discusses comics and their creators, right?  Free ad space, if nothing else=
.

I've known GG--a personable comics nut with brains & a fellow who does his
homework before opening his mouth--ever since he started The Comics Journal
(TCJ) 25 years ago.  His pub is the leading intellectual format on the
comics/comix profession, past and present.  Gary's only mistake or "bad
career move" of any consequence came when he said what he thought about som=
e
aspect of SF writer Harlan Ellison's work and/or personality.  Ellison
dragged GG to court over it, a costly lawsuit that ran on for YEARS before
Gary's right to exercise free speech was upheld.  Ironically, a review of m=
y
Comanche Moon (by Bill Sherman) had come in Issue 53, 1980 Winter Special,
where Gary interviewed and put Harlan Ellison on the cover; they were still
"chums" then.

Gary liked my work, recognizing it (perhaps) as a worthy successor to the
Harvey Kurtzman historical strips done for EC Comics in the Fifties.  He
published my Seguin book, Los Tejanos, in 1982, after Last Gasp had
published parts of it as Recuerden El Alamo and Tejano Exile.  I added
another 32 pages to GG's Fantagraphics edition, and Juke/Garrett did the
cover.  Thanks guys!  This book has long been out-of-print but may possibly
be available via Amazon, et al.  In Issue 61, 1981 Winter Special, TCJ ran
an interview with me called "Tejano Cartoonist," again by Se=F1or Sherman.  A
photo shows me as the handsome stud I then was but will never be again;
another pic shows me with the Rip Off Press gang & my foxy girlfriend,
Beatrice Bonini.  Seems like there were several other issues of TCJ where I
was profiled and my latest work mentioned, but I can't locate them.

In addition to such feature treatment, TCJ also published a couple of
articles I wrote as a contributor to the mag.  My "Learning Texas History
the Painless Way" (119, Jan 1988) was about the comic book, Texas History
Movies, that some of us oldtimers studied in grade school--and our recent
efforts to sanitize its objectionable ethnic/racial stereotypes.  This was
the same booklet that my landlord on Bellvue Street later gave me his 1st
edition copy of.  I still have my own revised copy from the Fifties, bearin=
g
my signature "Jackie Jackson."  A Hispanic lady friend of mine down in Cuer=
o
was horrified to learn that this nasty, racist little comic book had
launched my career as a distinguished Texas historian recognized for my
attention to the Latino contribution.  HMMM; must be a meaning there
somewhere...  Another piece I did for TCJ (Issue 144, Sept 1991) was called
"The Good, the Bad, and the Foreign"--a short history on Western comics her=
e
& abroad.  In it, I pondered the question of why Europeans seem to better
Western comics than us natives.  Se=F1or Ventura should read it sometime,
preferably before he accused me of using dialogue from the Gabby
Hayes/Hopalong Cassidy era.

Thus, it is safe to say that Gary Groth was "sympathetic" to me on the
Chron's review.  He was also sensitive to the slander angle--the same thing
that it had taken him years and megabucks to clear his name from on Harlan
Ellison's charges.  Though he was the other side of the fence, the defensiv=
e
side, GG knew firsthand how messy & complicated things can get when the
right to free speech is at stake.  Well, I wasn't suing the Chron, editor
Black, or critic Ventura, and Gary was in my corner for sure on the free
speech question--as he always has been.  A lot of what I say in this
interview is recycled from my rebuttal & stuff you've already read.  I ask
that you pardon me for this repetition.  But GG's questions took the
discussion above & beyond V's review to greater issues, asking if the goals
of "art" are compatible with "humanizing" oppressors and whether or not thi=
s
presents a moral conflict to artists like myself.  Behind it was a review o=
f
Lost Cause by Ron Evry that is informed & intelligent.  I append it so you
people can get a better idea of what a review of a "graphic novel" should
read like, as opposed to Ventura's slander.  This was published in The
Comics Journal 213 (June 1999).  Alas, GG could provide text only, not the
accompanying art as I'd asked him for.  Hope you enjoy...

Critique Revisited:
An Interview with Jack Jackson
by Gary Groth,
Originally printed in Comics Journal #213

Upon publication of Jack Jackson's latest graphic novel, Lost Cause,
Jackson's hometown alternative paper, The Austin Chronicle (September 18,
1998), ran a double-barreled hatchet job on it: a review of the book itself
by pop critic Michael Ventura and an accompanying essay condemning the
book's main character, John Wesley Hardin (by Jesse Sublett). The book is a
dramatic account of one of the most volitile periods of American history --
how white Texans dealt with post-Civil War Reconstruction. Ventura attacked
the book from several directions. His first devastating strategy was to
sneer at the book's designation as a "graphic novel" ("Well, it's graphic
enough -- without pictures the 148-page story would shrink to maybe 25
pages, if that."), which is a little like saying that if you took the image=
s
away from a movie it sure wouldn't be much of a movie. He went on to
question Jackson's historical accuracy -- falsely as it turned out -- and
finally called the author and his work racist.

I thought it was a boneheaded review by someone who evinced no awareness
much less sympathy with the comics medium in general and Jackson's work in
particular -- which is the least you should expect from a review of a
respected cartoonist's work. This didn't outrage me, though; after all,
shoddy reviews are published every day, and it was more or less par for the
course. What really pissed me off was the Chronicle's refusal to give
Jackson space to rebut the review on the specious grounds that "if we
allowed everyone who disagreed with a review of their art to rebut it, we
would have room for little else." This is obvious bullshit. Every restauran=
t
owner, musician, filmmaker and theater director who's criticized in the
pages of the Austin Chronicle would not choose to rebut a negative review
and in the unlikely event that the paper was overwhelmed with such rebuttal=
s
it could establish parameters accordingly. The Chronicle was clearly taking
advantage of its privileged position of owning the local press. This is
unjust on the face of it, and gives the victim of a bad review no recourse
to have his say. (The Journal has prided itself on its willingness to run
letters rebutting reviews, no matter how long or blowhardish the responses
are; fair's fair.) And I know how this feels first-hand: when the allegedly
1st Amendment magazine Gauntlet ran a 30,000 word hatchet job on me, they
denied my request to publish a rebuttal from me. Just like that. So, this
interview with Jackson is my way of helping even up the odds.

I've known Jackson for almost 20 years now; I've been an admirer of his
satirical and historical comics from the mid '70s, and published his Los
Tejanos in 1981. Lost Cause is a major work by one of the most important
artists currently working in the medium, and if the Chronicle refused to
behave decently and give him space to address Ventura's charges I felt the
least I could do is show him the respect the Chronicle didn't, and provide =
a
forum to do just that in the pages of the Journal. We discuss not only the
review that started a firestorm on net chat rooms, but the book more
generally and the delicate position of writing politically charged
historical drama.

- Gary Groth

------------------------------------------------------------------------

GARY GROTH:    Let's talk about Lost Cause and the controversy created by
the review by Michael Ventura in the Austin Chronicle.

JACK JACKSON: I was pretty upset about it, and didn't really have any way t=
o
deal with it, except appeal to the Chronicle to let me defend myself which
they wouldn't do. And that was even more aggravating than the review itself=
.

GROTH: That they wouldn't give you the same kind of space that they gave hi=
m
I found to be pretty contemptible. The review ran in the Austin Chronicle o=
n
September 18, 1998. Was there any backlash towards you, asfar as you could
tell, after he called you and your work racist?

JACKSON: No. On the contrary, people were rising to my defense -- calling
me, writing me, and trying to e-mail me -- but I'm not on the internet, so =
a
friend of mine who was passed these things along. I was amazed at the issue=
s
that were being discussed on these posts, you know? They were going to the
nitty-gritty, and half of them hadn't even read the book yet. They were jus=
t
looking at the review itself and the ignorance that it manifested.

GROTH:    So you didn't catch any more flak because of the review?

JACKSON: Oh, absolutely not. No, it was very supportive, and that's what
finally made me realize that hey, there's no point in trying to dodge this,
you might as well grab the bull by the horns, you know? I don't want to use
the term "milk it," but controversy sells books. So if this guy wants to
label me a racist, sure, let's talk about it. Consequently, I was going to
book-signings and discussing the racial aspects of my book. For example, th=
e
governor's wife every year throws a thing down at the state capitol called
the Texas Book Festival, and I was an invited speaker on a panel on John
Wesley Hardin -- and guess what came up? The review. So I figure there's
black people sitting in the audience, and you just have to deal with it,
once somebody decides that your work is racist garbage. That's basically
what the guy was saying, that lest Cause is going to pervert and twist the
minds of innocent young children, and he sees hitnself as their savior, as
it were, by denouncing my work. To say it blind-sided me would be an
understatement, because as you know, all my previous work had done just the
opposite. It had tried to tell the story of "the neglected historical
others," as Rusty Witek would call them. And simply because I wanted to do =
a
book and tell the story from the perspective of the white Southerners who
John Wesley Hardin was representing, as it were, then all of a sudden, I ge=
t
this ktnd of reaction. At my age, Ijust don't need it, you know?

GROTH:    Tell me a little about this panel you were on, and what the
reaction there was, and what the discussion was.

JACKSON:    Well, I was simply trying to say that you're talking about a
very, very difficult historical period here, Reconstruction. And this is on=
e
of the few instances in which the white folks, particularly those in the
South, found themselves the oppressed, as opposed to being the oppressor.
They were just not ready for it, and could not make the transition to a
subjugated people. They could not accept the standards that were being
imposed on them, the way people were coming down from the North and saying,
O.K., I want you to act this way and that way, I want you to think this way=
,
and these people are now going to be your social equals. So you had these
pockets of resistance, which I think is natural in any similar situation.
Even worse here. And violence, of course, was a necessary aspect of this
transitional period before the kinks were worked out. Hell, they're still
not worked out. But you can imagine in those days what the situation was
like. The difficulty came mainly with the young men, the young-bloods, thos=
e
who weren't old enough to have taken part in the Civil War. They had not
experienced all of the obscene things that go on during war. They're sittin=
g
around listening to their older brothers, cousins, and uncles talk about
them, and they kind of saw themselves as the champions of this life style
which all of a sudden is gone. "Don't worry, Pa. I'll make things right."

This was why you had the violence that occurred in that period so much, and
their elders provided them with a support network that prolonged the ordeal=
.

GROTH: Let me quote from Ventura's review and ask you to respond to this
accusation. He said, referring to the white Texan population in
Reconstruction Texas, 'Jackson's heroes have courage in the face of danger,
fierceness, determination, flair, and a kind of flat-out pedal-to-the-metal
madness that is very American" --

JACKSON:    [laughs] This guy's great. He's a gonzo journalist by trade, I
believe, always talking in his column about the major book he's about to do=
.

GROTH: He goes on to say, and I think this is the central acaisation,
'Jackson is a racist because he finds these qualities only in white people.
Almost without exception he presents blacks as oafs, exactly as blacks were
represented in the old-type movies that are the model for his dialogue." An=
d
then he goes on to say "Every drawing of a black man is the same drawing,
same bone structure, same expression, same lips. His whites by contrast are
difernitiated. This is more than a simple gap, this is how Jackson sees."

JACKSON:    Well, the guy needs glasses very badly, and several of the
people whose letters the Chronicle did publish pointed this out, that there
is as much differentiation in the black people in the book -- because I'm
working from photographs, for heaven's sake -- as there is with white
people. But the reviewer evidently did not notice these. He thinks that
because my blacks have flatter noses and larger lips than my whites, that
these anatomical differences are somehow an insidious plot on my part to
dehumanize these people. Gary, he's saying that I'm operating on exactly th=
e
same level as the Nazi artists in Germany.

GROTH: Right, right.

JACKSON: Those artists/cartoonists who depicted the Jews as squat, fat,
little hooked-nose subhumans to prepare the German population for the idea
that they should be exterminated. He's saysng that I'm doing the same thing=
,
and that by depicting my blacks in this fashson, I make the white violence
against them more acceptable. Hey, man, that's a heavy charge. And it is no=
t
justified by the artwork. If you look at it, you will see these people come
in different shapes and flavors like the white folks.

GROTH: I didn't detect that the blacks were any more caricatured within you=
r
style than the whites.

JACKSON: This is what is happening: I've never seen a single bit of artwork
that Michael Ventura's ever produced, yet he claims to be an artist in his
review, and he is not even perceptive enough to note the differences in the
people that I'm drawing. And I was just floored by that and many of his
other accusations. I'm not an ignoramus. This was not kind of a
happy-go-lucky, "Let's try to draw these subhuman Negroes so that everybody
will think that they got what was coming to them," sort of thing. Ventura's
write-up was just a litany of putdowns -- everybody who read it said that i=
t
was the most bitter kind of so-called review they had ever read in their
life and that it really amounted to a personal attack, a smear. I certainly
wasn't prepared for it. So like I said, it put me in a state of mind where
for like a couple of weeks, I didn't even want to do anything, you know? Wh=
y
bother? If this is the kind of response that you get to something that you
slaved on for a couple of years... It really did take the wind out of my
sails, I must say. And he later defended himself, because evidently he had
been getting a lot of letters and feedback from people himself.

GROTH: Now where did he defend himself?

JACKSON: He has a weekly column called "After 3 AM," or "Midnight Hour," or
something like that. I don't know if he lives here in Austin or in L.A. I
know that he bounced back and forth for a while, trying to become a
screenwriter out there, and had no luck at it. One of his projects, as it
turns out, was a screenplay dealing with John Wesley Hardin, which nobody
wanted. I think that when he saw my book, a lot of something -- antagonism
-- came into play. I just don't know. I've never met the gentleman, who, I
understand, hails from the Bronx.

GROTH: How do you respond to his charge that you imbued the whites with
certain qualities that you did not imbue the blacks with?

JACKSON: Well, it's horseshit. But my point is this: you have to, when you
do a book, take a perspective, O.K.? My perspective in this case was from
the side of the white Southerners during the Reconstruction period.
Basically, I saw the book, because it is about a feud, as dealing with
white-on-white violence, none of which Ventura even mentioned in the review=
.
He only saw the white-on-black aspect of it, which in fact is a very minor
part of the book. I am not trying to tell the story of John Wesley Hardin
from the black point of view. And I'm not even interested in what happened
to the blacks except insofar as it was a contributing factor to the overall
violence of the era in terms of military rule and Reconstruction. So I am
taking probably the most unpopular perspective for the book imaginable. And
that is the politically incorrect idea that you can tell a story about
racists sympathetically. You see what I'm saying? Because they were racists=
,
as Ventura points out, but they were also human beings. In other words,
racism was just part of the mind-set of that day and time. So it just seems
mind-boggling to me that you cannot take any perspective you deem
appropriate in the story you're telling. I think that an artist should have
that latitude, in terms of putting together his story, and deciding on a
perspective that is key to all that follows. And I say, hey, I'm not tellin=
g
this story like Alex Haley would tell it. I understand and appreciate his
approach, but it's not my cup of tea. Roots come in different colors.

GROTH: When you decided to tell the story from the point of view of the
white Texas population, you must have known that you were treading a real
razor's edge between sympathizing with their historical moment, with them a=
s
people caught up in an historical moment, and sympathizing with racism per
se.

JACKSON:    Well, of course I did. This is why the project sat on my
backburner for a decade. During this agonizing period of time, I'm sending
xeroxes of the script out to people who speciallze on the Reconstruction
era, as well as historians in South Texas. In other words, I'm soliciting
response on different levels here. I'm going to the chronistas of those
counties concerned, and I'm going to authorities on a national level, and
I'm saying, "Tell me if I've got my facts straight here. Tell me if this is
the way it happened." And so I got a lot of feedback over a period of time,
and I finally felt pretty confident about it, except, of course, for the
powder keg that it represents in telling the story from a point of view tha=
t
most people do not find sympathetic.

GROTH:    I think that one of the things that seems to come through his
review, is that there seems to be an implcit accusation that you didn't
condemn the racism from an authorial point of view, and yet --

JACKSON: Oh, yeah. That was a major problem with Ventura.

GROTH: But you did not feel the need to do that?

JACKSON: No, I didn't. In this case, I figured that what I needed to do was
to make the story more up close and personal, and to show what was
motivating these people to act the way they did, to reinforce, in my
narrative voice, what you saw below, as opposed to qualifying it. There's a
couple ways you can go in this voice. You can say, folks, what you're going
to see in the panel below is horrible, an atrocity, a real stain against
humanity, but, sad to say, this is the way it happened. And then show the
artwork. I would argue that that is not effective storytelling because it
strips away whatever power the artwork would have. By that kind of a
qualifying voice you work against and negate the visual side of the equatio=
n
-- and visuals are integral to the comic's medium, aren't they?

GROTH:    You're making a distinction between propagating racism -- which i=
s
what Ventura accused you of I think -- and depicting racism -- which is wha=
t
you're claiming to have done. But, would you agree with the proposition tha=
t
an author could assert racism by the way he depicts it, that this is a
matter of inteipretation?

JACKSON: Yes, it's all in the interpretive realm, and this is exactly why
our society has tied itself in knots conceming what's racist and what isn't=
.
Today, many Chinese-Americans would find The Yellow Kid an objectionable
symbol of past racism. That's also why humorous classics like Amos and Andy
have fallen into the racist category. Funny, bust-your-gut-laughing stuff;
but black intellectuals think it's the worst depiction of their society
imaginable. I, a young country hick who'd never even seen a black person
much less a big-city slum, thought it was a riot -- every bit as good as Re=
d
Skelton's "Freddy the Freeloader" bum character. [It's] All in how you
interpret it and who's doing the interpreting. What a white person might
find amusing, a black person might seejust the opposite. This is a given,
and seldom can you please everyone -- especially if your "interpretation"
deals with a period as troubled as post-war Reconstruction in the South.

Ventura, so it seerns, thinks that I must be a racist for even trying to
tackle this subject, for even wasting my time with people he denounces as
all racists themselves. "Why bother with such scumbags?" he asks. "Better
that they and their evil ways remain forgotten." So I was doomed, in his
estimation, from the git-go.

GROTH:    One thing he objected to was youe narration, and your use of the
word "Negro" in the narration, and he said that's "Jackson talking, not his
characters," but it was my impression that it was an omniscient narration,
circa 1870 or so.

JACKSON: Are you talking about the use of the words "Colored" and "Negro" i=
n
my narrative banners?

GROTH:    Yeah, in die captions. And it seems to me like what you were
trying to do was to narrate it from the point of view of someone in 1870.

JACKSON: Yes, precisely! Now, Ventura makes some sort ofa snide remark abou=
t
that, saying regardless of"what the politically correct crowd thinks," and
my argument is, "Hey, you're one of them yourself." What is a politically
correct person? Has the reviewer never heard of a national organization tha=
t
advances the rights of who? -- Colored people. Has he never heard of the
Negro College Fund, whose motto in TV commercials is "A mind is a terrible
thing to waste?" And yet he is condemning me for using "Colored" and "Negro=
"
as a narrator. What is a politically correct person except somebody who
hustles to make sure they're using the latest term that a minority group
decides to call itself? Aflican-American didn't exist as a term in that era=
.
And yet that's how he would have me refer to black people in my captions,
for to do otherwise is a slap-in-the-face to modern readers and especially
to blacks. So I'm just at a total loss as to how to deal with that kind of
criticism.

They were "Colored" people back in the 186Os and 187Os. They were "Negroes,=
"
which comes fiom the Spanish word for "black" [negro]. So I really don't
know what to say to such bullshit charges that my work is racist and unfit
for younger readers.

GROTH:    He claimed to have caught you on a historical mistake, with the
Winchester rifle...

JACKSON: Right. And he cited that one example, I might add, to say that my
entire work was historically inaccurate and not to be trusted as a
legitimate history of the era.

GROTH: Right. But he was in fact wrong, wasn't he?

JACKSON: He was in fact wrong. After letters started coming to the Chronide=
,
Ventura wrote a little blurb at the end of one of his columns. He said, "It
was an honest mistake, which needs no apology." I loved that. He calls me a
shoddy historian, but all he's doing is displaying his own ignorance and
pretending it's okay to do so.

GROTH:    And he based his charge virtually on that one mistake which he
later conceded wasn't a mistake.

JACKSON: On that one damn thing, that a Winchester couldn't have been in a
scene in 1857. And I'm not even drawing a Winchester. You know, a Wincheste=
r
on the right side of the plate his a slot where you slide a bullet in? You
look at the picture and tell me if you see one of those things on the side
of the plate. No! It's a Henry rifle, and it's the same kind that Blondie
used to save old Tuco's neck from the noose in The Cood, the Bad, and the
Ugly. They were rare pre-Civil War weapons, but people down in Texas got th=
e
latest in military technology available. Old Sam Colt himself said that the
Texans had basically made his arm, and without them, he would have stayed i=
n
bankruptry. So when these types of repeating rifles came out, you know who
was buying them first: Texans.

Anyway, that was just another example of the review's misdirected criticism
of me, and Ventura used it to make a mountain out of a molehill.

GROTH:    In the book itself, you talk about your various historical
sources, but can you tell me what you used for the visual sources? How do
you dig up that stuff?

JACKSON: Oh, there's quite a bit of it. For example, Hardin himself. All of
his papers and photographic collection have been preserved. He wrote scores
and scores of letters while he was in prison, and his relatives down there
at Nixon gave all this stuff to the university in San Marcos, which is abou=
t
30 miles south of Austin. All that material is there, including pictures of
the children, his wife, himself, and other relatives. Much of it has been
published, by the way, because he's one of the more notable gunfighters who
actually left an autobiography behind. So in one sense, you've got a store
of visual materials available for a project of this kind, cameras having
been invented by the Civil War era? You've got no problem with weapons,
costumes, houses... the whole shebang. Photographs of many of the main
characters; they exist.

GROTH:    W'hat's always struck me about your historical work is just how
authentic all the visuals look; I'm talking about the scenery, the
cacriages, the wagons, the houses, and so forth. Is all that, in fact,
accurate?

JACKSON: Absolutely. I pride myself on it. In fact, one of the leading
authorities on Reconstruction period and the military's role in it is a man
named William Richter. He lives out in Tucson. He not only read the script
for historical accuracy, but he's now a big fan, and when I sent him the
finished book, he wrote back and he said, "I can't believe it. I can
recognize every general in your panels. Is this a comic book? I didn't know
comics were so sophisticated." And stuff like that. So it's edifying when
somebody who has combed the archives for these types of documents thinks
that you're doing a hallway decent job.

But of course I'm not trying to cater academic "specialists." I'm tryng to
get the general readership to feel the mood and the tempo of the time, and
understand what it was like. This is my whole thing. When I create these
books, what I'm trying to do is take people back in a time machine to that
day and time and let them see events as they occurred through these people'=
s
eyes.

Well, some people don't like the view.

GROTH:    [laughs] Right.

JACKSON: I notice that Alex Haley didn't beat around the bush with Roots,
even when the thing was filmed. I mean, there was a lot of very
objectionable issues that he met head-on. The white owner's abuse of the
attractive black women, did he skirt the issue? Hell, no. Chuck Connors is
crowded right on top of her telling her to relax and enjoy herself. And so =
I
figure if a black man can tell the story and do it well, from his side-- hi=
s
racist, if you would, point of view -- why the hell can't a white man do th=
e
same thing? But that's just not the way it works; we have a double standard
about such things. Now people are even shy about naming a high school after
somebody if they owned slaves. In an era when it was socially acceptable to
do so! It's just mind-boggiing. Jim Bowie, for example. There was a great
stink when they tried to name a high school here in Austin "Bowie High
School," because he had been a slave-runner and owned slaves before dying a=
t
the Alamo.

It gets a little bit bizarre. Everybody in the South owned slaves in those
days if they could afford to. It was a mark of one's social standing.

GROTH: As someone who has drawn some of the most virulent anti-racist comic=
s
in the history of comics, are you conflicted about that kind of political
correctness?

JACKSON: It's not a matter of being politically correct to me at all, Gary.
My creative mandate is to try to tell the story truthfully.

GROTH:    No, no, I mean, when decent people lobby not to have schools name=
d
after people they consider to be oppressive people. I mean, do you feel
conflicted about your feelings toword that?

JACKSON: Do I feel conflicted?

GROTH:    Yeah, do you have some sympathy for that point of view?

JACKSON: Not really. I don't, because once you start hauling skeletons out
of the closest, we won't have anybody worthy of naming anything after. For
example, there's all of that hullabaloo about Thomas Jefferson and his
children by a mulatto slave girl, or whatever, and then the family came up
with DNA results that proved it. But earlier, when Nick Nolte made that
movie about Jefferson in Paris, scholars were outraged. "Oh, you're showing
Jefferson doing something that the historical record doesn't definitely say
he did." So, when the DNA thing hit the media, I got a chuckle out of it,
needless to say.

No, I don't lose any sleep at night over what my ancestors may or may not
have done. Trying to guilt-trip an entire culture is -- I don't know, it's =
a
little sick. We're not responsible for our ancestors failings. It's not a
problem with me. My problem in telling a story like Lost Cause, is to try
and tell it as well as possible, from whatever perspective is most
effective. In other words, with the Los Tejanos book, I certainly didn't
want to tell that story from the white Texan point of view. Am I a racist
for using the Mexican perspective? Most readers didn't think so. In fact
they patted me on the back and said I was breaking new ground. I think it's
a little ironic that the same approach to a different subject has now cause=
d
me to he branded a racist.

So it's not a matter of being politically correct. As a storyteller, once
you take a focal character, as a storyteller, I think you're obliged to try
to tell the story from that person's point of view, and his culture's as
well.

GROTH:    You mentioned Haley's Roots, which is the history of slavery as
seen through the eyes ofa slave. Do you think that seeing history through
the eyes of the victims gives the author a leg up, morally speaking, wherea=
s
seeing history through the eyes of the oppressor -- whether its the racist
South during Reconstruction or Nazis or Guatemalan death squads -- could be
intrinsically morally questionable? Does one of the goals ofart -- to
humanize its subjects -- run into moral conflict with such an approach?

JACKSON: An interesting point. Obviously we "civilized" folk about to step
into the 21st Century identify with and see sympathetically the plight of
victinas of oppression. Thus, the success of Haley's Roots. White people th=
e
world over could appreciate the struggle for human dignity that his
characters represented. Not only did Haley have a leg up morally, but as a
writer he obeyed the creative imperative that I just mentioned: to tell his
story as well and as truthfully as possible, whatever the cost. Imagine the
reaction he'd have gotten if his book and TV series hit the market in 1910!

Now, is it "intrinsically morally questionable" to attempt a story from the
oppressor's perspective? I don't know. People are just people, and few are
perfect. Yes, white Texans of Reconstruction times were racists (as we now
define the term), but they also had the same hopes and dreams of any era.
Their lives had some redeeming qualities, and I don't think it's right to
sweep them into the historical dustbin because they did politically
incorrect things by current moral standards. True, there's a thin line
between "glorifying" their misdeeds -- evidently what Ventura thinks I've
done -- and sympathizing with their human condition in rough times. They
were my ancestors, but I don't see how I've "fallen under their spell" (as
the self-righteous reviewer claimed) by attempting to recapture the spirit
of the Reconstruction era from their perspective. I don't even see them as
the oppressor but rather as the victim. Maybe that's what annoyed Ventura.
Anyway, it's not like I tried to hide their blemishes in Lost Cause; I put
them right out thece for everyone to see, "warts and all." How is this
glorifying my ancestors any more than Haley did his?

I guess, by extension, what I'm saying is that, yes, some death camp guard'=
s
son or daughter could do a book/film/comic about their father's "struggle"
against the Jews or the Mayan Indians in whatever historical period. It
probably wouldn't win the acclaim of The Pawnbroker or Maus, that's safe to
say! But their father, whether a brutal fucker or a hapless soul merely
caught in an institutionalized web of violence, was still human, and if the
work "humanized" him, then it would qualify as art, wouldn't it?
Objectionable to those whose parent/ancestors were gassed or hacked to
death? Certainly. But such things are history; they happened, and we're
still trying to understand why. I had never thought much about life from th=
e
Nazi point of view until I saw Marlon Brando in The Young Lions. Though he
was on the "wrong side," his role made me realize that he was a human being=
,
too, his inner-workings worthy of attention just like the good guys.

So to me there's no "moral conflict" in humanizing your subjects, be they
scumbags or saints, and I don't think the goals of art are incompatible wit=
h
such an approach. If the story has a compelling ring of truth, it's art, an=
d
political correctness can take the hindmost.

GROTH:    Now, you have been criticized, in Lost Cause, as being a bit all
over the map, because it's not only about John Wesley Hardin, it's also
about the Taylor-Sutton Peud, and there's less one central character in thi=
s
book than there is in say, Los Tejanos. Did you feel that scattered?

JACKSON: No, not really. Part of the problem comes from the fact that the
editor there at Kitchen Sink wanted to use a different subtitle on the
cover. Something about "the story of famous gunfighter John Wesley Hardin".
So a lot of people saw that and bought the thing thinking that they were
getting a fill-fledged book about the life of John Wesley Hardin. Actually,
I'm not interested in him except in terms of this feud that I'm writing
about, and the era itself. So I think some people were disappointed, becaus=
e
the "main character" doesn't show up until deep into the book. But if you
look on the title page itself you will see what the book is really about.

GROTH:    I noticed that.

JACKSON: That's misleading hype, but I don't feel like I should be blamed
for that. I understand that when a publishing company does a book, they wan=
t
to market it on the basis of name recognition, via the Bob Dylan song, and
the Time-Lift blurb about him being so mean that he shot a man for snoring,
blah blah blah. True, the book has sort of a "cast of thousands." And I
guess that that's discombobulating, if you're expecting a very focused stor=
y
told just from one individual's experiences throughout. But I didn't really
see any other way I could deal with it, because this one person is not ther=
e
all the time.

GROTH:    I gather that focusing on John Wesley Hardin uould not have told
the whole story.

JACKSON: No, it wouldn't have. He's in there, but right beside Creed Taylor
and Joe Tumlinson, both brothers-in-law, who are the two main feudists. It'=
s
kind of like the Hatfields and the McCoys. And they are actually as large,
if not larger, characters in the book than John Wesley Hardin is. IfI wante=
d
to do a biography of Hardin, believe me, it would have been completely
diilerent than this. But as I say, I was only interested in him insofar as
he related to the feud, which was basically white-on-white violence. It
wasn't white-on-black, except just once in a while when black people crosse=
d
them either as soldiers or policemen. I think if you'll look in the book at
the number of people that are shot down, you'll see more of them are white
folks than anything else.

GROTH:    Can I ask you why someone else painted the cover?

JACKSON: Because I don't paint very much. I'm basically a practitioner of
black-on-white, you know? [Taking] The old crow-quill to a blank piece of
paper, and getting something to arise from it, is completely different from
color work. I have no color vision or talent for it. My experiences in the
past, when I've tried to do color separations for my own art, have been
dismal. About the only thing that I've really done is the Comanche Moon
cover. And to me, this guy Sam Yeates is just incredible. I didn't think
that Sam really captured the lacial features of John Wesley Hardin. He's a
little chubby there, and Hardin was more raw-boned and lean. But I think it
works O.K. And the other thing that probably put off Ventura, and possibly
other readers, is you'll notice what's hanging behind him there on the
cover.

GROTH:    Oh, yeah. [laughs]

JACKSON: A tattered Confederate flag. As you well know, there are a lot of
states in the Union that no longer fly such a banner from the flagpole of
their capitol. In a sense maybe that is a red herring, or something, and
might put off some people.

GROTH:    Well, it is provocative.

JACKSON: I suppose so. I've tried to be like that most of my artistic
career.

GROTH:    But it certainly reflects the tensions that you were portraying,
so...

JACKSON: Not only that, the book itself has those dynamics in the
background. In other words, the legacy of the lost cause in terms of the
Confederacy's stars and bars is the background for the entire book. But
that's not the way I'm using the title; I'm not referring to the Confederac=
y
or the Civil War, per Se. I'm talking more about a passing life style, of
which slavery was only one aspect. I mean, here are people being told that
they are going to have to live differently and think differently than they
have in the past. Nobody wants to be subjected to that kind of domination,
especially whenever it's done at the hands of the military.

GROTH:    I assume you were heavily influenced by Kurtzman's war material?

JACKSON: Oh, definitely so. The funny thing about the Kurtzman war books is
that the Kurtaman strips were my least favorite ofall. I much preferred the
stories that other artists drew. I assume that Kurtzman had a guiding hand
in writing them all. Did he, or did he not?

GROTH:    Kurtzman wrote them all, except in the last few issues.

JACKSON: But nonetheless, as a visual storyteller, I did not find Harvey
near as effective as the rest of the guys. He was too impressionistic for m=
y
tastes.

GROTH:    I bet you liked Jack Davis.

JACKSON: Oh, of course. Davis particularly, but most of the rest of the
crowd were also outstanding. You know, Wally Wood, Reed Crandall, and --

GROTH: John Severin.

JACKSON: The whole gang. Yeah. Severin especially. Those books were a real
eye-opener to me, and some of the best that were ever done.

GROTH:    Has your drawing changed over the years from Comanche Moon and Lo=
s
Tejanos to Lost Cause?

JACKSON: Well, I was rushed on this book. I was given a year to produce a
140-page book, and I told them I simply couldn't do it, and they gave me a
year and a half. But then I was rushed on the inking and everything, and
felt like that I was doing a sloppy job.

GROTH:    Who is "they?"

JACKSON: The editor that I had at Kitchen Sink, Chris Couch. But I can't
blame him, because at this time Kitchen Sink had fallen under the wing of
their West Coast investment firm. And they had, I believe, some guy there
barking orders about what would be done, when and on what schedule, and so
on. It was extremely difficult to get a contract out of the boys at that
time, because it had to pass so many musters. There were so many hurdles
that you had to clear before you could even get an O.K. on a book. [It was]
Not like in the Old days, all very "corporate." And once, like I say, that
they decided yeah, they wanted to do it, then I'm put on this incredibly
demanding schedule, and -- so what I was trying to do was to simplify the
art a little bit in the book to deliver it on time. I don't know if it's
readily noticeable. The lettering, in particular, is not as carefully done
as I did on Los Tejanos, for example.

GROTH:    I can see that.

JACKSON: Yeah. I had a much more satisfying experience with this book that
I've just finished, which should come out this summer. I believe that it is
the best artwork I've ever done.

GROTH:    Now what book is this, Jack?

JACKSON: It's called Indian Lover. Sam Houston and the Cherokees.

GROTH: Who's publishing that?

JACKSON: An outfit here in Austin called Mojo Press. They published an
anthology of Joe Lansdale's work called Atomic Chili. In that collection, I
illustrated a story of his, one that slipped through the cracks very
quickly. I believe Dark Horse or somebody originally did it, called "Dead i=
n
the West." When it first came out, it was two books of around 48 or 52 page=
s
each.

GROTH: Now how can you afford to do these books?

JACKSON: How can I afford to do them?

GROTH:    Yeah. [laughs] Yes. I mean, they can't pay well.

JACKSON: No, the pay is not very good. But you know, I decided a long time
ago that life is short and you might as well be doing something you enjoy.
Even if you have to kind of skimp along and starve in the process. This
becomes more dilficult once you have a wife and child.

GROTH:    I know.

JACKSON: Yeah. But nonetheless, I've miraculously managed to pretty much do
the types of things that I want to do, whether it is commercially viable or
not. I mean, my sympathies are to my publishers, you being one of them, for
going along with it, and helping my projects come to fluition.

GROTH: I know the royalty you earned on Los Tejanos and I can't imagine tha=
t
the amount of money that you were paid for Lost Cause collld possibly have
sustained a year and a half of living.

JACKSON: Like I say, the only thing that makes it possible is usually peopl=
e
pay me as I work. So I've got a little bit coming in each month,just to
cover the basics. And then I scramble for the rest.

GROTH:    Well, I'm glad you can do it.

JACKSON: Well, yeah. I'm crazy for doing it. And that's why it hurts when
some turkey calls me a racist for a labor of love. But it's what I enjoy,
and I've seen so many dear friends not make it as long as I have, you know?
Sheridan, Irons, Griffin -- each time one of them kicks the bucket, it make=
s
me realize that hey, our time here is not guaranteed. It's a day by day
proposition. We'd better be doing something that we're getting some
fulfillment out of And I assume this is why you continue to do what you've
been doing.

GROTH:    I think it is.

JACKSON: Now for how long?

GROTH:    Twenty-three years.

JACKSON: That's what I'm thinking. Hey, you're almost to retirement age.

GROTH:    Yeah, rght. On what? But yeah, that makes all the difference in
the world, you know?

JACKSON: Like the old-timer musicians that were sitting around chewing the
fat: "Hey, you're getting old enough to retire," and the other guy says,
"Retire from what? I've never worked a day in my life." If you're enjoying
it, it's not like work. I continue to do it, and I've found something that'=
s
even less rewarding, financially, than doing comic books.

GROTH:    Good god, like -- let me guess -- translating Croatian poetry?

JACKSON: No, scholarly publications for the university press circuit. And
I've been cranking them out, almost as many as my comic books.

GROTH: I'd love to see some of that. How would I get a hold of it?

JACKSON: Have you got four hundred bucks?

GROTH: Pour hundred bucks?

JACKSON: The Book Club of Texas, which is a brainchild of Stanley Marcus,
the guy who ran the big Nieman-Marcus chain clothing store here in Texas.
Back before the Second World War, he started a thing called The Book Club o=
f
Texas, that would issue quality reprints of rare and out-of-print books. It
lapsed during the war, but it's been revived, and they decided to publish
new scholarship as well as these oldies but moldies. This summer, I hope,
they're coming out with a deluxe two-volume boxed set of a book I wrote. Th=
e
books are like ten inches by fifteen inches, finely printed in an edition o=
f
300 copies, and the book's called Shooting the Sun. It's a history of the
mapping of early Texas. And you know, there is just no pay there,
considering all the years of work I put into it. Because it's a worthy
project, I basically forego my royalties, production costs being so high.
But it will be so stunningly beautiflil once it comes out.



All site contents are =A9 2001


So, there it is ghettoites.  I finally got my views about V's slam of my
werk published somewhere else besides the slimy Austin Chronicle--and to a
national audience instead of a local one.  I'd had my say, my chance to
defend myself in the public arena, and felt better about it.  When I open a
website for my rebuttal & this TCJ interview, with somebody's help, I'll
finally be content.  At that point in time, people on the Web will be able
to compare V's review with My Side of the Story.  Is he free to keep his
review circulating?  Absolutely, as long as my defense is spinning in
cyberspace beside his vicious slander.  Freedom of speech has got to work
both ways, or it don't work a'tall.