Long Story Short ★ WILLIAM STOUT
An INCREDIBLE ARTIST and MASTER of CREATING his OWN LUCK
There are very few artists left who have had such a storied career. A career most of us would be jealous to have…if it was even one facet of what multi-hyphenate WILLIAM STOUT has had. If you’ve never heard of him, you may have seen his work unwittingly. This California native was kind enough to not only join us for LONG STORY SHORT, but also a full-length video interview for BEYOND THE PROCESS. He leaves no stone unturned and we’re very lucky to have him.
BTP: What’s interesting is this: If it hadn’t been for your fifth-grade schoolteacher bringing the artist side of you to the forefront you might have become a doctor. If that hadn’t happened, what kind of doctor did you think you would have become given your personality? Had you even considered medical illustration at any point?
STOUT: I intended to be a gynecologist; I love women. My mom raised four boys pretty much on her own (my parents divorced when I was fourteen); she was a pretty amazing role model.
As far as medical illustration goes, my fifth-grade teacher had me doing just that for the class after he discovered my artistic tendencies. In actuality, though, medical illustration, for the most part, was too dry for me --- except for the kind of illustration done by an art school teacher of mine, Frank Armitage. He designed all of the interior body sets for Fantastic Voyage. Frank was also my storyboard teacher at art school. Later, when I became a production designer, I got to hire Frank’s daughter to work for me on The Return of the Living Dead.
BTP: Frank Armitage is a legend! Again, your brush with fame cannot be understated. It’s a great lesson, too, that you were able to pay it forward and hire his daughter. Have you ever worked with assistants in your studio or mentored people privately that you felt would be worth the investment?
STOUT: I’ve had brief assists from Dave Stevens and Bill Wray.
In regard to mentoring: A few years ago, a friend approached me at Comic Con.
“Bill, I just came by to thank you for the advice you gave me when I was a kid.”
“What did I say?”
“You very kindly looked through my portfolio and then asked me what I really, really wanted to do as an artist. I replied that more than anything I wanted to work for Jim Henson and draw all of his beloved Jim Henson characters.”
He told me that I looked at him like he was some kind of a schmuck and then asked, “Why on earth would you want to make Jim Henson more famous and more wealthy when you could come up with your own characters, all of whom you would own?”
Well, Tony Diterlizzi took my advice and created The Spiderwick Chronicles, making him millions. Why in the hell didn’t I take my advice?
BTP: I have this question that’s been bugging me for a long time: Who the heck decided the color of dinosaurs? Was it like one artist or a group of scientists and then everyone else followed suit?
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STOUT: Early on, dinosaur color pretty much followed the drab coloration of large mammals, like elephants and rhinos. That changed once we learned that a lot of the dinosaur families had feathers. Nevertheless, I tended to err on the conservative side, as my dinosaur illustrations were already suspect because of my fantasy illustration history. When I color prehistoric animals, I rely upon convergent evolution to guide my color choices.
I never thought in my lifetime that we would know the actual color of dinosaurs --- but now we do for some of them due to the extremely fine preservation of some of their feathers.
BTP: There’s one artist that, at least to me, gets lost in the mix in terms of paleoart and that’s the work of John Gurche. I think I conflated James Gurney with him and it took me years to figure out who he is. I remember seeing his work in National Geographic, but it was a book of dinosaur paintings in a Waldenbooks that just blew me away. The largess and the intimacy he captured was unparalleled at the time. What do you think about his contribution to paleoart and his work overall?
STOUT: I’ve been friends with John Gurche for a long time. He calls his paleoart style Kodachromes of dinosaurs. I’ll tell you what I love about John’s work besides his phenomenal rendering skills --- it’s his brilliant ideas.
My favorite concept of his is his painting of the first fish coming out of the water from the point of view of the second fish. The first fish is leaving the comfort and safety of the pond. It is entering a harshly dry environment. And, get this --- there’s a bend in that fish’s path --- it doesn’t know what’s waiting for him just around the corner. The bravery of that fish! What a killer presentation!
As good as Gurche is at dinosaurs (and he’s great), his real forte, though, is ancient man. John is a prehistoric anthropologist.
He traveled to Moscow to study with Russia’s best forensic sculptor. You can hand this guy the skull of any murder victim and he will accurately sculpt that victim’s facial features. John’s goal is to accurately sculpt the features of every prehistoric man and woman known to science.
John designed the Lucy exhibit for the Denver Museum of Natural History. Here’s a description of the display:
You are looking into a glass cabinet. Inside the cabinet is a forest. There are plants with broad leaves. Your eyes begin to focus and adapt to the forest darkness.
You now see Lucy’s eyes looking back at you.
As your eyes adjust, you begin to see her face, then her body. It’s just like you discovered her staring at you in an ancient forest. Brilliant!
I consider John Gurche and Doug Henderson to be the two smartest living paleo artists, mostly because of their terrific picture ideas.
BTP: If you could spend time (and not worry about your survival) along any era of the dinosaur timeline to record their day-to-day lives, what era would it be, where would you focus your time, and what other artist, living or dead, would you take with you?
STOUT: I’d love to see a live Tyrannosaurus rex, so that would put me in the Late Cretaceous. I would like to be near a shore, so that I could see both land and sea creatures. I’d love to have Charles R. Knight with me except for one big problem: he was nearly blind. The great Czech artist Zdenek Burian would be inspirational --- but we wouldn’t be able to converse. There would be a frustrating language barrier. So, I think I’d choose Smithsonian muralist Jay Matternes. That would be one helluva adventure! Also, having Moebius by my side would be a great inspiration. Just trying to keep up with him would be both challenging and fun.
BTP: I had no idea Charles R. Knight was nearly blind! Jay Matternes would be an awesome pick, even at age 92!
It reminds me of the time when I visited the Frederick Remington Museum near where I grew up and one of the docents told me that Frederick Remington was actually color blind. It was a shock. Looking at his color choices you could actually make an argument for it. His value structure was unparalleled for the time.
STOUT: I didn’t know that about Remington.
Yellowstone National Park is one of my favorite places to paint. I love Remington’s western paintings. I assumed the cobalt blue shadows he painted in his yellow grass was artistic license --- until I saw it firsthand in Yellowstone. So, I wouldn’t be so sure about his being colorblind.
BTP: Aside from illustrations and covers for comics, was there any desire to create a dinosaur comic series of your own?
STOUT: I came very close to that at one time. That’s a sad story of serious betrayal by a friend I was helping and mentoring that I’d rather not go into here.
BTP: Other than the trip to Antarctica that was grant-funded have your other trips over the years around the world been self-funded? Were they mostly project-based?
STOUT: Let me tell you about how my world travel obsessions began:
When I was in my mid-teens, I expressed to my father that one day I’d love to travel to Europe. He scoffed at that idea in basically a put up or shut up throw down. “Some day? You’re never going to travel --- you’re all talk.” That really pissed me off. So, when I was about twenty, just to show him, I took off for Europe with a hundred bucks in my pocket. I spent over a month in England, France and Spain, hitchhiking around those great countries.
That’s Part One. Here’s Part Two:
I used to be the biggest movie nut you’d ever (or never) want to know. I attended film festivals, movie marathons, revivals --- you name it, I saw it.
I was living in Hollywood. I was very excited, as I was bout to see a new movie I had been looking forward to. A friend of mine spotted me from his car. He pulled to the side of the road.
“Hey, Bill! Whatcha doin’?”
“I’m gonna see a new movie!”
He looked at me like I was some kind of schmuck.
“A new movie…Really? Man --- two hours alone in the dark. You could be having your own adventures instead of watching someone else’s.”
That flipped a switch in me. From that moment on, I began to schedule a new adventure somewhere around the world each year. It changed my life. I used the money I made from my Wizards poster to travel to the Galapagos Islands and Machu Pichu in Peru.
A lot of my film making has taken me around the world. Except for some of the comic book conventions I have guested at, my other trips outside of America were pretty much self-financed, including my very first trip to Antarctica, which was on a cruise ship.
BTP: My first experience with world travel was Guatemala and Belize with my girlfriend (now wife) right after 9/11. I was so freaked out, because in the wake of the tragedy a plane had also gone down in the jungles of South America carrying students from Washington University. The trip turned out great. More importantly, it showed us how to work together in uncomfortable situations, to see if our relationship held. When you travel as you do, how often do you take your family and what have you learned about them through their experiences?
STOUT: I attend and exhibit at Comic Com International every year. I am one of five people who has been to every single one. It takes me a few months to prepare for the Con. I get pretty buried doing so. To make my scarcity up to my family, I take them on a three week to one month vacation after Comic Con. I book all of the hotels, arrange for all the travel, find the best restaurants and draw up an illustrated daily itinerary for each family member on the trip. I use the itinerary to both entertain and educate, lacing all of the travel info with facts about where we are going. I make recordings of the music from the region we are visiting as well. I go for total cultural immersion. Parents: Never pass up an opportunity to teach!
BTP: At some point I think many artists will wrestle with their own relevancy in their career. But as I enter the last chapter of it myself, I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of legacy. How important is legacy to you? What, if anything do you want your legacy to be when people look back on your life?
STOUT: I am very focused on that right now. I am 75; I can see the light at the end of life’s grand tunnel. I am putting together book retrospectives, each on a different aspect of my career and each containing lots of autobiographical text. Fortunately, I am somewhat of a hoarder. I’ve kept nearly everything or high-quality records of nearly everything. There will be a book on my film designs, my music-related art, my entertainment advertising and a three-volume box set on my work in comics, to name a few. My most important book will be my book on the history of life in Antarctica: one hundred oil paintings depicting that continent’s life from early prehistoric times to the present day.
Like Charles R. Knight’s murals, my nineteen prehistoric life murals will also function as an important artistic legacy.
BTP: That sounds deeply satisfying. I really look forward to them. I was grateful that the Chicago Field Museum still had Charles R. Knight paintings. I’ve seen a few Dean Cornwall pieces in a New York restaurant. I still would like to see the L. A. Library one he did that teased in the Captain America movie. How do you feel about street art and the colorful explosion of murals that seem to have cropped up in the last few decades throughout the world?
STOUT: I am fine with street art as long as all of the proper permissions have been obtained. Los Angeles has some superb outdoor murals, especially the ones by Kent Twitchell. I love the huge comics murals in Brussels. You turn a corner and BAM! --- there’s a big graphic surprise!
BTP: Your fanbase I would guess is diverse, as much as your career.
STOUT: I’m a really hard guy to collect. My work is all over the place.
BTP: As the years grow so does the fanbase, I would assume.
STOUT: I chalk that up to attrition. The true greats are dying off.
BTP: What challenges are there to reach new, younger crowds who are digital native in their consumption?
STOUT: There is still a fascination with old school handmade art. I see that interest (interest --- not the number of practitioners) growing, not declining. I try to stay connected to talented young artists and give them a boost every now and then when I can. I still get excited when I discover a talented youth. And I usually put my money where my mouth is and buy something of theirs.
BTP: Totally agree. It’s the one thing about attending conventions I used to enjoy. Finding these unsung heroes doing yeoman’s work and hoping for a break. Between the internet and the expansion of comic shows (one seemingly every week somewhere) it can seem overwhelming for a lot of young artists starting out. What do you say to those who are looking for a break but have intense anxiety of ever “making it”?
STOUT: After the negotiations are over, always do 100% of your best work on each job. You’ll surprise your clients and you’ll become a better artist. Plus, you’ll never look back on a work and say, “Damn --- I could have done better.”
Be your own biggest fan.
Give value to your work.
Always keep your originals --- especially your best ones --- you’ll need those for future retrospective exhibitions. Your clients don’t need your original art if they have a good scan. I’ve kept every original (except for the ones I have decided to sell), even when I was a complete unknown. Those originals? They’re my 401K, my friend.
BTP: Being mainly a traditional artist, how has technology helped you in the pursuit of work? Has being a traditional artist been a disadvantage for you in the 21st century?
STOUT: In my mind, the new technologies are just more art tools. I digitally color my comics work. I love working traditionally, though, a big benefit of that being that I have a piece of original art that I can sell or keep at the end of the day. Traditional art still has a magic to it that digital stuff doesn’t. There’s nothing like seeing fine handwork in person, right in front of you.
As far as the pursuit of work, I now get contacted for jobs from all over the world because of the access that the internet provides. Cat Stevens recently contacted me from Dubai in regard to creating an album cover for him.
BTP: That’s pretty damn cool. Like you, I think I leverage it where I can but if I can’t smell it or muck about making something with my hands, then I lose interest. I would also add your blog is really damn cool! I’m about halfway through reading it now. I think you offer a rare glimpse into a working artist’s life that many appreciate, and few ever see.
STOUT: It’s fun to maintain my blog (though I haven’t been very good about it lately), as it becomes a great and easy way to write my much-requested autobiography in small chunks.
BTP: Are you more of a pen and ink artist or a brush and ink artist when comes to your line work for comics and illustrations?
STOUT: I go back and forth between inking with a Hunt crowquil pen and a Winsor Newton Series 7 Number One brush. I mostly ink with a pen if I know I’m going to color the piece later. Darker lines…
The trick (my goal, anyway) with pen and brush inking: Try to make your brush lines look like pen lines and your pen lines look like brush lines. That’s always a good exercise.
BTP: Damn…a Series 7 #1! When I started inking that’s what I used but the constant dipping was annoying. I graduated to a #2, dabbled with a #3, but I tend to be a heavy-handed brush inker if I don’t take breaks. So now I’m working even larger so I can get my arm in there and still have fine detail come through.
STOUT: Dave Stevens used a #2. I am beginning to switch over. I like that the #2 holds so much more ink yet still keeps a fine point. I was afraid at first. Dave and what he could do with a #2 gave me the courage to switch.
BTP: What’s one of your favorite comic industry interactions that changed your career?
STOUT: That would be being mentored by Russ Manning (Tarzan of the Apes newspaper strips and graphic novels), Dennis Ellefson (CYCLE-toons and CAR-toons) and Harvey Kurtzman & Will Elder (on Little Annie Fanny for Playboy).
BTP: I said one, Bill. :) When working with Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder did you ever have to talk to them about their early days working for William M. Gaines at EC Comics?
STOUT: I milked those two guys for stories --- and they were eager to share.
BTP: I’m curious, because you’ve done both storyboards and comics you understand the similarities and differences in the devices employed to achieve the greatest effect for storytelling. How important is keeping the mechanics and language of comics distinct so as not to just be illustrating a page of storyboard art? As times change do you feel like there are any practitioners today that give you hope that the craft of American comics have a future?
STOUT: Storyboards limit you to one format (the dimensions of the movie screen); comics don’t. Also, it’s OK to cross the axis in comics --- but never in storyboards.
I think we’re experiencing a new Golden Age of comics right now. Any subject is fair game and you can execute the stories you want to tell in any art style. A great example is Craig Thompson’s Ginseng Roots, a brilliant graphic novel that has absolutely nothing to do with superheroes but is compelling storytelling on every page. American Splendor showed one could even write compelling stories about being a hospital filing clerk.
BTP: You bring up a pain point for me with comics. Comics is as much about composition and design as it is about illustration and storytelling. But I’m such a stickler for that 180-degree axis…I can’t knowingly cross it unless I break it up with a cutaway. But I digress…Craig Thompson has always had a great handle on the medium. I’m also a big fan of David Mazzuchelli’s non-superhero work, as well. His Asterios Polyp is incredible, and I wished he do more!
STOUT: There’s also Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, Joe Matt, Seth, Chester Brown, Skinner, Natalie Andrewson and Charles Burns just to name a few more great creators whose work I really like and pursue.
BTP: As artists we tend to want to always improve our work and ourselves to avoid stagnation. Even at this stage in your career is there something you’d like to get better at or an area you’d like to dedicate your time to more?
STOUT: I am still learning how to draw (I still do three hours of figure drawing every Sunday) and how to spot my blacks. Texture and patterns have become more important to me and design becomes even more important with each passing day.
BTP: What I’ve noticed in other artists and it’s now happening to me as well. As we hone our craft over decades we seem to focus on the smaller and smaller points of refining our craft, where in many cases it’s mostly perceptible only to us. The audience may feel like it’s different but they probably couldn’t explain why. In some cases, like with Alex Toth, he intended to want to infinitely simplify and distill the essence of line and character.
STOUT: Kurtzman thought that Toth went a bit overboard when it came to simplification. Harvey saw it as laziness on Alex’s part.
BTP: Are there any time periods, cultures, or practitioners that influence your design sense? How would you describe your approach to design?
STOUT: Nearly everything I know about design I learned from my art school girlfriend Judy Goode. She was ten years older than me and this was her second time around the block at Chouinard. She had been Bill Moore’s prize design student her first time at Chouinard. After the first day of his design class, I couldn’t understand a word Moore had said. Judy put it all into terms I could understand. Now I am known for my design sense. That never would have happened without Judy.
Other design influences: Norman Rockwell’s rival, Joseph Christian Leyendecker, was probably the best designer who ever lived. Then there’s Alphonse Mucha, the great Czech Art Nouveau artist, of course. I took a five-hour bus trip from Prague to a tiny village in the Czech Republic just to see his Slav Epic murals. Most of my fine art influences are from the late nineteenth century.
BTP: What artists working today inspire you in the pursuit of your own work?
STOUT: Mark Schultz, Mike Mignola, Arthur Adams, Frank Cho, Geoff Darrow, Robert Williams, Robert Crumb, Carlos Gimenez, Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, Charles Burns, Seth and Skinner.
BTP: That is a supergroup of talent! That checks a lot of boxes for me. People like Bill Sienkiewicz, David Bowie, Jan Gimenez, Didier Cassegrain, Annie Proulx, and David Fincher have been top of mind for me as late.
In the interview that we did with you for the Beyond the Process podcast, you mentioned you were a good mimic of other artists when the job required it. Who was the most fun to mimic and what did you learn from them that you still apply to your art today?
STOUT: The simplest artists are the hardest --- like Charles Schulz. Their art is like extremely specific handwriting.
I learned a whole lot from imitating Wally Wood. It really helped that he was just as good at funny stuff as he was at straight superhero drawing. Being great at both (and occasionally mixing them) was always one of my goals and something that Will Eisner noticed and loved about my work.
BTP: One of the main things newer artists will face in their careers is charging the right amount and signing a fair contract. You’ve worked in so many areas of art and media, when it came to negotiating money and contracts, what guidance did you have in charging enough and getting a fair deal for yourself? In what ways has that changed for the good or bad over the years?
STOUT: Along with Neal Adams, I have been a powerful (though mostly unacknowledged) force when it comes to artists rights. I have broken lots of new ground in regards to ownership, pay and negotiation. For most artists, business skills are nearly non-existent. Because of that, I used to give artist groups free lectures on contract writing and negotiation.
In my early days, when I’d hire a lawyer to rewrite my contract offers, I asked him about every line and why he phrased each line the way he did. I did that because I wanted to be able to negotiate and write my own contracts so that I didn’t have to pay an attorney four hundred bucks an hour to do so.
I tell artists that if you can’t walk away from a negotiation, then there is no negotiation. I tell them to give real value to their work. I tell them to keep their original art --- all of it. It is not necessary for the studios to keep your originals. That art is your 401K. Artists working in film think that if they just roll over and sign the first contract offered to them that the suits will respect them for being so easy to work with. WRONG! It’s just the opposite. They will hold you in utter contempt. In their minds, you’re so stupid you don’t even know how to play the game.
The most recent contracts are the worst. I find them hilarious. The studio wants to own all of the rights to your work in this universe and solar system as well as yet-to-be-discovered universes and solar systems! Some have a clause in them that gives them the sole rights to whatever you dream at night while in their employ.
BTP: Honestly, that is respectful of you, Bill. I wish more artists would share that kind of experience with people. There should be a workshop at conventions for stuff like this. I remember that transition from traditional art to digital when I took a gig with Warner Brothers. They were insistent they keep my original art. I told them, “I’m providing a service. You’ll get a high-res digital image. If you want the original it’s a separate price.” They were unmoved. I told them, “Fine, I’ll just do the job digitally and you can keep the files.. “ Knowing thyself is a huge part of this business. Who helped forge you in becoming the kind of person who knew their value and could lay out their working parameters to clients? Did it ever backfire?
STOUT: There was an original by Greg Irons that I was dying to own. I couldn’t afford it and Greg wouldn’t drop his price. I really admired him for sticking to his guns, price-wise. He gave true value to his work.
On occasion, I have had to walk away from negotiations. You always have to be ready to do that. One day I was on the phone with Disney. My wife was listening from the other room. Eventually, she heard me say, “Well, I guess we’ve hit an impasse. You won’t give me what I need --- and I won’t proceed unless I have that clause in my contract. I wish you all the best of luck with your project; I hope it’s a huge success.”
I hung up the phone.
My wife flipped out.
“Honey! We need this job! We only have fifteen dollars in our bank account!”
“Darling: If you can’t walk away from a negotiation, then there is no negotiation.”
The phone rang five minutes later. It was Disney. They conceded the contract point I was after. They had been bluffing and testing me, seeing if I knew how to play the game.
BTP: From the sounds of it, your magazine collection is legendary. I can’t imagine how you would store all the ephemera that you’ve collected over the years, let alone the amount of artwork you’ve created.
STOUT: I’ve got a pretty huge studio.
BTP: I want to say something crass here…I really do, but I won’t. :D
STOUT: Something about size mattering?
BTP: Have you a gameplan for what happens to everything after you’re gone?
STOUT: I’m working on it. I have complete collections of the great illustrated American magazines of the early twentieth century: Scribner’s, Century, Harper’s, Associated Sunday Magazine, McClurg’s. I think the only other collection that possibly rivals mine is that of the Library of Congress. The major libraries of America have gotten rid of their magazine collections. Those pages hold the history of the greatest images from American illustration: Howard Pyle, N. C. Wyeth, Joseph Clement Coll, Franklin Booth, Edwin Austin Abbey and J. C. Leyendecker, for example.
Sadly, that collection has no monetary value in the real world. No library would want it. It would take up too much space.
My rare illustrated book collection is a different situation. I was fortunate to assemble a collection of finely illustrated books early in my career, back when they were affordable --- including illustrated books signed by Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, Kay Neilsen, William Heath Robinson, to name a few. I have several books that are worth $20,000 each because of their rarity (often in editions of just 100 copies), their gorgeous illustrations and the fact that they were printed by the finest printer in the world at that time. I can’t afford to buy these books anymore because I am now competing with universities and museums who want to purchase them for their collections.
BTP: I had to tap out early in the antiquarian game. After seeing Michael Kaluta’s fabulous collection I threw in the towel. I was collecting a lot of Dean Cornwell first editions from Stuart Ng and the late Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr. I’ve recently sold off a majority of my comics (keeping the most prized) and I’m making the hard decision to weed out the books I can from my collection. I will say this, though: I’ve read every one of them and learned a ton.
I’m curious if places like Heritage Auctions would be interested in handling the magazines for you since they’ve sold some of your art as well.
STOUT: My comics, yes. My old, illustrated magazines --- there is almost no market for those, despite their rarity and beauty.
BTP: What are some of the things outside of the art world that bring you happiness and joy?
STOUT: Nature resuscitates me. I love hiking in the wild and observing wildlife. I love traveling the world and indulging in different cultures and cuisines (Mexico has the best and most varied food in the world). Music revives me, especially my favorite genre of music: the blues.
BTP: Great answer. This may open up a whole can of worms, but I like worms. The blues is something I danced around for awhile. I’d grown up listening to electronic, heavy metal, big band, swing, country --- you name it. Outside of listening to Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson a few times, what are your Top Five records that you’d recommend to a novice such as myself? What would hook me?
STOUT: American Blues: Pick up the Chess Records box set on Willie Dixon. That’s the Great American Blues Songbook right there. BB King’s Live at the Regal is pure blues class. I love anything by Skip James --- incredibly classy and elegant. He wrote “I’m So Glad” as a children’s song.
British Blues: Manfred Mann’s first LP is my all-time favorite British blues album. I think their version of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightning” is the best ever. Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac’s box set and their Then Play On CD are terrific. There’s no better white blues player than Peter Green. He was a helluva singer and songwriter, too. Steamhammer’s first LP is a real favorite of mine, as is Jethro Tull’s This Was.
BTP: How do you maintain your health and a healthy outlook despite what is happening around the world?
STOUT: I walk three miles of gentle hills every other day. I don’t eat junk food. I am active politically, especially when it comes to saving the environment. Travel is really important, especially outside the United States. It’s important to experience other cultures and to see how they perceive America. They often have a clearer picture of us than we have. I saw our current dictatorship coming a long time ago and foresaw that many Americans would embrace it.
BTP: I couldn’t agree more, Bill. Having an outside perspective of ourselves whether as a person, a community or a country is not only healthy but it helps us to grow in unimaginable ways.
I want to thank you again for joining us, Bill. It’s been a real treat diving deep with you. Where can people find out more about you and your work?
STOUT: My not-so-up-to-date website is www.williamstout.com
The contact button on that site goes directly to me.
I am a guest at these five conventions each year: WonderFest, Heroes Are Hard to Find Convention, Comic Con International, Dragon Con and LightBox. Come see me at one (or all) of those shows. I love meeting my fans!