Heller: In the intro [to Shadowland] you also recall the mass murderer John Wayne Gacy, who was sentenced to death for killing 33 boys and young men. You note that he was also a painter, and you entered into a brief correspondence with him over his art. How did this play into your artistic aspirations?

Deitch: Well, I didn’t enter into a correspondence with Gacy so much as goof on [my collaborator] Erwin Bergdoll’s correspondence with him. It did, however, play into my artistic aspirations in an interesting way over and above the inspiration it contributed, at least cosmetically, to the character Al Ledicker in Shadowland.

Years later when Art Spiegelman was doling out jobs for a reality comics series that was running in Details magazine, he offered me the job of going to San Quentin to interview Charles Manson for one such reality comic story. Well, I have just about as much contempt for Manson as I did for Gacy, and told Art so, also adding that I considered it a somewhat hackneyed thing to do as Manson interviews have been done to death and just provide that jerk with an ongoing soapbox. But I still did have a lingering interest in death row left over from Erwin’s correspondence with Gacy and, not wanting to lose the Details gig, made a spontaneous counterproposal that Details let me cover the execution of some more obscure, condemned criminal. Art and Details went for it, and it turned into one of the most interesting experiences I ever had doing comics, one that was a strong and interesting turning point.

I took to interviewing people like a duck takes to water—made me feel for a time like maybe I’d missed my true calling and should have been a reporter. More to the point, I think it brought somewhat more relevance to the stories I’ve done since then. Maybe that’s putting too much of a pretentious spin on it, but it has definitely had an effect on the work that I have done since then.