(Illustration by Nick Markinkovich. From left to right: Jason Gilmore, Alex Jansen, Richard Poplak, Nick Marinkovich)
Tonight at the Cadillac Lounge (1296 Queen Street West), the curious public will get its first look at Kenk: A Graphic Portrait, the full-length, documentary comic book that chronicles the exploits and eventual arrest of notorious bike thief Igor Kenk. The free event, which begins at 7 p.m., is presented in conjunction with Hot Docs, the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab, and TCAF, a partnering that reflects the project’s multi-media inception. The book is based on almost 30 hours of raw footage of Kenk captured by producer Alex Jansen and filmmaker Jason Gilmore, who then enlisted author Richard Poplak and illustrator Nick Markinkovich to finish the project. Books@Torontoist’s editor James Grainger interviewed Jansen, Gilmore, and Marinkovich about the long, strange process that brought the world Kenk: A Graphic Portrait. (For our interview with Richard Poplak go here.)
Torontoist: Alex, when and why did you decide to start filming the infamous Igor Kenk?
Alex Jansen: I first met Igor in April 2007. At that point I’d been living in the Queen West neighbourhood for three years but had steadily avoided him due to his already notorious reputation within the community as “the stolen bike guy.” The neighbourhood was well into its gentrification by that point, and Igor’s shop, with its blown-out windows, masses of bikes spilling out onto the sidewalk, odd hours, and shady clientele, stood out like a sore thumb next to the neighbouring boutiques and cafes. The rumours were rampant.
It was start of the cycling season and I’d yet to get a bell and light for my bike, something the police were cracking down on at the time. I was riding through Trinity Bellwoods park across from Igor’s shop around eleven at night, and sure enough he was still open and working out front on the street. So I decided to stop by and get said light. What should have been a two-minute purchase ended up being more than an hour as I entered into my first conversation with Igor. I discovered a much brighter, charismatic, and multi-faceted man than I’d expected, and he was surprisingly open and willing to debate the grey areas of his operation. I also started to learn a little about his Yugoslavian roots and his pure communist ideals, radical environmentalism, and zero consumption preaching, his warnings of economic collapse, his background as a police officer, his Juilliard graduate wife, and so forth. He certainly didn’t fit neatly into my original black and white assumptions. And it was immediately apparent that he was on an imminent collision course with the rapidly changing neighbourhood.
I invited my good friend and frequent collaborator, filmmaker Jason Gilmore, to come meet Igor the next day. We started shooting almost immediately for the next year and a half leading right up to Igor’s arrest.
Jason Gilmore: When Alex first approached me about shooting footage that would later be used as source material for a graphic novel, I was immediately interested in the idea. Having never met Igor, however, I wasn’t sure what to think about potentially making him the subject of any documentary-like project. I hadn’t planned on shooting any video the day when Igor and I were formally introduced, but the moment he opened his mouth and started prophecizing, I was immediately thankful I had pocketed my point-and-shoot camera earlier. I started shooting right away. He was the most magnetic subject I’ve ever captured on video. He made every second of footage intriguing.
Torontoist: What was your original conception for the project?
JG: The original conception of the project was all Alex’s. When I came on board, I did so with a very basic mandate: roll the camera, focus on Igor, never cut. I wanted to be sure I provided the project with as many options as possible once we got to the layout stage for the graphic novel.
AJ: At that point my ten-year work background was almost entirely in film, but having grown somewhat disenchanted with the medium for a variety of reasons (largely budget restraints, and a lack of creative freedom and authorial control) I found I was envisioning any new creative project that piqued my interest as a graphic novel. From the outset I’d wanted to create a portrait of this fascinating man against the rapidly changing neighbourhood in an Allan King style documentary presented in graphic novel form. The base idea was to root every panel directly in the source footage (both image and transcription), and I was really excited by the possibility of creating a relatively new mash-up/hybrid form of documentary as comic book.
Torontoist: How has the conception changed? What is the “final product” going to look like?
JG: This project has gone through a lifetime of evolution since its early conceptual stage. Bringing other members onto our creative team, like Richard and Nick, allowed the project to blossom in directions we could never have predicted. The book as we see it today is truly a direct result of the amalgamation of the creative contributions of our entire team, and I’m very grateful for having had the opportunity to be a part of it.
AJ: The biggest changes were definitely spawned by Igor’s unexpected arrest a year and a half into our production, in summer 2008, and the direct result of the incredibly talented collaborators we’ve brought on since. Upon Igor’s arrest it became apparent that this would need to take on a more journalistic focus. This lead to bringing on Richard Poplak as Writer, which came out of an interview he conducted with us for a fall Toronto Life piece around Igor’s arrest (until that point the plan had been to write the book myself under the guidance of Russell Smith, who oddly enough had also written a stand-out article on Igor Kenk for Toronto Life back in 1991). Post-arrest, Rich was the first journalist really engaging with both the story and Igor specifically at a more in-depth level. He is tenacious. Rich came on board almost immediately and took things to another level; we never looked back.
In light of not only Igor’s arrest but also the economic downturn just weeks later in summer 2008, one of the biggest changes was to use this story as a window into the year in which it took place: the year of Obama, the rising gas prices, increased environmentalism, and pending economic collapse. This was something Rich really wanted to explore, as well as bridging from Allan King-style documentary equally into old New Yorker style long form profile. Rich also discovered our new visual aesthetic while on his research trip to Slovenia; he discovered “FV”, an early ’80s art movement that was tied to the photocopier because of it’s integral role as an agent of democracy in the Yugoslavian era of state-run printing presses. This gritty collage style perfectly fit Igor’s own scavenged reality, and prompted our decision to bring on Nick Marinkovich to handle illustration. Nick was another essential addition to the team, and he locked us into an entirely novel and fitting visual direction.
Torontoist: Nick, how did you get involved with the Kenk graphic novel?
Nick Marinkovich: I had already been collaborating with Alex on Nadia McLaren’s Residential School graphic memoir project (to be published by Pop Sandbox in 2011), but I had a keen interest on his other concurrent project, the Kenk documentary, from the start. In a delightful twist of fate, when they decided to move forward with a new visual direction for the graphic novel, that graphic style matched my own, and I was available due to the other memoir still being in an early concept phase. After a few sample pages, we were rolling.
AJ: Nick nailed the style immediately. Jason laid out some sample pages off the footage and Rich left Nick with a number of visual samples he’d collected on his research trip to Slovenia. What Nick came back with nailed it perfectly on the first pass. We’d seen tastes of the style in some of Nick’s other graphic novel work, and he was very familiar with the aesthetic from his part Serbian roots.
Torontoist: Was it difficult working from documentary footage? Is this how you normally work?
NM: I do rely heavily on photography when starting any project. However, while this is used primarily as a reference to design and develop an illustration in another medium, in this case, the footage was the medium. While, in one regard, this actually made things easier and faster on my end–particularly with Jason providing the specific footage and layouts, which was an enormous help–the challenge was in oftentimes working with relatively low-resolution video footage, which is a world apart from the crisp, high-resolution photographic footage I was accustomed to. On many pages, the stills I had to work with were so grainy, it was more time-consuming preparing the page to be visually legible to the viewer before even rendering it through my photocopier process. In the end, the trick was to work with the graininess, and provide just enough emphasis on the focal points of each panel to keep the reader in the narrative, while maintaining the very lo-fi feel of the book.
AJ: To give a little context, some of the archival footage from 12 years earlier was actually shot on VHS.
Torontoist: How closely did you work with Richard during the project?
NM: Rich and I had a ritual of meeting prior to each chapter to go over the next hurdle page by page. This provided critical insight given that I hadn’t seen most of the original footage, and hearing all the background details to each scene made all the difference in forming the mindset to each chapter. Rich knew exactly what he wanted to see on each panel, and I wanted to give each chapter a feel of its own and to keep the art evolving. The thought of 300 identical pages made me cringe. To stay as improvisational as possible, it was ideal to go over everything at the onset, then burn through the chapter and work with the result. No mistakes, just happy accidents. Pages or panels were only re-treated if the result failed to properly convey the narrative.
AJ: I should also note that Nick delivered 300+ pages off Jason’s source lay-outs in less than six months. We were on an incredibly tight time-line to be able to release the book as close as possible to Igor’s release from jail.
