Ominously enough I finished a page of about 10 of my first strips and put it online around 2a.m., September 11, 2001. So as you can imagine, six or seven hours later no one was going to read my comic strip because that was the day the World Trade Centers fell. It was a pretty inauspicious beginning.
About two or three weeks later, we published the site and I publicized it on The Comics Journal, went to different comics community message boards and took out an ad here and there. I didn't try very hard to publish it because I wasn't enthused about it at the time. At that point I wasn't trying to make a career of Achewood.
I started the comic online since there's no way to print unless you're picked up by somebody, and there's no way to be picked up by somebody if you've only got three comic strips in your portfolio. I kind of see the technology of print as an enormous and unfortunate barrier of entry to artists who would otherwise make great work. I wasn't making great work at first, but I was able to publish online because it was free and easy. Now I've been able to create stuff that people really like, whereas otherwise, I would have been discouraged and quit five years ago.
What I hope happens every day that I'm supposed to write a strip, is that when I'm out on a walk or driving, I'll see something that will trigger a funny phrase or image in my head so I can write down in my notebook when I get home. The best strips are really written in three minutes. If I can get it all to come together, I can make a great, funny one-off strip, but often times I'm embroiled in a longer story arc. I'll have to sit down and work on it for five or six hours, and that's basically laborious writing, which never finishes in time. I like the strips that happen the fastest, obviously, but it is a time commitment. For the 18 seconds it takes someone to read it, I've probably put nine hours into it, you know?
If I don't have any ideas for a strip, I'll tap around in Microsoft word for a while and cast around for old ideas I've jotted down. From there, once I've got about 90 per cent of a strip written, I'll go to Adobe Illustrator, which is the program I use to draw it and I'll block the action out frame by frame. I'll find character illustrations in other strips that mimic what I want, like gestures or outfits that I need, and copy those in and adjust them to fit the strip. That whole process takes another few hours. Then there are the bubbles and background shading.
The fact it takes so long is basically why I'm never ahead. Newspaper cartoonists are usually about a month ahead. The curse of publishing by yourself on the Internet is that you don't really have to do anything ahead of schedule, since there's no process involved. You just post the comic; there's no one else you have to go through. So I've never really been more than a day or two ahead of the strip.
I actually sort of prefer it this way because if I have a strip done several days in advance I'll go back and I'll start to pick at it. When I submit it to the Internet and people start talking about it and buying copies, I can't really change it so well then. In a way, it's a form of discipline to work on the fly as I do.
Some days I miss updates because I don't have anything good for you to read, and it's not like you're going to fire me; you'll just come back later. I hate seeing how disappointed people are when I don't update strips every day. I feel like I've let everyone down, but it's like 'I just don't have any juice for you...I had a kid yesterday!' But basically I can't always give you something that I want permanently in my archives, which is to say I just won't post anything unless it makes me laugh. In the end, every day that I'm better than Garfield is a win. Even if I create a strip that doesn't make you burst out laughing - even if you laugh twice a year at Achewood - I'm feel like I'm way ahead of the pack.
I think in Achewood you'll find the characters represent general personality archetypes fairly well. You could probably say the characters in Achewood are built around literally six people I know. There are a few characters, depressed, that started as someone I know, but as I began developing them and putting them in different situations, I realized they're just sort of the intelligent, depressed character sets and there are all kinds of people like them.
Don't ask me to pick favorites; it's impossible for me to pick favorites because I know them all so intimately. I enjoy writing Ray, Roast Beef and Teodor the most, because they're the largest aspects of my own personality. As far as the character's blogs are concerned, about once a month I'll go through different cycles where I'm kind of feeling in a character's voice. I never know when they'll strike. Over time, they've produced a good amount of content and I just think its fun. I mean, a writer should write in different voices, so if I'm going to do what I do, these blogs are a great way to practice.
The popularity of Achewood is mostly underground; it's not like we're U2 or anything. I've got a small readership, and here and there I find people with the same mindset. It's really not mass appealing; it's still basically undiscovered. People who like it consider it their own undiscovered thing, and that makes them feel cool about it. Basically I write something that I like to read and it looks like there are a good number of people who enjoy the same things as I do.
I'm not saying I don't see Achewood as a success, because of course I do. The interesting thing about the way the Internet has shaped up over the last two years or so is that I don't need to have - although I would like - an enormous Achewood collection in Barnes and Noble to be a success. On the Internet, I can monetize in so many different ways. We have a shop where you can buy books, t-shirts, accessories, paintings, on and on and on. There's close to 100 different items that we sell. I don't need to be as big as The Rolling Stones to make a living because ultimately I can support my family.
On the Internet, exposure is so much easier; I don't have to go through a record company and go through focus groups and things like that to be marketed. It's a lot easier to make a living this way - well, it's a lot easiser to make a living creatively than it used to be, which is fantastic.
Now, I'm not sure how this happened, but I've become friends with a lot of people in bands since I've started this comic strip, and musicians also really appreciate the power of distribution online. If there are two creative fields that have a hard time getting distribution, it's new music and new cartoonists. No one wants to sit through your spiel, listen to your demo, sign you or commit any money to you when you're unknown. But lots of bands these days have proven that they can build enormous fan bases online. The best example I have of this is a band I've known for a while called Freezepop, a synth-pop band out of Boston. They've stuck with it and tour and play gigs and they all make a living off the music they sell, on their own label, because of the power of the Internet.
As exposed as I am online, I've never gotten hate mail. The most negative things I see are actually from fans that go on message boards and write, "he's jumped the shark" or "he lost his touch" or "he hasn't been funny since he had the baby." But after a couple years, I let it roll off my back. At first you're like, 'Oh my God this person says I suck now...is there something wrong with me?' But then you have to realize the person posting those comments is just some 14-year-old kid in Akron who's off his medication. You have to have a thick skin to be in the public eye and now criticism is absolutely meaningless to me. Sure, I love to hear the nice stuff, but the bad stuff doesn't matter in the end.
My high school English teacher said this to me, and this is something I've taken consolation from: "If 100 people tell you something nice and one person tells you something awful, you're just going to remember the awful thing." That's very true; it's something you have to condition yourself for but once you do you can create in your own personal vacuum, because you're not bothered by all the tremendous feedback to your work.
People always want to know why they can't find pictures of me anywhere. I'm not freakish or anything; I look like a completely normal person you'd pass in the street. It's because from the beginning, I didn't want it to be about me or about me promoting myself. It was all about the comic strip. After a year or two I noticed the chatter of people wondering what I looked like, and I began to like that because it was like J.D. Salinger. He was a recluse and didn't want anyone to know about him. I also appreciate knowing that there's no one out there pasting moustaches on me or Photoshopping my face on a woman's body. I find it empowering to keep this privacy. I just want to be a private person and do what I do and put it up at night and go to bed.
I haven't "ended up" writing Achewood. I would certainly like to see myself branching out into other media with this particular project and also with other projects. Today I was working on a screenplay. You know, where Ray and Roast Beef went down and fought in the Great Outdoor Fight. We've got a couple studios interested in the script, so we're trying to finish that up and get it sold.
I would also love to write novels. Play music. I'd like to emulate P.G. Wodehouse, who is best known for Jeeves and Wooster but who also basically invented American musical theatre and did so much in the 94 years he was alive. I'm not just going to cartoon, I won't. I like to do too many other things.
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