TGT Webcomics Interviews Snakehead Games

http://tgtwebcomics.com/podcast/ep106-snakeheadgames

Hey, guys. I just wanted to cue you in to this interview between Kurt Sasso of TGT Webcomics and Colin Ferguson of Snakehead Games. Snakehead, which creates in-browser MMO games such as Star Pirates and Spy Battle, has previously run custom ad campaigns with Starslip, Real Life, and other high-profile webcomics. Additionally, Tauhid Bondia of Good Ship Chronicles put together some ten comics based on the Star Pirates game, which you can read here.

The podcast is a lively conversation about business, webcomics, and fun, and I thought you guys might like to listen to it.

(Incidentally, the "wonderful guy that [Kurt] met in Chicago" who told Colin about TGT Webcomics is me. :)

It's Interview Friday, Everybody

Happy Friday, homepeople. So it's Friday, and you read a bunch of webcomics over your morning coffee before starting in on your work. And you're entering data into the database, or you're laying out a PDF, or you're analyzing the inventory report, and you're all, "Man, I wish I could somehow listen to something webcomics-related while performing these mindless tasks!" Because you are way too into webcomics.

Well, you're in luck: I have some links to feed your unhealthy obsession. Andrew McDonald of A.P.N.G. Enterprises shared with me two interviews he conducted, in which he and his interviewees talk about professional webcomicking and how the industry relates to other comic industries, as well as his guests' own webcomics. That makes it sound like very serious business, but it's also a lot of fun. Interviewed are:

• Paul Taylor, creator of Wapsi Square
• Gisele Lagace, artist for far too many comics to list

Load 'em up and listen to 'em in the background as you accomplish today's menial tasks. I'm not even too familiar with Paul Taylor's work, and he's still interesting to listen to.

So, that business should tide you over until Monday's review of Tuna Carpaccio, P.I.. But I'd also like to say that after several updates, Miles Grover's new comic Creep House is off to an excellent start. Miles' fresh spin on archetypal horror and fantasy characters is producing some quality comedy. I especially dig the writing on this strip--a party vith hella chicks, indeed!

Party hardy this weekend, you guys, and I'll see you right back here on Monday.

Comic-Form Interview: Aric and Lemmo (Blank It)

JACKSON: Customarily, I close out the interview by asking for some recommendations. What comics do you guys keep up with? What are some of your favorites?

LEMMO: Girls with Slingshots, Dr. McNinja, Wapsi Square, and check out Joe and Monkey's return from hiatus.
ARIC: I love Nedroid, Scary Go Round, Pictures for Sad Children, Hark, a Vagrant!, and Overcompensating the most.

Be sure to check out

Interview w/ FF6 Comic Creator @ Coloring Dragons

Good morning, everyone. Today's post will be going up later today, but in the meantime...remember the Final Fantasy 6 comic? This past week, the website Coloring Dragons published an interview with creator J.E. Simon (AKA Orinocou). The interview provides insight into her ambitious fan project: its aims and motivations, its challenges, her approach to the subject material and characters. It's an interesting read, especially for video game fans--but as noted before, one of Simon's goals in creating the comic is to make FFVI's story accessible to comic readers, regardless of their video game stripes. And this comes out in the interview as well.

Anyway, enjoy the interview, and in the meantime I'll be working on today's post.

Interview: Brandon Bolt (Nobody Scores!)

Brandon Bolt draws things. He draws things as a professional illustrator, which makes him money, and he also draws the webcomic Nobody Scores, which makes him stay up all night drawing. Updated roughly 2.37 times a week, Nobody Scores delivers long-form tales of spectacular failure, where continuity is optional and pain is mandatory. Its four main characters--arch-capitalist marketing exec Sara, calamity-prone crazy chick Jane, starving artist Beans, and beleaguered intellectual Raoul--suffer each other's company as they share living space, enduring such disasters as time travel, nanorobots, and the typical workday. It's an anarchic, cynical celebration of everything that could possibly go wrong, and it brings the fun.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Brandon Bolt at a computer some 2,000 miles from Brandon Bolt and interviewing him over email. What follows is the uncensored entirety of our conversation. The insights contained therein will shake the very foundations of your world.

JF: So, "Brandon Bolt" is a pretty awesome name. You really lucked out.

BB: I always thought it was pretty weird myself. I blame it for my alienation from humanity.

JF: (awkward silence)

So I guess we should probably talk about the comic now!

Nobody Scores is a skillfully-executed comic, but the concept is a hard sell--its humor is dark, cynical, and almost aggressively cringe-inducing. How do you find a balance between making a comic that will pay you back monetarily for what you put into it and doing what you want to do as an artist?

BB: I hear if you tape layers of newspaper between pieces of cardboard they're warmer when it gets below freezing.

Yeah--don't ask me. I try to draw stuff that doesn't bore me. Difficulty level: I am super bored. There isn't any other consideration. I am not at any level trying to market it to target audiences or anything like that. I don't even know what target audiences look like. There is no balance. If I get money, that is nice.

Because focusing on exploring the art is the only real point... If you're just going to stitch together another Snuffy Smith to plague the world for another 75 years, what's the point? Better to make it with something that's worthwhile--your chances aren't very good anyway. That's my attitude.

JF: But you do have systems in place that allow for monetary support. You sell adspace and posters; you have a discreetly-placed Paypal donation button in your sidebar.

BB: Well that is currently pizza money. Sadly! But pizzas are delicious.

JF: Since this past summer, you've abandoned straight-up infinite canvas for fixed page divisions in your comic. So you're at least making some formalistic concessions in order to facilitate a print collection. By the way, how's the fixed-page-size thing going for you?

BB: I haven't totally abandoned infinite canvas, but there is behind-the-scenes work on books and I thought I'd make it marginally easier on myself.

I am cursed however. All formats are a headache. I still have an easier time making infinite-canvas comics "work", I think, but then I give myself an infinite amount of drawing rope with which to hang myself. I've developed a theory that every person is allotted a set number of allnighters in their lifetimes. I think I may have three left. Really, I had a startling number of allnighters in me, it turned out.

So, I don't really like fixed page sizes--although I've been able to keep using many of the infinite-canvas techniques I was using before, and also, I'd kind of run out of infinite-canvas tricks to try--but limits on the amount of drawing help keep me from dying and that's real nice.

JF: On the topic of marketability...what do you think of the webcomics business model, in terms of cartoonists giving away their art for free? Do you think that it's more viable or less for career cartoonists than going a more traditional route?

BB: It is currently the least stupid of a variety of terribly stupid options, if you want to get exposure. Newspapers keep shrinking; the alt-comics press is in its usual state of woe, but keeps plugging along. Graphic novels do have the occasional breakout hit, so there's that. Webcomics are... well, they aren't actually much less static than other types of comics--the internet generates inertia--but it is possible to build an audience if you first build a comic. The competition is still not as stiff in webcomics, if you're talking raw quality. The obstacles are mainly social. You need to have high-traffic friends slash appreciators to send people your way. As for business models, I don't really have one. Nobody Scores! is a dick to merchandise because it's in such an unorthodox format. I am working on books but I don't know how exactly that will go at this point. The subsidiary t-shirts-and-tchochkes approach seems to work for some people. I am sort of interested in how Assetbar turns out, but my regular comic takes enough time as it is, and if I have to do premium content too, my shit will explode. That is, it will explode everywhere it exists and the Portland sewer management peoples are in for a fun night and I will be a big ol' mess as well.

JF: So...you're an art guy. You have a fine arts degree, and you have a career as a cartoon illustrator. I guess these things kind of come together in things like "Nobody Scores vs. Fine Art." How do you think your background has prepared you for Nobody Scores?

BB: Doing Nobody Scores! is a betrayal of everything my education stood for and I live in fear of the day someone from college stumbles upon my cartoon and puts two and two together.

I went to a liberal arts college, and the culturally omnivorous nature of Nobody Scores! is a manifestation of my liberal-arts-geek nature, and you are this far away from me telling everybody my SAT score and nobody wants that.

It is pretty nice to be able to draw different things intelligibly and that is due to my background, I guess. Also everything you need to learn about color you learn in the first semester of art class; it just may be a while before you actually pay attention to it.

JF: SAT scores are best left back in high school. I had better change the subject quick here.

Let's talk about your characters. They're deeply flawed human beings, but it strikes me that their flaws are just strengths taken to excess. Sara's ambitious and driven, Jane approaches life with reckless enthusiasm, Beans actually cares about things, and Raoul is too smart for his own good. Am I just looking at these people too optimistically, or do they really have some redeeming qualities to them?

BB: No, sure, they do. Basically, every engaging comedic character does things we all want to do, somewhere inside our psyches: we want to get top scores on all the globally recognized indicators of success (Sara), crush those who would stand in our way (Sara), do whatever we want whenever we want (Jane), care a lot (Beans), pursue our dreams no matter how abstruse (Beans), be the smartest guy in the room (Raoul) and scorn everybody else (Raoul). At least I imagine we do. This is where unsympathetic characters can insert their hooks into you, if you let them.

So, good sides in a nutshell: Sara is productive and responsible (at least at basic day-to-day tasks), Jane is fun to be around, Beans won't betray you (unless you've really goaded him into it), and Raoul is knowledgeable, even expert in a variety of academic spheres.

The primary flaw of all of them, really, is self-centeredness and callousness, which manifests itself in different ways, depending on the character.

JF: It's interesting how often the characters' selfishness actively contributes to a given comic's catastrophe. Their own selfishness ironically undermines the pursuit of their own aims and ambitions.

BB: The tragic flaw! Sometimes I do that. But fate is a fickle beast in Nobody Scores! and its misfortunes do not hew strictly to dramatic conventions. Sometimes, ridiculous shit just happens despite the characters' best-laid plans.

JF: In another interview, you noted that you try not to let any one character's perspective become too privileged. Is there any of the cast that you struggle to maintain that balance with?

BB: The machine of the comic has three nodes; the fourth character, Raoul, sort of operates in orbit. Of the three central nodes, I have found that Sara and Jane are by far the stronger personalities and Beans tends to get overwhelmed. This is partially because Beans is softer overall, and partially because his sphere--artistic expression--doesn't generate as many plots as the others do. So I have to tell myself to push Beans out there more every now and then.

JF: I usually close out these interviews by asking the cartoonist to share a few of their favorite webcomics, but it occurs to me--if I do that, I am basically asking you to reduplicate your links page. You follow print comics fairly assiduously, so what are a few of your favorite print comics? What's a title or two that's worth shelling out money for?

BB: Well, I don't know that I've been following them assiduously these days, but...Lio is my favorite newspaper comic and there's a book. Two books! Also, in entirely different veins from Nobody Scores!, there is the work of Jason Lutes--I greatly recommend the two Berlin books that are out; Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze books, a cartoon retelling of the Iliad; and if I had to pick a print cartoonist I want all web cartoonists to read it's Kyle Baker.

JF: Thanks for all your responses, Brandon.

BB: I am always glad to respond to things! Well sometimes I prefer to stand inert but this is not one of those times.

4/23: Week in Review

This week, the Week-in-Review comes early. Blogger Ari Collins has promised me a guest update on Friday reviewing The Walking Dead, but I still wanted to hit you with a handful of news stories I've found interesting throughout the week. Ergo, this Thursday update.

Before anything else, I'd like to plug a fellow blogger and cartoonist, Bengo, who has been kind enough to provide a few links to TWIW. He co-creates two comics, Lil Nyet and The Scratchin' Post, with his wife, and while I may not read these comics regularly, I can't deny that they're drawn quite competently with a quirky sense of humor. It just goes to show that even if a comic isn't entirely to your tastes, you can still recognize whether it's created with effort and talent. Additionally, Bengo regularly updates The Floating Lightbulb, a webcomics blog that's useful and informative for comic creators, readers, and general enthusiasts. If you like this blog, chances are you'll also like Bengo's.

Anyway, on to the news. Tall Tale Radio featured an interview with Superfogeys creator Brock Heasley this week, which I enjoyed listening to. There are some interesting segments in there about the balance between humor and "the dark bits," the role that major events like character death play in plotting your comic, and even a few words about Heasley's other current project, a memoir-in-progress titled "Bullets and M&Ms." Recommended listening, and it makes me look forward to reading more of Superfogeys when I get a chance.

This past Sunday, Dungeon Mastering posted the second part of its collaborative project with Geeks Next Door, in which the GND characters introduce one of their closet-geek friends to the joys of Dungeons and Dragons. This installment features a concise summary of what roleplaying is, but the real humor is in the creators' commentary that accompanies the comic. Should be of interest to fans of table-top RPGs, and I'm a fan of table-top RPGs, so...

At any rate, that's the news for now. I'd planned to also discuss guest strips in this entry, with a few links to comics currently running guest strips and some reflections on the "guest strip" phenomenon in general, but I need to start getting ready for work. Depending on how late I end up working tonight, I may have time to finish that up in a second post, but we'll see.

This is Jackson Ferrell, signing off. I'll check you later.

Interview: Tony Piro (Calamities of Nature), 2/2

Continued from the first half of the interview

JF: How do you view the relationship between art and writing in your comic? Do you think your approach to cartooning favors one or the other? Do you view one or the other as the "backbone" of a strip?

TP: I don't know. I find both to be a constant struggle. When I look back at my old stuff, I absolutely hate it on both levels. But I do see improvement over time. I guess that's what happens if you're in this game long enough. I would be interested in hearing what my readers have to say about this. As far as first impressions go, what attracted them to the strip initially, the art or the writing?

Ideally, I would hope that the art and writing work hand in hand in any given comic. Take either away, and the gag doesn't work the same. This seems like a reasonable goal, otherwise why choose comics as the medium of presentation? Nevertheless, many of my strips probably rely a little heavily of the dialogue to tell the gag. I'll have two characters discussing something as they walk through the forest. In a sense, they could be doing a lot of different things and still get the gag across. I have a visual medium at my disposal, I should sometimes try to "show" instead of "tell." I would say this a shortcoming of my strip right now. It's something I need to work on.

As for the "backbone" of the strip, I'm going go on a limb and say maybe color is the one constant that has been with Calamities since the beginning. When I changed formats I experimented with the idea of going black and white and updating 5 days a week. When I showed a few example strips to my friends they basically told me that my art wouldn't fly without color. I'd need to rethink my whole use of blacks. The use of color actually helps the reader process the information in the strip faster, so that the joke comes across clearer and is (hopefully) more funny.


JF: Your characters' personalities are pretty archetypal. What are the advantages and disadvantages of relying on character tropes? How do you put a fresh spin on them?

TP: If you look at comics in general, these character types show up all the time. Especially when you consider the classic group of three: the nice guy, the funny guy, and the angry guy. You see this everywhere, from Disney (Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and Donald Duck) to Bone (Fone, Smiley, and Phoney). There's a reason why this works. If you have a limited cast of characters and you want to get a wide range of interactions, these are sort of the natural character types you want to cover your bases. In that sense, over time I've felt like my characters have morphed into these archetypes, even when I didn't initially intend this to happen. For example, when I first started both Aaron and Harold were kind of the "nice guys." But as I wrote more and more gags, I would often find myself not needing them both (that's why Harold didn't appear in a lot of the early strips). At the same time, I kept finding I needed a character who was a little more angry and cynical to make some jokes work. So Aaron evolved into this role. So in that the sense, these archetypes are around for a very clear reason--it allows a lot of flexibility when telling gags.

The main disadvantage of having these archetypes is that it can feel pretty stale if you don't add enough depth to the characters. This is something I need to work on. Trying to tell a gag and make some sort of point in the space constraints of a comic strip, I sometimes feel I have little room for character development. What would help is if each of my characters had more of a back story, like a job, specific interests, and so on. I did this by making Alp an inventor, but I need to do this for the other characters. One of my goals for 2009 is to try to naturally work some of this into the comic. Hopefully this will make the characters that much more engaging.


JF: I'm curious--is Aaron listening to his headphones pretty much 24/7? Does he wear those things to bed? What's he listening to all the time, anyway?

TP: Hmmm...see this is one of those logical things you don't ever think of when you're working on a strip, but when someone confronts you with the question you ask, "what *was* I thinking?"

The history of the headphones was that the very first strip I drew with Aaron and Ferd was when I was 10 years old. It was at the time of the Bay Bridge World Series, and Aaron and Ferd were fighting over who would win. Ferd was for the Giants (giving him the Giants hat he still has to this day), and Aaron the A's (thus the green shirt). To portray him as a sports nut, I added the headphones, which I kept ever since without too much rhyme or reason other than I liked the way they looked (and the red helped to further distinguish Aaron from the other characters and the background elements). I actually still have this original comic, but I'm saving sharing it with the world until the time is right.

So what does he listen to? NPR? I'm not sure. I suspect a lot of the time, the headphones aren't even on, but Aaron uses them as a device to selectively interact with the world on his own terms (as I suggested in the strip you linked to). I guess you'll just have to ask Aaron yourself.


JF: Heh--I suppose so. Is there anything else you'd like to say before we wrap this interview up--maybe a parting tip for aspiring cartoonists, or a webcomic or two that you'd particularly recommend?

TP: I think the most important message for cartoonists is to remember what a unique opportunity it is to speak directly to an audience with a singular, unedited voice. So many other forms of media require a team of people to create something. It's just not practical for one person to do it all alone. Comics (and webcomics in particular) allow an artist to basically be the writer, director, actors, publicist, and everything else, all at the same time. This is special chance to share real ideas and feelings with other people, and this shouldn't be taken lightly. I've heard complaints from people who have told me that my work is too derivative, that the punch lines too obvious, and so on. But I hope at the end of the day, my readers appreciate that I'm sincerely trying to share real things with them, and I urge other cartoonists to do the same.

Concerning webcomics I'd recommend, that's a tough question because there's quite a few I read regularly. But here are a couple that often just make me want to throw my hands in the air and give up: Bellen!, Circle Versus Square, We the Robots, Savage Chickens, Octopus Pie, Wondermark, and One Swoop Fell. Oops, sorry, I guess that's more than one or two!


JF: Thanks for your time, Tony. It's been a pleasure interviewing you.

TP: Hey, thanks for offering! Keep up the great work on this site.

Interview: Tony Piro (Calamities of Nature), 1/2

Calamities of Nature began its life as a web presence about a year and a half ago, but in a way it's been in the making for much longer than that. Before there was even an internet to put comics on, Tony Piro was drawing the adventures of his central cast of four. The talking-animal characters have grown with him over the years, and in their current incarnation, they alternately have bizarre escapades and deliver thoughtful social criticism--sometimes both at once. The comic is updated Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

In a series of emails, Tony Piro and I had an extended conversation about the art and craft of his comic and the experience of sharing his creation on the web. What follows is the first part of that conversation; the second will be posted tomorrow.

JF: First off, you recently switched formats for Calamities of Nature, from long-form pages to shorter strips. How’s the change working out for you?

TP: I'm really enjoying it. Being able to communicate with my readers on a more regular basis has been invigorating. I did get a few complaints via e-mail and there were a couple of discouraging blog posts I've seen. But since the change, both my traffic levels and the interaction with my readers have increased so markedly that it's pretty clear it was the right thing to do.

When I first started the comic I had no idea that there was a webcomic community out there. I had recently found out about print-on-demand and Ka-Blam, and I wanted to do a comic book. This is what prompted the full-page format. In the meantime, I figured I would just post the comics online to see if I could get any feedback. My site was basically a static html page with a list of jpegs. Although Calamities of Nature has been up for well over a year, during the first 6 months I didn't even have my own url--I just posted on my work server. Around January 2008 I realized that I could share my work with more people by cultivating an online audience (than via print), and I started converting my site to be more reader friendly (if you're a history buff, you can see my first attempt at a reader friendly site here: http://calamitiesofnature.com/archive/25.html).

Over time, I read more webcomics and I became aware of what I was enjoying (or not) about the various comics and their sites. Things like the importance of not scrolling to read the full comic, or of having a satisfying end to each update (some of the pages from my early story lines didn't even have a gag at the end). At the same time, I was getting increasingly frustrated with the format I had chosen. It was great when I had a longer joke to tell (like the Michael Jackson comic), but for every one of those, I'd have two or three comics that could basically fit as a newspaper strip. It just wasn't an efficient use of time to spend 3-4 nights working on a comic that would be read in 10 second.

By last summer I had reached the tipping point. I was tired of doing these huge pages, and I knew I could update more often with less time with the new format. Plus I had a huge backlog of material written, which I didn't have time to draw. So I made the change in September and haven't looked back. Now that I've worked up a little bit of a buffer, I'm excited to do a few larger Sunday-style comics when I have an appropriate gag.


JF: How have your ventures into webcartooning suprised you? What's been the most surprising thing about the whole experience?

TP: Webcartooning has surprised me on all sorts of different levels. Maybe the first thing that surprised (and intimidated) me was how much good stuff there is. I used to draw at home in my own little insular world, and never realized all the great artists that exist. I guess all these people going to art school must be doing something, huh? Friends and family tell you how great your work is, and you tend to believe them because you haven't been exposed to the broader selection of work out there. Once I started becoming more integrated into the webcomic community I was overwhelmed by the breadth of artistic styles and writing voices. There's also some crappy webcomics (like anything else), but a lot of it just makes me want to give up.

The other thing that has impressed me is the kindness of (most) everyone in the community. When I have a legitimate question about something (like the tools people are using, or ad service providers, or whatever) I've e-mailed all sorts of people, from the biggest to the smallest names. And almost everyone is forthcoming and helpful. What other community can boast that?


JF: Sort of the bedrock of your comic's humor is the juxtaposition of funny animals and social commentary. You've been drawing these characters for awhile...did the social-commentary angle emerge for you, or has it been there pretty much since you came up with these guys?

TP: When I was growing up, three of my favorite comic creators were Bill Watterson, Berkeley Breathed, and Dave Sim. Now those are three guys with very strong personalities and opinions, and they made no apologies when that commentary guided their work. So when I was ten, I was already trying to include these sorts of social themes. It just wasn't as sophisticated as what I do now (things like comparing George Bush's name to shrubbery or making fun of Dan Quayle's foibles--see how far I've come, now I make fun of Sarah Palin instead).

The funny animal thing has always been natural for me as well. You throw in the above creators with Jeff Smith's Bone, and most of the stuff I was reading was funny animals in human worlds. If I'm going to be creating 3 of these comics each week, I need to be excited every time I'm at the drawing table. Having characters that I'm familiar with and enjoy drawing really helps to keep me going.

In addition, I've always felt that Scott McCloud's discussion of how a reader can relate better to a simpler face (see Understanding Comics) had a lot of truth to it. I hope this helps the readers connect better with the characters and their situations. Some people have e-mailed me to say they look forward to reading Calamities because they're curious what the characters will be doing or talking about. So this is working at least a little.


JF: In a Comic Fencing review from a couple months ago, one reviewer remarked on the “anti-Christian sentiment“ in your comic. However, I’m pretty sure you yourself wouldn’t consider strips like the "Mike Huckabee" or "Christian Rock" comics to be malicious or mean-spirited. What's the motive behind the commentary on religion in your comic?

TP: Jeez, you want to open this can of worms, huh? Where to start? The crux of my commentary on religion stems from my frustration with faith. That people make decisions because of belief instead of reasoning. And I realize that to expect people to be completely logical is a fallacy in itself. On the philosophical side, we know logic has its shortcomings (Godel's incompleteness theorem and all that). On a practical side, we don't always have enough information to make a completely informed decision. This is especially true in this day and age where everyone is a specialist in some field. More and more we have to trust the advice of experts, and in a sense this is a form of faith.

But what I find unforgivable is when people continually deny logical facts, even when faced with a mountain of clear evidence. The obvious example is evolution. Evolution is a basic fact about biology. You can argue the details of how it occurs, but it *does* happen. We see that gravity exists. We see that the earth goes around the sun. We see that the earth is round. We see that evolution occurs. Why would someone deny the last point? It's just not logical. People go to the doctor and take the medications that are prescribed to them. Some of those medications are developed expressly using the fact that evolution occurs, and that it is altering the biology of the disease-causing organisms. These medications often fight diseases that are passed genetically, and guess what, evolution affects how those genes are passed down. So to benefit from these advances in medicine, but deny one of the basic tenets that create these benefits, is illogical.

Now I know I'm fighting an uphill battle in some sense. If someone willingly chooses to be illogical, how to do you argue with them? Through logic? Clearly you cannot, because they don't subscribe to this. If someone maintains that the world is 6,000 years old and that any evidence otherwise is just a trick by God to make us think the world is older, how do I argue against this? They've already nullified the axioms of any argument I could make.

But that doesn't mean the fight isn't worth the battle. It's all well and fine if people want to have these illogical beliefs, but if it starts affecting the human condition negatively (and this is where people are going to get angry, because my feeling is that it has done more harm than good over the last 2000 or so years), then you have to push back. And this is my other big criticism of religion, which is the institutionalization of all these ideas. This is when it gets dangerous because you have an institution whose very existence relies on providing the currency of "certainty" to get people mobilized. Such an institution can build a lot of momentum, and it can be hard to steer back on course when its headed in the wrong direction. (And just so you don't think I'm just picking on religion, universities and governments have many of the same problems. People just become a little more fervent with religion.) This was one of the points I was trying to make with the Agnostic comic. Institutionalizing "certainty" is so much more powerful than uncertainty. This is the uphill fight that we're faced with. Scientific history is full of wrong theories, and uncertainty, and changing view points. That's just how scientific progress works. But who's going to want to pray to the altar of "I don't know"?

All that said, those couple comics that your mentioned are actually some of my least favorite ones. Instead of presenting these ideas in a well thought out manner, they make gags that are basically no more subtle than a pie in the face. And what does that really accomplish? Readers who subscribe to these opinions will feel validated. Readers who don't agree will feel marginalized. And in neither case have I actually made someone do any thinking. This is a disservice to both my readers and myself. After all the hours I spend on this comic every week, I'd like to think I'm providing entertainment with a little more value than political talk radio. Hopefully, my writing chops are to the point now where I can accomplish this a little better (like with the recent Agnostic strip).

So the short answer is, no, I wasn't trying to be anti-Christian. But the fact that it was construed as such by the comic fencing guys (and many other people I've gotten feedback from) indicates that I'm clearly not doing my job well enough.

JF: Well, I sympathize with your difficulties. Comics often rely on an economy of language, and it can be incredibly hard to give a balanced treatment of such a complex issue in so few words. I actually think the Agnostic strip was well-crafted in this regard.

I may not agree with you on every last point, but this interview is to learn more about you and your views, not a vehicle for me to express mine! I still do think you make some good points, and I don't think any institution should be exempt from critical analysis from without and within. And I can appreciate that you're critical of yourself as well.

It reminds me of what Chris Hallbeck's parting advice from my interview with him: "If you look back on what you did every 6 months and you hate it then you are going in the right direction." How do you maintain a healthy level of self-criticism and growth without getting too hard on yourself?

TP: That's a tough question. I'm constantly distraught and depressed over my work. When I start with an idea, it seems so fresh and exciting. But by the time I've drawn the strip to completion I almost always hate it. This usually isn't too bad of a thing as long as I finish the comic. Lately though, I'm building up a small archive of finished strips that I can't even get myself to post on the website. At least this will give me some bonus strips to help sell the next book.

Something that's helped keep me from becoming completely paralyzed by this self-loathing is that I read the Charles Schulz biography, "Schulz and Peanuts" by David Michaelis. A key point I took away was how Schulz channeled these insecurities to inspire his work. At least this way you get something constructive out of all this internal turmoil. This may also explain why Harold keeps showing up more and more as a central character.

Another thing that helps is to actively try to keep getting better. I'm always trying new tools and new tricks to keep things from falling into a rut. Sometimes the thing you try doesn't quite work. That's okay, it's just a comic or two. Other times it will allow you to make huge strides quickly, and that's really exiting. For example, for my January 9th comic I'm starting to use a brush to ink. This is completely changing my use of blacks and the backgrounds. For January 12th, I'm trying a more complex panel composition. Anything to keep me on my toes.

(Continue to the second half of the interview)

Interview: Chris Hallbeck from The Book of Biff

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Hallbeck, the creator of The Book of Biff. Biff, the titular character distinguishable by his shaved head and crazy eyebrows, has bizarre, full-color, single-panel adventures every weekday over at thebookofbiff.com. His strange problems and stranger solutions make for a fun daily diversion, and cartoonist Chris Hallbeck regularly delivers glimpses into Biff's surreal world, often in themed weeks such as "magic tricks" or "childhood playthings." He and I sat down over email for a closer look Behind the Biff. (And by "he" I mean Chris, not Biff.)

JF: So how did you come up with the Biff character, anyway? And why did you decide to name him "Biff?"

CH: Biff evolved from a doodle that I did in my friend's student planner. We had lunch together and I would draw things to try and make him laugh. Biff became a reoccurring character in those doodles. I liked the name Biff because I didn't know anyone with that name and it could also be used as a sound effect.

JF:I always think of truck drivers when I hear the name "Biff." Or that guy from Back to the Future. But Biff seems to have a very different personality from Biffs like those.

CH: Biff is more of a childlike mad professor.

JF: How does it feel to take Biff from his humble origins to a widely-read webcomic with two print collections? Did you expect Biff to be this successful?

CH: I think one of the most important things to happen was that when I got out of college I tried to get Biff accepted as a syndicated newspaper comic. I still have the stack of rejection letters in a box somewhere. I stopped drawing Biff for a number of years after that but when I decided to start it up again it was without any dreams of success. I realized that I just wanted to draw comics for the sake of drawing them. I made zero dollars from this project for the first 2 years but that wasn't a problem since it was not my original goal. The main attraction to me to the concept of drawing a webcomic was that it would cost me a very small amount of money to make it available to a large number of people.

JF: It also allows for more immediate fan feedback; I imagine that's a plus too. What's your favorite facet of being the creator of The Book of Biff?

CH: I like the challenge of it. Each comic is a new puzzle to solve and it's satisfying when I find the solution.

JF: The Book of Biff is a unique webcomic in that it takes the single-panel approach. Apart from the ubiquitous Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, it's the only single-panel webcomic I can think of. I'm not sure where I'm going with this question, but do you have any thoughts on Biff's single-panel-ness? What made you decide to go with that format?

CH: There are definitely a bunch more single panel webcomics out there. Savage Chickens is one that I read daily. The reason that I draw a single panel comic is The Far Side. My cartooning developed from drawing in the margins of school books and notebooks. Those small spaces are better suited to a single drawing with a caption than a strip format. I think those early doodles wired my brain for thinking one panel at a time.

JF: The Far Side really is the iconic single-panel comic; it's what everyone thinks of. But one thing that sets Book of Biff apart from The Far Side is its recurring cast—of one. What do you think being able to center the weirdness and humor around a single individual does for your comic?

CH: On the positive side, it can give me speed and focus. The writing can go faster because I only have to figure out what Biff's reaction will be to the situation. And unlike a multi-character comic I don't have complex character relationships and storylines to maintain.

I think having a single character can also be very limiting. There are a lot of jokes that I throw out because they won't fit into the limits of one panel/one figure/one sentence caption.

JF: For a typical comic, what does the creative process look like for you? How do you take an idea from…wherever your ideas come from…and carry it to its completion? Is there a lot of variation in the process, apart from the particular content, or is it pretty standard?

CH: I have a few different writing strategies. Sometimes I think of a funny image and try to reverse engineer a caption to fit it. Sometimes I'll think of a theme and write a list of objects or activities in that theme to bounce ideas off of. Usually I think of some sort of problem that Biff has to solve and then explore a few successes or failures he may experience and then I write down the one that I think is the funniest. The writing is the hardest part and it is the most random in the amount of time it takes. Some comics pop into my head fully realized. Some take days of chipping away at them. I know there's a comic in that idea somewhere I just have to peel off enough of the bad punchlines to find it.

The physical part of the comic is pretty straightforward. I do the drawing in Flash and the coloring in Photoshop.

JF: The relationship between what's weird and what's funny is a weird one. What do you think makes weird things so funny?

CH: I think it's just enjoying something that's new or unexpected.

JF: I'm surprised to discover that you draw the comic in Flash. The linework looks really hand-drawn, at least to me. Do you have a personal preference for digital or traditional craft? Any thoughts on how new digital tools are changing cartooning?

CH: Well, I still draw the lines with my hand. I think there is sometimes confusion when I hear comics described as either "drawn by hand" or "digital." As if artists in the "digital" category are somehow bashing their face into a keyboard to create their images.

The reason I use Flash is because my computer is not powerful enough to draw in Photoshop at the file sizes I like to work in. For me, drawing digitally allows me greater speed an I'm more fearless with my brushwork since I can always undo. I was actually afraid that I was going to lose my pen and ink skills when I first started drawing in flash but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the speed and line quality improvements carried over when I did my first post-digital ink on paper drawing.

JF: Thanks for your time and responses, Chris. Do you have any parting advice for aspiring cartoonists? If you could give one single piece of advice, what would it be?

CH: Keep drawing. If you look back on what you did every 6 months and you hate it then you are going in the right direction.

Interview: Gordon McAlpin from Multiplex

Multiplex is a digitally-illustrated webcomic about the employees of the Multiplex 10 Cinemas. It updates at least twice a week--often more--and much like its ensemble cast, it brings a little of everything to the table, with equal doses of movie commentary, workplace humor, and teen drama. And truthfully, what really sells me on Multiplex is the characters. You can stop in every so often and get your movie humor fix, but if you keep visiting this theater for long enough, you'll really get to know the employees. There's Jason, the perennially-grumpy movie snob; Kurt, the sharp-witted prankster with just enough responsibility to keep things together; bookworm Becky, who is a loyal friend once you get past her shyness; and a host of others. Seriously, I could go on--but the purpose of this entry isn't to reduplicate the cast page.

Multiplex creator Gordon McAlpin agreed to have an email interview with me, so I shot him a few questions and he fired some answers right back. Gordon's a fun guy, and he's also very professional about his comic, so I was eager to hear his thoughts on Multiplex, the webcomic universe, and everything.

JF: First, as much for my own curiosity as anything: it’s no secret that you originally envisioned Multiplex in animated-short format. Any chance we’ll be seeing Multiplex-related animation in the future, not-too-distant or otherwise?

GM: I hope so. But since no animation studios are coming up to me with offers, I’ll have to do it myself (or mostly myself), and I barely have the time to keep up with the updates, let alone teach myself Flash. Long-time readers know I’m about six months behind on the ebooks (and counting), which affects the print collection, too, and that should really be my priority.

JF: Your other major comic undertaking, Stripped Books, was hand-drawn—and recently we’ve seen hand-drawn Multiplex bonus sketches and even some hand-drawn strips. What motivated your initial decision to draw Multiplex digitally rather than by hand? Do you have a preference for either approach?

GM: I did Multiplex digitally because I wanted to build up a library of vector shapes for an animated version of Multiplex. I can basically take what I’ve drawn for the strip and paste it into Flash now, and I just need to animate it and add sound and all that — which is still a lot more complicated than it might sound.

I liked the idea that Multiplex, being about movies, is more visually evocative of animation than comics; I lay things out more or less like frames of a movie and do the panel breakdowns pretty rigidly, to emphasize this, too.

But I also just really like well-done 2D vector illustration and had fun doing it for the second Stripped Book (on Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith). I don’t understand why everybody in comics is so locked into the traditional pencils-and-ink cartooning technique. Comics are stories told in pictures, not just drawings: you can make comics with photos, CG imagery à la Dreamland Chronicles, whatever…

So, no, I don’t have a preference for either. I just like to change up my drawing style a lot, and I’d settled on a vector style for Multiplex, and… well, it got popular, so that’s the style I’m best known for.

JF: What are some of your favorite parts of the comic? Do you have any favorite story arcs, favorite characters to write/draw, a favorite facet of what Multiplex lets you do as a cartoonist?

GM: Well, I’m really excited about the addition of James Harris, not just because I get to finally do some hand-drawn bits in the strip (which I’d actually intended to do for a long, long time), and because it adds a new dimension to the strip: movie theater history.

Multiplex is a comic strip about movies, but it’s not just about the new releases of the week. It’s really a lot deeper than that, despite all the bathroom humor. Or at least, I’m trying to make it deeper than that, if that doesn’t sound too pretentious. It’s about criticism and whether or not anybody really does have a more valid opinion about movies than someone else. It’s about movie theater industry, which a lot of people say is dying, but I call “bullshit” on that.

The addition of James is — in the long term — going to raise a lot of parallels between now and what was going on in the 1950s, when the film industry (and the movie theaters that played them) were taking a massive beating from, primarily, television.

Basically, Multiplex lets me talk about my love of movies in a way that is, I hope, very entertaining to the readers. That’s my favorite part of the strip.

My favorite character would be Jason, though. It’s no shock to my readers (especially ones who know what I look like) that he’s an exaggerated version of myself. He often knocks movies I enjoy, so he’s really not just spewing my own opinions, despite what some readers assume. But I like his asshole side, and his dry sarcasm, which kind of runs through the strip as a whole, I suppose.

JF: Some of my favorite parts of the strip come from the relationships between characters—Kurt and Jason’s repartee, obviously, but also Melissa’s tough-love friendship with Jason, or how Neil relates to his workers. Do you have a character dynamic you particularly enjoy writing or drawing?

GM: Kurt and Jason are my favorite, but I enjoy it any time Jason gets a dressing-down, either from Neil, Melissa, Angie… whoever. I mean, a lot of the time, he is a little asshole. But that’s the point, and that’s why we love him. He’ll grow up, eventually. A little bit.

JF: Kurt and Jason…ha, I really should’ve guessed that one.

Anyway. In a recent interview, you remarked that you’ve got Multiplex on your mind almost constantly. What do you do when you need some space from your creation? What other activities do you find help your creative process?

GM: I like to drink heavily when I need some down-time. Or, honestly, watch movies that have absolutely nothing to do with the strip, or with the Triple Feature.

But that’s the thing about Multiplex: because it’s really about a love of movies, I don’t often feel like I need a total break from it — and, in fact, when I’m back in my parents’ hometown, away from any computer that I can work on Multiplex with, I’m often pretty anxious to get back to the strip.

One of my other hobbies is photography. I’m not terribly good at it, but I enjoy wandering around and taking pictures of old buildings. That interest is where my interest in old movie theaters came from, actually.

And, of course, I read comics. I love comics every bit as much as I love movies. I really just love visual storytelling.

JF: Unlike many webcomics, Multiplex has a racially diverse cast—but when it comes to race, it’s anything but politically correct. Was it a conscious decision on your part to expand your cast beyond the typical “white and nerdy” ensemble?

GM: Absolutely, and not just about race.

I’m keenly aware that there are people out there who are absolutely incapable of reading any characters that aren’t white, straight, and male as anything other than statements, which is why so many cartoonists are reluctant to break out from that.

An early strip set up that Becky doesn’t like action movies, so that must mean that I was saying all women hate action movies. I read a review of Multiplex that leaped to exactly that moronic conclusion. Guess what? There are women out there who don’t like action movies. They exist by the thousands.

But that’s really what most white, straight, male cartoonists are afraid of: “If I have a black/gay/woman character and they do ANYTHING, people are going to assume I’m trying to Say Something and somebody’s going to get offended.” Oh no!

It’s just cowardice, and it just perpetuates the lily-white state of comics. I don’t think having token minority characters or cool-chick characters (hot girls who are just one of the geeks!) cuts it, either.

JF: Your characters often have a surprise twist to their “first glance” identities—the resident goth turns out to be a serious Christian, the “dumb guy” has been playing dumb to con the theater, the skeezy pervert discovers that he’s gay. Given your fondness for pitching change-ups like that, is it ever tough to keep it from getting gimmicky?

GM: Angie being a Christian was not a twist! I put a cross on her in her very first appearance specifically because I wanted her to be a Christian, even though I never had any plans to use her beyond that first appearance (in #40). And making it an important part of her life was to counter the fact that the only other vocal Christian in the cast was Sunny – the dumb blonde girl.

I say "vocal," because America is something like 60 or 70% Christian, so to me it just stands to reason that about that many people on the staff are Christian as well. Just because none of the other characters in the strip have talked about it doesn't mean they aren't religious.

Anyway — back to the point — as for the other two examples you mentioned, those were really jokes not twists — albeit complicated jokes that were set up and played out over the course of several months. As long as I think they're funny, I don't worry about things like that seeming like a gimmick.

Generally speaking, the characters are not fundamentally different before and after their big reveal: Chase was and is the guy who tries too hard. Brian is still stupid, but differently stupid.

JF: Yeah, I guess by “twist” I just meant “surprise.” Not very precise of me! Still, I was plenty surprised by Angie’s disclosure. You really couldn’t expect people to infer that her cross is more than your standard Goth accoutrement. ;)

GM: You’re right — but I don’t see why people should assume that it’s only your standard Goth accoutrement, either.

JF: Fair enough. Your comic also stands out because in a world of talking dinosaurs, improbable antics, and magic robots, it’s essentially 100% realistic—the sort of thing that might actually happen to you if you worked at a movie theater. What role do you think the impossible has in fiction?

GM: I do think that there is some absurdity in Multiplex; it’s maybe more 90% realistic than 100% realistic. But the reason for the amount of realism in the strip is that I’m talking about real movies and a real industry. Any serious commentary on that stuff is meaningless if I have a talking robot in the strip.

But I love random, impossible, absurd things. I’m just… well, honestly, my writing interests have always leaned towards the real. When stories have almost nothing to connect itself to reality, they’ve got to be beautifully rendered, or I tune out really quickly.

As for the impossible, I think it’s obviously used as escapism a lot, but in the right hands, the impossible can be used as sort of a fun-house mirror to look back at ourselves. It may be showing us a distorted image, but it’s still real; it’s still truth. There has to be some element of reality in a story or it cannot have any real meaning.

Not that stories need to “mean” something; action movies often have absolutely no purpose other than to entertain, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But, you know, too much junk food rots your teeth. Too much junk storytelling rots your brain.

JF: Amen to that. Why don’t you leave us with a recommendation? A webcomic that’s both fantastic and says something substantial. Or, barring that, I’m sure we’d appreciate anything that’s just good storytelling… ::grin::

GM: Well, it’s not running anymore, but I think Minus managed to turn out a few soul-wrenching strips in-between its tales of an omnipotent little girl. The three-parter beginning here — http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus25.html — has really stuck with me.

I can’t just recommend one webcomic, though! I love Octopus Pie. That seems to be everybody and their mother’s favorite recent webcomic. I also love Diesel Sweeties, Girls With Slingshots, Voids… Theater Hopper and Joe Loves Crappy Movies, of course. I miss Perry Bible Fellowship and Beaver & Steve (which is on hiatus). Ummm… I dunno.

Outside of webcomics, I’ve recently gotten into The Wire, and although I’ve only seen the first season so far, it’s absolutely brilliant. Some of the tightest, best writing I’ve ever seen. Mad Men is also pretty amazing.

JF: Good comics, all of those. Though I certainly don’t keep up with Octopus Pie like I should. Thanks for the interview, Gordon!