Eric Drooker is the author and illustrator of the new graphic novel Naked City. His other books include the graphic novel Flood.
Q: What inspired you to create Naked City?
A: I wanted to tell a long-form comic story about the challenges faced by artists in 21st century New York. All the characters are all drawn from real life, including Isabel, the protagonist, who hitchhikes to the big city in hopes of being a successful singer/songwriter.
I also wanted to tell a story which illustrates how all of our plans shift without notice, and how we find ourselves on very different paths than the ones we first embarked upon.
Q: Did you create the images first or the text first--or both simultaneously?
A: Almost simultaneously; more accurately, the images and text oscillated throughout the process. Sometimes I’d begin with written notes—but just as often I’d begin with a batch of character sketches. The dialog (both word and thought balloons) emanated out of each character sketch in the story.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The title spotlights the book’s central theme—Nakedness—in all its forms: literal nakedness (Isabel supports herself as a nude model; she works for a painter). But also emotional nakedness, or vulnerability. Rawness. The city and all its residents are stripped bare throughout the course of the story.
The book is an exposé of the economic and emotional hardships that creative individuals endure to survive in a city like New York.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from Naked City?
A: Mainly, I hope readers are thoroughly entertained—and inspired—by the oddball cast of characters in this story. I trust they will find, in this book, evidence that paradise exists all around us—is already here—if only we could see it.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m currently working on a picture book about growing up in New York City. Using dozens of my paintings which have appeared on covers in The New Yorker magazine, as well as numerous illustrations and street posters I’ve created over the years—fleshed out with stories about my adventures on the sidewalks of New York—the book will be a unique visual memoir.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: To be born and raised on an island like Manhattan is to be born with thousands of stories already swimming inside your head. To be born in New York is to be born in the middle of a swarming beehive.
If you’re an artist, of any kind of raconteur, it’s your job to catch as many of these stories as possible, update them in contemporary vernacular, and share them with the rest of humanity.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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