Given the chance, Bored Panda reached out to the artist again with some new questions. Reflecting on what sparked his comedic voice, Dogmo shared, “Perry Bible Fellowship was the only webcomic artist I was aware of when I started, and I still consider him the standard by which all others must judge themselves. Nowadays I would say Beetle Moses. Big fan of how he can fit a story into three panels, and his compositions are unparalleled.”
Despite the sharp humor, Dogmo steers clear of using his personal life as inspiration for his comics. “I've given up trying to take something that happens in my life and convert it into a comic. For one, I can't get real-life-funny to translate to webcomic-funny, but also, as a reader, I find myself profoundly disinterested in anyone's slice-of-life comics. For something to be funny, it has to surprise you, and that's a well that gets emptier and emptier.”
Creativity often demands unique rituals, and for Dogmo, it’s about creating a space for free-flowing ideas. He explained, “I lay down on the couch with my notebook and 0.9 mm mechanical pencil and start writing whatever comes to mind. Sometimes it's just a phrase. Looking in my notebook now, I have ‘anti-heat-seeking-missile defense on jet plane is just ejecting female dogs in heat.’ The image of that seems funny to me; maybe I'll turn that into a comic. But it's not unusual for these ideas to sit around for months.”
When navigating the fine line between dark humor and absurdity, Dogmo is deliberate about his boundaries. “I pay attention to my personal boundaries and will put something out there if I believe in its merit even if I know others might not. Am I trying to get something off my chest? Is this comic just a way for me to complain about something, or to make a statement? Is this just all shock value and zero humor? Am I commenting on a current event? If any of those are in the affirmative, I kill the idea.”
Reader feedback, whether kind or critical, has also shaped his approach. “There are a few occasions where I've been complimented on some background element of a comic. One I can think of specifically was about how they liked my depiction of water. There's an ineffable quality to enjoying a comic beyond just the setup and punchline of a joke, and it would benefit all artists to pay attention to those aspects. Things like panel composition, and asking yourself if you can get a point across visually without relying on dialogue.”
