Nice to meet you guys! For those that are unfamiliar with Comic Who, how about you tell us a little bit about your webcomic?
Comic Who is a webcomic based on Doctor Who (yeah, I’m sure you’d never guess that). We created a sort of parallel universe where all the Doctors coexist and the last three of them (Eccly, Tenny and Smithy… recently joined by Cappy) decided to rent a flat and live together, they found a [quite] normal job and they try to enjoy the greatest adventure of all time: A normal ordinary life on Earth.
To be honest we started with the idea of making single strips with funny jokes, but we quite soon introduced a sort of continuity, recurrent characters like companions and foes. Even the Master has it’s own subplot and last year we started a new series with him as main character (Simmy’s Tales)
When did you start Comic Who?
We started in January 2011. We opened an account on blogspot and we started posting a strip every Monday (good old days when we had so much free time to work on a so close schedule).
What gave you the inspiration for the webcomic?
We share a great love for Doctor Who and we’ve always wanted to do something to “express” this feeling. We’re from Italy and in those days Doctor Who was quite unknown here, but then one of the main Italian broadcasters decided to air all the episodes. Of course we’ve had already seen all the episodes, so we thought it would be funny to see the 10th and the 11th Doctor watching the reruns of the Eccleston’s era… this is what came out.
How many of you are involved with Comic Who?
We’re two, basically me (Marco) and my wife (Elisa). Elisa is a professional illustrator, she use to work on child illustrations, so she’s actually the hand behind the Comic Who’s drawings. If they’re so cute, it’s all because of her. I’m a software developer, but I like writing. I used to write novels and this was my first attempt to write a script for a comic, but it worked.
How do you collaborate your ideas while working as a team?
Usually it works like this: I write, she draw. But in the end there is not a clear-cut separation. I use to come out with the ideas, then we discuss it and it usually evolve, sometimes even when the script is already finalized. For example, once we made a strip with the Master where he had a green teddy bear, but she forgot to draw it in the last panel; when we noticed it we decided that, instead of correcting the error, we could make it run out of the panel. Now that teddy bear has a name (Limeykins) and it’s our mascotte… it’s even in our logo.
Who is your favorite Doctor and companion?
It looks like my wife and I completely agree on this point. Our favourite Doctor is the 11th, Matt Smith is a great actor and a great person, we also had the pleasure to meet him (we also gave him a little clay doll of Smithy) and our favourite companion is, without a single doubt, Rory The Roman.
When will we start seeing little Capaldi join the gang?
Cappy has already made his first appearence in our latest strip. We used the regeneration scene in order to explain a bit more about the Comic Who universe, anyway we decided that we want to see how Capaldi’s Doctor will behave on screen before starting using it on a regular basis.
What has been your favorite part working with Comic Who?
Well, during the last three years we’ve had a lot of wonderful moments. We still remember the first time we found a fanart made by a kid about Comic Who, it was really heart-warming. Another funny moment was when we noticed that there were a lot of people in forums or on Facebook that used to refer to the various regenerations of the Doctor with the names we gave them (Eccly, Tenny, Smithy and so on…)
But probably the best moment of all was when, back in 2012, we were invited at the official Doctor Who convention in Cardiff, they gave us a press pass and the opportunity to interview Matt Smith, Arthur Darvill and Karen Gillan.
To support Comic Who, be sure to check out their website, like their Facebook page, and follow their Twitter!
Comic Who 50th Anniversary Strip:
Gamenomics & Comicology 