Interview: Steve Rude
Gary Evans and Ian Dean meet the comic artist, who has lots to say about his art, his beloved Nexus and everything in between
The comic artist discusses his influences, his beloved Nexus and much, much more.
Steve Rude has been interviewed by Imaginefx twice – once by phone and again by email. Except, you don’t really interview Steve. You proffer a question then buckle up for a roller-coaster ride of ideas, advice, opinions, anecdotes and digressions – and digressions on digressions. You ask Steve about his current animation project and somehow he arrives at The Beatles signing to Capital Records via Dr Martin Luther King.
Steve is very entertaining and very enthusiastic, and that enthusiasm is infectious. He’s 64 now. So he has a bit of the oracle about him, and a bit of the bar-room philosopher. But for all his opinions, Steve takes the work seriously. He’s been at comics over 40 years, worked with all the famous publishers, drawn all the biggest characters, won a ton of major awards, but his bio reads: ‘Steve considers himself an art student.’
You can’t really interview Steve in any conventional sense, so there seems no point trying to write a conventional article about him. What follows is a kind of incomplete life and times of Steve “The Dude” Rude. Not really a portrait of the artist as a man, more half a dozen blurry snapshots. They’re twisted parables. They’re strange allegories you can’t quite get to the bottom of. They’re never dull, never predictable, always intriguing, funny, and warm. They’re life lessons, Steve-rude style. Buckle up.
ON FADS
Steve Rude created sci-fi superhero comic Nexus with Mike Baron in 1981. He met Mike after having his work rejected from a newspaper (a regular occurrence) in hometown Madison, Wisconsin. The editor
Steve is very entertaining and very enthusiastic, and that enthusiasm is infectious
told Steve about some guy in town who wanted to write comics and needed an artist. Steve was 24 and had been living on food stamps at a YMCA, but he and Mike were “possessed of that youthful overdrive”.
Steve’s distinctive art style was – and still is – influenced by the stuff he grew up with, particularly Star Trek and the Hanna-barbera cartoon Space Ghost: “Those two shows, to this day, are somewhere in the back of my mind with everything I draw or design.”
Around the same time the illustrator also discovered Jack Kirby (“the undeniable Einstein of our business”) and John Romita’s Spiderman comics. Later, he got into Paul Gulacy’s Marvel martial-arts and espionage series Master of Kung Fu. “Kirby, Romita and Gulacy are the basic three artistic influences that have stayed with me all these decades, never too far my mind when I sit down to create something.”
This steadfast taste was put to the test in the 1990s when his classical comic style fell out of fashion. “Hero’s couldn’t just have costumes anymore, they needed pockets, zippers, and reinforced head gear over their entire wardrobe… It took me a few years to simply remember who I was when these changes occurred and just keep trudging forward.
“What I eventually settled on was simply staying true to what I am and was always meant to be, regardless of the trends.”
Some artists don’t like having a reputation. Steve Rude loves it. He cemented this reputation with work for World’s Finest (1990), The Incredible Hulk vs. Superman (1999), and Spider-man: Lifeline (2001).
It can be a lot of pressure being a big-reputation artist. But Steve tries to put himself in the editor’s position. He asks, “what would put a smile on their face?” The answer? He sends his work in the mail.
“So editors get a packet, they get a real physical package, and they get a thrill out of that. It used to be the thrill of everyone’s day, to see these big packages come in at the DC office, or Marvel’s, and they would rip it open and look at these pages and they would be beside themselves. Well, nobody does that anymore. What do you think I’m doing? I’m doing what makes them happy and excited.”
THE WONDER YEARS
What I settled on was staying true to what I am and was always meant to be
“This two minutes of animation took me from 1988 to, I think, 2003. When I was done with it, it was like I was coming back from a war, like I was crawling from the battlefield. It
stressed me out in ways I didn’t think I’d even survive.”
The animation that was 15 years in the making was a promo for an as-yet unmade cartoon series of Nexus. Why didn’t he quit? “The idea of not getting it done after all that time and work was unthinkable.”
Steve was very happy with how this animation turned out (“very Hannabarbera”), but he’d self-financed the whole project, and almost lost his house in the process. So unfortunately nobody was getting paid. He ended up compensating collaborators with specially made paintings – and Steve’s paintings sell for thousand of dollars.
“They were all happy about that. But when you meet crazy people that aren’t reliable, those are guys that
put a wrench in everything. You find out a lot about people when you’re not paying them. A lot.”
ON BEING BIPOLAR
Steve spoke candidly in documentary Rude Dude: The Steve Rude Story (2014) about his problems with bipolar. He summaries these problems like this: “I was basically a happy person who also seemed to lack certain brain chemicals that would eventually put me through hell – you know, just to make life interesting.”
He remembers doing one of his “happiest” covers, for Moth#1, while going through one of his worst depressions. Steve says bipolar never seemed to affect his art: “Good old bipolar – is it the chicken or the egg?”
Steve has noticed in recent years more people in his industry and in the public eye talking in interviews about mental health. These people appear to have it all: “Suddenly, rich or poor, we all become as one – just plain human. It reminds me of one of my favourite art adages: reveal, don’t conceal. Things that you try and bury have a tendency to burst forth many times worse if gone unacknowledged for too long.”
MORNING ROUTINE
“When I make a decision, any decision, I’ll know if it’s the right one the next day. If I wake up feeling good about it, then it was the right one.”
Steve’s daily routines at home in Arizona looks something like this: protein shake, upstairs to his studio, then he critically looks over the previous day’s work (“often shocked at some mistake that I’ve made in misaligned eyes or body proportions”). He figures out how he’s going to fix those mistakes and move on. Drawing and painting are brain work. Problems that appeared hopeless the day before often become manageable in the morning.
Steve was taught to start with “the knowns”. These are the things that definitely have to go into a piece. This gives “the unknowns” time to resolve themselves. The older he becomes, the more this whole process feels “amorphous.”
“This life that I have is incredible; it’s the most fulfilling life I could ever imagine. I get up every day happy and excited. I don’t know what’s going to happen that day and I don’t know what good pencil is going to do. I have it all planned out in thumbnails, but the things that come in moment to moment as you’re drawing these pages… it’s almost like it’s a supernatural experience. You know, where did this come from?”
When I make a decision, any decision, I’ll know if it’s the right one the next day
So most mornings start with a search for the knowns, with a flick through his sketchbook. For Steve, there’s no discipline involved in sketching regularly. He has 35 sketchbooks and believes he could exist without sketching: “It’s like breathing air.”
Steve’s outlook on life remains pragmatic “I’ve decided that by the
time you get into your 60s you need to know exactly how you’re going to spend the rest of your life.
“Most people live their lives trying to be safe... I make it a point to not live like other people.”
STAYING TRUE TO NEXUS
Nexus has over 100 issues and was previously published by Dark Horse Comics. It’s now under Steve’s own Rude Dude Productions, and that’s where he intends to keep it. “And that was a great feeling to realise that, you know, you’re not wrong and anybody else you’re not complaining to some big company.
“I’d have to say that the work on Nexus has always been the most important to me. The stories in Nexus is something I’ll pursue for the rest of my life, so much being left to tell of these unique characters.
“I have to be right there at the drawing board doing exactly what I know I have to be doing, because no one’s going to cancel my book. Now that I’m self publishing, nobody can cancel me. Yeah, I’m totally in charge of what’s going to happen from now on. It comes out of my brain and out of my hand. For the rest of my life.”