READERSVOICE.COM: I liked the art work in the black and white drawing of the house of horrors gag, with the kids being horrified by what they see. Do you like black and white drawings, when there is a lot of detail, or what makes you decide to go with color or black and white?

DEREK EVERNDEN: In general, I just do black and white because it’s faster, although I love old black and white comics and movies. When you cut out colour, you remove a major potential distraction. Black and white distills things a bit. Jokes usually don’t need colour (I recently did one about a flamingo hitching a ride home with some Canadian Geese after a wild peyote trip – that was pretty reliant on colour, for obvious reasons).
The house of horrors gag did have a lot of detail but that’s mainly because I couldn’t find a way around it – it’s all in the service of the joke; you have to be aware that the more you put in, the more you risk distracting from the punchline. So a detailed illustration has to be very carefully thought through.

RV: What are some of your plans, and roughly when will the follow up book of Bogart Creek come out?

DE: In the grand scheme of things, like Indiana Jones said, “I don’t know – I’m making this up as I go.”
Bogart Creek Volume 2 is due to come out in Fall of 2020 – I’m working on cover concepts now. My connection to Cartoon Collections has had the amazing benefit of allowing my work an audience with Bob Mankoff (a dream come true) and they put out calls for original cartoons to submit to publications they have a relationship with. I’ve recently had success with submissions for WIRED and Air Mail. So I plan to focus on that opportunity and contribute more Bogart Creek comics to their collection for licensing. I’d love to get syndicated, and will keep banging my head against that wall, even though I suspect my stuff may be too dark or violent. Before the holidays I finally launched an online store, so I’ll bolster that, and of course I’ll keep posting my usual 2-3 new toons per week on social media @bogartcreek.

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– see derekevernden.com