In the last couple of years Frank Santoro has made a startling return to comics. A few months away from the re-release of his youthful masterpiece Storeyville we checked in with “Frankie Blue Eyes” to review.

Tell me about the path from Chimera to Incanto to Cold Heat. Has it all come full circle? Do you miss your painting life?

Well, before Chimera I’d sort of given up on comics. I felt limited by the materials. I needed to make bigger work than comics. Painting was the obvious choice, but painting is hard, man. Plain & simple. I worked as the main assistant to this big time New York painter for five years and learned a lot about being a professional artist. It’s really hard, like beyond any task you could imagine to have to paint a fresco. Imagine having to paint faster than drying plaster and having only one chance to do it right. But he could do it, he could change scale from a small watercolor to a something the size of a movie screen. It really opened my eyes. And then eventually I just directed all that kind of energy into my comics. I just mean approach. Like, how do you render something larger than life? How do you get the real feeling of a 30ft tall painting into a comic book? I think it has to do with scale and geometry and composition. My work is laboriously composed even when it looks offhand and all that is related to old school perspective tricks in painting. Chimera & Incanto are bookends. Just raw imagery. I’d tried to paint like the style in those books for years. But the paintings never clicked. They were too precious–even if they were immediate and strong paintings they felt somehow off. But as a two or three color comic they really glowed. I felt free of the traditions of painting and of comics and just trusted my intuitive sense to shape the outcome of both. They were also alot of fun to draw and color.

Cold Heat is, for me, about hitting notes for the reader. It’s about the movement from one plot twist to the next. It’s a form and a style that allows me to go on and off the charts and just really play the fuck out of the song that BJ and I have written. It feels like Bullfighting. Like it’s dangerous. I’m really trying to push myself to evoke this time, these war years and this paranoia and fear. I could draw silent romantic melodramas all day like Incanto but it’s this contemporary present that is truly challenging to capture And since BJ is so good at crafting such truly challenging stories, songs if you will, I never hesitate playing them with total abandon and hopefully I’m really hitting those notes and taking the audience along for the ride. The Cold Heat deadline schedule when we were trying to do the monthly thing was brutal and I never had time to paint. So, yeah, I miss my painting life. It was easier. Lots of time for afternoon sex with the model. I don’t know if everything has come full circle. There’s a lot more money to be made in the art world than in the comics industry that’s for sure. So yeah, sex and money are basically what I miss about my painting life. But I’m happier now somehow. Go figure.

Was the process of Storeyville difficult? Did you feel like it paid off, aesthetically?

Yeah, it was an insane process. Basically, I just churned out these landscapes from memory and from some on site drawing and then I’d have to draw the figures, the characters in the story with equal intensity. So there was this push and pull between the foreground and the background and I just became fascinated with the way each element was drawn and how I could play off that tension. Grey washes, pencil, pen, color, color combos–how does that all fit together? What’s the range I have with only two colors and a half-toned blackline? I think it paid off aesthetically. It sums up how I believe things can be expressed with economy and feeling. And as corny as it sounds it’s also a document of my youth that doubles as a nice reminder of my honest idealism and determination. I still like to think I have that determination–I mean, to be idealistic and radical and free of bitterness or ill intent. I’m glad to see my naivete preserved. I like the touch I had then. I was less self conscious than I am now. It sort of scolds me from some artistic past to remain true to the ideals and standards that I developed then as a newly formed adult.

Discuss your approach to color comics. You have been described as “painting with offset separations.” Tell me about your philosophy and inspirations.

I think that was, ahem, Moebius that said about me, wasn’t it? Sorry. I had to get that in there. Most color comics suck. Let’s be honest. I think much can be learned from limiting the color palette in comics. Same in painting. It opens alot of doors. When you limit the palette you can see formal and symbolic relationships easier. Good, harmonious color patterns move the eye around the page and let the reader connect on yet another level beyond the actual drawing or the story itself. Think Beatles Yellow Submarine. Now think of the movie Shrek. If you think the hyper-realistic coloring of Shrek is better–well, I’m sorry for you. Just give up now. That’s my new philosophy. As far as the execution of color goes, I just think there’s still so much to learn and exploit in color comics with just the old four color process. There is a language that’s been around for 100 years in color comics that is so rich–it feels like a local dialect that is being replaced by a generic less accented speech–why “improve” it in Photoshop? So I make all my colors the old school way. See my article in ComicsComics.

How does Pittsburgh factor as a “character” in your stories?

Pittsburgh, PA has a really different look than most rustbelt cities. I grew up here and have a real connection to the land somehow. The hills create some really interesting perspectives and views. Sorta compressed and spread out like a comics page. Before I began Storeyville I did some sketching to gather material for the backgrounds and suddenly it was like a switch turned on in my brain - I could “see” any landscape in my head, real or imagined, and somehow make a simple contour line drawing of it that was clear and readable. Especially Pittsburgh, I could just conjure the feeling of it as a place with just a few lines probably because as a city it’s such a caricature of an American town. I was living in California when I drew Storeyville. It’s so not the America that I know out there that the “character” of Pittsburgh asserted itself when I was drawing it. It’s probably one of my biggest assets as an author and artist.

Who are your two most important visual inspirations right now, and why?

Yokoyama Yuichi and Katsuhiro Otomo. Otomo because I’ve been re-reading Akira to get me pumped up for drawing the rest of Cold Heat–it just might be one the greatest achievements in the history of comics, Akira. And Yokoyama because he’s so challenging, and fresh and new and real and good. His work reminds me of NOTHING else. It just seems to spring out of this parallel universe or something. I literally lost my shit when I first saw his work. As far as I can see, American and European comics have SO far to go to catch up with these masters. Otomo, the new blueprint after Tezuka - and Yokoyama, the new promise after Otomo.