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Interviews: SMBC's Zach Weiner Answers Your Questions 25

Posted by samzenpus from the here-they-are dept.
Last week you had a chance to ask Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC) creator and monocle enthusiast Zach Weiner about his comics, reading classy, and his other projects. Below you'll find his answers to your questions.
How did it start?
by Flavianoep

Expanding my question, what inspired you to write your webcomic?

Weiner: SMBC really started in like 1998? I had a geocities site called Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, where I posted essays and comics and such. It was purely for amusement, with no plan to make money.

Later it morphed into just comics, and people seemed to like it. Later still, I was working a shit job in Hollywood and desperately wanted to escape. So, I focused on comics, and a few years later I was able to quit my job!



Sacred cows?
by eldavojohn

Have there been any times you feared you went too far with your humor? If not, when have you received the most mail asserting that you did?

Weiner: Definitely, yeah. I actually once finished a comic (I forget the joke, but the image was very old people having sex) and then shelved it for being too crude. Then later I was out of ideas and needed an update.

I don’t actually get a lot of hatemail. Then one time I was blindsided was a comic where I had some fratboys finding out a frat brother was dead, and then drawing dicks on his face. Apparently that was a bit upsetting for some people.



Jokes you didn't tell
by gman003

You often tell jokes that rely on fairly advanced math, science or economics. Have there been any jokes you scrapped because you thought they were *too* advanced for your audience?

Weiner: Well, as a general rule, jokes of that sort aren’t reallllly funny? Like, they’re association-funny, but not actually clever. There are exceptions, but not many. I don’t think I’ve ever held back a good joke just because it was niche.

In fact, I could argue the Internet favors jokes like that, at least in the short term. Like, I once did a joke about using TI-83s as a stable reserve currency. Probably was not liked by most of my audience, but the people who DID like it shared it a lot. Or, similarly, I did one about the Chairman of the Fed dressing up as a ghost and haunting banks to boost consumption. Niche joke, but it got lots of shares.



Gender and skin color
by gsliepen

Dear Zach, I noticed that your comics feature a remarkable balance in gender and skin color of the people you draw. There are also many same-gender couples. How do you do this? Do you decide yourself for each comic, or do you roll some dice? Do you randomize other things this way as well, like glasses and clothes? By the way, I noticed that you maintain a list of things you cannot draw. But don't worry, you're way better than that Randall guy who can only draw black&white stick figures.

Weiner: What’s really weird is (possibly because my audience is a bunch of dorks) is that tons of people assume I have an algorithm or some random mechanism. The truth is I just don’t write gender/color/etc. into the script unless it’s relevant to the joke. Then, when I’m drawing I pick semi-randomly.

You don’t want to be completely random, because you could get in trouble. Like, if I’m drawing someone committing financial crime, I don’t want my random throw to be Jewish. In general, I try to avoid stereotypes. So, for instance, if there’s only one irrational character in the strip, I try to make it a dude. Also, when someone has to be the jerk in the strip, I generally draw a redhead, so I’m really drawing myself as the asshole?

Randall who? Rand Paul?



The Rise of Joke Theft on the Internet
by eldavojohn

I'm not talking about your humorous Sarah Silverman satire video but the actual people who misappropriate a joke for their own. I've seen it on Facebook where someone reads a joke on Reddit or XKCD or SMBC and just rehashes it as their own idea in a post knowing that no one else out there could possibly be wasting their time on something like SMBC. Do you see this as frequently as I do? In all honesty does this bother you or merely flatter you? Is it just a natural unavoidable quality of memes or do you think it's more sinister?

Weiner: Here’s the thing. In 1990, when I was 8, I used to redraw other people’s comics and show them off. But who gives a shit, because it’s an 8 year old. Now, it’s all public. I think the real danger is NOT that people like me get ripped off - it’s that young artists aren’t even allowed to imitate. Imitation is how you figure out what you like!

That said, it’s easy for me to not care, since I’m making a comfortable living. But, in general, I think with “joke theft” we should err on the side of tolerance. That said, when sites like 9gag take my stuff and watermark it, yeah, that pisses me off. But, there’s nothing you can really do.



Ren & Stimpy
by SupahVee

I see a fair bit of other influences in your comics, with Ren & Stimpy references seeming to show up here and there. What other comic have played a role in your work, and is there some bad experience in early childhood that clearly left you so scarred from Ren & Stimpy?

Weiner: Really? I definitely watched as a kid, but I’m curious what you see as Ren & Stimpy references! I’m at least not doing it on purpose. My early big comic influences were Scott Adams, Glen Baxter, and the comic The Parking Lot is Full. Since then, I’ve diverged a lot. These days I try to take more influence from books and concepts than other cartoonists. But, many comics continue to impress - xkcd, Hark a Vagrant, Buttersafe, Oglaf. Recently I’ve really enjoyed Whomp!



Intellectual Sources
by Gestahl

With respect to your "philosophical thought experiment" comics, how many of your comics are based in topics/ideas you learned before the end of your formal education, how many are based on things you have encountered in your "continuing education" (whether based on life experience, or just what you are currently reading about), and how many are "novel" intuition pumps?

Weiner: Most I’ve learned after. But, I was a pretty lousy college student. I try to read 3-5 books a week, and make time for deep reading as well. It’s harder now that I have a kid, but the kid provides some insight too, I suppose.

I don’t know how much is new. That said, I was very pleased to find out about Nozick’s Utility Monster AFTER I’d done a comic describing that exact idea! I was 40 years too late, but it’s neat to know that I came up with something a smarter guy came up with.



The Mrs. and the extended comic
by Anonymous Coward

How does your wife feel being portrayed in the comic?

Weiner: My wife likes the spotlight more than me! She’s actually doing some public science lecturing in the near future, if anyone’s interested.

So, I think she even enjoy the insulting ones (i.e. all of them).



Zach Weiner is awesome
by Jax Omen

I love Zach, met him at a comic-con in Seattle a couple years ago, he signed his SMBC-Theater DVD for us and posed for "photo bomb" pictures. Awesome dude. My question for Zach is, have you ever considered/pondered/done any longer-form comics, with a cohesive narrative? You have tons of goofy ideas, some quite entertaining, I'd love to see what you could do with a story-driven comic powered by your goofy ideas. Also: your wife is wrong, single-use monocles are an awesome idea, even if just for gag-gift purposes :P

Weiner: I’m working on one serious dramatic graphic novel and a few prose novels now. I’ve wanted to do longform stuff for a while, but it’s hard to find the time!

Glad you liked the monocles :) I think they’re hilarious, but I’ve never gotten so many angry messages (vapid consumerism! hipster bullshit! neckbearded nerds!) over a product before. It’s weird because people are ascribing all sorts of philosophical/social context to it that I just don’t see.



Any Public Response to the Common Criticism?
by eldavojohn

How do you respond to the criticism that by widely distributing your single use monocles to teenagers and adults, you'll be making highbrow socializing safer and therefore increase it to immoral levels?

Weiner: If one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt one’s moral views about them, but they are not one’s concern. Besides, Individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.



Do you have...
by serviscope_minor

Do you have any extra wisdom to share with us that's you know, like... woah? (For those less familiar with SMBC, this is one of my all time favorites.)

Weiner: Most people spend their lives in dread of the stuff that would make them happiest.

Also, no matter how good a giant Reese’s looks, it’ll never match your expectation.
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