A new comic strip appeared a few years ago. It was static characters in karate poses saying some of the more bizarre things Ive ever read. I guess I jumped on the bandwagon a little late because by September 2001 the strip had a name, My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable, and David Rees was firmly ensconced in the world of web comic strips. Mnftiu, as the fans call it, is one of the hottest and funniest strips on the web.
Rees grew up in Chapel Hill North Carolina. He went to Oberland College in Ohio where he studied philosophy. His first job was teaching kindergarten. Then he worked at Harvard Medical School for an eye surgeon. But it wasnt until he entered the office workplace as a temp which drove him to create his insane strips.
But soon after the tragedy of 9/11 a new strip appeared and it was called Get Your War On. It was obviously also done by Rees but instead of surrealistic babble out of frozen karate experts now there were office workers cursing their fucking heads off about the US situation in Iraq. Get Your War On is also very funny but also delivered scathing political humor. While not as complex of a cartoonist as political veterans like Ted Rall and Tom Tomorrow, Rees created a unique brand of humor that lay bare and called out Americas hypocrisies, inane attitudes and actions.
Check out David Rees website .
Daniel Robert Epstein: The book My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable is not the political stuff you got famous for. What made you decide to collect them?
David Rees: Its a book I self published for years. It always sold pretty well for a self published book. I would sell it on consignment at comic book stores. I would always make photocopies then staple them and ship them to stores. Eventually it just got to the point where I couldnt keep up with demand and it got expensive to photocopy it. The editor at River Head became a friend of my when he received a copy of My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable years ago and he asked me if I wanted to put the book out with a real publisher. So I said yeah it sounds great.
DRE: So you were literally photocopying up until last year?
Rees: Well the first stage was me going to the photocopy shop in Boston every Friday afternoon and trading them a case of beer for a hundred copies of the book. Then I would take them home and stapling them all weekend with my industrial grade stapler. That got kind of old, then I moved to New York and I couldnt find a photocopy hookup until my current editor started using the photocopier at his old job. That was kind of nice. He was kind of my publisher in an informal capacity. The next stage was that I got a loan from my parents and we printed up 2000 copies of the book with a barcode. But then I sold through those. So I realized I would need to make a few thousand more and by then I was sick of me having my house filled with boxes of books. My wife was sick of it too. Now were at the third stage of having a publisher take care of everything.
DRE: The book My New Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable is a very low-key book. When it showed up I thought it was a galley.
Rees: [laughs] What we wanted to do was make it as close as possible to the original photocopied and stapled book. I think that was one of the things that appealed to people. It was just this weird book on the comic book shelf that a crazy person might have stapled together. Thats because I was making it fast at work without anyone seeing me. Its probably the crappiest looking book they ever put out. Maybe it will start a trend of books that look like they were put together by 11 year olds.
DRE: Which strips do you like doing more the political stuff or the fighting ones?
Rees: When I made this book years ago at work it was so satisfying and fun. I just made it to entertain myself; I never thought I would sell it. I never made a comic like that before. Then when I made Get Your War On that also satisfied me but in a different way. I felt like I was going crazy in the fall of 2001. So making Get Your War On was very cathartic and helpful in a way.
They appeal to different parts of my personality. I always have a lot of different projects going on at the same time. In my mind Ive always considered My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable to very pure and that funny. I think Ive peaked early [laughs].
DRE: What comes first, the art or the dialogue?
Rees: For me when I made Fighting Technique I think I found the art funny. Then I set up a page on the computer with the art and blank dialogue balloons. Then I would type some dialogue, print it out then erase the dialogue but keep the art exactly the same. Then I would type in new dialogue. Thats why when you look at the book half the pages are visually identical. Its the same setup but you just change the words. I never made comics that way before. I used to draw them by hand which takes a long time. This method was so efficient. You could make a hundred comics in a day or something. So the art would come first then I would just keep changing the dialogue.
DRE: What comics did you do before?
Rees: I used to draw little comics. In the eighth grade I used to make a ninja comic I would sell to my friends. Then in college I would do comics for the school newspaper. But to make a four-panel comic it would take six hours because you have to draw it in pencil then go over it in ink and get ink over yourself. My mechanical pencils used to get clogged. It was a lot of work to tell one joke. Since I cared about the jokes more than the art the clip art on the computer was the perfect solution.
DRE: Once it started to get big you must have expected some kind of cult following. But you couldn't have anticipated it getting this huge? I remember when I first saw your work. I thought it was really funny and that we would never see anything from you again.
Rees: Get Your War On was the kind of thing where I made it for I then showed it to my friends. Thats kind of the same thing that happened with Fighting Technique. My friends gave it to their friends and the people at the copy shop were secretly faxing it to their friends. Get Your War On lo and behold other people liked it. Newsweek mentioned it and then it went from there.
DRE: With Fighting Technique does it still make you laugh or do you just know its funny?
Rees: When I first made it at work I would sit there and laugh all day. Yknow when you read The Onion online and youre busting out laughing it was like that. When I first made Fighting Technique I honestly thought it was the funniest thing I ever read. I dont know if it was because I was in such a crushingly boring situation at work and it was saving my sanity but I still loved it. I know there are plenty of people who dont get it and hate it but for me the Fighting Technique really expressed my sensibility in a way that I had never been able to do before.
DRE: I assume your personal sense of humor is very dry.
Rees: I dont know. I like all kinds of humor. Im a big fan PJ Woodhouse. But I also like crude stupid humor.
DRE: What strips do you like?
Rees: My all time favorite comic strips are all the old favorite standards like Krazy Kat, Pogo, Peanuts and then people like Edward Gorey who is kind of cartoonist. But the strips I really like are Tom the Dancing Bug which switches from being political to apolitical. But the two newspapers I read dont have comics in them and newspaper comics in general I think suck.
DRE: You did mention Pogo, which is very political.
Rees: Yeah man. When I went out on my book tour and was talking to people, I would always mention Pogo because Walt Kelly was getting into a lot of good stuff there. When you look at it its these really cute cartoon animals yet but there was a dark sensibility under it. His use of vernacular the way they spoke and each character had its own strong personality. I think Pogo was one of the pinnacles of comics.
DRE: Were you always political?
Rees: It wasnt like I was an activist then I made Get Your War On. I think I may get some of it from my parents because they are religious so they kind of believe in this Christian social justice. Theyre too old to be hippies so it wasnt the kind of left wing hippie dippy love groovy stuff but more like a sterner moral sense. That may have had an influence on me growing up and then also listening to political punk rock music in high school.
DRE: What were you like in high school?
Rees: I wasnt punked out visually my friends and I were nerds I guess. But we liked bands like The Minutemen and Black Flag which were political. We liked the record label SST a lot.
DRE: Now you are considered anarchist type cartoonist.
Rees: Yeah its kind of crazy when people me to speak about stuff. People write me and ask for advice. I feel comfortable talking out of my ass and being a blowhard but I dont feel comfortable telling people how to overthrow the system.
DRE: Was it Rolling Stone who spotlighted some political cartoonists and they put you up there with Tom Tomorrow and Ted Rall?
Rees: Yeah they had an article about political cartoonists.
DRE: Those are pretty big names to be alongside.
Rees: Its good company. Its weird. Like we were saying earlier I didnt set out to be a professional cartoonist. It was always just a hobby. But now Im in a situation where I list on tax return that I am a cartoonist. Thats great and I feel really lucky. I dont want to do it forever and overstay my welcome. But for now Ive grown pretty comfortable with it.
DRE: Have you mingled with many cartoonists?
Rees: Ive hung out with Tom Tomorrow because he lives in my neighborhood. I had drinks with Ted Rall.
DRE: A lot of those guys actually draw. Do they think as much of you because you havent been doing it that long and you dont draw?
Rees: Both of those guys were kind enough to blurb Get Your War On. Those guys are real pros. I think that the world of left wing political cartoonists is small enough that they will welcome people into that way of thinking. The comics world is infamous for being really small and insular but also has a lot of backstabbing and bad mouthing. Its so self destructive and retarded that I think its cool when more established guys dont have issues with people like me.
DRE: It must have been wild when you got the gig for Rolling Stone.
Rees: Yeah its in every issue of the letters page. Its great. I was a little nervous about it because I had never been on a schedule before. My editor is very niece and helpful and they never really ask me to change anything.
DRE: It would be odd if they did ask you to change anything.
Rees: When I met with them I said that I like what Ive been doing and I havent compromised so far. I was happy to make them a strip but youre just going to get what I do and I cant change it too much. My editor said he didnt want me to. Its fun to convey a lot of humor in one strip. I like the idea of Rolling Stone readers seeing it because it reaches a broader audience than the website.
DRE: It must have felt really good to donate the books royalties to benefit a team of landmine removal specialists in Afghanistan.
Rees: Yeah that worked out well. We raised a fair amount of money for them. For me it made a lot of sense because one of the things I was so pissed off about when I started making the strip was how scary the situation on the ground in Afghanistan seemed with the landmines, cluster bombs and other unexploded ordinance.
DRE: Yeah I worked on a documentary that tried to raise awareness for the same problem in South Africa years ago. Its insane.
Rees: Exactly. Afghanistan is totally fucked up because theyve been at war for over a quarter century. So it was nice to make this thing because youre upset about something then exploit its popularity to actually remove landmines.
DRE: Do you see your anger petering out after a bit?
Rees: I wonder about that a lot because I do wonder how much longer I will do the political cartoons. I dont feel as angry or as frustrated anymore. Two years after September 11th I feel like there is a lot more open criticism and skepticism of the Bush administration especially with how they handled the war in Iraq. In October 2001 I just felt like nobody was saying what they were actually feeling or how bad the situation would be for Afghanistan. So that made my anger more acute. Im kind of naturally lazy so now I feel like I dont make strips about certain things because someone else will or everyone already knows because its a different climate. But I still get angry and frustrated with the continuing bad situation in Afghanistan. Im so worried we are not going to follow through like we should. But its a different kind of anger than the acute anger I had all through 2001.
DRE: What else are you doing?
Rees: Yeah Ive been playing with my band Skeleton Killers a lot and working on my own acoustic music. I also did a couple of writing projects this year and that showed me if I want to become a writer I would have to do a lot more work. But what I am working on right now is a new book, which is a sequel to Fighting Technique called My New Filing Technique Is Unstoppable. Im totally reworking that book to make it better. Thats something Ive been working on recently. What I will do after that I dont know.
DRE: Do you do anything else for money besides the comics?
Rees: No I havent worked in an office for a year now. Its been great. Between Rolling Stone, the book advance and miscellaneous other newspapers and magazines its enough to barely scrape by in New York.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Rees grew up in Chapel Hill North Carolina. He went to Oberland College in Ohio where he studied philosophy. His first job was teaching kindergarten. Then he worked at Harvard Medical School for an eye surgeon. But it wasnt until he entered the office workplace as a temp which drove him to create his insane strips.
But soon after the tragedy of 9/11 a new strip appeared and it was called Get Your War On. It was obviously also done by Rees but instead of surrealistic babble out of frozen karate experts now there were office workers cursing their fucking heads off about the US situation in Iraq. Get Your War On is also very funny but also delivered scathing political humor. While not as complex of a cartoonist as political veterans like Ted Rall and Tom Tomorrow, Rees created a unique brand of humor that lay bare and called out Americas hypocrisies, inane attitudes and actions.
Check out David Rees website .
Daniel Robert Epstein: The book My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable is not the political stuff you got famous for. What made you decide to collect them?
David Rees: Its a book I self published for years. It always sold pretty well for a self published book. I would sell it on consignment at comic book stores. I would always make photocopies then staple them and ship them to stores. Eventually it just got to the point where I couldnt keep up with demand and it got expensive to photocopy it. The editor at River Head became a friend of my when he received a copy of My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable years ago and he asked me if I wanted to put the book out with a real publisher. So I said yeah it sounds great.
DRE: So you were literally photocopying up until last year?
Rees: Well the first stage was me going to the photocopy shop in Boston every Friday afternoon and trading them a case of beer for a hundred copies of the book. Then I would take them home and stapling them all weekend with my industrial grade stapler. That got kind of old, then I moved to New York and I couldnt find a photocopy hookup until my current editor started using the photocopier at his old job. That was kind of nice. He was kind of my publisher in an informal capacity. The next stage was that I got a loan from my parents and we printed up 2000 copies of the book with a barcode. But then I sold through those. So I realized I would need to make a few thousand more and by then I was sick of me having my house filled with boxes of books. My wife was sick of it too. Now were at the third stage of having a publisher take care of everything.
DRE: The book My New Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable is a very low-key book. When it showed up I thought it was a galley.
Rees: [laughs] What we wanted to do was make it as close as possible to the original photocopied and stapled book. I think that was one of the things that appealed to people. It was just this weird book on the comic book shelf that a crazy person might have stapled together. Thats because I was making it fast at work without anyone seeing me. Its probably the crappiest looking book they ever put out. Maybe it will start a trend of books that look like they were put together by 11 year olds.
DRE: Which strips do you like doing more the political stuff or the fighting ones?
Rees: When I made this book years ago at work it was so satisfying and fun. I just made it to entertain myself; I never thought I would sell it. I never made a comic like that before. Then when I made Get Your War On that also satisfied me but in a different way. I felt like I was going crazy in the fall of 2001. So making Get Your War On was very cathartic and helpful in a way.
They appeal to different parts of my personality. I always have a lot of different projects going on at the same time. In my mind Ive always considered My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable to very pure and that funny. I think Ive peaked early [laughs].
DRE: What comes first, the art or the dialogue?
Rees: For me when I made Fighting Technique I think I found the art funny. Then I set up a page on the computer with the art and blank dialogue balloons. Then I would type some dialogue, print it out then erase the dialogue but keep the art exactly the same. Then I would type in new dialogue. Thats why when you look at the book half the pages are visually identical. Its the same setup but you just change the words. I never made comics that way before. I used to draw them by hand which takes a long time. This method was so efficient. You could make a hundred comics in a day or something. So the art would come first then I would just keep changing the dialogue.
DRE: What comics did you do before?
Rees: I used to draw little comics. In the eighth grade I used to make a ninja comic I would sell to my friends. Then in college I would do comics for the school newspaper. But to make a four-panel comic it would take six hours because you have to draw it in pencil then go over it in ink and get ink over yourself. My mechanical pencils used to get clogged. It was a lot of work to tell one joke. Since I cared about the jokes more than the art the clip art on the computer was the perfect solution.
DRE: Once it started to get big you must have expected some kind of cult following. But you couldn't have anticipated it getting this huge? I remember when I first saw your work. I thought it was really funny and that we would never see anything from you again.
Rees: Get Your War On was the kind of thing where I made it for I then showed it to my friends. Thats kind of the same thing that happened with Fighting Technique. My friends gave it to their friends and the people at the copy shop were secretly faxing it to their friends. Get Your War On lo and behold other people liked it. Newsweek mentioned it and then it went from there.
DRE: With Fighting Technique does it still make you laugh or do you just know its funny?
Rees: When I first made it at work I would sit there and laugh all day. Yknow when you read The Onion online and youre busting out laughing it was like that. When I first made Fighting Technique I honestly thought it was the funniest thing I ever read. I dont know if it was because I was in such a crushingly boring situation at work and it was saving my sanity but I still loved it. I know there are plenty of people who dont get it and hate it but for me the Fighting Technique really expressed my sensibility in a way that I had never been able to do before.
DRE: I assume your personal sense of humor is very dry.
Rees: I dont know. I like all kinds of humor. Im a big fan PJ Woodhouse. But I also like crude stupid humor.
DRE: What strips do you like?
Rees: My all time favorite comic strips are all the old favorite standards like Krazy Kat, Pogo, Peanuts and then people like Edward Gorey who is kind of cartoonist. But the strips I really like are Tom the Dancing Bug which switches from being political to apolitical. But the two newspapers I read dont have comics in them and newspaper comics in general I think suck.
DRE: You did mention Pogo, which is very political.
Rees: Yeah man. When I went out on my book tour and was talking to people, I would always mention Pogo because Walt Kelly was getting into a lot of good stuff there. When you look at it its these really cute cartoon animals yet but there was a dark sensibility under it. His use of vernacular the way they spoke and each character had its own strong personality. I think Pogo was one of the pinnacles of comics.
DRE: Were you always political?
Rees: It wasnt like I was an activist then I made Get Your War On. I think I may get some of it from my parents because they are religious so they kind of believe in this Christian social justice. Theyre too old to be hippies so it wasnt the kind of left wing hippie dippy love groovy stuff but more like a sterner moral sense. That may have had an influence on me growing up and then also listening to political punk rock music in high school.
DRE: What were you like in high school?
Rees: I wasnt punked out visually my friends and I were nerds I guess. But we liked bands like The Minutemen and Black Flag which were political. We liked the record label SST a lot.
DRE: Now you are considered anarchist type cartoonist.
Rees: Yeah its kind of crazy when people me to speak about stuff. People write me and ask for advice. I feel comfortable talking out of my ass and being a blowhard but I dont feel comfortable telling people how to overthrow the system.
DRE: Was it Rolling Stone who spotlighted some political cartoonists and they put you up there with Tom Tomorrow and Ted Rall?
Rees: Yeah they had an article about political cartoonists.
DRE: Those are pretty big names to be alongside.
Rees: Its good company. Its weird. Like we were saying earlier I didnt set out to be a professional cartoonist. It was always just a hobby. But now Im in a situation where I list on tax return that I am a cartoonist. Thats great and I feel really lucky. I dont want to do it forever and overstay my welcome. But for now Ive grown pretty comfortable with it.
DRE: Have you mingled with many cartoonists?
Rees: Ive hung out with Tom Tomorrow because he lives in my neighborhood. I had drinks with Ted Rall.
DRE: A lot of those guys actually draw. Do they think as much of you because you havent been doing it that long and you dont draw?
Rees: Both of those guys were kind enough to blurb Get Your War On. Those guys are real pros. I think that the world of left wing political cartoonists is small enough that they will welcome people into that way of thinking. The comics world is infamous for being really small and insular but also has a lot of backstabbing and bad mouthing. Its so self destructive and retarded that I think its cool when more established guys dont have issues with people like me.
DRE: It must have been wild when you got the gig for Rolling Stone.
Rees: Yeah its in every issue of the letters page. Its great. I was a little nervous about it because I had never been on a schedule before. My editor is very niece and helpful and they never really ask me to change anything.
DRE: It would be odd if they did ask you to change anything.
Rees: When I met with them I said that I like what Ive been doing and I havent compromised so far. I was happy to make them a strip but youre just going to get what I do and I cant change it too much. My editor said he didnt want me to. Its fun to convey a lot of humor in one strip. I like the idea of Rolling Stone readers seeing it because it reaches a broader audience than the website.
DRE: It must have felt really good to donate the books royalties to benefit a team of landmine removal specialists in Afghanistan.
Rees: Yeah that worked out well. We raised a fair amount of money for them. For me it made a lot of sense because one of the things I was so pissed off about when I started making the strip was how scary the situation on the ground in Afghanistan seemed with the landmines, cluster bombs and other unexploded ordinance.
DRE: Yeah I worked on a documentary that tried to raise awareness for the same problem in South Africa years ago. Its insane.
Rees: Exactly. Afghanistan is totally fucked up because theyve been at war for over a quarter century. So it was nice to make this thing because youre upset about something then exploit its popularity to actually remove landmines.
DRE: Do you see your anger petering out after a bit?
Rees: I wonder about that a lot because I do wonder how much longer I will do the political cartoons. I dont feel as angry or as frustrated anymore. Two years after September 11th I feel like there is a lot more open criticism and skepticism of the Bush administration especially with how they handled the war in Iraq. In October 2001 I just felt like nobody was saying what they were actually feeling or how bad the situation would be for Afghanistan. So that made my anger more acute. Im kind of naturally lazy so now I feel like I dont make strips about certain things because someone else will or everyone already knows because its a different climate. But I still get angry and frustrated with the continuing bad situation in Afghanistan. Im so worried we are not going to follow through like we should. But its a different kind of anger than the acute anger I had all through 2001.
DRE: What else are you doing?
Rees: Yeah Ive been playing with my band Skeleton Killers a lot and working on my own acoustic music. I also did a couple of writing projects this year and that showed me if I want to become a writer I would have to do a lot more work. But what I am working on right now is a new book, which is a sequel to Fighting Technique called My New Filing Technique Is Unstoppable. Im totally reworking that book to make it better. Thats something Ive been working on recently. What I will do after that I dont know.
DRE: Do you do anything else for money besides the comics?
Rees: No I havent worked in an office for a year now. Its been great. Between Rolling Stone, the book advance and miscellaneous other newspapers and magazines its enough to barely scrape by in New York.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
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Also, I love Voltron.