“My Gums Are Bleeding”: 27 Funny Comics That Hit Hard, By Miles Erickson

In the interview, Miles shared more about himself. He wrote: “Honestly, my artistic trajectory has kind of been all over the place. I got my degree in fine arts at Calarts, which is where I got into doing comics. I wanted to make movies, but movies are more of a communal art. You need to work with actors, costumers, producers, you need to schedule everyone, etc. With comics, there are no dissenting opinions, no bad actors, you just do what you want to do. 

After college, I worked as a columnist at a newspaper for a while, which was the first place I got any of my comics published. Then I worked at an animation studio called Wild Canary, and then as a writer at another animation studio called Pencilmation. All my jobs have involved at least some facet of comic making, whether it be writing or drawing.”

When asked about the inspiration for the unique name of his comic series “My Gums Are Bleeding,” besides it at first being his personal account from 8th grade, Miles shared: “Honestly, you’d have to ask my high school self. But if I'd known the name was gonna stick, I probably would have picked a better one. Something like ‘____ webcomics’.”

Miles also shared that his comics “don’t really have any kind of agenda, political or otherwise. They're really just there to make you laugh.”

We were wondering about Miles’s creative process, to which he responded: “It's tough to pinpoint where exactly the jokes come from, they kind of just manifest. I rarely come up with any good ones when I sit around purposefully trying to think of them. There’s no lake or cliffside I go to where I sit and let inspiration wash over me.

Some of the time the comics are adapted from tweets or memes. Some of the time I’ll see a funny conversation in the comments of a Reddit post or something and I’ll think ‘How can I turn this into a 4-panel joke?’

As for the art style, I use a process called ‘rotoscoping’ where I take pictures of myself doing all the poses and then trace over myself, so that is actually me you're seeing in most of those comics.”

In regards to audiences' takeaway, Miles wrote: “I want my audience to laugh; I think if my goal were any more complicated than that, the comics would not hit the way they do, or they’d be something else entirely. I’m pretty comfortable in the fact that my content isn’t too deep and that people like it for what it is, a quick joke.”

Lastly, Miles added: “I have two books (My Gums are Bleeding, the Collection and Necromonica: Village of the Damned) both scheduled to release in 2025, please keep an eye out for both. I promise, if you follow me on Instagram, you’ll be absolutely inundated with information about both.”