The religion thing was surprising to me too, but I think that's part of the unique identity of his artwork, especially his ladies.  There's a sort of innocence and sweetness that's hard-wired into him, so even when he does sexy ladies and so forth, and even when he's done nudity, it's not crass or gross.  He has a natural instinct to avoid it, and I think that's what the copycats lack.

JSC told me the last time I saw him (ages ago) to seek out Wildsiderz b/c I love his likenesses so much, I found them online (they look amazing on the iPad) but there are three "issues."  Zero is the pitch book, 1 is the high school stuff and 2 is the stuff in the lab, where the other kids get their powerz.  I would LOVE for their to be more, but at the same time I can tell what an insane amount of work it must have been to make a book like this in 2005 (maybe now with iPad Pros and draw-on-the-screen computers it would be easier, but those holograms take TIME).

I could go on about Wildsiderz, I'm in awe of how well he can draw Portman (something I'm still struggling with), but I find it really funny that now Portman's character of Kat looks more like Ariana Grande.

But I was also thinking of Wildsiderz recently because I just got the first issue of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and thought how much I would love to see J Scott do those characters.  Weird that he hasn't, given the insane amount of variant covers produced for the 0 and 1 issues).  But Jack Black's Wildsider character is what made me think of that, there's a fat guy in Power Rangers, Bulk, and in the book he's drawn like a slab (there's a real solid slightly-anime quality to the whole thing, which mostly works) but the way J Scott draws "Bam" is exactly how Bulk should be drawn: rough curves, energy, bursting off the page.  Plus, you really can't escape the "Power Rangers" feel that Wildsiderz has, five high school students with animal powerz, the leader is a jock with the power of a T-Rex?  Ain't nothin' wrong with it, I'm just sayin' it's there.

I really like seeing how artists evolve, and it's reassuring to know that even great artists were terrible (much like how the scripts for great movies were terrible at one point, like Back To The Future), but at the same time, I keep thinking about how quickly "professional" artists evolved while my art style stayed almost in stasis until the turn of the century, at which point I started my five-year cycle of "re-learning."

Wow, I can't believe I didn't catch that, thanks dude!

Mich-Tract is also the basis for "Jess" in Wildsiderz, despite looking nothing like her.

Well, I think in the case of Wildsiderz, it was less basing off likenesses (for the main cast, the science teacher is  straight-up recognizable character actor) and more of merging together.  So Jess might be Michelle Trachtengerg, but she had aspects of other people fused in as well.  Which makes sense.  James Marsden, however, dead look-alike.

The issue with doing likenesses, at least from MY experience, isn't just the obvious rights issues (which, not being published, i haven't had to deal with) but the fact that you start having TOO many faces you want to do.  Everybody becomes a character.  So mixing, matching, and mashing-up just makes sense.

Highly sexualized action artist

great interview for sure...


lots of great insights and he's very candid about stuff which is nice to hear.