Interview with cartoon artist and author Chris Ruggia

Left: Detail from Chris Ruggia's 'Jackrabbit in the Shade'
Upper right: Chris Ruggia
Lower left: Chris Ruggia's book, American Black Bears: New Neighbors in the Big Bend. You can download this book, free of charge at his website.

Finding What’s Fun and Learning from Animals with Chris Ruggia

Chris Ruggia is an artist and comic maker living in Alpine, Texas. His work explores the local desert landscape while encouraging people to look beyond their human-centered perspective with fun, empathy, and humor. He was recently an Artist-in-Residence in Big Bend National Park and was interviewed this summer by Nature Book Guide’s Book Recommendation Panelist, Laura Mills.

Laura: Hi Chris, it’s so great to chat with you! I’m so enamored with the art you create around West Texas animals and landscapes. Can you tell me a little bit about your background, and how you got started with art and comic making?

Chris: Well, I’ve been drawing since I was a tiny, tiny child and I loved comics– I would draw little batman comics as a five-year-old. I continued to love them all through high school, and then I went to art school and studied printmaking and photography. At that point I kind of set comics aside, not because it wasn’t a legitimate art form, but I was just focused on art in other contexts.

I continued painting when my wife and I moved to Alpine, Texas at the end of ’94, but I slowed down for a period because I realized I was just painting to paint. It’s kind of an art school thing, where you’re just churning out work. So, I stopped, and I waited to see what I was compelled to make. And then gradually, over about a year and a half, the idea for the comics came up.

Laura: And how did the ideas for your comics develop?

Chris: The paintings I was making before I stopped were all abstract. And in Alpine, before the internet allowed people to connect as widely as it does now, I didn’t really have access to the people that liked abstract art. I liked making the work, but I had a hard time sharing it in a meaningful way. One of the things I was trying to figure out was, where is there an audience for what I’m interested in? Where’s the overlap between what people want and what I want to make?

In the Big Bend area, tourism is one of the major industries. So, I realized that interpretation of the area could be a goal for my comic series. Something that would provide valuable information and enhance their visit by teaching them about the area and the creatures that inhabit it. Because honestly, you’re not going see many animals in the middle of the day. The mammals around here are smarter than that.

Laura: Your comics feature so many great animals native to West Texas, including coyotes, black bears, and kangaroo rats. How did you go about choosing which animals to feature in your work?

Chris: Research is a huge part of it. I wanted the comics to actually give people information about these animals, even though the comics themselves are absurd comedy stories where the creatures all talk to each other. So, research was a huge part of the process, and a huge part of the fun for me.

I started by getting my information from the general literature, you know, like Wikipedia and things like that (which is a great source), but eventually I began reaching out to different scientists and asking who they thought I should take a closer look at – there was Dr. James Scudday and John Karges, who pointed me to the kangaroo rat. He handed me the Proceedings of the American Society of Mammologists, which was full of scientific papers about kangaroo rats.

One of the things I learned was that they make little caches of seeds, and they also break into other rats’ caches and steal their seeds. There was a paper that laid out this entire choreography for how they fight over their food: they box with their front legs and kick sand in each other’s faces. I have a scene in the comic where the kangaroo rat has been kicked out of his house by his mom and he gets into a fight with another kangaroo rat, and everything they do in that fight is straight out of the research.

Incorporating that research into my art is what really gave me that spark, when all the lights came on at once. I realized that this is what I love: that act of anchoring and incorporating what I’ve learned and expressing it with images and stories.

Laura: Is this research what led you to create your booklet about black bears? People already have such pre-conceived notions about bears, so it makes sense that you’d want to set the record straight.

Chris: It was really opportunistic for me – I knew retired NPS wildlife biologist Raymond Skiles, so I asked if I could interview him. Later, I was introduced to Matthew Hewitt, a PhD candidate at the Borderlands Research Institute, and he also agreed to talk with me. Their stories combined beautifully into my little book about bears! But you’re right: When I feature an animal, I’m trying to embody that being on their own terms so that I can hopefully share that perspective with the reader. It’s really important to me that we make that jump – that we’re not just looking at them from over here and going, “Oh, they’re so pretty,” or “Oh, they’re in my way,” because so much of the reason we study things is based on our own human interests. And I want to investigate every living being’s interests, you know?

Laura: What’s one of the most surprising things you’ve learned about the desert ecosystem, either through your research or just out and about?

Chris: Oh gosh there’s so much! Recently I was reading up on prairie dogs because I’m hoping to be working with the Nature Conservancy at the Marathon Grasslands Preserve – about a third of it is a prairie dog refuge. And reading up about them was fascinating because their vocalizations are extraordinarily specific.

A lot of predators are drawn to prairie dog colonies because it’s this stationary collection of protein ready to be eaten, right? So, the prairie dogs have developed these alert calls that distinguish the type, size, color, and speed of different predators, like hawks, coyotes, and badgers.

The scientists discovered that they could even identify individual people, down to the color of clothes they were wearing, in their alert calls. And that blew my mind. I’m looking forward to trying to interpret that when the time comes. But that’s just one fact – every species has something that’s fascinating to learn about.

Laura: I noticed that your comics are often very accessible and playful, and I’m wondering if you write specifically for kids, or if you hope your work reaches a wider audience?

Chris: I do think of my comics as all ages because my goal is to make something that I would enjoy but that’s accessible to anybody. As a result, I think most people see my audience as kids. I’ve had customers buy them for their kids, grandkids, nieces, and nephews, things like that. Which is great! And I get good responses from kids, which I love. But I don’t intent to limit it, and I think anyone can enjoy the work that I make. So, I’m actively trying to speak to both.

Laura: It seems like you gain a lot of inspiration from the natural world. Do you have any processes for going out and finding inspiration?

Chris: Well, a lot of my inspiration comes from those conversations with scientists. It’s opportunistic. I find out who I have access to that I can learn something from, and then I figure out a way to make something out of it. It’s about being open to what’s in front of me. But you also have to be sensitive to what you respond to. What lights you up? Linda Barry, the cartoonist, has a great book about writing called What It Is, and in it there’s an exercise where you write a list of things in a certain category. And then later you come back to the list and observe how you respond to those words. A few of them actually light up a little. Something happens inside you. If you follow that energy, you figure out what feels meaningful or interesting or fun.

For me, it’s all about fun. Like, what feels fun, funny, or emotional in some way? I just feel that out, and then I’ll picture in my head what kind of environment, what kind of lighting there might be, especially for painting. And I’m just kind of following the energy. Similarly, looking for inspiration out in nature – being out there, and giving yourself some space and time to see what’s shiny is so important.

Laura: Are there any nature-related books (fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels) that have inspired your artwork, or sent you in a specific direction with the content of your artwork?

Chris: Bambi, actually. And Felix Salten’s other book about a squirrel, Perri. I read them when I first started to think about comics, and he based his characters on what the animals would actually do in the wild, which is exactly what I wanted to do in my own work. I read a bunch of books about coyotes that shaped how I view them. J. Frank Dobie’s The Voice of the Coyote was very interesting and helpful, and there’s another one called Song Dog of the Southwest that was interesting. And then of course there’s Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, which I read in college. He lays out the idea of comics as a medium as opposed to a genre, which is an important distinction because people tend to only associate comics with superheroes. And that’s very far from the truth.

Laura: What do you hope people take away from your art?

Chris: I hope that they feel good when they look at it. That’s a big part of my motivation, because I like my art to be fun for me to make, and I like to then transmit that fun, if I can, to the viewer. So first and foremost, I hope that it feels good and that it’s fun to look at. And after that, the lofty goal is that the experience of looking at it allows them to jump beyond human-centered concerns and to imagine the concerns of this other creature. Because their lives might not be the same as ours, but they’re equally valid.

This interview was included in our September 2024 e-newsletter. Are you subscribed yet? Click on the pop-up box or email us at the address below.