(Let me feed you )

FAQ


What’s the deal with this website?

It’s one of those sites that cartoonists create in the hopes of avoiding starvation by

1. selling more of their comics and
2. garnering commissioned work.

Why is it called “Gabby’s Playhouse”?

Because no one seems to be able to spell “Schulz.” Even though this is the same last name you see spelled out right at the top every time you read a Peanuts comic strip.

Oh wow — are you really related to Charles Schulz?

No. Not really. It’s a long story.

But everyone keeps asking you this question. And this is the FAQ. Shouldn’t you just answer the question?

Fine. My dad’s adopted, so there’s no chance we’re related to Charles Schulz by blood. But he claims that his adopted family of Schulzes were once part of a greater Schulz clan of Bay City, MI, from which Sparky emerged — only at some point our part of the family moved down to Florida (and later South Carolina) to become rednecks.

But as a Peanuts-obsessed grade-schooler, I distinctly remember my father supplying the dubious assertion that Charles Schulz was my great uncle. So I wrote Sparky a letter informing him of this grand piece of news, expecting to be flown out to Minnesota for family reunions at the ice rink, where I could finally ascend to my rightful place beside Peppermint Patty and Linus and the rest of the precociously neurotic gang of latchkey kids, who wouldn’t care that I worried too much or didn’t have any social skills or suffered from a mild case of synaesthesia or left school every day defeated to walk the last two miles home from the bus stop in time for cartoons.

A couple weeks later I got a xeroxed form letter, signed “Snoopy.” Thirty years later, Andrei Rublev is my favorite movie.

So it’s pronounced SHULZ, right?

Wrong. There’s an invisible T. So it’s SHUHL-TSS.

Why don’t you put the T in it? Are you misspelling your own last name?

No. Listen, there’s no T, but you pronounce it. And don’t forget the C! A lot of people forget about the C.

How come so many cartoonists have such hard-to-pronounce names?

I have always wondered that myself! Clowes? Tomine? Strzepek? Sfar? What the hell?

So what’s your REAL NAME, anyway?

Well, Gabby is what most of my friends call me. Gabby Schulz. Not Ken Dahl. I’ve just been using Ken Dahl to draw comics. But I’m trying to phase that out because it’s kind of run its course, and it’s starting to get awkward that people who like my comics have started addressing me as “Ken” when we meet.

However — important note: if you are writing me a check, my “banks-and-borders” name is different than both of those names. Write for details. And please — write me checks!

I’m not writing you a check.

Well, you can always use my paypal, too!

Don’t you have a real job or something?

Not presently. I’ve spent the last year of my life drawing comics full-time.

Drawing COMICS? Good lord. How do you even survive?

That’s a very good question. I guess the short answer is: barely. I scrape a living together with illustration work, catering, dish-washing, banjo-playing, xmas-tree harvesting and other odd jobs like cat portraiture. For the past couple winters I’ve been going home to Honolulu for a month or two and working as a TV/movie extra, while researching my next book.

Besides all that I subscribe to a philosophy of voluntary simplicity.

You mean you’re a cheapskate?

Yeah, basically.

Why can’t you just get a real job? Didn’t you go to college?

Well, that’s a complex question… I do have a BA in English.

Oo… I’m sorry to hear that.

Yeah. At least I didn’t major in philosophy!

So basically you’re a bum, huh?

Well, not really… but I have to admit, grad school is looking better and better these days. I’m still stubbornly clinging to this lofty notion that, even in a culture as artistically bankrupt as the United States, a cartoonist of modest talent should be able to find a way to support themselves by actually drawing cartoons. This shouldn’t be too much to ask from the country that invented the comic book, right?

So you’re American?

I was born and raised in Hawai’i just thirteen years after it became a state — so I certainly didn’t feel American (or perhaps, more accurately “United-Statesian”) at first. But, cultural imperialism being what it is, I was sent to a school that taught me all about Santa Claus and George Washington and the Louisiana Purchase and proper English and elm trees and bluejays and raccoons and other things that have absolutely nothing to do with Hawai’i. It was all pretty confusing. I’m still not sure where I belong.

Where do you live now?

Brooklyn, New York, USA — for the time being. It’s expensive, but I live right next to a great park. But I do miss my friends from the cartoon school up in Vermont.

Weren’t you the Fellow at CCS during the 2006-2007 school year?

Yeah. That’s how I ended up there originally.

Did you see any moose?

No, I did not. But I would very much like to.

So… now that Monsters is done, what’s next?

Oh, thanks for asking! I’ve been starting work on another graphic novel — this one’s historical fiction, set in the very late 1800s, in an undisclosed tropical location. It’s about missionaries and a fictionalized, highly contagious, incurable, hideously disfiguring epidemic disease. The story centers around a teenage girl who, after being diagnosed with an early stage of the disease, is sent to a kind of leper colony. A lot of it is based on real places, events, historical figures, and gruesomely stupid late-19th-century medical procedures — but I don’t want to reveal too much about it yet.

Unfortunately, it won’t be out any time soon — I have to make some more money before I can continue working on it. After a year of working on Monsters full-time, I am flat-ass broke. If it wasn’t for the cat portraits, I would have starved to death this summer.

Listen, I’m still not sending you a check!

Fine. But if you know of any well-endowed publishers interested in seeing a proposal, my email address is fantods [at] gmail [dot] com!

*Yawn* Uh, what else?

I’m lettering Monsters in French for a Belgian publisher, L’ Employe du Moi (and other languages are in the works as well). I’m slowly learning to play the violin, whenever my roommates are out of the house. I’m also toying with the idea of walking or biking across the country sometime this or next year.

What’s your favorite food?

Kimchi Chigae!

Ahem. Well uh, I’m gonna go over and see if the line to the keg’s gotten any smaller.

Hey, wait! If you ever want to send me a letter, my snail-mail address is 287 Ocean Ave. Apt. 4D, Brooklyn NY 11225!

Yeah! Alright, well… seeya around…


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