(because ten questions aren’t enough “” and who has time to read twelve?)

Rafer Roberts is the creator of the comic series Plastic Farm. Plastic Farm was originally a self-published series, first appearing as oversized mini-comics in 2001 and then in traditional comic book form in 2003.

Plastic Farm tells the story of Chester Carter and his slow descent into complete madness and how that insanity is changing the world. Along the journey, readers are introduced to a variety of different characters including The Kamikaze Kid, a supernatural cowboy that rides a dinosaur and lives inside of Chester’s mind, a washed-up celebrity whose claim to fame was an ability to “inflate” his belly button, a foul-mouthed four-eyed demon monkey, a pair of zombie cops, cannibal farmers, religious zealots, an assassin with a heart of gold, and an airline baggage handler.

Plastic Farm has featured guest artists such as Danielle Corsetto (Girls With Slingshots), Dennis Culver (Funwrecker, Black Diamond), Dave Morgan, Wendi Strang-Frost (Elfquest, Johnny Public), and Jake Warrenfeltz (The Alberic Heresies, Softshell). “I have been reading comics since I was five and writing and drawing comics since I was nine,” Rafer said.

“Most of my favorite comics have finished their runs, including Cerebus, The Invisibles, Stray Bullets, Bacchus, Xenozoic Tales, Metropol, and Rare Bit Fiends. I’m currently reading The Walking Dead, BPRD/Hellboy, Fables, DMZ, Evenfall, Damon Hurd’s stuff, and a bunch of others.”

T.E. Pouncey: Plastic Farm is the story of a man going slowly insane. How difficult is it for you to write dialogue for an unbalanced character and keep it focused and coherent?

Rafer Roberts: Chester isn’t what you would call overtly insane, in that you could meet him on the street and never know the crazy that lives in his brain. It’s when you start listening to his stories, when you start to hear the madness that comes from his mind when you realize that something isn’t quite right about him. Chester, or at least the older Chester telling his life story, has these mood swings from time to time. These are usually set off by the other people in the airport bar, so writing that dialogue is as simple as taking a normal human reaction to something (annoyance, irritation, joy) and just adding a little more emphasis. The older Chester, and I don’t think I’m giving too much away, has really come to terms with his mind and has embraced whatever madness is there. Chester does not suffer from his insanity, and I think he’s really come to enjoy it (though he’d never admit it). So, his dialogue and his personality are not overtly different than any other “normal” person. He speaks completely coherently about what he knows to be real.

TEP: Your work has been praised by Independent Comic God Dave Sim. How did Sim become familar with your work?

RR: I sent it to him. I’ve been a huge fan of Dave Sim and Cerebus since I started reading it, which was when the bi-weekly reprint series started coming out. That was also around the same time that Jaka’s Story started, so I was reading both the reprints and Jaka’s Story concurrently, getting confused and intrigued by what was really two different comics at that point.

I’m not sure I realized when I started reading it how much Cerebus would influence me as a comic maker, but it has. I think that inside the pages of Cerebus is the solution to every problem that a comic writer or artist can face. What’s the best way to stage this sequence? What’s the best way to show this emotion? How many panels should this sequence take? How do I best foreshadow this later event? When do I bring in the comic relief and when do I leave it serious? I believe that a serious study of all 6,000 pages of Cerebus will give an artist insight enough to overcome any artistic challenge that comes up. Plus, it’s a great story.

So, short answer: I’ve been a huge fan of Dave’s work so I gave him my copies of Plastic Farm. I’m thrilled to death that one of my biggest influences seems to enjoy the comic and doesn’t mind saying nice things about it in public.

TEP: You have said you plan Plastic Farm as a 50-issue story. Do you have the entire series plotted, or do you just plot a few issues and work toward an open-ended conclusion?

RR: I have the entire series plotted out. I know how each of the seemingly unrelated stories tie in to each other, and I know the final fate of Chester. I also know the last line of dialogue. Though, that’s not to say that I know every little detail. I try to leave the nuances open so that I can be as surprised by a turn of events as the reader. It’s cool to leave some stuff open, but when you’re working with a story that jumps around as much as Plastic Farm does, it’s pretty important to know where it’s going. For example, I’m not sure what happens to most of the people at the Nameless Airport Bar at the end. I know what happens to Chester, obviously, but Betty is kind of an open end right now.

TEP: One of the Plastic Farm characters, the serial killer Jonathan Picanos, is from a Kansas farm. As a native of Kansas, I’ve seen plenty of people who kind of crack from isolation and despair. What made you chose Kansas as the setting for your story?

RR: I don’t really have a conscious rationale behind setting the Plastic Farm Interlude in Kansas, but there were probably a few subconscious reasons. The isolation may have been one of them, but it probably had more to do with it not being in a major metropolitan area or the suburb of a big city. The people of The Farmland Spiritual Cooperative are more agriculturally based in their belief structure and it made sense to me to move them away from the city. Kansas seems more peaceful of a locale to me, and my impression may be wrong about that, but it really just seemed like the logical place where the coop would set up their operation.

TEP: I really like the idea of Chester narrating his story to an uninterested audience. One of the hardest things for a writer is to keep the audience interested and engaged in the story. What, in your opinion, is the best way for a writer to keep readers interested?

RR: Don’t give too much away too quickly, but know when to give it away. The worst thing a writer can do is to make it clear, or at least give the impression, that the story isn’t going anywhere. Don’t tread water. Have a finish line in mind and keep moving towards it. Throwing in the occasional demon spider-monkey, cowboy that rides a dinosaur, or guy who can inflate his own bellybutton probably doesn’t hurt either.

TEP: Getting back to one of your Plastic Farm characters, Jonathan, frequently cuts himself. Have you known anyone with this problem or did you research the topic?

RR: No, and for what it’s worth, Jonathan cuts himself for reasons other than the traditional psychological causes of self-mutilation. I don’t want to downplay the seriousness of this mental illness, but Jonathan suffers from a whole different set of crossed wires. His reasoning for self-mutilation is touched upon in the Interlude, but it will be fleshed out more as the series progresses.

TEP: In Plastic Farm and another of your stories, Grandpaw’s Tale, you present the idea that religious belief can sometimes do a person more than than good. Why, do you think, has organized religion produced famous unbalanced fanatics like Jim Jones and David Koresh?

RR: This one is going to get me into trouble, so I will force myself not to go off on a huge long rant. People tend to forget that there is a difference between spirituality and religion, so when I say that all organized religions are bad, in no way am I telling people that their beliefs are bad. Organized religion is a business based on the corrupted spiritual teachings of wise ancient people. All businesses operate under the guiding principles of A) make money and B) eliminate/outlast the competition and make more money, and I don’t see organized religions being any different. I don’t see any problem with someone reading a Bible (or Torah or Koran, etc), making up their own mind about what it says, and going through life using that book as a guidebook for their spirituality and morality. Once a group comes in and TELLS you what the book means (or rewrites or removes portions of it to fit their own goals) and tells you that if you believe in it our way then you will be rewarded in heaven and if you don’t believe in this book a specific way you will suffer an eternity in Hell, and tells you that you need to get other people to believe in the book the same way, and, by the way, you need to give us ten percent of your wages every week, then we’re getting into population control and getting people to pay to be controlled. I can’t speak to the motivations of folks like Jones or Koresh other than they are the inevitable product of the business of organized religion. The beef industry injects cows with hormones and chemicals, feed cows to other cows, and ends up poisoning their customers. Religion goes nuts trying to control their flock and creates their own mad cows. That’s all Jones and Koresh were: Mad Cows. But — and I cannot emphasize this strongly enough — there is nothing wrong with believing whatever the hell you believe in so long as you actually believe it and came to those beliefs on your own terms. You can believe that a giant frog named Burt shit out all of creation after eating some bad gas station sushi, but as long as you figured that out on your own and that no one told you to believe it and no one is charging you a weekly fee for you to believe it, then more power to you. If you believe in the teachings of Christianity or Judaism or Islam, that’s fine so long as you actually believe in it and not because someone (including your parents) told you to. Anyone who tells you what you should think, feel or believe is not your friend. That probably goes for me as well, telling you this. Anyway, there’s more I could say but I’ve probably dug myself a deep enough hole as it is.

TEP: Which of your characters would you most like to have pizza and conversation with?

RR: Most of the characters in Plastic Farm are people I would hate hanging out with in real life, and they’re in the book so I can do horrible unspeakable things to them. But, I’d probably hang out with The Kamikaze Kid because maybe he’d let me ride the dinosaur around. That would be cool.

TEP: As both an artist and a writer, which gives you the most satisfaction, writing or drawing?

RR: I’m not sure that the word “satisfying” really applies to me. I’m never satisfied by anything I’ve done. I can be pleased with a really good script I’ve written or by a cool line of dialogue. I can keep my sanity by drawing ten hours a day for three days straight. I can be happy with how a story turned out, or by a turn of events in the story, or by how either I or one of the other artists handled a tricky scene. But, “satisfied” implies a certain sense of complacency, which is dangerous as both a writer and artist. Maybe when I’m on my deathbed looking back I’ll be satisfied. I hope so.

TEP: There is a bedrock of cynical reality in your work that reminds me of both Harvey Pekar and Robert Crumb’s autobiographical comics. Are any of your story elements biographical?

RR: Biographical only in the sense that some of the characters, Chester in particular, have done some things that I have also done. Example, Chester’s drunken car wreck at the very beginning of Plastic Farm is based on something that really happened to me. I don’t think any writer can avoid being influenced or inspired by the events of their own life, so elements from the real world will inevitably worm their way into any story. Even if it’s just a conversation, or that one of the characters comes from the same state as the author, something will make its way in. Chester is not me. Raoul is not me. They both share parts of my mind, which is terrifying to think about too much. I made Chester be born the same year as me, but that was really so I could more easily keep track of his age at different parts of the story…

TEP: Do you have any new projects that will be completed by the end of 2007?

RR: The online serialization of Plastic Farm will still be in full swing, and folks can check that out at Ambrosia Publishing. The first collected edition of Plastic Farm will be out sometime in early 2008, which ignores the time frame set by your question, but I want to mention it anyway. I don’t think I’ll have anything else new coming out before the end off this year, but I certainly encourage people to keep checking out the Ambrosia site, or my own for any news or updates.