Ramon Perez: Ramon Perez of butternutsquash

Fleen: Wait. You guys are Canadian, right?

RP: yes.

Fleen: So… you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, then?

RP: Well we do, but we like to get it out of the way earlier. It’s the same day you fine folks celebrate Columbus Day.

Fleen: Really?

RP: Yes, really. Hard to believe I know.

Fleen: I guess my whole plan for a special Thanksgiving edition of my interviews is completely ruined, then. You don’t even have anything pithy to say about the differences between cranberry sauce and cranberry relish, do you?

RP: Cranberry relish!? What strange concoctions you Americans brew up. Myself I have a soft spot for homemade cranberry sauce. So I’d probably lean in that direction.

Fleen: Okay. Um.. Well. What’s going on with Butternut Squash these days, then?

RP: Well we seem to be staggering a little as my schedule has been pretty chaotic with my freelance projects – the ones that pay the bills :) But right now I’m making efforts to get ahead of our update schedule to avoid future missed days. We’ve got some other things that we’re working on – such as venturing into print again, but, that’s another story.

Fleen: Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, or Halifax?

RP: Well we’re from Toronto, but those other cities are nice too.

(Editor’s note: At this point, Rob Coughler takes over answering. I wasn’t warned this would happen, so all my questions are still directed to Ramon. )

Fleen: How are you feeling about the new haircut?

Rob Coughler: Ramon is in the corner sniffling over the travesty that is his hair, thanks for bringing it up. Don’t worry, he will deal with the cards that are dealt to him.

Fleen: Nobody in the U.S. actually celebrates Columbus Day. Some of us just get paid not to show up for work. Should we be celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving instead? Can you tell us something about a traditional Canadian Thanksgiving?

RC: No I say that you keep celebrating American Thanksgiving, it gives you something to look forward too. Here in Canada we have Thanksgiving then Halloween and the nothing until Christmas. That’s almost two whole months of festive holiday drought.

Fleen: You didn’t start BNS as a web comic, and put it out on the web initially just as an entry in your art blog. At this point, however, you’ve been going strong as a web comic for several years. Can you talk a bit about how you feel about the web comics world and your relationship to it? For example, do you consider yourself a web comic artist – or just an artist who publishes a comic on the web?

RC: Well it was a comic strip first and a web comic first. As the comic strip, it never ever saw print because the guys organizing the project couldn’t get it together. The first time it was available for public viewing was on the internet. Sure it was in the art website, but still it was a web comic from a technical point of view. As to the second part of that question, we were taken by surprise by the web comic community. We never knew they existed until after we had been going for about a month. That’s when the emails started pouring in. We now follow a couple of web comics from our peers but we aren’t engrossed in the community. Ramon is an artist, I am a writer. I am not a “web comic writer” nor is Ramon a “web comic artist” the web is just a venue to display your talents. The biggest gallery in the world.

Fleen: Has the collaboration process with Rob ever put a strain on your friendship?

RC: Yes, we no longer speak. In fact the only contact we have is through FTP servers when we download the new ideas and strips for collaboration. Vince is the middleman if ever we need to be a little more direct.

Fleen: Could you see Butternut Squash ending due to a Yoko Ono style spat between you and Rob?

RC: I don’t see how Ramon would even be able to marry John Lennon, he’s hung up on the ladies and only the ones that are alive. I’m sure as hell not touching Yoko.

Fleen: Where do you see BNS being in five years?

RC: As a theme park. The twirling tea cups full of coffee, being poured by a 75 foot tall Coffee Girl… can you just imagine it? What a ride!