by Benjamin Ong Pang Kean

Believe it or not, Pigtale is not the sequel to DreamWorks’ Shark Tale.

Ovi Nedelcu's Pigtale, a new bimonthly ongoing series from Image, debuts this January. It tells the story of Boston Booth, an amateur private investigator in Portland, Ore., as he tries to deal with a life turned upside down by financial and professional turmoil. Things take a dramatic twist for Boston when he is introduced to Clyde, an intelligent talking pig desperate to escape from his evil stepbrother Taxx, a wolf bent on destroying his step-sibling, and taking over the city while he's at it.

We caught up with fresh talent Nedelcu for a chat.

Newsarama: Given that this is your first outing to a large audience, let’s start with the basics - introduce yourself to the readers…

Ovi Nedelcu: I was born in Romania, in 1979. When I was one, my dad escaped communism and ran for the border. After reaching America, he flew my family and me to New York, then to Chicago, then to Arizona, then to LA, then finally to Sacramento; where nothing really happened. So, instead of doing nothing, I started drawing and that made me happy. I continued doing that all throughout high school, and later attended college at the academy of art in SF. After two years, I left school and moved back to L.A. to work for WB animation doing Visual-Development, Character Design, Storyboarding, shooting rubber bands across cubicles and what not.

During this time I got married and promised my wife that we would someday move back to her hometown, Portland. After studio-hopping for five years, I finally decided to move to Portland with my wife and daughter. I love it here. The city is not too big, and not too small, it’s just right and has a very lively downtown atmosphere, like S.F, which I really missed when I was living in L.A. Now that I’m here in Portland, I'm currently writing and drawing my comic book Pigtale, while still doing studio and freelance animation work. I enjoy both. I realize life is short and then you die, so I try and make the best of what God has given me. I'm thankful for all the Lord's blessings. With that said, let me answer some of the other questions…

NRAMA: What got you into the business in the first place?

ON: Back when I was in high school, I started to get serious about making a career out of being a comic book artist. I always read them and liked drawing the characters while growing up, but it wasn’t until high school that I realized I could make a living doing them. I should thank two of my good friends, Efrain Luna III & Paul Harmon for inspiring that thought. They would always have all these comics with them and constantly be drawing comic pages in class. That really pushed me to want to do them also. Back then I was looking at the works of Will Eisner, Jim Lee, Dale Keown and basically the whole Image bunch. I soon grew out of that stage (with the exception of Will Eisner) when I got into college and realized that there was a lot more to comics and art in general that I wasn’t exposed to in my teens. Realistically, I’d have to say right now I only read a handful of comics, and usually only buy comics for the artwork and storytelling. There are so many different types of mediums and art out there that its hard for me to keep picking up books that I now realize are not as good as I thought they were years ago.

NRAMA: Who do you call your influences?

ON: My influences range from comics, to animation, fine art, illustration, web design and back again. I’m kind of all over the map. My library right now consists of hundreds of artist, but for the sake of name-dropping, I’d have to say Brad Bird, Alex Toth, Mike Mignola, Syd Mead, Nine Old Men, Chuck Jones, Ronald Searle, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Moebius, Provensens, Al Hirschfeld, Mary Blair, Tom Oreb, Hayao Miyazaki, Katsuhiro Otomo, Hank Ketcham, Bill Watterson, Dr. Seuss, Craig Kellman, Ed Benedict, Jim Woodring, Maurice Noble, and Eyvind Earle are artist I’m very much influenced by.

NRAMA: That said, what comics out there currently pique your interest?

ON: Well, I’m a big fan of Bone - who isn’t?, anything Mignola does is guaranteed to be on my shelf. I very much like the work of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale; what an awesome illustrator/designer and storyteller. To be honest, I’m into a lot of children’s book these days.

NRAMA: You’re billed as a “fresh talent.” Have you done any comics work before?

ON: I finished a short story about a year ago that ran in the Weird Tales books for Dark Horse that came out recently. I was in issue #4.

NRAMA: How did Pigtale come into the creative picture?

ON: Well, Pigtale isn’t my first published work. Like I said, I did that short story for Dark Horse. But prior to that I did a one-page story in the DC Big Book of Vice called “The History of Hemp,” a long, long time ago; about 7 years ago. I just basically had to show in sequence how hemp was used throughout history - besides smoking it - by different cultures and people. I penciled and inked that embarrassing page. Whenever I look back at that page I just cringe. Only now do I realize what the editor was thinking when he got it. Maybe that’s why he never returned my calls. Anyway…

Fast forward to a few months ago; I sent Image my submission after realizing I didn’t want to go through the headaches of self-publishing my stuff - printing, distributing, mail, records, etc. So I sent [Image Publisher] Erik Larsen a sample of my book along with a story outline. He replied saying “I’m sold” and that was it. Thanks, Erik!

NRAMA: What else can you tell us about Pigtale?

ON: Pigtale is a contemporary story that takes place in present-day Portland. It tells the exciting adventure of Boston Booth, an amateur private eye whose life is in financial and professional turmoil, when suddenly he runs into Clyde, a smart, talking pig desperate to get away from his violent wolf stepbrother Taxx. Together, Boston and Clyde venture off into the face of danger to help one another overcome their fears, rescue loved ones and save the city from Taxx; who’s bent on destroying Clyde, getting his revenge and using a Super-Plasma device to conquer the city and reign supreme!

NRAMA: So, instead of Will Smith, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese’s voiced-over characters in Shark Tale, we have Boston, Clyde and Taxx…

ON: Kind of - the main characters are Boston Booth (the amateur P.I.), Clyde (the talking pig), Taxx (the evil intelligent talking wolf), Carmen Reeds (Boston’s dream girl) and of course, Grandma (the partially deaf, conservative, loving, bold and blunt house keeper).

Let me say that I came up with the name Pigtale long before DreamWorks decided they would change the name of their film Shark Slayer to Shark Tale. People always ask me if it has anything to do with Shark Tale. And for the record, NO, it doesn’t. That name just came from two components of the story. First it’s a “fairytale/fiction” more/less, and second, it’s about a pig. So there you have it, “Pigtale.” Actually, I was going to name it “Pigtails” but then that didn’t really make sense. So then I came up with “Pigtales” as in “the adventures of a talking pig.” Because at first I was going to do the book as a serial, where each issue is its own story start to finish. Then I finally came to the conclusion that what I really wanted to do was a epic story arc that spanned 20-30 issues/ongoing and then maybe after that initial arc do a spin-off to keep the that world alive. So I ended up naming the book Pigtale because it’s just one tale. Sigh!

NRAMA: What in the world influenced you on Pigtale?

ON: I’m not exactly sure what planted the seed of the story, but at that time I was developing a few ideas that were along the lines of what Pigtale is now. So I just merged them together and then worked out the story so it would make sense. My original idea was about three housewives that were married to incompetent detectives. The idea was that the housewives were actually superheroes by night and housewives by day, and the wives would always end up saving their husbands from the mess they would get themselves in, only to have the husbands later come home and brag about how good they were at their job by taking the credit of the superheroes. Anyway, there was a lot more to it, and I might end up doing that story one day.

I also had another idea about an intelligent pig which I always liked, so… I thought, “ok, drop the wives, stick to one detective” and then drop a talking pig into the story! All of a sudden things just started rolling and falling into place. And so, the birth of Pigtale.

NRAMA: What’s next for you after this?

ON: Well, I’ve been working with director Henry Selick [Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach] at VINTON studios here in Portland. I just finished up doing some character design and storyboards for the short film he’s directing called Moongirl. Up next on the list is Neil Gaiman’s Coraline which Henry Selick will also be directing as a feature film at VINTONstudios.

I’m also currently designing and writing a screenplay for an animated feature film I want to pitch soon, and have been hard at work getting the second issue of Pigtale done. Besides that, I’ve been doing freelance design and development work for various studios. It’s been pretty crazy lately. I’m also developing an idea with a friend of mine who also has a book coming out from Image, which we want to collaborate on. And finally, and most importantly, spending time with my family, which I don’t get enough of because of work. My Wife has been very supportive with what I’ve been doing so far, and puts up with me far more than she ought to.

For more on Nedelcu and Pigtale, check out http://pigtalecomic.com