Broken Frontier

Welcome back to Part Two of our Inter-Review with Stephanie O’Donnell and her new book, The Original Nutty Funsters: A List of Grievances, the first GN collection of her webstrip published through Free Lunch Comics.

Be sure to read PART ONE  before diving in!

BF Review: O’Donnell’s art on the strip is incredibly solid stuff, reminiscent of the early  strips of Martin Wagner’s Hepcats (before it became a comic book) and in line with the clean anthropomorphic art styles seen in Radio Comix and Antarctic Press. Her layouts and pacing are pitch-perfect comic strip goodness, and it’s obvious that the strip format is one O’Donnell has admired and worked toward for many long years. The earliest strips are sketchier in look and rougher around the edges, but as the book moves into increasingly modern offerings, the progression to a finely-tuned and wonderfully confident ongoing series of strips is apparent.

BROKEN FRONTIER: Can you name your greatest artistic influences? Ever hear of or read the Hepcats book I compared you to?

STEPHANIE O’DONNELL: I have heard of Hepcats, but I still haven’t gotten around to reading that much of it though. (I gotta change that soon!) I do remember reading a magazine article on the series a long time ago and being really intrigued by the style and some of the material that was touched on in the piece.

I read a lot of Peanuts books and Calvin & Hobbes growing up. I still have some of the old mass market paperbacks like “You’re A Pal, Snoopy!” and “Take It Easy, Charlie Brown” and am a bit of a collector now. I’ve still got the original Sunday paper that the last C&H strip was published in. Those two series made a big impact on me. The concept of animals having their own distinct personality and vivid imaginations was what really drew me in.

BF: As the strips’ title (“Original Nutty Funsters”—did you forget?) was spawned from an Animaniacs reference, is there a Looney Tunes/Warner Bros. homage at work in the strip?

SO’D: Definitely. Henry is like a more bitter, bastardized Bugs. Except he lives above ground and doesn’t want anything to do with anybody. It’s funny because in the very, very early stages of Poley Polarity, he was kind of set up like a Bugs character, only he was a cat wearing Mickey Mouse-type clothing. He had an Elmer Fudd-like arch enemy, and there would be that back-and-forth rapport. As time went on, I added more characters and dropped the hunter guy. It came into its own, being more about his relatives and friends he hung out with and their quirks.

BF: How about writerly influences? Which comics strips out there do you stand (or sitting’s fine, too, I suppose) in awe of for their comedic and/or character nuance?

SO’D: In addition to Schulz and Watterson, I’m really digging a wide range of stuff right now. I’m a huge fan of Patrick McDonnell’s Mutts, and got the opportunity to meet him in person at New York Comic Con in 2006. He’s a super nice guy. He had a lot of great advice and was very encouraging. At the moment I’m also reading George Herriman’s  Krazy Kat stuff, and am kicking myself for not getting into it sooner. I just love how expressive everyone in the series is, and how he plays around with the English language.

BF Review: So all in all, The Original Nutty Funsters: A List of Grievances is a fabulous new collection of strips, and one I can recommend whole-heartedly, especially as it can be downloaded in PDF form for free on Wowio (as can all Free Lunch Comics’ comics, as they’re released). Even at the pittance price of $7.95, that’s 80 pages of high-quality comics for ten cents a page. That’s certainly more affordable than most, and the content shouldn’t have you writing your own disgruntled fan letter to the editors, or hey, if it does, that might actually be really poetic.

BF: What would you think of getting a letter like Henry Haresworth sends in the strip? What would you do? Laugh? Cry? Laugh, lock yourself in the bathroom and cry? If the damn letter’s got an address visit their home and throw a soda drink on it (that’s a reference to an event in the GN folks)?

SO’D: Knowing me, I’d want to do all of those things at once! I’m really new to all of this stuff, and even before that I tried to prepare myself for something like that. Even when you do, it’s still a shock. You still get freaked out. It’s a challenge for me to stand my ground even when I wanna really lash out at the person. Over time, I try to see it as something to vent about with my family and friends, and quite possibly, use as more fodder for stories.

There was this sketch comedy show on MTV in the 90s called “The State”, and they got  panned by almost every major media outlet. So they took those bad reviews and made a new ad campaign for the next season with those negative blurbs, with the tagline “More  Miserable Crap”. I just love how they took something like that and spun it around. I’d love to be able to handle it that way and turn it into a joke that works in my favor.

BF: What’s been your greatest fan moment to date? An event that’s stuck with you and keeps you motivated? Anything?

SO’D: Going to New York Comic Con this year and seeing complete strangers pick it up, thumb through it, and decide to buy it was a great feeling. I’ve been getting a lot of encouragement from friends, family, and colleagues all around. It’s also always nice to get feedback from someone out of nowhere who really likes your stuff. It really wakes me up and makes me realize that I’m getting out there in the world, little by little.

BF: And next up is a project for Free Lunch called Cookie Bear—can you tell us a little about that?

SO’D: Cookie Bear is a new project I’ve been working on for the past year or so. It  follows the demented, often sugar filled adventures of the title character, and his wacky foulmouthed  forest friends; a snake who likes to play pranks such as spiking Cookie Bear’s treats with a “secret family ingredient”, and a punk bird who likes to pick fights and generally cause trouble. It’s a little bit inspired by Pooh Bear, and  some of those ultra cuddly “woodland animals in the forest” cartoons from the 80s. Only expect more psychedelics and cussin’.

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To read the online strips of Stephanie O’Donnell’s The Original Nutty Funsters, visit their official site at http://theairingcupboard.net/tonf

And for all things Stephanie visit her Comicspace, Myspace, and DeviantART pages.

For ordering information visit the site of Free Lunch Comics, and for free download of the entire graphic novel reviewed and discussed herein, visit it’s Wowio page at http://www.wowio.com/users/product.asp?BookId=4341