John Bruni: Your sense of humor is questionable. How has ARSENIC LULLABY survived for so long?
Douglas Paszkiewicz: Well, there are a lot of questionable people out there. As society crumbles, our margins rise, you see.
JB: Excellent. Has there ever been an ARSENIC LULLABY piece that made even you cringe?
DP: Quite a few. If it weren’t for deadlines, I would have cut out a lot of stuff, but when you need a certain amount of pages by a certain time, you just say, to hell with it, it’s going in. A lot of the Nazi stuff, if I had time to think about it, I’d probably have left it out. But time is a tyrant, so in it goes.
JB: I like Abraham Lincoln’s role in your work.
DP: Thank you. He’s a lot of fun to draw.
JB: Is there any subject that would be taboo for you?
DP: Define taboo.
JB: Something you would absolutely not joke about.
DP: I try to stay away from sex jokes, religion jokes, not really because they make me cringe, but because people who are into that have an axe to grind and they’re not enjoying the timing and the structure of the joke. If I joke about sex, people want to just see nudity, and the jokes are just lost on them. I try to keep swear words out of it because I think it’s funnier when something horrible happens, and there’s a word balloon of x’s and o’s and zigzags.
JB: Can you tell us anything about the cartoon?
DP: Well, it’s strange that you should mention Abraham Lincoln, because he plays a role in the cartoon. What we basically did was, we took three stories directly from the comic book and just put those in animated form. I got some stand-up comedian friends and friends in bands doing the voice-over work for me. It turned out pretty decent, I believe. So, Voodoo Joe is in it, Baron von Donut is in it, and Abraham Lincoln as the devil sort of wraps everything together. It’s every bit as despicable as the comic book.
JB: Have you retired entirely from the comic book world, or will there be more books from you in the future?
DP: If the cartoon should go up in smoke, then I’ll do some more comic books, but I really am having a lot of fun doing the cartoon right now because I’ve got sound, I’ve got motion, so it’s a lot easier to tell a story when you have those two elements. I’m still doing work for MAD Magazine, so you can always go there to get your taste of my sense of humor. But for the time being, I’m going to work on the cartoon. The pilot turned out decently enough to say hey, we can do this. I’ll keep doing that until I get sick of it and say to hell with it with my brush and ink and bristle board.
JB: Aside from the cartoon and MAD, what’s next for you?
DP: Well, there’s enough on my plate right now, to be honest with you. I really bit off more than I can chew with the cartoon, but fortunately I got a lot of help, so it turned out good. But it’s going to keep me busy for a little while, I think.
Leo Perez: Is the cartoon only available on DVD right now, or is it going to come out on TV soon?
DP: We took it to several different networks. Basically, this is a pitch pilot. While they’re mulling over that, we’ll put it up on iTunes on a pay-per-download basis. As we accumulate more [content], we’ll send out more DVD’s for people to pick up, and that sort of thing. Distribution-wise, we’re going the same route we went with the comic books. Everybody who is a fan of the comic book will be able to get the DVD, and once it gets picked up by somebody, I’ll be able to retire to Cuba, or something.
Tune in tomorrow for my interview with EVIL ERNIE and LADY DEATH creator, Brian Pulido!
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