Silly Billy willies

>> Giggle, cringe and gape in awe at Billy Mavreas's Overlords of Glee

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Few artists in any medium are able to inspire laughter, repulsion and a sacred sense of wonder all at the same time. In the field of comics and illustration, Jim "Frank" Woodring comes to mind, as does Montreal's own Billy Mavreas. In the case of the latter, the pudding wherein lies the proof is The Overlords of Glee, the snappy new collection of comic strips (a term used loosely) that is co-published by the lauded Conundrum Press and the disreputable Crunchy Comics. Long familiar for his Yawp! Posters and other ephemera, Mavreas here offers a chance to peer into the more complex corners of his psyche. As the Mirror found out, we're all quite welcome there--if we can handle it.



Mirror: Your work shows an exquisite equilateral balance of the silly, the scary and the sublimely beautiful. Obviously, when you're drawing your little bunnies, there, the eponymous Overlords of Glee, you're giggling like an infant.

Billy Mavreas: Yes, (giggling) because they make me feel good.

M: Other elements are very desolate and frightening, and others still are mystical and profoundly moving. Are you struck by those feelings as well, while creating?

BM: Kind of. I'm a little more divorced from that, more distanced. I can giggle when I make a little happy guy, but when the desolation, the loneliness, despair, existential angst comes, I tend to just do and not descend into it. People tell me my stuff is very cute but also disturbing. I'll apologize, and they'll tell me, "No, no, that's good." But then, I'll look at a paint-by-numbers picture of a little kid, and it'll warm and comfort me. Someone else might find it creepy--"Get that away from me." I'm curious what that's all about, the range of emotions between the comforting and the distressing.

M: Your work has very little connection to traditional comics narrative. It's intuitive, abstracted, deliberately mysterious, rarely following a familiar narrative flow and resolution.

BM: Yeah, (giggling) so I've been told.

M: Do you plan the arc of a piece in advance or does your work evolve as it happens, in a stream-of-consciousness fashion?

BM: It is panel by panel--I have certain elements I want to throw in, whether they're architecture, landscape or characters. I'll put a sequence of a few panels down, and then another, and then I look at them together. Often a collage approach starts happening, where I have several panels that I remix to see what sequence works best. Where can I find the story in here? They tend to be moments that are dragged on into longer cycles. Things loop-dee-loop all the time. There's no structured story arc at all, but there's a motion.

Book launch at Casa del Popolo on Monday, Dec. 10, 7pm, free