Interview conducted by Amy Letts; Reposted with permission.

Antoine Gagnon takes the hot seat to answer questions about his humour webcomic ‘The Drunken Fools!‘

Q1: What is ‘The Drunken Fools’ about?

A1: The Drunken Fools is a webcomic where sobriety is overrated.

It all started with four friends in their mid-thirties, refusing to give up their college years of partying and boozing. But, it doesn’t end there for these guys. One of them, Spike, has been assigned a very Guardian Angel called Stubby to right his ways… it just happens to be a very powerful skunk.

Boozing jokes with a bit of fantasy… fiction or reality?

Q2: What’s so funny about being drunk?

A2: Dunno, don’t remember!

Q3: Are you an off the wagon, on the sauce, fully paid up member of the Blackout Brigade and perminent resident at the Hooch Hotel or what?
[Translation: Are you a boozer or does you inspiration come from another sauce… erm, source?]

A3: I am actually a member of the Former Kidnapped Kids League (FKKL). Our group is a bunch of people who suffered kidnapping and tortured by the Trolololo Song; these tortures were done by a group of Warriors mounted on Electrical Zippers. After a riot we finally escaped and since then we are asking for retaliation. Rumor says these warriors are being funded by the Bobana Corporation.

[Translation: They say we always write what we know best. In fact, one of the character, Billy, was based on me while the three others (Spike, Steve & Regis) were based on real life friends. So you could say I was a boozer back in the days and funny enough, getting older and reducing the amount of alcohol are making me rethink what I want to write about while trying to keep the “Drunken Fools” brand.]

Note: While writing the first part of my answer, I actually just got an idea for a potential chapter. Damn I love creativity!

Q4: So you’ve had a rethink? What have you rethunk?

A4: Well, it’s complicated (at least in my head) and a bit long. I started to draw only in September 2008 and the Drunken Fools was my first comic ever. Instead of drawing in the dark, I decided to launch the webcomic right away. I never had a plan at the beginning, the characters were me and my friends and the original chapter was a true story (a bit exaggerated). But I had zero writing experience, same with drawing. I was drawing as the idea was popping in my head.

Then I brought the Guardian Angel idea where an entity would be protecting Spike (the real drunk of the guys) but at this point, I wasn’t sure if that guardian angel would be real or a simple drunken hallucination. Then after the guardian appeared i different forms (a coffee mug, a pink elephant, etc..) I decided to run a contest to give an official name to that “angel”. Kurt Sasso (TGTmedia.com) participated and came up with Stubby the skunk. But he didn’t just provided a name, he actually provided a background story (Special Powers, Parallel Universe, etc…).

And then all Hell broke loose and Chapter 6 came where Spike became The Incredible Drunk (Hulk parody). Kurt started to write with me and I even have a 60 pages script in development right now (for like 2 years) on Stubby’s life in his own universe.

After Chapter 6, we (Kurt and I) went for a normal Drunken and Hockey story, without Stubby but I quickly realized I would be missing the “Fantasy portion” of the comic and then, decided to stop for a while and try to redefine what I wanted to do. It came as far as letting the Drunken Fools go completely.

That was back in October (great way to celebrate a 3 years anniversary…). Since then I did a Drunk Heroes series (single pages parodying our favorite Super Heroes) and I’ve been enjoying other geek stuff other than making a comic.

I’ve been more in a writing mode for the past two months. With numerous projects (comics) and ideas not related to the Drunken Fools until very recently, when I had a dream with a great idea where I could bring back The Drunken Fools and the Fantasy to their world. Actually, it may go as far as Sci-Fi, History, etc… But this time, I want to do it properly. I want to plan ahead, write, read, re-read, review, re-review, etc… I don’t want to write a page an draw it anymore. Does that make sense? I may not publish any drawing until 6 months, I don’t know. I am drawing in the background, but I’m mostly writing nowadays.

But the key thing is: after asking myself what I wanted to do, I finally found it, and The Drunken Fools will be coming back, but their life will change drastically. I want to add drama to it as well. And the brilliant idea I had will allow me to explore different genre within the same comic and I would even be able to incorporate some ideas I had that may have not been related to the Drunken Fools originally.

And now I think I have said too much already, next thing I’ll know, you’ll be asking for spoilers!

Q5: Eh-heh! Spoilers?

A5: You will have to do better than that if you want me to release any information such as a main character dying!

..

DOH!

Q6: Do you think ‘The Drunken Fools’ encourages or discourages excessive drinking and alcoholism?

A6: Neither of them. The target audience is obviously adults and I believe each one of us has to make their own minds in life.

Q7: Parlez-vous français? What’s it like having a bilingual webcomic and why isn’t it in other languages?

A7: That’s a great question (the 2nd part I mean)

Oui je parle Français. French is my primary language. I actually speak 3 languages: French, English and Drunk… ok, just kidding for the 3rd one

Having a bilingual comic is actually a pain in the neck at times. You can’t simply translate a script from one language to another, you have to adapt it. There are jokes, expressions, sentences that are very hard to translate/adapt due to the context on the story. And this adds more workload: need to write a script in both language and need to letter two pages instead of one (well, 2 separate Layers since I am lettering with a Digital Font) but still a lot of work.

The perfect example I always used is in the Movie “Airplane” where Lloyd Bridges says ” The shit will hit the fan” then, there’s a fan in a background receiving a nice poop… Well, that expression doesn’t exist in french and the first time I saw the movie (as a kid) they literally translated that in french word to word…. didn’t make sense at all! At least, seeing shit hitting a fan was funny as hell (poop jokes rule)!

And even sometimes it gets harder as some text is part of the art (like a Bar’s name, Company Name, Gas station, etc…). I have to be very careful in writing to avoid these as much as possible in order to avoid adding extra work for me.

And please Any Translation Tools on the internet are NO GOOD for full sentences, so please stop thinking you (you as everyone reading this) are so cool by sending french sentences that have been translated through an online tool!

And finally why isn’t there other languages for my comic? Well, I don’t speak any other language!

Q8: If I wanted to draw like you how would I go about it?

A8: Why in hell someone would like to draw like me?

Well, if you are that desperate, I do have a drawing process and part of it is being extremely lazy. So lazy that that I don’t want to write about it BUT, you can read the entire process here: http://www.webcomicalliance.com/helpful-hints/sketch-ink-scan-the-drunken-way/

Q9: What’s your involvement with the ‘Webcomic Alliance’?

A9: SHHHHHH! Don’t mention them too loud, keep your voice down! I believe they are part of the Warriors mounted on Electrical Zippers I mentioned earlier!!! They have inserted probe in my brain (an somewhere else I think) and I don’t know what they want with me.

[Translation: I’m one of the five founding members of the Webcomic Alliance and still part of it (I can’t believe they kept me that long). The Alliance is the best thing that happened to me as far as learning about comics (creating, writing, business, etc… The Webcomic Alliance is there to help the Webcomic creators, new and old, in any aspect of it. We are the proof you don’t need to be an extremely successful webcomic creator to provide tips, tutorials and good content to the world

The Webcomic Alliance is also the living proof that you can make real life friends on the internet! And we are bringing more COWBell to the world!]

Q10: You’ve moved from the world of Webcomics to that of Small Press (publishing your own ‘Drunken Fools Book). How does a comic in the ‘real world’ compare to one on the net?

A10: That’s actually very hard to answer. It’s two different world, different ball game, a beer and a scotch.

I did put my first 5 Chapters in a book (available here (shameless plug) :http://www.thedrunkenfools.com/drunken-store/) last year in order to provide the comic to people outside the webcomic world and mainly because 2011 was a year of Convention Experiment (EPIC FAIL!!) for me. But let’s put that aside, shall we?

But on the other hand, I’m wondering when we will start considering the internet as being part of the “real world”? Even when publishing a book, the Internet is the best medium today to spread the word about it, to market it. Amazon is the perfect example, who reading this interview right now never used Amazon? Today, in 2012, a book is part of the digital world now, the Real World IMO. So it is easy for webcomic creators to publish a book nowadays (just a LOT of work)

I don’t think I really answer that question, but it is so hard to answer in only a few lines.

Q11: Okay this is the last question and it isn’t really a question. This is open mic – Your chance to say anything else you want to say about ‘The Drunken Fools’.

A11: You know how some people tend to buy a motorcycle or a sport car when reaching the mid-life crisis? Well, my mid-life crisis made me buy pens, pencils, art supplies, etc… and I decided I wanted to learn how to draw. It’s funny how I take my book and tell people: This is my mid-life crisis! They would usually say, on the story you mean? And I would answer, no, drawing is my mid-life crisis!

So, The Drunken Fools are my mid-life crisis! It could have been a totally different story/world/characters. But as I mentioned when I first started this interview: We always write about what we know best!

Cheers!

[Translation: Beware of the Warriors Mounted on Electrical Zippers, they are mean and ugly! ]

Thank you for the interview Antoine and good luck with The Drunken Fools especially it’s new direction: Drunken Heroes.

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