Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles creator Neil Swaab

I needed three years worth of material for this book. I like to give the reader a good deal.

I became friends with Ted Rall when he included me in the second Attitude book. One day we went to go get drinks and at that point he was talking about how he wasn’t sure if he had enough artists to do any more Attitude books. He was saying he really wanted to do some single artists who were not as well known as they should be for the Attitude books. He wasn’t really sure who to do and I was saying, “Well, I’m looking for another publisher for my next book.” We both just looked at each other and it was like “Well, duh.”

Yeah, I had seen the first one. I hadn’t read it, but I’d seen it around and heard good things about it. Then Ted had just emailed me out of the blue for the second one.

Yeah. I was. But I’m always surprised when anybody prominent even knows who I am.

We have alcoholic Jesus is in there. Mr. Wiggles has to buy a baby shower gift or. Neil going blind is in there and Neil dates himself. But the big one in there is Alcoholic Jesus.

Not much. It really hasn’t changed. I’m always surprised that I never get any hate mail, but mostly I just get a lot of Viagra email.

Oh it’s great. I am a millionaire now actually.

I’m keeping it real. Actually I’m sitting on my solid-gold couch right now.

Yeah.

But the book’s release hasn’t been a tremendous boon, but it’s good. The site’s stats are up. The book’s selling. It’s not selling like giant numbers or anything, but it’s selling a little bit here and there. It’s selling better than the first book and it’s helped the sales of my first book.

Yeah. I’m not seeing huge results but that stuff builds up after awhile.

Right now I’m in Real Detroit Weekly, New Times Broward-Palm Beach and Italy’s Internazionale where it’s translated into Italian.

That was another Ted Rall thing. After the second Attitude book came out he had a show in Italy. He had invited all the artists who were in the first two Attitude books to exhibit some of their comic strips in there. So my comic strips were up in Italy for a while and I guess somebody there had seen it and was friends with the editor of Internazionale. That editor went and saw the show and just loved them. So he contacted me and I’ve been publishing there for over a year now.

They had to ask me one time what I meant by Sideways Vagina. They needed me to clarify.

Well, they’re on my list of emails I send out every week of my comic. So they get the English version and then they have somebody in-house translate it. Then they put all the translated dialogue back in using a font created from my own handwriting.

I get some stuff every now and then from people in Italy.

No. Only Inside out ones. Whatever that means.

Actually I do. Somebody I talked to who was looking for content mentioned them as a possibility.

If it’s something that’s making money, then I’m definitely not cool with that. But if it’s somebody’s personal blog then I feel that is promotion. I don’t really see that as too much of a violation, especially because they’re not making any money off of it. I have really only gotten on people when I’ve seen that they post basically all my comics. You can’t have a whole entire archive of stuff on there. That’s just not cool. If they have a few on their site, that’s not a big deal to me as long as it’s properly credited.

I think I’m pretty set now with how it’s looking. I think the whole second book is a lot more consistent than the first one. There might be slight nuances and variations and things like that changing over time, but I don’t think anything drastic.

Right now I’m doing CafePress t-shirts but I’ve got these other guys that I hooked up with that I’m looking to do some new t-shirts with. They’re just waiting for me to give them the designs so they can start producing them. These will be real high quality silkscreen shirts. That’s all the merchandise stuff I’ve got. I’d love to do a Mr. Wiggles talking doll and a couple of other things but I just don’t have the money to invest right now. If I can find an investor or something, then totally I’d be down with putting out some more merchandise.

Thanks! I launched it the month the second book came out. I was just busting my ass to get that thing done. I wanted it to be easier to navigate. First of all, the comic’s on the main page so you can see it right away. You don’t have to dig for anything. You can see all the books and everything that’s available. I really wanted to overhaul the site so when the second book came out I could promote it and myself so much better.

Yeah.

I’d feel bad about making someone work for free because I’m pretty demanding and controlling. I know exactly what it is I want, so it’s like I’m not really looking for a collaboration. It actually wasn’t too bad for me to code and build the website because I was teaching that in my illustration class at Parsons. I hadn’t really done as extensive a site as this one, so it was nice to actually learn for myself so I could teach them a little bit better.

It still is in my hometown in Michigan. But I feel like I have two hometowns because I’ve been living in New York so long. I really identify with the whole New York art scene and attitude. It’s a little bit different because there’s less of a “I know you” factor. If you’re like “Oh yeah, my strip is in the thing” and people go “Oh, I see it.” Now it feels like people in New York are going to be forgetting about it because people have such a short attention span. Like only the real fans will remember. I think the rest are like, “Oh yeah, there was some strip. I think it had this bear thing or something. I don’t know. I never read it.” I think that will eventually be the attitude in New York. It does feel more like a web thing right now, but I’m hoping to get back into a paper in New York. Maybe if things settle down with The Village Voice I can hit them up again. It’s just things with The Voice are just so insane right now. Things there are a little too much in upheaval for me to submit my comic.

But a lot of people refer to it as an online comic but it has never been an online comic. It’s a print comic and I just happen to post it online. Do you know that comic The Perry Bible Fellowship?

That comic is always referred to as an online comic. It wins like all of these awards for best online comic and stuff like that. That comic is in five times more papers than I’m in.

I don’t understand why they keep referring to it as an online comic.

Yeah, those web awards. Very prestigious.

Yeah, I guess they wouldn’t send you anything physical. Maybe you get like an icon to put on your desktop.

Yeah.

Well, I always try and do the best work that I can. Of course you don’t always do the best work that you can, but you certainly try to. I definitely felt certain allegiances to certain editors like Jeff Koyen, when he was editor of the New York Press. He did a lot of stuff for me in his time there and his time outside of the New York Press. He started as a production manager at the New York Press and he was a big fan of my comic. He was known for doing the zine Crank in the early 90’s so he started putting ads for my comic on his Crank website. When he left the Press and moved to Prague, he started editing a paper there. Then he was able to get my comic in Prague for two years while he was editing that paper. Then he came back over when the paper got sold and became the editor of the New York Press. I really felt like he had gone out of his way to do a lot of stuff for me. When he was editor of the Press, he’d give me covers all the time. I didn’t want to move over to The Village Voice even when there were some issues with the New York Press in terms of payment and things like that. As long as he was editor, I was always like “Yeah, I owe him.”

It’s a really tough field right now because anyone who’s going to do something that’s controversial or that isn’t your daily paper stuff, has to get published in these alt-weeklies. The alt-weekly market sucks right now. Things like craigslist are making a lot of ad revenue going way down so these papers are just shutting their doors. Every other week there’s some paper closing down or in financial trouble. Also if you look at the papers, a lot of them have the same comics already so a lot of these doors are already shut. With that in mind, you just have to do what you can. Send your stuff out to the papers. If they don’t want it, you put it online and you build up an audience and maybe at that point they’ll start seeing that your stuff is good or that you’re getting more recognition and then they will run it. For instance I was in this monthly paper called The Toilet Paper in Colorado, which lasted almost a year. It just closed like a month ago. It was great paper though. The editor there, Noel Black, used to work at whatever the alt-weekly is out there. I think it’s the Colorado Springs Independent. He was a big fan of my comic and I think had tried to get it into that paper there and he always got shot down. So when he started his own paper, I was one of the first people he contacted. I think you get a lot of younger guys like that who want stuff but just get shot down. I think as they rise in power or start their own ventures, hopefully they’ll pick you up and do things with you. Outside of that you can take a look at making a living on this online stuff. It’s hard to do. You don’t really make money on the online comic. You make money off of the merchandise.

For an online comic I don’t think it’s that tough to build an audience. The more frequently you update, the easier it is to build an audience. So if you were to update every day, you’d probably get a pretty big audience after awhile. Since people are so incredibly bored at their work they just want to log on and read something. I don’t even feel it has to be that good necessarily for people to read it. It’s like “Oh, let me just take five minutes and go read that comic. It’s not that good, but it’s got this cute little donkey. I like the donkey. He’s funny.” So they’ll just go on as a time killer. The more you update, the more that happens.

That’s my theory anyway. I have absolutely nothing to back it up. I’m talking purely out of my ass here.

Usually late Sunday night, early Monday morning. Officially it’s Monday. So my biggest numbers are on Mondays.

Yeah, I’ve gotten past my reclusiveness.

I was always apprehensive, thinking “I’m doing these dirty comics and I really don’t want people to know what I look like or associate me with that because maybe it’ll ruin their enjoyment.” Sometimes you’re picturing the artist and you’re thinking, “Oh, he’s like probably this really badass dude and this total anarchist.” Then you see the guy and he’s just some regular dude. He’s got a sweater vest on and you’re just like, “What? I don’t want to read this comic.” Like that scene in Ghost World where they go to the Dan Clowes signing. So I was just really paranoid about that. Now I’m past that. I think that’s just some maturing on my part. Feeling more comfortable with myself.

Yeah but there’s always something to get pissed off about. What’s harder is writing jokes that you haven’t already done before. You’re sitting down and you’re like, “Man, I’ve got a good dick joke.” Then you’re like “Goddamn it. I’ve done like 200 dick jokes. Does the world really need another dick joke? I’m trying to look at this dick joke from a completely different angle. Nobody’s ever done a dick joke like this. ” Then you’re like, “But it’s still a fucking dick joke. I’ve done 200 of them.” So you start trying to find something new with it. It gets tough. It also gets tough because I’ve done 350 of these things so you want to push the characters a little bit more and push the humor a little bit more. But you’re also still trying to keep what’s relevant while you and your audience is maturing. But it is also not something that you can consciously think about. It’s more like you just have to think, “What’s funny today? What’s funny that I haven’t done yet or that I might have done but I can do in a completely different way?” It means I have to work harder but I don’t think there’s actually much of a difference in what you see in print but more of what’s in my head.

Wiggles gets a girlfriend.

It is not a person.

It’s not a surprise, but let’s just say he builds his ideal girlfriend and she’s not everything he thought she would be.

And zaniness ensues.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck