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Frequently Asked Questions

Section 1: General Questions


G01: What is Leave, Freeze or Die about?: Leave, Freeze or Die is about a group of college students (roughly based on my friends of the same appearance and name at the time they were in school) bored to tears at a crummy university in Manchester, New Hampshire. The school, College University, looks remarkably similar to the real Central High located in that city. Beyond that, there's not much in the way for plot. Earlier strips (prior to #163) were under a mandate that the content reinforce that the events were taking place in New Hampshire, and most of the material revolved in some way around state politics. (One early editor described his vision as "Doonesbury, with squirrels.") That rule has since been relaxed and the strip aimed at a more general audience. This has shifted the focus back to the kids again, as it was in the earlier run of the strip in Boston College's The Heights newspaper.
G02: Are the characters based on real people?: Yes. All of the student characters are based on people who attended Manchester Central High as part of the classes of 1994-1996. Rolly, the dean of College University, is based on the school principal of that era. Other characters are based on New Hampshire public figures, such as the newspaper publisher and his daughter, the local weatherman, and and state politicians.
G03: The strip has a very liberal bent to it, and yet appears in some pretty conservative publications. Why?: The publisher has a sense of humor. As of this writing, no strip has ever been rejected for content, although there are many strips I've never submitted to NewHampshire.Com or the newspapers. Some have appeared on this site, while others only in paperback compilations.
G04: Can I buy collections of LFD strips?: Yes! Every six months, the previous 70 strips (published and unpublished) are put together into paperback collections, available in the store.
G05: Can I find the paperbacks in book stores?: Right now, no. I use Blurb to print on demand. The strips' limited local appeal up through the third year of its current run limited the audience primarily to New Hampshire, while I myself have lived out of the state most of that time, making it difficult to engage store owners and ask them to carry the books. I'd have to print dozens of copies at $20 each and hand-distribute them, if I even got the shelf space. Since 2007, I've taken greater steps to make the content less localized and promote the strip, and hope to bring it to a wider audience through conventions in the future.
G06: So you don't even live in New Hampshire?: Nope, despite the woefully out of date bio on the NewHampshire.Com site, I haven't lived in NH since 2006. I'm currently across the border in Pinko Massachusetts.
G07: Are the graphic novels the same as the strips/paperbacks?: No. The graphic novels were produced from the time I was 11 (in pencil on dot-matrix paper) through 2005, and were the original format of the comic. They coexisted with the strips during and after the Boston College era, and ended shortly after I started doing the current strip (since 2004). The graphic novels were made mostly for my friends (the same people who are the characters) and were much more insider and obscene in their content. Some are up on the site now for legacy purposes. They feature the same characters, but with slightly different histories.
G08: Have you ever been sued?: Thankfully, no. I don't use the characters' last names, and have modified their appearance (mostly by keeping them at age 21 while their real counterparts have grown). Everyone who's in it knows they are, the exception being public figures who are well-known enough to be fair use.

Section 2: Character Questions

C01: Is Pete Asian?: Pete, the squinty-eyed protagonist of the strip, is not Asian. He's just squinty.
C02: Are Pete and Amy related?: Amy is Pete's ex-wife. The similar noses are coincidental.
C03: What's the deal with Akmal?: Akmal, the perverted tightrope artist brought to America by James in strip #236, is based on a real person who stalked my friend Matt's then-girlfriend in the late 90's. The real Akmal had come to the U.S. on a cultural exchange with the city of Seattle, and fell in love with the woman. He somehow reentered the country and bombarded her with creepy phone calls in broken Russian. Matt's friend Dave and I then concocted the cartoon Akmal, based on Pepe Le Pew on Viagra. He existed primarily as a means to taunt Matt until his appearance in the graphic novels and more recently in the strip.

Section 3: Production Questions

P01: How are the strips numbered?: Strips beginning in August 2004 (the start of Leave, Freeze or Die) through August 2007 are named by the date they were originally run on NewHampshire.Com. After August 2007, I began drawing multiple strisp per week, while NewHampshire.Com and its affiliated newspapers continued to operate on a weekly schedule. I began numbering the strips in the order that I drew them, since the dates a strip ran on this site differed from when they appeared on the external runs (if they even did), sometimes by weeks or months.

Strips beginning with a letter were never submitted for external runs. Due to content, or obscurity of subject matter, they were held back and only appeared on this site. The exception is any strip starting with a "U", which I intended to be political and off-continuity. These have been rare, however.
P02: What materials are used to draw the strip? How is the strip drawn?: Strips #1 through #162: 8.5x11" photocopy paper, inked with Bic Z4 Roller pen. No penciling. Panel boxes were drawn up in Photoshop and printed out as a blank template of four identical boxes with rounded edges. The templates changed slightly from time to time. Strip size on paper was roughly 6.5" x 3".

Strips #163 through #A06: 8.5x11" smooth bristol board. Inked with Bic Z4 Roller pen, penciled with .07mm mechanical pencil. Panel boxes hand-drawn with Pigma brush pen. Signature in Micron 01 pen. Strips are 9" wide and 3.5" tall on paper.

Strips #A07 through #230: 9x12" smooth bristol board. Inked with Micron 05 pen. Penciled with .07mm mechanical pencil. Panel boxes hand-drawn with Pigma brush pen or Sharpie. Signature in Micron 01 pen. Strips are 9" wide and 3.5" tall on paper.

Strips #231 onwards: 9x12" smooth bristol board. Inked with Micron 02 pen. Word balloons from strip #233 onwards done in Micron 08 pen. Penciled with .07mm mechanical pencil. Panel boxes hand-drawn with Sharpie. Signature in Micron 01 pen. Strips are 9" wide and 3.5" tall on paper.

Lettering prior to strip #163 was done digitally with a font based on my handwriting, called File Wide, first at 14 point but later at 12. Since #163, the font has been Creative Block, usually at 11 point strong. Earlier incarnations of the strip, and all but the last few graphic novels, were hand-lettered and did not use any font.

For strips #163 onwards, after penciling and inking everything except the text (which remains in pencil), I'll erase the pencil lines and scan into Photoshop at 600dpi black and white. I'll change to RGB mode and erase any leftover pencil marks, do the lettering and flatten the text down to the background, then select all non-white areas and copy their content twice to separate layers. I'll then take the first copy (the middle layer, one above the background) and color it by hand using a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet. After the primary color is in, I'll add shading, then flatten the layers and save off three copies- the original PSD (about 5500 x 2200 pixels), an original-size PNG copy for print in the paperbacks, and a 700-pixel wide PNG for this site. I'll send a copy of the original PSD to the editors to publish at NewHampshire.Com and the papers.

I use Photoshop CS3 on Windows XP and Mac OS X 10.5 machines.

P03: How often is the strip drawn? How long does it take to produce a strip?: New strips are penciled and inked two or three times a week, either one or two at a time. On Wednesdays and Sundays, I color as many inked strips as I have available. It takes about a half hour to an hour to pencil and ink one and another 45 minutes to color, so the total time is about an hour and a half per strip.