Bertozzi, Nick

PERSONAL: Male

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Alternative Comics, 503 N.W. 37th Ave., Gainesville, FL 32609-2204. E-mail—nbert@abac.com.

CAREER: Graphic artist, writer, comix creator, programmer. Worked in the marketing department of DC Comics, New York, NY.

AWARDS, HONORS: Xeric grant and Ignatz award, both 2000, both for Boswash; named Emerging Artist of 2002, Comics Journal; two Harvey awards, for best new series and best new talent, and an Ignatz award, for outstanding comic, all 2003, all for Rubber Necker.

WRITINGS:

Boswash (graphic story/map), Luxurious Comics, c. 2000.

The Masochists, Alternative Comics (Gainesville, FL), 2001.

Creator of mini and full-size comix series, including The Incredible Drinking Buddies, Tranquilizer, Rubber Necker and The Salon (online); contributor to anthologies, including 9-11: Emergency Relief, Alternative Comics (Gainesville, FL), 2002; creator of strips, including "Beck" in Spin magazine and "Karmopolis, the Land of Cars," in Nickelodeon magazine.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Rubber Necker, The Salon, short stories.

SIDELIGHTS: Comix writer and artist Nick Bertozzi's work has earned him a string of awards and considerable praise, particularly for his "Rubber Necker" series.

Jesse Fuchs interviewed Bertozzi for Alternative Comics, asking him when he was first exposed to the genre, and Bertozzi answered that his father had read him Zap Comix before Bertozzi was old enough to read. "I read Zap by myself when I could read too," said Bertozzi. "I remember really liking Mr. Natural. Then, when I was eight or ten, I read a lot of National Lampoon. There was nudity in it, and I was always thrilled by that, as any little kid would be."

The adult Bertozzi worked in the marketing department of DC Comics and created his own minicomic, The Incredible Drinking Buddies—which he then took to full-size—as well as Tranquilizer. Bertozzi told Fuchs that he had been "exorcising the Crumb demon from when I was a kid. And then the Comix 2000 piece actually got accepted, and I thought, finally somebody's paying attention to what I'm doing, and I did what I really wanted to. All the comics I was afraid to show to anybody because I thought they were too pretentious turned out to be the ones people actually liked! So that gave me the impetus to do Boswash."

Bertozzi received a Xeric grant to create Boswash, an illustrated story printed on an accordian-style fold-out map. The folds mark the edges of the panels, which are laid out three to a column. The two-color format is not black and white, but rather blue and orange. The story is about a U.S. Army cartographer named Boswash who, at the end of the war with Mexico, disputes the location of the border of the two countries with his superior.

Greg McElhatton reviewed Boswash for icomics online, saying that this is "Bertozzi's best art yet. It's evolved into a clean line, with some really expressive faces…. The story itself is engrossing as well; you can feel Boswash's struggle, and by the time you've gotten to the end of the first half of the map, you're eager to turn it over to see what happens next."

The Masochists is Bertozzi's three-story graphic novel about an assortment of broken, sad characters. "Passing Out" delves into the horrors of adolescence, while the central character of "U.V. Katastrophe" is an older rock musician who has hit a creative wall, but who experiences a moment of transcendence when he sits in with his old band. "5/4" contains threads of obsession and self-mutilation and finds a young woman humiliated when she is exhibited, drunk and half-dressed, as part of an art show.

The woman, Donna, has a horrible family life that drives her. McElhatton wrote that "you can't help feeling sorry for her—doubly so after we see how she masks her mental pain with physical pain instead. It may be the hardest to find yourself having something in common with Donna, but I felt it was her story that I found the most heartrending of the three." McElhatton said of Bertozzi's artwork that "using a minimal amount of lines, his use of graytones works really well with the open expressions and backgrounds of his stories. People look real, something very important in three stories like those found in The Masochists."

Peter Siegel reviewed The Masochists for Artbomb. net, saying that the book "is a very honest and compassionate look into their lives … you'll be hard pressed to find a more oddly refreshing book with such an unflinching tone."

A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote that Bertozzi "infuses his stories with a deep melancholy and punctuates them with moments of genuine emotional discomfort that reveal his characters' most intimate and vulnerable sides."

Rubber Necker is Bertozzi's ongoing creation that includes stories such as Drop Ceiling, which features a young man whose place in the family business is at risk and who is looking for a special box left to him by his late father. Another story, Belles Lettres, is about a woman who develops and becomes obsessed with a new typeface.

Tim O'Shea interviewed Bertozzi for Silver Bullet Comic Books online and asked him how he felt after winning the Two Harvey awards for Rubber Necker. Bertozzi replied, "I'm really glad and astonished to have received the Harveys. The awards are kind of like nods from my friends and readers, telling me that I'm headed in the right direction with my comics."

Drop Ceiling examines why things are created. Bertozzi told O'Shea that he used Pawtucket, Rhode Island, as the model for the story's setting, where there is a distinct contrast between buildings constructed with care and those that have been merely thrown up. He said that "it's the contradiction of beauty and garishness that I find so appealing and a good subcurrent to the story." Bertozzi fits twenty panels per page, which he said is not hard, "since they consist of small shots. Most often, they're meant to give the reader the illusion of the main character's point of view. My perception of the world is pretty scattershot, so that's how I see the main character's vision: always floating around, eyes resting on different objects in a room. It's a manga trick."

Bertozzi posts updates of his online strip The Salon on the Serializer Web site. The story is set in 1907 Paris and revolves around the lives of artists like Picasso and writers such as Gertrude Stein. In preparing for the writing of this story, Bertozzi read the biographies of the main characters and histories of cubism in order to add factual information to his supernatural tale. The strip as he posts it is essentially the first draft of a project he intends to eventually publish.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Publishers Weekly, March 25, 2002, review of The Masochists, p. 48.

ONLINE

Alternative Comics, http://www.indyworld.com/ (December 9, 2003), Jesse Fuchs, interview with Bertozzi.

Artbomb.net, http://www.artbomb.net/ (December 9, 2003), Peter Siegel, review of The Masochists.

icomics, http://www.icomics.com/ (December 9, 2003), Greg McElhatton, reviews of Boswash and The Masochists.

Nick Bertozzi Home Page, http://www.nickbertozzi.com (December 9, 2003).

Serializer, http://www.serializer.net/ (December 9, 2003).

Silver Bullet Comic Books, http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks/ (August 27, 2003), Tim O'Shea, interview with Bertozzi.