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All Is Full Of Linky-Love: 3 Questions With R. Stevens, Writer And Artist Of Diesel Sweeties By Dale Lazarov

His bio: Richard Stevens 3 used to be a graphic designer, a college professor and a mailman. He also used to be a syndicated cartoonist, the high point of which was being yelled at for replacing Cathy in one local paper.

He makes a pixel robot romance comic called Diesel Sweeties and lives in a factory building with two cats and a few hundred pounds of computers.

His t-shirt designs have been featured in The IT Crowd, Scott Pilgrim Saves The World, Top Chef, and Big Bang Theory (twice). He also makes LOLBots, a phone-sized comic he needs to do more of.

First question: Chris Arrant says "Diesel Sweeties has emerged as one of the top tier of widely-read and successful webcomics, both for its modern cynical humor and wincingly realistic drama that everyone can feel something in common with." Is there any particular set of influences or aspirations that guide you?

Chris Arrant is too generous and makes me wish I had a Christmas card list!

I guess I aspire to write Peanuts with penis jokes. It's all about living every day as a build up to a deadline, doing a billion variations on a theme, forcing the brain to power through every day whether you want to or not. You chew through enough ideas and sometimes you hit gold.

There's something about limitations that drives me crazy. Pixel art isn't just about simple drawings- it's about trying to encode a ton of information into almost nothing. It also forces you to consider every single word of dialogue because so little fits in a panel! I think that's why I've taken to loving Twitter so much. I see the constraints as a gift, not a problem.

I think the portrait I sent you for this interview is 689 bytes. That's 300 baud modem safe. Not only is it less than 1k, it's a sequence of numbers that's easy to remember and you could blow it up to the size of a building. I *love* stuff like that.

Of course, this might also be evidence of a mental illness. I kern every panel of pixel text by hand.

Question no. 2: Other than its purpose as a sharp and funny sexual/romantic/geeky comic strip, what do you want people to take from Diesel Sweeties?

Computers are every bit as deserving of your love, hate and respect and any other domesticated animal. Objects have a purpose. They just want to do their job! Treat them well and they behave. Ask anyone whose computer acts up until they ask me to fix it.

When robots get that tiny little extra bit more intelligent and gain sentience, I'm pretty sure they're going to keep me as a pet while they render the rest of you into lubricants.

I'm not religious but I do need something to look forward to.

Question The Third: What appeals to you about publishing Diesel Sweeties on the web?

Immediacy. There's no one in my way except my server, myself and the number of hours in a day.

Sure, I have to live like a street musician and pay my rent with t-shirts, but that's a lot of fun. It forces you to improvise. There are no meetings, no conference calls, no bullshit. You just do things until something works.

Live every day like Galactus is setting up his hibachi on your roof.

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Read Diesel Sweeties here.

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Dale Lazarov is the writer/editor of chic hardcovers of gay comics filth — STICKY, MANLY and NIGHTLIFE — published by Bruno Gmünder Verlag . Visit Swanderful, his tumblog of Curt Swan comics art, and his very NSFW gay erotic art tumblog, Fuck Yeah Dale Lazarov.

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