Kathy
Kathy Peterson: On the surface, Count Your Sheep is a fairly straight forward comic about a precocious little kid and her imaginary friend. However, you actually deal with a lot of complicated topics. Reading through the archive, you've talked about depression, death, public education, poverty, and being a single parent. What kind of reactions have you gotten from your readers on these topics?
Adrian Ramos: Well, readers can be very passionate. Sometimes they mention how the strip reminded them of something from their own childhood, long forgotten and how the strip brought it all back. Sometimes they agree with the views, and sometimes they don't. There hasn't been any "big" statement of belief in the strip that hasn't stirred a reaction from a reader. Usually positive, but I've managed to offend people from time to time. Hard to believe a harmless comic like mine would offend anyone, but it has.
KP: When you originally thought about doing Count Your Sheep, did you intend to explore these topics? If not, what was your initial plan for Count Your Sheep and how did it evolve into its current form?
AR: My initial thoughts were to make comic where I would experiment a bit. Experiment with simplicity, mostly, which explained the simple cast and the simple concept, girl and imaginary friend. Nothing that hadn't been done before, but a perfect setup for my idea. I saved my "bigger" ideas for other concepts, but as the comic went along and became more popular, I poured more time and more thought into it, not to mention more of myself.
KP: On March 23rd, you said, "I just fell in love with my comic all over again". What happened?
AR: It's not that I had fallen out of love with it, but it's like in every other relationship; the loved one becomes a fixture, their features not as striking as they once were and merely now part of the background. But then they go and say or do something, something special, and that's when you go: "oh, this is why I was in love." It was one of those things. Some ideas about the strip came to me, and I was in love all over again.
KP: You recently introduced, "CYS: At Seventeen". Will this become a regular feature like, "CYS: Back in Time"?
AR: The original idea for the Back in Time strips was to slowly show Laurie's youth leading up to where we are now, and it still is, but whenever there's something new to show from back when Laurie was a seventeen year old, it will return.
KP: From the comic, it's fairly obvious you're a big Beatles fan. Are you a musician yourself? Do you have a particular favorite Beatles song, album, or memory?
AR: I am a Beatles fan and not a musician, sadly. I have lots of favorites, but "Getting Better" from Sgt. Pepper's holds a lot of meaning to me. (It's also the unofficially song of Laurie to Katie.) My favorite whole album is Abbey Road. I listened to the band as a kid, and I used to adore the earlier material, all the Love Me Dos and She Loves Yous, and for a long time I stopped listening with any regularity. Then, as a teenager, I rediscovered the latter stuff, from Revolver onwards, and I was in awe. The band that played all the catchy tunes from my childhood had this experimental edgy side to them that fascinated me.
KP: Besides the Beatles, you bring up sports quite often in the comic. Much to Laurie's horror, Katie's a big soccer fan. Are you a soccer fan? Or a fan of any other sports? If so what's your favorite team?
AR: I'm a fan of a bunch of sports because I suck as an athlete. I'm the sort of guy who know records and trivia by heart. I was always a soccer-football-basketball guy, although I outgrew b-ball when I realized I was not going to ever grow tall enough for the NBA. But both footballs remain a passion of mine, and my inner struggles represent Laurie and Katie's debates between one and the other. Soccer-wise, I root for Club America of the Mexican First Division, and I tend to favor Real Madrid and Manchester United whenever they play. As for football, I was born into a football family in which we were all involved, that rooted heavily for the Pittsburgh Steelers, except for my eldest brother who is a Cowboys fan. I hated it for a long time, until I heard the story of the underdog New York Jets of the 1968 season, and it brought me back to the game, so I've been a fan of the white and green ever since.
Thanks for the interview and for your questions, it was a lot of fun!
-adis!
