THEORYBOY INTERVIEWS MILT GRAY

Well, slightly exaggerating.  Above, the heroine of Milt Gray's new web comic, "Ms. Viagri Ampleten."

Sepia sketches by John Kricfalusi

Greetings Theory Cornerites! Uncle Eddie here.  That's me above, second from the left. You know, we've interviewed many celebrities on this site: Sammy, Dean, Frank, and even Bob Clampett, but none has been as tall as our present subject, Simpsons timing director, animator, Clampett fan and web cartoonist, the 6' 6" "Tower of Power," MILT GRAY. "Hi MILT!"

MILT : "Hi, Uncle Eddie! Wanna see my latest drawing of Viagri Ampleten?"

UNCLE EDDIE: "Sure! Wow! She certainly is...(gulp!)...ample. So this is your new web comic character! She's a spy, right?"

MILT: "Well, not exactly. She's a free agent. Sometimes she works for the government, and sometimes for private people. She takes on the really dangerous assignments that no one else wants to touch." 

UNCLE EDDIE: "How does she decide what jobs to take?"

MILT: "Good question. Well, she's more likely to take a job that gives her scope to follow her hobby, which is sex. She's on a crusade to liberate people from their sex hangups."

UNCLE EDDIE: "Uh oh! There goes your 'G' rating."

MILT: "'Not worried. I'm after whatever rating makes sense for the stories I'm telling.  I figure the readers will tell me how graphic I should go."

UNCLE EDDIE: "How did you figure out the format?  There can't be many web comics that scan the way yours does."

MILT: "Yeah, it works great, doesn't it? It came about because the project started as an animated cartoon, and the panels were meant to be layouts. That's why they're all the same size. When I decided to do a web comic instead, it seemed like a natural outgrowth of that to put them in a column and let the reader scroll down. I guess I was lucky, because everybody seems to like it that way."

UNCLE EDDIE: "How did you color it?"

MILT: "Well, I xeroxed the original drawings down to a size my scanner could take, then I just fed them in.  The color was done on Photoshop by my color stylist, Cynthia Macintosh. 

UNCLE EDDIE: "I'll put a few of the panels up (that's them above, cropped badly by me, and in a different format than the one Milt uses. I was just too sleepy to do it right).  Boy, you can tell that an animator drew them."

MILT: "Thanks. There's a lot that's different about this comic. I hope it influences things. The web is a great vehicle for comics, and it'll get even better if we continue to experiment."


Milts web comic:  http://www.viagriampleten.com