The Fabler

Ryan Sohmer is a busy man.

I caught up with the writer behind Least I Could Do and Looking for Group at this year’s Calgary Comic Expo, which was his third consecutive convention in a one month period.  He was sick as a dog, draped shoulder-to-shoulder in a LFG blanket, and running roughly 30% on cold medication and 70% on Red Bull. (At least as far as I was able to gauge.)

Needless to say, Ryan Sohmer is also a very motivated individual.

He was at his booth alongside long-time collaborator (artist on LFG and LICD, pictured at right) Lar deSouza the entirety of the weekend, greeting fans, doing signings, and promoting his latest book, Least I Could Do: Noir et Blanc.

In between expos he has been working on keeping the content steady on his webcomics, trying to work the kinks out of production on the long-awaited Looking for Group Movie, and adjusting to the double-whammy of opening a comic shop and becoming a new Dad in the space of under six months.

Oh yeah, and he has a new book out (Looking for Group Vol. 3) this month, plus another five Convention appearances lined up over the rest of the summer.

As you might expect, the most predominant item on Ryan’s mind these days is fatherhood. It’s clear that just talking about the subject still feels somewhat surreal to him.

“I never wanted kids,” Ryan says, “It’s crazy to think of being a father now, because back then I honestly did not see myself ever wanting to have children.”

His son, Caden, was born just this past February. The phrase Ryan chose to describe the change in life perspective he’s felt since then?

“Holy shit!”

According to the (usually articulate) webcomic writer, one of the best parts of being a Dad is being able to enjoy everything again for the first time.

“Like stupid things even,” he says, “Going outside for the first time, seeing the ocean for the first time… Getting to experience all of those first times again through someone else is ridiculously rewarding.”

Ryan has often said that Rayne Summers, the womanizing protagonist of Least I Could Do, is loosely based on an earlier-in-life version of Sohmer himself. It makes sense to wonder if Rayne might one day follow in Ryan’s example and have a cartoon kid of his own.

“I could see Rayne being a father figure to a few people,” says Sohmer,  “but he will never have a child. It won’t work. I did a storyline a little while ago where Noel and his wife are trying to have a kid, so I’m going to use Noel to put my own experiences in there. There’s so much humor that happens when you have a kid, and I’d love to get that into the strip  – but doing it with Rayne would just be a cop-out.”

I mentioned that Ryan also recently opened his own comic shop. Sohmer is the owner of The 4th Wall, a Montreal-based comic shop that opened for business in October of last year.

“For the first two months,” he says, “I was in there every single day. I chose the inventory, and I did what was needed to get it all going.”

Being the ridiculously busy person that he is, Ryan hired Jeff Moss, a friend of his from Toronto, to come in and help manage the store.  Since Moss took over with most of the day-to-day business around the shop, Sohmer admits his in-store duties have somewhat dwindled.

“These days, I don’t do shit,” Ryan says with a laugh, “I pretty much just go in there on Wednesdays for new comic book day to read all the new titles. Jeff’s done a terrific job.”

When asked what the biggest challenge has been so far with owning his own comic book shop, Ryan has a one-word answer:

“Diamond.”

Referring of course to Diamond Comics Distribution, the primary (read: exclusive) distributor for comic book retailers, Sohmer has this to say:

“Any other business in the world, if you order something, you get it. If something has a ship date of X, you get it at X.  Not with Diamond. By the same token, I understand that it’s not always just Diamond – it’s often one of the publishers connected to Diamond being late with a shipment. But if Marvel or DC is late with a title and a fan comes in for that title, they’re not going to blame the unseen publisher or distributor, they’re going to be frustrated with their experience at the shop.”

Much love, Diamond Comics. Much love.

Despite the two new major additions to his life, Sohmer is still dedicated to keeping updates on Least I Could Do and Looking for Group regular and well-written.

Sohmer has been writing Least I Could Do for over seven years now, with Lar de Souza performing all artistic duties on the strip for the past five. The two have also worked together on Looking for Group, a fantasy-themed webcomic featuring the adventures of (among other things) a sadistic undead warlock and a naive elven hunter, since its inception in November of 2006.

“We’ve been doing this so long together that we each usually know what the other is thinking,” says Ryan of his working relationship with Lar, “When we first started it was: I would write a script, he would do a sketch for it and send it back to me, I would make my notes and sent it to him to make the changes… it would go back and forth like four or five times. Now, I send him a script, he sends me the finished version and it’s done. ”

We featured a profile on Lar here on the Fabler Blog just about a year ago where I asked Mr. deSouza to describe his relationship with Ryan Sohmer. His exact words were that it’s “kind of an internet romance”.

“He pretty much nailed it with that description,” says Ryan, “In any other world I would say that Lar and I wouldn’t be friends. We’re totally different people, with different backgrounds, different experiences and attitudes towards things… but for the last ten years, he’s been one of my closest friends. We’re kind of like the odd couple. I tell my wife all the time, ‘I love you baby, but Lar’s my soulmate.’”"

They certainly do work well together, as any fan of their webcomics could attest. So well, in fact, do the ideas of Sohmer mix with the artistic talents of deSouza that Lar offered to redraw the original 127 strips of Least I Could Do (originally done by Trevor Adams).

“When I was working back then seven years ago with Trevor, ” says Ryan, we didn’t know what the fuck we were doing. So they were all shitty DPI and we couldn’t print or otherwise do anything with them. One day I was talking about this with Lar and he just said, ‘I’m gonna redraw them!’  I was like, ‘Seriously? Alright!’ So we did the whole thing and I was incredibly happy with what came out. ”

What came out was Least I Could Do: Blanc et Noir, the latest book released through Blind Ferret Entertainment.  Ryan is nothing if not humble about seeing the origins for LICD finally in print.

“I’m embarrassed of the first 120-odd strips,” he says, “I think they are written poorly. But it is where my writing came from, and it’s not right to ignore what fans have, for a while now, wanted in book form.”

This brings us just about to the end of my conversation with Ryan Sohmer. There is one more thing, however, that I had to ask about – the status of the now almost mythical ‘forthcoming Looking for Group movie’.

Several years back, Ryan and Lar announced that they were developing an animated feature film based on the characters in LFG. Last year when I asked Lar about it, he said they had just decided on a production studio. So what’s the official word now?

According to Ryan:

“We have a production company. The financing is all in. It’s just legal wrangling now, and the Canadian film market is a pain in the ass. It takes time, and there’s so much red tape… I never thought it would take this long. I wish I had just done it on a small budget four years ago, but I didn’t. My mistake. But, it is coming!”

So, Looking for Group fans take heart. One day there shall indeed be a Fwoosh so grand, that it cannot be contained in a mere web-based comic strip.

As for any future projects from Ryan Sohmer, he did rather cryptically mention that we can expect an announcement in the coming weeks. He wouldn’t go into details, but did say it involves him writing for something that is neither LICD nor LFG.

For more from Ryan, you can follow him on Twitter, or visit the official Least I Could Do and Looking For Group websites.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming