The Fabler

When sometime-superheroes evolve into somewhat autobiographical sketches…

When the combined comics of one creative Calgarian threaten to overwhelm the humble corner of the interweb that they occupy…

One name resounds clearly amidst the din. (the din?)

Damian Willcox is… dorkboy.

(cue theatrical John Williams knockoff score)

Damian Willcox has been making comics for over fifteen years, an impressive span by any standard.

‘dorkboy‘ represents his fictional alter-ego , a superhero in a world similar – but substantially more ridiculous – than our own. Over the years, dorkboy evolved into ‘dorkboy comics‘, a banner under which Willcox has created a number of totally different comic strips, each featuring their own unique artistic approach and distinctive tone.

One of those comic titles is ‘skully.‘, which features the curiously human encounters of an unassuming, well dressed spectre of death. Another is ‘workin’ jones‘, a much more realistically drawn portrayal of an average person in his everyday interactions with the people around him.

‘sketchbook comics‘ is yet another example of the diverse interests which appeal to Willcox’s creative side. sketchbook comics is the most overtly autobiographical of his creative corral, featuring a super-cartoony version of Willcox in short vignettes taken from his everyday life. The art is, as you might guess, very loose and sketch-like.

You’re probably getting the point by now that Damian Willcox is hard to nail down in a particular artistic niche. Which is for the best, really.

dorkboy comics, which originated as self-published minicomics before Damian moved the majority of his work online, is all about variety.

In an attempt to make sense of the creative cornucopia that is Damian Willcox’s comic book canon, I tracked him down for an interview.

The interview went as follows: (rest assured, dear reader – there’s very little alliteration in the actual interview)

KD: How did dorkboy comics start?

DW: Oh boy. I made the first one in 1995. When I was in college a friend of mine was in the printing program at SAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology). He was doing a zine kind of thing, and he had one last page to fill so I ended up drawing a comic for that out of the blue.

Probably a year or two after that, I decided to make a minicomic as a christmas card from my friends and family. That would’ve been the first official 11×17, folded dorkboy comic.

People liked it, and I had fun making it – so it just kept going from there.

KD: Fifteen years is a long time to be involved with one comic concept. Does it feel like it’s been that long to you?

DW: No, it’s weird – it’s actually gone really quickly. The thing is, as I’ve gone along I’ve just started up a new comic whenever I felt like doing something different.

When you’re doing comics, you can change the presentation and you can change the content so much that you can create totally different story experiences.

There are certain stories I could only do with one of my comic titles that just wouldn’t work with any of the others.

KD: What methods or programs do you use to create the strips?

DW: Right now, I lean more towards digital methods. A big reason for that transition from pen and ink was that I was getting tendinitis.

I’ve tried a bunch of different programs, but the main two that I’ve settled on are Adobe Illustrator and Manga Studio. Using the second one, I’ve been able to reproduce the linework very closely to when I used to draw in pen and ink.

KD: On the topic of drawing digitally, I know you like to experiment with a lot of different mediums. Lately, what have been your favorite platforms or programs to play around with?

DW: (laughs) I’ve been doing comics on my iPod Touch, using SketchBook mobile. I’ve actually made six or so comics on that tiny little screen.

KD: How much of your time does dorkboy comics take up these days?

DW: Usually, the comics take up about ten to fifteen hours of my time per week. I can stay regular so long as I’m not too busy with work – during a busy period, it gets pretty hard to free up fifteen hours out of nowhere.

KD: What does your dayjob entail, exactly?

DW: I do product design for software. I don’t do any of the programming or anything, but I basically design how the program should work for average people to be able to understand it.

KD: Your collection of work tends to venture all over the place, and it becomes sort of hard to readily define. What do you tell people when they ask you about what dorkboy comics is?

DW: I try and break it down into the different titles. There’s no real way to summarize them otherwise – I mean, most of them tend to be more of the humor category, but then you have ‘workin’ jones’, which is much more serious.

KD: How did your approach to making comics change when you shifted from print to almost exclusively digital?

DW: With print comics, I would end up spending more time on the business side, on running around putting them together, and on distribution. Ultimately making comics is not something I want to be a job.  It’s something I enjoy doing, and once it becomes a job, it loses that portion of its appeal.

Anytime I’ve experimented with taking my comics in a direction where I could make money from them, like for a while there was interest in a tv series based on them, it just turns into an unenjoyable experience.

I just want people to read the comics and enjoy them really, and the nice thing about the web is I can do that without a lot of financial risk or commitment.

KD: What would you say is one important thing for an aspiring comic creator to know in the current state of the industry?

DW: I would say to have realistic expectations, and be realistic about where they’re starting. A lot of people might decide, “Hey, I’m going to do a daily webcomic” and then a month into it when they don’t have a million followers, be discouraged. The workload for that could get pretty huge, and it can seem daunting when you’re not getting the reception you hoped for.

The most important thing is just to make comics for the sake of making them, and get better in the process of doing that.

KD: Do you have anything else in the works that you might like to share?

DW: At this point I feel like everything’s been pretty much transparent in terms of what I’m working on. I pretty much post everything (laughs). If I do a crappy little sketch comic, it’ll either show up on the website or on Twitter.

I’d like to pull together my kernel corn and my workin’ jones stuff and maybe put together a couple of individual books. So that might work out in time for next year’s Calgary Expo.

For more from Damian Willcox, you can check out dorkboy comics, his blog, twitter feed, and the dorkboy comics Facebook page.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming