Battlemouth

Allow me to capture your attention: there is a plethora of comics out there on the Internet for you to read. If you’re reading this, I’m sure you have a few bookmarked that you check out every week. Every man and woman out there creating these wonderful pages for you to read each week have dedicated countless hours to entertaining you in some way. Here at Battlemouth, I hope to draw your attention to something new and interesting that will invigorate your imagination toward new horizons.

Having fallen in love with John Allison’s Bad Machinery, I took an opportunity to talk with the creator and discuss the finer points of being a member of the webcomic community. Read on for the full interview.

Battlemouth: You recently finished up Scary Go Round, and began Bad Machinery nearly two years ago now. How has it been working with a different cast of characters?

John Allison: Actually it’s only been 9 months since I started Bad Machinery. I realise that it must feel like an awful lot longer. Working with the new characters is great, I still feel like I’m finding out about them. Part of the fun, and the challenge, of writing young characters is that there is a lot of room for them to grow and change.

BM: Has it been any more challenging, or is it the best thing in the world (at least for the time being)?

JA: It’s challenging in the sense that drawing children was not something I had really done at length before. Kids grow at different speeds but after years and years of drawing adults I have to constantly check the proportions – especially head size. And then that can start to throw me when I draw the adult characters. There’s just more to juggle mentally at once. But it’s more fun than a hassle because it’s satisfying to get it right.

BM: What drove you to creating webcomics all those years ago?

JA: I had a lot of spare time! I had finished university and was looking for a job. The days stretched out before me, long and empty.

BM: Do you have a planned ending for Bad Machinery, or is it still leading you astray?

JA: Christ alive man, I just started! The stories are self contained but the greater character arc I guess would end at the end of school. Whether I’ll ever get that far, I don’t know. It’s an awfully long way away. I imagine that along the way I’ll want to do other things too.

BM: What is that “dog” creature Mildred and family have found? Is that from Scary Go Round (I would know that were I to have read every chapter ever)?

JA: That would spoil the story. It’s not from Scary Go Round though. I don’t want to have any meaningful carry-overs from my old comics, plot wise. My plan for the series was to have a sense of growth and evolution without requiring the reader to indulge in tedious continuity porn.

BM: Have you ever done any other work outside of Scary Go Round, Bad Machinery, and Bobbins?

JA: Do you mean any work ever? Like a Saturday job? Or art/design work. I’d love to have rolled out of bed one morning and started my paying cartooning career, but it certainly didn’t happen that way.

BM: I know a lot of webcomic creators are a part of some larger network of like-minded individuals. Is there any such group you’re a part of?

JA: I was a part of some of the earliest webcomics collectives, Fleen, Keenspot, and Dumbrella. I would say that I’m now past the point where there’s anything to be gained from such networks.

BM: How is it working besides them?

JA: I got a lot of traffic as part of Fleen, which included PvP and User Friendly alongside other notables. Fleen invented the dropdown list of webcomics, can you believe it? Keenspot was another big leg-up in the early days. When I started Scary Go Round, I became part of Dumbrella, a network that R Stevens of Diesel Sweeties set up with Sam Brown of Exploding Dog. We exhibited together at San Diego Comic-con many times, among other shows, and all remain great friends. After a while we all kind of outgrew the collective though. At its peak there was a huge message board community attached and all that entails, good and bad. I felt at times that “Dumbrella” as an identity obscured, in promotional terms, some of the superbly talented but less recognised individuals within the collective.

Thanks to John Allison for chatting with me about his fantastic webcomic Bad Machinery. As always, if you have a suggestion for a webcomic you’d like to have introduced to our other readers, just leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail.