Last Saturday I attended an event aptly titled “Ponypalooza”- an event totally dedicated to the celebration of My Little Pony. The event was held at the Madison Library, in the little room to the right of the entrance doors. The Fire Marshall’s Maximum Occupancy sign read 70, but the massive amount of heat and the minimum amount of possible movement within the thrall of giddy fans leaves my estimate to be about 180 sweaty bodies consistently within that tiny room, with people constantly coming and going. Bronies, pedophile-looking types, little girls, and nervous moms filled the space.
I was there on assignment. My job was to interview Andy Price, the man responsible for all of the illustrations in the relatively new My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic! comic book. Finding him was easy enough. He was the guy at the desk. At the end of the line. The line that held strong and impenetrable for three hours.
The reason why this fact is so important is because I had to wait until he was no longer busy to interview him. For three hours. So, naturally, I found ways to amuse myself. I got my face painted, took pictures with gigantic Pony people, and made myself a Pony tail out of yarn. I had to blend in with these people. The environment felt like it could become hostile at any moment. Perhaps it was just the temperature, but there was no way to be sure.
Luckily, I wasn’t there alone. Jessica Gallagher, my friend and photographer, was along with me. Her awkwardly pink shirt was the perfect camouflage for the occasion, blending well with six year olds in rainbow colors and older, greasy men alike.
After a lot of sitting, it was finally time for the Q&A. Mrs. Price hovered like a matriarch behind her husband’s desk, handling any and everything that needed to be handled so that her husband could focus on his drawing and signing. She was obviously the one in charge here. I approached her, gave my name and press affiliation, and was soon sitting beside this wildly successful Madison man who makes his living with a marker.
I introduced myself again, gathered my questions, and my recording. After telling me a few pointers regarding my phone (he has the same one), the interview began. For your reading pleasure, the questions will be in bold.
What is your personal relationship with the Pony Universe, and does it ever pervade your reality at inopportune times?
Well, as for the personal relationship, I am the illustrator for the official “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic!” comic book, which is licensed by Hasbro. Does it ever pervade my reality at inopportune times? Oh, God yes. It’s in my thoughts so much anymore, that I find it hard to delinienate when it’s not. Because, it is my paycheck, and it is also a lot of fun. I mean, I get to draw for a living. I get to play for a living. So, I’m always thinking of ideas that I can add to the book. But yeah, I’ll be driving, pumping gas, and think: What would Rarity be like pumping gas?
What got you started drawing Ponies?
As far as that goes, I got into the show about a month, two months, before the job opportunity came along to do the comic. As far as the comic goes, the writer, Katie Cook, is an old friend of mine. We have known each other for a long time, so she approached me with it. She got the job writing it, and then she sought me out, and said “Hey, I want you to do this.” So, to quote Ghostbusters, I said “if there’s a steady paycheck, I’ll believe whatever you say.”
In what direction do you see this going?
It’s hard to say. I’m still overwhelmed by all of this. Like today. I didn’t expect this big of a turn out. And any time we go to a signing, we always underestimate. Luckily, the library had some markers. I brought one marker. I ran it out. You know? I see it growing for quite a bit longer. It’s still reaching audiences, the Hasbro corporation themselves are now bringing it to Japan. And, as big as it is here, we’re nothing compared to Russia, apparently. It’s monster-big in Russia. So, it’s getting more and more international. Pony conventions are popping up this year in the UK, and in Australia, and Paris. So, I think it’s just going to get bigger, for a while.
What are your feelings on bronies? Are you the original?
Umm… (Long silence)
Most of them are great. They really are. It’s hard for me to understand why this show appeals to teenage guys. I’m not positive on exactly what it is. There are a lot of elements; great animation, there’s a lot of hidden jokes. Even though it’s a show for little kids, there are a lot of gags that fly over the kids’ heads, and older people can appreciate it. I think, for the most part, bronies are great. I’ve met thousands of them since the books began in November. For the most part, everybody’s been great. Everybody’s been friendly. You know, I don’t really have anything disparaging towards any of them. Every once in a while, you get somebody that’s a little too socially awkward, but it’s kind of an inherent thing with any genre of fandom. There’s always going to be somebody that’s a little more socially awkward, and I think that’s why they gravitate towards these things. It’s a group that can accept them, if that makes sense.
I’ve been looking around. The dichotomy of the showing, all the people, is fascinating. You’ve got these happy kids running around, you know, all “Ponies, ponies!”, the regular looking bronies walking around, and then you have some more questionable looking people skulking about.
Yeah, we’ve run into a couple of questionable ones here and there. And again, it’s not just bronies. It’s Star Trek, Star Wars, et cetera. Any fan group is going to have those fringe outcasts that don’t quite really fit in anywhere, but they have a mutual appreciation for the same subject matter. We’ve gotten a couple of… weirdos. But, who doesn’t? Am I the original? No, not by far. I actually came in kinda late, compared to many. But I do consider myself a bronie.
There were over 100,000 preorders for your comic. To whom are you catering?
Actually, we specifically design this to be available to all ages. Granted, the target audience for this show is six to eight year old girls, but we know that a lot of the people spending money on the show are much older. If not just parents, a lot of the older fans. So, we wanted this to be a book that twenty year old Dave could go and buy, but he could also bring home a copy for his six year old sister. We wanted something in the book for everyone. One of the great benefits of that has been getting kids to read. I learned to read reading Batman. Comics have changed a lot over the years. When I was growing up, you could buy comics at the local drug store. Now you have to go to specialty shops to get them. So it’s a big deal for us to see a kid with a comic, because that’s the new audience coming up. It’s a great thing to see a kid whose never held a comic book before reading a comic, because this introduces them to a whole new world.
What was the impact that caused this high wave, and where will it break?
As far as breaking, we don’t know. And that is what is astounding a lot of people in the comic book industry. Usually, with a book like this, when it takes off on the first issue, it quickly peters out. This hasn’t. Overall, we are consistently in the top ten selling comics, which is a very big deal for an independent publisher(not D.C. or Marvel). On iTunes, we are consistently outselling The Walking Dead. That is a very big deal to us. We’ve had retailers call and say that they don’t know how to order this, because usually by issue four or issue five, it calms down. But it’s not calming down. I don’t see it dying for, I guess, four or five more issues. There’s still a lot of people finding out that there is a comic. It’s still new to a lot of people. So, I think it’s going to be a while before sales smooth out and it finds a regular group. As long as people keep buying it, we’ll keep making it.
How does all of the positive feedback on your DeviantArt page affect you?
It blows my little mind. It’s wonderful to see people’s feedback. And, you know, you can’t help but feel your head kinda swell a little, but it’s neat. For all the years I’ve been drawing, this is the first time that I’ve made such an incredible impact, such an incredible reach to people. It is still mind blowing. I don’t know how to deal with it, but it tickles me endlessly. It keeps me in a great mood, and I love meeting new people on Deviant, and talking to other artists, and it pushes my work. It gets me more work.
What is your favorite comic book character?
Batman. Across the line. Any variation. The comic, Christian Bale, Adam West, the animated; if the man is standing up, and he has a bat across his chest, I like him. Like I said, I learned to read on the character. He’s probably the strongest character in the whole industry, so I love him.
Do you have any comments regarding the “erotic fan art?”
It is bizarre. And again, it gets a lot of attention because bronies and My Little Pony is a very big thing right now. But again, it’s nothing new. Star Trek, Star Wars, any anime show, Spider-Man- any of it. It’s all been touched by it in some way. It bothers me more on this because this is primarily oriented towards kids. And the worst thing is, “Oh, I need reference material on Big Mac,” I type in Big Mac, and it’s the very first thing that comes up. That’s disturbing, you know? It does distort the message when it comes to people who don’t know anything about the show, if they go and look something up, and that’s the first thing they see… You know. A lot of guys won’t admit to liking the show, and that’s why. There’s a stigma to it. I’ve had two requests, and I’ve turned them down. Two requests to do the Pony erotic art. Not my thing. And, I don’t need to be drawing that while I have a kid at the other end of the table. Luckily, out of all the people, I’ve only been asked twice, and the first one didn’t come out and say it. But I knew what he wanted.
How does your personal day to day life shine through your art?
Well, one way it does a lot is, we have a lot of cats. My wife is a vet tech, and we both love cats, so those are our kids. And they show up a lot in my art. In fact, in the first issue of the book, on page three, you’ll see all of our cats. Also, on the same page, there’s a Pony version of me, and a Pony version of my wife. Why not? Another thing is that we get to do a lot of references and gags that older people get. Like, what may look like a silly pony to a kid, is actually the Blues Brothers to an older person. So, I’ve put in things like that. Things that I like, I sneak into the art. And it just makes it fun, for me. Especially every once in a while you get pages that comic people call “talking heads” pages. Where you have to explain the plot, or further something for the reader, but there’s not a lot going on visually. There’s nothing exciting to draw, other than people talking. So, in those kinds of scenes, I like to sneak in stuff that makes those pages fun for me to draw. The fans are eating it up, so that’s how I justify it.
The questions thoroughly answered, we sat and talked for a bit about Watchmen, film and comic, and soon it was time to go. Although my whole day had nearly been swallowed up by the swell of Ponydom, talking to this man was fulfilling. He was smart, friendly, eloquent, and well mannered. He was doing what he loved, and he was doing it very successfully. I definitely have a changed perspective on the whole subject, and I feel a slight urge to seek out all of his hidden jokes, like a large snake may want to explore an inviting rabbit hole, in hopes of finding satisfaction in devouring the tender denizens within.
