Call For Questions for Jeff Darlington, Creator of General Protection Fault

Jeff Darlington, the creator of GPF has agreed to answer your questions. GPF has run daily for almost 5 years now; it has an archive full of office and technical humor, pop culture parodies, and an intricate science-fiction-themed, action-adventure epic. How else to describe GPF? Perhaps it’s best to let Darlington do that himself:

General Protection Fault started as an accidental doodle while sitting in a cubicle in a large information technology company. Needless to say, it was corrupted with geekiness from the beginning. Since that time, it has grown into a bizarre, humorous, and entertaining adventure with little signs of slowing down.

Post your questions for Darlington here, and we’ll send the top ten moderated questions over to him. We’ll take questions (one question per post to this thread) up until June 18th.

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Xaviar Xerexes

Wandering webcomic ronin. Created Comixpedia (2002-2005) and ComixTalk (2006-2012; 2016-?). Made a lot of unfinished comics and novels.

16 Comments

  1. How did the writing and drawing mechanism work for your crossover with Bill Holbrook’s Kevin & Kell (did you, e.g., each write your own strips from an outline you’d cooked up together?); and what was the motivation for it (i.e., had one of you arrived at a point in your story when you felt the crossover would be somehow opportune, or did one of you just email the other, “You know, I’ve got this crazy idea…”)?

    Paul Gadzikowski, paul@arthurkingoftimeandspace.com
    Arthur, King of Time and Space New cartoons daily.

  2. Gamester and Mischief don’t seem to be designed by yourself — or at least their appearance is not close to the style of the GPF regulars. Were they designed by someone else, or did you give them such a different look on purpose?

    You have created some of your strips with a fade-in/out motif, which can be done on computers but not in print. Was this hard to arrange? How was it done? If you ever collect these strips into dead-tree format, how do expect to reproduce them?

  3. Dude, I think we can all leave the Sexy Losers issue alone now. Even I’ve moved on. Let the healing begin, man. Let the healing begin.

  4. You’ve got a technical background – how much of your comic have you been able to draw from your work experiences? Do you, a la Dilbert, take jokes and characters from your work experience?

  5. 1. Did switching from “techie” plot lines with emphasis on the jokes to adventure/scifi/fantasy oriented plots affect GPF’s following? If so, how?

    2. How and why did you develop the “no mouth” style?

    3. How do you feel color has affected your comic?

    4. What do YOU enjoy most about GPF? This is an essay question and worth 56% of your grade. 😉

  6. How you’ve dealt with women’s sexuality in the strip has been interesting. Ki, who can come across as the strip’s “ideal woman,” is waiting until marriage. But we haven’t seen any motivation for this, just a positive response to Nick’s explanation of why he doesn’t want to when she asks, “why haven’t we?”

    Meanwhile, we know that evil Trudy practices (caricatured, unsafe) BDSM, will pursue a “taken” man at all costs, and bait minors with her own body (whether or not she can follow through with it). We also know that Sharon, whose alignment seems to run a bit on the chaotic good side, probably isn’t unopposed to sex outside marriage, but within a relationship.

    Were these decisions intentional, or did the characters just sort of emerge that way? In particular, why the decision to assign strong kink to the primary antagonist?

  7. When you started GPF, tech strips were a really big part of the webcomics scene. Now they’ve retreated to some degree and gamer strips have taken center stage. How has your attitude toward GPF changed as a result of these shifting trends?

  8. I love your comic, Fooker’s the best.

    I recently read the entire comic from the beginning, (I work tech support, so I need something to keep me sane.) and I noticed that in the beginning, the comic seemed very lighthearted and none of the story arcs seemed too connected, save for a few reoccurring characters and underlying themes. It seemed more of a play on geek stereotypes than a comic with a serious plotline.

    Over time you seemed to have started tying it all together, taking things that wouldn’t seemingly fit in with each other and making them tie into each other (quite well, I might add).

    To me this begs the question, did you always plan to have a serious sci-fi/fantasy plotline go along with GPF or did that fall into place for you after a period?

    -Kenko

  9. Is your moustache the source of all your powers? I think you’re the only mustachioed webtoonist (you’re the only one I know of at least. The others are either cleanly shaved or sporting beards too. Obviously something is going on…

  10. You were one of the artists who threatened to leave Keenspot had Sexy Losers joined. What was the reasoning behind this decision, and how do you feel about Sexy Losers currently?

  11. Why does the number six seem to be a recurring theme in your comic strip?

  12. You usually have a scriptural reference/biblical quote in the lower right hand corner of your website. This is a bit different, at least as far as webcomics go. What role, if any, do matters of faith play in the creation and purpose of gpf comics?

  13. Actually, mostly curiousity here from someone who is way too tired to register, but wants to post anyway.

    First off – Your latest huge story arc is just AWESOME stuff. You’re one heck of an author.

    Secondly – I have to ask. What is that crazy Uncle Wisebottom gonna come up with next? We’re due for another Mad Science Invention…And we need someone to carry on the Wrinkly Old Guy joke!

  14. You come across as extremely modest, especially for a webcartoonist ;).

    Are you aware of the immense respect the cartooning community has for you?

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