Meet Dennis Messner | Cartoonist, author, illustrator, writer, & storyboard artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Dennis Messner and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dennis, how do you think about risk?
While living in Chicago, and working as a graphic designer, I entered a Nickelodeon Storyboard Talent Competition, which I shockingly won and which gave me the opportunity to pitch a children’s animated TV series idea to a producer at Nickelodeon. I moved to LA, but the pilot wasn’t picked up. From there, I just started pitching animated TV ideas, not knowing AT ALL what I was doing or how I was supposed to do ANY of it. I’d like to say this was all fearless risk-taking, but naive might be a better word. Had I known how talented and creative other artist/writers were, I probably would’ve been intimidated. But I didn’t, so I wasn’t.

Since then, I’ve sold animation development projects a dozen times, as well as storyboarded and/or written on various animated TV shows for Cartoon Network, DreamWorks, and Disney. Somewhere in between, I illustrated 8 children’s books, and am the author/illustrator a middle grades graphic novel series called “The Unpetables” that came out a few months ago. (The second book will be out next year.)

I grew up in rural Missouri where I was always making up cartoon characters and stories. If an adult said I was an artist, I’d correct them: “I’m a CARTOONIST.” But, after college, I had no money and no idea how to do any of that, so I lied about my degree to get a graphic design job at an ad agency. While there, and exploiting company resources, I submitted comic strip features to newspaper syndicates until I finally sold one. That experience gave me confidence, but also taught me to: ONLY PITCH IDEAS THAT WILL KEEP ME MOTIVATED AND INTERESTED.

The most rewarding projects for me have been the ones I’ve been able to find a personal connection to. I sincerely believe that if you can find love, joy, or wonder in an idea, people will pick up on that.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
First and foremost, I LOVE character comedy, as well as eccentric, creator-driven comics like Peanuts, Popeye, Moomin, and GeGeGe no Kitarō. I adore getting lost in the minutia of what a character may or may not say. Sometimes I write things for my own characters to say, but when I go to draw them, they won’t say them. It’s annoying.

One well I constantly go back to for ideas is my experiences growing up in Missouri — whether it’s the colorful characters, the woods, or the atmosphere. I remember how one of those characters (my painter/grandfather) taught me to draw trees: “Draw from the GROUND UP. There’s CHARACTER in the way a tree grows!” Later, when I asked him why Mickey Mouse wears gloves, he said: “Have you ever seen a RODENT’S HANDS?! They’re DISGUSTING! You’ve GOTTA put gloves on those things!”

I’ve been extremely lucky to have crossed paths with many passionate and hilarious artists, writers, musicians, voice actors, editors, and producers for which I am forever grateful. During the Covid lockdowns, I sorta decided that, as long as I had projects to work on, I would try to make characters and stories for misfits and weirdos — which was how I felt growing up.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
My favorite places to take visitors are: La Brea Tar Pits, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, The Museum Of Jurassic Technology (extra points for NOT explaining it to them beforehand), Watts Towers (eccentric transplants like Simon Rodia are the BEST thing about LA, look for them as much as possible), Hollywood Forever Cemetery (mostly for the Johnny Ramone memorial and Mel Blanc’s “That’s All Folks” headstone), Little Tokyo (don’t miss Q Pop Shop and Anime Jungle), Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine (a beautiful place that houses a portion of Gandhi’s ashes), and Getty Museum (I like the garden and illuminated manuscripts). I would also try to talk them into the Laurel and Hardy staircase in Silver Lake or The Echo Park Time Travel Mart.

Hike to the top of Runyon Canyon Park — the less you like this person, the closer to noon you can leave. Griffith Observatory is great place to contemplate how insignificant your problems really are. Definitely have a beer at the Original Farmers Market and count the octogenarians, or take a road trip to Galco’s Soda Pop Stop. The Last Bookstore and Wacko/Soap Plant are fantastic, as well as Once Upon A Time Bookstore in Glendale/Montrose. I like the intensely roasted coffee beans at Urth Caffe, Rosalind’s for Ethiopian, India Sweets and Spices for Indian, Izakaya Sasaya for Japanese, and Señor Fish for tacos.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There have been a few books that meant THE WORLD me. A big one came when I was 10 and my dad bought me a copy of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” I read Tom Sawyer first, which I thought was…okay. But Huckleberry Finn blew me away on the first page. This one was first-person narration, and Huck starts by criticizing Mark Twain for telling “stretchers” in Tom Sawyer. I was struck by the thought: “OH. You can actually HAVE FUN with writing.” (On a side note: my second graphic novel [“The Unpetables (Book 2)”] starts with a nod to this when the narrator, who is a pig, accuses me of adding “cheap laughs” to book one.)

The next year, my mom drove me to Kansas City and let me select a copy of “The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation” by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston for my birthday. This was a big, expensive book, and we didn’t have a lot of spare money, so it was a sacrifice, as well as a loving gesture. That book gave me more practical information than all of my university art classes. Incidentally, 10 years later, my college apartments caught fire and I was the last out. Much to the displeasure of the firefighters, I ran back in and saved one item — “The Illusion of Life.”

Other influential books were: “The Diaries of Adam and Eve” (talk about ridiculous and contradictory narrators), “Cruel Shoes”, “My Life and Hard Times”, “Cat’s Cradle”, “A Confederacy of Dunces” — as well as Floyd Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse, and Carl Bark’s Donald Duck.

Website: http://www.dennismessner.com/

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Other: Penguin Random House Books: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/723689/the-unpetables-by-dennis-messner/ Top Shelf Productions: https://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/dennis-messner

Image Credits
Dennis Messner