Australian Trudy Cooper’s online comic Platinum Grit (which she co-creates with writer Danny Murphy) is quite frankly the best kept secret in comics. Running since 1994, it’s a sprawling, lively adventure dealing with the dark mysterious legacy of a Scottish clan, sexy female characters that never come across for one second as pandering or trite, and some of the tightest, most addicting comic storytelling you will find in ANY form, slammed together in a you-can-dance-to-the-fucker mashup.
I came across Trudy’s stunning work only a short while ago when a writer mentioned that she’d like to work with Trudy on an upcoming anthology book (see the January issue of SPIN magazine for details). Being insanely busy I figured ‘oh I’ll take a look and then get back to it…’
6 hours and a pack of smokes later it was 4am and I’d read through the entire run.
You can read this insanely good comic here: http://www.platinumgrit.com/index.htm
Your mission after reading through the interview and comic? Spread the fucking word. The fact that Trudy isn’t a household name in comics fandom is a crime that needs to be rectified.
And now, I give you the frighteningly talented (and much too humble) Trudy Cooper…
What was your first professional comic work, and how did that come
about?
I've never done any professional comic work, I'm afraid!
Tell us a little about Platinum Grit, the story and the characters.
PG is notoriously difficult to sum up. I've had 14 years to think up a snappy synopsis and still can't! Very basically, it's a magical-realism black comedy about a broken boffin (Jeremy) and the girl (Nils) who befriended him. On the surface it's about their relationship, which is often unhealthy, occasionally deranged, yet ultimately touching (although some will say that we haven't quite gotten to the touching bit yet. I say we have). Wedged into the middle of them is Kate, who belongs in the real world, but finds herself utterly caught up in the not-quite-right world that Jeremy lives in.
Underneath all that is the ticking clock of his family's odd legacy, which he's deliberately been kept in the dark about. Mysteries, secrets, and terrible terrible things.
Platinum Grit obviously has a deep, overarching 'mythology' to it.
You can tell there are secrets to these characters, the situations
they are in and things that are larger than the characters at work in
their world. What inspired the storyline and how detailed and thought
out are your plans for the 'world of Platinum Grit'
Very detailed. It's an almighty juggle keeping track of everything and I live in fear of dropping the ball somewhere along the line. We spend a lot of time working out the details, and going back over them before writing the next chapter.
In terms of what inspired the story - it evolved from the characters and from things Danny and I are interested in. Our own experiences and observations inevitably work their way in if the story can use them.
Not to say that it's in any way autobiographical (clearly), but from my end, a lot of elements come from my own feelings of nostalgia. For example: Jeremy's relationship with his beloved Uncle springs, in part, from growing up with a physicist for a brother, and watching him tinkering about (and yes, he built rockets and fired things out of cannons). I love the whole "antique backyard-science" thing. Add a fascination for family histories, Scottish folklore and elements of Australian culture and it's all in there somewhere.
The personalities in PG feel very 'real' and full of life, are they
based off of anyone?
No, there are aspects of Danny and I in them, but we very much fleshed them all out into their own people. We've spent an awful lot of time with them, and still spend a lot of time talking about who they are, why and where they're going. Kate began as a bit of a mix of Danny's sister and a friend of a friend, but only superficially. Jeremy and Nils began as my archetype characters that had previously been in a different story I'd been carting around from my late teens. They luckily evolved.
On the PG site, it says that your 'day job' is working as an
animator. What kind of animation work do you do, and do you think that
feeds into your work on PG at all?
I should update that, as I've stopped animating in favour of design...
But I majored in Animation at art college, so that definitely had an impact on how I draw. The animation work I've done has been small scale stuff. I actually rather hate animating, but I always think of how PG looks in terms of animation. I can't help it, it's ingrained!
Platinum Grit stands out from a lot of the comics currently running
on the web because of its tight rendering, emotive and evocative
characters, and your distinctive blend of animation, comic book and
anime styles, what are some of your influences that lead your to this
visual approach?
I grew up on a diet of Warner Bros, Hana Barbera, Disney and the occasional dubbed anime, so that was what I aped from childhood. My style is a mix of all those things, carried along and developed as I grew up. I discovered comics that weren't kids comics in my late teens, and fell in love with Cerebus, Elfquest, Myth Adventures, and the french Valerian comics. I then fell for the British boom in the 90's before discovering yet more wonderful French work - books I still adore to this day and often go back to when I feel I need a kick of inspiration.
As for the emotive part - I set m…[Message Truncated]
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CREATORS AND DESTROYERS: FINALLY! The CREATOR OF THE 'MONTH', v2 TRUDY COOPER
