INTERVIEW - Jonbot Vs Martha’s Colin Bell
Geek Syndicate
The webcomic Jonbot Vs. Martha follows the adventures of Jonbot and Martha. Jon and Martha were getting a divorce, but he had a heart attack and snuffed it. Then a friendly, slightly mad scientist built a robot and stuck Jon’s brain in and hey pr esto we have JONBOT! He still wants a divorce though…which actually seems like a blessing because he’s kind of a dick. Will he learn to grow and accept responsibility now he’s a robot? Probably not. Oh and they have an adorable daughter Sarah. Artist Neil Slorance is a Scottish Illustrator with “a passion for all things robotic and dinosaur based.” He currently lives in Glasgow with his tortoise Herman. Neil’s blog can be found here. His Neil Armstrong tribute strip made me sniffle. Writer Colin Bell also works for Newsarama and Comic Booked as well as his own awesome blog It’s Bloggerin Time! He says His favourite foodstuffs are “Chicken Chargrills and condensed milk. Not together though, that would be rank.” Colin agreed to answer some questions for us on the webcomic.
GS: So who came up with Jonbot vs Martha? Was it always going to be a webcomic? CB: If memory serves I think we had the idea of the two of us simply doing a webcomic before we had the actual idea that became JVsM. Once I’d nagged Neil into joining me, I had a good look over all his stuff (online here!) to try and see what he’d be happiest drawing, and the two recurring themes in a lot of his work were robots, and this incredible ability to wring real poignancy out of simple, everyday things. We’re talking real emotional heft wrapped up in the cutest bundle you ever did see. With that in mind, I pitched him the basics of the strip (robot and woman getting a divorce) in a bid to try and EXPLOIT THESE STRENGTHS TO THE EXTREME. So, in that sense we both came up with the idea in that his work and abilities informed it from the outset! GS: You have your own theme tune! How did that happen? CB:We have two! One’s a folky jaunt by Glasgow troubadour Shambles Miller, and the other is by electro-lothario Zuko Fontiane and it sounds like it’s been ripped straight from the
title sequence of an 80s Saturday morning cartoon. We acquired them the only way we know how – outright begging. Our second ever strip (and the first JVsM I ever wrote) is our Title Sequence, complete with lyrics that sum up the plot of the strip. When that was published we put a call out with it for musicians to put those lyrics to music, and thankfully Shambles and Zuko were kind enough to answer. I must stress that open invitation is still open should anyone else want to take a stab. WE LOVE THEME TUNES. GS: Do you have any plans to produce a book of Jonbot vs Martha strips? CB: Overall I think what we’d like to do is to wait until the strip reaches its conclusion and then just put out a nice big Complete Jonbot Vs Martha deal with commentary (by which I mean apologies), and additional material and the like. That said, when we were nominated for four Scottish Indie Comic Book Alliance awards this year (Best Comic, Writer, Artist and Cover, humblebrag) we put together a wee collection of all the eligible strips into a booklet that voters could read.
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