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James Kochalka is a Jungle-Exploring Mad Scientist Who Listens to Jimmy Cliff
and Draws Elves
An interview with a guy who gets
paid for drawing and singing
By Victor Vazquez
 I recently got the opportunity to talk to comic artist James Kochalka
at the Burger King on University Avenue in Berkeley. It was an hour before his
two-man acoustic pop sensation, James Kochalka Superstar, played its first West
Coast appearance up the street at Comic Relief, an independent comic store.
Kochalka has published 16 independent comics and graphic novels and has made
three albums. He is an unstoppable force, a living factory filled with monkeys
and robots inking panels and composing verses as they pass by on conveyor belts.
Kochalka is a superstar and this is what he has to say.
Youth In Control: What's your name?
James Kochalka: My name is James Kochalka.
YIC: What's your favorite color?
JK: Oh…hmmm… they're all pretty good, it just depends on how
you use them together.
YIC: How autobiographical is your stuff, does everything relate to
your real life or do you just make up some crazy stuff sometimes?
JK: Well, a lot of the comics are directly autobiographical. Most of
the Magic Boy comics, which are the ones with the buck toothed elf guy,
those are autobiographical. But Monkey Vs. Robot, which is about a bunch
of monkeys fighting a bunch of robots, that's not so autobiographical.
YIC: What's the deal with Monkey Vs. Robot? Do you just like drawing
monkeys and robots or is there some deeper meaning?
JK: Well I wrote the song "Monkey Vs. Robot" first, just at
a party. Some people were playing guitar and stuff and I started singing along,
you know, and the song just kind of came out. And then I recorded the song,
and my album was called Monkey Vs. Robot. People responded to it so well,
I decided I'd just respond and flush out the idea even more and draw the Monkey
Vs. Robot graphic novel.
YIC: Would you say you're more into music or comics?
JK: Well, I do both everyday. I draw a daily diary comic strip and I
write little songs, walking around the house, or walking down the street every
day. So, they're both part of my daily life. I don't know which one I like better…
I don't have to choose, do I?
YIC: You have to choose!… No, but like if you had to be blind or deaf,
which one would it be?
JK: Oh! Wow! Well, then that's like choosing… I guess blind.
YIC: How does your wife take the way she's depicted in your comics?
JK: She used to hate that I would draw about her at all, especially if
I drew something that was dirty. But, she's getting more used to it.
YIC: Whenever I draw pictures of girls, they get kind of offended because
I can't draw very well, but does she ever get mad at how she looks physically?
JK: Yeah, sometimes she'll say I'll draw her too fat.
YIC: So Magic Boy's an elf. Is that your spirit animal or something?
JK: You ever read the Narnia series? Or like in Peter Pan or stuff…
They always talk about how when you grow up, you stop believing in fairies.
And I promised myself two things when I was a kid: that I would never grow up
and that I would never stop believing in fairies. So that's why I draw myself
as an elf.
YIC: So when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
JK: I wanted to be either a jungle explorer, or a mad scientist.
YIC: Or maybe both?
JK: Yeah, I ended up being both, I guess.
YIC: So who were your childhood idols?
JK: I don't know if I had idols so much, but I liked the album The
Harder They Come by Jimmy Cliff.
YIC: Is there anything else you want to be doing in your life besides drawing
comics and making music?
JK: Um… I guess I'd like to make some money too.
YIC: Do you support yourself on this, or do you have a side job?
JK: No, the past two years, I've made my living, just drawing. I don't
really make much money from music, but… I don't know why that is…
ha ha ha.
YIC: What were some of your other day jobs?
JK: Well, for six years, before I finally quit, I was a waiter in a Chinese
restaurant in Vermont. For the first year, they yelled at me every day. The
first four years, they hated me. Then the last two years, they liked me.
YIC: So that was from Quit Your Day Job, right?
JK: Quit Your Job, yeah… But actually, the book Quit Your
Job is really about how you don't have to quit your job to be happy, because
at the end, you find out, he didn't actually quit… Although, I have to
say, I'm much happier, now that I've quit.
YIC: So what's your favorite book that you've done?
JK: My favorite is my daily diaries, which haven't come out in book form.
It should be out this month. Sketchbook Diaries is the title that it's
published under and Top Shelf Comix is putting it out.
YIC: How big is it going to be?
JK: It collects the first year's worth of my diary. So it goes from October
of 1998 to October of 1999. Actually, I did more than one strip a day for a
period of time so it's 381 strips.
YIC: Have you ever been to art school?
JK: Well, I went to University of Vermont for college, which is just
a general liberal arts school, and I majored in art, but it's a lot different
than art school. I would kind of recommend not going to art school, although
I did go to art school for my graduate work. I don't know, there's a lot more
important things to learn than art.
YIC: What would you have rather majored in?
JK: I don't know, maybe English. I mean it's good to take art classes,
I just don't believe that in an art college, the other kinds of classes are
up to the same caliber as they would be at another school.
YIC: You've done stuff for Vice. What other publications have you
been in and are you planning on doing syndication in newspapers?
JK: Well, my diary runs as a weekly comic in Burlington Free Press,
which is a daily newspaper from the town that I'm from. And that's the only
newspaper that runs them. And then it runs in Vice.
YIC: Anything else you want to add? Cause I don't have too many questions
left.
JK: Well, I hope I did a good job answering your questions. I'm a little
bit nervous about my show that's coming up in an hour because it's my first
west coast performance.
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