Posted By Leo Johnson on July 12, 2013

Kris Straub has been creating webcomics for quite a few years. Whether it was his long-running scifi/humor comic Starslip, his current gag-a-day strip Chainsawsuit, any of his past comics like Checkboard Nightmare, F Chords, Kris always seems to be making a comic of some kind. His most recent project is Broodhollow, a comic a bit different than many of his past outings. Kris took the the time to answer some questions about his newest story, not even a year old, but already full of wonderful plot and interesting characters.

Leo Johnson: What’s the elevator pitch for Broodhollow?

Kris Straub: It’s a 1930s cosmic horror adventure with little quirks and humor throughout, but to encapsulate its tone, I tell people “Tintin goes to Innsmouth.”

LJ: Your other current webcomic, Chainsawsuit, is a comedy strip. How is it transitioning from the gags of that strip to the often humorous, but much more serious, and sometimes scary, story that is Broodhollow?

KS: Comedy and horror have similar rhythms, in that both establish a pattern, and then break it. A joke breaks a pattern with something absurd, and something scary breaks it with an unexpected threat. They occupy really different spaces in my mind. The strip I did before Broodhollow, Starslip, was science fiction humor, but it also had some heavier moments. I feel like that’s important to get a reader more connected to everything going on. Like… ultimately you can come to rely on character moments to drive humor. Chainsawsuit is really just funny things I think of that didn’t fit anywhere else.

LJ: Again, Broodhollow is different from Chainsawsuit in that it’s a longform story, much like Starslip was. Is the longform format easier for you? Harder? Or is it just a different mindset when writing?

KS: It’s a different mindset. Longform can be easier in that there’s more things you can hang your hat from. You can break character expectations, you can call back to earlier events. I feel like there’s more hooks to exploit. I think gag-a-day is harder in that you can’t really build anything up; you have to demolish it and start over the next day.

LJ: You’ve been working with webcomics for quite a while now. What has made the medium one that you’ve enjoyed working in for so long?

KS: For me it’s being able to deliver what I do to an audience that wants it, and I know they’re here because they like it, and not because my traffic is lumped in with some aggregate site’s numbers. I can talk directly to my readers and interact with them. I recognize them! They come up at a convention and say “you don’t know me, but I like what you do,” but a lot of times I do know them from Twitter or my comments.

LJ; In addition to webcomics, you’ve also done a good bit of animation, such as with the Blamimations that you and Scott Kurtz did. Was this sort of an extension of cartooning, or something that developed independently?

KS: I never took animation classes; I think you can easily look at the Blamimations and see that that’s true. But I used to work exclusively in Flash for drawing — it was never designed for that, but I was dumb — and I got familiar with it. I really like that kind of humor because you can do jokes with editing, with timing, that you can’t do with sequential art.

LJ: Describe the process of creating the comic a bit. What does it take to get an idea from your brain on to the page?

KS: I’m writing Broodhollow further ahead than I wrote Starslip — one big arc, instead of week by week. But I still fudge where I want to be day to day, where I want the story to spend time. Other than that it is pretty straightforward. Because Broodhollow is a mystery, the hardest part has been how much to show, and when. A lot of times I feel like I’m not giving enough information to the reader, or I’m being pointlessly cryptic. But I would rather let that unspool for a while, than have a character provide a ton of exposition.

LJ: What has been your favorite panel or page to create so far in Broodhollow?

KS: Anything that lets me draw in the realistic style, when Zane sees something horrible, is a lot of fun.

LJ: How long can we expect Broodhollow to run? What does the future hold in store for Wadsworth and company?

KS: After Starslip, I didn’t know what comic to do next. I had wanted to try something horror-like for a while, but I built it such that, if no one liked Broodhollow, I could just end it, get a single 100-page book out of it, and never go back. But there is a very deep central mystery to Broodhollow that I don’t think I’ve ever read in other stories, and people have been more supportive of this strip than anything I’ve ever done, so I’m going to get to reveal that mystery.

I know what’s in store for the town, but I’m not sure what will happen to Wadsworth and friends as they encounter it. It’s fun to be moving forward without anything set in stone as to how characters will deal with what’s happening.

Broodhollow updates each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

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Categories: Comics, Interviews
Tags: Broodhollow, Chainsawsuit, interviews, Kris Straub, Starslip, webcomics