Getting to know you with John Barrett:

Where on the globe are you?
-Red Bank, New Jersey. A few miles from the Jay & Silent Bob's Secret Stash comic store.

Your age?
-I'll be 29 on October 16, 2003.

Do you have a day job or just do comics?
-I just do comics and artwork at the moment.

Tell us your favorite animal!
-I'd say 'cat' because I keep two siamese-type cats as pets, and they're the only animals I'm familiar with enough to call friends.

GDquestions:
How did you find out about Gold Digger and what was your first issue?
-I first read part of the original Mangazine story, where Cheetah does her first transformation while wearing Gina's bra. I must admit that I really liked the subject matter, but I wasn't hot on Fred's art enough to pick it up. I picked up issue 7 of the regular series and it wasn't hard to get the back issues. Issue 5 (labeled as 0) really got me hooked. I really liked the Cheetah vs. Jetta fight. I got Fred to sign a bunch of the old issues at AnimEAST in 1994.

Who's your favorite char and why?
-I like Cheetah the most, because she's a huge tomboy. Any issue that's exploited her super-strength or supernatural abilities I really liked. I think Gina's cool, but there were some really cool stories revolving around Cheetah's werecreature nature. In second place, I'd say Tirga. Just because I roleplayed as him on GD-MUSH years ago. It's in his nature to be a flirt, and that's how I like to roleplay.

Whose your least favorite char and why?
-I didn't like Ryan for a long time because there wasn't a lot of back-story for him. For someone in competition for Gina's affection, all I knew was that he was a rival treasure hunter who evolved into a trash-talking street fighter. Lately, we've learned a lot more about his past through the people he knows.

What do you hope happens soon in the comic?
-I hope to see what's going on with the Edge Guard.

Artist questions:
How long have you been drawing?
-Since I was four, so about 25 years.

Why do you draw?
-I draw because it's the best way I can communicate what's on my mind. I have ideas, but I'm terrible at putting them into words. I've always felt that my art could allow me to get others to understand me. So, I wind up putting a lot of myself into my work.

What artists have influenced your style?
-I pulled a lot from the Catillac Cats from the old Heathcliff cartoon, then got inspired by Sonic. I liked seeing critters stylized with big spiky anime hair. Next up, I got inspiration from Masamune Shirow when he did Appleseed. From there, Rob DeJesus inspired me in his SB NHS comic. I loved the first commercial anime releases over here: Kennichi Sonoda's Bubblegum Crisis and Hirano's Dangaioh. I tried to learn a lot from Adam Warren's fight choreography, and the outrageous character designs of the Capcom universe, including the manga artist of Cammy's Gaiden, Masahiko Nakahira. Then I liked the anime designs of Tenchi Muyou and Giant Robo. Lately, I've been digging Kotobuki Tsukasa of Saber Marionette J. Whenever I've lifted a design from a famous artist to use in Edge Guard, I've tried to make it really obvious where it came from.

What materials do you use most?
-I use mechanical pencils. The cheap refillable ones, but I keep losing them. I use a white Mars Staedler eraser and Staedler pigment liner technical pens 07, 03, and 01 in that order. Mainly I use them because I can buy more at my local Staples store. Dynotaku showed me that they dry faster than Micron Pigmas. For major dark areas I use a Sharpie permanent marker, or just fill it in with PhotoShop.

Any advice you want to add, (for either budding artists or fans)?
-Be prepared to draw books and books full of not-so-great art early on. The important things are drawing from your personal environment and experience. Draw things and people that are personal to you and have meaning. If you're not drawing from from the heart, your work can look insincere and flat. After years of practice and faith in yourself, your work will truly become great. Also, don't let yourself get too distracted from art! Video games are the bane of comic artists.

What are your future plans for your art career?
-I've got a comic in the works starring some of my original characters from Edge Guard in 1928 Earth. This won't be Gold Digger Earth, so I won't be infringing on Fred's story. There's going to be different types of werefolk, so they'll look more like the way I draw furries. The first draft of 10 issues is all written. I need to finalize it and draw it up. I also wanna play around with possible Flash animation on my new website.

Edge Guard Questions:
So, tell us a bit about Edge Guard. How much of the story was you and how much was Fred?
-When I got permission from Fred to do Edge Guard, I asked him if he could help me with the story. Fred wound up being too busy, so I had to think fast on my feet. I managed to get some questions about Jade answered now and then by email, but his email-box got too filled up for that to work. I never seemed to figure out the right time to call him either. So, the only times I was able to get advice about Jade were at the conventions Fred and I went to. Luckily, he didn't ask me to make any changes after I showed him the final comic pages at those conventions. Issue 1-4 was all me, but the bits with lycanthropy, Onoli's Jasper and the Shadowelf artifacts were Fred's ideas. He also came up with the Dark Edge Guard as being like the Sith to the Jedi, battling the Guard for control of parts of Jade, like a big game of Risk.

Did you come up with the Kistune cast from nowhere, or did you recycle chars that you never had a chance to use before?
-I came up with the kitsune concept when I was gathering all the info I could about the Guardians and saw in Perfect Memory that he'd already decided that the Eastern Guard were kitsune. I got worried that the kitsune would look just like Fred's werewolves and knew that foxes were tremendously popular in furry fandom. So, I wanted to do an 'Anime meets Furry' comic.

-I came up with Terio first. I liked how Terrie Smith drew foxes, so I was inspired by her style. I named Terio for Terrie Smith. In my research, kitsune names ended in an 'o' or an 'n'. Next I came up with Mitsuko, but I originally named her 'Kivery', but my roommate decided that it sounded too alien. I named her after a Bloody Roar character, in the spirit of how Fred pulls names from popular video games, giving it to an unappropriate character. I created Terio and Mitsuko to show Sheila what a failed Edge Guard romance would be like. I wanted to split Tirga and Sheila apart so their coming together would be a very slow process instead of the "love at first sight" of Cheetah and Stripe. But I never got to bring them together. Yoten, Adon, and Greyson were drawn before I'd written the scripts for EG #2-4, so I was just guessing what their powers would be like. 'Yoten' is a combination of Yakumo from 3X3 Eyes, who never opens his eyes, and Goten, the cutesy Dragonball Z super kid. Adon is named for the Street Fighter character (another mismatch), and acts like Donovan from DarkStalkers, hating his feral nature. Greyson is named for Dick Grayson, Robin from Batman, and I thought that 'grey' was a great name for a neutral druid type. Riassat is named for Tessaria, the creator of the Fred Perry Fan Club, whose name is a jumble, just like the Edge Guard names are word-jumbles of the Thundercats. Mamori means 'protect', Claudius is close to the name of Lion-O's father from Thundercats, and Cleo is from the Catillac Cats cartoon, the original inspiration for my character Roxikat. I made Cleo as the 'Snarf' component of the Thundercats model of the Edge Guard. Her first name 'Sanfrita' is a word-jumble of 'Snarfita.' Don't hate me! :)

Overall were you happy with how Edge Guard turned out? Would you have done anything differently if you had to do it over again?
-I'd leave issues 1-4 as they are, and go with my original plan of making four or five issue chapters. I'd have made more real Dark Edge Guard, and spent more time with the characters' problems. I'd have gone into what makes Sheila tick and explore her family, and also delve into Tirga's past. I wouldn't have rushed to fix everyone's plots (so I wouldn't be burdening Fred with them). I wanted Gar to face Stripe again, and get his tail whipped, driving him to want to power up. Cleo would have stayed a werecat. I was also going to show more of the vampires that Riassat came from. I'm a huge vampire fan.