Comic Vine: Let's start with the basics, who are some of your influences (in drawing, comedy, etc)?
Chris G: Primarily Charles Schulz, Erik Larsen, and my brother Dave.
Comic Vine: Your Mini-Marvel strips often parody current (Marvel) events. Do you try to keep up with comics?
Chris G: I do try to keep up, but it's impossible to read everything that's going on. I make sure to keep up with the stuff I'm specifically directed to parody.
Comic Vine: Do you sit down and brainstorm ideas or do they just come to you when you're doing other things like...grocery shopping?
Chris G: Both. I try to brainstorm, but nothing usually comes from my brainstorming sessions immediately. Things will pop into my head at random times, but I suspect that is a result of my subconscious reacting to any brainstorming I've done.
Comic Vine: Do you have another drawing style besides making everyone look like kids? (I saw your PvP run). Would you ever do something in another style?
Chris G: What you've seen is my only style, but that does include adults, babies and teenagers as well. I can draw any age of person in my style, even people as old as 72.
Comic Vine: Good thing there's not a lot of 73 year old heroes running around. Will Rock, Paper, Scissors include any of your recent stories in Marvel Adventures?
The Iron AvengersChris G: Some recent stuff and some of the old stuff will be in there. The MINI MARVELS' ROCK PAPER SCISSORS digest collection will contain:
PAPERBOY BLUES - Spidey has to collect his paper route money, but it's not so easy when one of his customers is the Green Goblin!
CEREAL QUEST - A simple trip to the grocery store gets Wolverine more than he bargained for!
PAPERBOY SHOWDOWN - Spidey and Venom face off in a battle to win the bigger paper route!
HULK DATE - Hulk takes Betty out for a memorable lunch!
WORLD WAR HULK: ROUND TRIP & RALLY THE TROOPS - The Hulk is very angry with the Illuminators.
PASSING THE TORCH - The Fantastic Four, and just about everybody else, are annoyed with the Human Torch's refusal to turn off his flame.
IRON AVENGERS - Iron Man creates custom suits of armor for his Avengers teammates! See Iron Spidey, Iron Wolverine, Iron Captain America, and more!
HawkeyeComic Vine: A lot of your older stories focused on Spider-Man (and his paper route) but Hawkeye slowly started stealing center stage. Was this your decision or did the "fans" demand it?
Chris G: That was just something that sort of happened. I just gravitated towards using Hawkeye. Nobody demanded it.
Comic Vine: Will Hawkeye ever release another single (as heard on your website)?
Chris G: I've thought about it. Nothing is planned, but you never know. Hawkeye would love to work with Timbaland and/or Miley Cyrus.
Comic Vine: The Marvel Adventures lines seems to be expanding and doing well, any chance of Mini-Marvels branching out into more solo books rather than the back pages?
Chris G: I think there might be a chance if the Mini Marvels digest sells significantly well enough that Marvel deems it worthwhile.
Comic Vine: Any comment on DC's Tiny Titans comic? (Seems to bear a striking resemblance to Mini-Marvels).
Chris G: I think it's great and Art Baltazar and Franco are doing some really neat stuff that is fun to read and is fun to look at. I'm glad there's more stuff like this being published. I would love to do a Mini Marvels / Tiny Titans crossover.
How cool would Mini-DC be?Comic Vine: Would you ever do a Mini-DC comic?
Chris G: I would consider it if there was an opportunity to do so, but I think DC already has that base covered with Tiny Titans.
Comic Vine: How about a Mini-Marvel cartoon? (I read that Marvel is doing a Super Hero Squad cartoon based on the Hasbro toy line).
Chris G: If Marvel was actually interested in doing a Mini Marvels cartoon AND interested in having me on board, then yeah, I would do it.
Comic Vine: Were cartoons a big part of your childhood? What were some of your favorites? Any thoughts on the sad state of Saturday morning cartoons these days?
Chris G: Yeah, I loved cartoons as a kid. I loved all the superhero stuff - Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, all the Superfriends cartoons, even the really badly animated Marvel stuff seemed awesome to me when I was a kid. Then there was Transformers, GI Joe, He-Man, Voltron. A lot of that stuff. As an adult I got hooked on Dragonball Z. Right now I don't even know what's on Saturday morning, but I saw a commercial somewhere for the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon that looks really cool.
The other G-Man...Comic Vine: I asked you before but I'm going to ask again, any plans for more G-Man? More back-up strips in Image Comics?
Chris G: I'll eventually return to doing back-ups in Savage Dragon, and I'd like to do a G-Man mini-series, but there's nothing planned at the moment.
Comic Vine: Your G-Man "universe" is packed full of different characters, were any inspired by friends from your childhood? (I understand if you don't want to risk giving away secret identities and such).
Chris G: Yeah, a lot of those characters are based on specific family members and friends, but a lot of them are just made up from nothing.
Comic Vine: Will there be more "Mean Brother/Idiot Brother" strips on your website? The menu shows 10 but only 4 are viewable.
Chris G: Maybe someday. I'll have to fix that menu!
Chris drew our logo characterComic Vine: At comic conventions, besides being asked to draw chicks with vines, what's been the strangest request? Most common?
Chris G: Other than a few disturbingly inappropriate requests which I refused, nothing incredibly strange comes to mind. Lately people most commonly want to see Captain America.
Comic Vine: Your crayon artwork is also amazing, what brought about that idea? Is it simply a favorite medium?
Chris G: A friend of mine suggested I should paint stuff because "people like color art". I don't know how to paint, so I busted out the crayons.
Comic Vine: I also saw a you-tube clip of your arm wrestling match with Mike Oeming. What's the story behind that? Has he ever demanded a re-match? Have you ever patrolled the Artist Alley and challenged others?
Chris G:Mike Oeming for a few years has done an arm wrestling challenge as a fundraiser for the Hero initiative. You pay a donation as your fee to battle Oeming. If you lose, you get to say you arm wrestled superstar artist Mike Oeming, but if you win, you get a page of original Mike Oeming artwork! I waited until Mike had already arm wrestled about a hundred people that day so I knew he'd be good and tired, and I totally got a sweet page of POWERS artwork! Mike's an awesome artist and a class-act.
[Here's the video:]
Comic Vine: Have you thought of doing cover reproduction commissions?
Chris G: I do them when people ask for them if I have the time.
Comic Vine: Anything you want to plug? Your website, drawing commissions, etc.
Chris G: The new digest, MINI MARVELS: ROCK, PAPER SCISSORS went on sale July 23rd. It's a direct market exclusive limited print run, so it's very possible you'll miss it if you don't go to your local comic shop the day it comes out.
Check out bohemiafilms.com to order the comic ANDY, which I illustrated, and to download the movie ARMAGEDDON FOR ANDY, which I did a minor animation sequence for.
And check out chrisgcomics.com to see my website which includes some archived comic strips and some animated cartoons.
Note: After the interview was posted, Chris was so awesome that he did this picture for us.
