Dude, I LOVE your strip, can I link to it?
ABSO-FRIGGIN-LUTLY! In fact, if you’d like a banner please feel free to rape, pillage, or steal one of these banners to do so:
You'll need to download them and put them on your site, Keenspace doesn't allow image linking. If those don't work for you, well, feel free to e-mail me and I'll do a custom banner for you. Just let me know what size you want, and I'll let you know where to wire the mountain of cash for it (no not really).
Would you link to my strip?
No, I'm a bloody hypocrite! In all honesty I'm not currently linking to other strips. Not yet, however I may entertain it sometime in the future. If I change my mind, just check back here and I'll let you know.
Would you be interesting doing a crossover or have one of your characters appear in my strip?
ABSOLUTLY! I just ask for some creative input. I'm not going to dictate you're creative genius, but I do want to make certain that the spirit of the characters are preserved. I would LOVE to colaborate with you on a strip or a crossover storyline.
I need an artist for a series I'm doing, you interested?
Does it pay? I accept cash, and first born daughters, provided they're witty, smart, and stunningly beautiful. Second born daughters COULD be accepted, but I'ld have to give them a fairly rigorous battery of tests. Not necessarily YOURS mind you, unless you're in your 50's or 60's, or possibly late 40's and had children at a rather young age.
Dude, why does your strip look like Bloom County/Doonsberry?
Well,
- It's the friggin nose. I'm not going to change that schnoz, no matter how many people bitch about it.
- Thanks for thinking I have even a SMIDGEN of the talent that Berkley Breathed or Gary Trudeau have.
- I loved
Bloom
County
when growing up. While I don't consider this to be an homage or blatant rip of that style, I certainly do take some stylistic and artistic flairs that that strip does. However I am beginning to find a bit of my OWN voice, and after a few months I'm feeling myself move more and more towards the "Siebels" style, but I cant deny that ever since I started doodling these characters, this is how they look and I really LIKE how they look.
Dude, your strips around December of 2004 look like crap, what's up with that? I mean Chris looks plain fugly, not just ugly, but PUG FUGLY.
FUCK YOU
You know, drawing the same characters over and over again does enable you to kinda...REFINE your style a bit you dick. Hell, you ever seen what Garfield looked like in his first strip?
Asshats.
With the exception of "The Dude's" Nose getting longer, which is intentional, the sucky art at the start...deal with it.
Speaking of your lead character's schnozz, what's his name?
If I told you that I’d have to kill you. Honestly, he DOES have a name. NO, it's NOT Jason. However that's a surprise which will be left for one of the final strips (fifth from the end if I remember correctly). So, if you want to find out if he's a Mark, Luke, Aaron, or Methuselah you'll just have to keep reading. So far most people call him "the nosey guy" "doonesberry face", "asshole" or "the dude". I actually like "the dude" myself, becuase it has that nice little "The Big Lobowski" feel to it. But I'm not going to say "you can call him the dude" in the meantime, I'ld much rather have you ABH readers come up with a nickname yourselves because I'm LAZY, very very LAZY, and don't want to put forth an effort to make something catch on.
Wait, the fifth to last strip?
See, I'm a planner.
ANYWHERE BUT HERE is a series with a beginning, and an end, and a
LOT
of story in-between. In my mind, I think I'll be running THIS strip for about 5 years, possibly longer, but it feels like a five year story. I already have the script for the last two weeks of strips, honestly, it's pretty ballsy, and I'm not sure if I'll have the guts to actually do what I have scripted out. But, I guess we'll find out in five years.
If I DO go through with the last 10 strips as I have them scripted, there will most likely be a spin-off strip using many of the characters in ANYWHERE BUT HERE. I'd state the name, but I don't want some dick to swoop in and start using it. If, by some odd chance someone comes up with it on their own, I want to be that dick that swoops in and starts using it. The new strip will have many of the old characters, a few new characters, and a rather new feel. And it ALREADY has an ending in my mind...which will make it another five year project.
And I really hope that I get to do that ending, because it's...well, the character who get's that ending, they deserve it for all I'm putting them throught.
After that, yep, there's a third story in there, one that doesn't have an ending. One that I can just let grow and change, and be.
But, ANYWHERE BUT HERE, is the first part of a rather large sweeping story. ..one that the more I think about, the more I really like.
Where the heck is this strip set?
Well, I haven't actually come out and named the town, but for the most part it's set in
Fargo
North Dakota
, my home town. There are parts from various Midwest towns tossed in there, such as Grand Forks North Dakota, Minneapolis Minnesota, Madison Wisconsin, Charles City Iowa, Sioux Falls South Dakota...and a few other places that have popped up in my travels, but it's mostly Fargo. In fact, I can send you information on a number of the restaurants and shops that pop up in the strip....just in case you find yourself stranded in this hell hole, and need a decent place to eat .
Why isn't it in color?
Well...ahem...the first 20 strips are. It's an artistic thing. The Dude's coming to North Dakota is...kinda like a reverse Wizard of Oz. You know, he goes from a world of wonder and possibility to....North Dakota. I kinda LIKE that aspect of the story. It makes me seem cultured...and borderline brilliant. But the bottom line is, I like black and white myself. It tends to pop out the details like CRAZY. And I'm completely and totally INFATUATED with my crappy line work. Honestly, I've tried a few strips with color and feel like I lose to much detail. Plus it's a REAL time killer, and I'm VERY friggin lazy. So, I'm sticking with Black and White, or grey and white.
Dude, what's the deal with the Archives? It's like, you just skipped somewhere right in the middle, and like, why is the first strip dated June 6, 2003. I thought you Started the strip in 2005!
Ah, well you see, er, well....
I'm an idiot. Plain and simple.
See, when I orignialy concieved of the strip, it had a definitive begining. There are certain things that happen at the start of the series that will resonate right through the end of the series. There are pieces in there that wind up pointing to certain places. However...well...
I started "writing" this strip around the year 2000. I had these ideas for a comic, something that I rather liked. And I put together about a dozen or so little strips, and as I did them I realized, that...HEY, there's no way in HECK the story I want to tell will EVER wind up being published in a paper. It's just too...risky for them.
So I put away my scribbles, and just regarded it as one of those things that would never see the light of day.
And then I discovered "the internet", and webcomics, and after a few years, I decided that this story COULD be told, and I now had the means of bringing it to an audience.
But even in December of 2004, ANYWHERE BUT HERE was a side project that I wasn't certain if I would finish or not...heck, I didn't even know if anyone would like it and if I'ld just drop it in a week or two. So I started it where I felt most comfortable. I started writing where I felt it was most interesting for ME as a writer to explore. Right smack dab in the middle of the story. And then, as the strip grew in popularity, I discovered that I COULD do this, and that I WOULD have to commit to finishing the strip, because if I wussed out, and DIDN'T, I would disapoint people.
So I started publishing the archives retroactivly. So I can get the whole story out there without having to resort to some sort of cheezy flashback.
However, the archives come secondary to the story at hand, so some times it can be shuffled to the back burner when I have larger projects to work on. My hope is to have the four hundred or so strips between the first strip I published in December of 2004, and the first strip of the series which is marked as June 6 2003 will done sometime around next spring. No idea if I'll get there or not, but I figure it's a good goal to shoot for.
The sad truth is, I may not be able to finish up the archives until I wind up wrapping up the strip itself. But we'll see. I tend to be a bastard, and am quite good at beating the crap out of myself when a deadline presents itself.
Can I date you, struggling artists in their late 20's are SOOO hot?
GOD YES! I'm listed in the white pages, and most of my Friday nights are spent eating TV dinners and crying myself to sleep. So I'm normally COMPLETLY available.
How do I get a hold of you?
Feel free to e-mail me at FMCORPS@YAHOO.COM. I await your spam.
Dear Mr. Seibels,
We find your strip to be a fresh of breath air in a world of otherwise stale and humorless comics. We would like to syndicate your strip. Would you be interested in selling your soul to our company in exchange for a mountain of fame, fortune, and cold hard cash.
-Please note, I'm still awaiting this e-mail.
ABSOLUTLY!!!
Have your people call my people, they'll talk to your people, slice about 70% off the top, and then chain me to a table for the rest of my life so I can keep whipping out their cash cow. I have no objections to that WHATSOEVER. Just send a contract, even if it's written in the blood of a newborn baby, and I'll sign it without hesitation.
SERIOUSLY
