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Big Things: Wendi & Sean Strang-Frost
Strang-Frost Productions was founded in 2001 by Wendi Strang-Frost and her husband Sean Frost to publish their minicomic JOHNNY PUBLIC, the story of a man with several people living in his head. Since then, issues have emerged "sporadically from the second-floor studio of our cat-infested house in Michigan". Responsibilities are evenly split, with Sean handling the scripting and website and Wendi doing everything else, from artwork and printing, right through to stapling. BIG NEWS: WENDI: I'm currently working on Chapter 7 of JOHNNY PUBLIC, 'Out of the Wilderness', and I'm also looking for full-time comic work! (Wendi can be contacted on wendi@sfpro.com. SEAN: Right now I'm finishing up the script for Chapter 8 - the final part of 'Out of the Wilderness'. Then I need to flesh out the outline for the next story, 'The Queen of Hearts'. I also do the monthly webcomic FURRY WIDDLE BUNNY, which proves that given two years of practice I can draw a reasonable stick figure. BIG BUSINESS: WENDI: ELFQUEST was my first big inspiration. It let me know that you could really make a comic book out of any sort of story, so I did that sad teenager thing of trying to make a comic out of my D&D characters. TSR turned me down, naturally, so that lasted all of six pages. Later a friend called me out for bitching about how bad I thought the art was in what I happened to grab at the comic shop, and when I said I thought I could do better, he said "So do it". Now, since I love telling stories, and I'm far better at drawing than writing, comics are the perfect way for me to be able to tell stories. SEAN: My first comic subscription was to SPIDER-MAN, because everyone's was. This was the era just after some really terrific stories and before some pretty good ones, and Spidey was busy fighting bad guys that would make She-Hulk cringe. One issue, I swear to you, featured this guy in a Big Wheel. I think his name was Big Wheel. It rolled over buildings. I mean, if you've got the resources to be a super-villain and build a custom vehicle, I think that pretty much your last choice would be a Ferris wheel. Anyway, Sandman and Hydroman fell into the water, and I was going nuts waiting for the next issue. Then it hit me. Why wait? I sat down with some paper, colored pencils, and a stack of comics for reference. It was great! I drew a few pages before I got bored, which is pretty impressive for my attention span even now. Johnny Public was inspired by sheer timing. I'd been mulling over the line "Johnny Public, Private Eye" for the better part of a week, when Wendi (facing imminent graduation) asked me to write a short script that she could use to prepare a general submission. She'd just recently completed a multi-media piece entitled 'The Queen of Hearts', so I turned the subject into a villain and had Johnny shut her down in the space of a few pages. It was kind of like a surreal Hostess ad. There were all kinds of visuals crammed in to try to meet the requirements of different publisher guidelines. Somehow, I'd decided that Johnny was suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder (I think I was into The Badger at the time...) so the whole thing started with him supervising his own treatment. The whole thing was a mess, and only a few pages were ever drawn of it. Sometimes, an idea needs to stew for a while. BIG TROUBLE: WENDI: The biggest challenge for me in making comics is time. I need more of it. I'm hoping to be able to go full time into comics in the very near future. I have too many stories to tell to waste my time at a day job. SEAN: For me, the biggest problem is simply talking about our comic. I write, in part, because I'm not a very good speaker. When I start to explain that William Denn has people living in his head, eyes get to glazing and I know that I've lost them. I guess I've just got to keep trying until I start seeing positive reactions. Then I've got to keep trying, because you're never done selling. BIG SPENDER: WENDI: I can afford to make comics because my husband has a big-time, cushy computer consulting job. Now he needs to make $10 more an hour so I can stay home and make comics! SEAN: From my standpoint, it's not that expensive. Writing doesn't take a lot of time, not as much as drawing does, and minicomics are fairly low in cost. Because we use our own printer, it's essential a print-on-demand operation, which means that we generally have the money before we put a book together. There were initial equipment costs, of course, but nothing a credit card and a strong stomach couldn't handle. BIG AMBITION: WENDI: If money, time and opportunity were not a factor, I would make a full-color, painted Viking epic, retelling Norse myths in Sean's unique, um, style. Perhaps reinventing Norse myths would be better, but full-color, hand-painted comics, definitely. SEAN: I'm fascinated by the Icelandic sagas and by the Norse mythological cycle. On the surface it's so much macho posturing, but there's some real humanity and passion in them that I'd love to show people. Right now I'm reading SKAGGY THE LOST, which I'm loving, but it's only making me all the more anxious to share my view of the mythology. I'd also like to write zombie stories, but I may need to find a different artist for that... BIG UP: WENDI: I look forward to FINDER by Carla Speed McNeil, A DISTANT SOIL from Colleen Doran, getting through the rest of the TRANSMETROPOLITAN trades by Warren Ellis, anything Mike Allred and Eddie Campbell draw, minicomics by Robert Black, Jeff Coleman, and Harris O'Malley, Layla Lawlor, (RAVEN'S CHILDREN), Rafer Roberts, (PLASTIC FARM), and I've recently discovered Mike Mignola's HELLBOY, which completely blew me out of the water. I'd really like to get my hands of copies of HAWAIIAN DICK and LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS as well. Plus the VOGELEIN trade that just came out! I've got a pin-up in that. SEAN: PLASTIC FARM, by Rafer Roberts, is one of my current favorites. He's toying with us, the bastard, but I can't stop looking! I like a lot of the creators at Oni - Chynna Cluggston-Major, Mike Allred, Gail Simone, Antony Johnston. I think that Mike Mignola's HELLBOY is damn near the Ideal Perfect Comic. Arvid Nelson and Eric J do a great job with REX MUNDI. What I really look forward to are minicomics. I think that creators are much more daring when it's just a few bucks in photocopies on the line. Each and every one is worth looking at, if only to see how people define what a comic is. Roll call time: Neil Kleid, Stephen Greenwood-Hyde and Jeff Coleman, Robert Black, J. Kevin Carrier, Jeff Chon, Dennis Culver, Harris O'Malley - these are just some of the people that are sharing their vision with the rest of us. BIG TIME: WENDI: I really want to see ["Out of the Wilderness"] in publication as a trade, resplendent with an ISBN of its own, by early next year. After that, I need to start on 'The Queen of Hearts', and picking up regular, paying comic work would be very, very good. SEAN: After that, there's much more JOHNNY PUBLIC to tell, then on to vikings, vampires, and hopefully a zombie story or two. BIG FINISH: WENDI: I would like to be remembered first as someone who drew really good stories that were both entertaining and insightful, and second, it would be nice to be remembered as someone who expanded the definition of comics a little, or as the first comic book creator with a book on the national best seller's list. I can always dream. SEAN: A lot of people seem to focus on legitimizing the medium, and I think that's a losing game. It sets you up to think that nothing that has been done is worthwhile, and you wind up trying to reinvent the wheel without using circles. I'd rather take the tire as is and examine how to make it perform in different road conditions. I guess I'm saying that I'd like to be remembered as a guy who spoke his mind, no matter how many metaphors got strained in the process. BIG DEAL: WENDI: Readers can get hold of JOHNNY PUBLIC by going to www.johnny-public.com, where the minicomics can be purchased via check, money order, or PayPal. They can also be purchased at Isotope: the Comic Lounge in San Francisco, CA, at 21st Century Comics in East Lansing, MI, the Splash Page in Missoula, MO, or at the Underworld in Ann Arbor, MI. SEAN: It's worth noting that until JOHNNY PUBLIC: OUT OF THE WILDERNESS is collected in a trade, it's available for reading online at the website.
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