Matt Buchwald started drawing Fodi in the middle of 2003. The story of Fodi is a classic story of triumph over adversity, time travel, beer, and Matt’s strange obsesssion with winged women.

Before we dig in, Matt wanted to make sure that he would get to say at least one funny thing. So here’s Matt for a brief intro:

A chicken walks into a library and goes up to the front desk. She asks the librarian, “Book book book book?” The librarian leaves and comes back with four books. The chicken takes the books and sits down at a table, where she hands the books to her friend the frog. The frog looks at the books in turn and saids, “Read it, read it, read it, read it.”

Mission Accomplished, Matt! And now, our interview about Matt, Fodi, and the Beer That Saved Pittsburgh.

Fleen:
Why is your comic called “Fodi”? Why is it hosted at baldninja.com?

Matt:
I’m going to answer the second question first, becauce time works better that way for me. During our brainstorming sessions to come up with a concept for the comic, I was drawing ideas on a gigantic whiteboard that Steve owned. I’m not really should what I meant to draw, but Steve took one look at it and said, “Hey that looks like a bald ninja.” We found the concept of a bald ninja hilarious. After our initial hosting options began to get really crappy due to excessive virus prevention measures, we decided to go with our in joke and have it be our domain name for the new hosting because fodi.com/.net/.org were all taken and I have an inexplicable aversion to including the work “comic” in a domain name. We then wrote the bald ninjas into the comic, and they sold Matt and Steve the Bald Ninja Brewery. So the domain name sorta works. (I’m still contemplating sucking it up and getting fodicomic.com or the like. At least until someone gives me the $5000 or so they want for fodi.com. Apparently my $100 offer wasn’t good enough.)

Most people think Fodi is an acronym because the title logo is in all caps. I don’t tend to discourage these thoughts because they lead to interesting acronym meanings being made up. Fodi is a slang pronounciation of “forty,” as in “a forty ounce bottle of [crappy] beer. In Steve’s apartment back then, his roommate had two servers named Shotglass and Corona Beach, respectively. When Steve set up his own server, he kept with the theme and named it Fodi. The comic was originally hosted on that server, and located at fodi.rh.rit.edu. Since we felt the comic should match the url, the comic was then named Fodi. Luckily, this enabled us to be complete hypocrites in the future, thus assuring we will die tragic, flawed heros’ deaths.

F:
Who would win in a fight ­- a bald ninja, a robot ninja or a cheese ninja?

M:
The cheese ninja. Behold the power of cheese.

F:
What was your original purpose for doing Fodi? Have you changed your purpose since you started?

M:
At first, I just wanted to make a comic because I felt I could make a comic and wanted some sort of outlet to get better at drawing. Looking back, I have absolutely no idea why I thought I could ever make a comic back then, but I’m very glad I stuck with it anyway. Now, I’ve shifted more to wanting to really start telling stories and improving my storytelling. I think that’s where the larger growth potential is.

F:
What’s it like to own a brewery?

M:
When you own a successful brewery, it’s a-ok to roll around naked on top of piles of cool, cool cash. Unfortunately the comic doesn’t alter reality, so I’m left buying my beer like every other shmuck.

F:
How much beer do you think your characters have consumed over the course of your comic strip?

M:
Not nearly as much as they should have. Seriously. All that running around they’ve been doing? A waste of precious beer-drinking experience.

F:
Can you tell us a little bit about your creative process?

M:
I jot down all sorts of things. AIM conversations, IRC conversations (a particularly vivid source of juicy dialogue), etc. Anything I read or stumble upon while following links is good fodder. Once some idea sticks, I just run with it and see where it goes. My good friend Steven Coad (who has done most of the coding for the site) is also an idea man, and he came up with the premise and loose plot/back story for the current arc. I often bounce scripts and more detailed plot lines off of him, and occasionally he’ll script out a sequence of comics or edit mine to flesh them out better. Steve’s a great guy for all this and I probably don’t thank him nearly enough.

More recently, I’ve been scripting far in advance (currently I have tentative scripts through the end of March). After some time of letting the scripts sit, I’ll go back and make more changes. It has helped me get over the initial attachment to scripts which tends to allow awful ideas to bleed through. While scripting, I usually have some sort of panel arrangement in mind to give it some extra context for me, which helps in the editing process by letting me mold the words around a scene.

F:
Your artistic ability has grown considerably since you started drawing Fodi on a regular basis. Do you feel this has been mostly accidental, or have you been taking classes or doing some kind of self-study?

M:
My artwork improvement is almost completely attached to drawing Fodi. I really don’t sketch nearly as much as I should. In fact, my sketchbook is woefully low on content. Most of my sketching is done on scraps of paper that are not retained, but I don’t do nearly enough. Occasionally I’ll look at other webcomics to try to add in a bit of growth. I also went through the Scary Go Round archives one and tried drawing various poses. John Allison has a huge wealth of varied poses. Mostly though, I’ll start drawing a panel and just try to put down something I think looks right. As I’ve gone along, I keep the things that look right to me (until something else looks more right) and change the things that don’t.

F:
What are some of the writing challenges you face with your comic?

Transitions! Transitions are my biggest source of writing woe. I always angst over when I should move on to a different scene and how much information I need in order to understand what’s going on. It’s been especially tough since I’ve felt the need to split the cast up location-wise several times now. Knowing when to move from one location/group to another has been a challenge.

F:
Who’s your favorite of your characters, and why? Who’s the hardest character to write for?

M:
I’m a little partial to Matt, being loosely modeled after me, but my favorite has to be Lara. Lara is fun because she’s so socially naive. When she was created (in the comic), she was created without having a firm moral value system, or a developed social structure; the context of her existence wasn’t set. It lets me push and bend her in whatever direction I think she needs to go, whereas the other characters are a bit more set in their personalities. Plus, you know, hot winged chick.

I think I have the most difficulty writing for the Steve character. Too often I want to write like he’s Matt, when he’s really a darker, more cynical character. Also, his character has the most planned development in the future, so it’s a trial trying to make sure I don’t stray too far away from that path.

F:
Which of your characters do you think has changed the most?

M:
Sally. She went from med student to zombie, and then later on she died. That’s a lot of change. Now she doesn’t even really exist within the current comic except as backstory reference. That’s harsh. I think Lara’s a close second, having been so malleable, then assuming a role based on what Matt and Steve seemed to think she should do, turning to a puppet of evil, protecting them, and now being kidnapped and taunting the apparent badguy.

F:
Where do you think your comic will be in five years?

M:
Hopefully still on the web and not in some forgotten corner. As long as I have the time to make it and stories to tell with the characters, I plan to keep chugging along. I get a great deal of personal pleasure drawing and writing for it and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

F:
Would you like to do your comic full-time, if you could support yourself off of it?

M:
That’d be cool, but the comic income would have to eclipse the income I get from my engineering job. I think I’m content for now to keep it as a hobby, with the goal of using it for a bit of supplemental income should I ever really get rolling enough to be a mechandising whore.

F:
Where do you get such great ideas for t-shirts?

M:
When I’m not shamelessly stealing them from you (I totally feel no shame over that), I just sort of use whatever seems right. As soon as I created the Bill character, I knew I would design the I <3 Linux shirt some day. Sally’s broken heart shirt was made in response to a friend saying she’d totally buy it if I made it.

F:
Do you consider your comic to be in a category or genre? Are there other comics that you think are similar in style or tone? Or do you think your work is particularly unique in the field?

M:
I have trouble categorising my comic. It’s loosely adventure/sci-fi, but I have interests in enough other things that a variety of topics want to bleed in on occasion. Fodi is probably similar to some of the other comics I read just because it’s hard to not be influenced by television shows I watch, books I read, and comics I follow. I don’t know if it’s truly unique, but I hope I’ll be able to form a story that ends up being a fairly unique total composition.

F:
What comics do you read regularly?

The comics I keep up with best are Goats, Sluggy Freelance, Scary Go Round,, Wigu/Overcompensating, Car Vs. Motorcycle, Commissioned, Muffin Time, Questionable Content (a relatively new read for me), PVP, and occasionally Diesel Sweeties, Penny Arcade and Ctrl-Alt-Del.

F:
What comics do you consider to be your main influences?

M:
Both Goats and SGR have humor that resonate strongly with me, so I’d probably be lying if I said they didn’t influence me in some capacity. And I mean, heck, the idea to have the two main characters be based on Steve and me was almost a direct result of Goats. I started with what I knew and started developing my sytle from there.

F:
How did you feel about this year’s Super Bowl?

M:
Being from Pittsburgh, I feel that the Steelers were the better team. All the calls were right except the holding call which in fast motion looked like holding, so it should be forgiven. That low block on Hasselbeck was technically correct by the rules, though rarely enforced (except by Levy, who had called it previously this season… aganist the Steelers). It was correctly a tackle and an illegal block. Seahawks, plain and simple, did nothing exceptional to try to win the game. They played their normal offense and defense, and were the normal Seahawks. They didn’t play to win; they played to play.

Really though, both teams played some awful football.

F:
Baseball Cap, Fedora, Bowler, or Stetson?

M:
I don’t tend to wear hats, but when I do I wear a baseball cap. Personally I think hats are silly, except when they are silly hats. Silly hats are okay in my book.