Interview ith Renae Geerlings
The editor of Top Cow's comics, gives us the inside scoop of what it is like being the editor of toady's hottest comics.
1. Tell me something about yourself.
Wow. That is an OPEN ENDED question. What a way to warm up! Let's see. I am an introvert who can turn into the world's biggest ham at any given moment. I love being on stage but meeting new people tires me out really quickly. I am TOTALLY lazy yet I'm a detail oriented control freak. I go from being the cleanest person on the planet to being the messiest. I don't really know. I guess like anyone, I'm just a bundle of contradictions. People who meet me on different days wouldn't even know they were talking about the same person in a conversation. But I must say, for as much as I get obsessive about my job, I live for the weekends!
Hmm, strange thing, I have just realized at age 25 that I am a blanket girl. Who knew? I always have a blanket on me at home. I'm not relaxing
unless I'm curled up under a blanket. That's pretty random huh? First time I made that confession to strangers too. I don't know if I'm getting more eccentric in my old age, but people have started commenting about it...even at friend's houses...I commandeer their blankets. Is that weird? I wonder what that means psychologically. I love down comforters. Maybe it just means I have bad circulation. I'm quite a habitual person. I like my rut. That's actually something I don't really like about myself since it makes life comfortable but not too exciting.
2. What are your duties at Top Cow?
Hmm? I track each page and cover and plot and script of each book. Make the schedules, Band-Aid the situation as best I can if people are late, sign off on each and every voucher to get people paid, answer fan mail, write letters columns, check the artwork for any corrections or discrepancies...basically, I take care of the entire process of the books and the artists. Once it gets to final production, I keep track of progress, and help get it to film and to the printer. Beyond that, I play somewhat of a counselor for the artists a lot.
3. What Top Cow issues are you currently working on?
Basically all of them except the Cow Quarterly.
4. What problems most often occur in the editing of Fathom and your other Top Cow projects?
Well, there's the double edge sword with art. If you rush it looks bad, but if you take your time, the book goes late. Plus, its really daunting doing a monthly book for the artists, you spend three days awake trying to make a deadline but it usually takes longer than you think so you end up spending day four and five awake as well. THEN you have to start over again. After about twenty-twenty five weeks of sleep deprivation, a lot of people tend to get disillusioned. OF course after they're done, then you've got the production aspect and computers have a tendency to malfunction when you have that much use and memory stored. I've seen too many colored, done versions of pages get lost--just disappear. There are so many steps to putting a comic together that invariably something goes wrong. You don't ever like it but you learn to deal with it. Hopefully, it doesn't cause the book to go late but it does happen.
5. How do you like working with the staff of Top Cow?
I love it! Its almost like a family. There are people you love, people you hate, people you love to hate and people that you hate to love. But ultimately its great. You can't work this many hours this close to people and not feel strongly about them!
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