Rick Smith is best known for his work on SHUCK, which he produces with his wife Tania. Last year he created the online travelogue BARAKA AND BLACK MAGIC IN MOROCCO, and he is currently working to get the book into print. His work has been favourably compared to that of Seth and James Kochalka.

BIG NEWS:

Tania and I are finishing up the SHUCK UNMASKED book that collects the stories from SHUCK COMICS #1-#4 and includes 54 pages of new material (which was originally slated to appear in issues #5 and #6). The 168-page trade paperback will be published by Top Shelf Productions. It will be available online and at shows starting in June, solicited in the September Previews catalogue and will appear on retail shelves in November 2003.

Shuck is a demon who used to be in the business of guarding souls. Wearing an old man mask to hide his goat-faced nature and to fit into his new retired lifestyle, Shuck lives in a house next door to little Thursday Friday, her mom and her talking cat Jamara. The mask doesn't help him hide, and Shuck is drawn into the netherworld he thought he had left behind.

There's something for everybody in the book. New readers will be introduced to Shuck and his cacaphony of companions in a single volume. Current readers will be able to read all new stories that wrap up the arc begun in issue #1.

It's great to be working with Chris Staros and Brett Warnock of Top Shelf. They've been very helpful and are both friendly and professional. It's exciting to work with such an admired and respected publisher and I hope their reputation will draw readers in who might not have noticed my work before.

BIG BUSINESS:

Like many creators, I just started drawing and afterwards realized that this whole community of independent artists and writers was doing exactly the same thing I was. The web was a good place to hook up with these folks; it's actually how I met Joey Manley and got into Modern Tales. Beyond that, I really wanted to see my work in print. So I self-published the first four issues of SHUCK and that satiated the desire to guide a comic book through its entire life cycle. Of course, now I want to see my work in book form, which is where Top Shelf stepped in and is helping out.

Now that I've been drawing and writing comics again for about two years, I like to see how other artists have evolved and grown - creators who hit the scene about the time I did or a little before. The comics world, despite what naysayers declare, is currently growing and getting better and stronger.

BIG TROUBLE:

I'm finding, now that I have two or three new stories ready to be produced, that my day job is getting in the way. Until I can forego that income, I'm going to have to burn the midnight lamp. Of course it's a mixed blessing: if I didn't have the day job, I couldn't have printed the SHUCK comics and gotten much needed exposure.

I keep telling Tania we should move to Goa and live cheap while producing masses of comics... she's not going for it until we're fifty-five, though.

BIG SPENDER:

My day job (and Tania's) made it all happen. Without income, I suppose we would have stuck to publishing to the web... which is all right but doesn't carry the weight paper does. Of course, I produced the most material when I was out of work.

Printing isn't enormously expensive but you have to have a good gauge as to how many copies you think you can sell before embarking on getting a quote.

BIG AMBITION:

I'd love to work in color on a book that documents my dream life. I have kept a dream journal for the last twelve years and am thinking of going ahead and putting the dream reports into comics format. I believe Rick Veitch has done this and Jesse Reklaw does it for other dreamers. But to have that project in color? Man...

I've toyed with and actually drawn a few pages for this project and even came up with the title of the project over a year ago: JADED LUNGES OF CURIOSITY. Once work on SHUCK wraps up, I very well might pursue this.

BIG UP:

Right now I'm reading Richard Sala's EVIL EYE, Jessica Abel's LA PERDIDA, David Lapham's STRAY BULLETS, anything by James Kochalka or Tom Hart, and am looking forward to the anthology KRAMER'S ERGOT #4. It looks lush.

In the last year, I've enjoyed Damon Hurd's MY UNCLE JEFF (which just scored an Eisner nomination), and John Porcellino's KING-CAT (which I discovered in an issue of THE COMICS JOURNAL). And for some odd reason I like reading Overstreet's COMIC BOOK PRICE GUIDE. That's a lot like reading the Yellow Pages, I presume.

BIG TIME:

I'd like to continue publishing at least one book a year. I love the traditional, standard pamphlet format but it has limited distribution and is viewed as a periodical. Thus the SHUCK books found their way to the back issue bins, never to be seen again. So I intend to pursue the squarebound trade collection or original novel/album format in the future. Getting into bookstores and having the book sit on a shelf for longer than a week is a good thing.

Next up after the SHUCK UNMASKED trade is hopefully the printed version of BARAKA AND BLACK MAGIC IN MOROCCO. I intend to include a map of the country, transcribed journal entries and other bonuses to accompany the 96-page travelogue.

After that I'll try my hand at the JADED project and see how that holds up after 20 pages or so.

If JADED doesn't capture my fancy, I have another story that I've been working on (since high school, if you can believe that) that deals with school shootings, dead kids who don't know they are and unrequited teen love.

And I've been toying with the idea of a Shuck YULE SONGS CD/novel wherein singers and musicians take on the roles of Shuck and Thursday carolling to pagan tunes. Rob Vollmar and I have already corresponded about the project - he's enthusiastic about taking a strong role in this project... which is a good thing - I don't know much about music or its production.

Finally, I might try a SHUCK daily comic strip that will be published online and then collected in print after a year or two. I'd like to see if I can keep up with that schedule.

BIG FINISH:

I guess I'd like readers to be able to say they enjoy reading my books over and over. That's a good thing and the mark of an engaging story.

BIG DEAL:

Readers interested in SHUCK COMICS will find all four issues available at Sulfurstar.com via a secure PayPal shopping cart. The books are priced at $1.95 each and there's an ongoing online special (all four books for the price of three).

All four issues are also available in color online in the Modern Tales archives. Subscription rates are low: $2.95 per month or $29.95 for the whole year. And when you subscribe you get access to over thirty other comics - FANCY FROGLIN, AMERICAN BORN CHINESE, HUTCH OWEN, FRED THE CLOWN and more.

SHUCK UNMASKED will be available for purchase online and at shows in June and in stores in November.

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