Continuing our series of week-long interviews with some of the stars of the newly released Brit small press anthology Paper Science 7,(which started yesterday with Marc Ellerby’s chat) today we have Matthew Sheret talking to My Cardboard Life’s creator Philippa Rice.
Matthew Sheret: You first contributed to Paper Science back in #2, with a My Cardboard Life strip. How do you feel the anthology has evolved since between then and your piece for the Music Special (#5)?
Philippa Rice: It’s changed quite a bit since then. Introducing themes for the last three issues has been really good. When I was asked to contribute to the music issue I thought, “but I don’t know anything about music!”. Actually it was good because I got to write something that I never would have written otherwise.
MS: Is there anything you’ve particularly enjoyed about working in the newspaper format?
PR: I liked working at that big size. You can get a lot more of a story into four pages when they’re massive.
MS: You also wrote a story, illustrated by Luke Pearson, for #4. Was the creative process much different to how you usually work?
PR: I’d never written anything for someone else to draw before. I just approached it in the same way as if I was going to draw it myself and sent Luke a rough draft of the comic scanned out of my sketchbook. We both made changes to it after that but really the process was just the same but shared between two people; I just didn’t have to do the time-consuming drawing bit.
MS: Between collections like Solipsistic Pop and ink+PAPER to projects like Nelson, anthologies seem to be thriving. As a creator, what’s your take on them?
PR: Well I don’t know if Nelson is an anthology really because it’s not really separate pieces of individual work. It’s more like an exquisite corpse or human centipede. The other three are all quite different from each other. I’m glad I got to be in all of them.
One of the things that makes Paper Science special is that in each issue there are comparatively few artists featured so you get to notice them a bit more.
MS: After the new issues Paper Science is going on a bit of a break for while, but if you could pick a theme for a future issue what would it be and who would draw the cover?
PR: The theme should be scary stories and you should get a real ghost to draw the cover!
Philippa’s wonderfully unusual series My Cardboard Life is updated every weekday, and you can see more of her work at her (new) website. Paper Science is available now. Stay tuned for the next in this series of interviews with contributors to the new issue tomorrow with David O’Connell; you can read the previous interview in the series with Marc Ellerby here. FPI would like to thank Philippa and Matt for taking the time to share their thoughts on the new issue.
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