Paperback Reader: How would you describe True Story Swear to God to someone who hadn’t heard of it?

Tom Beland: It’s a boy meets girl story where the girl lives really far away. We tried to ignore the distance at first but maintaining a relationship is the hardest job in the world. I think the story connects with lots of readers because so many more people are meeting from long distances thanks to the Internet.

PBR: How long has it been since you moved to Puerto Rico?

Tom Beland : About six years now. That really blows my mind. I think the Vegas odds gave us two months and there were plenty of times when I almost cashed it in. Looking back it, I think she's had many more opportunities to do that than I did. I was such an impatient ass in the beginning.

PBR: What have been the biggest differences from Napa Valley?

Tom Beland: The heat and humidity were the worst to get used to. You get some of that up here in New York, but in California it’s cool all the time and when it heats up, it's a dry heat. Also, my hometown is really small, like Mayberry. Everyone drives courteously; service is quick and friendly. So it was a huge change to move to a city environment where everything moves so fast. Traffic is an absolute nightmare. And intersections are totally imaginary. You'll see left hand turns from the middle lane, people using the emergency lane to move up ahead and everyone runs red lights... motorcycles, cars, even city buses have done it. There aren’t enough police and the ones we have are underpaid.

Tom Beland: I started the strips in 1995. At the time autobiographical comics were totally alien to me, aside from Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse. Then I discovered and got hooked on Keith Knight’s K-Chronicles. This was the first comic strip I'd seen where it was all about this guy's life. I couldn't wait until Wednesdays when the Pacific Sun had the new K Chronicles toon. I got to know Keith and he’s the one who pushed me to do my own work. I talked a lot in my strip about my friends and family... which was nice and all. But things really took off once I met Lily. Ordinarily, introducing a girlfriend to a comic is the kiss of death because if you break up the readers are like, “What happened to that girl?” But Lily sort of just found her way into mine... it was very natural to put her in the strip. I never used a girlfriend in it, not even my first wife.... well, I think once, when discussing our divorce. But Lily began to find her way in it every week. She quit being a topic and began manifesting into a character.

But Lily really tipped the scales. I designed the first issue on the plane home from Orlando after meeting her. It sat in a box for two years. During that time, I began to create compilation zines, which held about twelve TSSTG strips per issue. It was an amazing stroke of luck when they were nominated for the Ignatz Award at the Small Press Expo. That really gave me the confidence to take the actual book that was put away and put it out in print. We submitted to Diamond and they picked it up. The book came out, reviews were good, then it got the Eisner nomination which was so intimidating because I knew the next issue had to be as good. It's still like that. You think this issue is going to be your downfall and then the fans and critics, bless em all, they love it as much as the previous issue. When it came down to issue where I visit Lily in Puerto Rico, I wanted the reader to be able to look at that issue and KNOW I've been there. I worked really hard to getting the setting right. I walked around San Juan for days taking pictures to make sure everything was just right. I didn't want to use generic buildings in the background, I wanted a Rican to look at the page and say "that IS San Juan."

PBR: That one picture you drew of the fortress was awesome.

Tom Beland: That one almost killed me. I found an aerial photo and was really tempted to just trace the thing, but I ended up drawing the whole thing. It was a nightmare. I gave that page to my brother-in-law when he moved away from Puerto Rico. The only other page I’ve ever given to someone was my friend Christine who runs Metro Comics here in Puerto Rico, She was really supportive in getting the book out so I gave her the page where I first saw Lily. I like seeing my art going to people I trust will do something nice with it. There’s this guy Wayne Beemer who’s the first person to collect my art. I met him at a convention and he’s like, “I want that, that, that and that.” And I told him it was one hundred dollars each but he didn’t care.

PBR: Are you getting recognized more at conventions now?

Tom Beland: I’m starting to get people who come up to me all nervous and saying how starstruck they are. I always look behind me to see if Art Spiegelman is standing there or something. I had a kid come up to me here (at MoCCA) who wrote out “True Story Swear to God” in Chinese characters. We had a couple who came to a convention on their honeymoon, because they related so well to the series. Lots of long-distance couples have latched onto it. It amazes me that my book to find reviews on the Internet in Japanese or Dutch. The other thing is that, due to the amazing food here, I'm bigger now than I was then. So, I get the occassional, "Dude, why are you so skinny in the strip...?" Well, there's also the fact that I DRAW the thing, so I might as well get SOME perks!

But one of the perks is being able to go to a con in New York. I friggin' LOVE this place. I mean, I hear all these stories about the old artists for the New Yorker or MAD Magazine walking up and down the Avenue of the Americas with their portfolios under their arm. The same streets that I was walking down, to show MY stuff to an editor. And when I look around I see all the huge skyscrapers and I think of how Spider-Man COULD swing along the buildings. For me, New York City is a comic book come to life. It’s Jack Kirby, John Romita, Don Martin, John Buscema, Jack Davis and all the guys I read back in my youth.

PBR: You’ve worked in both strip form and comic book, do have a preference?

Tom Beland: I always say that the strips are like the TV shows and the comic books are the movie. I used to do stand up in San Francisco and when I write a strip it’s like getting up on stage with the mic in my hand. With the books I have think about lighting, pacing, dialogue… all the things a director has to work around.

I got really burned out on the strips around the time the third issue of the comic book series came out. I just recently began to get back into the strips. There’ll be another 100 Stories book coming out. Those trade paperbacks... I can't believe how many people buy those... including myself. I always try to do a little sketch for anyone who buys one of the trades because they’re essentially getting a rerun and there has to be some perk. Plus, it's fun to see their reaction when they get the sketch.

And I’m not a guy who charges for a sketch because I know that when someone walks into a comic shop with twenty bucks in his hand and he’s going to get Avengers, Spider-Man, Gotham Central… and after buying his favorites, he'll have about another three bucks left to spend. So, my competition are these amazing books like Fables, New Frontier, Ex Machina, PVP, Demo, Y the Last Man Standing, Finder, Strangers In Paradise, Bone... you get my picture? One of those books has to get bumped for me to make a sale. I mean, what the hell are the odds?? I know that issue number nine was up against Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier, which was an amazing book. So I if someone bought my book instead of that, it’s really flattering.

PBR: You address a lot of very personal issues in your book, even your erectile dysfunction…

Tom Beland: Yeah, everyone asks that question. It’s like talking with James Lipton, “Where… do you find the strength… to talk about…” It’s really not a big deal, I take medicine for it, we’ve gotten past it. And in comedy no one is going to remember the joke the next week and it's like that in comics. You'll have this huge fanfare and people might have some buzz about how someone talked about something as personal as E.D.... but the next week, POWERS will come out and they'll shift over to IT'S shocking topic. Which is how is SHOULD be. There have been a lot of other things that were much harder to talk about. Forgetting what my father looked like.. that one was tough. Portraying myself as a jerk is tough, but honest. I got spit on at a protest rally. That was tough. The hardest thing to write about was leaving my home and family. But if you’re going to do an autobiography you have to go back and address the hard stuff. Because if you don’t it’s not worth doing, why tell the story?

It’s like in the Spider-Man movie. Yeah, it was really cool when Doctor Octopus threw the car through the window but it wouldn’t have been important if Peter and Mary Jane hadn’t been just about to kiss.

PBR: Okay, but my question is with all the things you’ve addressed, is anything off limits?

Tom Beland: Well, it’s not going to be soon but… I like to smoke a little weed every now and then. And I was really worried to write a story about it because I do it with my brother and he’s got kids and all. And, you have to understand that Lily’s a public figure in Puerto Rico. She’s like Oprah, which would make me Stedman, so I didn’t want there to be headlines like “STEDMAN’S A JUNKIE!!” But they both said it was fine. So that and the Smut Peddler stuff…

PBR: Uh, “Smut Peddler…?”

Tom Beland: It’s this X-Rated book that is produced once a year and the editor, Trisha Sebastian, thought it’d be great to get the lovey-dovey romance guy and get him to do some hardcore porn!! While I was doing it I hid the pages from Lily and every time she’d walk into the room I’d cover them up and be like, “I’m not drawing boobies!!” It’s like being thirteen again and getting caught with Playboys. But when they approached me with it, I made it clear that I would only do it in a tasteful way. Some of these comics are like 70’s porn where no one’s even heard of a razor. And the anatomy is completely exaggerated.

That’s what I thought would be most off-limits but honestly nobody cares. But if I drew Lily’s butt too big in a swimsuit or something, I’d be a dead man…

PBR: Now you learned to draw from your father right?

Tom Beland: Yeah, he was always an aspiring cartoonist and I picked up everything from him. He loved the old MAD Magazine so guys like Jack Davis, Don Martin, Rowland Wilson, Al Hirschfield were all a huge influence on him and me. Also, the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons. If you look at how I draw Lily she’s basically Wilma Flintstone without the bun on the head and different clothes. I always wanted to do a costume party where instead of drawing Lily dressed as Wilma, I’d just draw Wilma. The funny thing about it is that I was always a Betty Rubble guy.

PBR: Do you ever catch any flak for doing a kinda chick oriented book?

Tom Beland: I’ve heard words like “saccharine” but the key to my comic is that you have to be, or have been in love. If you’re not, it must be hell to read because you can’t know what it’s like. One guy from TIME Magazine said I blew the story because at the end of the first issue my mailing address was in Puerto Rico.

The worst I’ve ever gotten was this woman who was offended that I discussed a rectal exam in the strip. And the next week I wrote a strip that shot right back at her, both are in the 100 Stories book. My editor said, “You know she’s just waiting for you to hit back” but I didn’t care. We get bombarded with tampon ads and commercials about yeast infections; I don’t see the difference. But the positive letters and emails outweigh the negative.

PBR: What else are you doing in addition to the book?

Tom Beland: I do a strip for Studio Monthly, a recording industry trade magazine. They send me scripts about people in the industry and I draw the strip. Then whatever freelance work comes my way. But Lily is the real breadwinner. When I first moved down, she said to me that she makes enough to support us and wanted me to pursue my dream. It was really hard to get myself motivated at first without having someplace to go every morning.

PBR: Finally, how’s the comic scene down there?

Tom Beland: Really strong. They buy a lot of English books, they like their capes. There’s a pretty big convention down there but it’s more centered around sci-fi, Star Wars and all that. Lots of requests to draw Darth Vader. But lots of stores carry comics regularly so it’s not your typical geeky readers. Which isn’t to say there aren’t any Latin versions of Comic Book Guy.

They’ve got a couple of homegrown artists who are really well respected. There’s this one comic, Turey, which about this Indian, that is huge. Lily got me the opportunity to meet the creator, Ricardo Alvarez Rivon, at his house this one time. And he brought me into this room where he had an entire wall of original art by guys like Kirby, Steranko, Eisner… It was everything I could do to not totally geek out right there. I mean, there were Kirby’s pencil lines!!