Derek Hunter is a well known artist in our neck of the woods, and he’s also a dick. At least he seems to think so, we’re just indifferent to him. He draws awesome art, but he won’t even sit down and have a drink with us that has booze in it. Who drinks water a bar, honestly? The guy’s a tool. …Oh, yeah, anyway! He sat down and chatted with Gavin Sheehan at City Weekly about his exploits during his college years, and why he put it in comic book form. If you’re in the area, go check out Draw Night at NoBrow Coffee this Friday.

Gavin’s Underground interview with Derek Hunter

Gavin: What was the process like for you in deciding what stories to use?

Derek: In all honesty, I am not that awful of a person, so the stories in the book are the worst of them. Of course, I tried to choose the ones that would make for the best short stories. Ones with a good beginning, middle and end. For example, I used to put roadkill in those big blue USPS mailboxes when I was in high school, but that doesn’t necessarily make for a good story. So stuff like that was left on the cutting room floor. Also, the whole purpose of this comic was to be the ultimate “anti-biography”; I had to make sure the stories truly painted me out to be a “fuck”.

Gavin: Considering the personal nature of the stories, what are your feelings about the book being released for the public to buy and read?

Derek: That was a major concern before I started writing the book, but once the stories started coming together, and especially after I bookended all of the stories with the retrospect prologue/epilogue narrative, a very “playful” attitude sort of washed over the whole thing and, in my eyes at least, the character in those stories stopped being “me”. And to be honest, I’m not the person I was in those stories anymore and I think that is obvious to anyone who knows me. And those people’s opinions are the only ones that would really effect me anyway.