TAKING WRONG TURNS WITH GODFREY CHAN

[MattBrady]

by Daniel Robert Epstein

Take a talking gay Macintosh laptop, a 30 year old rail-thin Chinese-American from Hoboken New Jersey who wants nothing more than a white chick and a white chick who’s not interested put them together and you’ve got Godfrey Chan’s online comic strip Wrong Turns.

Chan has been putting his Bloom County inflected webcomic online every week since January. I figured it was time to talk to Chan after he self published his first Wrong Turns collection, It's Not Stalking If She Doesn't Press Charges.

We caught up with him to find out what’s going on, and if his title is really true.

Newsarama: I read that a big part of you starting Wrong Turns was your experience taking classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade theatre in Manhattan. So Rob Corddry was your teacher there. Is that how you got the quote from him?

Godfrey Chan: Yes, I took a class at the Upright Citizens Brigade right after 9/11. Rod was nice enough offer a quote.

NRAMA: How did the UCB influence your work?

I watched some of the UCB’s Comedy Central series when it first came on in 1997 but I just wasn’t into it. It was right after South Park, I watched two episodes.



NRAMA: It’s somewhat of an acquired taste. The show is much different from what they do at the theatre.

GC: Right before 9/11, I saw my first show at the Upright Citizens Brigade theatre and totally fell in love with it. When I finally went to an ASSSSCAT show with a bachelor party, I said, “This stuff is amazing.”

I had to take am improv class. At the time I had a full-time job doing web design and I couldn’t stand it. I just wanted to break off, but after 9/11 I realized it wasn’t the time to quit your job. But I did it anyway. A big reason was the combination that I discovered that I’m bipolar and I was smoking tons of pot at the time. So I was having bipolar-induced manic episodes.

NRAMA: What brought those on?

GC: Let me rewind. When I quit, I actually started a production company called Wrong Turns. There were four other people; three guys I used to work with and one friend. We met every week at a Starbucks and we got as far putting up a website. Looking back now, I definitely like working alone better; it’s just a lot of pressure with four guys. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself working all these hours for not all that much money and smoking so much pot. I realized something was very wrong when I hallucinated that I had tons of friends standing out in front of the Howard Stern building. I ended up at the New York Presbyterian Hospital in the psychiatric ward for two weeks. That’s when they diagnosed me as bipolar. After I came out I sunk into a depression for a couple of months. It slowly got better. I have a Christian upbringing and I went back to church which was a big help.

NRAMA: I saw on your website a link to the Sojourners Christian website.

GC: Then I started to get some freelance jobs and things got better and I hadn’t touched Wrong Turns for a long time. Then in 2003 I had this part-time job as a tech guy at a company in Hoboken. It was four hours a day, decent pay, covered my rent, so then I just laid low and didn’t do much creatively. Then late 2003, I was just like, “All right, I got to really get off my ass and do it.” Actually I was really inspired by the movie American Splendor.



NRAMA: You had done some Wrong Turns back in college, was it the same when you brought it back?

GC: No, in college it was a one panel strip with no regular characters. My characters just subconsciously morphed in there. The strip I drew back in college that that got the biggest press was when I put Where’s Waldo in the middle of the Million Man March.

The characters in Wrong Turns came about when I was delivering Dunkin’ Donuts in Williamsburg Brooklyn. I hated the job and one day I just pictured my laptop talking back to me. That’s how Lapster came about. The first comic that came out with these particular characters was January 2004 and the book encompasses from that date until December 2004.

NRAMA: How did the strip first begin?

GC: I started a comic strip in college called Fresh Off the Boat which is a reference to anyone coming off the boat, especially Chinese people. That became Wrong Turns in my sophomore year.

NRAMA: Where did the title “Wrong Turns” come from?

GC: I don’t know. I remember writing that down in my sketchbook. Then I looked at it and it just worked. There wasn’t any kind of deep epiphany.



NRAMA: Are you going to do a book every year?

GC: I’d love to do one every year unless I get picked up by somebody.

NRAMA: Are you actively looking for syndication?

GC: Some months I’m like, “Yeah!” This month is a little off. I’m going to start with alternative newspapers like The New York Press and I’m going to look into an organization called the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. I want to start within the country. After that I’m going to send them off to various magazines like every Apple Macintosh magazine and Asian American stuff too.

NRAMA: Was it tough to draw Lapster having sex with another computer?

GC: It was actually pretty easy. To be honest you would think that I came up with the idea of Lapster being gay, but it didn’t turn out that way. Ten cartoons into it, my girlfriend was like, “You should make Lapster gay.” I think when other people suggest some ideas, I usually say, “Oh yeah. That’s cool, but I’m probably not going to use it.” But when she said I should make Lapster gay, I was like, “Wow, that’s perfect.” A Macintosh is aesthetically pleasing anyway.

NRAMA: What’s the setting in the strip?

GC: It’s really very autobiographical and I spend so much time in front of my computer so it made sense. My computer is like my best friend; I spend more time with my computer than any other person. My computer does so many things for me: it makes money for me. When I did online dating, it found girls for me. I can talk to my friends with the computer. There’s this weird relationship people have with their computers. As far as the characters, going back to that job at a travel magazine, there I had this really intense crush on this girl who engaged to someone else two months after we met. Having a crush on someone that obviously you’re never going to get is easy because you know nothing’s going to happen so you can have this picture of an ideal person. So the creepy crush relationship in the strip is based on that.



NRAMA: Have you always done comics?

GC: I always drew when I was a kid. I was the art kid and if you actually go on my site and click on the seventh grade link, that’s actually a bunch of satires of commercials I did back then. They all had a similar theme: death or hookers, all the stuff that’s in a seventh grader’s mind.

NRAMA: How many hits does your website get?

GC: It’s up to 3000 a month.

NRAMA: Do you get a lot of fan email?

GC: Not as much as I would like to. Most of the responses are from friends. Once in a blue moon, a stranger will send something and after I was at Mocca a couple of people sent stuff.

NRAMA: What’s the farthest away you’ve ever gotten a fan email?

GC: Nothing out of the United States. I’m still at this stage where it’s kind of unknown.

NRAMA: How many copies of the book did you print?

GC: I printed up 500, which looking back it may be a little too many. I sold 20 or so at the show and I gave a lot of comp copies away. Now I’m going to start sending them to the alternative newspapers.

NRAMA: What are your influences?

GC: I read Bloom County on and off when I was a kid, but at that age didn’t get a lot of them. Then there was Calvin and Hobbes and of course, The Simpsons. But beyond comics, I’m really inspired by a lot of comedians, especially Upright Citizens Brigade. Even stuff that’s not necessarily funny like Wes Anderson movies. A lot of my stuff is just about being who you are, as simple and cliché as that sounds. It’s a big thing for me, especially being Asian-American, I know a lot of Asian parents make their kids become professionals like doctors and engineers.

NRAMA: Are your parents from China?

GC: My parents are both originally from Asia. My dad died of Lou Gehrig’s disease eight years ago. I had a lot of struggle growing up becoming an artist. My mom supported me more than my dad, my dad was like, “You’re going to starve on the street.” I guess he’s not really that far off from his predictions, but I’m this much happier doing this than I would be if I was made to something because it was more practical and made money. Web design does make me money at times and I could go in and get a full-time job now and make a good living, but I just don’t like to work for people.

Check out the official site for Wrong Turns
http://www.wrongturns.com/

Buy It's Not Stalking If She Doesn't Press Charges for $4 plus $2 shipping at http://wrongturns.com/store/

[BlueThunderArmy]

What kind of Mac laptop is that? The early iBooks (multicolored clamshells) were gay beyond a shadow of doubt, but that one looks like an old Powerbook G3, which is about as butch as Macs get.

[President Kang]

that's a dangblasted interesting looking strip, I'll have to add that to my daily webcomic barage.