David Schilter / kuš! (Latvia) – interview, Stripburger 69, May 2017
(illustration: König Lü. Q.)

Milestone anniversaries always represent a great opportunity to look back and evaluate our past achievements. This year, as we celebrate our silver anniversary, the Latvian brotherly magazine kuš! is celebrating ten years of successful work in comics publishing. On this occasion, we have turned to our old Swiss friend David Schilter, the co-founder and agens movens of this comics magazine from the Latvian capital of Riga. kuš! has managed to evolve from an ambitious and enthusiastically run project into a full-blooded and noble comics magazine with an eclectic selection of independent artistic comics in full colour. David explained the genesis and the evolution of the magazine and revealed how they tackle their editorial and publishing activities. You’ll be able to read David’s thoughts on the current state of the contemporary Latvian and international scene, while the recipe behind kuš!’s success might encourage someone to help establish and develop a comics scene in a place in which a comics scene does not exist (yet). Read on! (Bojan Albahari & Stripburger editorial team)

Your story is somewhat peculiar. What was the main reason you left Switzerland and moved to Latvia?

In 2005 I partook in an Erasmus exchange semester and studied in Vilnius, Lithuania. During that time, I fell in love with Latvia, and I moved there as soon as I completed my studies in Switzerland in 2006. For no particular reason, I always wanted to leave Switzerland and I always liked the north of Europe, so I ended up in Riga.

What were you doing before you left for Latvia?

Before I left I was finishing my Master’s degree in Law at the University of Lucerne. I also had a part time job, in which I packed a colourful boulevard newspaper on a night shift in the largest Swiss printing house.

Where did the need to publish a comics magazine arise from?

In Switzerland, I visited Fumetto more or less since the first festival 26 years ago. There I got acquainted with alternative comics. I attended every festival and I often volunteered. When I arrived to Latvia, I was struck by the total absence of comics. So, after burying my plans to start a career in law, I decided I have to do something to end this lack of comics and I co-founded the kuš! magazine.

How would you describe the mission of the kuš! magazine? What are the guidelines you follow in your editorial work and content selection?

In the beginning the mission was to introduce Latvians to the wide range of comics. Well, alternative ones, we were never truly interested in mainstream comics. In our first year we published six issues, which were distributed through kiosks all around the country, but the distributor decided we were not commercial enough and they stopped selling kuš!. Almost by chance we received a tiny grant and started publishing the magazine in a smaller format in English (i.e. š! anthology) and began distributing it around the globe ourselves. At this point our mission changed slightly. From that point onwards our goal was to introduce Latvian artists to the international public, but we also wanted to promote work by lesser known international artists, with a slight focus on artists from North-East Europe. Alongside publishing comics we also regularly invite foreign artists to Latvia where they hold workshops, teaching Latvians how to make comics, as we still want to foster the comics scene here.

Our editorial approach is still influenced by the beginning of kuš!, in which we wanted to show various styles and narratives. We continue to look for artists with a unique approach and we want to give them space to experiment and create stories which they might not be able to publish with bigger publishers, who like to have a greater say as regards the content. Usually we give the artists a theme and let them draw whatever they want. We invite artists whose work we enjoy and we always try to create a diverse selection.

How would you describe the comics scene in Latvia (or in the Baltic states, if you prefer) before and after kuš!? Did kuš! encourage any other Latvian publishers to publish comics?

It is still impossible to talk of a comics scene in Latvia. However, this has changed a lot over the past 10 years. In the first issue we had a single Latvian artist – Anete Melece, who created the cover. All of the comics inside were created by foreigners. Our next issue, the anniversary issue, is the exact opposite, as it contains works by 19 Latvians and one Swiss guy – you can guess who, he’s in every issue (Ed., König Lü. Q) … So, we managed to motivate numerous Latvians to create comics. Most of them still only draw to be published in kuš!, but some send them to other anthologies such as Kuti or Stripburger.

However, we are still the only ones here to publish comics. It would be great if someone would translate the classics such as Maus or Persepolis, but maybe the market is too small for this. It’s shocking that such works are completely unknown here.

We think that we have provided at least some inspiration for the collective of artists who started publishing illustrated books and zines five years ago.  A good sign is also that an important Latvian children’s book publisher started collaborating with many of ‘our’ artists.

How do you manage to survive as an independent publisher in the Latvian/international market merely from the funds you make from sales? Is it possible to rely solely on selling your magazine?

‘Survive’ is the keyword in your question! Although I have to admit, it has got a lot better for us over the last years. In the beginning it was very difficult, but I am glad we fought through the hard times and persevered. We are now also financially supported by the Latvian Culture Capital Foundation. They support a part of the printing costs for most anthologies and they have recently started paying the rent for our tiny office. It also helps that we are doing this project in Latvia, where the living costs are comparably low and that we are selling most of our books abroad. Alongside publishing we also work with different institutions such as Norden or the Goethe-Institute with whom we organize comics workshops and exhibitions, for which we get paid. Every now and then we take part in or organise EU funded projects. We do the work we love and we usually get to choose the artists that we would like to invite, so it is great that this helps subsidize the publishing of kuš!.

How and why did you choose this ‘minuscule’ format for your š! anthology?

It was a chance decision. Our first Latvian issues were larger, more like the American comic book format. But when we started with the first English issue, we were on an extremely limited budget, and we could only afford to publish an A6 edition. Before this we used to invest a lot of our own money into printing, but I decided we can’t do that anymore (I was broke, as I have used up my savings I had from packing the tabloid paper in Switzerland), so we ended up with the small format. It started off relatively well, and when we wanted to make the books bigger, people said they loved the tiny format, so we decided to keep it.

Apart from the š! anthologies and mini albums you also started publishing ‘classic’ independent comics albums (three since 2015, i.e. kuš! mono). What was the reason behind this? Did the mini format turn out to be too small and too limited?

We have been hoping to publish a longer Latvian comic for a couple of years and therefore we wanted to provide more space for that. Well, the first three books were not by Latvian artists, but by artists we have closely worked with over the years, but the fourth kuš! mono by the Latvian artist Zane Zlemeša will be coming out soon! We are very proud of her and the book. Three years ago she wasn’t even drawing comics. We discovered her drawings and paintings and invited her to create a mini kuš! (a 24 page mini comic), which turned out great, and since then she has been one of the most active Latvian comics artists, hopefully inspiring others to create longer comics.

What is the secret behind the international success of kuš!? A quick glance at your website reveals a large distribution network that covers not only Europe, but also all other continents?

I am not quite sure what you are talking about. It’s also a secret to us. We are far less successful than it might appear from glancing at the bookshops that stock our books. Our print run is still very small. The first issue we published had a print run of 8000, I wanted to print 10.000, but my co-editor said that was just crazy. Newer š! issues vary between 1000-2000. If we have a cat on the cover we print more, if we don’t we print less. We hand out approximately 200 copies to the contri-buting artists, the rest we try to sell. Commercially this is a disastrous project and we work almost 24/7 to keep it going. Probably one of the greatest steps in getting as far as we are now was when John Porcellino started to distribute our books with the Spit And A Half distro. Thanks to him we got better known in the US and later spread a bit more globally. Katra (Ed., Stripburger co-founder and editor) once noticed that ‘all’ of our covers were pink, maybe that also helped?

In his farewell letter Tommi Musturi provided a telling analysis of the Finnish book market and the situation of small independent publishers in Finland that marked the closure of the independent publisher Huuda Huuda. He pointed out, among other things, that the high prices of international shipping are killing the distribution. We are facing the same issue: postage fees often exceed the value of the package content. In circumstances like this, has the small and light format of š! proven to be a decisive advantage?

It’s our biggest fear that The Latvian Post will raise their prices… Currently they are still affordable. But yes, if we would publish larger books, the shipping costs would increase significantly. As we do basically perform all of the distribution to the bookshops ourselves (apart from two tiny distributors) we have got to keep the books light in order to keep the costs low. I could say that creating small books is not an absolutely voluntary decision. But don’t worry, we will not start making even smaller books if the costs rise. It turns out that they are not that easy to print. Our printing house is already struggling with the size and they have absolutely forbid us from making books smaller than we are currently doing.

It is possible that the future might be digital. We’re still fighting against this, as we love printed comics, but it basically became impossible to order small press comics from the US or Canada, as usually the shipping costs twice as much as the book itself, thus we sometimes just get a pdf instead.

More problematic than shipping is to actually get the books into the shops. Most bookshops are not willing to experiment and basically sell merely bestsellers. Numerous shops that have stocked kuš! in the past have closed down over the past years, but recently we have witnessed a new trend of small alternative bookshops. Usually once the shops stock our books, they sell rather well. Thus, we remain hopeful.

What is your opinion on the contemporary aesthetic trends in independent comics? Did you notice any sizable shifts in the comics scenes, artistic changes of course or emerging differences in the readers’ tastes? How have independent comics changed (if at all) since you started dealing with them?

The biggest change seems that printing became more affordable, and numerous artists self-publish beautiful books, in contrast to the rougher looking photocopied zines which dominated comics fairs in the past. Especially riso printing became very trendy, so there are a lot of beautiful riso printed books around. I guess the printing technique also influences the drawing style. It allows for greater experimenting with colour. I couldn’t say what is trendy at the moment. I often like very trendy stuff, but then again I also like works that defy all trends. I feel different trends are happening at the same time. Many artists seem to be inspired by art brut and artists such as Henry Darger, others seem to draw even simpler drawings (heta uma – ugly but good), and then there are also a lot of cartoony works inspired by Cartoon Network animations such as Adventure Time, or 80’s inspired works with lots of gradients. And the snake is currently the trendiest animal in comics.

I guess the strength of kuš! is that we tend to include everything. We are never super trendy, but hopefully the comics will convince the audience with their quality over time. What I enjoy in most works by Latvian artists that we publish, is that they usually come out with their own inspirations and are hard to place within a specific trend, as they usually don’t read a lot of comics apart from kuš!. I am usually a bit puzzled when people speak of the ‘kuš! style’, as I think we feature diverse work, and that this can’t be compartmentalised in a certain box. We just love eclectic and weird work and this would most likely be the only definition I would give. The beauty is that there are so many different outlets, that artists don’t have to follow a specific trend.

There are so many small publishers out there and they cater to all tastes, and if this isn’t enough you also have the vast possibilities offered by the internet.

You’ve met numerous comics artists. Who has personally made the biggest impression on you? Can you share a story or an anecdote about this?

During the last 10 years I have met a lot of wonderful people from the comics scene. Lots of whom I’d like to think I’ve developed a friendship with beyond comics. I have also met a bunch of stars who turned out to be normal people. There is a funny story linked to the time I went hiking in the Swiss mountains with Tommi Musturi. After that my parents invited us for coffee, and Tommi’s chair collapsed. I am very glad he didn’t break his hand, or anything else, well especially his hand… I think my mother was so embarrassed that she gave him a kilo of chocolate. She still asks me how he’s doing. I can tell you more crazy stories off the record …

What is your vision for kuš! for the future? How do you see it evolving further? What would you like to do if you had enough funds and time at your disposal?

A lot of the kuš! developments have occurred by accident, so we don’t have many special plans and visions, as it always turns out differently anyway. Basically, I would like to stay small. I will be happy if we get a slightly wider distribution and can keep up the busy publishing schedule of four anthologies and twelve minis per year for as long as the artists are willing to be a part of this. As we’re always running out of time, it would be nice to find some additional funds, so that we could hire additional staff who would help us in our endeavours. My co-editor Sanita’s answer is more interesting. She says if we ever win the lottery, she will build a retirement home for comics artists in the Latvian countryside. But apart from that, we hope to keep up the spirit of kuš! even after our 10 years anniversary this summer. We hope to publish a few surprises and motivate more Latvian artists to become a part of this strange endeavour.