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Dragon and Goat, the Interview

posted by Matt Knicl at 9:43 pm.

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The Mighty Chimera

After my interview with one of the Daily Illini’s strippers (no, not that kind) for Beardo, I sought out Dragon and Goat scribe Adam Fotos.

Matt Knicl: How did you come up with the idea for Dragon and Goat?

Adam Fotos: I started Dragon and Goat the summer before my last year in Undergrad at the University of Tennessee in 2003. I was reading the comics in the school paper and realized it was about time I started my own strip. Dragon was a character that I had been drawing for years, having evolved out of a devil character I was drawing in high school, and Goat was another character that had been in my cartoon repertoire for a while. Even though incompatible signs of the Chinese zodiac, they just made sense as a pair.

Matt: Are the strips based on real life?

Adam: As much as a comic about a talking dragon and goat can be about real life, the strips do come out of everyday experiences. I play off of pop cultural phenomena like Harry Potter, Pokemon, or Scientology, but when they end up in the cartoon world, they seldom have “real life” boundaries.

Matt: Why did you choose to run your strips in the DI?

Adam: I generally take Dragon and Goat with me wherever I go, and I came here for grad school to get my MFA in Painting. I like having it run in a public paper over just posting it online to have a wider audience. In general college papers have a much more diverse audience than local papers that’s better suited for comics like Dragon and Goat.
I’ve since started making my own Dragon and Goat books and I have been releasing them through Lulu.com. The first book Dragon and Goat: Into the Jelly compiled the strips I did in China and my first year here at UIUC. The latest book Dragon and Goat: An Utter Dimension will be released at the end of January compiling the strips from Fall 2006 to Summer 2007. The books are definitely the best place to read them in mind-blowing RGB color.

Matt: What is your philosophy for writing your comics?

Adam: I try not to be too simplistic or repetitive in my strips. I like involved story lines that may take weeks to tell, but that hopefully will be interesting enough to get someone to check the archives to figure out what the hell is going on. I don’t really like doing one-liners, but I do want the strip to make people laugh. From an art stand-point, I always hand-draw Dragon and Goat rather than shuffling around a few drawings in Illustrator. This allows for the characters to change over time…and keeps me busy. For a while I was even philosophically opposed to using gradients to delineate space, but I’ve gotten over that now that I’m doing all the strips in color.

Matt: What other comics/strips were your inspiration?

Adam: From a humor standpoint, Gary Larson’s The Farside influenced me very, very early on and as far as image/text story-telling Jeff Smith’s Bone heavily impacted me when I was starting out. Having matured as a comics artist over the past five years, Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics greatly re-shaped what I thought of comics shortly after beginning Dragon and Goat, and I have since been much more interested in independent/ alternative comic artists like Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Anders Nilsen or whatever books I find for cheap at Quimby’s in Chicago.
When I first started out I thought the comic strip was something separate from my “fine art,” but now I’m definitely an advocate of comics as art- in and of themselves. This summer I’ll be teaching a studio art course in the School of Art to this effect and encouraging students to make their own comics. As far as I know it’s the first art class being taught here at UIUC devoted to the medium.

Matt: What is the best part about being a cartoonist?

Adam: Definitely creating your own world and characters and seeing how they evolve over time. I really enjoy hearing from readers and when people are excited about what’s coming next.

Matt: What is the worst part?

Adam: To generate a weekly comic strip that’s inventive and interesting everyday is very time consuming, and it’s sometimes difficult to balance making the comic with my other art like painting or sculpture.

Matt: What one thing would you like to say to your fans at the U of I?

Adam: Don’t hesitate to let me know what you think about the strip. I really enjoy hearing from people.

Matt: Does your comic appear in any other papers other than the DI?

Adam: Right now Dragon and Goat is only in the Daily Illini. While I was teaching English in China for a year it was running in a Chinese English language newspaper called the Shenzhen Daily. It only ran every other week, but they paid really well and per panel so the usual 4 panel format changed to 5 panel. I’ve been pretty bad about posting lately, but I do put strips up on my blog at www.dragonandgoat.blogspot.com. The books available through Lulu are another place you can catch Dragon and Goat.

Matt Knicl: My name is Matt Knicl. I'm a U of I alumn and one of those unemployed English majors Garrison Keillor likes to make fun of. I've been reading comics since high school and one day I would like to write them. My goal is to expose readers to what is out there in the world of comics and using my English powers, show what is worth reading or not. I can be reached at buzz.comics@gmail.com.