This month will be a bit different than usual because Ryan Estrada is a different kind of cartoonist.

That said, for the comics portion, I will still be featuring ONE of his many amazing comics, but I will be talking about him for the most part and all the things he does. For the comic, I chose one of my favorites and one of his most recent, Plagued. It’s about a crazy experience he had one night in Thailand where he believes he’s seeing signs of an upcoming tsunami. It’s great.

As for Ryan himself, he’s a bit of a hero of mine. The guy is an amazing cartoonist. He has perfected speed-comicking, tutorials, and more. He has been a pioneer in the webcomic market and the Google+ frontier. Not only that, but he’s basically a spirit animal for the pay-what-you-want movement. It’s amazing what he’s doing, and he was the prime inspiration for me releasing my last comic DRM-free and pay-what-you-want.

For the next 9 days, Ryan has a Kickstarter running called Broken Telephone and the lowest tier gets you every digital comic that the highest gives you. He enlisted 17 other artists to tell 18 different stories and it looks awesome. Check it out!

Okay. Now onto the comic and interview questions!

Plagued Page 08

 

Ryan Estrada Interview Part 1

Q. When did you know you wanted to make comics?

I always knew that I was a cartoonist. I started submitting to newspapers when I was six. They didn’t hire me, but I kept bugging the same newspaper until they finally caved in and gave me a weekly strip at the age of 15.

Q. How did you get started with comics?

That first strip was called “Pet Peeves” and was about the earth-shatteringly original idea of an orange cat who is too lazy to catch mice. Sigh. I’ve hopefully improved since then.

 

We’ll be back every Wednesday with more from Ryan Estrada, but for now, go back his Kickstarter!