ROCCO CASTORO: Hi, I'm Rocco, and we're outside the House of
John F. Ryan IV, better known to his fans as Johnny Ryan.
He's the creator of "Angry Youth Comix," "Blecky
Yuckarella," "Prison Pit," and for the last 10 years, he's
drawn the back page of "Vice" magazine, which has featured
some of the most grotesque, funniest, offensive, and
downright mean stuff we've ever printed.
JOHNNY RYAN: You know, as far as back as I can remember,
I've always been interested in comics and sort of redrawing
comics that I read.
It started with just the newspaper comics, and then
moved on to "MAD" magazine, and then superhero comics, and
then eventually Crumb and alternative comics like that.
And I can even remember getting in trouble in school,
like, the teacher seeing me draw asses and tits in my
notebook in second grade.
And I was sort of confused, like, I'm just trying to do
some comedy here.
ROCCO CASTORO: What were your favorite
superhero comics back then?
JOHNNY RYAN: "Spiderman," "Hulk," "X-Men," the usual.
I was strictly a Marvel guy.
And I had brand loyalty.
And I don't know, DC also just always seemed hokey to me.
And it wasn't until Frank Miller came along and sort of
redefined all that stuff and made that stuff more adult
that I kind of became more interested in it.
It wasn't until later on in high school where I started to
delve more into the Crumb stuff.
ROCCO CASTORO: And rumor has it that Crumb is not a huge
fan of yours.
JOHNNY RYAN: He's a big inspiration on me and my
career, but he also seems like he's kind of a dick.
Those guys from the '60s, the underground guys, especially
Crumb, you know, that's why that was such a big influence
on me to see-- because the stuff that they were doing
then, it's just interesting that they would not be able to
get away with that stuff today.
Like, I don't see them being able to do--
Crumb being able to do "Wild Man Sam's Pure Nigger Hearts"
cartoon, or even any of those Angelfood McSpade comics
without some kind of--
he's not going to be able to get that in "Vice" magazine.
Like, I couldn't do something like that and get it into
"Vice."
ROCCO CASTORO: But that's interesting because a lot of
it kind of came out of censorship, in a way, with the
comics code.
JOHNNY RYAN: Well, I mean, they were all
doing their own thing.
ROCCO CASTORO: Yeah, yeah.
JOHNNY RYAN: That was all underground comics.
And I essentially do my own thing with my comics.
But I mean, those guys were real trailblazers with the
stuff that they were doing.
But even, like, in underground comics now, things don't get
that fucked up as they did back then.
Shock is considered a pejorative thing.
Oh, he's just trying to be shocking.
But I personally look for that.
I want things--
I like things that are shocking or that cause people
to be unsettled, or be like, I don't know if
you should do that.
That, to me, is real art.
That's what I like.
ROCCO CASTORO: How did you start working with "Vice"?
JOHNNY RYAN: I started working with "Vice," started with this
artist Dave Cooper.
We were both invited to Angouleme, which is a comics
festival in France.
And I was sort of the American guy that they invited.
Dave was the Canadian guy.
And we went over there together, and we
kind of hit it off.
So when we got back, Dave showed my stuff to "Vice." And
they liked it, so they had a back page of comics, which
included Kaz, and Jeff Roysdon, and some other
people, and they wanted to include me in there.
So it was several different artists at the time.
And then, eventually, there were just like, hey, we just
want to give you your own page.
And at the time, I don't think I was really taking it very
seriously because it was just like $25 for a month.
And I was just like, whatever.
Oh, OK.
And so when they offered--
they offered me a little bit more money to do back page,
and I was like, OK.
But I still really wasn't too interested.
I was kind of just shitting something out
as fast as I could.
It really wasn't until they started posting them online
and I started to see the horrible comments that I would
get, and that kind of made me want to pick
up the pace a bit.
There was an edict laid down of what I was and was not
allowed to do.
They would say, you can't do--
no swastikas, no racist stuff, and no hard-ons,
and no split beavers.
ROCCO CASTORO: No split beavers, yeah.
JOHNNY RYAN: So that kind of limited me.
So I had to sort of work around that.
And it kind of got really difficult when I was doing the
gag panels because there was a long period of time where I
was doing the gag panels.
And there would be months where I would get an email
saying, OK, we can't run X gag panel.
We can't run this one or that one for whatever reason.
I kind of stopped doing gags mostly because of that--
ROCCO CASTORO: Yeah.
JOHNNY RYAN: --in a way that is--
because there's certain--
I mean, you can almost go through the different stages
of my work because I started out doing these shitty, sort
of these bullshit, like, little
full-page "Blecky" strips.
And then I moved into doing gags.
And then I started to move away from gags and to do just
the full-on stories, like one-page stories.
And my stuff started to get a lot more violent because I
would find that they had less of a problem if I got, like,
weird and violent than if I was doing stuff about boners--
ROCCO CASTORO: Just like TV, right?
JOHNNY RYAN: Kind of.
ROCCO CASTORO: But now, you've gone through a few phases,
"The Parade," and now we're on "Prison Pit," which you're
working on Book Four right now.
JOHNNY RYAN: This is "Prison Pit" Four,
ROCCO CASTORO: And how far out?
JOHNNY RYAN: Page 45.
Only 65 more pages to go.
I usually start a couple months after I
finish the last one.
So I don't know, I feel like I'm always working.
I never fucking get a break.
I still want to do at least six books in total before I
wrap it up.
ROCCO CASTORO: You're stuff's appeared in "MAD." it's
appeared in--
JOHNNY RYAN: That's it.
ROCCO CASTORO: "Vice."
JOHNNY RYAN: Oh, "Vice." Nickelodeon.
ROCCO CASTORO: I know Nickelodeon, too.
What was it like working for them, specifically?
JOHNNY RYAN: Nickelodeon was great.
Chris Duffy was my editor over there, the art director, or
whatever, and he knew comics.
He's a comics fan.
My adult stuff and the stuff that I do for kids are similar
in that they just have that kind of crazy
nonsense vibe to it.
It's just sort of the elements are changed.
And it's not so many cocks and pussies in the kid stuff.
ROCCO CASTORO: I don't know, I guess that kind of feeds into
a questions of what's offensive and people getting
upset over some of your work.
And I think that all has to do with children, really, at the
end of the day, because that's all anybody's worried about,
is corrupting them before their time.
JOHNNY RYAN: Well, it also has to do with--
I mean, I think it's more than kids because it also has to do
with hurting people's feelings.
If you do a joke that's about death and hurting people, and
it's about a real--
like 9/11 jokes, that has more to do with, like, you don't
want hurt the people that were involved with that.
Maybe the most offensive thing and maybe one of the greatest
things I think I've ever done is the soft 9/11 piece, which
is sort of a collaboration with my wife because I sort of
designed it.
I was, like, this is what I want.
But I don't know how to sew.
So she had to sort of do that stuff.
But when she finished it, I was just
like, this is brilliant.
This should be in a fucking museum.
But when I put it online, the reaction was--
it varied between this is the most amazing
thing I've ever seen.
Will you make me one?
I want one.
To I hope you fucking die in a fire, and your screams of pain
are thought to be laughs by your neighbors, like your
neighbors think that you're laughing instead of screaming,
just like they were wishing me--
like you would have thunk that I flew the plane into the
buildings, like the rage, the amount of rage that people
were throwing at me.
Some of the greatest moments that I have when I'm working
is when I come up with an idea that's, like, if I do this,
people are going to be fucking pissed.
And that's what makes it kind of fun to have that kind of--
I guess, it's like a rush of power [LAUGHING].
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