The Xcentrikz - Interactive Comic

Interview with Robert Monroe on his great day-in-the-life comic,

OUT THERE...

October 14, 2009

(Click on any of the images in this interview to visit the comic...)

Here's a cool chat I had with R.C. Monroe on his nifty comic, Out There. I really like the illustration style, and his sense of humor was fun. I hope you like it too, go check it out! OUT THERE is strictly updated every day of the week (excepting Sunday) so send some fan mail if you liked it. Robert definitely deserves it! Enjoy...

THE XCENTRIKZ: You're talented and your illustration style is so fun and imaginative. But how did you get started in doing comics? What’s it been like to hone your skills?

R.C.: Once I discovered comics, I never wanted to draw anything else. I never had any aspirations to do illustrations or paintings or anything “respectable.” Comics were it for me. Which in a sense was good because it forced me to develop my own unique cartoon style but it also kept me from learning how to draw very well.

I tried selling a strip to the syndicates when I was in college, but by then my tastes ran towards comics that were unmarketable then and would be unmarketable now. I got interested in other things after that and took several years off from drawing, but when I discovered webcomics about 4 years ago I got inspired again.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Were you into comics when you were younger? What did you like back then, and how do you think it might be affecting Out There now?

R.C.: Peanuts was my first big influence; I was a fan before I even learned to read. Then MAD Magazine, then other newspaper comic strips like B.C., Beetle Bailey, Andy Capp, and scores of others. Doonesbury was a huge influence when I was in my teens. I’ve also drawn inspiration from older strips like Pogo and Li’l Abner. Later I got very into R. Crumb, Harvey Pekar (American Splendor), and the Hernandez brothers (Love and Rockets).

I don’t think it’s possible to account for every artist or writer who’s influenced me, but the most obvious are Schulz, Mort Walker, and Crumb for drawing, and Schulz, Trudeau, Pekar, and Jaime Hernandez for writing.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Anything in particular that got your imagination going, in the beginning of Out There?

R.C.: The comics I drew when I was younger were usually either wacky gag-a-day comics or stream-of-consciousness freak-outs a la Crumb. I hadn’t really used comics much to develop characters or tell stories until I started Out There. I found it came very naturally to me. So that kind of got me excited about what I was doing. Really, I don’t know if I’d have stuck it out if the writing hadn’t been so easy at the beginning. It’s actually a little harder now but that’s because I’m more critical of what I’m doing.

THE XCENTRIKZ: What inspired the Out There characters? Are any of them inspired by real people?
R.C.: Miriam and John were originally meant to symbolize my internal struggle—John being what I aspire to be and Miriam being what I am. Of course, I fudged the details a lot—I’m not really like Miriam, just similar in some ways—and as I went along I tended to focus more on the things that made them people and less on the things that made them symbols, which was good, because readers are probably better able to relate to them as a result.

Clayton is sort of an amalgamation of three people I know, and a couple of the others borrow a characteristic or two from real people, but really, all the characters are me. Sometimes they’re saying things I’d like to say, sometimes they’re saying the opposite of what I’d like to say just so someone else in the strip can set them straight, and other times I’ll have two characters stating opposite points of view—both of which I can in some way sympathize with. That’s not to say I use every single strip as my soapbox, but sometimes when I feel like saying something, I’ll pick a character and have them say it.

THE XCENTRIKZ: What’s something that really challenges you in doing Out There?

R.C.: The six-days a week schedule can be challenging, but I’ve pretty much gotten it down to a science. Mostly the challenge is to avoid being too predictable and to avoid repeating myself too often. Not a whole lot happens in Out There; it sort of employs what one could call the Harvey Pekar approach, showing ordinary lives and ordinary everyday situations, and asking the reader to accept that there’s something interesting and compelling about them. To do this, you have to be a pretty good writer, and being that writer is a challenge. Getting readers to accept the notion that they should care about what’s going on when nothing much is going on is an uphill climb. They‘re not used to it, because it’s not where most comics are at.

THE XCENTRIKZ: In your opinion, what’s one of the coolest things about Out There?

R.C.: I’m not sure there’s anything cool about it! I think it’s really different from every other comic strip on the web or in the newspaper, but I’m not sure that makes it “cool.” Plus, you can’t really tell how different it is unless you follow it for awhile. At a glance it probably doesn’t seem all that different.

THE XCENTRIKZ: How has it been promoting Out There to new viewers? How do you think it got as popular as it is today?

R.C.: I don’t think Out There is very popular—at least not to the degree that I’d like it to be—but whatever popularity it has attained is probably attributable to the fact that I’ve been lucky enough to find people with whom my approach resonates. Out There is a tough sell because it’s not in synch with what generally “works” for web or print comics; in Out There, there’s no fantasy, no adventure, no references to popular culture, nothing “edgy” or “cool”, it doesn’t belong to any recognizable genre. I think my natural “market” is people who don’t read comics at all. I don’t really read comics much anymore myself. Out There just isn’t really oriented towards a typical webcomics or comic book audience.

THE XCENTRIKZ: How about some fun personal questions… If you could go back in time to change something in your life, what might it be?

R.C.: I’m tempted to say I’d have started Out There in about 1998 when there were hardly any other webcomics, and it was probably a lot easier to build an audience. But in truth, it would have been a very different strip if I had done it then and I’m not sure I would like it now. So, no regrets.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Stranded on a desert island! What three totally nifty items would you want to have?

R.C.:My wife and my two cats. Hopefully there’s food there too.

THE XCENTRIKZ: What’s one of the weirdest things that’s happened to you doing comics?

R.C.: Being at a convention and meeting people who like the strip is kind of weird for me. I’m a little uncomfortable with the attention, actually. They can probably sense it. I always hope they don’t go away feeling like I didn’t care about them or that I took them for granted; it’s not the people themselves that I’m uncomfortable with, it’s the unnatural dynamic of them knowing who I am—sort of—and me not knowing who they are. It’s not a normal way to interact with people.

THE XCENTRIKZ: How do you feel about life as a web-comic creator? The pros, the cons, the costs of time and resources. What makes it worth it to you, at the end of the day?

R.C.: There’s a great many things I enjoy doing, but the only ones I’m any good at are things that you can’t make a living at. Comics might be the exception. I’d really like to be making my living doing Out There, but the reality is that only a relatively small number of webcomics creators get to do that, and according to my most recent calculations, I’m not one of them. Sometimes that frustrates me. But Out There is creatively fulfilling, and unlike other creative things I’ve done in the past, my comic strip at least pays for itself. As far as the time it takes, I’ve always had to have some creative project to work on, and it’s nice to have one that isn’t costing me money.

THE XCENTRIKZ: What do you think of the Out There reader base?

R.C.: I was reading a few webcomics before I started mine, and I noticed most of them had very active online forums where people would discuss each installation of the comic and psychoanalyze the characters and speculate about the next plot twist and argue a lot with each other. I figured this was a normal thing for webcomics readers to do, so I expected this to happen when my strip started gaining an audience. For some reason, though, it didn’t. I have a forum, but hardly anyone uses it. I’ve always gotten a fair number of e-mails from people, but not much forum participation. At first I worried a little about this—okay I still worry a little about it—but then I realized that I’ve almost never felt compelled to join in on the discussion in other comic’s forums, so it shouldn’t be surprising that my readers don’t either. It may be an oversimplification, but I tend to think my readers are a lot like me in this regard—they like reading comics, but they don’t feel a compulsion to share their opinions about them with the world. I think forum participation is probably more a thing for the young (I’m generalizing again), and if my readers are like me, they’re not young.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Tell us more about the Out There books?

R.C.: When I was a kid my Peanuts and MAD books were my most prized possessions, followed by all the other comics reprints books. Later on I started collecting Pogo books, and these were real gems, because Walt Kelly made each book much more than just a collection of stuff you’ve already seen. He augmented the reprints with scads of new material: new drawings, new strips, essays, poems, etc. I wanted my books to be like that. I ran out of time on the first book so there’s not much extra in that one, but the second and third books both have a lot of extra stuff, including some bonus comics that tell the “untold” stories of Out There. I think if people are going to shell out money for a book of strips that are all available online for free, they‘re entitled to a little something extra.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Anything else to share with your fans out there? How about a clue as to what’s upcoming in Out There?

R.C.: I have a rough outline in my head, basically just a list of things that are going to happen in the strip, but I’m always revising it, switching the order, throwing things out and replacing them with new things. So basically I have no idea what’s going to happen. I’ll have changed my mind three times by the time people are reading this.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Any special people you’d like to give a shout out to, in thanks for their help?

R.C.: My wife for being understanding and supporting, the folks at Keenspot for continuing to believe in Out There, and the people who take the time to let me know they’re reading the strip, for reminding me that I have a responsibility not only to myself but to others too.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Thanks again for the cool interview Robert. Keep up the nifty work! Go read Out There now, folks – Enjoy.

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