Eric Monster Millikin

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Eric Monster Millikin

Eric Monster Millikin's comics often explore themes of the occult and romance.
Author(s) Eric Monster Millikin; sometimes with artist Casey Sorrow
Website http://www.ericmonster.com/
Current status / schedule Weekly
Launch date Fall 1995
Genre(s) Horror, Comedy, Romance, Political

Eric Monster Millikin is an award-winning American cartoonist and former human anatomy lab embalmer and dissectionist.[1] He is the creator of the self-titled controversial weekly romantic horror comic Eric Monster Millikin.

Eric Monster Millikin has been published as a webcomic since the fall of 1995.[2] It has also been published in newspapers and books. The storylines generally revolve around Millikin's use of the occult in both romantic relationships and battles with various ghosts, demons, aliens, and monsters. The artwork is mixed media, combining expressionist paintings with found objects. The comics often have political themes, and the text is sometimes written in free verse. From 2000-2008 the comic was titled Fetus-X. Millikin is one of the few, and first, webcomic creators successful enough to make a living as an artist.[3]

Contents

[edit] Characters and plot

Typical plots of Eric Monster Millikin's comic portray him engaged in activities such as being killed by vampire hunters, being eaten by a dinosaur, and sawing off his own arm[4] then replacing it with a zombie's. He is often accompanied by Fetus-X, a psychic zombie fetus floating in a jar of formaldehyde[5], and Anal Ho Tep, a resurrected Egyptian mummy who enjoys anal sex and was formerly a grave robber. [6] Millikin also has a kitten named Patches which he built by stapling together roadkill lying around his house and who has a tentacle for a tail. [7] Many of the stories are about Millikin trying to bring Alicia, a fork-throwing poltergeist cheerleader and his former girlfriend, back from the dead.

One of Millikin's frequent nemeses is El Chupacabra, a goat-sucking extraterrestrial and masked Mexican professional wrestler. In ancient Egypt, El Chupacabra forced Anal Ho Tep into slave labor for purposes of building the pyramids. In contemporary times, the U.S. government maintains a color-coded Chupacabra alert system which was recently raised to metallic magenta. [8]

Other characters have included United States Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, candidate John McCain, Areola (a mermaid), Satana (a devil girl), Bunny (a research test rabbit), and Jesus (the son of God).

[edit] History

Millikin began drawing horror comics by age one-and-a-half, when he made crayon drawings of ghosts terrorizing him during toilet-training. By second grade, he was making teachers' birthday cards showing his school burning down captioned "Fuck you." [9]

By spring 2000 Millikin was working with artist Casey Sorrow and calling the comic Fetus-X based on one of the characters. It ran in college newspapers like Michigan State University's The State News. Immediately there were problems with censorship, Catholic League protests, and threatened cancellation. After six months, The State News cancelled the comic strip despite support from some readers.[10] It continues to be published on the web and in many college newspapers and in alternative newspapers such as Detroit's Metro Times. [11]

In the fall of 2002, the comic became part of the subscription-based online alternative comics anthology Serializer, a spin-off of the successful webcomics site Modern Tales. Other comics on Serializer included Achewood Sunday Edition, The Magic Whistle, Pup and Little Laurie Sprinkles.[12] In the fall of 2005 it became a free comic on Webcomics Nation.

In June 2006, Millikin was interviewed in the book Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists, edited by award-winning syndicated editorial cartoonist Ted Rall. Attitude 3 also includes other webcomics such as Cat and Girl, Dinosaur Comics, Diesel Sweeties, and The Perry Bible Fellowship. [13]

After being offline due to a server crash, Serializer relaunched in October, 2006 under the editorship of Eric Millikin.[14][15] Millikin's comics were among those on the relaunched serializer, along with A Softer World, Idiot Box, and Templar, Arizona.[16]

Millikin is one of the artists in the "Out of Sequence:Underrepresented Voices in American Comics" art exhibition.

[edit] Critical reaction

In their review of serializer.net, The Comics Journal wrote: "It's a pleasure to see strips like ... Fetus-X use the newspaper format for far more daring, entertainingly perverse work ... [it] would be perfectly at home at a good alternative weekly or a great college paper." [17] In their review of Attitude 3, the American Library Association's Booklist wrote that "the visual style of Eric Millikin’s Fetus-X 'crosses Edvard Munch with an incipient victim of high-school suicide.'" [18]

Since 2000, Millikin's comics have been the target of protest campaigns organized by the Catholic League for its "blasphemous treatment of Jesus". [19] “This particular comic is offensive to Catholics and Christians,” Catholic League spokesman Patrick Scully said in August 2002. “It completely ridicules the Catholic faith and is not funny.” [10] The Hartford Advocate has called Millikin a "borderline sociopath."[20]

The Webcomics Examiner named Millikin's comics one of the best webcomics in 2004, calling it "one of the sharpest political commentaries available. In an era where presidents are treated as messiahs, and questioning the fatherland’s foreign policies is socially unacceptable, Eric shows how necessary it is to yell at the top of your lungs about the madness of it all."[21]

It has also been nominated for multiple Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards including Outstanding Comic, Outstanding Single Panel Comic, and Outstanding Romantic Comic. It (referred to as "Foetus-X") was later disqualified for not meeting the Award's defined genre criteria for romance comics.[22] In 2007, it was again nominated for multiple Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards including Outstanding Romantic Comic. It was not disqualified from the romance category in 2007.

Millikin's comics were used along with Penny Arcade, American Elf and Questionable Content as an example of comics using the web to create "an explosion of diverse genres and styles" in Scott McCloud's 2006 book Making Comics [23]

[edit] Side projects

Eric Millikin has won awards for his illustrations and posters for major newspapers such as The Detroit News[24] and Detroit Free Press.[25] This has included awards from the Associated Press,[25] Society of Professional Journalists,[26] and the Investigative Reporters and Editors.[27] Feral Calf is a comic by Millikin's former collaborator, artist Casey Sorrow. It is about feral fish people doing strange things to each other and is also hosted on Webcomics Nation. Eric Millikin and Casey Sorrow also created the holiday Monkey Day (celebrated December 14th) as an opportunity to educate the public about monkeys, as a holiday that supports evolution rather than religious themes, and an excuse to throw monkey-themed costume parties.[28][29]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Zabel, Joe (June 14, 2004). "Cutting Up The Dead: An interview with Eric Millikin". The Webcomics Examiner
  2. ^ Xerexes, Xaviar (January, 2009). "Eric Monster Millikin Talks Fetuses, Zombies and Monkeys". Comixtalk
  3. ^ Brenner, Lynn (February 27, 2000). "What People Earn: How Did You Do This Year?". Parade Magazine, p. 9.
  4. ^ Millikin, Eric. "I sawed off my own arm!". Fetus-X. Webcomics Nation. http://www.webcomicsnation.com/ericmillikin/fetusx2/series.php?view=archive&chapter=3393&name=fetusx2. Retrieved on 2006-09-03. 
  5. ^ Millikin, Eric. "Psychic Fetus Fucked With My Brain!". Fetus-X. Webcomics Nation. http://www.webcomicsnation.com/ericmillikin/fetusx2/series.php?view=archive&chapter=3393#strip6. Retrieved on 2006-11-26. 
  6. ^ Millikin, Eric. "Unidentified F'ing Object". Fetus-X. Webcomics Nation. http://www.webcomicsnation.com/ericmillikin/fetusx2/series.php?view=archive&chapter=1553&name=fetusx2#strip2. Retrieved on 2006-11-26. 
  7. ^ Millikin, Eric. "I Dared Create a Kitten from Corpses!". Fetus-X. Webcomics Nation. http://www.webcomicsnation.com/ericmillikin/fetusx2/series.php?view=archive&chapter=3393#strip3. Retrieved on 2006-11-26. 
  8. ^ Millikin, Eric. "Unidentified F'ing Object". Fetus-X. Webcomics Nation. http://www.webcomicsnation.com/ericmillikin/fetusx2/series.php?view=archive&chapter=1553&name=fetusx2#strip4. Retrieved on 2006-11-26. 
  9. ^ Breithaupt, Christy (July 26, 2006). "Dark visions: MSU grad's 'Fetus-X' comic earns national recognition". Lansing State Journal
  10. ^ a b Bennet, Brandon (August 1, 2002). "Guest appearance helps ‘Fetus-X’ move forward". The State News
  11. ^ Millikin, Eric (April 13, 2005). "Holy Shit, the Pope is Dead". Metro Times
  12. ^ Hart, Tom and Joey Manley (Oct. 21, 2002). "Modern Tales And Tom Hart Launch Serializer.Net Today".
  13. ^ Rall, Ted (2006). Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists, New York: Nantier, Beall, Minoustchine. ISBN 1-56163-465-4.
  14. ^ Xerexes, Xaviar (Dec. 2006). "The Comixpedia End of 2006 Roundtable".
  15. ^ MacDonald, Heidi (Oct. 12, 2006). "Serializer.net returns".
  16. ^ Bors, Matt (Oct. 24, 2006). "Serializer.net".
  17. ^ Wood, Mariko (March 2003). "Download: Good Comics and Baud Web Comics". The Comics Journal, No. 251, p. 38.
  18. ^ Flagg, Gordon (August 2006). "Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists". Booklist, Pg. 23
  19. ^ "Michigan State President Acts Presidential". (November 2000). Catalyst Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
  20. ^ "Stand-Up Comics". Hartford Advocate. http://www.ctnow.com/custom/nmm/hartfordadvocate/hce-hta-0201-ht06comics06.artfeb01,0,3994240.story. Retrieved on 2007-03-19. 
  21. ^ "The Best Webcomics of 2004". The Webcomics Examiner. http://webcomicsreview.com/?p=20. Retrieved on 2007-03-18. 
  22. ^ Mekkes, Mark (2006-07-21). "Final WCCA Voting Begins!" (blog post). Comixpedia. Xavier Xerexes. http://www.comixpedia.com/zorticfinal_wcca_voting_begins. Retrieved on 2007-02-16. "after extensive review, it has been determined by the WCCA Committee that Foetus-X's nomination for "Outstanding Romance Comic" does not comply with the Outstanding Romance Comic category's genre criteria" 
  23. ^ McCloud, Scott (2006). Making Comics, New York: Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-078094-0. Pg. 227
  24. ^ "News is honored by sports editors". (February 28, 2003). The Detroit News, p. 1H.
  25. ^ a b "Freep's fentanyl report is tops". (April 18, 2008). Detroit Free Press, p. 3A.
  26. ^ "Free Press wins big with SPJ; Journalists sweep the year's top awards". (April 19, 2009). Detroit Free Press, p. 9A.
  27. ^ "Mayoral reporting: Free Press wins top honor". (April 1, 2009). Detroit Free Press, p. 5A.
  28. ^ McKenzie, Charlie "Holiday monkey business". (December 8, 2005). Hour (Montreal, Quebec)
  29. ^ "A toast to Bubbles". (December 8, 2005). Los Angeles City Beat

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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