Fecal humor is so juvenile.
Jokes about sex are cheap. And ones about child molestation are
just plain wrong. Yet, Michigan native Neil Swaab makes it all hysterical—which
is not to say, comfortable—in his weekly comic strip, Rehabilitating
Mr. Wiggles. The weekly strip follows the misadventures of
Neil—a balding, introvert who putters around all day in his
Brooklyn slum—and his deranged roommate, Mr. Wiggles, a cute
and cuddly teddy bear who is addicted to drugs, violence, and copulating
with anything that moves (and many things that don’t). As
Ted Rall, the well known cartoonist who edited the second volume
of Mr. Wiggles, part of Rall’s Attitude series, says, Swaab
dares to go “There.” What makes “There”
funny? Reveal the sexual exploits of a stuffed animal, throw in
his pals like Jesus Christ the recovering alcoholic, and see the
comic’s critique on popular culture and you’ll soon
discover Swaab’s bold, personal humor.
Perhaps it is the absurdity of a living, breathing, crack-abusing,
sexually overactive teddy bear that allows the reader to accept
story lines about subjects like pedophilia. Nevertheless, Swaab
uses the strip as a launching pad to explore story lines about religion,
relationships, therapy, and so on into the thread to give the comic
its role as, as Hamlet said, a mirror unto nature. Though many of
the comics reflect contemporary society and life in a place like
Brooklyn, NY, Swaab insists that he’s inspired by suburban
angst. He’s also inspired by television and feels dialogue
is one of the most central parts of his comic. Mr. Wiggles currently
runs in many alt-weeklies, including Real Detroit, and
has appeared in Gear, Razor, and the Prague
Pill, among other magazines.
Swaab was raised in the suburbs of Detroit (Farmington Hills) and
received a B.F.A. from Syracuse University. Along with making his
reputation as a comic writer and artist, Swaab has established himself
as a visual artist of many media in New York City. He works both
as an instructor at Parson School of Design and as designer of—no
joke—children’s books (at HarperCollins.)
I spoke to Swaab at a café near his home in Astoria, Queens.
Ann Arbor Paper: The strip started in your college
paper. What kind of response did that get?
Neil Swaab: I never got hate mail in college. We
would get hate mail for the most bizarre things, especially if we
did something on frats or sororities, and we would just get tons
and tons of hate mail, but I’d never get any hate mail, it
was very odd.
A2P: Do you take that as a sign of success or as
a sign that you need to up the ante?
NS: The thing with upping the ante, you think you’re
going to get hate mail about something you never get it. It is always
something you view as an innocuous strip then all of the sudden…
I wouldn’t expect any reaction.
A2P: When and how did you come
up with the idea of the Mr. Wiggles character?
NS: I was previously doing a comic strip for my
school paper and I wanted to do a different one and I had my sketchbook
and I happened to be drawing this little kind of teddy-bearish type
creature and he had a big monster with him. The joke was that the
monster was really big and scary but he was actually quite friendly
and nice, but the teddy bear was the evil one. It was about their
interaction. Then when it came time to do the strip, I was like,
“Well, I really like the teddy bear, I want to continue with
this teddy bear thing.” And then I put myself in place of
the monster because proportionally it’s so hard to draw and
fit a giant monster and bear in the strip together. So it somehow
just came from that.
A2P: How are you able to gain work as a designer
for children’s books at HarperCollins when your trademark
is a comic strip about a teddy bear who molests children?
NS: Nobody actually knew about that. It’s
one of the worst kept secrets now in the whole company. When I got
my job at that place—I’ve been working there for over
four years now—the comic had only been out for like a year
and half. It wasn’t widely recognized at the point. I mentioned
that I did something, but nobody really knew much.
Then you’d have some random person, like the building facilities
person, come up to you and be like, “Wait a second?”
He’d see that I have a post card laying around, and be like
“Hey are you him?” The more stuff would happen, I’d
have gallery shows or book shows, there’d be some talk and
people would be like “So, what is it you do?” Next thing
you know, everyone kind of knows.
It hasn’t hindered me at all. The thing with kid’s books,
I has always thought everyone was really cheesy and very family
and friendly. It’s not like that all. They’re adults.
They’re just like everybody else. It just happens to be another
job that they do.
A2P: Is there a deeper meaning behind your strip?
NS: There’s a deeper meaning. I don’t
know if I should say it. But there’s definitely something
else going on.
A2P: You’ve never been censored
at the New York Press. Has anyone else ever censored you?
NS: Gear magazine was the only
one. It was always for very weird things. There’s one where
Jesus calls this woman a bitch and they wouldn’t let me say
“bitch” for some reason. And there was another one where
they wouldn’t let me say “Robin Williams’ back
hair.”
A2P: I don’t think a comic
strip like yours would be in such wide circulation 15 or 20 years
ago. What do you think it means that artists like yourself are able
to get expose for works like Mr. Wiggles?
NS: It’s a good thing and I’m not sure
if it’s because of my strip, because it’s not a dirty
comic or a shock comic or anything like that. It is dirty and it
is shocking at times but it’s also a lot more humanistic in
a lot ways. And I think that is why it gets a large distribution.
People get the wink of the eye and know that it’s not about
being degrading and horrible.
A2P: What storyline are you most proud of?
NS: The “Future Me” storyline where
my character comes back from the future to convince himself to commit
suicide because life in the future is so bad. I think that one got
the best response. And there’s a lot more that I want to do
with that. I’m trying to get a TV show started. That’s
one of the plots I’m developing for the show, there’s
a lot more that I want to do with it.
A2P: Do you consider yourself a cartoonist first
and an artist second or the other way around?
NS: I don’t consider myself a cartoonist.
I think that’s what separates my comic from a lot of other
comic strips. To me, a cartoonist is very concerned with the medium
and the exploration of cartoons as an art form and how they can
use comics to tell stories and to create art.
To me, I already have an artistic statement in mind and I just use
comics as another form of expression the way that I would use, say,
a brush to make a painting. It’s just another extension of
me as an artist.
A2P: Ted Rall edited your new book. What’s
it like working with him?
NS: Ted is excellent. I became very friendly with
him through his Attitude books. He’s really, really funny
and he’s not what you would think at all. He’s totally
laid back, very unassuming looking as well. Easy going and easy
to talk to.
When I said, “Hey, here’s the book, here’s how
it’s going to work,” Ted said, “Look, I’m
here to help you. You do what you want. If you need to run stuff
by me that’s great. Have fun, I want you to be happy with
your book.”
A2P: Makes the whole industry sound a lot friendlier than
I would think.
NS: The comic industry is very friendly. The book
publishing industry is tough. There’s a lot of people willing
to help you out. It’s a small industry.
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