Continuing on with Round 4, we have yet another very interesting interview:
kyupol interviews PIT_FACE of Putrid Meat!

First of all, I'm interested to know the history behind choosing your alias as “PIT FACE”? Why “PIT FACE”? Is there a story behind that? (optional: tell me your name and A-S-L?)
Well “Pit-Face” was the name of a band i had in high school. We weren't very good OR organized. Actually i don't think we ever even got an entire song down except for a Black Sabbath song. The name just sounded really cool to me because it made me think of some kind of mosh pit mutant headbanger. I wanted to keep the name with me.

a/s/l??? hahaha! I'm 23. Born Sept. 11 1985. I'm a girl, in a heavy relationship and I've been living the past two years in Woodstock,IL. and my real name is Deidre Rae Crouch.

When did you start: Drawing? Doing comics?
I've been drawing ever since i can remember. Of course it was mostly dinosaurs and stuff like that back then, but my mom's a children's book illustrator. I've always seen her making art so even though our content is a lot different, it's always just been there and been available all my life. My family has also always been very supportive of the work i do, so that also makes a lot of difference.
I think i do comics because my brother got me into em when i was little and they just seemed like the natural way to go for a creative outlet.

Why is the comic titled “Putrid Meat”? Why did you choose that title and how did you come up with that kind of story?
I don't remember how i came up with the name Putrid Meat. I just wanted something with just the right flavor to it so as soon as you read the title, you knew what kind of story it was going to be. Really doesn't have anything to do with anything in the story particularly, but i figured since it's more of a pulp story, that'd be okay.

I noticed that your comic seems to be colored by a crayon or pencil crayon? How long does it take you to finish a page? (from sketching, to inking, to coloring)
I draw with colored pencils and markers actually, but in terms of how long it takes, it really depends if i want to get my lazy ass in gear or not. i try to get at least one page up a week.
but if i sat down, got to work and burped out a whole page without stopping then it'd probably take about 3 hours.

What is your target demographic?
I don't know really. Anyone who's get the same sense of humor as i do i guess. I also have a lot of metal references tucked in there, mainly thrash metal so them too. Probably just anyone who isn't overly sensitive.

The character “Bones”. I noticed he's one of those slob tough guy types and he's quite an interesting fellow. Is there anybody in your real life that influenced this character?
Heh heh, he'd actually get along pretty great with the guy I've been dating for the past 7 years, but I've always been a HUGE Megadeth fan so saying that, it'd be dumb to say there isn't some Dave Mustaine influence in there….ESPECIALLY the hair. but otherwise he's mostly his own guy.

Another question about Bones: How in the hell do you kill this guy? Does he have a kryptonite weakness or something?
Well yeah, but i can't tell you that yet! hahahaha!

About your art style: Why do your characters all look deformed? I mean, there's this certain “look” and “feel” to them. In a way, that you can almost SMELL them. Is there a message you're trying to convey to the readers?
I don't know, i used to like the smell of Windex when i was a kid, maby that had something to do with it. Liked watching a lot of Ren and Stimpy and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Beetlejuice and stuff like that. actually had a phase where i drew mostly clean cut lookin anime if ya could belive it.


Any other influences for your comic? Like films? celebrities? comics? anime? movies? politicians? etc?
OH HELL YEAH! Mainly thrash metalers .Along with the Dave Mustaine hair, Bones has a Razor logo on his shirt. Puke has that big messy black old-school Anthrax hair.I tried to put a white streak in there like Alex Skolnik too when he came back in the last story. Big Milano=Billy Milano, got the idea for President Exis from the Masked Jackal video by Coroner. Charlotte came from the song Charlotte the Harlot by Iron Maiden. And then there's Jack the Ripper…well…he's just jack the ripper! Bones's reading a Lobo comic in there and Lobo's the best thing in the history of everything. There's tons, TONS more! some of em are just really hard to spot. even had a cameo from the Cycle Sluts From Hell in there and they said they loved it! And I'm not trying to rip anyone off, they're just little tributes.

What would be the theme song of Putrid Meat if it were a movie and why?
Suck Your Bone by Voivod or Electro-Violence by Overkill. They're just so damn thrashey and off the fuckin wall.


How do you have the stomach to constantly draw gross things like blood and guts and filth spilling all over the place? I don't think I can do that.
You just gotta like grossing people out a little bit i guess. to tell ya the trust, when i write this stuff, i really want people to like it but at the same time, i secretly hope there's a handful of people out there that are just disgusted and hate it cuase i think it's hilarious.

What is the most challenging thing about drawing comics?
Drawing boring panels. Like drawing a door knob turning or something like that. I just wanna skip it and get to the part where someone head's being ripped off or whatever.Sometimes i wont even be able to work on it because there'll be a boring panel in the way and i just wont be able to get into it until i can make it a little better.

What kind of ending do you plan on Putrid Meat? If you don't wish to put spoilers, just show us a rough idea.
Well i want to keep it escalating. If you take a look at how the stories go, they just keep mounting up and up. first bones holds up a bank, then he infects a quarter of the city with rabies, then he starts a city wide war and now there's this politician and it's going to keep expanding. Basically there's not going to be a corner of existence Bones isn't going to fuck up really badly…and purely, because he's just an asshole!

Do you plan on publishing your comic or just confining it to the web?
think i want to keep it to the web unless there was ever a free way to publish it. With sales and stuff you have to worry more about your audience and who'd be more interested in it and rush it about and stuff like that and i want to keep it purely a labor of love.


I know this sounds like talking big but… do you imagine your comic as a live-action movie or as an animated film if ever?
I don't mind talking big, suits my ego just fine! haha! But it could be cool if it was ever done right. if i was going to sign over the rights to ANYONE, even if they were my best friend in the whole damn world and i had immaculate faith in them, i would still insist that I'd have to monitor everything every step of the way, who plays what parts, scenes, settings, script, everything. not even saying they'd have to stick to the exact story im doing, cuase obviously movies have to be condensed, but it'd have to have the same flavor. Heh heh, I'm sure the director would grow to hate me, but that's what'd just have to come with it, it IS my baby, after all.

Any last words… errr… messages you want to convey to your fans? Any specific people in particular you wanna mention or thank or something?
I'm working on a new project for a company called Arrow comics and the comic's part of an old series they had called “The Dead”. This is the same company that published “DeadWorld” for those of you who are familiar with it. The Dead's like the “Cannibal Corpse” of the comic world. I mean you've never seen a zombie comic like this, and i know people say that kinda stuff all the time, but dig up some of the old issues and you'll see what i mean. To give you a clue. they used to have alternate covers for the issues. One explicit one, and one normal one for the shelves and i remember for one of the alternate covers they had this dead girl laying on this bed in the background, and in the foreground was this monster with her ripped out genitals hanging out of his mouth, so it's pretty heavy. You'll like it.

I want to thank Mike Wasion, a good friend of mine for getting me that gig. He's been a huge fan of The Dead and he's a master of all weird dead zombie things and he got in touch with Arrow and gave em my name so blame him for this too. He's a kick ass writer. Here's a story he wrote for the Splatterhouse video game.

Your mom's a children's book illustrator?????? That is SO WILD!!! Our son has been influenced by my work somewhat, but he wants to go into video game design, so his 3D adventures will take him off on completely other wild tangents than what I'm doing.
It's amazing to me to see a parent's influence on their children's work and where that influence takes them. And you're being original!!!
Great interview. I really enjoyed reading.

i know, i think about that some times how different me and my mom's styles are, but we both love our art so much. like it was the passion for it that was inherited instead of just the techniques.

This has to be one of the most revealing interviews yet– I'd never guess Pit-Face would draw clean-cut anime… or for that matter anything that could be described as “clean!”
When I first saw Puke his hair reminded me of Joey Ramone. Guess I was way wrong on that one. You'll let me know when and where I can get a copy of your zombie comic when it's done right?

not that far off though Joey kicked ass! and of corse i'd let ya know!i'll probably be boasting the thing all over the place!haha.

here's an old pic of Bones when i was in my anime phase. there's some older…DIFFERENT stuff….but i dont want to get into it. not…not now….

Anime Bones scares me, and not in the good way that ‘normal’ Bones does.

skoolmunkee
Deidre Rae Crouch

Even your real name is awesome.

Haha! Anime Bones!
I can't believe you can do one of those pages in 3 hours, by the way. huh!?