Six days a week for the past four years, Christopher Baldwin
has--with monastic discipline and at great personal cost--put
quill to scroll and produced "Bruno," his deeply idiosyncratic
Internet comic (www.brunostrip.com).
In an online cartoon community filled to bursting with pallid
"Bloom County" clones, "Bruno" stands apart: Its lovingly
rendered lead character is a bisexual, semi-employed woman-child
prone to dysfunctional relationships and fits of despair.
She's lived in a closet, fallen into polyamorous relationships,
gone on week-long benders and window-shopped for a therapist.
Like her creator, she recently hit the road and moved to
Portland. Also like her creator, its not certain how long
she'll be sticking around. Bruno and her pals tend to speak
in wry, navel-gazing paragraphs, but read a few weeks' worth
and you're hooked on the strip's droll bittersweetness.
There's nothing like it in comics--online or in print. Baldwin's
developed a small but fiercely devoted following--they've
fronted the printing costs on his "Bruno" books (available
online or at Reading Frenzy), offered him food and shelter
and given him strange and wonderful presents. One reader,
of her own volition, translates his strip into French. We
sat down with Baldwin at Berbati's Pan and posed a few pointed
questions.
Willamette Week: Why did you choose a female lead character?
Christopher Baldwin: Well, pretty much everything I'd
done prior to "Bruno" had a male protagonist who resembled
me to a degree. I started the strip because an acquaintance
of mine was doing a strip called "Campus Pond"--it was about
these ducks who bottled water from the campus pond--and
he said, "Chris, you have to do a strip, and we'll have
our characters cross over"--which you couldn't do anywhere
then, except in a college venue. You can do that with online
comics today. So I was creating a strip, and the first strip
actually featured a guy as a protagonist--but it was a really
dumb idea. And then I realized suddenly that there weren't
any strong female strips--and around that time I was introduced
to "Sylvia" and "Dykes to Watch Out For," which were pretty
amazing--
But they were also the only two of their kind.
Yeah. And I was just, like, "This just sucks." And most
of my friends were these really strong, wonderful women.
And I love curly hair, so Bruno had curly hair, and a little
double-chin, which I think is cool. I'm not a big fan of
magazine-type women. After two years, I was going to give
it up, and then a friend had a Web site--and no one had
a personal Web site in 1996--and he wanted content. When
I started doing it on the Internet, it was six days a week....
I re-started from day one: I completely re-drew the first
semester; I added a lot of strips for character, I had to
re-letter the next two semesters because I wasn't using
a lettering guide at that point. It was painful. There was
more surreal stuff, like Bruno talking to the audience--I
cut all that stuff out.
Bruno uproots herself quite a bit. In following the
strip, I've noticed she seems to have a revolving cast of
"disposable friendships" moving through her life; although
she stays in touch, she's really kind of an alone person.
Does this describe you?
Yeah.... The one thing the strip has is that it represents
people who aren't represented. Many of the people who stay
with the strip have suffered from depression.
Any weird fan stories?
Well, I used to hide my gender, signing the strip as "C.
Baldwin," but I stopped doing that because people got hurt....
The types of guys who approached me approached me like I'd
approach me--you know, "I'm sitting in a café reading Nietzche
with a cup of coffee thinking of you." I've considered creating
a new site--extremely pornographic. I'd probably get a million
hits.... And Alison Bechtel, who draws "Dykes to Watch Out
For," was really excited to meet me--because, you know,
there are no women doing this--but I told her I was a guy,
and she was really nice about it, but it wasn't the same,
you know? And one fan made a Bruno doll. She hand-molded
the head, sewed the arms, sculpted the toes, hand-painted
it--it's gorgeous. But what was kind of weird is that she
refused to correspond.
Why did you move to Portland?
I lived in western Mass. all my life. I needed a change.
I was gonna move to Berkeley; a friend of mine bought a
house and said, "I have a one-room apartment in the house
that isn't being rented out--you can stay there as long
as you want for free. This is my chance to support the arts."
But we had a falling out. I do have a friend from college
here, so I figured I'd come here and check it out. I got
here beginning of February. Spent six months on the road
getting here.
Now, I remember you writing on the "Bruno" site at
the time, "I'd like to stay in the homes of 'Bruno' readers."
Did you actually do that?
Yeah, yeah. Like, 30, 40 people I'd never met.
You're kidding. How was that?
It was great. They're all wonderful people.
Were they pretty consistently good experiences as you
were traveling?
Well, there were no bad experiences, let's say.
Overall, it was just nice, educated--not that I have anything
against people who aren't educated, but it makes for better
conversation. And someone who's not educated probably isn't
going to read "Bruno," because there's too many words. But
yeah--they're all nice, they took me out to dinner, put
me up. It was strange--no bizarre, scary stories at all.
Nobody was like, "Well, actually we've had this fantasy....
Draw on my wife's back." [laughs]
Well, I wouldn't have minded that. I stayed with a Republican
Catholic lawyer--but he had a good conscience, I thought.
He showed me his entire gun collection, and we were gonna
go out "shootin' cans," but it started hailing. I've never
touched a gun, so I thought, "Hey--I'll never get a chance
again." I just really like experiences, like, "Okay, I've
shot a gun at a tin can"--never have to do that again. "Slept
with a man." I know what that's like now. I never have to
think, "Gee, I wonder if that's why all my relationships
fail, because I keep withdrawing."
Well, another thing about your character that I find
most interesting is that--and I don't know how closely you
identify with her--she's kind of narcissistic and self-involved.
And you've had other characters tell her this. She gets
in these kind of fractal thought loops about nothing, and
people get frustrated with her. But you still make her likable.
You've taken this character who's deeply flawed and made
her the centerpiece. Why did you do that?
[pause] Uh.... accident, I guess? I don't know. I'm told
I'm fairly likable, and I'm flawed very similarly. I mean,
one of the things that's likable about her is that she realizes
it. Even more than that: A farcical character is flawed
and can't see it, and everyone reading it can see it--but
what makes a farcical character real is that you understand
why they're flawed, and therefore you sympathize
and don't blame them. I mean, people really see that Bruno
isn't just doing the teen/goth/angst "thing"--life is poison
for her, and she's trying to find answers even though it's
circular and gets nowhere.... I have no answers. I'm single.
I'm narcissistic. I'm uprooted. I left good relationships
because I couldn't find happiness.
Have you left good relationships for the cartoon?
No ... but the cartoon gets in the way of a good relationship.
You're one of the few guys capturing the lost art of
cross-hatching, particularly on the Internet strips, in
an era when you can actually achieve a similar effect with
Photoshop.
Oh, yeah. I could create my own screen of cross-hatching
and just paste it in and no one would be able to tell the
difference.
Why don't you?
Because, uh ... because I'd be able to tell the
difference. It loses ... soul, kind of.
I'm curious about how long it takes you to do this.
Do you draw every day? Or do you draw in one chunk for the
week?
I try to do them ahead of time, but I haven't drawn tomorrow's
yet. I try to write an entire week on the weekend. I do
it on a word processor, and it's rough--it's often not funny
the first time around, and it's just sort of a plot, and
I work it over.
Well, "Bruno" cartoons don't exactly end with the "Bloom
County" "pause, punchline" formula.
But the strip does have its trappings. Too often, I think,
I make analogies and do a play off the analogy--and that's
getting really stale for me.
Do you feel pressure to be "funny"?
Sometimes. I've experimented recently with doing strips
that intentionally have no punchline at all. My fans are
really receptive to that. But still--I don't want to be
"Apartment 3-G," I don't want to be "Mary Worth." It's entertainment--for
all that it is, it's still that. But I think humor can be
used intelligently, even poetically.
Well, one of the things about "Bruno" that strikes me
is that you have this unlimited digital palate. And yet
you publish it in a daily strip-sized format, albeit in
one long panel. Is there a reason you don't do an extra-large
Sunday strip or play with the format a little?
Well, doing a regular-sized strip a day is a lot of work
as it is. That's a big factor. And I started out with the
newspaper format.... Well, actually, I really like constraints.
It's like Shakespeare and iambic pentameter--not that I'm
Shakespeare.... You have to stop and think about it.
Your readership isn't as big as I thought it would be.
But the thing is, they're dedicated. I'd say almost 50
percent of those people buy merchandise, which is incredible.
It's small but dedicated.
You don't find the time to shamelessly market yourself.
Well, Wired interviewed me, but that almost didn't
help at all because it was in a print magazine. People don't
go from print to computer, I've found out. But when I started
up the strip again [after a 1997 break], it was picked up
by CNN Online, and I got, like, 50,000 hits that day. And
I had a movie deal [with Avengers and Benny and
Joon director Jeremiah S. Chechik]. We signed the contract
a year and a half ago this coming Friday, in fact. They
had it for one year and they extended it for six more months.
For that, I got written up in Salon.
So was it before or after The Avengers?
Oh, after.
[makes "What a shame" sympathetic noises] And they
gave you money for this?
Well, the first amount didn't quite cover my attorney.
But you know, the attorney was worth it. You know, [Chechik's
representatives were] like, "We're really artist-friendly.
Here's a nice contract. We don't need attorneys." And I
was like, [affects dumb voice] "Okay, send it to me."
Bruno would be wearing a "swoosh" right now if you'd
signed that contract.
It was "$100,000 and we get all rights," and that was
the basic contract. And I said, "Well, I don't know if that's
quite worth it." And they said, "Well, you can keep doing
the strip and putting it up on your page." And I said, "For
you?"
Do you still want Janeane Garofalo to play Bruno, as
you told Salon?
Well, she'd be my first choice. But they only have rights
to make movies of the material from, like, the first three
years. So she was still much younger then. Janeane's getting
a little older to play those young parts.
Sardonic doesn't wear so well with age.
But still. Who can deliver a line like her?
Speaking of corporate shuffling: You tried to do an
actual syndicate-friendly strip, "Sheppard and May." [Sample
strips for "S&M" can be found at the Bruno site. -Ed.] What
inspired you to want to do that?
Well, the key for me is I wanted a job. If you get syndicated,
you're shackled for five years--and most people stay on
for an additional 200 or so until everybody wishes they'd
died a thousand times.
[laughs]
The trick was, I wanted to create a strip that had some
beauty to it, but also was digestible. I mean, I think there
are some subversive elements within "Sheppard and May."
It reminded me a bit of "Calvin and Hobbes" in its
tone--children having philosophical discussions and feeling
very wry for their age.
Watterson's a huge influence. He's brilliant. I was happy
because Bill Watterson could never create a "love interest"
in his strip. He tried to have it be Suzy, but he felt it
wasn't working and he stopped it. And I created the Dee
character, and she was just this sort of half-retarded mute
that was just ... perfect. She was so heartbreaking, and
[Sheppard] just loved her--little-kid love. I could have
done that strip for five years, and hopefully it would have
matured a lot.
What happened with it?
The syndicates turned it down. All the syndicates know
me. Editors wrote me and said, "Great strip! Send us more!
This isn't quite it, and the kid market is kind of dead!"
I was told I should do a teen strip based around his older
sister, because the only female teen strip that exists is
"Luann," so it's an open market--a completely open market....
[There's a quiet moment of shared derision for "Luann";
both laugh]
... In terms of quality, yes. Do you think you're going
to do that?
Probably not. Too much time. At this point, "Bruno" is
doing okay, the book sales are going decent. I do print
runs of 500, and the books pay for themselves within six
months. And the books keep on selling--it's slow, but it's
definitely increased since I built an [online] store accepting
credit cards and the whole bit.
Did you build that into the site yourself?
No. I just put up something on the site that said, "Who
knows CGI? I can't pay you. I can maybe give you a drawing."
And within a half-hour, someone was like, "I'll do it."
It's so amazing. I wanted to print the [first] book, and
I didn't have any money. I'd done all the pre-press, but
I needed $2,000. So I went up on the Web site and said,
"Hey! I need $2,000." Within a day and a half, I raised
$2,000. I was offering paying back in one year with a 15-percent
return, which is better than I would have paid on a credit
card. For them, it's better than what they'd get from any
kind of loan. And they're all paid up.
Have you done that on subsequent books?
I've done it twice. I vowed not to do it again after this
time, but.... [laughs]
I know people can become "Bruno Patrons."
Yeah, that's something different. That's just $6 and you
get your name in the next "Bruno" book. Sort of like when
you go to a play, and the patrons are printed in the program.
How many hours a day do you put into this thing? I mean,
you said you write it all over the weekend; how long does
it take you to draw it?
A little under two hours [per strip]. And I usually write
and edit a week of strips in four hours--sometimes a lot
longer, and sometimes a lot less.
So you put maybe 20 hours a week into this?
Yeah.
Do you find that it curtails your personal relationships?
Oh, yeah. What relationships? But who knows what
the future holds? But yeah, I haven't dated someone seriously
for three years. I've had a lot of short relationships here
and there....
Well, you've got to find someone who understands
that there's this 20-hour-a-week monkey on your back.
Yeah. My last girlfriend understood that, but wasn't
emotionally happy with it. As a matter of fact, she
didn't want me to stop, because she understood how important
it was to me and who I was. The hard part is when I'm working
full-time and doing that. And right now I'm taking French
classes at PCC two nights a week.
And what do you do for work?
Temping. Right now I work for Toyota, putting things on
shelves. I'm signed up to do Web stuff at a temp place,
but they haven't found anything for me. But frankly, if
I have a choice between working for Nike for $18 an hour
and Toyota for quite a bit less.... You know, Toyota has
a union, it's a nice environment, it's relaxed....
Do the men that Bruno dates represent the women
in your life?
Kind of. It depends. Different relationships have in a
way mirrored what I've been going through. [Her former boyfriend]
Dan was me, in a way. But she's me. So it's kind
of a weird relationship. When she was originally in New
Orleans, she dated me. I mean, John [the character's
name] is my middle name, it looked like me.... I looked
in the mirror when I drew it. In the first half-year of
the strip, she dated John and then took off because he's
wishy-washy. That's what I felt like at the time.
Do you think that most people who do comics or any kind
of art are self-involved human beings? I mean, is that a
necessity--a requisite for the job?
I think anyone who does art--music, painting, cartoons--to
a degree. Well, Bill Watterson is a good example. I imagine
he's an extreme humanist--whenever he talks even
briefly about like his wife, you feel that the strip is
something he does because he loves it, but that he values
people, he values life. But at the same time, as far as
where the strip's concerned, he's narcissistic--he's like,
"This is how I'm doing it, because it's all just black and
white, and you all can just fuck off." You have to think
about yourself and life to get anything real out of something.
How do you maintain the discipline of doing this every
day?
Uh, well.... I like doing it. That helps a lot.
It is starting to make some money. I love doing "Bruno,"
but I hate working, and I need a project that's going to
replace work. When Wired wanted to interview me,
I thought, "If Wired wants to interview me and I
can't make a living off of this, I can't make a living off
of any art. This is a viable project to make money
off of." And it's getting there. I'm no longer losing money.
I mean, I got to town in February, I worked for a month
in June, and then I just started work a week ago.
What do you do when you're not working? What do you
live off of?
Book sales....
So you live about as cheaply as a human being can live,
basically.
Oh, yeah. I pay $235 a month in rent, I eat lots of spaghetti
and Corn Flakes....
And you're skinny as a rail!
[laughs] Well, I don't eat that much. I try to ration it
out.
So you want to do the strip at any cost, basically.
At this point, kind of. It's sort of my focused project
right now. I mean, I have a novel I'm working on; I wrote
a full-length play in iambic pentameter years ago. It's
funny--at the beginning the iambic pentameter's terrible,
but by the end it's kind of nice because I got the ear for
it.... It was loosely based on "Kamachi the Poetess," which
is an ancient Japanese play, so I don't think there'll be
any fights over copyright infringement. I sort of modernized
it to American culture--it's about a bunch of teens in high
school.... It's a silly play.
Are you planning on staying in Portland for a while?
Mmmm... Maybe. This is my current plan--if my temp job
ends tomorrow, my plan will change. I'm thinking of going
to Boston in January and trying to re-ignite the last serious
relationship I had. So I'm going to do that for a month,
then hopefully I'm going to France for two months. I want
to go for four or five, but....
Have you been saving money to do this?
Saving money? I've never heard of that. New concept. That's
why I started this job last week--if I work through mid-December,
I should have enough to do all this. I'm actually going
to be staying with my French translator, so that'll be cool.
The person who translates the strip into French?
Yup. We've communicated a lot--we've never met, but we've
become as close a friends as you can become without meeting.
Do you have very little patience for the person that
says, "Oh, I'M a comic-strip artist," and doesn't actually
produce any comic-strip art? You know the kind of person
I'm talking about?
Like you!
Thank you. [laughs] The type of person who says, "I
could do an online strip--just a matter of gettin' the will
up," and they don't do it. How do you feel about those people?
I don't come into contact with many people like that.
I know people who say, "Yeah, I really want to paint or
write or draw or whatever, and I just don't get around to
it," and sometimes I try to encourage them, but you know,
people view themselves how they view themselves, and they
do what they do and I do what I do.
That's so polite.
[affecting "bitter" voice] "They can just fuck off! Losers!
Get a life! God! I've been doing this for years! I'm a professional!"
[laughs]
Oh, it hurts because it's so true.
I'm sorry.
No, no. Do you have the strip's overall narrative arcs
planned out in advance, or do you just make the decisions
as you go along?
I've got some themes planned out.... What lies ahead?
I've been thinking about whether Bruno's [polyamorous] relationships
with Jules and Sophia are gonna last, if something's gonna
happen. I'm tempted to make it last, because they never
last, and nothing seems to get in the way. If I move back
to Massachusetts, she might go there. I want to have her
go to France. I'll probably do a fundraiser to France--like,
raffle off or on eBay sell a drawing or something. "Buy
lots of books! Help me go to France!"
Do you sell your original art?
I sell original art, but I don't sell the original strips.
I remember you going on this harangue at the Bruno
site where you said, "Okay--I'll accept commissions for
original art, but don't expect them anytime soon."
[laughs] Oh, Christ.
Okay. Your advice to aspiring Internet cartoonists,
if you have any. "Don't"?
My advice.... Do it for a while--at least four or five
months before you really try to link to other sites. Because
I have people who say, "Oh, I do this online comic strip--will
you make a link to my site?" And they've been doing it for
a week.... Unless you're serious about it, don't bother
other people who are not getting paid for giving their blood
and soul to it. [pause] There's the non-polite me
coming out there. You know, it depends on your goal. If
you want to be syndicated, it's great. "Sheppard and May,"
if I did it for a year online, and then tried to get it
syndicated, that probably would get it syndicated.
Why don't you, then?
Can't afford to do two strips for no money. If one was
paying, I could do it. Because strips mature, and it makes
a hell of a difference. Though "Garfield" was funny until
it matured--quotes around "matured," there. Just do it if
you love it--it's not a big cash industry, so if you don't
love it, don't bother.
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