Goodbye and Thank You to Brickbats Cartoonist Terry Colon.

PositionQ&A - Interview

Terry Colon rose to indie comics prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was a prolific contributor to the pioneering web magazine Suck, where he shared a masthead with Reason Editor at Large Nick Gillespie and drew the illustration for the iconic tagline, "A fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun." At Reason, he has illustrated the short stories of abuse by authorities in the Brickbats section since 2006. He has also drawn for Entertainment Weekly, Cracked, Time, and many other publications.

Since joining Reason, Colon has generated an avalanche of art, but his Guernica is almost certainly "What Part of Legal Immigration Don't You Understand?"--an illustrated flowchart that details the maddening complexity of coming legally to the United States. The illustration appeared in our October 2008 issue; Colon also drew that month's cover.

Ahead of his pending retirement, Reason Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward emailed with the notoriously private Colon, 65, about his time in the drawing business. Even though most Reason staffers have never heard the sound of his voice and we're only 97 percent certain he exists at all, we will miss Colon's knack for bringing impish levity to the most infuriating news items.

We are pleased to announce that another alternative comics legend, Contributing Editor Peter Bagge, will be picking up where Colon leaves off, bringing his own perspective to Brickbats.

Q: Are there particular types of Brickbat stories you find more difficult or more fraught to illustrate?

A: Some image ideas come readily, others take some mulling, and some things simply don't lend themselves to any image, let alone a comical one. So, yes, some are more difficult, though I don't know if they are of a type.

It might be easier if I were doing literal depictions of the text, but the Brickbats are representations of an underlying concept, situation, absurdity, or whatever. Such things are not always easily depicted. In the end, I don't know how I generate picture ideas, let alone why sometimes I can't. Just one of those ineffable things.

Q: Are there types of Brickbats you look forward to?

A: I prefer ones that lend themselves to an image readily, hopefully a comical, satirical one. Is that a type? I don't know. At any rate, it was nice to be able to pick which entries to illustrate myself.

Q: Have you ever met Charles Oliver, your longtime Brickbats colleague?

A: Afraid not. But in this computer age, I've not met or even spoke on the...

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