1) What is your comic about? (it’s so open-ended, I know! Talk as long or as short as you like!)

Carter: The Crooked Gremlins is about an elite cadre of subterranean mischief makers charged with one simple yet important task: break stuff.

You see, the universe knows it has to impede the technology advancement of the human race. The Gremlins are around to keep people fixing stuff so that we don’t have the time to invent the Kill-O-Zap ray gun until we’ve also figured out a way to protect ourselves against it.

Paul: I thought it was about penises and the gremlins that love them. Am I wrong?

2) How did you get started making webcomics?

Carter: Did we… I mean, have we started? Oh, yeah, I guess we’re webcomickers now. The Crooked Gremlins actually began as a political commentary site. Each of the Gremlins was going to cover a different area of the political arena, and the idea was that different people could “take turns” writing as different Gremlins. Of course, the only kind of website more prevalent than webcomics are political commentary sites, and my heart wasn’t really in it. I called Paul, who was sort of our video games correspondent, and we started talking about doing a comic using the same characters. A few months later, the site became centered around the comic, and it’s made a big difference.

Paul: Huuuge difference. Big, throbbing difference. Trying to sift through the political jargon to get to the dicks was just, ugh. I mean, when you want to just get right to the meat of it… it was really frustrating.

3) Five years from now, what do you see your comic becoming? Will it be over? Will it have grown larger?

Carter: Seriously? Five years? Anyone who makes webcomics knows that they very rarely plan out a comic 5 days from now, let alone five years. I think our premise has a lot of potential, and there were at least 7 seasons of the West Wing, so yeah, we’ll still be around in a hemi-decade.

Obviously, I love the strip. I love it to pieces. I think it’s great. But it’s like a child; sometimes, it’s bad and you have to spank it. It’s a strange metaphor, but whatever, you asked me.

Paul: Five years? They all have mustaches made of various penises. I mean, animals. Sorry.

4) Tell us about your main character. What are his/her motivations? How did he/she join up with your other characters and why?

Carter: There are two main characters; Frank and Elrond. Nick and Retrac are also sort of central to the canon, but they’re more like recurring characters. When Paul and I started the strip there wasn’t any decision made like – “Okay, you be Elrond, I’ll be Frank, and Nicholas is my cat.” We just sort of adopted the characters naturally as we wrote the strips.

Back when it was a political blog, one of the other founders and I thought it would be cool if they had a kind of Russian hierarchical structure to their organization, with different Ministries and Directorates and Commissars and such. We haven’t abandoned the idea entirely; Frank is still the leader of the group, and Elrond is still his tech support, and Nicholas still watches a lot of TV, and Retrac still deals with philosophy and theology. But we’ve really shifted the focus away from their work and more toward their interactions with one another, which I think is much more entertaining.

Paul: Yeah, I kind of walked into a situation where there were already defined characters and this rigid structure of who’s who. Like, this guy wouldn’t suck a dick but this guy would complain about having to. That is just super constrictive when trying to create. Over time, they have grown into something more. I happy with where we are headed now. Penis.

5) Who is your favorite secondary character and why?

Carter: Nicholas. He just… we abuse him so much, and there’s really no call for it. We’re so incredibly mean to him, and it’s always funny. I think we tried to use him once in a serious capacity, and it backfired big-time. I’m not going to out-and-out tell you which strip I’m talking about, but let’s just say we swung at a pitch in the dirt.

Paul: I’m a fan of all of them really. Any time I can get all their penises in one place…

6) What is your favorite comic page?

Carter: My absolute favorite, and I don’t think this will ever change, is the one entitled “De Plane Boss.” It’s vulgar, it goes to the root of the origins of the Gremlin idea, and I’m very happy with how the strip looks. Even though we continually refine our aesthetic and we do more advanced shading and coloring techniques now, I’m just thoroughly satisfied with the strip.

Paul: Ok, this I will take seriously. Penisaurus Rex.

7) Is there a storyline you’re really looking forward to? What is it about? Give us a spoiler warning if necessary!

***SPOILER WARNING***

Carter: Anyone who is actually reading right now is clearly not enough of a fan to avert their eyes after a warning of spoilers, so this is what I have to say to them: What’s your problem, tough guy? What, you can’t wait a few weeks to see what happens in a strip that clearly has no linear story? Je-sus, you’re impatient. Hey. Hey. You know what? I’m gonna tell you what the big secret about “Lost” is.

You ready?

Turns out it’s a TV show written by people that Aaron Sorkin fired. Fired.

Paul: That’s actually not true. The Great Wall of Penis.

8) Can you give us a short explanation on how you make your pages? If you have a tutorial or anything, please link it.

Carter: This is where it gets complicated. Paul is, in an official capacity, our “artist.” I am, for lack of a better word, our “writer.” But we both write and draw the strip, so those words lose some meaning. Paul will usually send me the lines, which I will color and shade, after we work out a script. Here’s a breakdown of the process:

  1. Idea.
  2. Share idea with Paul. Get told I am stupid.
  3. Vigorously argue with Paul re: My Intelligence/
  4. Create new idea.
  5. Agree on new idea.
  6. Write script, send to Paul two days before deadline.
  7. Get phone call from Paul 5 hours before strip is due.
  8. Realize there is some drastic problem with the strip we didn’t see when we wrote it.
  9. Revert to earlier idea.
  10. Lines, coloring and lettering. Write accompanying post for strip.
  11. Done, strip is up.
  12. Scotch.

Actually, step 12 is liberally sprinkled throughout the entire creative process. It’s like sand; it gets into everything.

Paul: That’s close to how my side of the process goes.

  1. Wake up hammered.
  2. Sneak away from person-I-don’t-know’s bed.
  3. Stumble on to street.
  4. Tell woman, “I didn’t forget my pants, I just don’t wear them.”
  5. Penis.
  6. Fall into my house.
  7. My roommates (parents) assemble me into, fucking, something.
  8. They make me call this asshole. He babbles some shit I don’t want to hear.
  9. I throw up.
  10. I give in so I can get off the phone. I get my dad to do the drawings or whatever.
  11. Done, asshole gets his crap.
  12. Scotch.

9) Be your own critic! When it comes to your comic, what are you looking to improve upon?

Carter: The writing has to get better. I don’t see much room for improvement in the art. I mean, we’re already head & shoulders above most other webcomics (kidding, we love everybody) in terms of aesthetics, so the only other thing to do is pick up the pen and write comics worth reading.

Paul: Yeah, this guy sucks. Can we replace him?

10) You guys have a unique and interesting premise. Why do you waste it on video game references and dick/fart jokes?

Carter: Advancing a narrative as complex and ambitious as ours is tough work. It’s a lot easier to write things that make us chuckle. Like, a lot easier.

Paul: Vagina.