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TechCrunch
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- TechCrunch
Cartoonist Paul Pope is more worried about killer robots than AI plagiarism
Paul Pope has written and drawn some of the most gorgeous comics of the twenty-first century — from 'Batman: Year 100,' in which Batman challenges a dystopian surveillance state, to 'Battling Boy,' in which an adolescent god proves his mettle by fighting giant monsters. But it's been more than a decade since Pope's last major comics work, and in a Zoom interview with TechCrunch, he admitted that the intervening years have had their frustrations. At one point, he held up a large stack of drawings and said the public hasn't seen any of it yet. 'Making graphic novels is not like making comics,' Pope said. 'You're basically writing a novel, it can take years, and you work with a contract. No one can see the work, so it can be very frustrating.' But there's good news on the horizon. A career-spanning exhibition of Pope's work just opened at the Philippe Labaune Gallery in New York, while with an expanded edition of his art book, now called 'PulpHope2: The Art of Paul Pope,' is due in the fall — as is the first volume collecting Pope's self-published science fiction epic 'THB.' It's all part of what Pope described as 'a number of chess moves' in what he grudgingly admitted is an effort to 'rebrand' himself. Pope is reemerging at a fraught time for the comics industry and creativity in general, with publishers and writers suing AI companies while generative AI tools go viral by copying popular artists. He even said that it's 'completely conceivable' that comic book could be replaced by AI. The contrast is particularly stark in Pope's case, since he's known for largely eschewing digital tools in favor of brushes and ink. But he said he isn't ruling out taking advantage of AI ('any tool that works is good'), which he already uses for research. Techcrunch event Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW 'I'm less concerned about having some random person create some image based on one of my drawings, than I am about killer robots and surveillance and drones,' he said. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. Image Credits:Paul Pope/Archaia You have a gallery show coming up, and it coincides with the second volume of your art book, 'PulpHope.' How did those come about? I got contacted by Boom Studios, I think it was late 2023, and they were interested in possibly collaborating on something [through their boutique imprint Archaia]. So we went back and forth for a bit, I came on as art director, and I was able to hire my own designer, this guy Steve Alexander, also known as Rinzen, and we spent about nine months [in] 2024 putting the book together. And then, coincidentally, I know Philippe Labaune, just from having been to the gallery, we have mutual friends and things, and he made the offer to show work from not only the book, [but] kind of a career retrospective. It's ballooned into something really nice. Are you somebody who thinks about the arc of their career and how it fits together, or are you mostly future-oriented? I'd say a combination of both, because — I have said this elsewhere, but I think at a certain point, an artist needs to become their own curator. Jack Kirby famously said, 'All that matters is the 10% of your best work. The rest of it gets you to the 10%.' But then in my case, I do a lot of variant covers. I've worked on many things outside of comics that are kind of hard to acquire, whether it's screen prints or fashion industry stuff. And I thought it'd be really cool if we do something that's a chronological look at the life of an artist — [something that] focuses mainly on comics, [with] a lot of stuff that people have either never seen or it's hard to find. It's the first of a number of chess moves that I've been setting up for a long time. And the gallery is — I would call it a second chess move. I have another announcement later in the summer for a new project. Making graphic novels is not like making comics. You're basically writing a novel, it can take years, and you work with a contract. No one can see the work, so it can be very frustrating. This stack here, this is my current work, and it's all stuff that basically hasn't been published yet. So I thought this was a great way to either reintroduce my work or — I hate the term 'rebrand,' but rebrand myself. In your essay 'Weapons of Choice,' you talk about all these different tools you use, the brushes and pens, the Sumi ink. Has your working style been pretty consistent, pretty analog, for your entire career? I would say mostly. I did start incorporating Photoshop for coloring and textures, kind of late to the game — I'd say it was not 'till around 2003 or so. I developed carpal tunnel around 2010, so I've tried to steer away from digital as much as I can, but I still use it. I mean, I use Photoshop every day. It's just [that] most of what I do is the comics purism of ink on a paper. Image Credits:Paul Pope/Archaia Do you think of ink on paper as objectively better, or it just happens to be how you work? I don't think it's better, to be honest. I think any tool that works is good. You know, Moebius used to say that sometimes he would draw with coffee grinds, he drew with a fork. And I have some friends, in fact, a number of friends, who are doing highly popular mainstream books, who have gravitated toward digital work, or its various advantages. And I just don't like that. But one thing [is,] I sell original art, and if you have a digital document, you might be able to make a print of it, but there is no drawing. It's binary code. Also, I feel an allegiance to the guys like Alex Toth and Steve Ditko, who took time to teach me things. Moebius, I was friends with him. Frank Miller. We all work in traditional analog art. I feel like I want to be a torchbearer for that. How do you feel about the fact that comics-making is increasingly digital? I think it's inevitable. The genie is out of the bottle at this point. So now it's a matter of being given a new, vivid array of tools that artists can choose from. When you talk to younger artists, do you feel like there's still a lane for them to do analog work? Absolutely. One of the challenges now is, you can download an app, or you can get an iPad Pro and start drawing. I think the learning curve in some ways is a little quicker, and you can fix, edit, and change things that you don't like. But it also means the drawing never ends. One thing I really like about analog art is, it's punishing. [One] piece of advice I got early on was, your first 1,000 ink drawings with a brush are going to be terrible, and you just have to get through those first 1,000. And it was true, it was humiliating — every time I sat down and tried to draw with the brushes, a lot of the work is going to be in your your fingers or your wrists, and it's easy to make mistakes, but gradually you get an authority over the tool, and then you can draw what it is you really see in your mind. Before we started recording, we were also talking about AI, and it sounds like it's something you've been aware of and thinking about. Yeah, sure, I use it all the time. I don't use it for anything creative outside of research. For example, I just wrote an essay on one of my favorite cartoonists, Attilio Micheluzzi. His library is being published by Fantagraphics right now, and I did the intro for the second book. It's amazing, because there's a lot of personal detail about the man that was really, really hard to find, unless you could literally go to — he died in Naples, but he spent a lot of his time in North Africa and Rome. This guy's a man of mystery. But you now can get the dates of his birth and his death, what caused his death, what did he do? And AI helps with that. Or sometimes, I work on story structure. But I don't use it directly to create anything. I use it more like, let's say it's a consultant. My nephew writes [code] and he describes AI as a sociopath personal assistant that doesn't mind lying to you. I've asked AI at times like, 'What books has Paul Pope published?' It's kind of strange, because maybe 80% of it will be correct, and 20% will be completely hallucinated books I've never done. So I tend to take my nephew's point of view on it. You have this skepticism, but you don't want to rule out using it where it's useful. No, absolutely not. It's a tool. It's a very contentious point with cartoonists, and there are important questions about authorship, copyright protection. In fact, I just had dinner with Frank Miller last night, we were talking about this. If [I ask AI to] give me 'Lady Godiva, naked on the horse, as drawn by Frank Miller,' I can spit that out in 30 seconds. Some people might say, 'Oh, this is my art.' But AI doesn't generate the art from the same kind of place that humans would, where it's based on identity and personal history and emotional inflection. It can recombine everything that's been known and programmed into the database. And you could do with my stuff, too. It never looks like my drawings, but it's getting better and better. But I think really, speaking as a futurist, the real question is killer robots and surveillance and a lot of technology being developed very, very quickly, without a lot of public consideration about the implications. Here in New York, at the moment, there's a really great gallery on 23rd Street called Poster House. It's pretty much the history of 20th-century poster design, which is right up my alley. So I went there with my girlfriend last week, and they currently have an exhibit on the atom bomb and how it was portrayed in different contexts through poster art. There was this movement 'Atoms for Peace,' where people were pro-atomic energy [but] were against war, and I kind of liked that, because that's how I feel about AI. I would say, 'AI for peace.' I'm less concerned about having some random person create some image based on one of my drawings, than I am about killer robots and surveillance and drones. I think that's a much more serious question, because at some point, we're going to pass a tipping point, because there's a lot of bad actors in the world that are developing AI, and I don't know if some of the developers themselves are concerned about the implications. They just want to be the first person to do it — and of course, they're going to make a lot of money. Image Credits:Paul Pope/Archaia You mentioned this idea of somebody typing, 'Give me a drawing in the style of Paul Pope.' And I think the argument that some people would make is that you shouldn't be able to do that — or at least Paul should be getting paid, since your art was presumably used to train the model, and that's your name being used. It's a good question. In fact, I was asking AI before our talk today — I think the best thing is to go to the source — 'compare unlicensed art usage [for] AI-generated imagery with torrenting of MP3s in the '90s.' And AI said that there's definitely some similarities, because you're using work that's already been produced and created without compensating the artist. But in the case of AI, you can add elements to it that make it different. It's not like [when] somebody stole Guns N' Roses' record, 'Chinese Democracy,' and put it online. That's different from sitting down with an emulator for music with AI [and saying,] 'I want to write a song in the style of Guns N' Roses, and I want the guitar solo to sound like Slash.' Obviously, if somebody publishes a comic book and it looks just like one of mine, that might be a problem. There's class action lawsuits on the behalf of some of the artists, so I think this is a legal issue that is going to be hammered out, probably. But it gets more complicated, because it's very hard to regulate AI development or distribution in places like Afghanistan or Iran or China. They're not going to follow American legal code. And then on the killer robot side, you've written a lot and drawn a lot of dystopian fiction yourself, like in 'Batman: Year 100.' How close do you feel we are to that future right now? I think we're probably, honestly, about two years away. I mean, robots are already being used on the battlefield. Drones are used in lethal warfare. I wouldn't be too surprised, within two or three years, if we start seeing robot automation on a regular basis. In fact, where my girlfriend lives in Brooklyn, there's a fully robot-serviced coffee shop, no one works there. And the scary thing is, I think people become normalized to this, so the technology is implemented before there's the social contract, where people are able to ask whether or not this is a good [thing]. My lawyer, for example, he thinks within two or three years, Marvel Comics will replace artists with AI. You won't even have to pay any artists. And I think that's completely conceivable. I think storyboarding for film can easily be replaced with AI. Animatics, which you need to do for a lot of films, can be replaced. Eventually, comic book artists can be replaced. Almost every job can be replaced. How do you feel about that? Are you worried about your own career? I don't worry about my career because I believe in human innovation. Call me an optimist. And the one distinct advantage we have over machine intelligence is — until we actually take the bridle off and machines are fully autonomous and have a conscience and a memory and emotional reflections, which are the things that are required in order to become an artist, or, for that matter, a human — they can't replace what humans do. They can replicate what humans do. If you're trying to get into the business of, let's say comics, and you're trying to draw like Jim Lee, there's a chance you might get replaced, because AI has already imprinted every single Jim Lee image in its memory. So that would be easy to replace, but what is harder to replace is the human invention of something like whatever Miles Davis introduced into jazz, or Picasso introduced, along with Juan Gris, when they invented Cubism. I don't see machines being able to do that. You were talking about the discipline needed to draw with a brush, and one of the things I worry about is, if we increasingly devalue the time and the money and everything it takes for somebody to get good at that, you can't decouple the inventiveness of the Paul Pope who comes up with these cool stories with the Paul Pope who spent all his time making drawing after drawing with brushes and ink. If we think we can just focus on coming up with cool ideas, it's not going to work like that. I do think about this. I think it would be very challenging to be 18, 19, having grown up with a screen in front of you, you can upload an app to do anything, within seconds, and that's just not the way most of human history has worked. I mean, I don't think we're at that term 'singularity' yet, but we're getting really close to it. And that's the one thing that worries me is whether we talk about killer machines or machine consciousness overtaking human ingenuity, it would almost be a forfeit on the part of the people to stop having a sense of ethics, a sense of curiosity, determination — all these old school, bootstrap concepts that some people think are old-fashioned now, but I think that's how we preserve our humanity and our sense of soul. The first big collection of your 'THB' comics is coming this fall, and it sounds like that's also a big part of the Paul Pope rebrand or relaunch, the next chess move. Is it safe to assume that one of the other next chess moves is 'Battling Boy 2'? Yes. It's funny, because for a long time, we had it scheduled — 'Battling Boy 2' has to come out before 'THB' comes out. But there was some restructuring with [my publisher's] parent company, Macmillan, and my new art director came on in 2023 and he said, 'You know what, let's just move this around. We're going to start putting 'THB' out. It's already there.' And I was so relieved because, again, 'Battling Boy' is 500-plus pages, and I'd work on it, then I'd stop working to do commercial work. I work on it. I stop. I work on the movie. It's like I'm driving this high performance car, but it doesn't have enough gas in it, so I have to keep stopping and putting gasoline [in it]. So it's been reinvigorating [to have a new book coming out], because it kick-started everything.
Geek Vibes Nation
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Vibes Nation
GVN Talking Comics: Paul Pope On Upcoming NYC Gallery Exhibit At Philippe Labaune (Starts June 19)
When asked about his artistic legacy, renowned cartoonist and artist Paul Pope knew the impact he wanted to have: 'When I do something, I want it to be timeless,' says Pope. 'I don't want to chase the zeitgeist—I want to create something that will feel relevant in 10 or 20 years.' If you ask fans of his work and his contemporaries, Paul has achieved those goals and then some. To honor his artistic achievements, the Philippe Labaune Gallery in New York just opened The Paul Pope Exhibit in conjunction with Felix Comic Art. The exhibit will present original pieces from seminal comics, including Batman: Year 100, Battling Boy, THB, Heavy Liquid , alongside homages to European artists such as Hugo Pratt and Moebius. In addition, the exhibit will feature some of Paul's commercial art, including illustrations for the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and The Grateful Dead, as well as some of Paul's more personal pieces. In advance of the Exhibit's opening, we were fortunate to catch up with the iconic artist to talk about his artistic beginnings, his self-published work, and the new exhibit. So we are honored to welcome Paul Pope to GVN Talking Comics. Creative Origins GVN: Thank you for sharing just a bit of your time, Paul. Since this is my first opportunity to chat with you, let's start with some of your creative background. When did you first take an interest in comic art and whose work inspired you to pursue it? PAUL: I was reading comics before I could actually read. I grew up in rural Ohio with my mom and later, my grandparents. My dad came back from hockey camp in Ontario one time with this massive slab of vivid color pictures in stacked boxes featuring outrageous and enticing characters with names like Doctor Doom and The Dreaded Dormammu. I was hooked. The stories were like complete heroes journeys cast in garish color amber, to be revisited time and time again. I'd say it was Jack Kirby and then Carl Barks (the 'good Donald Duck' artist, as he was called) who first lured me in. This was in the 70s. Comics were really hard to acquire back then, so I had that one collection, Bring On The Bad Guys from Marvel Comics, and later an issue of Kamandi and a few Disney comics. They seemed to come from their own pocket universes, unlike anything else I'd seen before. Self-Publishing GVN: As you developed your talent, you self-published some of your work through your own Horse Press, including Sin Titulo (1993) and The Ballad of Doctor Richardson (1994). What made you decide to start your own publishing concern, and did you seek any advice in doing so? PAUL: I was initially planning to be an art academic and part-time painter, like my first master artist, Pheoris West, whom I studied under at Ohio State University. We covered all the art fundamentals and I also studied art history. He was the one professor I had who was sympathetic to my ambitions to be a professional comic book artist, but he steered me to more traditional art fundamentals such as color theory, anatomy and composition. I broke into comics in the early '90s, when the self-publishing movement was gaining steam. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was already huge. Jeff Smith's Bone was gaining traction, Mike Allred broke in, etc. I started working at a print shop to gain some experience and did my research and gradually made solid plans and contacts in the printing and distribution wings of the comics market. I didn't need much since I was in my early 20s and it was a good time to take risks. I read a lot of books on 'how to self-publish' and 'how to start your own company' and later met some older people in the industry who could give me good advice. A lot of it was just persistence and a dash of luck or timing. 'Chance favors the prepared mind,' as Louis Pasteur said. It's been one of my mottos since then. GVN: Eventually, you did work for numerous publishers, including Kodansha, Japan's manga publisher, First Second Books, DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, and so many others. Did your creative process change any when working for the 'mainstream' publishers as opposed to self-publishing your own stories? Working with the Audience in Mind PAUL: Not really, actually. The main challenge was that the editors required full scripts or story treatments. Before I started working with Kodansha and DC Comics (sometimes with Marvel and elsewhere), I had no editorial input at all. I just made it all up, and whatever seemed right made it to print, warts and all. I was–and am–mindful that the 'mainstream' audience might require a more detailed or rendered style, they may not want vague or experimental comics. So I try to work with the audience in mind and tell a story which hits all the quadrants, but hits it well above the bullseye. Even with something like Batman Year 100, I tried to make a legitimate and fresh Batman GN, but do it in a new or surprising way. Keeping Awards in Perspective GVN: Over the years, your work has garnered the appreciation of fans and critics as well as some of comics most prestigious awards. Did you ever feel that the recognition you earned somehow validated your approach and hard work, or are you a creator who feels like you worked for your own satisfaction, and what recognition came from that was just a bonus? PAUL: I like what Nick Cave said when he refused the MTV Music Award for Best Artist in 1996 – 'My muse is not a horse.' The awards are a sign that people value your work, but you can't throw your arms around an award and an award won't pay the bills. Honestly, the real rewards come at around 2 am when you're alone in your studio and you did a perfect page or a page which surprises and delights you, knowing it won't be seen for months or maybe years. It takes years to complete a graphic novel. It's a long haul. So the award must essentially be internal. The Paul Pope Exhibit GVN: Speaking of recognition, starting next month, New York City's renowned Philippe Labaune Gallery, along with Felix Comic Art, will host a career-spanning exhibit of your work. How did this opportunity come about, and how hard did they have to sell you on the idea of displaying your impressive breadth of work? PAUL: Honestly, if it wasn't for my girlfriend Neha this show wouldn't have come about. She was the one who mentioned to Philippe that we ought to collaborate. We were at the Will Eisner exhibit Philippe hosted months ago, and they just started talking. I am sort of a shy person, actually, so I'd have not suggested it. Philippe offered the chance and we just rolled with it. The timing is really good, though, since my 2nd monograph PULPHOPE2 just came out. So this is the official book launch for the project and a lot of the work in the show is from the book itself. GVN: When it came to decide what pieces to display, did you have complete control over that or did you work with the Gallery and Felix Comic Art to decide the direction the exhibition would take? PAUL: It was ultimately Philippe's decision, he knows his market and what will bring people into the gallery. I think I brought about twice as much work as we finally decided upon. It's a very good cross-selection of my work stretching almost 30 years, unbelievably. In conjunction with my art rep Felix Lu, they set prices and decided which pieces made the final cut. I think people will be happy to see the originals up close and personal. Most of this work has never been shown publicly. Viewer Takeaways GVN: This show will go from Thursday, June 19th, through Saturday, July 26th. By the end of the show, what would you hope that those who visit will take away from the exhibit? PAUL: Well, I chose the name 'pulphope' for a reason– we work in pulp fiction and print on cheap paper, we make mass produced disposable pamphlets and paperbacks, but within the lines and words we can contain the greatest ideas or impulses an artist can express. I want people to be inspired by the work and see an example of what you can make happen if you have a stubborn refusal to give up on a dream and you continually keep questioning and searching. When I see original art, I get inspired to work harder. Recently Philippe exhibited pages by Guido Crepax, one of my all-time art heroes. It was very moving and life-affirming. I hope this exhibit can offer that to somebody, in its own humble way. Upcoming Projects GVN: Thank you once again for your time, Paul. Before I let you go, please remind our readers about this great exhibit and any other projects you might have upcoming. PAUL: Thank you! My next book release is the first of the multi-book series, Total THB, collecting over 1000 pages of my 'lost' science fiction epic. Book one is out November 2025. I'm also working on finishing Battling Boy 2. When that is collected into one volume, it'll be over 500 pages. These things take a long time to make! Felix Lu and I also plan to open a new private commission list later this year. I like staying busy. If you are in the New York area and are a fan of Paul's work, you can't go wrong in visiting this exhibit. The Paul Pope Exhibit will be open to the public from Thursday, June 19th, until Saturday, July 26th. The Philippe Labaune gallery is located at 534 West 24th Street in New York and is open from Thursday through Saturday, from 10am to 6pm. The roots of Philippe Labaune Gallery have a strong European influence: among the artists are esteemed creators such as Lorenzo Mattotti, Nicolas de Crécy, Guido Crepax, Dave Mckean or François Schuiten. In recent years, American artists such as Landis Blair, Rebecca Leveille Guay, Mike Mignola, Frank Miller, and Peter de Sève have helped Philippe Labaune Gallery to foster a community of overlapping art collectors and comic fans from all over the world.
Forbes
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
New York Gallery Show Spotlights Iconoclastic Comic Artist Paul Pope
Comic book storyteller and illustrator Paul Pope is stepping into the fine art spotlight with a prestigious gallery show to accompany the recent launch of his career retrospective monograph Pulp Hope 2: The Art of Paul Pope (Boom! Studios, 2025). The exhibition opening at Philippe Labaune Gallery in New York Thursday, June 19 spans Pope's three-decade career across comics, illustration and design, featuring never-before-seen originals and curated selections from his extensive archives. The show is part of a trend toward greater acceptance of commercial art in museums and galleries, accompanied by increasing collector interest outside of the niche of the comics community. Pope, 54, is best known for works like Batman: Year 100, Heavy Liquid, and Battling Boy, which helped define a new era of auteur comics in the 1990s and 2000s. Straddling American, European, and Japanese influences, Pope's edgy style is unmistakable: dynamic, lushly inked, and suffused with themes of rebellion, dystopia and urban decay. His narratives often explore the collision of personal identity and societal control, making him a favorite among critics and fans of sophisticated genre storytelling. 'Paul Pope is a singular force in contemporary comics — a comics destroyer, who pushes the boundaries of traditional comic art," said Philippe Labaune. 'His distinctive style brings together the dynamism of Japanese manga with the narrative depth of European Bande Dessinee, and the spirit of American pulp. Pope blends a manga awareness with a European attention to mood and form. Moebius, Hugo Pratt, and Enki Bilal are all clear touchstones.' Artist Paul Pope © 2017 Andrew T. Foster The show is a further indication of how perceptions of comic art are evolving. Once relegated to collectors' portfolios and convention booths, original comic pages are now being presented in galleries and museums alongside contemporary illustration, painting, and sculpture. As prices rose during the pandemic, the field started to attract the interest of investors from outside the traditional collector community, and now some pieces change hands at auction for six figures or more. Philippe Labaune Gallery, which has previously featured exhibitions from titans like Will Eisner, Moebius, Mike Mignola, and Guido Crepax, is becoming a premier destination for this emerging art-literate treatment of comics. Presenting work in this setting encourages viewers (and buyers) to consider the aesthetics of a piece alongside the more traditional indicators of value to comic art enthusiasts such as the prominence of famous characters, the importance of a page in story continuity and the reputation of the artist among comic book collectors. For Pope, who has been largely absent from the publishing scene for nearly a decade pursuing a variety of behind-the-scenes projects, the show represents a return to the arena. "This year feels like getting back to the chessboard," Pope said in an interview. "There's been a lot happening on numerous fronts, and this show and the book are the first overtures in a return to more public-facing work." The exhibition was catalyzed by the recent publication of Pulp Hope 2, the sequel to Pope's hard-to-find 2007 monograph. The new volume collects decades of work, from iconic character pages to obscure commissions and previously unpublished art. Pope said the opening will double as a belated launch party for the book. "We'll have copies of the book, I'll be signing and sketching, and the show itself includes pieces that span my whole career,' he said. Among the featured works are large-format pages from his creator-owned projects, a tribute piece to the late French comics grandmaster Moebius, featuring Pope's rendition of his character Arzack, illustrations for clients like Rolling Stone and Saks Fifth Avenue, and even a complete boxing sequence from his 2002 sci-fi comic 100%, displayed sequentially to highlight Pope's storytelling within the gallery context. Presenting narrative comics pages in a gallery setting raises the question of how such work functions outside its original storytelling context. Unlike 'fine art,' which is produced in the first instance for gallery sales, commercial art such as comic book pages, film art and illustrations are artifacts of the production process where the book, film or advertisement is the final product. As collectors are pushing prices for this work to market parity with other kinds of art, those distinctions are becoming less important even among the gatekeepers of high culture. For Pope, the transition to having his work presented in a new context is not only viable: it's revealing. "There's a kind of energy exchange that happens when people see the originals," he explained. "You get the linework, the corrections, the physicality of the process. It's different from the final image in a printed comic." Pope, who trained in painting and printmaking before turning to comics, has always approached the medium with a broader visual vocabulary than many of his contemporaries, and often works in a larger scale than the traditional comic book page. His influences range from Renaissance art and Rothko to manga and futurist architecture, filtered through the countercultural attitude of punk and early indie comics. That eclecticism has made him difficult to pigeonhole, but also secured his reputation as one of comics' most original voices. "Paul is easily one of the most intelligent, well-read artists working today," said Felix Lu, Pope's longtime art agent. "He's an auteur. A guy like Paul is more aligned with legacy than licensing. His work speaks for itself, and that's what collectors and fans respond to." Lu has overseen the sale of Pope's art for the past decade and helped coordinate the show. While gallery exhibitions don't always offer the same financial returns to the artist as online sales or conventions, Lu sees the value in broader exposure. "It's a prestige setting. You get to see the work in person, the scale of it, the texture. And we're particularly optimistic with the upcoming opening of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art—the world is waking up to the artistic merit of this kind of work." Pope remains ambivalent about the market mechanics that tend to value character recognition over creative originality in comic art collecting. "It's like Clint Eastwood said: one for me, one for them," he noted. "Working on something like Batman gives you visibility. But the independent work, that's where you grow." In addition to the gallery show and art book, Pope has several major projects in the works: THB, his sprawling 'lost' sci-fi epic from the 1990s, is finally being collected; Battling Boy vol. 2 is in development; and a new, as-yet-unannounced project is sure to delight superhero fans. Amid all this activity, Pope remains committed to forging his own path in art and business. 'If you care about what you're doing, you don't do this work for comics, you don't do it for longevity," he said. "You do it because you care.' For longtime fans and newcomers alike, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see the full scope of Pope's vision in one place and a glimpse into the evolving role of comics as gallery-worthy fine art. The Paul Pope retrospective runs through July 25 at Philippe Labaune Gallery, 534 W 24th Street, New York. Pulphope 2 is available now from BOOM! Studios.
