Ten Questions: Josh Lesnick

Girly is a webcomic created by Josh Lesnick which generally centers around the romantic relationship between two girls named Otra and Winter, as well as other citizens of the city of Cute-Town.

On October 15, 2005 Girly became a part of the Dayfree Press collective, and on June 28, 2006 the first Girly print collection was published via Radio Comix.

1] Hello! Tell us who you are, and what you do.
I’m Josh, and I draw comics, and I run an adult comic site. Aaaaaand that’s about it. The comics are Girly and Doctor Voluptua. The adult site is Slipshine. Together all my comic work helps me eek out a living. Not enough to buy a yacht, but enough to buy a nice pan of lasagna every once in a while.

2] How long have you been working on Girly? What is it about?
Girly is primarily about a cartoon relationship, the one between Otra and Winter. It’s hard to describe it without bringing up Cutewendy, the comic I wrote in the early 00s. Cutewendy was a simple comic I made about two girls, one of whom is the sidekick of the other. It was a simple gag strip where crazy shit happened. Girly is actually the sequel to the comic, taking the concept, while inserting a story, some humanity, and a bit of romance to the mix. In short, it’s about lesbians.

In most of the stories, Winter and Otra live for adventure, searching all over their town for something resembling it, and creating it themselves if they can’t find it. Many other characters muscled their way into the comic over the years, and their stories started and ended. The new chapters are mostly about the two girls returning to their roots, whilst being chased around by a grumpy but hot police officer.

3] What are some of your influences in your art and writing?
As a kid, Jim Davis. Because boy howdy could he write a fine comic about cats that hated Mondays. Eventually I moved on to Berke Breathed, despite my being too young to really understand what his comics were about. I drew my own little comic strips on graph paper during this time, biting elements mostly from these two artists. Very little of Davis’s influence is still with me, of course, but the occasional snarkiness of Berke was deeply ingrained into me.

The art in Davis’s other comic U.S. Acres, drawn by the rather brilliant Brett Koth, was tangential in passing my interest from newspaper comic art to cartoon art. Not many people know this, but the original U.S. Acres comic was pretty underrated, and MUCH better-drawn than the cartoon was. I know Watterson called it a “travesty”, but I think he was being just a tad harsh. I’m not saying it was a great comic, but it was still a step up from Garfield, and Momma, and Crock, and The Wizard of Id. Etc.

So I was into that, and from there a friend showed me his Archie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comics, drawn by artists like Ken Mitchroney, in what I’d later learn was the “CalArts” style. Not without its flaws, but still a lot more organic and full of life than the TMNT cartoon that was running at the time. I was pretty impressed when I saw it, and got a subscription for myself.

So there was the TMNT artists including Mitchroney, Garret Ho, Mike Kazelah, and Chris Allan… and that’s when Tiny Toons went on the air, which had storyboards and layouts by a lot of these same CalArts guys. Tiny Toons was not a good cartoon and its premise of trendy 90s Looney Tunes for tweens was godawful, but it was nevertheless an important cartoon, because before that, and “DuckTales”, and “Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures”… there was.. nothing. there was Filmation and 80’s Hanna-Barbera. Finally there were shows that reminded impressionable young artists like me that cartoons could be cartoony.

This Renaissance helped bring forth the man who is easily my biggest influence, and a man who has a thing or two to say about cartoons that are cartoony. I’m talking about John K, of course. Say whatever you want about him, he knows his shit. He knows a lot of things people have blissfully forgot about over the years. And he knows how to invigorate us cartoon artists. I don’t agree with every single thing he says, but kudos to him for saying it.

Also in 1993, I found anime. Welll… to put it simply, I learned a few good habits and a lot of crappy habits from it. It gradually leaned me in the direction of learning proper anatomy, structure, and scenic drawing while at the same time, the life and character my art contained was completely buried for several years. It totally had me spinning my wheels. I will say that the biggest influence during this time was Ryusuke Mita, the creator of “Dragon Half”, and at least he did have an art style that stood out among many. Regardless, I’m obviously not very proud of that whole phase, I encourage artists not to let it happen to them.

It was fairly recently that I grew out of this, which is not to say elements of manga are gone from my comics. Obviously, that’s not the case, and it would be impossible to get rid of them without forcing it. I tried my best to make sure the more generic elements were phased out. I can’t remember exactly what it was that made me return to my roots of cartoon art, but in any case, John K is once again one of my top influences, both in art and attitude, and there’s also Bruce Timm, Shane Glines, and Dean Yeagle who have all provided much inspiration in combining cartoony with sexy. And Evan Dorkin, another artist who’s great at both storytelling and critiquing the profession. He was actually an influence as far back as ‘93.

Shutting out all of Japan would be just mean though. Monkey Punch and Kiyohiko Azuma remain pretty prominent influences in art and writing, respectively.

Finally, my peers… Sam Logan, Bryan O’Malley, Meredith Gran, Kyle Carrozza, and other friends who I’ve talked with over the years and have become SO MUCH BETTER THAN ME.

That answer probably 100000 more words than was necessary. Basically I like cartoonists who draw cartoons!

4] Can you tell us about some of your other projects?
One project which is officially on indefinite hold now is an animated project called “Pop Star Becky”, which is about a pop singer who aspires to expand her career further in the field of acting and other talents, only it doesn’t work out too well because she’s not very good at anything except getting stoned and sleeping around. It sounds kind of like the plot of “Perfect Blue”, and there are a lot of breasts in it, but that’s where the similarities end, honest. I’m hoping to get into the apparently untapped market of “R” rated internet cartoons with this, but unfortunately, working on these kinds of projects over the internet is insanely hard, and I’ve been thinking I may have to wait until Girly is over before this can happen.

There’s also the occasional porny comic I do for my Slipshine website. A recent one was about coal miners who have a thing for each other. The next series of stories I plan to do for the site all feature an upgraded design of my ol’ Wendy character, which is a strange return to form for her. I don’t think many people are aware that she was initially designed to be some kind of sexy pinup porn starlet-type character before I created that silly webcomic about her, and now that that’s been over for years, I guess she can go back to doing that.

Aside from that, I’ll do occasional one-shot things and post them on my journal or somewhere, mostly to keep things fun and to keep my brain from exploding.

5] So, you do adult-oriented comics and run a site called Slipshine and now you are doing a webcomic called Doctor Voluptua. How do you balance adult cartooning and the more general work?
It can be kind of tricky, because I do tend to prioritize Girly over everything, even though I have to work the hardest to generate any income from it. It’s more due to Girly being my “baby” at the moment; the long-running project I’m determined to see through to the end. Ultimately, I do have to contribute to Slipshine, since there are people who subscribed to see my work, and I have deadlines to keep me in line there.
Doctor Voluptua has a low priority even though I do love working on that comic. I’m actually on break from it for a moment, but I’m hoping that will be over next week. Of all my sites, that one is still the most “experimental” one. One of the reasons Slipshine is a pay site in the first place is because the internet doesn’t make it easy to offer adult content for free. I enjoy making it more accessible to everybody, but it’s really hard to get the financial boat going.

6] What are some of your favorite webcomics? What makes a good webcomic?
I have a ton of favorite webcomics, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave several of them out, but I’d say my ABSOLUTE favorites at the moment are U.F.O., Sam & Fuzzy, Pictures for Sad Children, and Gunnerkrigg Court. U.F.O. is just a fun comic about an alien invasion and the unlikely hero who must defend the earth. the comic is really creative in so many ways, and half the story is told from the alien’s perspective. Momo draws some of the best comics for my Slipshine website as well. Sam & Fuzzy is the best example of a coic that started out as a gag-a-day strip and developed a continuing storyline. PFSC is comparable to Achewood in that it’s a minimalist comic with great characters and dialogue. Gunnerkrigg Court is a story-based comic full of pretty interesting mysteries and unique ideas.

What I like to see in webcomics is creativity, effort, and soul. By “soul”, I mean artwork that has some semblance of an organic quality to it… artwork that conveys warmth and personality. Just about anything loose and hand-drawn can accomplish this. And it’s a pity so many of the more well-known webcomics rely on cutting and pasting, and geometric shapes.
Artwork is really important to me, and it’s baffling how in webcomic circles, I seem to be among the minority. It’s amazing that people get mad when I say that stick figure comics are inferior to fully-drawn comics by people with art backgrounds. How in the world is an opinion like that controversial?
There are always exceptions to the rule, here and there, but generally I’d like to see more comics that are as fun to look at as they are to read, and I’d like to see more people talking about them.

7] Do you work exclusively digital these days, or do you like to dabble with pencil and paper once in a while? Did it take long for you to get a handle on digital production?
I used to do my comic layouts in pencil, but I stopped that pretty recently. I’m still not sure if this was a good idea or not. On the one hand, there’s less of a mess around the place, but on the other, I almost never get away from the computer anymore.

I’d say it took about three years to be able to duplicate my hand-drawn work on a tablet. It’s certainly not something that can be picked up right off the bat. Cutewendy was a pretty useful tool in the learning process. Unlike all my other comics, that one was drawn straight to a tablet without any layouts or anything. They were scribbles at first, but as time went on, I wanted it to resemble an actual comic, and I started learning ways to do it. I don’t know if it’s the best learning method, but it worked for me.

8] The Puppy Club doesn’t update nearly enough. What will you do to rectify this?
The Puppy Club was an attempt to start out a second regular series that didn’t quite pan out. The thing is, when you manage to get a webcomic going and build up a decent audience, it’s insanely hard to get another one going. It’s like people only want to read a single comic from one author at a given time. Even Doctor Voluptua, with all its tits and everything, has had trouble with audience growth.
I do love working on The Puppy Club, but ultimately, it’s fallen into the group of low-priority projects.
If I ever do decide to try drawing it regularly again, I may use the rather brilliant idea Randy Milholland had, and throw that and other comics up on the same page as Girly, so everyone can conveniently view my latest comics all on one page. Of course, I won’t be able to do that with Doctor Voluptua…
You’re right though… It’s been too long since I’ve drawn it. I still need more practice with foreign accents. Maybe I WILL rectify this soon!

9] Josh, what the hell is up with all the horses?
I like the sound of the word “horse” for some inexplicable reason. I’m not sure exactly what got me started on it. It could have been the Refreshments song named “Horses”. I’ll go with that.

10] What do you like more, Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, Farscape, Futurama, or Firefly?
I’d have to go with “Futurama” because it’s a cartoon and I’m obsessed with cartoons.

Tags: Adult, Girly, interview, Josh Lesnick, Mainpage Comic, Slipeshine, Ten Questions