Spotlight on Rat Bastard

“I’d planned on going to the School of Visual Arts in New York City,” Rat Bastard co-creator and artist Cliff Galbraith says. His eyes narrow as he reflects on a formative experience in his life. “But I was such a fuck-up that I never applied. I was just being a bum.

“One night, the cops picked me up for selling pot at the pool hall. ‘You’re the guy who was doing donuts in the park and chasing the guy walking his dog around the baseball diamond last summer,’ one of them said. ‘I remember your father - he’ll deal with you better than the law ever will.’

“My father gave me three choices: 1. Go to work for him in his machine shop. 2. Go to a local art school, DuCret, which I could get into easily. 3. Get out of the house. My friends and I were always petty criminals, so I opted for the path of least resistance. I went to art school and discovered Heavy Metal magazine and guys like Moebius.

“One day,” he continues, “Frank Thorne came to lecture at our school. I showed him my work and he told me to call him when I was ready. I never got it together. Next thing I know, I’m dropping out of school and printing T-shirts.”

From there Galbraith headed on a circuitous route which eventually brought him back to comics and his self-published creation Rat Bastard, which he puts out with collaborator Tim Bird. Along the way he created the Saurus line of T-shirts (you might have seen them: pictures of various dinosaurs in human garb labelled “Shopasaurus,” “Beachasaurus,” “Partyasaurus,” and so on), formed his own company, and proceeded to live off the royalties for the past several years. Four years ago his father stepped in to run the operation and Galbraith threw himself into comics full-time.

“I really wanted to create characters,” he explains, “and I was sick of Saurus - I’d always felt it was a glorified Hallmark card. I ran into Tim one day. I told him I’d been sketching characters. I’d been watching what was going on in comics, the whole Image thing, and I thought my work sucked just as much as theirs and I could write just as bad as them.”

Galbraith pauses to light a cigarette. He takes a long drag and puffs smoke into the chilly air before continuing.

“I had a mountain of sketch books, and I’d already done most of a really poorly-drawn Marvel-type character. Tim sifted through all of it. He was fascinated. Eventually he found 3 pages of character sketches and plot notations for Rat Bastard. ‘This is what you should be working on,’ he said. ‘This is you!’”

From that event was born the comic book, which recently released its fifth issue. Set in a dystopian future full of mile-high skyscrapers and flying cars, Rat Bastard follows the adventures of Rosco, an ELF (enhanced life form; in this case, Rosco is a rat) who can’t seem to stay out of trouble. Take the atmosphere of Fifth Element and mix it with the humor of Brazil and a dash of anthropomorphics and you’d have this comic. In this future, your status in society depends on how genetically pure you are (other species’ DNA has intermingled with that of humans by this time), and you live under the rule of an Elvis impersonator who is the king.

In the first four-issue story arc, the mystery behind a dead cabbie sends Rosco on a journey which takes him places ELFs aren’t allowed to go. He learns of a girl named Carmen Monoxide who is tied into the murder somehow. Then he meets a shadowy stranger who gives him 24 hours to find a stolen vial or be destroyed. Along the way he stumbles into Ground Town, the place at the bottom of the towering skyscrapers where only the most mutated people live. After narrowing escaping, he’s abducted by an outlaw political activist group, and later he runs into the Knights of Genetic Purity as well as the Gleaners, who steal spinal fluid. For the final showdown he finds himself in the domain of S.M. Elvis, the sadomasochistic Elvis impersonator who controls the Manhattan Empire.

“Tim thinks the appeal of Rosco is that he’s an ‘every man’ character,” according to Galbraith. “He has no super powers and seems to be thrown into situations and lives by his wits. At times, we’d all like to deal with people the way Rosco does. The fact that he’s not even a man makes him unique in this sort of story. He seems to be the only one with any common sense.

“The naration by Rosco is a non-human’s observations on the absurdity of human behavior, how petty we are. How selfish and self-absorbed we are. How we live in our own filth, how destructive we are. And most of all, how prejudiced we are. Since the Enhanced Life Forms gained their civil rights, racism no longer exists. But prejudice still does. It’s just moved its focus from one group to another.”

As for the idea of an Elvisian ruler, Galbraith says: “The whole idea of Elvis as a deity is really just to raise the question: Were Jesus, Buddah and Mohammed really just the most popular cats of their day? Where does legend turn into religion? There are so many recent examples of someone’s fame taking on mythic proportions. Look at stories about Babe Ruth, George Washington, Davey Crockett, even JFK. How do these people become more than what they truly were?”

Since the comic had such a unique underlying premise, Galbraith (who says he was “Mr. Independent by age 19”) never thought of bringing his vision to one of the bigger publishers. Using his knowledge of running a business and selling a product (“I’d done trade shows for years,” he says; “comic cons are just really weak trade shows), he and Bird set out to do it themselves. “Do it yourself” is a common battlecry among self-publishers, but few really know what they’re getting into, and even fewer go to war with a plan in place.

With royalties coming in from his T-shirt creations, Galbraith had the ability to fund his endeavor better than most self-publishers. He and Bird hit almost every convention in the country for the first two years, promoting their book and selling comics and T-shirts. The fact that it was a quality comic in color for $1.95 (Glabraith knows he’s losing money on each issue, but he’s trying to keep the price down in order to sell more comics) made it enticing for most readers, and soon word-of-mouth spread.

“I love conventions,” Galbraith says. “I meet a lot of great people, a lot of interesting artists. That said, though, I’ve never been in a room with so many douche bags. We gravitate more toward guys like Shannon Wheeler, Kieron Dwyer or Evan Dorkin - we’re kind of cut from the same cloth. I’m not really interested in talking to some ‘hot’ artist from Marvel or DC. I have and Christ are they dull.”

One of Galbraith and Bird’s knocks against the celebrity status given to so many artists in comics is the fact that they credit “The Huja Brothers” for the story and the art and make themselves Art Director and Editor. Huja stands for “hopped up jackass,” which is what Bird told me once is their reference to anyone who thinks they can just go out there and publish a comic (he and his partner included).

“The whole idea of the Huja Brothers is to make it like a band,” explains Galbraith with a laugh. “Like the Ramones or the Donnas. We’ll be Lee Harvey Huja or Cool Mo Dee Huja or whatever. We’ve even let fans sit and sign books. Our whole plan is to destroy the myth of the celebrity artist.”

Galbraith and Bird also bestow the title of “honorary Huja” on anyone they deem worthy. Drew Hayes attended one con as “Drew Huja,” and Bob Schreck is a Huja as well, although he didn’t give himself a nickname.

Not only does Galbraith not really care about being popular, he also diverts from many fellow self-publishers in his like of Diamond. Many complaints have been lodged about the distributor’s unfriendliness toward small press people.

“Grow up,” is Galbraith’s advice. “It’s not Diamond’s job to sell your book. If it didn’t sell, it might just be because it sucked, or you did nothing to promote it. This is a business, not a local craft fair. You should try gluing macaroni to a tin can and spray painting it if you just want to play around.”

One industry powerhouse which he and Bird dislike highly, however, is Wizard magazine. Despite the fact that they sold a lot of T-shirts and comic books at Wizard’s Chicago Comic Con, he feels no desire to continue to support a publication which he feels ignores small publishers in favor of the bigger ones.

“They don’t give a rat’s ass about the independent guy. If they won’t support us, we can’t support them.”

And in Galbraith’s view, the big publishers aren’t doing much for the comics business either. It’s best to stand back and give him some room when the topic of the current state of affairs in comics today comes up.

“When I was a kid,” he explains, “most comics were written and drawn by hairy-knuckled men. Today they’re done by boys. Boys with no life experiences. They’ve grown up watching adventure movies and Star Trek.

“Other than Alex Ross and Kurt Busiek, I really don’t get what’s going on in mainstream comics. It’s like there’s two comic industry universes: there are those who want to beat off to stuff like Fathom, chicks with swords and guys in tights versus those who are interested in content, self expression and the possibility of something new. I saw the cover of one Heroes Reborn Fantastic Four, and Sue Storm is posing with her ass pointed to the reader! Isn’t she supposed to be somebody’s mom? Kirby must be spinning in his grave.”

And comic book shop owners?

“Look at the comic shop owner character on The Simpsons. How do you think they came up with that guy?

“I mean, some of them are absolutely wretched,” Galbraith elaborates. “I can’t stand them. Then there are the people who really understand business and have a healthy affection for the medium. But what this tells me is that most comic shop owners aren’t going to cons. They don’t see them as trade shows, so they’re not exposed to new stuff.

“If we go into a shop, introduce ourselves, and get to know the owner, our sales jump from between zero and five books to 40 to 100-plus books per issue. That tells me something about the comics business.”

Sales have remained steady on the book and Galbraith has plans to bring in more artists to work with him. He also has an 18-page story in the works for Frank Frazetta Fantasy Illustrated, and it won’t feature Rat Bastard. That comic will continue, although he and Bird have no plans to do it forever.

“I’d eventually like to kill him,” Galbraith says. “I’d like him to choke on a sandwich. When we get bored, we’ll kill Rosco off, I guess. Or we’ll kill each other off. Tim has already said he felt it was his duty to kill me off before I reach forty. That’s a pal.”