As always and given the chance, Bored Panda reached out to James Sandoval. The artist's work, especially in his recent comic series "Feitr’s Guild," demonstrates his talent for infusing fantasy tropes with satire and depth as we dug slightly deeper this time.
When asked about the inspirations behind the 'Feitr’s Guild Origins' arc, Sandoval explained, "So I’ve mentioned in a previous interview how Feitr’s Guild started off as just a series of loosely related gag comics about cliches and tropes I’ve seen in various fantasy stories and games - but the more I made, the more I became attached to those characters and the dynamics I was creating between them. Soon enough, I was coming up with their names and backstories, and building an entire world around them."
"The premise of Feitr’s Guild Origins was basically, 'OK, let’s say these gags I was making about standard fantasy and gaming tropes were actually what occurred in a living, breathing world.' Gods who treat mortal lives as betting chips in a game, ostensible 'heroes' who operate through extreme violence and selfish looting, and a civilian populace that just wants to survive in this horribly unjust world - what kind of society would develop from that?” So I came up with a story about gods playing a tabletop role-playing game and the heroes they use as their playable characters. I wanted to explore a world where the 'NPCs' were actual people with their own lives who knew they ultimately existed at the behest of the players in this divine game - they could choose to actively play along and provide quests and rewards to the players, do the bare minimum as a boring NPC in order to survive these encounters, or try to keep as far away as possible from any excitement/danger these adventurers bring." He continued.
"There’s a piece of advice from Alan Moore that I find relevant: 'As a prospective writer, I would urge you to not only read good books, but read terrible books as well,' because terrible writing can inspire you to attempt creating something better, as opposed to simply imitating something that’s already good. A lot of the jokes I make through Feitr’s Guild are pretty much me saying, 'I hate it when fantasy stories/games do this - I will mock it.' So my expansion of Feitr’s Guild into an actual cohesive narrative is my being inspired by 'terrible books' and challenging myself to create a good story out of these terrible ingredients. It’s been a lot of fun for me so far, but only time will tell if I’m successful with the attempt. If not, hopefully, I inspire someone else to do better."
Addressing his experience with experimenting with different art styles while managing his comic production schedule, Sandoval said, "Unfortunately, I can’t say I’ve really tackled any particularly challenging art styles recently. I still have ideas for comics that would entail more complex visuals, but I just can’t bring myself to dedicate the time for them when I’ve got a bunch of other simpler ideas that would be much easier to make.
Although, one particular challenge came for a significant stretch of the Feitr’s Guild Origins arc, where the premise of a scene was an interrogation between a magical investigator and a merchant. It was primarily dialogue driven, but the characters had to spend almost the entire conversation staring at each other (for magic reasons, the investigator needed to maintain constant eye contact with the merchant). So I really found myself struggling with figuring out how to illustrate the scene in a dynamic way without having to resort to a boring 'talking heads' comic, where it’s just one panel of a guy’s face and word bubbles, then another panel of the other person’s face and word bubbles, then back-and-forth until completed."
"Anyway, the 'Interrogation sub-arc' of the Feitr’s Guild Origins arc ended up being 12 pages long and took over 11 months for me to get through, but I think I did a decent job keeping it somewhat interesting for most of them. Hopefully, the dialogue was engaging enough to keep the readers invested as well. I can’t say for sure, my readers will have to give me more feedback, but I would like to think my writing ability has improved from having to navigate that segment."
When it came to reflecting about 'SadBot', a personal favorite comic, the artist shared with us, "I guess it follows a pattern in my comedic storytelling where I just really like 'Shaggy Dog Stories.' For those who don’t know, that’s basically a long story intended to get you emotionally invested, only to end in an anticlimax that undermines that emotional investment (e.g. a man goes through various trials and tribulations to present someone a shaggy dog, only for the recipient to say, 'It’s not that shaggy') It’s kind of a recurring tactic I use: set up an interesting premise for an actual story, make the audience believe that’s the kind of story they’ll be getting, end with a punchline, revealing 'Gotcha, this was a comedy the entire time!'
But what I appreciate about writing these kinds of stories is that in order for them to work, I actually have to create a compelling story in the first place, so it necessitates that I improve as a storyteller in general. In order for SadBot to work, I needed to get people invested in the romance between this robot and his human lover, establish a world that won’t let them be together, their romantic chemistry, and how they respond to emotional friction. All of this in only a handful of panels too. The amount of comments I got from this comic telling me, 'I was actually invested in their romance until you hit me with that twist!' really made me feel accomplished as a writer."
"It encourages me to believe that if I actually did write a proper romantic story about a robot and a human in a society that discourages such relationships, I could pull it off. I just need to replace the punchline with… I dunno, a tragic accident to make it a drama. Or a happy marriage to make it wholesome. Or a fight with kidnappers to make it an action series. Either way, if I ever do end up writing a romance, I could probably apply the lessons I learned from SadBot to that story."
In relation to how his background in stand-up and improv comedy influences his comic narratives, Sandoval remarked to Bored Panda, "I haven’t done stand-up in quite a long time, so I can’t say it’s had a lot of influence on me lately. But I’m still fairly active with improv comedy and I can definitely say the lessons I’ve learned on that stage feed well into my comic writing, as well as vice-versa. Much of my improv performance is centered around very quickly establishing the 'who, what, and where' of a scene, so the audience can become invested in its characters and premise as soon as possible. Some of these scenes might only be a couple of minutes, some of them might be part of a larger narrative that takes half an hour - either way, I need to know how to communicate a lot of information to people in as short a time as possible."
"This is very similar to what I have to do with most of my comics, which are usually only four panels long. Ideally, I communicate everything about the 'who, what, and where' in the first panel, and then the audience should be suitably invested to take in the rest of the story. In an improv show, if you and your scene partners are just waffling about in a contextless void for the first few moments of a scene, it’s very easy to lose the audience’s interest and that low energy could stagnate the rest of the show - you’ll need to come up with something especially funny or engaging to reel them back in.
You might think, 'It’s only a four-panel comic/three-minute-long improv scene, are people’s attention spans really so short that they need to be hooked immediately?' And the answer would be, 'Yeah, kinda.' In most instances, people aren’t willing to give you the benefit of patience, especially if they barely know you as an artist. Build a reputation as a skilled storyteller and maybe more people will give you the time to take things slow, but otherwise, you gotta find a way to catch people’s interest on first impression. So frontload your four-panel comic/improv show with something fun and save the slow burns for your novel/one-man play that you’re definitely going to finish some day." He added as an ending note.
