WORDS: ROBERT FOSTER

We’ve all seen interviews with nullos and videos of guys with shards of glass in their anus (I’m not going to bother linking that) — those things are fucking horrible but not really that creative — they’re just sex things. It’s the way God made those people. They’re just doing what comes naturally.

But what about when people just do stuff to wind people up? Stuff that’s just gratuitous, childish, and willfully obnoxious. That’s where it’s not just your dick telling you what to do, it’s when you’ve got to think about the best way you can upset people with just your “being a dick” skills alone.

The guy who runs the online comic Electric Retard (which has been around for a while, if you’re a total internet guy — I know, I know) has those skills in spades. He is funny as shit and he’s even been banned in Germany. His comics are basically MS Paint versions of the worst things that could ever happen, like giant Hitlers fucking
grandmas and stabbing frozen shit into people. They are laugh-out-loud hilarious, each strip starts out with a boring, normal situation and that situation gets completely ruined by something really, truly
awful, which is pretty funny.

I spoke to him because I think he’s funny. His name is Eric and he’s an American (and he’s not a Nazi, he’s just a dick).

PLATFORM: Hello Eric. How did you make these great comic strips?

ERIC: I draw them with MS Paint. I don’t use a tablet or anything, just a mouse. I have never tried to make a masterpiece out of my comics, unlike some other people who are like Picasso with MS Paint. In fact, I have always intentionally tried to make them look very childish looking. As long as you can recognize a shit as a shit, a rapist as a rapist, and a massive Hitler cock splitting open a grandma as a massive Hitler cock splitting open a grandma, then my job is done.

The only thing I pay particular attention to in the drawings are bodily fluids. I always try to make them look as realistic as possible within the confines of MS Paint. That way, a little girl getting her vagina cleaved open with a fire axe looks especially authentic. To be frank, I really enjoy drawing blood and gore. I work as a graphics designer for a games company I co-founded and the same amount of attention goes into my gore in the games as the comics do.

What inspired you to be so unpleasant?

For me it wasn’t exactly a case of being unpleasant. There is the shock value, of course, but for people like me, shock directly converts to massive amounts of hilarity. A lot of people have accused me over the years of just trying to be shocking, edgy or offensive, but that is just the cherry on top. I find the stuff that goes on in the comics absolutely hilarious. It makes me laugh. It makes a lot of other people laugh, and I suppose if you don’t think it’s funny then the least I can do is try and offend you. That way, everyone gets something out of the comic. If you don’t like my comics, then fuck you.

Where did you get your ideas from?

I usually begin drawing a comic without any particular ending or joke in mind. I simply start off with a few frames depicting everyday, suburban life. Once I have that done, I ask myself, “What would be the most fucked up thing possible to happen in this situation?” and usually it doesn’t take very long to think of something. The fact that I start the comics without a joke planned for the end makes them seem especially random, and if when I am finished with the completed comic, the comic makes me laugh, then I put it up. I’ve made a lot of comics that I’ve either never published or taken down after a day or two simply for the fact that I didn’t think they were funny.

Do you get a lot of hatemail?

Surprisingly no, most of the mail I get is fan mail. Although I have received some pretty hilarious hatemail in the past. The best hatemail I ever got was from the German government, who demanded that I either take down the comics or add an age verification system. Obviously, I didn’t do a fucking thing, so now the comic is banned in Germany and I will never be able to visit that country. The felonies I have apparently committed according to German law carry a minimum five year sentence, so fuck you German cunts and die.

I’m not a psychologist but I reckon if you met one they’d say you were acting up or acting out or whatever. Did you have a hard time getting along with kids when you were at school?

I was nearly expelled from one school for causing so much trouble, but my parents chose to remove me anyway and put me into another school. I did a lot of nasty shit. At school camp I walked around at night time and took a shit on other people’s tents, abandoned the camp, and ran to the nearby road to moon people driving by, and pretty much acted like a huge cock. I got sent home a few days early and my parents killed me. I also sent mass emails of goats to the entire school, hacked into the network and changed all the printers around to different rooms, and once crashed the entire school network. Considering all the shit I did, I’m lucky I didn’t get expelled, but I could get by by throwing around that, “I have ADHD” excuse that people buy so easily.

Actually, that was just the first school. In the second school I sent bomb threats to my teachers and smeared shit all over the bathrooms regularly. I remember one time there was a competition to make an epilepsy support website design in computer class, so I just made it an animated gif of flashing black and white that said EPILEPSY in big letters. I think that was my first ever meme to have any success on the net.

My parents took me out of that school and put me in a special school where I pretty much slept all day and smoked weed. I didn’t really get up to much trouble in those days aside from drawing giant pentagrams all over school property and trying to fuck as many depressed and vulnerable goth chicks as possible.

Pretty much the entire time I was in school I was drawing pictures of people getting raped and killed and then passing them to other people in class just to see their reaction. I had to see the school counselor a few times because of this and they didn’t hesitate to call my parents.

Since then I have dropped out of three universities. I am never going to an educational institution again.

I haven’t really had too many people I would consider friends during my life. Almost everyone I know has hated me since I was a kid, even my parents. I got my social pleasure from fucking with people and being a cock, and that’s still how I get my social interaction to this day. It’s kind of like saying, “You hate me so I am your friend.” Other people’s contempt of me has always made me feel validation as a person. If people genuinely like me, I tend to ignore it for some reason. I realized a long time ago that I was probably really fucked up in other people’s minds, but it doesn’t bother me because I’ve always pretty much considered people no better than animals.

I suppose you could say that I am a nihilist. A lot of people tend to associate nihilism with desperation and negativity, but for me, nihilism represents the ultimate in spiritual freedom, which is why I can make comics about children being raped and not feel bad about it one bit.

Who are your favorite comic book artists?

My favorite artist is Mike Diana. I don’t like many other comics. To be perfectly frank I
think most web comics suck ass. The only one I still read is Penny Arcade. I think it’s funny because I am a pretty huge gamer (although I barely ever talk to people about games) and actually understand the comics. I don’t need to read Tycho’s retarded explanations that accompany every one of them.

My comics aren’t like that. If you can’t appreciate the humor of a guy stabbing another guy with a frozen shit and then fucking the wound, then you are trying too hard to think that you are “grown up.” Growing up doesn’t take effort, it just happens as you get more experienced with life, and that doesn’t necessarily stop frozen shit rape from being funny.

I totally agree. Thanks Eric!

And here’s one of his strips, in full, to finish. Enjoy!

SIMULTANEOUSLY POSTED ON PLATFORM.

-PLATFORM

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This entry was posted on 01.14.10 at 5:05 pm by Platform . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 2.0 feed. You can E-mail it to a friend.
33 Comments
  1. surgical Says:

    sooo old


  2. Maxwel Says:

    simply not entertaining


  3. nachochip Says:

    old but still awesome


  4. dondi Says:

    SLAYER

    FUCK YOU


  5. Fowad Says:

    Funny shit.


  6. loosejuice Says:

    Woooaaaah, there are still people with Internet access who haven’t seen these?

    It’s like those 16 year olds you hear at the mall talking about 4chan in hushed tones like it’s some big fucking secret.


  7. dan dizzle dan Says:

    Can you explain the humor again? i thought stuff like this was funny when i was six because it was STUFF PEOPLE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO BUT WE SHOW THEM DOING IT ANYWAY AND IT IS HILARIOUS.

    Kinda the way that farts are funny BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO FART IN PUBLIC, HA HA HA


  8. homeless. Says:

    awesome pervert


  9. haha Says:

    loosejuice spies on 16 year olds at the mall


  10. Dirty Sanchez Says:

    Dude, that is some dark shit.

    (wait…lemme look again)

    Ok. No.

    Still awful.

    Bad and wrong.

    -

    Bit of advice: run those by a therapist before you publish them and say clearly “I do not wish to cut off and eat a child’s penis.”

    Get it in a file somewhere. Anywhere.

    Can’t wait for a court psychiatrist to see these.

    One argument with a girl at a bar and you are fucked, son.


  11. Maxipad Says:

    Has anyone seen Michael Jackson do the moonwalk?


  12. Maxipad Says:

    Good interview though.


  13. Kid Douche Says:

    Funny, funny shit! I was hoping that the interview would reveal the artist to be more psychologically stable than his comics, but oh well.


  14. stoops Says:

    well we’ll see. the rolling stones were shocking once.


  15. Angela Merkel Says:

    “The felonies I have apparently committed according to German law carry a minimum five year sentence, …” <- Bullshit


  16. Narwhal Says:

    Holy Jesus Fucking Christ. It’s not that the comics make my brain explode, I can see the humor. But, listening to this guy is creep fucking city. What kind of maladjusted weirdo enjoys smearing shit on bathroom walls on a regular basis?

    I wish you would have asked if he’s ever had a real live girlfriend.


  17. Radtooth Says:

    OMFG I found that comic like a year ago and could not for the life of me remember the name of it!! THANK YOU SO FUCKING MUCH!!!


  18. awwwmannnn Says:

    I always wondered what that geek in highschool who had to go see the youth worker every second class got up to.. now I know.

    He sits at home friendless, going on porntube bi-hourly to take out his fear of women, smokes weed by himself, and has dillusions of grandeur because he MS Paints his psychosis into shitty unfunny comics..

    keep sitting at your screen, waiting for morpheus to someday give you the code..


  19. stoops Says:

    and i’m shocked, SHOCKED i tell you, that this chap has no friends.


  20. Clayton. Says:

    I’m shocked at how British all this shit is, but I still loled by American standards.


  21. Jay Says:

    British ?! Its says hes American. Plus, you yanks lead the way the insular psycho high-schoolers.


  22. Zippy Says:

    Cartoons are the last vestige of acceeptable anti-social behavior. Our freedoms are almost gone.


  23. A bit about Eric Says:

    Sounds like eric is not so much a nihilist, but a narcissist in total denial of his self love so calls himself nihilistic. If you actually didnt care about anything you wouldn’t have such repetitive themes in your drawings and your behavior. If you believe in nothing then you would think everything is acceptable and offensive and drawings would have more than just gore and shit. Eric believes in shit and gore, and that he is better than others, and he clearly doesn’t understand his own behavior….probably a sociopath.


  24. organ grinder Says:

    “I suppose you could say that I am a nihilist.” hahaha


  25. Radtooth Says:

    Hes obviously a sociopath, or at least leads us to believe that he is. But what the fuck does that have to do with how funny the comics are?? Most of my favorite artists have some weird tick about them, something that sets them apart from the rest at least.


  26. Uncle Wah Wah Says:

    You want to be a sociopath? Go and act these out in public. Live your vision.


  27. Stephen Glass Says:

    has to be the first time someone has actally expressed themselves artistically with MS paint


  28. TurdTown Says:

    This was amazing.


  29. chapstick Says:

    ‘keep sitting at your screen, waiting for morpheus to someday give you the code..’
    ahahahahahahahahaha.

    but yeah he’s just a creep who never grew up. smearing shit on the walls? thats just fucking dirty, are you mentally retarded?!


  30. Ana Says:

    apparently he has had a gf. used to say on his site.


  31. Bill Says:

    Meh. They’re well done for MS paint comics, but they try a bit too hard.


  32. trolol Says:

    “I suppose you could say that I am a nihilist.” aka fat loser with no friends taking the angers he has at life out on gory comics.


  33. Dave Says:

    This gives me an erection.


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ZEBRA KATZ MIXTAPE: CHAMPAGNE

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STREET BONER 1681

Looks like Dora the Explorer is all growed up and ready to party!

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STREET BONER 1678

When I’m mayor, brass knuckles will no longer be illegal but short hair and flats will.

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