William Terrell: How did you get started in mini comics? How did you make the jump to mini-comics from full sized work?

Matt Feazell: There was a year when I made a jump to regular sized comics

WT: I've seen Antboy and I've heard about Zot, but I've never seen it myself...

MF: Oh really? Eclipse also put out a full size Cynical man comic back in 1987...Zot 14 1/2 was out of that.

WT: Did you ever want to do full sized comic book work over the mini-comics?

MF: Yeah, I used to really want to do a full size comic, be distributed by Diamond, be rich and famous and be pretty much like Dave Sim, only nice. But really, once I got into the stick figure genre, I realized I was having all the fun in the world and that's what I was really good at. It took years and years to really sink in, but I've found my niche with the stick figure comics and I would be an idiot not to pursue it. I once put up a comic book to a mini-comic and the work in the mini-comic format looked so much better than in the comic book format. In full size it looks watered down, it looks like someone trying to draw a comic book. In the mini form, it looks sharp, focused, and 100% real.

WT: Speaking of that, I have noticed that the mini work in the last few years has started to look "cleaner" and "sharper". Is a result of a certain way you are working or just honing your craft in mini-comics over the years?

MF: Yeah...its kind of like the same thing as putting on a tie to go to a job interview. Once I know people are going to read this, especially now that a newspaper editor is going to pay me for people to read it, I want to be careful to, um...not let it all hang out. (laughs) I do get uptight when I know people are going to read it and I especially get uptight when I know people are going to pay me for it. So, its a constant struggle not to over-render stuff.

WT: Sure...I've seen the two version of Little Teeny Tiny Comics. I remember seeing the original "sketch" version of it and then the clean, sharp version in a recent collection.

MF: Yeah, yeah, that's a really good example.

WT: Now, I've also noticed that you have switched to a horizontal format versus the old vertical, traditional comic book shape that you used to draw in.

MF: Yeah, it fits better in the newspaper. The books aren't like 100% mini-comics anymore, its a mini-comic collection of newspaper strips.

WT: Do you foresee collecting these in a form like your previous collection, ERT!

MF: Yeah, in a couple more years so that I can work up to 96 pages...maybe in two years or so.

WT: Now, going back to the weekly Cynicalman strip, how long have you been doing that?

MF: It started weekly in November of 1999 in the Detroit Metro Times. Before that, it ran for about two years monthly in Orbit Magazine. Now it has really clicked. You know, I've been trying to do a newspaper strip for decades, like since almost the very beginning. I thought newspapers would be a good thing to get into with this cartoon style, but I could never make it work for some reason. It wasn't until those ORBIT strips, the sideways format, the 8-panel grid, that it finally clicked for me somehow. Now I really like the work and what I'm doing there.

WT: I've seen you list Peanuts and Dennis the Menace as influences before...did they help push you in the direction of the daily strip versus a full sized comic book story?

MF: I think my very first amateur comic were newspaper style strips that were four panels and really dumb gag cartoons. I swiped a few rifts from Peanuts, there was...I think I swiped a kite-eating tree. But it wasn't too long after I started doing that that I started reading Marvel comics and that is what made me really want to draw. I started practicing drawing muscle guys and I thought stick figures were just for fun. I was really going to be a muscle man comic book artist.

WT: Weren't we all. (laughs) Now, I've also been looking back at some old Peanuts strips recently, as many have been, and I never really appreciated the work until I saw some of the old stuff. They seemed so much more involved and a lot fresher than the last few years he was doing them.

MF: Yeah, they had real characters in them. They also had a touch of surrealism that probably most comics don't have...except a few like Calvin and Hobbes. Well...actually, maybe all comics are surreal. (laughs) Dennis the Menace was great. I started to get in to Hank Ketchum art as I was tapering off comic books. Just as I was beginning to draw stick figure comics and had come to the realization that I wasn't having any fun drawing comics and all I was doing was making portfolio pieces, I came across a bunch of Hank Ketchum paperbacks with Dennis the Menace cartoons in them. The artwork looked great! Every panel was like a painting...it was really amazing.

WT: I've never been able to see much of the Denise the Menace stuff myself.

MF: You can find the paperbacks in every quarter bin...I think the strip is still coming out, but its not being drawn by Ketchum anymore. The paperbacks from the seventies I like best.

WT: Now, shifting gears a little, the first work of yours that I read was The Death of Anti-Socialman which is a collaboration. How has working with someone else worked out for you?

MF: Well I really like working with Walt. He comes up with a lot of good ideas and gives me some challenging things to draw that I would never think of drawing. (pause) The characters he comes up with have girlfriends and mine never do...so he has a real flair for interesting characters and relationships in his writing and he never complains when I change the ending which I do all the time. (laughs)

WT: The story is to be 12 chapters long and you are up to part 11 currently. When this is finished, do you foresee doing more collaborations?

MF: Yeah. The original idea was to do a Stupid Boy mini-graphic novel, and then a Cynicalman one, but I don't think I'll live that long at this rate.

WT: You have quite a cast of characters now with Stupid Boy, Cynicalman, Cutegirl and the whole bunch.

MF: A new one just came out recently called Nerdy Girl in my Valentine's day strip.

WT: Are these strips available on the web at all?

MF: Only when I get around to coloring it and posting it on my personal website. However, WorldFamousComics.com is publishing my ERT! Paperback, reprinting the paperback one strip a week. I gave them the book at the end of last year and it started around January.

WT: Now, you've always sold your mini-comics at the cons and meet a lot of people that way. Do you end up hearing back from the people that buy some books or is more of a curiosity to most?

MF: Its probably more of a curiosity, but I do hear from people repeatedly over the years that I have met at comic book conventions, but I'd say the vast majority of people that see my work at a comic book convention pick it up out of curiosity. They probably won't get into mail ordering work, but will want to pick it up at the next convention.

WT: Sure...is there a way to make a living on mini-comics or is really something that has to be a labor of love?

MF: Well, I always work it out on my taxes and I use it as a business deduction and it always seems to work out even. It pays for the printing and the postage and most of the convention trips through the sale of min-comics and those related merchandise doo-dads that I make.

WT: Is the Cynicalman weekly gig the first time you've gotten to do a regular, weekly strip?

MF: No, the very first time was back in 1981 or 82. I did a weekly advertisement for a restaurant in Minneapolis called the New Riverside Cafe. Every week they had an ad in the student paper at the University of Michigan and it featured Cynicalman in a six-panel comic strip that always ended up with him going out to eat at the New Riverside Cafe.

WT: (laughs) That's great. Now, I've seen your personal website and you have been posting some of your work up with color added and the such. Do you see putting more of your work up online in the future?

MF: Well, I think it is always going to come out as a mini-comic. With the speed at which I do the strips for the web the work will probably come out as a mini comic first and then it will be published on the web. But it is possible I could put it up first and then come out with a mini-comic of it. I kind of see web publishing as hearing a 45 single played on the radio and then buying the mini-comic as getting the album.

WT: That is a great analogy. I was thinking that there are a lot of similarities with the web and mini-comics in terms of distribution and cost...

MF: There are a lot of similarities and I can real easily see mini-comics disappearing and this whole small press publishing thing just segueing into Internet publishing.

WT: I can definitely see it too. But I'm still attached to the actually having something and it feeling real in my hands.

MF: And is that just because we are old fashioned or is it real?

WT: We'll see in find out over the next twenty years, I guess. Now speaking of the web, you have also done some work with software. You have offered your website on a floppy and you made the Understanding Mini-Comics software. Do you see yourself doing more of that type of stuff?

MF: Now that was a lot of fun. I did Understanding Mini-Comics as a big HyperCard stack and I also did a Cynicalman game the same way. I also did Understanding Mini Comics as a Macromedia Director Project that had color and some more noise and music in it. The last thing I did was Stick Figure masterpieces.

WT: Well, since this isn't your day job, what is?

MF: Well, for the last two years I've been freelancing and getting the studio set up on third floor and making WebPages and junk mail for a client and newspaper ads for another guy and doing the comics. I was doing work for Orbit magazine, but it recently folded. As of today, I'm working as a desktop publisher making yellow pages ads for an advertising agency.

WT: Is this work that allows you to do the other work?

MF: Yeah, I see it as something that allows me to do all that other fun stuff. I think I like it a lot better than working at a bookstore or a record store which is what I did before I got these freelance jobs.

WT: Are you trying to get the Cynicalman weekly strip into other papers?

MF: Yeah, I just got picked up by a paper in Grand Rapids called The Paper.

WT: Thanks a lot for the interview and have a good night.

MF: You too.

Interview © 2000 William R. Terrell. CuteGirl and Cynicalman strips are © 2000 Matt Feazell.
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