BY JENNIFER M. CONTINO
Stan Yan's not just proud of his Wang, he's excited to be working on the adrenaline fueled action thriller REVVVelations. He told THE PULSE the series is "a souped-up post-apocalyptic car race." Yan's working on this and other comics full time. It's sink or swim or maybe crash or win for this freelance cartoonist. He also described the series as "another venue for me to vent about some political things that both Jolyon Yates and I felt strongly about in the guise of gratuitous pulp entertainment."

THE PULSE: Although you've been in the comics game for a while, a lot of our readers might be meeting you for the first time in this interview, so give them a few points of interest about the man, the legend, Stan Yan, please!

STAN YAN: Legend?! Ha. I'm guessing most of your readers don't know me, so I'm only a legend in my own mind. I've always been interested in drawing ... more specifically, entertaining people via my humourous writing. Comics has just always been my delivery device. However, I never looked at it as being a viable career choice, so I actually studied accounting in college at the University of Colorado in Boulder and worked as a stock broker for about 13 years.

Despite my disparate major and career choice, I've always continued to draw. I did comic strips and editorials for my school paper for a couple of semesters, I worked as an art director intern at a NY ad agency and I created a comic book that was the predecessor of The Wang while in college. While working as a financial advisor in the stock brokerage industry, I continued writing stories for my Wang characters and self-publishing comic books. Eventually, these led me to relaunch these characters storylines as what most of my fans know as The Wang today... basically my soapbox for saying whatever I have on my mind, personally, politically, and scatalogically. After being laid off twice in three years, I decided to take a vow of poverty and try my hand at freelance cartooning full-time.

As a part of my vow, I began to draw SubCulture for Ape Entertainment, I began to write and color a weekly action-adventure webcomic, REVVVelations, and I finished up two The Wang graphic novels, and launched the continuing adventures of these characters as a weekly webomic as well.

THE PULSE: What is REVVVelations? Just from the name it sounds like some kind of souped up car chase or something ....

YAN: REVVVelations is my first attempt at writing an action-adventure comic. You're right. It IS a souped-up car chase -- more accurately a souped-up post-apocalyptic car race. REVVVelations was the brain child of my collaborative artist, Jolyon Yates, and other fellow cartoonist Will Barnes as a over-the-top and gratuitous story that would force them to practice drawing cars, which Jolyon didn't feel was something he did well. If you've looked at the comic, you -- as do I -- might dispute that.

They began inviting other cartoonist from our local comic collective here in Denver, The Squid Works, to participate in a project that originally started as a concept that would have each of us writing and drawing our own regional race webcomic, and at the end the winning racers of each of our comics would get together for a big national race.


Unfortunately, most of the artists lost interest in the project except for Jolyon and I. After getting together to compare scripts, Jolyon began to lose interest in his own script and asked if he could just draw mine... I happily agreed.

The result is the bastard child you can see at http://www.squidworks.com/Revvvelations (with archives at WebComicsNation). The series updates every Saturday.

THE PULSE: So this is a project you didn't create, but that got under your skin. Why did this one speak to you over others you could have been involved with or over something of your own creation you could have spent time with?

YAN: Well, to me it was a personal challenge, for one... to see if I could write an action adventure with my characteristic humorous flair -- so it was something I hadn't done before.

Secondly, it was just another venue for me to vent about some political things that both Jolyon and I felt strongly about in the guise of gratuitous pulp entertainment. I'm finding that often the most powerful social messages are delivered by entertainment because people don't see it primarily as political, but rather primarily as entertainment. And, that's something I continue to want to do is focus primarily on the entertainment side of things: character and plot driven stories, where if some politics happen to slip in, so be it.

I want to create stuff lots of people are receptive to!

THE PULSE: So who are the racers in this book? What makes them want to put it all out there in something as dangerous as this appears to be?

YAN: Well, the main characters are actually guerilla TV broadcasters that accidentally stumbled into the race, Moose and Essie. They're actually rival broadcasters. I guess I should set the stage first. In the world of REVVVelations, regions of the US are owned by corporate conglomerates, and the media has become concentrated to the point that despite the fact that the nation is still completely addicted to TV, there are no longer TV "channels". The one remaining TV channel mostly focuses on the nation's obsession -- The Race. Not to say there aren't alternate voices that are trying to report what they believe to be REAL news. Those are the fearless guerilla TV broadcasters, who use their mobile transmission dishes to jack into regional TV transmissions and broadcast their programs to their limited audiences. Of course, the Ministry of TV can't have this, and the FCC has become a media "Gestapo" to put an end to any such illegal activities.

Our story starts with one of our heroes, Moose, driver and cameraman for Truth TV fleeing from the FCC in their news vehicle -- a modified 1970 El Dorado Hearse. In the process of this chase, we're introduced to rival guerilla TV broadcaster, Essie X, from Station X, and daughter of influential Ministry TV televangelist, Reverand Ecchs.


Essie is doing an expose on what it is like to be in "The Race", obviously seen as soft news by Truth TV, but in the process of the aforementioned chase, an accident ensues leading to the deaths of both Moose and Essie's broadcasting partners, forcing them to team up so 1) Essie can stay in the race and 2) so Moose can stay alive by pairing up with the daughter of influential Rev. Ecchs. Obvious perceptions of philosophical differences create friction between the two, and fireworks fly!


THE PULSE: This sounds like it has a lot more going on beneath the surface than one might expect! What are the challenges to presenting one page of this a week online? How do you get everything in without overwhelming the reader?

YAN: Well, my first challenge with this project was trying to put the shoe on the other foot. By the time I had started working on REVVVelations, I'd already been drawing SubCulture for writer, Kevin Freeman. So, I'd already become more accustomed to aschewing my typical control-freak nature to do collaboration as an illustrator. Now, I had to find out whether my scripts would communicate effectively with another artist.

Fortunately for me, Jolyon was the visionary behind this story in the first place, so a lot of what you see is part of his original vision for the story, although what you see is actually a little more cartoony than most of his work, since I actually did the character designs for Moose and Essie. Once I figured out that Jolyon typically exceeded my expectations, the biggest challenge is coloring his work. I'm used to coloring my own stuff, but his style is incredibly detailed, and he does a great job of cramming a lot of story into each installment (a lot more than I envision in my own head) without making each strip feel crowded. At any rate, it makes the coloring process extremely time-consuming. So, I have to figure out how to shoehorn coloring into my weekly freelance work schedule which has me drawing and toning two strips a week for SubCulture, writing and drawing one strip for The Wang, drawing an illustration for Bend Oregon's Source Weekly, managing my teaching schedule and freelance work, and doing miscellaneous Squid Works business.

Oh, and I have no idea whether readers are overwhelmed or not. But, by virtue of the fact that a couple months ago, we surpassed one million page views, I'm guessing we're doing something right.


THE PULSE: Or if that's wrong, it's a good wrong to be! What inspires you when you're working on this series?


YAN: Mostly current events. There's been a lot to be upset over in the past several years, so I'm definitely inspired by that.

THE PULSE: What's coming up in the series?

YAN: Well, if you've ever watched the CBS show, "The Amazing Race," The Race is structured kind of like that, where racers not only drive, but there's checkpoints at which they have to complete tasks before racers can proceed. So, right now, Moose and Essie are driving up I-70 towards Glenwood Springs to catch up with racers who are already at that task. Now, the twist is that tasks generally take the form of things that sponsoring regional corporations want others to do for them so they don't have to get their hands dirty, like assassinations, robberies, and the like.

THE PULSE: What about you? What's coming up in some of your other comic projects?

YAN: Well, I just finished doing layouts for the "SubCulture: The TPB" book, which collects the 4 issues of the SubCulture comic book miniseries along with the first couple dozen webstips. It also includes directors commentary-style "Easter eggs"; new pinups by the likes of Alex Robinson, Ozzy Longoria, and Lonnie Allen among others; developmental sketches and more. I'm very excited by this book, which came out in October Previews: All in all it’s 144 pages, in a handy 6X9 format. The book is on Page 210 of the October Previews, Diamond order code OCT08 3822. It costs $16.95. We're also doing a promotion, so if you pre-order the book direct from subculturecomic.com, Kevin and I will both sign it for you and we'll throw shipping in for free!

Many fans of my sick-and-twisted slice of life graphic novel series might not know that this year, I launched the continuing adventures of my characters in The Wang as a weekly webcomic, coming out each Monday at www.squidworks.com/stan/wang (archives at WCN as well). In the process of launching the comic, I've boldly and proudly officially proclaimed Eugene Wang as being an Asian-American, like myself (although I can't emphasize enough that he's NOT me). So, this opens up a whole lot of storylines that went previously unexplored.

My strips, while not as popular by webhits as REVVVelations, have been very well received. I've begun narrating them at conventions, and apparently they're extremely addicting, making it really easy to turn attendees into purchasers of the graphic novels that precede them. I've introduced new characters, including a weiner dog named, Dildo (It's a comic called, The Wang, folks). I hope to collect the first year of strips into a book I'd love to release at the NY Comic-Con, but definitely no later than the San Diego Comic Con. So, definitely stay tuned for more details. I know fans of my graphic novels have been waiting patiently for something new in print.


THE PULSE: Speaking of print, are you going to ever offer any REVVVelations in GN form?

YAN: Yes. I've actually printed up a limited number (100) of the first 60 or so collected weekly installments of the strip (full-color), which I'm using to 1) pitch the story to publishers and 2) sell at conventions. So, they're not available online. I plan to make a more concerted effort to solicit publishers once I've finished scripting the "4th issue".

So, if you're one of the proud holders of one of these books, hang onto it -- it could be a collectors' item! I have at least one publisher that is definitely interested in publishing the mini-series, but I don't want to do anything until I hit some of the bigger fish I have my eye on.

Thanks so much for the interview, Jen!