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Jennie Breeden Interview with BuzzyMag.com (THE DEVILíS ***)
JMW: Hello, this is Jean Marie Ward for BuzzyMag.com. With me today is webcomics artist, Jennie
Breeden.
Welcome, Jennie. Iíve got to ask you, what are ëThe Devilís ***í?
Jennie Breeden: Satanic ***.
JMW: Oh, really?
Jennie Breeden: No, not satanic *** at all. Itís only as pornographic as my husband will
let me make it. He knows my mom reads it, so thereís that. Itís a journal comic.
JMW: A journal comic you write and draw?
Jennie Breeden: I draw and I do the whole thing. My husband has been helping me with
some of the Internet hosting stuff. Iím more artist-minded. I donít know how the whole
logic reality thing works, so he helps me out with that. Usually something happens in
the life around me and people laugh and then I write it down and steal it. Itís more of
a documentation than it is writing.
So every single day, I post a comic strip up online about conventions. The comics that
have been going out recently is that my friends and I ran around and celebrated Holi, which
is, you throw paint at each other and itís dusty. Itís an Indian festival and you get
covered and you breathe it in and it gets in your eyes. I said, oh my God, Iím breathing
in cancer. Then I sat there and wrote that down and took a lot of pictures for reference.
Itís a journal comic. Itís a slice of life every day.
Iíve been doing it since 2001. God, I donít want to do the math. That makes it 12 years
old. Itís old enough to go to school. I donít quite know what grade that is yet. I think
this week, Iíve hit over 4,000 comic strips that are up online that are free to read.
JMW: Oh my goodness. That answers one of my questions, how long have you been doing it?
My other questions are, who are the major characters? You? Your husband? Anybody whoís
fortunate or unfortunate enough to meet you?
Jennie Breeden: I used to do cartoons about the conventions and people bringing me weird
things and the high jinks that we get up to. I had a couple bring me a basket of all of
these different candies and funky things. They had a box of jellybeans, the Harry Potter
jellybeans. There was a dirt flavor, a grass flavor, and we would do jellybean Russian
roulette. I did a cartoon about it. Then I had some people bring me a huge basket of
water and condoms. I was like, this seems to be escalating. Iíd better stop documenting
it, or a vanís going to pull out and three guys in ski masks are going to say, this is
going to be awesome. Youíre going to do a cartoon about this.
So I stopped doing cartoons about the interesting people I met at conventions. I try to keep
it to people who have signed waivers.
JMW: They have to sign waivers? Oh boy.
Jennie Breenden: My mom suggested that. My mother said, you need your siblings and everyone
you know and your loved ones to sign a waiver so that when they say, I didnít like that
you did that, or, you did a cartoon about that, I can say, itís legal. I ended up getting
a hold of a copy of a contract for a reality show, and it has all of these clauses like
we can take your image and then change your personality and what you say and context.
I went, wow, remind me never to go into a reality show. So I have them sign those waivers.
JMW: Yes, with I can use your image and we can change your personality.
Jennie Breeden: Itís a bit disconcerting to go up to somebody and say, honey, I love
you. Could you sign this? My husband and I are still going over his contract.
JMW: Oh, yes. So heís in the strip, youíre in the strip, your friends and family, everybody.
Why ëThe Devilís ***í? What is the origin of the name?
Jennie Breeden: Once upon a time, I went Savannah College of Art and Design and I majored in
comic books. Whenever something funny would happen around the dorms, I would do a little
cartoon about it. I had this folder full of little cartoons. About 2000-2001, I had a
friend say, oh, you should put them up on the Internet. I said, okay, well, I guess
I have to name it. I wanted to name it ëRealityís Victim.í I got a whole list of different
titles I could call it. My friend DJ said, well, I was going to have my band be called
ëThe Devilís ***,í but I donít play an instrument, so you can have the title.
So for one summer, I asked everyone who I came in contact with, what name do you like?
They didnít know what it was. I just said, what name do you like? To a person, every
single person that I stopped, in line at grocery stores and the pizza delivery man, and everybody
said, Devilís ***? I donít know what that is, but I want to find out.
So I used that, and three years later, I had two girls run up to me at a convention and
they said, oh, Devilís ***. I love that movie. I said, what? They said, you know,
the Sandra Bullock movie. I said, what? Apparently, in ëMiss Congenialityí there is a scene
where the little blonde cheerleader says, I wanted to get the red undies, but my mom
wouldnít let me. She said they were Satanís ***.
Why I used ëThe Devilís ***í is that it was a way to filter the readers. It was
a way to lure them in, because if you say, oh, itís a journal comic, that doesnít sound
funny or interesting, but if you say that itís satanic ***, theyíre like, I want
to click on that one. If anybody could be the slightest bit offended by Jesus smoking
pot with the Devil, which many or may not happen in the comic, then theyíre not going
to click on it. If they say, The Devilís ***, oh, that doesnít good, then I donít
have ñ surprisingly, Iíve never, knock on wood, gotten an e-mail saying, oh, youíre
so offensive. Iíve had two emails. One guy said, you know, I really liked it back when
you were cute and innocent, and youíve gotten kind of vulgar and just the female equivalent
to ëThe Man Showí. A week later, I got another e-mail saying, you know, I really liked it
back when you were angry and violent and hardcore, and now youíve kind of dumbed down and youíve
gotten all soft. I was like, you guys need to talk to each other and decide what I am.
So it does seem that everybody has their own opinion on whatís hardcore and whatís not.
My mom reads the comic. My friends are in the comic. I donít do a comic about something
that Iím not willing to say to someoneís face, because I am a non-confrontational ***.
So I make sure that whateverís in the comic is something that Iím comfortable with, because
the people who are in the comic know where I live.
JMW: That could be a problem.
Jennie Breeden: I had an aunt point out, she said that my comic isnít mean. And I try
not to be mean with the comic, because they can find me.
JMW: Youíve mentioned also on your website that you struggle with dyslexia, like the
word balloons. How has being dyslexic influenced your art? Positively? Negatively?
Jennie Breeden: Thereís a comic where two guys say, and I think this is xkcd, they say,
hey, letís have a contest and see who can have the most comments on a blog post. The
one guy says, I did the ultimate blog post. It has everything in it. It has government,
itís got social frustrations, it has all of the different aspects of life and the universe,
and I talk about everything. Iíve gotten 123 comments. The second guy says, I got 5
million comments. The guy says, what did you do a blog post about? He says, I put a spelling
mistake in the title.
So whatís frustrating is that if thereís a spelling mistake in something online, the
people are very polite. They say, hey, did you notice that thereís a spelling mistake?
Unfortunately, you get 50 of those comments, hey, did you notice that thereís a spelling
mistake? And itís hard to stay polite.
JMW: After number 50.
Jennie Breeden: Yeah. About number eight, you start kind of losing your cool. Yes, I
noticed. I posted a rant, and what set me off was that I was trying to spell the word
ëchivalrous.í I spell phonetically. I sound it out. So if it sounds like an S-H, Iím
screwed. The computer said, I have no idea what youíre talking about. So finally, I
turned to my housemates and I said, hey guys, how do you spell ëchivalrousí?í I had one
housemate turn to me and say, donít you have a dictionary? How stupid can you be?
JMW: Ouch.
Jennie Breeden: So I posted commentary on that. It had to do with drowning and pig feces.
I had a lot of people say Iím not the only one. Somebody else is frustrated by this.
I had one person say, Iím so offended by your rant, I canít read your comic anymore.
And I thought about taking the rant down, but I had too many people say, thank you so
much for saying that.
In second grade, they pulled me out of school and put me in the special kidsí class because
I wasnít reading. It took me a long time to learn how to read. Comics helped me immensely.
My older brothers had comics. I wanted to know what happened in ElfQuest. Strongbow
was in a cage, or maybe it was the lady with the black hair who was in a cage, and I wanted
to know what was going on, so I forced myself to sound out the words and figure out what
was going on.
They put me in Resource. They put me back into a normal school halfway through second
grade, and during English class, I would go to the special kidsí class, Resource. In
middle school to high school, I was in both the smart kidsí gifted class and the stupid
kidsí class. I got to go to all the pizza parties. It was awesome. About that time,
I realized, itís not me. Itís the school system. Everyone has a different brain. Everyone
thinks differently, and yet they try to use the same way of teaching for everybody, and
so it doesnít always work for everyone. I found that for me, itís memory. Itís trying
to memorize names and dates.
You ask me about a movie, I can tell you the whole story of the movie. I canít tell you
whoís in it, the names of the people in the movie, but I can tell you other movies theyíve
been in. My friends have a lot fun. Itís a game, guess that actor. So I found that
to try to function in the public school system for memorizing the things that they want to
memorize, I found that if I figured out a story, I got a story to figure out. I still
remember, Denmark. Mark on a den. Iíll figure the story out, and thatís a different way
of approaching a problem.
So I found with the comic strips and the comic books, itís more of, for me, writing a comic
is that something funny happens. I have to figure out whatís funny about that situation,
and then how do you communicate that, and how do you boil it down to its essence? So
approaching that, itís not necessarily, this is the conversation that happened, and thatís
why itís funny. Itís a bit more of figuring out the story behind it.
Unfortunately, for the spelling, you do a spell check, ëroleí and ërollí are both
spelled the same way. I did a comic about meeting a male burlesque dancer, and said,
oh, itís so nice to meat you. M-E-A-T. It worked.
JMW: Yeah, I can imagine you got a lot of comments on that one, too.
Jennie Breeden: When I posted the rant, I had a bunch of people say, you have dyslexia?
I thought the spelling mistakes were on purpose. I thought that was part of the joke. I was
like, wow, you think Iím way smarter than I am. More talented. Iíve had a lot of people
say, oh, Iíve had the same problems. Thatís the thing that I adore about the comic is
that I do these things that I think are weird or interesting or unique, and I have people
all over the world saying, oh my God, thatís so me. Thatís me and my sister. Thatís me
and my friends. I had one girl in Connecticut come up to me last year and say, I thought
I was broken, and then I read your comic and I found that thereís other people just like
me out there. It was awesome.
JMW: With that, Iíd like to say thank you so much, Jennie.
Jennie Breeden: Thank you.
JMW: And thank you from BuzzyMag.com.