Richard Corben interview from Heavy Metal, June 1981

Interview with Richard Corben

Part One

from Heavy Metal June 1981

Richard Corben remains one of my favorite artists, particularly his work on various projects for Mignola's Hellboy. His obsession with rendering D-cups on any and all of his female characters seems to alleviated a bit with age, The sometimes puerile aspects of his work in the 70s and 80s are less pronounced nowadays, but even at his worst, Corben was still quite a bit better than many other graphic / comic artists of the 70s and 80s.

By the early 80s Corben's continuous work in Heavy Metal had given him a degree of status and a profile that had not been awarded to him by the underground comix scene, the members of which tended to regard him as a warped Midwestern 'square'. Thus, the June 1981 issue of HM saw Corben as the star of a multi-part interview by contributing editor Brad Balfour.

Unfortunately, Balfour comes to the interview more than a little disappointed to see that Corben is your ordinary, average guy who happens to draw comics for a living (albeit comics that often feature large doses of violence and female nudity). Balfour obviously is nonplussed by Corben's ordinariness.

Balfour seems determined to discover some sort of profound psychosexual flaw in his subject, and the interview adopts a testier tone as Corben plainly gets exasperated with Balfour's line of questioning...