K&J FAQ

Q: Why do the covers have "Stupid Monkey Productions" on them? Isn't that the company that does Robot Chicken?

Kyle and I actually came up with the Stupid Monkey Productions name around the time we were starting work on our second issue in 1998 but it wasn't put on the covers in the "right" format as it is now. Despite generally just being Kyle and Josh, I later started to branch out and try my hand at other comic ideas and eventually created a (now gone) site under that company name. At one point I was having a contest for people to create a new logo and no one would touch it because of Seth Green's company by a similar name, Stoop!d Monkey, LLC. When the debate actually got heated enough for someone to tell me that the only reason I used that name was to mooch off of Green's company success I knew it was time to just say the heck with it and drop it.

There has been speculation that I changed it because I got in trouble or was worried I might get in trouble because of it, but it's just not true. Even in a business world his misspelling difference would have been enough for it not to be an issue, but if it ever escalated into an actual legal battle I have proof that I was using that name 7 years before the creation of his. Of course, it's a moot point now, but ultimately I changed it because of peoples' perceptions of the name and not because I was worried about getting sued.

Q: Why don't the characters have ears or noses? What's up with the black pigmentation for their skin?

Believe it or not, I've actually had people ask me if the characters are black, as in "of African descent" black. The answer to the above questions is actually very simple. The K&J universe started as stick figures and when I was looking for some kind of character overhaul I wanted to find a way to keep that spirit but introduce them to a more realistic design. So I took their simple round heads and their black stick bodies and gave them regular human proportions which Steff later enhanced in her design. Basically, they're 3D stick figures.

Q: You said you've been doing this for over 10 years. How can you only have 4 issues done?

Well, I only have 4 issues done in this style. The comic's evolution was unique in the sense that it didn't just start at the beginning and get better as time progressed. It actually started at the beginning about 6 different times - every time a new version was tried - which means displaying all that content would be incredibly redundant. Sure there are some new jokes, some old jokes that got cut out, and I do have images that go back that far up on the site, but to show everything I've ever done would just be a page cluttered with a massive amount of different versions of the same old thing. Most of what you see of the older things will probably be displayed in the gallery.

Q: Can we buy issues of the comics?

The first 4 issues, some of the filler comics, and a decent chunk of other random content were put into a completed collection and a handful of copies were printed. That will hopefully be available again once the store is actually up and running, but a few modifications to the book will need to be changed because of the company name changing, the website changing, etcetera. I do expect it to be available again at some point, though.

Q: What brand of cigarette is Happy?

He's not any specific brand per se, but I do think one of the reasons he's so huge is that at the time Kyle and I smoked Camel Wides. While I haven't smoked in 8 years I haven't really thought about it past when the first person posed this question to me. So I would say that he's not any specific brand but was influenced by how the specific type of cigarettes we smoked at the time were about twice as big as normal ones.

Q: Almost an animated pilot and an animated movie? Really?

Yes, although in the grand scheme of things "almost" is more like "I tried and failed because there was no funding." The first time I talked to an animation studio was in 2003 and they loved it. They loved the originality of the comic and the characters so much that they were willing to give me 50% off of the entire pilot's costs if I signed a contract giving them first dibs on being allowed to animate it if it got picked up into a series. Unfortunately, their first estimate was done without really reading the script and because of the number of background characters and various settings, even with half off the cost it was more money than I was able to produce.

Years later I contacted the same studio who focused solely now on CGI animation and didn't have the capacity for 2D (something I was surprised by not being told until later in the estimation process). Still, we went through the whole thing again and they gave me a quote somewhere over the 6 million dollar mark. By that point the comic had no more updates and a shadow of its original following and there would be no way for me to convince investors to indulge me to the tune of that much.

Q: Kyle and Josh got turned into animal people in the future in #4. Is it a "furry" comic now?

Good lord, no. The Zoo was actually a concept that kind of got away from me in that the story ended up being a lot more involved than originally intended. I didn't want for it to go into a second issue in the story arc, but there wasn't a way to do so without making a really crappy story full of holes or completely rewriting it. There are a few reasons behind why I did that issue the way I did, but ultimately I wasn't terribly happy with the way it started going. The conclusion may come eventually if someone starts drawing the comic again.

I love you.

I know.