Greg Cravens – Memphis Flyer

Gabriel DeRanzo and Greg Cravens seem like unlikely partners. Cravens is a veteran illustrator, cartoonist, and comic strip creator. DeRanzo has a sterling reputation as a bartender, but when he and Cravens met at 901 Comics in a networking session for artists interested in contributing to Bad Dog comics first Memphis-made anthology of graphic fiction, he had no idea what he was doing. What did the inexperienced DeRanzo possess that nobody else had? A completed script. According to Cravens, who’s been around the block a time or two, that made all the difference.

“Other people may have had ideas,” Cravens says, explaining why he gravitated toward DeRanzo. “But he had a completed 5-page script.” According to all involved, it wasn’t a very good 5-page script, but it was a spark — a beginning. There were plots to be hammered out and characters to develop. There was also an ethos to explore: The weed should be freed — and it would be too if not for those meddling, “Pharmaceutical companies, the alcohol industry, and organized crime,” and money spent on “politicians to keep it illegal.”

Enter the Stoned Ninja.

The meet-up where DeRanzo and Cravens first teamed up is part of the origin story for 901’s house brand, Bad Dog Comics, which published its second anthology earlier this month. Bad Dog will soon publish the second installment of DeRanzo and Cravens’ Stoned Ninja, which is currently receiving its finishing touches. Meanwhile, the creators continue to produce t-shirts and other fun, useful merchandise that, if things go according to plan, may ultimately position Stoned Ninja for wider distribution than most indie comics ever see. What has Stoned Ninja got that other indie comics don’t? Its own brand of ninja-approved, 100 percent hemp rolling papers, that’s what.

Samples from 901 Comics Anthology Vol. 2

“When I was a kid, comics were in every grocery store and quickie mart in the country, and they aren’t anymore,” Cravens says explaining the potential for head shops to expand comic distribution. “The market has narrowed down to where you have to go hard target search for a comic shop to go get comics,” he says. “What we’ve got is something we can sell in another store to another targeted audience. So, that’s the pitch when we approach larger publishers. There are potentially 25,000 more shops you can put your comic into, if you’ll just pay attention.”

“Given the content of the comic I figured there was no reason to go less than 100% pure hemp,” DeRanzo says of Stoned Ninja rolling papers. “So it’s as good a quality paper as anything out there and we’re offering fun packaging. On the inside flap there’s a comic and we’re going to change that flap every time we put in a new order. So Stoned Ninja will be like Bazooka Joe Bubble gum.”

Stoned Ninja was originally inspired by the classic Kung Fu comedy Drunken Master, and developed as a means to explore pot culture beyond the usual burnout stereotypes.

“So I asked myself, if there can be a Drunken Master, why can’t there be a Stoned Ninja?” DeRanzo says.

Roll Local with Memphis Made Comic, Stoned Ninja

Don’t anticipate kung fu Cheech and Chong, or Jackie Chan-inspired antics, even. Stoned Ninja is packed with fun stuff. Pizza boxes (featuring DeRanzo’s face) make cameos. The hero, Japanese American college student Kazunori Takagi, appears and disappears in clouds of dank smelling smoke. But, for being the story of a young man granted ninja superpowers by toking on a special strain of marijuana, the narrative content is fairly straight-faced.

For 10-years DeRanzo daydreamed about Stoned Ninja while he tended bar. “I had this insane amount of story content for movie ideas,” he says says. Comics weren’t in the plan so when Shannon Merritt from 901 said he wanted to start making comics DeRanzu said, “That’s great, I will buy your comics!”

“No,” Merritt answered. “I want you to help me make these comics.”

One problem: DeRanzo couldn’t draw. Okay, two problems: He had no experience writing either. But the characters were there. And after a decade of thinking about it, the stories were there too. So DeRanzo leaned on Cravens’ experience in graphic storytelling, and Cravens trusted DeRanzo’s vision. Inker Josh Lindsey has since joined the team.

“I drew the knives all wrong,” Cravens says, admitting a learning curve of his own. DeRanzo gave his illustrator some sharp examples as a gift. “I nearly cut my toe off twice,” Cravens says of his sample cutlery experience. But now his knives are proper.

Samples from Stoned Ninja

“Right now we’re trying to build the first six issue story arc at a pace that lets us be normal people. Once it’s done we plan to release it on a monthly schedule. Ideally going mass distribution,” DeRanzo says.

For the completely appropriate price of $4.20, comics are available locally at 901 Comics, Whatever stores, The Wild Hare smoke shop, Tobacco Zone, and Memphis Made Brewery. Stoned Ninja starter packs, which include a comic book, a t-shirt, and a pack of Stoned Ninja rolling papers are available online at stonedninjacomics.com.

DeRanzo, Cravens, Lindsey

If you’ve ever picked up fried chicken at Jack Pirtle’s, requested a maze or crossword puzzle for your kid at Shoney’s, or seen the balloons depicting a top hat with shoes in front of a Jim Keras car dealership on Covington Pike, you’re familiar with the work of cartoonist Greg Cravens.

In fact, you probably see Cravens’ work every week in this very paper. Cravens illustrates the Flyer‘s “What They Said” column, and he occasionally creates graphics for the cover. He’s been working with the Flyer on a freelance basis since the paper was founded in 1989. But Cravens’ work extends across the city (and even the globe).

Greg Cravens

Cravens illustrates and authors the syndicated comic strip The Buckets, which runs in about 40 papers across the globe, including papers in Australia and Thailand. He’s the guy who designed the Jack Pirtle’s logo, boxes, and cups, and years ago, he created the iconic top-hat-with-eyes “Mayor of Covington Pike” logo.

For years, he drew the Shoney Bear in that restaurant chain’s children’s activity books. He used to draw the Piggly Wiggly pig in the former Memphis-based grocery chain’s line of children’s books. He illustrates Homewood Suites’ line of children’s books that are sold in their hotel gift shops. He’s designed comic books for Backyard Burgers. He’s created artwork for the Peabody. His work is everywhere.

In the past couple of weeks, he wrapped up work on two murals. One depicts a wine cellar inside the new Pinot’s Palette location in Cordova. And the other mural is for the birds — literally. Cravens painted the Memphis skyline and the marshy Mississippi River inside The Peabody’s duck enclosure on the hotel rooftop.

But Cravens would rather be illustrating comic strips or newspaper articles.

“Murals are not my thing,” Cravens says.

His primary thing is The Buckets, a comic strip about a family with “two boys, a dog, and a mortgage.” It ran in The Commercial Appeal for months until it was suddenly dropped without explanation a few years back.

“They ran it until they dropped six cartoons from the paper, and mine was one of those,” Cravens said.

The Buckets was created by cartoonist Scott Stantis in the early 1990s, but Stantis handed the baton to Cravens in 2000, when Stantis’ kids — the inspiration for the comic — grew up. Cravens had two young kids at the time, and thanks to a background in advertising illustration, he was skilled in mimicking the styles of other artists. He was able to draw The Buckets characters in Stantis’ style for several years before adding a few tweaks in his own style.

He also authors and illustrates his own webcomic called Hubris (http://hubriscomics.com), which highlights all the outdoorsy things Cravens wishes he was doing — bike riding, skateboarding, rock climbing, kayaking.

“I started Hubris so I could own something when I sell books at [cartoonist] conventions or sell sketches or doodles. When I started doing The Buckets, syndicates still owned all the work. Later, creator rights kicked in, and you can now copyright it with your name. So The Buckets is mine now too,” Cravens said.

Cravens began his work as a cartoonist when he was just 14 years old. And, as he tells it, he’s been leaving a trail of destruction ever since.

“When I was 14, I got my first comic strip in the newspaper. It was a little weekly newspaper in Jackson, Tennessee,” Cravens says. “Three weeks later, the newspaper folded. I went off to Opryland and did caricatures when I was 16 or 17. When I left, they shut it down and turned it into a shopping mall.

“Then I went off to Memphis State and got a graphic design degree. I left there, and they changed the name of the university on me. Having left that trail of destruction, I went into advertising, thinking there’s an industry that needs a good kneecapping. You can’t kill advertising, so I went back into comic strips, and you see where newspapers are now.”

In the next few months, Cravens will be turning his attention to the 70th Annual National Cartoonists Society Reuben Awards — “like our Oscars,” he says — which will be held in Memphis on Memorial Day weekend. Hundreds of cartoonists will be flying into the city to attend the show, and Cravens has entered some work to be considered for a nomination.