Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Hey, aren't you ripping off "Red Meat?"
A: I'm a huge fan of Max Cannon's strip Red Meat.
The guy is twice a genius: once for his wickedly funny and perverse
writing and once for having pioneered a whole new technique in the
once-thought-fossilized medium of the comic strip. The original version
of PartiallyClips, "Cel Block" which ran in Scene magazine in 1998, was
definitely inspired by Red Meat.
Having said that, there are some major distinctions between
PartiallyClips and Red Meat. First and most importantly, PartiallyClips
has no recurring characters. Every fan of Red Meat knows Milkman Dan
and Johnny Lemonhead and Bug-Eyed Earl, but the characters you see in a
PartiallyClips strip will never be seen outside those three frames.
Second, Max Cannon actually does change the expression, position, and
other aspects of the art within one of his strips. PartiallyClips will
always have three identical, static panels.
Third, PartiallyClips doesn't have taglines, which are one of the best
reasons to read Red Meat. ("Trilobite Tracks on your Teleological
Treatise"?! Brilliance!) Unfortunately, I'm not the poet that Mr.
Cannon is. And again, I'm not out to rip him off, but to explore some
of the ground he has opened up.
Finally, while both strips use dark and twisted themes for humor, there
is a distinct difference in style. Most of my gags would seem wrong in
a Red Meat strip, and vice versa. I believe that there is room in the
world for a PartiallyClips and a Red Meat, even if our fan base may
overlap. The Web is large; it contains multitudes.
Q: Hey, aren't you ripping off "Get Your War On?"
Here, I have an even better answer. I had done at least 30 strips before I ever saw Get Your War On,
David Rees' great clip-art political strip, and it should be obvious
that he's doing something totally different, weird and special over
there. Look, there's a lot of room left in this medium. Strips that use
clip art are pretty much all about the writing, and we're all doing our
own thing for our own reasons. Go pick on the thousands of strips which
suck because their creator can draw but can't write.
Q: Where do you get the clip art?
A: I have a 29-CD set of clip art from Nova
Development. It contains 600,000 images. I scan through the CDs,
looking at the images for likely candidates, and save these to a
folder. I try to pick ones with multiple people, because most of the
best strips I have done use dialog. I have identified close to a
thousand images.
Q: Are you worried about copyrights on the images or having to pay royalties? Won't you get sued?
A: Commercially-sold clip art is royalty free. Generally, the only
thing you can't do with it is sell it in another collection of clip
art. The end user agreement for my clip art mentions that it may not be
used in obscene or libelous ways. Both terms have specific legal
definitions (which PartiallyClips will never do anything to fit), and
they are there to protect Nova Development from being sued.
Q: How do you write a strip?
A: I look through my candidate images until one strikes
me as funny or I get the nucleus of an idea. I import that image into a
3-column template in MS Word 2000. I print out the blank template and
commune with it, writing dialog snippets and margin notes all over the
page. It it's a tough one to write, I will take out a notepad and fill
pages just asking myself questions about the characters, their
situation, their personal history with each other, etc.
Eventually I have the dialog all written and I lay it out in balloons
in Paint Shop Pro 7, using a cleaner-looking background I made in
Photoshop. Then I print it, decide if it's funny, try rewrites of
clunky dialog, make small tweaks on the layout, then save it in about 5
different file formats for different purposes.
Q: Do you ever get an idea and then go looking for a clip that fits it?
A: I used to claim it was impossible to do it this way. That was when I
had a smaller set of clip art which did not come with a print
directory. Now I have 600,000 images an a phonebook sized gallery of
thumbnails. Every once in a while I think I can turn something I said
in conversation into a strip, and I go looking for likely clips. This
has even worked a few times, but it's still very difficult.
Q: You should do a strip about...
A: Well, the thing is, I'm not really open to ideas from readers. There
is the possibility of being sued if I use your idea, sure. But really
it's the fact that PClips is my
project, my baby, and my means of expression. I'm not that interested
in sharing it, except with other comics creators whose work I admire in
the form of a guest week or something. And even if I wanted to, I've
explained above that it's very hard to work from the idea alone. These
strips start with the art I borrow, and the humor is generated from
that.
Q: Do you ever try a clip and can't make a strip out of it?
A: Yes. I have some strips that took 3 or 4 days and a dozen pages of
notes to get done. On several occasions I have completely given up on a
clip after weeks of it nagging at me. I plan to have a contest at some
point for readers to take a stab at writing strips for these clips.
Q: Do you do this for a living?
A: Yes? Sort of? As of this writing (Aug 2003) I have quit all forms of
paycheck-oriented activity and I am working full time on producing and
growing PartiallyClips. This has meant a major lifestyle change but it
will allow me to do things to make this project succeed which I
otherwise would not have time to do.
Q: Why are you doing this?
A: I have this weird need to entertain.
I'd like to write serious hard-SF novels, but few
serious things I've written have given me the positive feedback that
I've gotten from writing humor. I stumbled into inventing this very
narrow medium of expression, and it seems to work for me, so I am
sticking with it and we'll see how far it goes.
The plan had been to make money until my mid-40s, get financially
comfortable, then try and start a writing career. In 2001, a high
school friend of mine named Dan Fahs died. He was 32. He was my age. He
was an amazing illustrator and the two of us had tried to get a comic
strip called "Belchburger" published in 1991. Dan's death reminded me
that nothing is certain, and if I want to leave any kind of creative
legacy I might not have the luxury of waiting until my 40s to start it.
So here is PartiallyClips.
Q: How long have you been doing the strip?
A: Cel Block (same format) I did for Scene magazine in 1998. There were
exactly two whole strips. In December 2001 I started writing
PartiallyClips. First content appeared on the website in February 2002.
Q: Who came up with the name "PartiallyClips?"
A: When I decided to revive Cel Block, I found that
www.celblock.com was registered. I put it to the Nth Degree staffers to
help me find a new name. Cate Twohill came up with "Totally Clips,"
which I thought was excellent. The problem was that it too was
registered as a domain, and was also the name of 50 hair salons around
the continent. I modified it to PartiallyClips and snapped up the
domain. You could argue that PartiallyClips is more appropriate than
Totally Clips anyway, since the strips are partially clip art and
partially my dialog.
Q: What are your plans for syndication?
A: I identified a list of alternative weekly papers. In September 2002
I sent out a mass-mailing of full syndication packages to 135
publications. Each package contained 50 camera-ready strips, and my
permission to print PartiallyClips for FREE through May 2003, along
with a terms-of-use agreement (minor legal stuff). In spending the
money to do this, I hoped to jump-start the strip and save a couple of
years on the readership-building process. It has worked, and several
papers are now running the strip. A list of papers that are currently
running the strip can be found on the main page.
In May of 2003 I began to charge a syndication fee. I will remain
self-syndicated for as far as I can forsee. I hate the way the major
syndicates do business and it'd have to be a pantsload of money to make
me sign with one.
Q: Is there any subject you won't write a strip about?
A: Lots of em. Most of them I won't talk about, either. Mainly I am
avoiding political humor and anything topical that would date the
strip. I don't mind offending some readers but the balrog of political
correctness does pursue me through the mines. It's an annoying
coincidence that PartiallyClips abbreviates to PC.
Q: I don't get the one about...
A: Fugeddabahdit. Nobody I've shown these to has laughed at every strip. Go on and read the next one.
Q: Do you sell the originals?
A: Duh, there are no originals. It's a shame, too. I'd sell my toenail
clippings if I thought there was a market. I have started saving my
notes pages though.
Q: Anything I can do to help the strip?
A: You can certainly donate money to support the upkeep of the site and to show your appreciation for the free laughs. You can also
Vote
for the strip every day by clicking the VOTE button on the header. Tell
your friends about Nth Degree and PartiallyClips, and email them links
to this site. In general, I want everyone in the world to read more
often, think critically, and pay attention. |
