The Fallout Gang

Creator of AbstruseGoose a popular math and science web-comic

http://abstrusegoose.com/

I’ve been drawing comic strips in one form or another since I was about 7-ish years old.  In high school I was the newspaper cartoonist.  I even tricked the school into funding the publication of a mini-book of my cartoons.  When I was in college, I submitted several cartoons to the New Yorker magazine.  I hung all of my rejection letters on my dorm room wall (now I have a cartoon published in Newsweek magazine so SUCK IT, New Yorker!).  After college I sent samples of my cartoons to several syndicates but I didn’t get any nibbles, although I’m pretty sure that one of them stole my (non-copyrighted) character ideas and converted them into (what became) a very popular mainstream cartoon.  I’m not naming any names.

As with most web cartoonists, I just started posting comics online as a hobby.

I think I got most of my readers through Digg, reddit, and StumbleUpon.  Each of those three are good for giving your site large transient spikes in traffic, but I think they are more valuable for exposing your site to potential long-time readers.  They each have their own unique character so they’re good for bringing in a diverse set of readers.  I did not do any sort of mass emailing or anything like that.

I wish I had some useful advice for this.  I don’t.

There are several comics to which I am partial:

http://abstrusegoose.com/73
http://abstrusegoose.com/85
http://abstrusegoose.com/98
http://abstrusegoose.com/99
http://abstrusegoose.com/113
http://abstrusegoose.com/120
http://abstrusegoose.com/163
http://abstrusegoose.com/171
http://abstrusegoose.com/186
http://abstrusegoose.com/191
http://abstrusegoose.com/206
http://abstrusegoose.com/207
http://abstrusegoose.com/209
http://abstrusegoose.com/215
http://abstrusegoose.com/234

I particularly like these comics because they express thoughts that have been rattling around in my brain for quite some time and it was good to finally put them on paper.  I imagine that many other people have carried the same thoughts in one form or another and hopefully those comics struck a chord with them.

You can’t go wrong with a nice Samuel Adams Boston Lager.

6. Which of these three is your favorite (logos, pathos, ethos) for your characters to draw the audience in?

I do not “deliberately” employ any of those devices while making my comics.  However, now that you have asked that question, I have to admit that I probably (on a subconscious level) resort very often to something that resembles an appeal to pathos.  I don’t think that any of my comics are especially insightful in any way; many of the comics are about ideas or concepts (whether they are about math, science, relationships, or whatever) that cross people’s minds frequently but (perhaps) are not given much thought.  So when someone actually sees one of these concepts or ideas presented in the form of a comic, hopefully it will resonate as being (intellectually) aesthetically appealing and they will be able to identify with the comic personally.

parentheses overuse alert!!!

Nah.

Without question, my all-time favorite comic is Peanuts.  When I was a little kid, I was such an avid fan of the strip that I had an entire bookshelf devoted solely to Peanuts books (and then I discovered girls).  However, the appeal for me was never about humor.  I can’t remember a single time that I laughed at a single Peanuts comic strip.  The awesomeness of the comic was a bit more subtle.  In daily increments of four little panels, Charles Schultz was able to convey to us his vast imaginary universe of characters that were (in a sense) very real. Charlie Brown, in particular, was a manifestation of the “inner child’ that so many adults can access only with great difficulty.  He lived life with an innocence in the face of existential angst; dogged persistence in the face of failure.  He judged the world without malice.  He was contemplative and introspective without being introverted. The drawings were simple, yet the characters inhabiting the Peanuts universe were able to effectively communicate the all-too-real range of feelings of loneliness, isolation, and unrequited love as well as the warm fuzziness of friendship and the happiness of a warm puppy.  I believe that author David Machaelis described it very appropriately when he referred to them as “comic strip koans about the human condition”.

Favorite TV show – Star Trek:The Next Generation.
cuz it’s awesome.

I really wanted to do a comic that was more about the exposition than the rising action or climax.  I wish more movies and TV shows worked that way.  I want to see more stories that are simply about people without the artificially inserted improbable conflicts and the even more improbable nicely packaged resolution.  But as with almost all movies and TV shows, my comics more often than not seem to be focused on the denouement, i.e. the punchline.  Oh, well.

10. What do you think the future holds for web-comics? Iphone apps, more
interaction between client-server, etc.?

I’m not sure.  I do think that there is a lot of room to make webcomics more interactive.  In what form this will come about I have no idea.

Besides the stuff alluded to in the answer to question #2, I didn’t really do anything in particular to get noticed. I don’t have links on other sites to my work.  However, I have noticed that others have put links to my work on their sites but I would never ask someone to do so.

I’ve also noticed that a lot of popular web cartoonists out there maintain an active online presence through Facebook, Twitter, forums, etc.

Wait, I’m successful?  If this is what it’s like to be successful, then it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

You flatter me, kind reader.

13. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Do you make any money off your creations?

I never know how to answer these types of questions.  However, when I close my eyes and try really hard, I can see myself luxuriating on my own private beach island where the drinks are cold and the water is warm.  And the only way on or off the island is via my private jet which is equipped with state-of-the-art stealth capabilities and a particle beam death ray turret.  Well… you asked.

I am starting to make some money from my comics.

14. If you could be doing anything else what would it be?

I would like to obtain a pilot’s license and fly around the world (with my honey of course).  Sometimes I think I’d like to go to film school and start directing independent films.  Some day, I will have a large DIY laboratory in my basement where I will build intelligent robots programmed with quantum probabilistic neural networks.  Some day I would like to own a cat and build him/her a huge outdoor fort with long maze-like labyrinthine passageways for him/her to explore.  Cats love that sort of thing.  Sometimes I wish I had time to do some recreational video game programming.  If I ever get to the point where financial obligations are no longer a concern, I would probably spend a lot of time studying and trying to formulate a theory of everything (TOE).

Also, see the answer to question #13.

15. Any tips on how to pitch a comic/screenplay/idea to someone of influence?

You’re probably asking the wrong person.