Main Page: Alvin and the Cracrofts
Interview with the Cartoonist of "Alvin and the Cracrofts"
Where did the idea for this comic originate?
Well, I've always been into storytelling, mostly through writing but also through drawing sometimes. In middle and high school, I doodled a lot because I got bored, especially in study halls. There was one year I had like three study halls and almost no homework to do in them, since I was accustomed to doing it on the bus. At some point I drew a few stick figure comics about this guy Alvin, and his geek friend Arnold, and his girlfriend Aurora, and his pet Komodo dragon Steve. That was a short-lived series because I had a short attention span, and it wasn't very good.
Years later, when I should have been graduated from college but instead was taking a break from it, I was reading “Brewster Rockitt: Space Guy!” And I'd read it before, and I'd read a lot of comics and when I do that for long enough, sometimes it affects my brain so that I'm actually thinking in comics. And something clicked this time, and I decided to start my own series. Alvin and Steve were back and there was a whole new supporting cast for them.
So Alvin was always the protagonist.
In theory, anyway. Sometimes he gets overshadowed by more interesting characters. (laughs) He's sort of the everyman, but he reflects my own views of the world most of the time and becomes a puppet for my own opinions. I have to be careful not to let him get too one-dimensional in that regard. Of course, there are exceptions, like when he thinks Mormons are weird and I'm a Mormon – er, Latter-day Saint. Contrasts like that are fun to write. It's fun to explain a view I don't share, and really explain it, not just make it look stupid to support my own side.
His wife Rachel was there from the beginning too. Where did she come from, and why is she so – uh, unusual?
Rachel, right. Well, like I said, the comic that sparked this one was “Brewster Rockitt: Space Guy!” And if you're familiar with the protagonist, he's just a complete idiot. Even more so than most adult males in the comics. He literally has trouble remembering whether to put his socks or shoes on first. So he inspired Rachel, and then she was gender-swapped because I wanted so subvert the trope. It's always the dad or the husband who's an idiot, you know? Even if it's not usually that extreme. I wanted to have the woman as the idiot for a change. And in a twisted way, that makes her a feminist icon, too, because, like one friend told me, the right to be seen as less than perfect is a big deal. But she's lovable too, you know? Stupid people are usually insufferable when they're being belligerent and don't know they're stupid. Rachel isn't like that, she's the sweetest person ever and she's got a wonderful self-awareness that doesn't get her down. She has lots of redeeming qualities, and Alvin sees that and that's one of the messages of the comics.
She's named after two women that I was kind of obsessed with at the time she came into fruition. One from church, another from work who actually spelled her name a bit differently. And the one from work, well, I had a bit of a crush on her and then I found out she was married, so that put a stop to trying to do anything there. But she was a real grouch and seemed to immediately hate me for no reason. I couldn't figure it out and I decided I would go out of my way to do nice things for her to maybe improve her attitude. There weren't a lot of opportunities for that, alas, but I took one, I took out her garbage one day when it was overflowing, and I had just come in to start and she was already working and I took it out so she wouldn't have to do it herself and waste book-scanning time. And I didn't know if she'd even noticed, but after that she started staring at me all the time. Literally all the time. It got to the point where I could be like “I bet Rachael is staring at me right now. Let's see... Yep.” Either she had a crush on me or she was plotting to kill me. (laughs) So naturally, Rachel Cracroft's appearance is also a merging of these two people that came out more beautiful than I could have ever anticipated.
Good thing Rachel Cracroft is nothing like your coworker! So, what's up with Tyler? Why is she such a brat?
Right, she kind of has to be, doesn't she? Well-behaved children aren't funny. (laughs) She's a good kid, though. She has a good heart and she cares about the downtrodden and she even loves her parents deep down. She was based on Calvin, sort of a gender-swapped version like Rachel, but I think as she took on her own life she sort of emulated my own childhood. I had a lot of behavioral problems, arguably worse than her sometimes, but I never set out to be a bad kid and it just stemmed from the way I saw the world and my parents weren't equipped to deal with that. I made sure Alvin and Rachel didn't follow their mistakes, but they're still kind of clueless how to deal with her. (laughs)
Tyler is also based on a real person. Her name, and appearance, and aspects of her personality like being liberal and feminist are drawn from a dear friend of mine. She was flattered, thank goodness. (laughs) Tyler's her favorite character. I'm sure she's a lot of people's favorite character. She definitely takes more “screen time”, so to speak, than she deserves.
Her relationship with Pastor Hartgraves is interesting.
Yeah, I mean, on the one hand she's obviously making fun of him sometimes, asking for his opinions just because she thinks they're stupid. And sometimes they are. (laughs) But I think there's a real fondness there too. I think she's genuinely interested in what he has to say about life.
You have Pastor Hartgraves saying stupid things sometimes, but other times he's just a great guy.
Yeah. I'm a Christian myself, though Pastor Hartgraves wouldn't admit it. (laughs) So I believe in God and Jesus Christ and the Bible and so on. And within the worldview of the comic I'm going to advocate for all that being legit. But at the same time, lots of Christians, in my own denomination and certainly in the mainstream, and especially in the South where this takes place, have said plenty of stupid things. There are some doctrines and some opinions that just don't hold up under any sort of logical scrutiny. And people see those things – and Brigham Young, one of the early leaders of my church, pointed this out, that people see those things and think this religion doesn't make sense. So they reject the entire thing because of these problems that don't need to be there. So really, by calling them out myself from my position as a Christian, and hopefully weakening their influence and guiding other Christians away from them, I'm helping to strengthen and immunize Christianity.
That's beautiful. Now I'd like to get back to the setting for a moment – what's the significance of that?
I had no idea where I wanted to set this, but it just sort of unfolded from Rachel's statement early on at the wedding, “SCREW ALL Y'ALL!” She was quoting Strong Bad, actually, but the word “y'all” stood out to me. I decided to set this in the South. And thence came one of Rache's catchphrases, “My land”. Having the South as the setting opened up several story options that would otherwise not have been as “close to home”, no pun intended. Racial tensions and Confederate flags and monuments affect the Cracrofts a lot more personally than if they lived in, say, Oregon. But there are other things that become less personal and it's just a tradeoff you have to do to add some local flavor to the comics.
Originally that was where it stopped and everything was vague, referring to “town” and “the university” and “the state” and so on. But I changed my mind and decided to call the town Blue Haven, after the town in the webcomic “Surf Rat & Spencer”. I couldn't resist that little tribute. And I named the university after one in my home county in New York, and I tried to use specific names for a lot of things but I still kept the state anonymous. I wanted to keep some mystery and some universality. Blue Haven is like Springfield on “The Simpsons”, at least before they revealed which state that was in. I can't help thinking of Florida, but that's not canon. (laughs)
You put in a lot of tributes and references like that, don't you?
Oh yes. That's the way to go. I'm influenced by many of the greats who have gone before, so it's only fair to show my gratitude. It gives me a certain satisfaction.
Most comic strips aren't set in a specific timeline. The characters never age and real-world events are referenced rarely if ever. What made you decide to buck that trend, and how did you decide on 2004-2024?
Mainly it's because I wanted to follow Tyler through her development. I thought it would be neat to have one character bridge a spectrum of ages. You know, there's six year old Calvin and fifteen year old Jeremy, and Tyler is both of those. She evolves but she stays the same person. She deals with different issues throughout her life. Specifically, I used 2004 as a starting point because at Alvin and Rachel's wedding they play the song “Maahi Ve”, which I love, and I looked it up and it came out in 2003 so that sort of limited their options if I wanted to be realistic. I thought a 20-year span was a nice even number and then I could have Tyler born in 2006 and end with her graduating high school and it would all tie together nicely. So there's a lot of one-off strips like a standard comic but it all folds into this overarching story over tweny years, and there's a strict continuity. Then of course referencing all these real-world events was a natural way to use this constraint to its full potential, and have Alvin tell everyone my opinions about them. (laughs)
But there's still some sense of “cartoon time”. I don't worry about whether the Cracrofts could feasibly do so many things or gain so much pop culture familiarity within a human lifespan. So in that aspect it's sort of like Indiana Jones, where he does more things in 1936 than any human could possibly do, and through some weird twist of physics somehow still has time to teach his classes. (laughs) You can sort of see these different aspects embodied in Ivan and Jerry Cracroft. Jerry dies partway through the series, showing that the characters have a limited time on this Earth. But then Ivan just seems to live forever as far as the cartoon time is concerned. He's more like Grandpa Simpson in that regard.
What are some of the advantages and drawbacks of the timeframe you chose?
The obvious advantage is that I lived through it. I was too young for the beginning to have a real grasp on what was going on in the world, but I remember what those years felt like and that's something to go off of. The main drawback, of course, is that it limits the stories I can tell and the things I can reference. And honestly it's not my favorite era. I really miss the simpler time that I'm old enough to somewhat remember, the nineties, and to a lesser extent the eighties that I miss despite never having lived in them. But that makes its way into the comic through Alvin's nostalgia and constant state of midlife crisis and yearning to reclaim the culture he's lost. He's not anti-technology or anti-upcoming-generation or anything, but he doesn't like getting old and he doesn't like losing the way his life used to be. It's simple and maybe pretty universal, but I think it's one of the most interesting things about him as a character.
This seems like as good as time as any to talk about the Cracrofts' extended family, whom you mentioned. Let's start with Ivan and Jerry.
Okay, so they're named after my dad's dad's dad and my mom's mom's mom, respectively. And Ivan's big train layout is based on my dad's dad. I wanted to have tributes like that to my family members, and it saved a lot of trouble coming up with names and personalities. (laughs) The dynamic between Ivan and Jerry is pretty lighthearted and has some teasing because, you know, writing spunky old people is fun, and it reflects what I'd want in a marriage myself if I wanted a marriage.
On to George and Connie. George is kind of a jackass, isn't he? How does Connie put up with him?
(laughs) He kind of is, huh? This is the South, and he's hardcore conservative and that's all there is to it. He's based a bit on my own dad. My dad convinced me to be a conservative like him while I was growing up, and then as I started to think for myself more I adopted some more liberal views, like Alvin, so there's some of the same tension in that. Connie didn't have much of a personality at first because I was dealing with so many characters, and George had such a loud and opinionated personality, that she took the back seat to everyone else for a while. I tried to rectify that by consciously including her more often and giving her some quirks, like her obsession with organic food and so-called alternative medicine, which comes from my mom. I love my parents, of course, but they can be goofy sometimes.
Alvin's brother Bill isn't your typical womanizer. He's a computer geek, and he gets married. Why?
I mentioned Alvin's original geek friend Arnold in the earlier comic idea. He didn't make the cut when I decided not to have all the character names start with “A”, but I wanted to incorporate him somehow so I gave that aspect of him to Bill. He bucks stereotypes in that way. But he also became larger-than-life through the Flanderization process, so he gets married like fifty times or something, and he's quite open about his porn and marijuana use. This is not a comic for children. But he's got a good heart, somewhere.
Susan's is easier to see. But why does it keep getting broken?
Susan is basically a gender-swapped Jon Arbuckle, except in her case, it's a mystery why nobody of the opposite sex wants her. And that's inspired by some women I've known who were beautiful and smart and nice and fun to be around, but the years went by and they never got married for some reason I couldn't see. In Susan's case, maybe it's hinted at with her relatively liberal politics and her independence and intelligence that might put unworthy guys off. She's the black sheep of her family and Alvin, being the good guy that he is, is her only family member that she's really comfortable opening up to. I like the relationship between them. I don't like to see Susan suffer, but it's cathartic in a way, sort of as a middle finger to wishful thinking and unwarranted optimism. Sometimes life just sucks. Sometimes people never get what they deserve. Not in this life, anyway.
Why didn't you include Rachel's parents until near the end of the series?
That's simple enough. As they were getting married at the beginning, I was introducing Alvin's parents and grandparents and siblings and pastor and college friend and Rachel's college friend, and it was probably too much and it definitely would have been too much if I'd had to worry about Rachel's family as well. But I worked their absence into the story and it gave me the potential for another storyline near the end.
Like “The Simpsons”, there's quite a cast of supporting characters. We've already covered Pastor Hartgraves. Where do you get your ideas for them?
To save myself effort, I try to minimize the number of supporting characters and keep reusing the established ones. I've even retconned their appearances back into the past in some cases. But sometimes in the process of writing a storyline or thinking about the world or whatever, I'll see a niche that needs to be filled and go from there. Like the Cracrofts have to get checkups, they have to get vaccinated, they have to give birth somewhere. So Dr. Hu is born from that. And before you ask, the pun is literally the entire justification for his existence, and there's not much more to him than that.
You spend a lot of time on some of the school characters. We don't see many of Tyler's teachers, but there's a lot about Dr. Pitts and Mary. What draws you to those characters?
I love science, so Tyler does too, though she's more dedicated to pursuing it herself than I was. Dr. Pitts is one of those characters I retconned back because I liked him so much. He's based on a professor of mine who showed me that scientists can be kind, fun-loving people with varied interests. They're not all soulless. (laughs) I had one of my favorite classes ever with him. Mary's also based on a real person, who's possibly the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and I based her on that person with permission and I exaggerated her intelligence and other attributes to make her ridiculously good at everything. You know, with her in the comics, no one can say that I'm being sexist by making Rachel stupid. They balance each other out. (laughs)
Tell us about Audrey, the principal.
I figured Tyler needed a nemesis of sorts. You know, she clashes with her parents all the time, but someone not related to her that she could spar with. Who better than a high school principal, since she's supposed to hate school? And I had this co-worker, Audrey, who teased me all the time and I teased her back. She was a shift lead and she enjoyed flaunting her authority over me. I enjoyed that too. So into the comics she went, but I didn't want this principal to be completely tormented by Tyler. I always felt bad for Principal Skinner on “The Simpsons” with the hell Bart put him through. He didn't deserve that, and neither did this one, so I made her able to dish it out as well as take it. Nobody's going to walk all over her.
One last thought. You're a very religious man, as you've said, and you have a definite sense of right and wrong, but your comic has some very adult humor and showcases values you don't necessarily subscribe to. How do you navigate that?
Well, you know, the world is a dark, perverse, kind of awful place, and it contaminates what should be the innocence of childhood and what should be the innocence of a nuclear family, and that's just a reality we have to live with. Certainly as a religious person I have to resist that in a way, but I think in general we're better off making fun of it like I do than being afraid of it all the time. Like, there's a comic where Tyler mentions looking up the lyrics to “Baby Got Back” because she heard it in a bunch of kids' movies. That's based on personal experience. And “Baby Got Back” isn't something I ever listen to in my personal life, but it is part of the cultural milieu we live in whether we like it or not, and I derive humor from that fact. I would add also that nobody's perfect, and perfect characters are boring, and I think we can appreciate, even chuckle at poor choices they make without endorsing them.
Thank you for your time today.
Well, I've always been into storytelling, mostly through writing but also through drawing sometimes. In middle and high school, I doodled a lot because I got bored, especially in study halls. There was one year I had like three study halls and almost no homework to do in them, since I was accustomed to doing it on the bus. At some point I drew a few stick figure comics about this guy Alvin, and his geek friend Arnold, and his girlfriend Aurora, and his pet Komodo dragon Steve. That was a short-lived series because I had a short attention span, and it wasn't very good.
Years later, when I should have been graduated from college but instead was taking a break from it, I was reading “Brewster Rockitt: Space Guy!” And I'd read it before, and I'd read a lot of comics and when I do that for long enough, sometimes it affects my brain so that I'm actually thinking in comics. And something clicked this time, and I decided to start my own series. Alvin and Steve were back and there was a whole new supporting cast for them.
So Alvin was always the protagonist.
In theory, anyway. Sometimes he gets overshadowed by more interesting characters. (laughs) He's sort of the everyman, but he reflects my own views of the world most of the time and becomes a puppet for my own opinions. I have to be careful not to let him get too one-dimensional in that regard. Of course, there are exceptions, like when he thinks Mormons are weird and I'm a Mormon – er, Latter-day Saint. Contrasts like that are fun to write. It's fun to explain a view I don't share, and really explain it, not just make it look stupid to support my own side.
His wife Rachel was there from the beginning too. Where did she come from, and why is she so – uh, unusual?
Rachel, right. Well, like I said, the comic that sparked this one was “Brewster Rockitt: Space Guy!” And if you're familiar with the protagonist, he's just a complete idiot. Even more so than most adult males in the comics. He literally has trouble remembering whether to put his socks or shoes on first. So he inspired Rachel, and then she was gender-swapped because I wanted so subvert the trope. It's always the dad or the husband who's an idiot, you know? Even if it's not usually that extreme. I wanted to have the woman as the idiot for a change. And in a twisted way, that makes her a feminist icon, too, because, like one friend told me, the right to be seen as less than perfect is a big deal. But she's lovable too, you know? Stupid people are usually insufferable when they're being belligerent and don't know they're stupid. Rachel isn't like that, she's the sweetest person ever and she's got a wonderful self-awareness that doesn't get her down. She has lots of redeeming qualities, and Alvin sees that and that's one of the messages of the comics.
She's named after two women that I was kind of obsessed with at the time she came into fruition. One from church, another from work who actually spelled her name a bit differently. And the one from work, well, I had a bit of a crush on her and then I found out she was married, so that put a stop to trying to do anything there. But she was a real grouch and seemed to immediately hate me for no reason. I couldn't figure it out and I decided I would go out of my way to do nice things for her to maybe improve her attitude. There weren't a lot of opportunities for that, alas, but I took one, I took out her garbage one day when it was overflowing, and I had just come in to start and she was already working and I took it out so she wouldn't have to do it herself and waste book-scanning time. And I didn't know if she'd even noticed, but after that she started staring at me all the time. Literally all the time. It got to the point where I could be like “I bet Rachael is staring at me right now. Let's see... Yep.” Either she had a crush on me or she was plotting to kill me. (laughs) So naturally, Rachel Cracroft's appearance is also a merging of these two people that came out more beautiful than I could have ever anticipated.
Good thing Rachel Cracroft is nothing like your coworker! So, what's up with Tyler? Why is she such a brat?
Right, she kind of has to be, doesn't she? Well-behaved children aren't funny. (laughs) She's a good kid, though. She has a good heart and she cares about the downtrodden and she even loves her parents deep down. She was based on Calvin, sort of a gender-swapped version like Rachel, but I think as she took on her own life she sort of emulated my own childhood. I had a lot of behavioral problems, arguably worse than her sometimes, but I never set out to be a bad kid and it just stemmed from the way I saw the world and my parents weren't equipped to deal with that. I made sure Alvin and Rachel didn't follow their mistakes, but they're still kind of clueless how to deal with her. (laughs)
Tyler is also based on a real person. Her name, and appearance, and aspects of her personality like being liberal and feminist are drawn from a dear friend of mine. She was flattered, thank goodness. (laughs) Tyler's her favorite character. I'm sure she's a lot of people's favorite character. She definitely takes more “screen time”, so to speak, than she deserves.
Her relationship with Pastor Hartgraves is interesting.
Yeah, I mean, on the one hand she's obviously making fun of him sometimes, asking for his opinions just because she thinks they're stupid. And sometimes they are. (laughs) But I think there's a real fondness there too. I think she's genuinely interested in what he has to say about life.
You have Pastor Hartgraves saying stupid things sometimes, but other times he's just a great guy.
Yeah. I'm a Christian myself, though Pastor Hartgraves wouldn't admit it. (laughs) So I believe in God and Jesus Christ and the Bible and so on. And within the worldview of the comic I'm going to advocate for all that being legit. But at the same time, lots of Christians, in my own denomination and certainly in the mainstream, and especially in the South where this takes place, have said plenty of stupid things. There are some doctrines and some opinions that just don't hold up under any sort of logical scrutiny. And people see those things – and Brigham Young, one of the early leaders of my church, pointed this out, that people see those things and think this religion doesn't make sense. So they reject the entire thing because of these problems that don't need to be there. So really, by calling them out myself from my position as a Christian, and hopefully weakening their influence and guiding other Christians away from them, I'm helping to strengthen and immunize Christianity.
That's beautiful. Now I'd like to get back to the setting for a moment – what's the significance of that?
I had no idea where I wanted to set this, but it just sort of unfolded from Rachel's statement early on at the wedding, “SCREW ALL Y'ALL!” She was quoting Strong Bad, actually, but the word “y'all” stood out to me. I decided to set this in the South. And thence came one of Rache's catchphrases, “My land”. Having the South as the setting opened up several story options that would otherwise not have been as “close to home”, no pun intended. Racial tensions and Confederate flags and monuments affect the Cracrofts a lot more personally than if they lived in, say, Oregon. But there are other things that become less personal and it's just a tradeoff you have to do to add some local flavor to the comics.
Originally that was where it stopped and everything was vague, referring to “town” and “the university” and “the state” and so on. But I changed my mind and decided to call the town Blue Haven, after the town in the webcomic “Surf Rat & Spencer”. I couldn't resist that little tribute. And I named the university after one in my home county in New York, and I tried to use specific names for a lot of things but I still kept the state anonymous. I wanted to keep some mystery and some universality. Blue Haven is like Springfield on “The Simpsons”, at least before they revealed which state that was in. I can't help thinking of Florida, but that's not canon. (laughs)
You put in a lot of tributes and references like that, don't you?
Oh yes. That's the way to go. I'm influenced by many of the greats who have gone before, so it's only fair to show my gratitude. It gives me a certain satisfaction.
Most comic strips aren't set in a specific timeline. The characters never age and real-world events are referenced rarely if ever. What made you decide to buck that trend, and how did you decide on 2004-2024?
Mainly it's because I wanted to follow Tyler through her development. I thought it would be neat to have one character bridge a spectrum of ages. You know, there's six year old Calvin and fifteen year old Jeremy, and Tyler is both of those. She evolves but she stays the same person. She deals with different issues throughout her life. Specifically, I used 2004 as a starting point because at Alvin and Rachel's wedding they play the song “Maahi Ve”, which I love, and I looked it up and it came out in 2003 so that sort of limited their options if I wanted to be realistic. I thought a 20-year span was a nice even number and then I could have Tyler born in 2006 and end with her graduating high school and it would all tie together nicely. So there's a lot of one-off strips like a standard comic but it all folds into this overarching story over tweny years, and there's a strict continuity. Then of course referencing all these real-world events was a natural way to use this constraint to its full potential, and have Alvin tell everyone my opinions about them. (laughs)
But there's still some sense of “cartoon time”. I don't worry about whether the Cracrofts could feasibly do so many things or gain so much pop culture familiarity within a human lifespan. So in that aspect it's sort of like Indiana Jones, where he does more things in 1936 than any human could possibly do, and through some weird twist of physics somehow still has time to teach his classes. (laughs) You can sort of see these different aspects embodied in Ivan and Jerry Cracroft. Jerry dies partway through the series, showing that the characters have a limited time on this Earth. But then Ivan just seems to live forever as far as the cartoon time is concerned. He's more like Grandpa Simpson in that regard.
What are some of the advantages and drawbacks of the timeframe you chose?
The obvious advantage is that I lived through it. I was too young for the beginning to have a real grasp on what was going on in the world, but I remember what those years felt like and that's something to go off of. The main drawback, of course, is that it limits the stories I can tell and the things I can reference. And honestly it's not my favorite era. I really miss the simpler time that I'm old enough to somewhat remember, the nineties, and to a lesser extent the eighties that I miss despite never having lived in them. But that makes its way into the comic through Alvin's nostalgia and constant state of midlife crisis and yearning to reclaim the culture he's lost. He's not anti-technology or anti-upcoming-generation or anything, but he doesn't like getting old and he doesn't like losing the way his life used to be. It's simple and maybe pretty universal, but I think it's one of the most interesting things about him as a character.
This seems like as good as time as any to talk about the Cracrofts' extended family, whom you mentioned. Let's start with Ivan and Jerry.
Okay, so they're named after my dad's dad's dad and my mom's mom's mom, respectively. And Ivan's big train layout is based on my dad's dad. I wanted to have tributes like that to my family members, and it saved a lot of trouble coming up with names and personalities. (laughs) The dynamic between Ivan and Jerry is pretty lighthearted and has some teasing because, you know, writing spunky old people is fun, and it reflects what I'd want in a marriage myself if I wanted a marriage.
On to George and Connie. George is kind of a jackass, isn't he? How does Connie put up with him?
(laughs) He kind of is, huh? This is the South, and he's hardcore conservative and that's all there is to it. He's based a bit on my own dad. My dad convinced me to be a conservative like him while I was growing up, and then as I started to think for myself more I adopted some more liberal views, like Alvin, so there's some of the same tension in that. Connie didn't have much of a personality at first because I was dealing with so many characters, and George had such a loud and opinionated personality, that she took the back seat to everyone else for a while. I tried to rectify that by consciously including her more often and giving her some quirks, like her obsession with organic food and so-called alternative medicine, which comes from my mom. I love my parents, of course, but they can be goofy sometimes.
Alvin's brother Bill isn't your typical womanizer. He's a computer geek, and he gets married. Why?
I mentioned Alvin's original geek friend Arnold in the earlier comic idea. He didn't make the cut when I decided not to have all the character names start with “A”, but I wanted to incorporate him somehow so I gave that aspect of him to Bill. He bucks stereotypes in that way. But he also became larger-than-life through the Flanderization process, so he gets married like fifty times or something, and he's quite open about his porn and marijuana use. This is not a comic for children. But he's got a good heart, somewhere.
Susan's is easier to see. But why does it keep getting broken?
Susan is basically a gender-swapped Jon Arbuckle, except in her case, it's a mystery why nobody of the opposite sex wants her. And that's inspired by some women I've known who were beautiful and smart and nice and fun to be around, but the years went by and they never got married for some reason I couldn't see. In Susan's case, maybe it's hinted at with her relatively liberal politics and her independence and intelligence that might put unworthy guys off. She's the black sheep of her family and Alvin, being the good guy that he is, is her only family member that she's really comfortable opening up to. I like the relationship between them. I don't like to see Susan suffer, but it's cathartic in a way, sort of as a middle finger to wishful thinking and unwarranted optimism. Sometimes life just sucks. Sometimes people never get what they deserve. Not in this life, anyway.
Why didn't you include Rachel's parents until near the end of the series?
That's simple enough. As they were getting married at the beginning, I was introducing Alvin's parents and grandparents and siblings and pastor and college friend and Rachel's college friend, and it was probably too much and it definitely would have been too much if I'd had to worry about Rachel's family as well. But I worked their absence into the story and it gave me the potential for another storyline near the end.
Like “The Simpsons”, there's quite a cast of supporting characters. We've already covered Pastor Hartgraves. Where do you get your ideas for them?
To save myself effort, I try to minimize the number of supporting characters and keep reusing the established ones. I've even retconned their appearances back into the past in some cases. But sometimes in the process of writing a storyline or thinking about the world or whatever, I'll see a niche that needs to be filled and go from there. Like the Cracrofts have to get checkups, they have to get vaccinated, they have to give birth somewhere. So Dr. Hu is born from that. And before you ask, the pun is literally the entire justification for his existence, and there's not much more to him than that.
You spend a lot of time on some of the school characters. We don't see many of Tyler's teachers, but there's a lot about Dr. Pitts and Mary. What draws you to those characters?
I love science, so Tyler does too, though she's more dedicated to pursuing it herself than I was. Dr. Pitts is one of those characters I retconned back because I liked him so much. He's based on a professor of mine who showed me that scientists can be kind, fun-loving people with varied interests. They're not all soulless. (laughs) I had one of my favorite classes ever with him. Mary's also based on a real person, who's possibly the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and I based her on that person with permission and I exaggerated her intelligence and other attributes to make her ridiculously good at everything. You know, with her in the comics, no one can say that I'm being sexist by making Rachel stupid. They balance each other out. (laughs)
Tell us about Audrey, the principal.
I figured Tyler needed a nemesis of sorts. You know, she clashes with her parents all the time, but someone not related to her that she could spar with. Who better than a high school principal, since she's supposed to hate school? And I had this co-worker, Audrey, who teased me all the time and I teased her back. She was a shift lead and she enjoyed flaunting her authority over me. I enjoyed that too. So into the comics she went, but I didn't want this principal to be completely tormented by Tyler. I always felt bad for Principal Skinner on “The Simpsons” with the hell Bart put him through. He didn't deserve that, and neither did this one, so I made her able to dish it out as well as take it. Nobody's going to walk all over her.
One last thought. You're a very religious man, as you've said, and you have a definite sense of right and wrong, but your comic has some very adult humor and showcases values you don't necessarily subscribe to. How do you navigate that?
Well, you know, the world is a dark, perverse, kind of awful place, and it contaminates what should be the innocence of childhood and what should be the innocence of a nuclear family, and that's just a reality we have to live with. Certainly as a religious person I have to resist that in a way, but I think in general we're better off making fun of it like I do than being afraid of it all the time. Like, there's a comic where Tyler mentions looking up the lyrics to “Baby Got Back” because she heard it in a bunch of kids' movies. That's based on personal experience. And “Baby Got Back” isn't something I ever listen to in my personal life, but it is part of the cultural milieu we live in whether we like it or not, and I derive humor from that fact. I would add also that nobody's perfect, and perfect characters are boring, and I think we can appreciate, even chuckle at poor choices they make without endorsing them.
Thank you for your time today.
