My 30 Dumb Comics For Smart People

I’ve always been a doodler, I had a couple of miserable desk jobs in my early 20’s and I used a sit doodling on little scraps of paper most of the day. Then I went to college and started taking calling my doodles “illustrations”. They didn’t really start out as comics, they were just drawings which were kind of bleak and sometimes mildly amusing but I kept producing them and, through doing stuff like Inktober, I accidentally stumbled on a style that worked for me.

It’s all been very stop-start though, posting to social media eats away at me and I’ve never been 100% sure I’m comfortable with being the “funny guy” but people have always laughed at me so I figured I might as well be in on the joke. I also live in perpetual fear of offending anyone which isn’t ideal since quite a few of my comics are quite offensive.

A lot of inspiration comes from conversations with my wife. She has an incredible tolerance for me rambling on and on about some nonsense and occasionally, when I’d say something I think is funny, I’ll write it down (9 times out of 10 it isn’t that funny when I come back to it!)

Sometimes its a book I’m reading or something I’ve watched; I find life pretty absurd so there’s plenty to draw from (no pun intended). I recall Kurt Vonnegut's quote that goes something like: “Laughing and crying are both acts of desperation, I prefer laughing as there’s less cleaning up to do after” - I think about that a lot.

I've always been committed to using ink and paper! Drawing on paper is the thing I fell in love with, it's one of life's few genuine pleasures and, to me, that means a lot. It’s the thing you do as a child and I still like to get my fingers dirty working with paint or ink. It's an insane system (drawing on paper then scanning it), it’s time consuming and, since I've become a real paper snob, it’s expensive.

My advice to any young illustrator would be to try and do at least 30% of your work on paper, it teaches you to accept what you’ve done in a way drawing tablets don’t, and often it’s these eccentricities that make your work stand out, it’s what Bob Ross called “happy accidents” and accepting your flaws is not just an important lesson for an artist but also life. I'm a chaotic person, I'd like to be more in control but accepting the chaos and welcoming it into my work is helpful. That all got a bit philosophical.