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'THE WILLIAMS BROTHERS TALK TRASH ABOUT THEIR BOOK,
SEWERMAN '
Oct 14, 2004
Twenty miles west of Toronto, you’re not going to find
many rednecks. However, you will find two brothers working together on Redneck
Comics, a series of superhero books whose goal is to parody anything and
everything. Silver Age Superheroes, The “Marvel Way,” Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles all fall prey to their sharp wit as they write the stories of Sewerman
and the Sensational 7. With their work available online, their first trade
paperback out and new artist, Kris Stemmer, on board, Scott and Eric Williams
caught up with ComiX-Fan to talk about satire, superheroes, and how they’re not
related to inker Scott Williams.
ComiX-Fan: How long have you been working on Redneck comics?
Scott Williams: I started writing the first Sensational 7 comic in May of
2001. Prior to that, we had been kicking around the idea of doing comics on the
'Net for years. It just wasn't always going to be comedy stuff.
Eric Williams: We always had a hard time getting something started, and I
wasn't always interested until Sewerman. I was interested, sure, but not
creatively invested.
CXF: What was the original plan?
EW: I don't think we had an original plan...
SW: The big thing was that I was writing these silly little team books
that were not very good, but deadly serious. They were pretty bad. The upside
was that the artist was Kris Stemmer, our cousin of considerable talent.
CXF: But once you had Sewerman, the idea took off?
SW: We weren't sure at first how to attack the Sewerman idea. I wasn't
interested in doing the comic at first, but we tried it as an experimental
computer animated done in MSPaint with Quicktime editing software and it was a
pretty big disaster. The first Sewerman comic didn't come out for I'd say about
a year after he was created.
EW: I had begun coming up with ideas on my own and showing them to Scott every
so often. And some of that is maintained in the series.
CXF: Ah. So who is Sewerman? Is he as offensive as he sounds?
EW: I don't know if he's offensive at all. He's a guy who grew up in the sewer,
and knows nothing of the outside world, having been trained to be a hero, a
protector against evil, by his mentor, Rodent. Who happens to be a giant rodent.
And also, madly insane. And Sewerman has no concept of the importance of all
this crap he does.
SW: Just, you know, casual stops on the road of satire and absurdity. We do a
lot of sex jokes, race jokes... but naturally, it's supposed to be ironic. We
actually ended up putting a disclaimer on the cover of one issue (#6) because a
character in it, Shamilk, was a joke about stereotypically black superheroes.
But actually the reaction was so positive that we didn't need it, and in the
long run, I feel like we hurt the issue a bit by being overly sensitive.
CXF: Well black superheroes are so badly written sometimes... god, do you
remember DC's Milestone line? Horrendously bad comics. I still have them
somewhere with my Valiant comics and copies of Trenchers #1
EW: I remember this bit in Wizard, after that issue came out, about black
superheroes, and they had a page from a comic in the 80's featuring a black hero
and honest to God his dialogue sounded just like what we wrote for Shamilk.
CXF: It's sad when you go for irony and it turns out to be true. So we have Sewerman, a crazy superhero trained by a rat. Are we talking Don Quixote crazy
or....?
EW: I never read Don Quixote.
SW: The book's called Man of La Mancha. And no, he's not off fighting windmills.
He's just a very disorganized guy. He doesn't know what business he has fighting
the bad guys, because he doesn't understand good and evil in the way most of us
do. He just has a suit, and a sword, and his orders, and he does his best.
CXF: So, we have Sewerman fighting bad guys... how does the world respond to
Sewerman? Is he hero, villain, savior, stench? Or does he just hide and no one
notices him?
EW: Kinda like the Ninja Turtles, I guess. They were a great inspiration to
us. Really, he's a spoof of the Turtles. I mean come on... Rodent, March
McNeil...
SW: Yeah, he remains hidden most of the time. He has gained this sort of Urban
legend feel. People talk about him. Issue #4 deals with the trappings of
Superhero fame. And it explains why Rodent wants Sewerman to remain hidden. So
it's a kind of curious subculture heroes fighting villains in the underground.
But in the next issue we're doing #10 we'll find out exactly how the world will
react to the revelation that yes, this Sewerman does exist.
EW: Really? (laughs)
CXF: Now, Redneck comics is more than just Sewerman, if I'm correct.... Isn't
there a title called Sensational Seven? Or am I making this up?
SW: No that's absolutely correct. It's just not an ongoing series, like Sewerman's book. We've done two one shots that are spoofing the "Marvel Way." I
think the title makes it clear who we're after this time. The "Marvel Way" being
to draw the comic THEN write the dialogue. I refuse to have any prior script
ready before creating a Sensational 7 book... I make the pages up as I go along.
It's kinda improvisational.
EW: We're planning a new Sensational 7 comic featuring a supervillain team
called the "Fabulous Fifteen." And basically, the running joke is that the team
is kinda stuck in the silver age. They're dopey, have dopey powers, and are
misogynistic.
CXF: So we have spoofs of TMNT, Marvel, silver age comics, race, gender...
what’s left to satirize?
SW: Oh, you know, anything we can find, really. Apart from basic ideas the
spoofs just tend to manifest themselves. Lots of cliches that always seem to
come up. you name it, chances are we've done a joke about it or are planning to.
Bad girls, magic, gratuitous sex... Oh, and time travel.
EW: The entertainment industry, fame, religion, counterculture (goths), vegans,
news media... all that crap you hear about these days. Which could sometimes
date the book, but... whatever.
CXF: All satire is dated to a certain extent. We had to read Voltaire in
college, and everyone just kept asking, 'What is he going on about?' I think
it's the nature of satire.
EW: Well, we're better than Voltaire.
SW: Yeah, well, if people are reading our stuff in college hundreds of years
from now, I think there's bigger issues than getting a Russ Meyer reference.
Like... what the hell happened to the Education system that they're reading
Redneck Comics in College?
CXF: Speaking of that, where did the title Redneck Comics come from? Are there
rednecks in Toronto?
EW: Nah it's just a joke.
SW: Well, you can always tell a "Redneck Canadian" by if he or she pronounces
things like "aboot" and instead of Potato, "bedata." But the name, well, we just
like how it sounds. DC sounds distinguished, Marvel sounds impressive, and Image
sounds flashy. Redneck sounds funny. Before Redneck there were a few names we
were considering. I remember Royal and Saturn. But only Redneck ever really
worked. Plus, I like the logo. The Big Red Wide Latin "R." You can't get Wide
Latin these days.
The font. There are, I'm sure, plenty of wide latin persons out there.
CXF: Something about the combination of rednecks and dead languages is just
funny.
SW: It works for us. When we showed the first comic to our dad, his first
comment was "I like the logo."
EW: I designed the logo. It was the only designing I ever did.
SW: Eric’s very proud of that. Perhaps unreasonably so.
CXF: Ha! So how far into the story are you guys? The first trade is out (I
think) and you mentioned #10....
SW: The first trade IS out. In fact, you can buy it online at our store http://cafepress.com/redneckcomics/
it contains the two Sensational 7 comics and the first two issues of Sewerman.
We just put out #9 on the site, http://redneckcomics.8m.com/ and #10 we'll be
working on soon, expect it sometime early in 2005. And that will be the last
issue of our current Journey into the Sewer (The Adventures of Sewerman) series.
EW: Then we will revamp it as Return of Sewerman. Expect pretty much the same
jokes.
SW: But it'll be darker. Think Frank Miller......meets Fred Hembeck.
CXF: Ah, the new #1 and the foil cover, $5 price tag... I see.... it is the
Marvel way.
SW: New Artist, too. That's when we bring in superstar talent Kris Stemmer, who
drew the cover to the trade, which, I may remind you, is onsale at our store.
http://cafepress.com/redneckcomics/
CXF: Why have you decided to pass the art mantle onto Kris?
SW: Because he's better!!!!! I can't stress that enough. Kris is a phenomenal
artist, I love looking at it. I'm not an artist, I'm a writer who draws out of
necessity. The problem is, he lives far away, so it's not as convenient. His
style will be better for the mood of Return of Sewerman, though, so we'll find a
way to make it work. So no more crappy Scott Williams pencils.
CXF: Will there be Scott Williams inks?
SW: Boooooo! He stole my name! Curse you and your pointed wit, Alex Groff!
CXF: I feel your pain: there is an Alex Groff writing terrible, and I do mean
terrible, poetry which is posted all over the internet. It's enough to make a
grown man cry. Or want to smack the @#$*! out of him.
SW: Yeah but at least he's not in the same business as you. I'm gonna have to
adopt a pen name. I'm thinking "Rex Terror."
CXF: That’s better than Ben Dover or Al Kohelic.
SW: My next choice was "Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo"
EW: What about "You can call me Ray, or you can call me Jay..."
CXF: Well, these are Redneck comics, after all.
SW: Except we've gotten a few messages on our message board, online at http://stillontheshelf.com/forum
asking "Where ARE the Rednecks???"
CXF: Heh. So, are there any other parodies that helped inspire your work? I keep
thinking of Valentino's normalman and Captain Everything. You two?
SW: As a general policy, I dislike other parody books. Most of them, and I'm not
naming names, are pretty much 1 note jokes that get played out. I used to like
Marvel’s What The ?! and pick up old back issues anytime I can find 'em in the
dollar bin. But so few other parody books appeal to me. Call it professional
jealousy. Or just being a bitter mother@#$*!.
EW: The only other funny comic I read that inspired me at all with Sewerman is
Deadpool. That's about it. Other than that, most of it comes from TV.
SW: Oh yeah, we love Deadpool, but that's not a parody. So a lot of it comes
from just childhood boredom really. Whatever fascinates us.
CXF: As a parody, does Sewerman or Sensation 7 have a direction that they're
going towards do you have a logical end in mind or are you planning to keep on
going as long as there are things to parody?
SW: Sewerman has a logical ending. The same ending all real heroes must have.
He's gonna die. Sometime down the line, we don't know when and we're only mildly
sure how. But he's gonna kick off someday. And probably, just to wrench more
parody out of it... he'll come back. But that remains to be seen.
As for the Sensational 7? Well, they'll go on forever. Maybe some new members...
well, always some new members (if you've read the books then you know what I
mean.) But I'm kinda fond of fuckin' with death in these books. In the first
issue of Sewerman, the villain's henchman gets beheaded... so naturally, the
first scene of the next issue has him being rebuilt as a cyborg. And for the
rest of the series he has "New" in front of his name. Wait, I lost track of what
I was saying. An ending? Yeah, whenever we stop making money. Which we'd have to
start doing first, so buy the book.
CXF: Money? You mean we get paid for these things?
SW: We? You? No. What? Eric and I obviously publish the book which you can
still, amazingly, buy at http://cafepress.com/redneckcomics/ and we get a little
bit of profit from each copy sold. And someday we hope to go to the big leagues.
But until then every bit counts.
CXF: No no, I'm the interviewer! I get a cutback. That’s how it works in this
business.
SW: Let's not make this public. It'll have to be under the table. (smirk)
And with twenties in hand, Scott, Eric and I called it a day. To find out more
about Redneck Comics, visit http://redneckcomics.8m.com/. To order the trade
paperback of Redneck Comics, visit http://cafepress.com/redneckcomics/.
