War Rocket Ajax #104: The Ajax Roundtable with Matt Digges and Daniel Butler

This week, the War Rocket Ajax roundtable finally returns! Chris and Matt welcome Matt Digges, the artist of Awesome Hospital, and Daniel Butler, the artist of Copernicus Jones: Robot Detective to talk about the quirks of making webcomics -- and you can listen to the whole show right here at ComicsAlliance!

War Rocket Ajax #104: Shameless, Even For Us with Matt Digges and Daniel Butler

(WARNING: Contains NSFW language)

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In this week's show, Mass Effect. Mass Effect Mass Effect Mass Effect, Mass Effect. Mass? Effect! Plus, Matt has been refining his stand-up comedy routine, and brings some cutting-edge observations on how different people walk to the podcast that may surprise you. Seriously, though, if you're in Chicago, keep an eye out for Matt!

As we predicted last week, it turns into a Double-Master-Blaster situation as soon as Daniel and Matt join us to talk about working together on our projects:

Wilson: We are all guys that don't live close together, but we collaborate on comics. Not that many years ago, we wouldn't be able to do this. I wonder if our listeners would like to know how we got connected, and how we work having some distance from each other.

Sims: Well what I do is I get Chad to write a script and get him to email it to me, then I email it to Matt and Josh so it looks like I did some work.

Wilson: Well, Matt, how did you get hooked up with Chris and Chad?

Digges: It all started in a previous life when I was on Death Row for murdering many people...

Sims: He means Death Row Records, by the way.

Wilson: You were Suge Knight in a previous life.

Sims: He's actually Suge Knight in a previous life right now, which is really weird.

The artists also talk about what it was like to get out of their artistic comfort zone:

Butler: I think the only thing that I had drawn before in that comic was just people. Just people. But yeah, robots in trenchcoats, cars doing turns into alleyways really quickly. Having to invent a city out of my imagination was probably the most painful experience I've ever had when it came to drawing.

Wilson: But it's all there on the page.

Butler: Yeah, you didn't want just a city, no, you had to be like "he has to view the entire city from this hill," and I was like "oh my God."

Sims: I love that because that's such an easy thing to write, like "Copernicus looks at the city," but it's such a pain to draw.

Butler: And that's the thing, I think I hate drawing anything that requires a straight line. I hate that more than anything in the world, I just want to do squiggly little scratches. My favorite part of the entire process is when I get to draw how messed up Copernicus is from all his battle damage. But those buildings? Oh my God, that's just so boring to draw. I don't want to say that the end result isn't something I'm extremely proud of, but just the process just makes me want to... just makes me want to cry.

Plus, find out Chris's flawed plan for conquering the Zuda competition on this week's episode!

Show Notes:

Daniel draws Copernicus Jones: Robot Detective, written by Matt Wilson. You can also find him on Tumblr!

Matt draws Awesome Hospital, with Chris, Chad Bowers and Josh Krach. You can also find him at his autobio comic, Sequential Life!

Chris's Rec: The Stuff You Missed In History Class podcast.

Matt's Rec: Community, back on TV this Thursday!

Comics Reviewed:

Polly and the Pirates v.2: "It's kind of a simple kid's adventure story idea where this girl is at a boarding school and she finds out her mother was the Queen of the Pirates, so her crew comes to get her. She's the new pirate queen, and she's 12. If you know a kid, get it. If you like good comics, get it."

Atomic Robo and the Ghost of Station X #5: NOTE: Chris says "#6" on the show. He is confused. He means #5. "For the first time in the series, Robo, this completely unique being, meets the closest equivalent to himself, and he has to decide between that and the human race. It's the kind of thing that could be exactly what they don't want that book to be. It could be brooding, it could be heavy-handed, it could be sloppily done, but it's not. It still has that air of fun, but is really maturely done and very emotionally affecting in a way that comics struggle with."

Defenders #4: "I love Dr. Strange stories, and this one just has a big emotional weight to it... This book has a crazy thing that happens in it, but it leads to a big emotional decision for Dr. Strange, and I just can't say enough good things about it. There's so much story in this one issue. I liked 1 - 3 a lot; I love #4."