Poor Little Percy Gloom
by Chris Barsanti, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 6/12/2007
If it's intended as a nightmare, then the whole enterprise has a strangely pleasing look about it. Percy Gloom is the first graphic novel from children's film and TV director Cathy Malkasian (Rugrats, The Wild Thornberrys Movie), and as debuts go, it's hard to beat. A fantasy landscape drawn in looping, fairy tale swirls and telling a story redolent with totalitarian darkness, Gloom is an unsettling mixture of whimsy and evil, like a Kafka tale retold in the spirit of Dr. Seuss's The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. The titular character is a little sad sack of a lazy-eyed guy who suffers mightily in a strange world where he is afflicted by everything from an Orwellian bureaucracy to an impossibly weak stomach (the only things Percy can safely consume are buckwheat muffins and lemon juice). Along the way, Malkasian packs in satirical jabs at everything from mind-over-matter fads ("Medicine is poison!") to the modern world's obsession with safety (Percy finds a job at the Cautionary Writing Institute, coming up with warning labels for any product under the sun). It all ends—as more books should—with a song performed by goats.
PWCW: What got you started in animation, specifically animated film?
Cathy Malkasian: I sort of got into it on a lark. Having nothing to lose, I left off my portfolio at a studio at a time when they happened to be hiring. I had no idea how much fun it would turn out to be, or what great people I'd get to work with.
PWCW: Was there anything in particular that prompted your move from animated film to graphic novels, or was this just something you had been wanting to do for a while?
CM: Up until I made friends in animation, most of my comics experience had come from reading Mad magazine when I was a kid. It was a real eye- and mind-opener when various work buddies introduced me to everything from Windsor McCay to R. Crumb. [Illustrator] Rob Goodin was the biggest corrupting influence, being the first to suggest that I try my hand at comics.
PWCW: How long have you been working on Percy Gloom?
CM: It took about a year, all told.
PWCW: Was there a moment of inspiration for the book and character or was it the sort of project that came together piece by piece?
CM: It grew more out of exasperation than inspiration. I got fed up with the problem of fanaticism in this world. On every social level, I watched people getting addicted to being right at the cost of their honesty and humility. A fanatic's ideas don't have to be true or beneficial; they simply have to be presented with boisterous, uncritical and often intimidating zeal. Combine this with the technology of destruction and mass communication... and you get these mindless forces of separation, sucking the life out of people.
PWCW: Percy Gloom could easily be seen as a pretty grim story—its main character is almost always depressed, afflicted with many problems and in danger from malevolent forces. Do you think of it as an upbeat or downbeat tale?
CM: Well, that would depend on your point of view! To me it is a satire, ultimately hopeful. We all have the ability to look at ourselves honestly and decide what is most important, how we want to spend our time here.
PWCW: You've published a number of small comics before. Was it intimidating going from illustrating black-and-white 16-page comics to writing and drawing this dense, 180-page, hardbound graphic novel with fine duotone printing?
CM: The miniature is a challenging and rewarding format, but sometimes it can be limiting. This character and world needed more breathing space.
PWCW: The setting of Percy Gloom has a fairy tale feel to it, but is also extremely surrealistic. Did you ever find yourself wondering if readers would come along on such a strange ride?
CM: Not really. Realism is just one possible style out of many. Hopefully, this will find its way to those who'll want to read it.
PWCW: On <a href = " http://www.percygloom.com/"the book's Web site </a> you refer to Radiohead as "the best band on the face of the Earth." Percy Gloom seems to inhabit a certain sense of alienation and doom that would not be at all strange to find in a Thom Yorke song. Any connection there?
CM: There is a similar sensibility there... and dark humor, too. Radiohead are alchemists—true composers—whose music is very visually stimulating.
PWCW: Is Percy Gloom intended as a stand-alone or could there possibly be a sequel?
CM: Good question! I don't know yet.
PWCW: Lastly and most importantly: who wrote the goat song?
CM: I wrote the music. The goats in my head dictated it.
