Interviews Conducted by Robert J. Beck

What made you want to start a web comic?

Peer pressure! Seriously! Chris Layfield was doing his own
comic at the time, called Evolbara, and it seemed like a lot of
fun. At the time I was like 16 or 17 and didn’t know a speck of
html so when Chris approached me about doing a project
together I thought it sounded like a great learning experience
for me. That learning experience turned into Zap!

Are you a big fan of web comics yourself?

I so am. You just get a wider variety of topics and characters
in web and indy comics. You’ve got a lot of unique creators
bringing their unique perspective to the medium and you just
get so many wonderful, original things from that.

When you first started Zap! did you ever think he would become as big as he has done?

A popular webcomic is rarely something that you just stumble into. I mean, it certainly does happen that way for some. I bet everyone could name an overnight success from the webcomics scene, but for everyone else we had to work for it. I always wanted Zap! to be popular, so I worked really hard to never miss updates and to constantly improve the comic itself. I’ve taken out ads, commented on comics forums, done fanarts for other comics, and tried to make connections with other creators, all in order to share the comic with as many people as possible. Then, we’ve just been lucky to have smart, loyal fans.

Where did the name of the strip come from?

Chris and I couldn’t figure out what to call the comic in the beginning, so we just settled on naming it after the main character. But it works for what we’re doing with the genre. It’s kind of a campy, fun, amalgam of science fiction tropes.

What makes your strip different from others?

 At the time Zap! started (in 2003) there actually weren’t very many full color web comics. So, we decided to make it full color. Now there’s a lot of them! So I just hope that my commitment to quality and progressing makes it stand out visually. As for the story, it was always intended to be a combination of all the things Chris and I loved about science fiction stories. So, what you’ll get from Zap! isn’t a stark cyberpunk, dystopian or exploration science fiction story. It’s a combination of those things that makes it unique and familiar.

Who do you think has influenced your style of art?

Everything. I started drawing the illustrations in video game instruction booklets when I was little (like, the late 80s and early 90s), then at some point I found a hardback copy of Elfquest at a Waldenbooks and it changed my life. So, then I drew elves for years. Then there were the Disney years, then the anime years. Now I’m into French comics like Sky Doll, but I just sort of pick and choose and take little bits of things that I love from each. My style is always evolving. I constantly feel like I don’t know how to draw.

What is the process of actually making a strip?

It starts from the script. I like to have whole scenes choreographed and thumbnailed before I start drawing them, to make sure that I don’t leave out something important. Then I pencil the pages on trimmed 11x14 bristol. Finished pencils are scanned and I ink and color digitally on my cintiq.

Do you ever find it hard to come up with a new idea for a story/joke?

Luckily, now, most of the humor is character based and it comes pretty organically. The story is already planned out, so the hardest part now is wrangling dialogue to prevent plot-holes. Things need to happen very specifically for all of the story elements to come together in the end.

Do you plan on doing anything special for your 500th strip?

Oh, man! No pressure. I probably should do something, shouldn't I? The script falls right in the middle of a fight scene.