Steve Emond’s webcomic Steverino follows the relationship woes of the title character, a nerd with a romantic soul–maybe a little too romantic. Emond also draws the Slave Labor comic Emo Boy, a sendup of emo culture. He was kind enough to talk to me about the origins of Steverino, the Steverino movie, and BFFs.

Shaenon Garrity: What’s the origin of Steverino?

Steve Emond: “Steverino” was an evolution from a “Where’s Waldo”-themed book I had made during my senior year of high school. I used to draw these pictures of the school for my friend Bettina with all of our friends standing around doing things, and you’d have to find certain things. This led to me making really bad “Far Side” strips with the same group of friends, which led to a book of “Steverino” comic strips that I wanted to finish by graduation to give everyone so I’m not forgotten. I don’t ever want to be forgotten by anyone ever.

Over the summer, I kept drawing the cartoons, and my friend Mike had suggested I start a “fan club” and keep sending the issues out to everyone while they were at college. It became a neat little way of staying in touch with everyone. I did monthly 25-page books of these comic strips, and each month the art would improve, the jokes were stronger, and it felt more like a real comic strip. I started thinking about it as more of a real stab at syndication as opposed to a bunch of silly drawings for friends, and put more effort into building the world of “Steverino.” I kept doing it from 1997 right through about 2000, at which point I stopped doing a monthly book and started to do it as only an occasional submission. It was generally liked by syndicates, but no one was quite ready to bite. Despite the promise and the positive feedback, eventually I sold the idea of Emo Boy to SLG Publishing and abandoned the idea of “Steverino” to concentrate on that comic.
 
SG: How does “Steverino” relate to Emo Boy?

SE: Steverino and Emo Boy have a lot in common, and in some ways are exact opposites. Both of them are generally “loser” characters–they’re maligned, made fun of, abused, and generally scoffed at by society. The main difference between the two is that Steverino sees the glass as half full, and Emo Boy sees it as half empty. Steverino always has a smile on his face and never stops trying; he’s very optimistic and naive. Emo Boy is already crushed by the world and has little will to do anything at all. The tone of each project is very different as well. For the dark subject matter, “Steverino” is written very lightly and is intended to be a fun read. Emo Boy is a comedy also, but it’s far more subtle; even the crazy silly things are written as if they are very serious subjects. Some people find that a turn-off, but I think Emo Boy taking himself so seriously is what makes it funny. Movies like Wes Anderson’s films and Little Miss Sunshine make great use out of making comedy out of very dry straight-forward writing.
 
SG: How did the Steverino movie happen?

SE: Ha ha…well, that sounds more “official” than what we did…What happened was in 1998, my friend Mike (the same one who suggested the fan club idea) was off at film school, and I proposed the idea of doing a small movie based on the comic strip. He was into it, and that spring my friend Taryn and I wrote a screenplay that was too long and complicated to actually film. We took what we could actually film of it, and Mike improvised some of the weirder material, and we filmed it over the summer. Mike took it back up to school and edited it over the fall and by winter we had our movie, “Sweet Nothings.” Not to say anything every actually happened with it, but it was a cute film and really captured that era for me, at least. It’s especially touching for me as Taryn died the following year, and to have written that with her and have her in so much of the movie makes it really special to me.
 
SG: Why did you decide to start drawing “Steverino” again?

SE: A few reasons. For one, I was putting together a three-book collection of the entire “Steverino” run, and adding commentary and looking through sketchbooks, and re-reading old newspaper articles, and I guess I felt nostalgic for the characters (that I hadn’t drawn in a few years). I almost wanted to pick up right where I left off after that initial run, before I got too bogged down with trying to please syndicates. I wanted to put the skills that I’d acquired since then with the fun I had just doing comics about my friends, even though most of them I hadn’t seen in a long time. Back in August I got back in touch with Cori, who had always been Steverino’s dream girl. We were never as close as depicted in the comic strip, but when we started hanging out again back in the summer, we bonded very quickly and became great friends, and dare I say, BFFs. I think that made me want to go back to doing the comics as well. That, and I wanted to send out another syndicate submission as it had been a few years since I’d tried at all.
 
SG: You also run “Steverino” on MySpace and LiveJournal.  Does being on the blogosphere have an effect on the strip?

SE: That would imply I have any marketing sense at all…sadly, the only way I really know of to let people know this comic exists is by constantly reminding them. Luckily I have a few friends and fans of Emo Boy a bulletin post or LiveJournal entry away and can remind them when a new “Steverino” is up.
 
SG: How do you ink and color the strip?

SE: I keep a “print-ready” version of the strip for any print endeavours, but publishing the comic on the internet lets me really play with the look of it. The first dozen strips or so, I inked and then scanned into photoshop in black and white. Then I would print out the cartoon, paint with watercolors onto a seperate piece of paper, and then piece the two images together in photoshop. A few storylines in, I started to scan the inks in grayscale, so you can see where the ink gets darker and lighter. I think it gives the whole strip a looser, more artsy feel. While the painting is intentionally loose and sloppy, the drawings under them are actually very tight.
 
SG: What’s coming up in 2007 for “Steverino”?

SE: No huge plans just yet. At some point I’ll try to introduce some more long-term storylines, but for now I just want to introduce the characters and get everyone nice and familiar with them.
 
SG: Any final thoughts?

SE: I think my final thought will be “Please let there be more, I don’t want to rot in the ground forever!” But those are the bad thoughts. We don’t think about those.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Modern Tales News. 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.