GeneChing
02-26-2016, 09:58 AM
Exclusive: Ronald Wimberly Channels ‘80s Martial Arts Excess in GratNin (http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/02/exclusive-ronald-wimberly-channels-80s-martial-art.html)
By Sean Edgar | February 25, 2016 | 10:00am
http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/2016/02/24/GratNin_Main.jpg
Ronald Wimberly’s artwork is a protest against immobility.
Known for illustrating the 2007 comic biography of rapper M.F. Grimm, Sentences, and his dynamic reinterpretation of Romeo and Juliet via Coney Island, The Prince of Cats, Wimberly’s newest foray perfectly suits his unmistakable aesthetic of speed and style. GratNin, short for Gratuitous Ninja, doesn’t cut or jolt or flip along the printed page—it cascades down a digital screen of limbs extended in kinetic combat and characters poised in firecracker tension.
http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/assets_c/2016/02/ronald-1-thumb-220x331-430344.jpeg
Offered solely on the new comic book app Stēla, GratNin presents the story of Gowanus kids embracing a legacy of martial-arts mysticism. It joins a cadre of other projects written and drawn exclusively for smartphones. Out today, the comic flows vertically at a ferocious pace to match Wimberly’s hyper-stylized modern mythology.
Though the artist’s work has graced a number of colorful projects in the last few years—including She-Hulk at Marvel and sci-fi epiphany Prophet at Image—2016 will see the release of new original projects from the Brooklyn creator, including the neo-gothic gentrification parable Sunset Park and alternative history Civil War epic, Slave Punk. Paste emailed with Wimberly to discuss the way of the ninja and creating comics for the smart phone.
Paste: Let’s start with the origins of the project. What’s the inspiration?
Ronald Wimberly: I grew up in the ‘80s, the end of the Showa era and the final act of Japan’s, post-war economic trouncing of America. I grew up surrounded by Japanese exports and cultural commodities. It was the decade of the Ninja. Ninja came to symbolize unstoppable, shrewd, subversive power. This obviously stuck with me.
Right before I dropped out in the 4th act of my time at Pratt, I joined the Static Fish, the Pratt Comic club. I had made one comic before I discovered [French artist Moebius’ graphic novel] Arzach. I decided my next comic would be silent. I would focus on storytelling. I couldn’t think of a subject. “Silence…action,” Gratuitous Ninja, GratNin for short, was born. It’s evolved over the years as a playground for me to work out different things. It’s finally solidified into what I’m doing for Stēla.
http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/assets_c/2016/02/GratNin_4-thumb-500x1176-430323.jpg
GratNin Art by Ronad Wimberly
Paste: The majority of your works take place in Brooklyn, addressing specific locales. The Prince of Cats covered Coney Island, your upcoming project Sunset Park highlights gentrification in the titular area and now GratNin takes aim at Gowanus. Why is Brooklyn such a constant muse for you? Are these works in dialogue with one another? Do they share a universe?
Wimberly: I live in Brooklyn, baby. If I move, the stories will change. It’s why I’ve been reluctant to move; it’s easier this way. I hope to do some international stories, too. One day, I’d like to do a story about my hometown, Washington, D.C. Brooklyn was the home I chose. Most of my adult life stories take place in this theater. So when I write about things or imagine things, I work with the palette that I have. Writing can be hard enough, it’s easier to have something familiar or easily observable to start with, an underpainting, a melody to build on. From Prince of Cats on, all of my personal works take place in the same universe.
Paste: Looking into the last two questions, I definitely felt a pre-Giuliani Zero-Tolerance New York City on this project. Were you of age to ever visit the grindhouse theaters before they were gentrified away? What films or media made the biggest impact?
Wimberly: Lol, way too young for that. I got here in ‘97. And I was spending most of my time in Brooklyn. If I remember correctly, not long after, Giuliani would institute curfews in the area. THAT really changed the vibe. But by then, the “grindhouse theater” was “bootleg DVDs from Chinatown.” I think you’d have to be in your 50s, at least, to remember the Hi, Mom! days of 42nd street and such. I saw the old NY on the occasion my great gramma would take me on church trips to plays and such. I remembered thinking it looked like Ghostbusters.
For me, when I first got to NY, actually it was the summer of ‘96, I was visiting Pratt for portfolio review. Kids had just come out; that was influential. I was influenced by drinking beers and smoking blunts in the street. Around that time, I wasn’t really watching anime or grindhouse movies that much, but I grew up watching them on channel 20 or 50 in D.C. On my way home, crossing the Manhattan bridge, my Mom interrupted my Ron G tape I copped from the East Village. I took off my headphones. “Did you hear? A rapper got shot…,” she said. It was Biggie.
http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/assets_c/2016/02/GratNin_1-thumb-500x863-430321.jpg
GratNin Art by Ronad Wimberly
Paste: You tend to experiment with format and media type in your works. The Prince of Cats merged poetry with comics, you’ve said that Sunset Park will use the format of gothic novels. At first glance, GratNin seems to incorporate some grindhouse kung fu elements. Does this work innovate in a parallel manner?
Wimberly: If you’re asking about GratNin innovating in a parallel manner to Prince of Cats, yes, somewhat. I’m still figuring out my work process on Stēla. It presents unique problems to solve. Drafting GratNin, I took on new formalist constraints along the way. Limiting myself to a certain amount of screen heights per episode, palette, defining page height, etc. I’ve even used some poetic repetition, but it’s nothing as strict as Prince of Cats.
With GratNin I’ve been looking at what Sanpei Shirato (The Legend of Kamui) did with the genre. Thinking about what he said about contemporary life with the ninja genre vs. what Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto) has said; playing with the tropes in both those and other ninja stories. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to try and make a new work in the tradition of Sanpei Shirato’s work while remaining true to my personal experience. How much do I want to flirt with pastiche? I keep a Tumblr feed of things I make, scan or find that are related to the themes in GratNin.
continued next post
By Sean Edgar | February 25, 2016 | 10:00am
http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/2016/02/24/GratNin_Main.jpg
Ronald Wimberly’s artwork is a protest against immobility.
Known for illustrating the 2007 comic biography of rapper M.F. Grimm, Sentences, and his dynamic reinterpretation of Romeo and Juliet via Coney Island, The Prince of Cats, Wimberly’s newest foray perfectly suits his unmistakable aesthetic of speed and style. GratNin, short for Gratuitous Ninja, doesn’t cut or jolt or flip along the printed page—it cascades down a digital screen of limbs extended in kinetic combat and characters poised in firecracker tension.
http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/assets_c/2016/02/ronald-1-thumb-220x331-430344.jpeg
Offered solely on the new comic book app Stēla, GratNin presents the story of Gowanus kids embracing a legacy of martial-arts mysticism. It joins a cadre of other projects written and drawn exclusively for smartphones. Out today, the comic flows vertically at a ferocious pace to match Wimberly’s hyper-stylized modern mythology.
Though the artist’s work has graced a number of colorful projects in the last few years—including She-Hulk at Marvel and sci-fi epiphany Prophet at Image—2016 will see the release of new original projects from the Brooklyn creator, including the neo-gothic gentrification parable Sunset Park and alternative history Civil War epic, Slave Punk. Paste emailed with Wimberly to discuss the way of the ninja and creating comics for the smart phone.
Paste: Let’s start with the origins of the project. What’s the inspiration?
Ronald Wimberly: I grew up in the ‘80s, the end of the Showa era and the final act of Japan’s, post-war economic trouncing of America. I grew up surrounded by Japanese exports and cultural commodities. It was the decade of the Ninja. Ninja came to symbolize unstoppable, shrewd, subversive power. This obviously stuck with me.
Right before I dropped out in the 4th act of my time at Pratt, I joined the Static Fish, the Pratt Comic club. I had made one comic before I discovered [French artist Moebius’ graphic novel] Arzach. I decided my next comic would be silent. I would focus on storytelling. I couldn’t think of a subject. “Silence…action,” Gratuitous Ninja, GratNin for short, was born. It’s evolved over the years as a playground for me to work out different things. It’s finally solidified into what I’m doing for Stēla.
http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/assets_c/2016/02/GratNin_4-thumb-500x1176-430323.jpg
GratNin Art by Ronad Wimberly
Paste: The majority of your works take place in Brooklyn, addressing specific locales. The Prince of Cats covered Coney Island, your upcoming project Sunset Park highlights gentrification in the titular area and now GratNin takes aim at Gowanus. Why is Brooklyn such a constant muse for you? Are these works in dialogue with one another? Do they share a universe?
Wimberly: I live in Brooklyn, baby. If I move, the stories will change. It’s why I’ve been reluctant to move; it’s easier this way. I hope to do some international stories, too. One day, I’d like to do a story about my hometown, Washington, D.C. Brooklyn was the home I chose. Most of my adult life stories take place in this theater. So when I write about things or imagine things, I work with the palette that I have. Writing can be hard enough, it’s easier to have something familiar or easily observable to start with, an underpainting, a melody to build on. From Prince of Cats on, all of my personal works take place in the same universe.
Paste: Looking into the last two questions, I definitely felt a pre-Giuliani Zero-Tolerance New York City on this project. Were you of age to ever visit the grindhouse theaters before they were gentrified away? What films or media made the biggest impact?
Wimberly: Lol, way too young for that. I got here in ‘97. And I was spending most of my time in Brooklyn. If I remember correctly, not long after, Giuliani would institute curfews in the area. THAT really changed the vibe. But by then, the “grindhouse theater” was “bootleg DVDs from Chinatown.” I think you’d have to be in your 50s, at least, to remember the Hi, Mom! days of 42nd street and such. I saw the old NY on the occasion my great gramma would take me on church trips to plays and such. I remembered thinking it looked like Ghostbusters.
For me, when I first got to NY, actually it was the summer of ‘96, I was visiting Pratt for portfolio review. Kids had just come out; that was influential. I was influenced by drinking beers and smoking blunts in the street. Around that time, I wasn’t really watching anime or grindhouse movies that much, but I grew up watching them on channel 20 or 50 in D.C. On my way home, crossing the Manhattan bridge, my Mom interrupted my Ron G tape I copped from the East Village. I took off my headphones. “Did you hear? A rapper got shot…,” she said. It was Biggie.
http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/assets_c/2016/02/GratNin_1-thumb-500x863-430321.jpg
GratNin Art by Ronad Wimberly
Paste: You tend to experiment with format and media type in your works. The Prince of Cats merged poetry with comics, you’ve said that Sunset Park will use the format of gothic novels. At first glance, GratNin seems to incorporate some grindhouse kung fu elements. Does this work innovate in a parallel manner?
Wimberly: If you’re asking about GratNin innovating in a parallel manner to Prince of Cats, yes, somewhat. I’m still figuring out my work process on Stēla. It presents unique problems to solve. Drafting GratNin, I took on new formalist constraints along the way. Limiting myself to a certain amount of screen heights per episode, palette, defining page height, etc. I’ve even used some poetic repetition, but it’s nothing as strict as Prince of Cats.
With GratNin I’ve been looking at what Sanpei Shirato (The Legend of Kamui) did with the genre. Thinking about what he said about contemporary life with the ninja genre vs. what Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto) has said; playing with the tropes in both those and other ninja stories. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to try and make a new work in the tradition of Sanpei Shirato’s work while remaining true to my personal experience. How much do I want to flirt with pastiche? I keep a Tumblr feed of things I make, scan or find that are related to the themes in GratNin.
continued next post