Comic Timing

A look back at Uniter comics

Staff

For years, The Uniter has included comic strips from local artists (see below) and syndicated masters (Matt Groening’s Life in Hell ran in the early ‘90s, among many others). Currently, our little street weekly hosts a rotating package of Lisa Jorgensen’s Circle Heads and Jean Floch’s The Creeps. The former, a light romp in the day to day experience of being in your mid-20s, balances nicely with the latter’s absurdist chaos, which involves two roommates who seemingly exist to annoy each other, all while misinterpreting normal social cues. 

Both cartoonists sight Calvin and Hobbes as a major influence, proving the spectrum of influence that Bill Watterson’s beloved characters provide.

The Creeps by Jean Floch.

“I started drawing The Creeps after graduating from university in 2008 and it appeared strangely fully formed,” Floch, 27, says of the strip, which appears daily at gocomics.com/the-creeps. “It wasn’t inspired by anything I’m conscious of; there was no grand premise, just two idiots interacting. Well, maybe that’s a lie, I’m very inspired inspired by (humourist) Jack Handey. He writes perfect jokes and I’m sure I’m stealing all of his ideas that are within my grasp.”

Circle Heads by Lisa Jorgensen.

Jorgensen states that Circle Heads also finds a home in simplicity.

“I guess I kind of felt that Circle Heads was a very simple style, and I could just hash something out that’s fun and I didn’t have to take it so seriously,” Jorgensen, 27, says. “We’ve all grown up with those strips that are light and whimsical and I guess maybe did pay homage to those kind of strips.

“When I was younger, the way that I always drew, I called it the ‘circle heads style’, literally because they have circle heads. If I wanted to draw a really quick comic I would do that style. It’s actually the same way my brother would draw. After a while I started drawing more anime style and my brother would go ‘why aren’t you drawing circle heads?’ So this is a throwback to that.”

A graduate of the University of Manitoba’s graphic design program, Jorgensen spends her time working on various comics other than Circle Heads, including the paranormal Necro High and Athena, between such gigs as screen printing wedding invites.

“I definitely wish I had some sort of structure and schedule, I think that’s key if you’re going to get something done,” she says. “Unfortunately a lot of my projects, I work on them when I feel like it, and sometimes I can sit down and do a whole bunch of pages and get a whole bunch done in a short amount of time, and then I’ll go stretches without doing anything at all. It’s easy to get distracted with daily life.”

Daily life is exactly what Floch has to deal with, to keep up the pace of one strip per day.

“Drawing a daily comic eats up a lot of time, which can be a good thing because it forces you to not wallow in self-pity,” he says. “But on the flip side, you don’t have the time to give yourself the pity you need. Each comic takes roughly two hours, so I spend about 10 hours a week drawing comics.”

He also notes that when you’re worrying about daily jokes, it can drive a cartoonist more inward.

“I’m much more analytic about humor and less funny in person,” Floch says. “When I hear something funny I don’t laugh, I try to mentally space out what they’ve said into 3-5 panels. I also don’t say things that I find funny out loud because as soon as I realize that I have something funny to say, I’m busy breaking it down into a comic strip format instead of actually saying it. 

“Drawing comics has made me more boring to interact with, and I will steal your jokes.”

Published in Volume 68, Number 21 of The Uniter (February 19, 2014)

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