Kevin Moore’s weekly comic Sheldon the Pig just got a new title, Wanderlost, chosen in a reader contest. There are other changes in store, as Wanderlost starts a new storyline and the normally silent pig protagonist suffers the fallout of having just spoken his first word. Kevin was kind enough to talk with me about his lifelong passion for comics and his plans for Wanderlost.

Shaenon Garrity: When did you start drawing comics?

Kevin Moore: Way back when the word “groovy” was said without irony. I was about 4 years old. My single mom and I were living on Rodney Street in Buffalo, NY a neighborhood of white college students and working class black families. A slightly older kid next door, Kelly, and I were hanging on the front stoop, looking at comic books (some DC horror titles my mom’s friend gave me) and he showed me how to draw a fist with the “POW” sound effect and an impact symbol surrounding it. I was hooked. Afterwards my friend Tom and I would get together and create comics starring ourselves in James Bond style adventures. I remember drawing myself flying a motorboat off a ramp over a shark. So more like James Bond meets the Fonz.

From there I read anything that had cartoons: the newspaper comics pages, comic books, and eventually political and editorial cartoons as I grew older. Doonesbury, Bloom County, and political cartoonist (and Buffalo native) Tom Toles were huge influences. I think Peanuts goes without saying. As a teen I obsessed over Howard the Duck and Phil Folio’s Myth Adventures, then as a college student Hate, Eightball, Yummy Fur, Crumb, Hunt Emerson and Joe Sacco, who inspired me to move to Portland. As a result, my cartoons became more political, satirical, scatalogical, angry and snarky.

SG: What made you decide to start doing comics on the Web?

KM: Back in 1999 I started posting some political cartoons to a free site that was awful, so I soon bought my own space and URL, and began posting what eventually became In Contempt. For a couple years these strips had run in a local weekly, and my original plan was to promote my work and build an audience while I sought paying gigs through alternative weekly papers and lefty magazines. What I soon discovered was that I could build a pretty large audience while keeping a regular schedule and blogging about issues that concerned me; people were far more responsive than editors. I made very little money, but gained a lot of respect and praise from cartoonists whose work I admired.

My approach to Sheldon was much different. I began Sheldon mostly as a way of exercising artistic and storytelling muscles atrophied as I did my political work. The original web site was simply a space for me to post work I had done and to share with my friends. As it went along, Jenn Manley Lee, whose Dicebox had been on Girlamatic, and her husband Kip Manley encouraged me to approach Modern Tales. Once I did that, I got much more serious. I should note also that Chris Baldwin’s success and experimentations were inspirational.

And then both Sheldon and In Contempt were disrupted by graduate school. Fortunately that’s over, so I have been returned to both with a kind of desperate vengeance. I went a year without cartooning at all, which was actually painful. I started up again in summer 2006 and steadily increased my productivity. Now I am pretty reliable, despite occasional hiccups that seem to affect everyone in webcomics. Life happens.

SG: Your work has a traditional Sunday-comics feel, or like the classic Disney comics. What are some of your artistic and cartooning influences?

KM: Hey, thanks! I love the old Carl Barks Scrooge stories, and I’d give my left nut to ink like Walt Kelly. Part of what originally inspired Sheldon was my picking up an anthology of Krazy Kat cartoons. I had always loved the strip, but re-reading them re-ignited the creativity that I felt I had let languish while working so long on underground and political cartoons. Granted, I love underground and political stuff, too, and they have their own creative possibilities.

But [George] Herriman’s work is truly liberating, because it forces you to think in more formalistic ways about composition and language–all while keeping true to the core story: cat loves mouse, mouse hates cat, hits cat with brick, dog loves cat and jails mouse. With Sheldon I wanted to create a similar core story that I could elaborate upon; in this case: pig hates farm, pig leaves farm, goes on adventures, winds up through misadventure back on the farm. As if some invisible bungee cord was snapping him back.

As I was working Sheldon out, the Barks influence–as well as the Bone, Asterix, Tintin influences–began to take hold. One thing I had felt missing from comics, especially from the newspaper these days, were adventure strips. Manga’s popularity with children and teens today derives from their love of cartoony adventure stories–something that mainstream superhero comics had abandoned in favor more “realistic” themes, not to mention crazy cross-overs, movie tie-ins, and tangled plots no one could follow anymore. Fortunately that trend seems to be changing, if Bruce Timm and some of the recent work by Colleen Coover are any indication.

SG: You recently changed the title of your comic from Sheldon to Wanderlost. Why the name change?

KM: One reason is practical and the other is creative. Practically speaking, I don’t think my series can make its mark in kid-friendly webcomics when another great and wonderful series named Sheldon (by the funny and talented Dave Kellett) is getting all of the attention it richly deserves. I am laying on plaudits because Dave deserves them and I don’t want anyone to think I’m envious. It’s just recognizing reality.

Creatively, I have wanted to open up the series to explore adventures with other characters, especially Chloe and her completely nutty inventor father, Mr. Guzek. I thought a different title would allow for shifts in focus from one character to the other. I came up with a bunch of title ideas, couldn’t decide and appealed to Sheldon fans for feedback. That led to a lot of great suggestions, but I’m really wishy-washy on things like this, so I thought a contest would help out. The response was…underwhelming. Only 16 people–out of the some 700-900 people I see in the stats every week–and most of them were friends and family. My wife offered the chilling thought that maybe most readers didn’t want me to change the title anyway. Oh, the irony.

But I’m glad I did it and I’m happy with the result. “Wanderlost” is great because it captures the contradictory spirit of the strip by alluding to Tolkein’s bumper sticker aphorism (”Not all who wander are lost”) while recognizing that they often do indeed get lost.

SG: What other suggestions did you get for the new title?

KM: The other choices in the survey were: Bound for Nowhere, Greener Pastures, Off the Farm, Swellington, Warren Peace and Wayward Bound.

But the suggestions were much wilder: Hoof-Loose (implying a pun with Kevin Bacon), Fatback Farm, Gang Green, Curly Tales, Folderol Farm, Wee Piggy, Blowin’ in the Wind, Pig Tales, Iglatinpay (which cracked me up) and Fun With Bacon.

Chris Baldwin made several sarcastic suggestions, my favorite being “Neurotic Livestock.”

SG: Until the end of the last storyline, Sheldon only “spoke” in symbols. What made you decide to let him start talking?

KM: Originally I had conceived of Sheldon’s symbol-oriented speech as a means of imposing some formal limitations on me. I thought it would force me to seek more creative ways of character intercommunication and of telling a story without relying upon exposition. It quickly became a way to distinguish Sheldon from the other characters, part of his charm, and a source of difficulty in relating to his world and to his environment. He gets along best with characters like the Warren Peace bunnies who can speak his symbolic language. Chloe understands him, but the adults simply don’t get it. From my own experience, I think this is something kids could related to, the frustration of trying to communicate with their parents and elders.

However, I felt that at some point he should grow out of this “speech impediment.” I didn’t want to trap him in a life of total alienation from his surroundings. The trick is how to make a change that was consistent with his previous mode of communication, yet didn’t want to force it unnaturally. It had to arise from a real need. His decision to use words at the end of “Grounded” is a conscious choice he has made in an attempt to communicate his apology, his sense of contrition to his mother.

The current story explores his “condition” through a trip to a psychiatrist. Which sounds more dour than it really is. I have satirical instincts, and a lot of personal experience with shrinks as a kid and as a parent, so the humor will get a little dark, but I think it’ll be funny.

SG: In addition to Sheldon, you draw a political cartoon, In Contempt. What’s the appeal of political cartooning?

KM: Right now I’m so angry I could plotz. Political cartooning is my way of venting. A good example is the strip from 10/18/07. I had taken on some extra shifts from work, so I didn’t think I could post an update at all for either Tuesday or Thursday that week. In fact I missed Tuesday, despite a strip I had been working on. Then I read the morning’s news that the Democrats were caving in on the warrantless wiretapping legislation pushed for by the Bush Administration. Steam tooted from my ears and I found time to finish the strip and post it. I really had to get that off my chest.

By the way, Sheldon (now Wanderlost) owes some of its origin to In Contempt. In 2002 I had been producing some of my best but also some of my angriest political work following September 11th and the rise of the so-called “War on Terror.” It was really emotionally draining. Sheldon grew out of a psychological need to reconnect with something a bit more light-hearted and innocent. “Sweetness and light” was a phrase that I repeated to myself, partly because it is so easy for me to go the other direction and indulge my love of rude, crude and lewd humor. At this point I feel doing both Wanderlost and In Contempt provides me a creative balance by allowing me to pursue different tacks.

SG: What can we expect in Wanderlost in the coming weeks?

KM: In the short term, the current story line, “Tongue-Tied,” addresses Sheldon’s speech therapy, his mother’s frustrations with communicating with him and his own resistance to his world. In the long term, readers can expect to see more of Chloe as a featured character, more of Mr. Guzek, and significant changes in Sheldon’s home life, especially the relationship between his parents.

All of which sounds much more serious than I will treat it. I really like finding humor in difficult situations, interpersonal conflict, psychological trouble and social frictions. It’s kind of purgative.

SG: Any final words?

I’m really happy to be a part of the Modern Tales webcomics family–which sounds really corporate to say, but I mean it. There are so many fantastic cartoonists at MT, WebComicsNation, Graphic Smash, Serializer and Girlamatic.

The comics medium in general is already experiencing interesting changes thanks to the creative freedom supported by the Internet. I have no idea where any of it is going. I’m carving out a humble niche among thousands of niches, and I really have no expectation of lucrative remuneration. Achewood and PVP aside, I don’t see too many other business models for webcomics that make sense or really work–although if anyone will come up with it, Joey Manley is most likely it. I have a professional life as a librarian, so there is something really liberating about not worrying about how the art is gonna pay for itself; I’m more worried about how the art is going to justify its existence as art. So, er…no sweat?

Read Wanderlost now!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 1:08 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.