MAKING PRISON FUN! CHIP ZDARSKY'S PRISON FUNNIES

[MattBrady]

Prison: not funny. Getting poked in the eye: not funny. However – as Prison Funnies creator Chip Zdarsky shows, getting poked in the eye while in prison is pure comedy gold. Issue #2 of Prison Funnies hits today, and we caught up with the creator.

“Prison Funnies carries you away on the wings of a mentally handicapped dove,” Zdarsky told Newsarama, in regards to a description of the series. “You don't know where it's going, the dove sure as hell doesn't know where it's going, but the journey is filled with wonder and whimsy. And, you might just learn something along the way. More than likely you'll learn what your tolerance level is for extremely dark humor as you immerse yourself in the cartoonish lives of twisted prisoners who'd eat your precious dove in a heartbeat.”

Uh, yeah.

Originally starting out as a strip for a University of Toronto newspaper, Prison Funnies moved to online well, because as Zdarsky puts it: “I realized that the Internet is the place to be. All the cool people are on the Internet, right?”

Put basically, Prison Funnies is about prisoners and the humor that can be found in prison life. No – not the, ‘Oh that Bruno – he’s such a scamp!’ Bob Hope prison movie style, but more along the lines of the warm smile that can be found in a sudden, but ironic stabbing, or accidentally being tossed into solitary with a prisoner suffering from world-class incontinence. Yeah – dark stuff.

“All great humor springs from profound tragedy,” Zdarsky said. “Would you find Family Circus as funny if the grandmother wasn't suffering from severe depression? Or if those kids didn't have leukemia?”

Told with a winking self-awareness, Prison Funnies features a fairly large cast, but there are many recurring characters, each with their own…peculiarities.

“Johnny Arson is the loveable scamp who loves a good fire and isn't afraid to set them, on you and everyone you love,” Zdarsky said. “He also has no skin. Diesel Pete is the cool, unflappable killer that makes all the ladies hot. Shame there's no ladies in prison...or are there? Nope, there's none.

”Big Tony is the kingpin of the system. You need a fresh bar of Irish Spring? Talk to Tony. You need 24 more hours to find out who killed your wife and framed you for her murder? Talk to Tony. You need Matt Brady dead? Tony.”

Hey…

”Thomas O'Toole is the guard who loves too much. Nick Carraway left the Midwest to make it big as a stockbroker in New York. Upon moving to an affluent section of Long Island he encountered Jay Gatsby, a wealthy young man with a mysterious past. Nick quickly fills a role as a confidant to Gatsby, and becomes embroiled in the lives of several affluent characters as a result.”

See? Prison can even make 10th grade English Literature class assignments fun!

Ask Zdarsky where Prison Funnies came from, and you kind of get the feeling you won’t get the same answer twice. This time out, he said: “Several years back I was the victim of a crime of passion. Now, it's true that it was my passion that made me commit the supposed crime, but I was just as much a victim of those passions as Mandy was.

“Anyhoo, I was sent to the local jail for a brief 30-day stay. During my sentence, there was an 'incident' that left my nose ‘shattered,’ my ribs ‘splintered,’ and my skull ‘baseline fractured.’ It was at that point my mind concocted a likeable cast of n'e'er-do-well convicts in order to keep the reality of my situation from destroying what my doctors labeled ‘a feeble mind.’”

That said, Zdarsky is to be lauded (he thinks so, at least) for not once going for the easy comedy of man love in prison. Nope – that’s a field that’s far too easily plowed, and he’d just rather go for the higher brow stuff, thank you very much.



“Why don’t I talk about man love in Prison Funnies? Man love's a serious issue, that's why. It's immoral and decadent and needs to be stopped before pansy Democrats…sorry, Sodomites, get into the White House again. I've had upwards of seventeen homosexual encounters in the past eleven months and haven't laughed once. I moan, and I groan, and I breathe heavy. Does that sound like something fun or funny? Nope.”

On the more serious side…well, kind of more serious, Prison Funnies’ audience (“angels whose feet never touch the ground,” as Zdarsky calls them) is a true cross section of the fringe – with a healthy dose of guards and correctional professionals thrown in.

“The most interesting responses have been from correctional officers and prison psychologists who've read and loved the comic. It was actually banned from a Canadian correctional facility when the warden found the guards trading copies. How cool is that?

“I've also received fan mail from a prisoner in Texas and he said that his fellow inmates really enjoyed the issues. I like to think that somewhere out there someone is trading a banged up copy of The Collected Prison Funnies in order to avoid a stabbing. Comics saving lives. That would be nice.”

On to the nitty gritty, Prison Funnies started in the fall of 2000, and Zdarsky collected the first run after it ended in the summer of 2001. “Once I realized that people actually enjoyed them I began printing it up in greater amounts and went through Diamond and Cold Cut to get them into eager hands worldwide. Too Much Coffee Man Magazine ran new strips while I focused on expanding the format into longer stories, which worked out well in Prison Funnies #1 and now #2. I still do the odd strip now and then and I have a host of talented artists doing guest strips, but my focus now is on fast-paced, full-blown comic book stories.”

As for that issue #2, found in better comic shops around the northern part of the Western Hemisphere today…”It’s pretty jam-packed,” Zdarsky said. “I really wanted to make a comic that foregoes ‘decompressed storytelling’ and just hits you over the head with tons of jokes, action and romance. I'm pretty proud of the results and I hope people feel that they get their money's worth out of it. I'm having a great time doing it and an especially great time traveling and meeting fans. All jokes aside, comics people are good people and I'm pretty grateful for the life I lead.

“Of course, part of the wondrous life I lead are the great gang that I share my studio with, The Royal Academy of Illustration & Design. They're a swell bunch of dudes and I love being part of such a super group. And on behalf of them I just want to wish you all a Happy Holidays with a very special photo series.

[Larry Young]

The continued existence of Chip Zdarsky ensures Canada's safety.

L.

[Chip Zdarsky]

I'll fight to the very last drop. I'm not sure what the drop will consist of, but it'll be the last one most definitely.
Cheers, Brother Larry.
love,
chip.

[Vacuumboy9]

there's nothing like a little Chip Zdarsky to make the day a little more filled with the neverending ennui that can only come from hours of pondering the pointlessness of our existence.



Speaking of Li'l Chip, come see him as Chip reads the news naked here:

http://www.stevetastic.com/prison/NAKED/naked1.html

You've been warned...

[Chip Zdarsky]

I feel like a young Hollywood starlet trying desperately to escape her sordid past.

[OM]

...Could you put me in touch with Tony? I'd like to discuss that Matt Brady option in detail :-P

[Tony Moore]

it's funny, but when i was in San Quentin, i was the guy you talked to if you wanted Matt Brady dead. totally unrelated incident, but kinda kooky, huh?

Also, Chip is the real deal Holyfield.
haters beware.

-T

[Chip Zdarsky]

Chip haters need not beware. There's such a fine line between hating me and loving me that I view both as equal anyways.
love,
(hate?)
chip.