‘Pictopia’ pride of Pitt Alum

‘Pictopia’

Toonseum 945 Liberty Ave.

Sept…. ‘Pictopia’

Toonseum 945 Liberty Ave.

Sept. 25-Oct. 31

(412) 232-0199 or visit www.toonseum.org.

You might know Pittsburgh to be a lot of things, but a historical place for comic-books probably isn’t one of them.

Not only is it home to the Toonseum — a museum dedicated to comics and cartoons — but also

the original pages of “Pictopia,” Pitt Ph.D. student and former professional comic illustrator Don Simpson’s graphic novella will be the subject of its own exhibit.

The novella tells the story of a city in which old comic book and newspaper comic strip characters live in ghettos to make room for the sleek full-color new superhero comics and their urban renewal project.

“It was an allegory of what was going on in the comic-book business in those days and probably still going on. Superheroes are the dominant genre people identify with comic books, and personal or idiosyncratic works have a harder time,” Simpson said.

“Pictopia” isn’t only applicable to the comic book industry. “It can be interpreted in terms of the modern world. The capitalist west has this hegemony over all other cultures and forms of expression. It’s kind of frightening,” Simpson said.

The 13-page work was created in 1986 for Fantagraphics, a comic-book publisher facing mounting legal fees as a result of being sued for libel. Many professional creators in the business donated their work to raise money in an effort to save the publisher. “In the course of that, Alan Moore contributed this script [Pictopia] and I was given a chance to draw it,” Simpson said.

Simpson had met the legendary British graphic novelist Moore at a convention in San Diego 1985 and, with the cocky bravery only youth can muster, showed him a sequence he had done mocking Moore’s “Swamp Thing” comics.

“I was 23; I was fearless. It was all in good fun. He actually knew who I was and had read Megaton Man [the series Simpson created satirizing the comic book industry]; he complimented me on it,” Simpson said.

The fateful page Simpson presented Moore will hopefully be part of the show.

“Most scripts are like a set of Ikea instructions, but Alan’s was very unorthodox, very detailed. I’ve never seen a script so dense, so much background information you couldn’t even draw and psychological things about the characters. It was very ingenious because what he succeeded in doing was communicating all his ideas to me as the artist,” Simpson said of the script Moore presented to him,

Intense details aside, Moore left Simpson room to decide on how the novella was to be drawn and framed.

“An Alan Moore script is very almost-philosophical, like a treatise or something, but he wasn’t concerned with whether I used a close up or a long shot as long as I understood what was important to get across to the reader,” Simpson said.

“Pictopia” has been reprinted several times since its original release in “Anything Goes II,” as well as featured in an anthology titled “Best Comics of the Decade,” but it is still difficult to find.

“It’s certainly not as widely seen as the “Watchmen” or other major graphic novels that are in print everywhere,” Simpson said.

In honor of the exhibit, Toonseum will reprint the novella as a stand-alone comic book, which offered Simpson the opportunity to draw a new cover whose character he hadn’t drawn in 25 years. Simpson contacted many of the people involved in the original publication and collected their memories of working on the project, which will be included in the stand-alone book.

“It’s been very interesting because I’m totally in a different place now, studying art at Pitt,” Simpson said of returning to his graphic novel roots.

Simpson received his B.A. from Pitt in 2007 and is now working on his doctoral dissertation on American architecture and urban planning.

“I’ve been following the path of least resistance and it’s worked out pretty well. As an artist, I’ve gone to museums all my life and I knew what I liked and what I wanted to make, but had a lot of intellectual questions about what is it that other people see in art. I wanted to understand the value of art to society and try to escape the singular point of view of the artist,” he said.

As a graduate student, Simpson teaches an Art History writing class at Pitt and debated the ethics of assigning his students to write on his show.

“That’d be weird for me. I’m not sure it’s actually art, more pop culture or kitsch or something, kind of ironic, kind of kitsch. Maybe it’ll be extra credit, I don’t know. I think it’s disqualified,” he said.