Richard: What is DeepFried.com?

Jason: Now don't go confusing your readers! Deepfried.com is unrelated to my comic (it's a website devoted to celebrating fried foods' role in the rise of international breading conglomerates.) No, my site is Whatisdeepfried.com, and it is the home of the Deep Fried comic strip and related fun and misbehavior.

Richard: How did you come up with the idea for the comic "Deep Fried"?

Jason: The heroes, Beepo and Roadkill, began as their own strip in my college newspaper. After college my attempts to get the strip into newspapers floundered, but as luck would have it, the a "comic book" format of cartoon periodical had just reached American shores a few years earlier. I rolled the dice and began self-publishing Deep Fried as a deviant humor anthology.

Richard: Who are some of the main characters and what are they like?

Jason: There's Beepo the Clown, an alcoholic party clown who spends a lot of his time slithering through an unsuccessful romantic career, hampered by the fact that no one wants to have sex with a clown. His sidekick is Roadkill, asociopathic house cat who believes in social justice through psychotic violence. Squints is Beepo's best friend, a burned out stoner who just wants to surrender to the button-down life, except society won't let him. Clarissa is a little girl in her own story arc who is sort of my response to the cute goth girl genre, such as Lenore or Emily. Her life is genuinely bleak and her stories are peppered with very awkward humor. In another universe altogether I have Weapon Brown, a butched out parody of Charlie Brown. He's a cyborg bounty hunter who inhabits a post-apocalyptic wasteland populated with mutant versions of popular newspaper strip characters.

My creations all inhabit different genres of humor, from politics to satire to scatology. What they all have in common is that they distort their pre-conceived niches. I like holding carnival mirrors up to existing carnival mirrors.

Richard: How would you describe the humour in "Deep Fried"?

Jason: You know, at conventions I struggle for just the right one-sentence pitch to sell Deep Fried, and after seven years I still don't have it. I normally try to appeal to a person's dark side, tell them Deep Fried is "twisted, sick, perverted, mwuh ha ha ha!", but that's not really it either. I'd say Deep Fried is mostly concerned with sculpting new reactions out of mundane notions of taboo subjects. My humor has the patina of being "shock" humor, but that is my hook for steering the reader into odd realms of pathos and sweetness, or disturbing them in a completely unrelated way. I really like screwing with people's emotions.

Richard: Is "Deep Fried" a mature title?

Jason: I think in about ten years Sesame Street will be harder than Deep Fried.

Richard: How long would you like to continue producing "Deep Fried"?

Jason: Dear God, if only I could stop! I have interrupted Deep Fried so often in the past that I feel like it is a recurring cancer. As my most intimate creation, it is also the one I have the least ability to market towards a mass audience, by which I mean making it safe and easily digestible. I hope to keep doing Deep Fried as long as I have the need, and not to be unable to do it because of material concerns.

Richard: What is "Weapon Brown: Blockhead's War"?

Jason: Blockhead's War is a Weapon Brown series I am currently pitching to all willing publishers. It is the continuation of the adventures of Weapon Brown that began in the pages of Deep Fried. There, Weapon Brown only interacted with grown up distortions of the Peanuts cast. In this new story, which I am hoping will become a mini series or graphic novel, he mingles with the casts of every other comic strip you have ever heard of. Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Bloom County, Dilbert... no blood will be left unshed. Eventually it comes down to a battle royale between Weapon Brown and Calvin and Hobbes, which I think the world would love to see. You can read a 14 page preview on my website right now

Richard: Would you ever like to work for one of the big two comic companies?

Jason: Oh, how I have tried! I actually did get a small writing assignment from DC a few years back that was published in their hardcover Bizarro World anthology. My story is called "It's Not Easy Being Green." It's about Green Lantern turning into a chromaphobe over the color yellow. Besides that momentous achievement I have pitched several series ideas to DC through Keith Giffen, but nothing has materialized yet. Call DC! Tell them you want an Ambush Bug series pronto!

In the meantime, I am published semi-regularly in the pages of MAD magazine. Their offices are only one floor below DC's, so maybe I can tunnel in.

Richard: Who do you admire most in life?

Jason: Those monks that just had their heads smashed in in Burma. I remember seeing a picture of the demonstrations in Burma recently, and one showed a bleeding protester while over his shoulder is a billboard advertising the movie "300". It was an interesting dichotomy. You would think that the military government would be afraid of people taking encouragement from entertainment that encourages solidarity in the face of cruelty. Sadly, it takes more than Hollywood to rouse asubjugated people. Those monks are the 300, and I hope the rest of the people of that nation eventually rally to their cause.

Richard: If you were not in the comics field what would you be doing?

Jason: I would never not be in comics.

Richard: What future projects do you have planned?

Jason: The last few months I have devoted myself to overhauling my website and debuting a new arc of Deep Fried material online which will eventually be gathered into a trade. I am also hoping that Weapon Brown will be picked up by someone, and that I will be busy with that in 2008. Meanwhile, I am working on a children's project called the Boogie Bunneez which has the interest of a well-known publisher. The Boogie Bunneez are a pair of cute and sassy dancing rabbits, a 180 degree difference from Deep Fried. I am developing the project further, and have high hopes for that as well.

Another project I am really looking forward to is a sort of Austin Powers style send up of today's super hero comics starring a resurrected team of Rob Liefeld-ish muscle heads. I'll be releasing dribs and drabs of that project throughout the coming year.

Richard: What comics did you read as a kid and do you read now?

Jason: I was a big New Mutants fan in the day. That and Chris Claremont's X-Men were what really enthralled me about comics early in my reading career. After that, my next favorite series became the Peter David/ Dale Keown incarnation of the Hulk, especially since I was courting the editor of the Hulk for work at the time. I discovered Milk and Cheese in college, which greatly inspired me to pursue Deep Fried as an indy comic instead of as a newspaper strip (though Weapon Brown reveals my undying affection for that untaken career route).

These days I am big on All Star Superman, Hellboy (though I tend only to favor work which Mignola himself draws) and The Boys. But Garth. That book needs a hero.

Richard: How can someone contact you?

Jason: Just put a flag in the flower pot in front of your house. I will see it, and then leave a newspaper under your car with coded instructions where to meet hidden in the Sudoku puzzle. Failing that, you can e-mail me from my website.

Richard: Any final words of wisdom?

Jason: "You can pick your friend's and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your nose's friends."

www.whatisdeepfried.com