Max Dlabick (Andre and Karl) and Tobias Rose join forces to create the webcomic Stick n Poke, which is available to read for free on the platform Line Webtoon.
Stick n Poke is about Mal Hassan, a girl who drops everything to follow her favorite band on tour after being offered a job to manage their social media accounts. The story is still in its early stages, but Max and Tobi want to break hearts and make their readers cry with maximum levels of feels.
The comic made its debut on Webtoon on August 30, 2019, and boasts over 10,000 subscribers. According to Tobi the idea behind the project was in development for about two and a half years before they started production on the actual webcomic. The story originally resulted from a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. The two continued to illustrate and discuss the story for fun before finally deciding it had to be turned into a full-blown comic.
The name for the comic was inspired by the many stick n poke tattoos both authors have. They say the idea of stick n pokes will show up a lot in the comic. It’s used as a metaphor for the idea of self-inflicting both art and harm on yourself. They say it’s a theme that just kind of stuck.
Both Max and Tobi studied at the Kansas City Art Institute which is where they met. Like many of the creators on the Webtoon platform, however, neither feels art is their full-time job yet.
“Being an artist in the real world is really hard,” Max says.
Max works for a year-book company, which they say is a kind of art but mostly just pushing pixels around.
Tobi works at a library, which doesn’t offer much in the way of illustration but does have some inspiration by way of people watching.
Not every webcomic would be suited for print, but I can definitely image Stick n Poke off-screen and on a page. Like most of the webcomic authors I’ve interviewed, Max and Tobi are hoping to see Stick n Poke printed someday. Max already has some ideas on what printing company they might want to use if they decide to self-publish hard copies.
It was fun chatting with this dynamic duo and you can listen to the interview with Max and Tobi on the Chaotic Pop Podcast via Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can also support Stick n Poke on Patreon, however, the Patreon content is intended for an 18+ audience.
