This Artist Draws Amusing Comics Featuring Ridiculous Situations (30 Pics)

Bored Panda reached out to James, the author behind the "But A Jape" comics. First, we asked the artist if he had any life-changing influences that might have helped him with his art and art style in general when it comes to his comics.

"Perry Bible Fellowship probably most represents my ideal form of comic-based humor—both the writing of the jokes and the art accompanying them serve to make each comic more than the sum of its parts. The jokes are simple, but executed elegantly with no extraneous dialogue or overly complex visuals. And speaking of the visuals, Nicholas Gurewitch’s ability to employ different art styles to complement different types of jokes is another skill I aspire to emulate—though I wouldn’t say I’ve developed this skill quite as well as I would like. Making myself release two comics a week tends to limit my ability to experiment too much with my art style when a simpler one ensures I can finish more at a time.

SMBC is another major influence in terms of how I approach humor. In fact, it may have influenced me more than I thought, since I often receive comments of, 'I thought this was SMBC until I read the author’s name.' To be honest, I’m still unclear as to where exactly the overlap in our comics is, but it’s given me a bit of a complex where, after finishing up every comic, I stop to think to myself, 'Does this look like SMBC?' or 'SMBC didn’t do this joke already, did it?'"

"Hark! A Vagrant is another one of my favorite webcomics that I’m consciously aware has influenced my work. My title, But a Jape, is even partly inspired by it, what with being a rather anachronistic phrase. Earlier on, I actually planned on having a lot more literature and history-based humor for But a Jape, much like Hark! A Vagrant, but it didn’t quite work out that way. Also, those types of comics tend not to gain as much traction as some of my others. Not that I’ll stop making them, though.

There are definitely more influences I could go through, but then I’d be here for days."

Art, in any kind of form, takes a lot of time, not only to practice but also to produce, therefore we asked James how long it takes him to fully finish his comics.

"This is hard to say, because I like to have a lot of variety with my comics—some are short with simple artwork while others are longer and more complex. The shortest time I’ve taken to write a comic was about 1.5 hours, while the longest has taken me over a couple of weeks. But for, let’s say, one of the standard 4-panel types where I already have a clear image of how it looks and what the text says? Those average me around 3 hours, start to finish. That is, if I’m disciplined enough that day to sit still and work the entire time."

Being an artist is not easy, one can easily encounter a lack of inspiration, burnout, etc, so we wanted to ask the artist about his ideas for the comics.

"I’ve always been the kind of guy who just makes amusing observations to himself and then turns to tell them to the nearest person willing to listen. Sometimes it’s observing a pattern I’ve noticed in a lot of stories or just an awkward interaction I’ve had with another person. Eventually, I got the idea to try it out for stand-up comedy and began taking notes on my phone any time I came up with something I could stretch out into a bit. When I began writing comics, I did the same thing but rewrote them to work in a visual medium. In fact, a number of my comics are recycled from my short-lived stand-up days. Not a lot of them, though, the stand-up days were very short-lived. If I ever do get back into stand-up, I might just recycle some of my comic's material."