Interview with Brad Perri from Pirate Mike!

Every week we put a webcomic artist in the spotlight, this week: Brad Perri from Pirate Mike. Brad is our webcomic artist of the week!

Make sure to check out their latest comics on our homepage!

State your name for the record

· Alias(es): Brad Perri
· Creator(s) of the Webcomic: Pirate Mike—Maladjusted Minnesotan
· Date of birth of your Webcomic: October 2013
· By night you are  a webcomic creator, by day you are : a content strategist
· Where are you from: St. Paul, MN

How would you describe your webcomic?

A mainstream gag strip about a pirate raising a family in Minnesota.
Really, this is a constant struggle for me. I’m constantly changing it and fiddling and trying different versions on. It’s been known mostly as Pirate Mike: Maladjusted Suburbanite, but I’m a little wary of the “character moves to the suburbs” thing. I’m not very big on the idea of the suburbs being placed in opposition to the city as a place of shallowness whereas the city is somehow authentic. I think they’re both shallow. :) I feel particularly awkward when I describe the strip as a pirate moving to the suburbs when Scary Gary already riffs on the whole “move to the suburbs” thing very effectively. Perhaps the family element changes things, but I really do need to come up with a good description still. It’s more important to me that people know Mike lives as a family man in the 21st Century America than knowing that he somehow lives in the suburbs, specifically.
I might be asking the title to do too much work. I want a title that adequately conveys three things: (1) that the character is a pirate, (2) that the character is maladjusted and (3) that he’s in a contemporary setting. Unlike Hagar, who stays in the time of the vikings, I want Mike to derive a lot of his humor from the fact that he lives with us in 21st century America. I’m currently going with “Minnesotan” because of the alliteration and because the stereotype of the Minnesotan as a buttoned-down person (ala Fargo) contrasts humorously with someone who really needs a lot of work when it comes to fitting in.
One description I’ve liked in the past is: “He’s quit the sea to raise a family in the suburbs.”

Why are webcomics your passion?

Because I get to do my own comic in its entirety (writing, drawing, lettering, coloring, publishing, etc.) while building Pirate Mike’s audience myself. These are both very important factors. As a little kid, I wanted to do comics. Once I figured out, though, that the writer and the penciller were generally separate, I didn’t really want to do that anymore. Comic strips in general still afford that opportunity. On top of that, even though like most folks I want to be syndicated in a newspaper, I don’t necessarily want the shenanigans that come with that. As a kid, one of the reasons I didn’t choose comics as a profession was all the horror stories about how comics artists get screwed and die as destitute alcoholics. No thanks. But with the web, I can “publish” my strip, it’s my vision, it’s my say in how the story goes, and, hey, if folks don’t gravitate to it, then folks don’t gravitate to it. I do what I can marketing-wise, but, ultimately, the key for me is basically I get to do it My Way (queue Sinatra). But, that said, if anybody out there wants to pay me to do this, let’s talk . . . :)
Just to say a little bit more about the audience-building: I’m pretty disappointed when I read comments from editors and from newspaper readers about what they find objectionable or entertaining in a comic strip. It seems to be to the point that the audience simply expects the comic strip to pander to their need to be left alone in the morning while they drink their coffee. If that’s the audience the newspapers have cultivated, it’s not one I’m interested in. Obviously, I’m no firebrand when it comes to my comics, but I would like someone to have a pulse, to enjoy the medium and to appreciate what I’m doing rather than just being annoyed that I made a reference or used a word that they find offensive. I think with webcomics I have the opportunity to build an audience that is tailored to Pirate Mike rather than the other way around. It may be a very teeny tiny audience, but, nevertheless, it’s all mine.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

These days, my inspiration comes mostly from my friends in the Twin Cities Comic Collective (www.tc3mn.com).
Also, seeing what other folks are up to on their own webcomics: Best In Show, Buzza Wuzza, Ralf The Destroyer, Channelate, Awkward Yeti, Lunarbaboon, Tubeytoons, Anyone for Rhubarb, Moco Comics, Dogs Ducks and Aliens, Dust Bunny Mafia, Dust Piggies, Jabaru, Fowl Language, Catbeard, PAMO’S World. You know I will forget a handful of strips I am currently excited about so, please, for the love of all that is good, forgive me if I left you off this list. I promise: I love you. Knowing that people are doing comics that aren’t necessarily huge yet is very inspiring for me. I find it very encouraging.
Previously: old cartoons, old comic books, old comic strips: Garfield, Peanuts, Bloom County, Krazy Kat, Popeye, Li’l Abner, Calvin & Hobbes, Broom-Hilda, Beetle Bailey, Hagar the Horrible, and Pogo. I was lucky enough to be dismissed by a very respected cartoonist as a mere echo of Hagar and Broom-Hilda. I take that as a great compliment. The first paperback collections I ever bought were of Broom Hilda. When I think of disgruntled characters I love, Leopold the demon from Scary Gary comes to mind as does Garfield (particularly the early Garfield), but the early beer chugging cigar smoking Broom Hilda and her insulting friend Grelber rule that roost. I really wish Broom Hilda still used Grelber! Free insults!
New comic strips I like include the previously mentioned Scary Gary (especially for its writing), Bleeker the Rechargeable Dog (especially for layouts and coloring), The Barn, The Tinkersons, Dustin, and Dog Eat Doug. I enjoy watching these strips continue to fight for their rightful place in the newspaper.
I also loved Big Top and I’m still distressed about that strip’s disappearance.

What’s your main source of traffic (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit,…):

Twitter is where I get most of my views. I’m also on Facebook, Google+ (the BetaMax of social media that I much prefer to Facebook), ComicsSherpa (I pay them), and Tapastic. I don’t use Reddit because I find the interactions there toxic. And I don’t really care if you vote me up or down. That’s not the kind of feedback I’m interested in. But, as I always say, if I get a gajillion thumbs up on Reddit, then, yes, Reddit is the most important thing in my life.

What’s your favorite comic of all time?

Iron Man when Don Heck was drawing it in the ‘60s. I don’t mention comic books as an influence because I’m not trying to do a comic book, but, really, the single thing that turned me on to comics was actually an episode of those lousy 1966 Marvel Superhero Cartoons, the one featuring the Iron Man story from Tales of Suspense #45: Iron Man versus Jack Frost! I still remember sitting there at four years old and it changed my life forever. My dad bought me my first comic book (Iron Man #98 in 1977, I think) and that was that. But oddly it’s the ’60s Marvel comic books that really altered my brain because those old “cartoons” were basically just the comic books stuck on celluloid and moved across the screen. I still love them. I watch them all the time. Don Heck’s Iron Man is the best: his pen line, his inks, his version of Tony Stark as this successful dashing ladies man, the odd scratchiness of Iron Man’s armor, I just love it. Can’t get enough of it.I love love love Don Heck’s Iron Man. Gene Colan’s is a close second.

What would you like to achieve with your webcomics?

To stay focused on making the strip and taking one step at a time. Currently, my goal for the next twelve months is to post a new strip on Fri with strips from the archive on Mon and Wed.
If I start trying to make goals like “get syndicated” or “build x number of followers” or “generate x amount of revenue,” then I tend to get overwhelmed and discouraged and that makes it very difficult to make a comic strip. Yet I do not consider myself a “do it for the love of it” guy. I very much want an audience. I just know I can’t control that. I figure as long as I’m doing a comic strip, then it’s unlikely that I’ll get worse at it. Plus, I think of what else I would do with my time and if I think “make mediocre comics” or “fill in the blank” I always choose mediocre comics. So, until that changes, I’d have to say that what I would like to achieve with my webccomic is to have as many comic strips done as I can when ‘time’ is called and I drop dead.

What’s your biggest frustration as an webcomic artist?

Not being able to devote more time to it. Only putting out one new strip a week makes it very slow going in building out the strip’s universe. But it all adds up and the strip continues to take form. Patience and perseverance. Along those lines, I try not to dwell on this because I don’t find it very helpful in achieving my goal: making comics. Otherwise, I start thinking about how much better I could be if I could devote more time to it, how much happier I would be because I could focus on it and in being more integrated into a comics community, how much better I could understand the process of creating a comic, etc. etc. It can get depressing. So, yeah, time. On the other hand, I try to think, hey, maybe it’s the press of having time limitations that actually helps me make the strip! Whatever gets you through the night, right?

Who can we help you to reach your goals?

You’re doing it right now! So thank you! Seriously, you are. I like having the chance to talk about Pirate Mike and cartooning. I find that in itself very inspiring: talking to other people who also love comics. One of my greatest joys in comics is being at a comics convention and telling kids about how I make comics. One thing I wish I had had as a kid was a knowledge of any resources that may have been available to me to learn how to make comics. The biggest frustration as a kid was wondering why I couldn’t get my lines to look like real comics lines, that thick-to-thin of a cursive brush line, for instance. My mom bought me a crowquill pen set, but you can imagine how successful I was with that. I had no idea what I was even looking at. So into a drawer it went never to be spoken of again. Then buying the Marvel Try Out Book as a kid, cracking that open and just being overwhelmed and closing that book and running into the night screaming. Being associated with other folks interested in the making of comics, to me, is just as important as the actual process of making the comics themselves, or at least it is for me.

Which webcomic artist should we interview next and why?Which question would you like to ask them?

Phil Juliano, “Best In Show.” Phil is a friend of mine with the TC3 and I met him at a comic convention after following his strip on Comics Sherpa. Not only a really great guy, but one of the best cartoonists I know and/or read. Phil has been making Best In Show for 10 years now and it is unquestionably one of the top comic strips I enjoy. Phil has been absolutely critical in my own developing concept of webcomics. Question to ask Phil: What are the differences for him between working to get his comic into more newspapers versus working to build an online audience? I’ve actually never discussed this with him.

Why do you expect from Best WebComics?

To help me discover new webcomics! I hope it’s a site that is pretty inclusive and can also serve as a resource for other folks getting into webcomics who might not understand all the possibilities that are available in webcomics. It’s a very exciting time to be doing comics because of the variety of comics you can do on the web. I think Best Webcomics could be an important part of keeping that momentum going! I look forward to seeing what folks continue to do with comics given the elasticity of the web and its constantly evolving nature.