Creator of Self-Titled Webcomic

What made you want to start a “web comic”?

I’m gonna plead insanity on that one. I had no idea

what I was getting myself into. I grew up in the ’80s,

reading comics like The Far Side and X-Men, trying to break my high score on video games like Gorf and making animated ASCII comics on the Commodore VIC-20 and full screen pixel art on a then state-of-the-art black-and-white TRS-80. By ’85 I was in the fifth grade screwing around with CompuServe from Radio Shack to show the world my unauthorized Wizard of Oz comic “Witches and Stitches” with my totally awesome Scarecrow and Wicked Witches love triangle. So, in the early ‘90s it was the natural thing to do to start putting my art on the web as soon as I first got my hands on a browser. It was so natural it was probably supernatural.

Are you a big fan of web comics yourself?

I’m just into cool art, wherever it is. Cave walls, tattoo parlors, the Internet, newspapers, art galleries, wherever.

   When you first started Eric Monster Millikin, did you ever think it

  would become as big as it has?

  There’s part of me that’s continually surprised by my global

  popularity, but then there’s another side of me that will never be

  satisfied, not even after I win the Nobel Peace Prize.

  Where did the name of the “comic” come from?

  It’s just self-titled. The Millikin family name itself is descended

  from the Scottish McKillikan clan, which I suspect was a clan

  dedicated to Killing everything I Kan. And then I guess my parents

  really loved America and they were like, “You can’t spell ‘America’

  without ‘Eric’.” And, yeah, “Monsters”, I like them and they like me.

  Who do you think has influenced your very unique style of art?

  Oh, I’m influenced by everything I see. I see some bad art and I’m influenced to just say “I’m gonna do the complete opposite of that.” But stuff that’s influenced me in a positive way would be artists with senses of humor like Marcel Duchamp and Tony Oursler, mind-benders like Dali and Escher, and expressionists like Francis Bacon and Edvard Munch.

In comics, people like Dave McKean lead the way for my kind of painting in comics and peeps like Scott McCloud helped me think about breaking most of the conventions of standard comics. But so many people have influenced me, it’s a cast of thousands of other artists in different genres and styles.

Do you ever draw in a different style than this?

I’ve done all sorts of artwork. Most people today are most familiar with my colorful expressionistic optical illusion monster paintings but I’ve done everything from wood

cuts to sculpture to video installation to performance art as well.