Comics: Nintendo Super Squad, Poopdeck Swabbing, Psychic Meatloaf, Kill Murray
Age: 25
In what part of the world do you live: Denver, CO
Are you single/boyfriend/girlfriend/married: Single
Children: 0
Day job: OMC Support Specialist at Comcast Cable. Basically, I watch TV for eight hours a day.
Aren't you supposed to be in Kenya?
Yes but the lions were too fierce for my small town sensibilities.
Why the new username for Nintendo Super Squad?
For the joke of the cover page to work I needed a non-recognizable name. Plus “Cooltendo” is just a perfect handle. It's full of youthful innocence and reckless bravado. To me Cooltendo is that little nephew who won't stop talking to you about his Pokemons. He's the kid who loves everything Nintendo but doesn't know how to relate his passion to the real world. At least, that was the character I was shooting for in the early pages.
So should we expect any new pages of Poopdeck Swabbing, or have you moved past that comic now?
I sometimes moonlight with the idea of making more Poopdecks but I really don't have the energy to do two comics at once and I am dedicated to Super Squad. Maybe someday I'll come back to Swabby and Co but I really don't see it happening in the near future. Poopdeck was really fun and I enjoyed working on it a lot but it was also very much an experiment with making comics. Each Poopdeck took about four hours to complete while I can bust out a Super Squad in about an hour. Poopdeck was about creating a nice page while Super Squad is about not worrying about the art and just making a fun strip.
How did you get into comics? What do you like about doing them?
Comics have been a passion of mine my whole life. As a kid I would pour over the comic pages in the newspaper eating up Calvin and Hobbes, the Far Side, Garfield, and Peanuts. These days newspaper comics seem really stagnant and stale. Web comics is definitely where it's at. I've been drawing my whole life too. I had done a few strips before I found DrunkDuck but nothing at great length. It wasn't until I found this wonderful site with it's free hosting and easy uploading that I was inspired to draw a comic “for reals.” I sketched up a thing featuring a narwhale and MegaMan and Poopdeck Swabbing was born.
I love making comics because I'm very much a visual person and comics let me tell a story using images. It's the most pure expression I've found of taking what's in my head and conveying it into the world. I'm also very much an idea man. I've come up with thousands of ideas for stories, characters, and settings but these are just base ideas rather than full fledged narratives. Comics (at least in the way I use them) give me a type of shorthand that lets me present an idea rather than tell a full story. Essentially comics are a way for me to express myself without getting bogged down in the mechanics of telling a story, if that makes any sense.
What are some of your comic, art, or media influences?
I think the obvious choice is K.C. Green. I stumbled upon Droop a few years back and was amazed at how free and expressionistic it was. K.C. taught me that “bad art” can be good art. Before I discovered K.C. I would often get frustrated at my own drawings and little imperfections. Now I don't worry about them and just let the art be organic and fun. Another huge influence is John Kricfalusi, the creator of Ren and Stimpy. The show itself was a big influence on my sense of humor as a kid but also John K's theories have bored their way into my mind. He talks a lot about how facial expressions are more than just happy, sad, etc. There is a much wider range of emotions and humor that can be conveyed from expressions that can't easily be defined. This is one aspect that I think really stands out in Super Squad. I spend most of my drawing time working on expressions.
How do you like to work?
While working on other projects. Metz gets frustrated sometimes because when I should be working on one of our many secret projects I'm drawing a Super Squad. I also tend to use up my breaks at work drawing. I really don't have a set time or place to draw. I just get it done whenever I can. The beauty of Super Squad is I can just bust one out whenever I get the opportunity. Not worrying about the quality of the art or writing really gives one a lot of freedom.
What's the biggest criticism you get?
Some people still haven't caught on to the whole joke. Just yesterday I got a comment about how I was stealing these comics. I wouldn't say that's a “criticism” though, just people who are looking at things a little too literally. I know some people hate the comic. They don't find it funny at all or they feel the jokes aren't clever. Perhaps my range of appeal is too narrow. I know people get upset when they miss a reference. When I did the Gyromite and StarTropic strips there was a lot of confusion and not a lot of laughs. I hadn't realized these games were so obscure or that people who be so angry when the comic went over their head. People also got really mad when Mario and Metroid went off on their honeymoon. People said that the comic was moving along at a good pace and all of a sudden Mario's gone astray and Luigi rescued the Princess. It was always my intention to undermine people's expectations with the plot and have it get all twisty. Readers didn't appreciate it though.
Any advice for beginners?
I'll give you the same advice that I give everyone who tells me they wish they could draw, and it's the same advice I got as a kid from Mark Kistler: “Draw, draw, draw! Everyday!” It doesn't matter what you're drawing or how good it is or anything. As long as you do it everyday you will improve. If you want to make comics work on it everyday and it will happen.
It looks like you were a Nintendo kid growing up. Is that the case? What are your feelings on Sega?
When I was in third or fourth grade my parents got me a NES along with MegaMan II and I fell in love. I didn't own many games but I did have a subscription to Nintendo Power. I devoured that magazine like my life depended on it. I would study maps of games I would never play, learn all the cheat codes I could, and studied those old Mario and Zelda comics for depth and meaning. A year or so ago I found a flash game where you were presented with a screen shot of an NES game and you had to write in what game it was. I answered all 25 questions right and thought it was a pretty easy quiz. But then I posted it on some forums and no one else could get a perfect score. It was then that I realized that perhaps I know a little too much about this subject. I focused those anxieties into a comic and now we have Nintendo Super Squad.
I always thought Sega kids were confused. I mean Nintendo had such a larger library of games and more enduring characters. Then I played Sonic 2 and boy I was envious.
Do you have a rough estimate of the number of Nintendo game references you've done so far in NSS?
Heck, I don't know. One thousand million? Six? Some of them are very obscure. Like in comic number 20, panel 3 I actually played Mario 3 to World 4-1 so I could draw the level as it actually is and I don't think anyone got it.
Do you plan NSS very far ahead or is it all made up as you go?
I have a general idea where it's going to go a few strips ahead. But it's all very vague. I don't cement anything until it's actually on the page. Some things I've had in mind for a long time though. Like I knew that there was going to be the Four Sword and twelve Links for months now. And I've spent the past five weeks or some coming up with the other Links designs. However it wasn't until I drew Kirby jumping into Luigi's mouth that I knew where that strip was going and now I have this totally new sideplot.
Do you have any plans for future projects?
I would love to do a Mega Man comic in the same vein as Super Squad but I don't know if I want to focus on copyrighted characters past this comic. It's really confining. I'm also working to create an animated series, I have a comic that I've been designing for the past four years called Scumby and the Time Pirates that I want to have ready for the Comic Book Challenge next year, and there's that secret project with Metz. I guess here's a good a place as any to plug the movie I spent all of last year editing and creating effects for. It's called The Nerd Trilogy. It's a hilarious take on nerd pop culture. Star Wars, X-men and such. It's only ten bucks and you can get it at nerdtrilogy.com I recommend that everyone check it out. It is really great.
Thanks, Loki. I'd like to talk to some of the Nintendo Super Squad members now if that's all right. (If some of the pictures seem too small, right-click on them and choose ‘view image’- they've been shrunk by the browser to fit into the column.)
Mario, how did the Nintendo Super Squad form?
Do you ever think of using the Squad for selfish reasons like revenge or coin-gathering?
Who is your least favourite team member, and why?
Who would you want to join the squad, if you could pick anyone?
Does it feel like this mission has taken over your life?
Thanks Mario. Is Link there? Any of them will do. . .
Link, why do all the girls you meet on your adventures end up being dreams, or clones of yourself, or condemned to a lifetime of slavery as sages?
Does it bother you that Mario tends to call you Luigi?
As the first person to be cloned, what's it like?
If the three of you were in a fight, who would win?
If you're on a mission to rescue Princess Peach, why didn't you rescue her at Mario's wedding (which she attended)?
Speaking of Peach, I have a few questions for her too. And Kirby, if he's around.
Peach, were you surprised about Mario's wedding?
Tell us a bit about Bowser.
Kirby, what's your dream vacation?
Given your obsession with eating things to gain their power, what does it feel like to be eaten yourself?
Thank you, Nintendo Super Squad, and thank you Loki! I have to say you have really outdone yourself. :)
