Paul Pope has written and drawn some of the most gorgeous comics of the twenty-first century \u2014 from \u201cBatman: Year 100,\u201d in which Batman challenges a dystopian surveillance state, to \u201cBattling Boy,\u201d with its adolescent god proving his mettle by fighting giant monsters.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s been more than a decade since Pope\u2019s last major comics work, and in a Zoom interview with TechCrunch, he admitted that the intervening years have had their frustrations. At one point, he held up a large stack of drawings and said the public hasn\u2019t seen any of it yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaking graphic novels is not like making comics,\u201d Pope said. \u201cYou\u2019re basically writing a novel, it can take years, and you work with a contract. No one can see the work, so it can be very frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s good news on the horizon. A career-spanning exhibition of Pope\u2019s work<\/a> just opened at the Philippe Labaune Gallery in New York, while an expanded edition of his art book, now called \u201cPulpHope2: The Art of Paul Pope<\/a>,\u201d is due in the fall\u00a0\u2014 as is the first volume<\/a> of a collection of Pope\u2019s self-published science fiction epic \u201cTHB.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s all part of what Pope described as \u201ca number of chess moves\u201d designed to \u201creintroduce\u201d and \u2014 he grudgingly admitted \u2014 \u201crebrand\u201d himself.<\/p>\n Pope is reemerging at a fraught time for the comics industry and creativity in general, with publishers and writers suing AI companies<\/a> while generative AI tools go viral by copying popular artists<\/a>. He even said that it\u2019s \u201ccompletely conceivable\u201d that popular comic book artists could be replaced by AI.<\/p>\n The contrast is particularly stark in Pope\u2019s case, since he\u2019s known for largely eschewing digital tools in favor of brushes and ink. But he said he isn\u2019t ruling out taking advantage of AI (\u201cany tool that works is good\u201d), which he already uses for research.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m less concerned about having some random person create some image based on one of my drawings, than I am about killer robots and surveillance and drones,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n You have a gallery show coming up, and it coincides with the second volume of your art book, \u201cPulpHope.\u201d How did those come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n I got contacted by Boom Studios, I think it was late 2023, and they were interested in possibly collaborating on something [through their boutique imprint Archaia]. So we went back and forth for a bit, I came on as art director, and I was able to hire my own designer, this guy Steve Alexander, also known as Rinzen<\/a>, and we spent about nine months [in] 2024 putting the book together.<\/p>\n And then, coincidentally, I know Philippe Labaune, just from having been to the gallery, we have mutual friends and things, and he made the offer to show work from not only the book, [but] kind of a career retrospective. It\u2019s ballooned into something really nice.<\/p>\n Are you somebody who thinks about the arc of their career and how it fits together, or are you mostly future-oriented?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019d say a combination of both, because \u2014 I have said this elsewhere, but I think at a certain point, an artist needs to become their own curator. Jack Kirby<\/a> famously said, \u201cAll that matters is the 10% of your best work. The rest of it gets you to the 10%.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But then in my case, I do a lot of variant covers. I\u2019ve worked on many things outside of comics that are kind of hard to acquire, whether it\u2019s screen prints or fashion industry stuff. And I thought it\u2019d be really cool if we do something that\u2019s a chronological look at the life of an artist \u2014 [something that] focuses mainly on comics, [with] a lot of stuff that people have either never seen or it\u2019s hard to find.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the first of a number of chess moves that I\u2019ve been setting up for a long time. And the gallery is \u2014 I would call it a second chess move. I have another announcement later in the summer for a new project.<\/p>\n Making graphic novels is not like making comics. You\u2019re basically writing a novel, it can take years, and you work with a contract. No one can see the work, so it can be very frustrating. This stack here, this is my current work, and it\u2019s all stuff that basically hasn\u2019t been published yet. So I thought this was a great way to either reintroduce my work or \u2014 I hate the term \u201crebrand,\u201d but rebrand myself.\u00a0<\/p>\n In your essay \u201cWeapons of Choice,\u201d you talk about all these different tools you use, the brushes and pens, the Sumi ink. Has your working style been pretty consistent, pretty analog, for your entire career?<\/strong><\/p>\n I would say mostly. I did start incorporating Photoshop for coloring and textures, kind of late to the game \u2014 I\u2019d say it was not \u2018till around 2003 or so.<\/p>\n I developed carpal tunnel around 2010, so I\u2019ve tried to steer away from digital as much as I can, but I still use it. I mean, I use Photoshop every day. It\u2019s just [that] most of what I do is the comics purism of ink on a paper.<\/p>\n Do you think of ink on paper as objectively better, or it just happens to be how you work?<\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t think it\u2019s better, to be honest. I think any tool that works is good. You know, Moebius used to say that sometimes he would draw with coffee grinds, he drew with a fork.<\/p>\n And I have some friends, in fact, a number of friends, who are doing highly popular mainstream books, who have gravitated toward digital work, or its various advantages. And I just don\u2019t like that. But one thing [is,] I sell original art, and if you have a digital document, you might be able to make a print of it, but there is no drawing. It\u2019s binary code.<\/p>\n Also, I feel an allegiance to the guys like Alex Toth and Steve Ditko<\/a>, who took time to teach me things. Moebius, I was friends with him. Frank Miller. We all work in traditional analog art. I feel like I want to be a torchbearer for that.\u00a0<\/p>\n How do you feel about the fact that comics-making is increasingly digital?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think it\u2019s inevitable. The genie is out of the bottle at this point. So now it\u2019s a matter of being given a new, vivid array of tools that artists can choose from.<\/p>\n When you talk to younger artists, do you feel like there\u2019s still a lane for them to do analog work?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Absolutely. One of the challenges now is, you can download an app, or you can get an iPad Pro and start drawing. I think the learning curve in some ways is a little quicker, and you can fix, edit, and change things that you don\u2019t like.<\/p>\n But it also means the drawing never ends. One thing I really like about analog art is, it\u2019s punishing. [One] piece of advice I got early on was, your first 1,000 ink drawings with a brush are going to be terrible, and you just have to get through those first 1,000. And it was true, it was humiliating \u2014 every time I sat down and tried to draw with the brushes, a lot of the work is going to be in your your fingers or your wrists, and it\u2019s easy to make mistakes, but gradually you get an authority over the tool, and then you can draw what it is you really see in your mind.<\/p>\n Before we started recording, we were also talking about AI, and it sounds like it\u2019s something you\u2019ve been aware of and thinking about.<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, sure, I use it all the time. I don\u2019t use it for anything creative outside of research. For example, I just wrote an essay on one of my favorite cartoonists, Attilio Micheluzzi. His library is being published by Fantagraphics<\/a> right now, and I did the intro for the second book. It\u2019s amazing, because there\u2019s a lot of personal detail about the man that was really, really hard to find, unless you could literally go to \u2014 he died in Naples, but he spent a lot of his time in North Africa and Rome. This guy\u2019s a man of mystery. But you now can get the dates of his birth and his death, what caused his death, what did he do? And AI helps with that.<\/p>\n Or sometimes, I work on story structure. But I don\u2019t use it directly to create anything. I use it more like, let\u2019s say it\u2019s a consultant. My nephew writes [code] and he describes AI as a sociopath personal assistant that doesn\u2019t mind lying to you. I\u2019ve asked AI at times like, \u201cWhat books has Paul Pope published?\u201d It\u2019s kind of strange, because maybe 80% of it will be correct, and 20% will be completely hallucinated books I\u2019ve never done. So I tend to take my nephew\u2019s point of view on it.<\/p>\n You have this skepticism, but you don\u2019t want to rule out using it where it\u2019s useful.<\/strong><\/p>\n No, absolutely not. It\u2019s a tool.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a very contentious point with cartoonists, and there are important questions about authorship, copyright protection. In fact, I just had dinner with Frank Miller<\/a> last night, we were talking about this. If [I ask AI to] give me \u201cLady Godiva, naked on the horse, as drawn by Frank Miller,\u201d I can spit that out in 30 seconds. Some people might say, \u201cOh, this is my art.\u201d But AI doesn\u2019t generate the art from the same kind of place that humans would, where it\u2019s based on identity and personal history and emotional inflection.<\/p>\n It can recombine everything that\u2019s been known and programmed into the database. And you could do with my stuff, too. It never looks like my drawings, but it\u2019s getting better and better.<\/p>\n But I think really, speaking as a futurist, the real question is killer robots and surveillance and a lot of technology being developed very, very quickly, without a lot of public consideration about the implications.<\/p>\n Here in New York, at the moment, there\u2019s a really great gallery on 23rd Street called Poster House<\/a>. It\u2019s pretty much the history of 20th-century poster design, which is right up my alley. So I went there with my girlfriend last week, and they currently have an exhibit on the atom bomb and how it was portrayed in different contexts through poster art. There was this movement \u201cAtoms for Peace<\/a>,\u201d where people were pro-atomic energy [but] were against war, and I kind of liked that, because that\u2019s how I feel about AI. I would say, \u201cAI for peace.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m less concerned about having some random person create some image based on one of my drawings, than I am about killer robots and surveillance and drones. I think that\u2019s a much more serious question, because at some point, we\u2019re going to pass a tipping point, because there\u2019s a lot of bad actors in the world that are developing AI, and I don\u2019t know if some of the developers themselves are concerned about the implications. They just want to be the first person to do it \u2014 and of course, they\u2019re going to make a lot of money.<\/p>\n You mentioned this idea of somebody typing, \u201cGive me a drawing in the style of Paul Pope.\u201d And I think the argument that some people would make is that you shouldn\u2019t be able to do that \u2014 or at least Paul should be getting paid, since your art was presumably used to train the model, and that\u2019s your name being used.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s a good question. In fact, I was asking AI before our talk today \u2014 I think the best thing is to go to the source \u2014 \u201ccompare unlicensed art usage [for] AI-generated imagery with torrenting of MP3s in the \u201890s.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And AI said that there\u2019s definitely some similarities, because you\u2019re using work that\u2019s already been produced and created without compensating the artist. But in the case of AI, you can add elements to it that make it different. It\u2019s not like [when] somebody stole Guns N\u2019 Roses\u2019 record, \u201dChinese Democracy,\u201d and put it online. That\u2019s different from sitting down with an emulator for music with AI [and saying,] \u201cI want to write a song in the style of Guns N\u2019 Roses, and I want the guitar solo to sound like Slash.\u201d<\/p>\n Obviously, if somebody publishes a comic book and it looks just like one of mine, that might be a problem. There\u2019s class action lawsuits on the behalf of some of the artists, so I think this is a legal issue that is going to be hammered out, probably. But it gets more complicated, because it\u2019s very hard to regulate AI development or distribution in places like Afghanistan or Iran or China. They\u2019re not going to follow American legal code.<\/p>\n And then on the killer robot side, you\u2019ve written a lot and drawn a lot of dystopian fiction yourself, like in \u201cBatman: Year 100.\u201d How close do you feel we are to that future right now?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think we\u2019re probably, honestly, about two years away. I mean, robots are already being used on the battlefield. Drones are used in lethal warfare. I wouldn\u2019t be too surprised, within two or three years, if we start seeing robot automation on a regular basis. In fact, where my girlfriend lives in Brooklyn, there\u2019s a fully robot-serviced coffee shop, no one works there.<\/p>\n And the scary thing is, I think people become normalized to this, so the technology is implemented before there\u2019s the social contract, where people are able to ask whether or not this is a good [thing].<\/p>\n My lawyer, for example, he thinks within two or three years, Marvel Comics will replace artists with AI. You won\u2019t even have to pay any artists. And I think that\u2019s completely conceivable. I think storyboarding for film can easily be replaced with AI. Animatics, which you need to do for a lot of films, can be replaced. Eventually, comic book artists can be replaced. Almost every job can be replaced.<\/p>\n How do you feel about that? Are you worried about your own career?<\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t worry about my career because I believe in human innovation. Call me an optimist. And the one distinct advantage we have over machine intelligence is \u2014 until we actually take the bridle off and machines are fully autonomous and have a conscience and a memory and emotional reflections, which are the things that are required in order to become an artist, or, for that matter, a human \u2014 they can\u2019t replace what humans do.<\/p>\n They can replicate<\/em> what humans do. If you\u2019re trying to get into the business of, let\u2019s say comics, and you\u2019re trying to draw like Jim Lee, there\u2019s a chance you might get replaced, because AI has already imprinted every single Jim Lee image in its memory. So that would be easy to replace, but what is harder to replace is the human invention of something like whatever Miles Davis introduced into jazz, or Picasso introduced, along with Juan Gris, when they invented Cubism. I don\u2019t see machines being able to do that.<\/p>\n You were talking about the discipline needed to draw with a brush, and one of the things I worry about is, if we increasingly devalue the time and the money and everything it takes for somebody to get good at that, you can\u2019t decouple the inventiveness of the Paul Pope who comes up with these cool stories with the Paul Pope who spent all his time making drawing after drawing with brushes and ink. If we think we can just focus on coming up with cool ideas, it\u2019s not going to work like that.<\/strong><\/p>\n I do think about this. I think it would be very challenging to be 18, 19, having grown up with a screen in front of you, you can upload an app to do anything, within seconds, and that\u2019s just not the way most of human history has worked.<\/p>\n I mean, I don\u2019t think we\u2019re at that term \u201csingularity\u201d yet, but we\u2019re getting really close to it. And that\u2019s the one thing that worries me is whether we talk about killer machines or machine consciousness overtaking human ingenuity, it would almost be a forfeit on the part of the people to stop having a sense of ethics, a sense of curiosity, determination \u2014 all these old school, bootstrap concepts that some people think are old-fashioned now, but I think that\u2019s how we preserve our humanity and our sense of soul.<\/p>\n The first big collection of your \u201cTHB\u201d comics is coming this fall, and it sounds like that\u2019s also a big part of the Paul Pope rebrand or relaunch, the next chess move. Is it safe to assume that one of the other next chess moves is \u201cBattling Boy 2\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes. It\u2019s funny, because for a long time, we had it scheduled \u2014 \u201cBattling Boy 2\u201d has to come out before \u201cTHB\u201d comes out. But there was some restructuring with [my publisher\u2019s] parent company, Macmillan, and my new art director came on in 2023 and he said, \u201cYou know what, let\u2019s just move this around. We\u2019re going to start putting \u2018THB\u2019 out. It\u2019s already there.\u201d And I was so relieved because, again, \u201cBattling Boy\u201d is 500-plus pages, and I\u2019d work on it, then I\u2019d stop working to do commercial work. I work on it. I stop. I work on the movie. It\u2019s like I\u2019m driving this high performance car, but it doesn\u2019t have enough gas in it, so I have to keep stopping and putting gasoline [in it]. So it\u2019s been reinvigorating [to have a new book coming out], because it kick-started everything.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/paul-pope-studio.jpg?w=680\")
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