Broken Frontier

Matthew Loux just released his first solo work through Oni Press. Sidescrollers is a laugh-out-loud look at a lovable underdog’s quest to win the girl against all odds. Even if those odds are in the form of a jock.

BROKEN FRONTIER: To start off, can you give a quick rundown of your book?

MATTHEW LOUX: Sure! Sidescrollers is the first book I both wrote and drew. I had previously drawn F-Stop, written by Antony Johnston. Sidescrollers is a fun comedy about three video game-playing friend, that try to save this cute girl they know from this jock that used to terrorize them all through high school. And the way they first do that is by grafitti-ing his car up real bad, and after this happens they are being chased by him the rest of the book. It’s pretty much a goofy comedy. At one point one of the characters get beat up by a group of girl scouts while another is being chased by a cat possessed by the devil. It all kind of comes to a head at the end of the day.

It’s a story I wrote a while ago, and I’ve been working on it on and off. I was able to convince Oni to put it out, and they went for it, and somehow it became over 200 pages. I think it’s a really fun read, and it was really exciting to finally see it in print.

BF: As you mentioned, you did F-stop with Antony Johnston. How different is it being on your own?

ML: The interesting thing about working with a writer is that I can just shut my brain off and draw. But for this, I had to, you know, figure out how to break it down to the pages, get my pacing down to where I wanted it. My storytelling is a pretty straight-forward storytelling, I never really try to do anything too crazy, so I think that it is easy to read. But with comedy, pacing is important so I really put a lot of extra attention to put a lot of repeat panel jokes in, which is stuff I’ve always loved. It also was really satisfying to be able to conceive an idea and have complete control of the way it would end up. Antony never said anything bad at all about what I did – but Oni was very hands off on this project for what I did, even when I told them it would be over 200 pages! And I got it done on time.

BF: With comedies often being more strip-based, why didn’t Sidescrollers really take on that look?

ML: Because I have a hard time with strip based comics. I mean, I love them when they are done right, but I have a hard time doing a gag each panel, a gag each installment. That’s probably why I haven’t done a web comic yet. I have a hard time maintaining a joke every time. Plus, I like to do callback jokes, set up a joke at the beginning, and then refer back to it in the middle of the story, and then again at the end. The TV show Arrested Development has a lot of that sort of jokes – like a callback to old episodes – and I try to do a lot of that kind of humor. But I also try to do a lot of different kinds of humor, like really low-brow humor, dry humor, and animal humor, one of my favorite kinds. I mean, just normal animals doing human-like things is, to me, just hilarious. I guess it could just be me though. [Laughs]

BF: [Laughs] There’s a lot of videogame-playing in the book—what’s your favorite game?

ML: Well, right now I’m playing Dragon Quest 8, and I’m enjoying it. I’m playing very slowly. I’m at like 90 hours, where most people finish it at 40 hours, which is kind of sad. But I’m enjoying it, it was my reward for finishing Sidescrollers basically, because I deprived myself of any outside contact for almost a year.

BF: What about your all-time favorites?

ML: Probably one of my all-time favorites is Castlevania: Symphony of The Night. It was a side-scrolling videogame, but it had a big map, and was like SuperMetroid. And Zelda. I loved the Zeldas, but not the latest one. Wind-Raker really sucked.

BF: This is your first book all by yourself—are there going to be more?

ML: Yeah, James  just demanded a proposal for my next book by Thanksgiving, so I better get my act together. I have a few ideas, but haven’t totally committed to one. I’m not ready for it yet, but definitely want to do a sequel to Sidescrollers, maybe in a year. I have some germs of ideas kicking around, it depends if anybody likes it or not. I’m hoping to have something by next summer, whatever that may be.

BF: Anything else?

ML: Nope, that’s about it. Just go out and buy Sidescrollers, it’s going to be the funniest read you’ve read in a long time.

For a 71 page preview of the book, check out www.onipress.com.