Miles Grover | Thinkin' Lincoln
The Flak Comics Interview
By James Norton

On a page of eclectic strips, Miles Grover's Thinkin' Lincoln still manages to stand out — it elegantly blends modified clip-art, historical fiction and absurdist humor into something potent and entirely unique.

Flak Magazine: In what city do you live? And, assuming you're not a full-time cartoonist, what do you do for a living?

Miles Grover: I live in sunny Seattle, Washington, about 20 blocks from the offices of the Penny Arcade dudes. My day job is as a Web designer, and I also go to night school for English.

Flak: Tell me a little bit about the history of the strip — what's the genesis of the idea, and for how long have you been drawing it?

MG: I've been making the strip for a little over two years now. Originally, I had just made these three heads: Lincoln, Washington, and Queen Elizabeth II. I was going to make full bodies for them, but I never got around to it on account of laziness. I don't think at that point the idea of making a comic out of them had even fully formed — I just thought they looked pretty cool, maybe they'd look neat on a T-shirt. I was also starting to really get into a bunch of different webcomics at the time, and eventually I realized I could make a pretty cool one out of these heads I made, and now here we are.

Flak: Describe a couple of writers and/or cartoonists and/or illustrators who have inspired your voice.

MG: My biggest (and probably most transparent) influences are Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics and Chris Onstad of Achewood. I think a lot of my early comics sound way too much like Ryan, and some of the ones in the middle sound like bad imitations of Achewood. DC has been my favorite comic for a while now, and I owe a lot to Ryan, though I like to think I've found my own unique voice by now.

Flak: On a similar note: are there any online cartoonists currently working whose work your follow and admire? What makes their strips compelling?

MG: Besides DC and Achewood, I love the Perry Bible Fellowship, Dr. McNinja, SUPER MEGA, and, well I could list a lot more. Dinosaur Comics is so intelligent, Achewood has really fantastic characterization, the PBF has great art and is really clever a lot of the times, Dr. McNinja is a doctor who is also a NINJA, and SUPER MEGA has to be seen to be believed.

Flak: There's an ongoing knife-fight between clip-art cartoonists such as yourself who do largely dialogue-driven strips and more traditional artists. What would you say to people who argue that if you're not drawing your strip from scratch and creating a richly textured illustrated world every time you cartoon, you're not really cartooning?

MG: I would say to those guys, "Hey, you guys, why don't you stop saying jerky things." Then I would frown. I think my take on this is sort of more results-oriented than, you know, process-oriented. If a guy takes a long time drawing a comic that sucks, well I'm going to read the comic with clip art that is actually funny. Another thing I tend to defensively bring up when this situation is mentioned is that in my case, I've actually drawn every piece of art I use (with a few rare exceptions). I definitely copy and paste a lot (I have a big file with like 500 Abe Lincoln faces I've made), but at the same time I do have to make new art for probably at least half of my strips. So yeah, I guess my comic is kind of a weird hybrid in this regard.

Flak: How did you put together the particular stable of historical figures who populate your strip...? Any particular reason you put Lincoln in the center of things?

MG: My main criteria for adding new characters are whether I think they're cool and whether I can find a good picture to base my drawings off of. Since I tend to really enjoy the look of those Daguerreotype-style photos from the mid 19th century, a lot of my characters are from that time period. Those photos always have like really cool contrasts and the dudes in them are always making such badass faces (due to how long you have to sit there while the guy is taking the picture), I can't really resist. And since those are pretty much the first photographs, historical dudes from before that time are a little harder to find good pictures of, because only certain people got paintings made of them. So I guess what I'm saying is there are aesthetic as well as practical considerations that affect my choices.

I picked Lincoln because he's just one of my favorite historical dudes. I put him with the others in the comic because I really like incongruity. I guess that's basically why I do a lot of things.

Flak: What's the arc, or evolution of the strip from its creation to the present day — are there any themes or styles of strips you've particularly enjoyed doing, and hope to do more of?

MG: I think the main thing that has evolved in the strip is that I've figured out how to write, like, actual jokes a lot better and more consistently. There are some early strips I'm still proud of, but there are also a lot of them when I look at them that I just think, man I thought this was good? Most of the time now I end up with something I'm at least pretty happy with. Another thing that's changed or is changing I guess, is that I've sort of given up some of my reluctance to do things people might expect? Like for a long time people have said things like, why doesn't Lincoln meet John Wilkes Booth or Robert E. Lee? I've sort of resisted because it felt like it was too easy or obvious, but now I'm considering doing stuff like that because now I kind of feel like it's just as bad to be too worried about that as it is to not be worried enough. I don't know if that even makes sense.

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