I wrote a piece for the current issue of Totally Dublin about local comic creators and, in the spirit of all things hacklike, ended up with far more text than was usable in the final piece. To redress this terrible imbalance I’m posting the full transcriptions of interviews I did with Alan Moloney, Hilary Lawler, Maeve Clancy and Paddy Lynch.

So to kick things off, the inimitable Alan Moloney…

You’d be known for doing sketches more than narratives. Is there something about the short form you find particularly appealing?

The lack of planning! I can’t plan a long narrative for love nor money so short form gag’s are about all I can stretch to. Usually ideas come to me as jokes or situations that I find funny – short form suits this perfectly. Any attempts I’ve made at long form comics going longer than a page have been godawful abominations that I’ve been too ashamed to put anywhere near where someone might see them.

In what way is WSHD a departure from Looseville?

The only departure I can think of is how much easier it is for me to write. Looseville was an attempt at character driven humour – and in that regard I suppose it must not have worked seeing as how I don’t write it anymore. WSHD was my way of getting back into gag comics after I’d gotten terminally bored with Looseville early last year.The humour of WSHD and Looseville is very similar, I think. Especially in the dialogue. The only difference is, in Looseville sometimes I’d hit a brick wall when I’d try to think of something for the characters to “do” that would fit their personalities – in WSHD that wall doesn’t exist because it’s usually just some random character I’ve parachuted into a joke and that suits my writing style much better.

Have you found your writing style change to suit online comics?

The only difference is the swearing. In the Cork News there can’t be any swearing, like, at all, whereas other publications are laxer depending on the style of the magazine. There is a greater freedom when it’s online, of course, but my style doesn’t change for print. Usually the only thing that changes is the wording.

WSHD recycles a lot of stock/recycled/generic images. Where did you get the idea to work this way?

Yep, for a while I did use a lot of other images for WSHD and the main reason for this was laziness, I think. My day job (graphic design) can be very taxing on my drawing reserves and sometimes when it came to comic time at 11 pm I’d have a joke to tell but absolutely zero will to draw it. So I’d use some stock vectors, or copyright expired illustrations and mold my joke around them. I always felt a little bad afterwards but oddly enough I think some of these comics were the best I’ve done. Then a few weeks ago, I made a few characters of my own that I could move around and customize pretty easily so that the visual style would stay consistent. It also means that I can stitch a whole bunch of comics together really quickly which is great when I’m wiped out after a weeks work.

Do you prefer to see your work in print or online?

In print. Every time. I started off in print before I was ever online so it’s always had a special place for me. Nothing beats the sight of walking around Cork on Friday morning and seeing people in a bagel bar flicking to the letters page and showing their friend WSHD. That’s unbeatable for me and the internet will never top that. For me, the internet is a means to an end i.e. to get myself into papers and magazines. I have a very love/hate relationship with the internet. I love how interactive it is, and how, as a platform, it’s possible to reach so many people – especially with Twitter and Facebook. It’s also great for forming relationships with readers and other web comic artists.
On the other hand though, there’s so much bullshit that goes with it. There’s a lot of self deception when it comes to webcomics. I see some people throwing money away on advertising their comic thinking that the next €50 they spend on Project Wonderful or Google ads will be the last push they need to go “Penny Arcade” or Kate Beaton when it blatantly isn’t. I see people with 700 twitter followers thinking it’s a big deal and not realizing that 500 of these people are other webcomic artists that’ll retweet you, sure, but they aren’t reading your stuff and neither are any of their followers (who are also mostly webcomicers too).

I see people spending a fortune on printing up 1000 books and then selling 4. Madness. It shouldn’t annoy me, but it does. It enrages me sometimes.  I suppose, one of the main reasons I prefer seeing WSHD in print is the validation it gives me. Every time I see it in the Cork News or Totally Dublin or any other magazine it means that somebody (an editor!) thought it was good enough to put into their publication and that’s a rush that makes me want to do another.