Street roots., September 12, 2014, Page 8, Image 8

street roots
8
S e p t 12, 2014
E rik a M oen lays it a ll out
on the story hoard in the
sex-positive world o f comics
BY SUE ZALOKAR
S T A F F W R IT E R 3
rika Moen is a Portland based
illustrator and cartoonist, who also
happens to be really fascinated by sex.
Moen and her husband of six years, Matt
Nolan, began the wildly popular web comic,
“Oh Joy Sex Toy” (OJST). Essentially the duo
provide a comic formatted review of sex toys
and sex positive topics.
Moen, who proudly claims years of
extensive field research in matters of
consensual, pleasurable sex, draws the wildly
? popular webcomic which releases each
Tuesday on her website, ohjoysextoy.com. .
Moen plans to release a hard copy of the
first year of the “Oh Joy Sex Toy” comics in
tandem with new comics created specifically
for the OJST Book.vMoen and Nolan are self-
publishing the 268-page project. The hook
should be available in November on the
OJST website.
She will be at the Rose City Comic Con at
the Oregon Convention Center, September
20-21 and will be tabling with Periscope -
Studio. She will have copies of her
autobiographical comic DAR! series available
for sale, which Will soon fall out of print. She
has the last few copies left and when they’re
gone, they’re gone. Moen will also have an
advance copy of the OJST book to show off.
She recently returned from some
international travel, and I asked Jier about |
h er trip.
E
Erika Moen: Um, well, I got hit by a car.
Sue Zalokar: What?
E.M.: Yep. With my settlement, my
husband and I went to go visit his family in
England.
S.Z.: Let's back up though. You were hit by a
car?
E.M.: I was a bicyclist in a crosswalk. I
bike every single day, but I’m really cautious.
I know lanes of traffic don’t all stop, so I
don’t know how this happened. I poked out
and it looked clear, so I started to go out -
very slowly, I wasn’t moving fast at all - it
was walking speed for sure. There wasn’t a
car, and then there just was a car. It’s a
miracle, hut he happened to hit me in such a
way that I didn’t break any skin. But I didn’t
get hurt! I w ent into shock immediately and I
was shaking so hard that somebody else had
to help me call my husband. I was shaking so
hard somebody else had to dial for me.
I definitely was hit by a car,, but I didn’t
have a scrape on me.
So, if you ever want to take an
international trip, you just have to cross
Powell Boulevard.
S.Z.: You've been making comics and
putting them online for 16 years - over half of
your life. How did you start drawing?
E.M.: I always kind of drew the same way
th at all kids draw. Comics always appealed to
me. Not just specifically comics, but picture
Dooks as well. I could just spend hours going
over th e exact same books as a kid.
My dad had this giant hardback book — it
P H O T O BY LEAH N A S H /
was ju st huge, you could smoosh a toddler
with it'— called “The Smithsonian Collection
of Turn of the C entury Sunday Comics.” Or
Sunday Funnies, maybe? I don’t rem ember
exactly, but it was all the classic comics from
way back in the day. I would spend hours just
going over it.
I really loved drawing for a really long
time. I kind of lost it for the last few years,
bu t I’m getting it back... I’ve been enjoying
drawing. And I do love making comics.
Comics have this unique ability to .
communicate difficult or complex subjects in ,
this really easy to digest way. And
controversial subjects as well.
S.Z.: There are stylistic distinctions between
Erika Moen drawings and non Erika Moen
drawings. How has your style evolved in the
time you have been drawing?
E.M.: Since I’ve been drawing OJST, I’ve
been trying really hard to simplify my lines, I
know even in the very first strips, it’s simple.
It’s cartoony. But as I’m going on, I’m trying
to eliminate every superfluous line. And
really get it down to the essence of conveying
information in a single line.
The reason why I have a limited color
palette, and if you look at all of my comics
over the last 16 years, they almost all have a
very limited color palette, is because I’m
scared of color,
It takes a good eye and artistic training to
know how to put together all of these
different colors and not have it look like, as
my friend Dylan MeConis likes to say, it
looks like vegetable soup. I like to choose
one tone and three shades of one tone and
then just work with that.
S.Z;: You pretty much built a college -
curriculum for yourself and then made your
passion into your art and trade. For those o f
our readers who may not have followed your
autobiographical comic, DAR!, or may not be
familiar with your current project, the wildly
popular, “Oh Joy Sex Toy,” can you tell me
about how you came to identify as a sex
educator?
E.M.: I don’t identify as a sex educator.
S.Z.: Really? Because that is how you are
portrayed. I've even heard you refer to yourself
as a sex educator.
E.M.: Fm making a distinction that
nobody else will give a damn about and
really, in the grand scheme of things, it
doesn’t mean anything. But, I see mySelf as a
cartoonist who does comics about sex
education. Again, a subtle distinction - but
an important one.
J think the whole world of sex is incredibly
fascinating. I’m a hobbyist. I’m not trained,
I’m not a professional, I’m not an expert.
S.Z.: Shall we talk about sex education for
our youth?
E.M.:Tf’s appalling.
S.Z.: Yes. B itt fifth graders don’t necessarily
need to know about butt plugs yet, so how ...
E.M.: They do need to know about
pleasure. It is left out of our sex ed
(curriculum). However in our culture,
pleasure for men - I’m going to be sexist.
Right now I’m just gonna talk about cis
gender stuff.
Men, we are taught in our culture, men
want sex. We know sex must feel good for
See MOEN, Page 9
courtesy of erika
Erika Moen in her
studio