Q&A w/ David Wilborn of Urban Jungle

In April of 2008, David Wilborn began Urban Jungle, the story of one man living in a world of animals… and I mean that literally. I’ve been reading Urban Jungle for a few years now and the comic never fails to bring a laugh. David was gracious enough to agree to an interview and chat about how he creates comics.

Tell us a little about yourself. How long have you been cartooning?

Well, like a lot of cartoonists, I’ve pretty much been drawing and creating characters as long as I can remember. My dad was a computer programmer back when they used those big reams of track-feed paper, and he used to bring home the used batches for me to draw on. I went through reams and reams of the stuff.

The first character I remember creating was named “Midget Man,” who was basically a football helmet with tennis shows sticking out of the bottom.

Is cartooning something you always saw yourself doing?

I always wanted to be a cartoonist “when I grew up.” I recently realized that I wasn’t going to get much more grown up than I am now, so I’d better get cracking on it. The fact of the matter is that there has never been a time when I haven’t been drawing and cartooning for myself, and it’s nice to get it out there and find out that at least a few other people appreciate it.

Have you done any other comics besides Urban Jungle?

I drew several comics for my college paper, The Daily Cougar, at the University of Houston. My first was called Harrison, which was the story, not surprisingly, of a college student. It included a roommate with a bomb for a head, and a robot that transformed into a Cushman (those little golf carts that maintenance guys drive). It makes me cringe a bit when I look back at it, but I definitely started to learn the ropes of cartooning on the strip.

I also co-created two comics, A Little Moore and The Smarties, with my college roommate David Eastman. He was really the brains of these strips and I did the drawing. Both were created under the Pseudonym “D.T. Moore” and drawn in a different style to hide the fact that I was drawing more than one cartoon for the paper.

When did you first become aware of webcomics and when did you get the idea to start one?

My very first Webcomic was called Wild Willy, about a single guy who had a pet cat and duck. The duck’s name was Phil and he was really a prototype for Phil in Urban Jungle. I started publishing Wild Willy way back 1998—this before “Webcomics” really existed as such. I updated sporadically and the comic lasted less than a year. I often wonder what the comic would have become by now if I had kept it up.

A few years ago when I decided to get back into cartooning regularly, I started publishing on Blogger and pitched Urban Jungle to several newspaper syndicates with little success. A friend of mine pointed me to the WebComics.com website. I credit the book “How To Create Webcomics” with giving me a lot of what I needed to get Urban Jungle looking professional and start creating a presence on the web.

What are your influences as a cartoonist?

As a kid I couldn’t read enough Dr. Suess. I think this was one of my biggest influences to get into drawing. Growing up, we always had shelves of cartoon books in the house—Peanuts, Garfield, Hagar the Horrible, Broom Hilda, stuff like that. I remember sitting down lots of times and practicing drawing the characters.

Later comics like Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbs and Dilbert definitely had their influence as well.

Where did the idea for Urban Jungle come from?

I always thought it would be fun to create a comic that included both anthropomorphic animals who mostly acted like people, as well as house pets, and see if it could pull it off. So far it seems to have worked—nobody’s asked me why a duck works in an office but a pug stays home and has to be taken for walks.

I was also drawn to the idea of doing a comic featuring only one human being with the rest of the characters being animals—this was also something I have not seen done very much. If I stick to this rule, it means Zack is going to be single for the rest of his life; otherwise we get into kind of strange territory.

Thirdly, I knew I wanted to do an office comic, given that I have worked in an office pretty much my whole career. I figured I would have plenty of material to pull from.

Zack is a bit of a geek. Do you share any traits with him?

I always tell people any resemblance is coincidental… but truth be known, for the most part Zack is pretty much a younger, single version of me. My wife gave me a science fiction strategy computer game as a Valentine’s Day gift, if that gives you any indication.

Unlike Zack, I’ve never really had a boss I didn’t like, and I actually enjoy my job.

If you could sum up Urban Jungle in a few words, what would they be?

One man. One office. Lots of animals in ties.

You can read Urban Jungle Monday thru Thursday at www.urbanjunglecomic.com