Because I would have to go buy the newspaper for my uncle. That was my introduction to comics, really - funny Sunday comics. Did you have a goal? How did you see your future? It’s been been a part of my life since I was a kid. But just through comics and cartoons and wanting to tell my own story I drew more and more. My older cousin drew and was like an older brother figure so I wanted to hang with him and draw too. How do you make this weirder? And for us, it’s making this strange, offbeat thing fun. I also work for Adult Swim and weirdness is part of the brand, and I want to be almost the weirdest thing on Adult Swim, the strangest thing - it’s, like, the fun goal. But I think what we like in the writers room and also with the artists is finding a way to take these crazy, sometimes seemingly esoteric concepts and making it weird in a funny way - like, being sweet or genuine or kind is weird to some people. It’s easy to present the crazy and messed-up stuff in a crazy and messed-up way. It has a sweetness even when things get crazy, a lightness. I’ve been lucky enough, no matter where I went, to be able to find that, and I try to showcase that in Strongburg, within the TV-14. I mean, there are no talking wolves or giant godheads, but in terms of the fun aspects of moving to a place and finding community, just that fun, that joy. What I like about Strongburg is that it has a lot of things I’ve seen almost anywhere I’ve lived. You move to different places and you meet different people and sometimes things are culturally different. Communication styles were way different - which is something I found myself even as an adult very interested in.ĭid the places you grew up influence your conception of Strongburg? Growing up I was more used to folks being direct that’s not to say folks weren’t direct, but it was not the direct that I was used to. How was it different?Ĭommunication, how things were communicated. But moving from East Orange to Upper Darby was a culture shock in a huge way. When I was 12, 13, I moved to Pennsylvania, like 10 minutes away from Philly, predominantly, I guess, more of a white neighborhood I think it’s a lot more diverse now, over the last 20 years. And I feel like an amalgamation of all those things. And everyone I grew up with was so present with their influences and the things that they loved, so eager to share it with each other. That in itself I think is a major issue in the work. So there was a lot of bending and pulling in regards to parents coming in with their standards as to how they were raised and how things were here. My mom and dad are both from Ghana my cousins and I were mostly first-generation born here. I had a large family, cousins, brothers, I was surrounded by all of them. The beauty of living in New Jersey - in what I could say was the ’hood at that point, not in a negative way at all, either - is I lived around my family. Residing above them, in the city of Strongburg, is an irascible, impetuous God (Reginald VelJohnson, who was Carl on “Family Matters”), a big head with a beard of cloud sending down to Earth for mozzarella sticks, and his aide-de-camp Wallace (the singer Shelley, formerly known as D.R.A.M.). Witherspoon), a horse, and the tracksuit-wearing, haiku-declaiming King Yeti (Andre Pascoe), a human. Regularly in their company are the emotionally needy Stupid Horse (J.D. “Lazor Wulf” knows what it’s about, even if it will take you a minute to catch up - or maybe you never quite catch up, which is after all one of the pleasures of travel, to be a little disoriented in a rich and settled Somewhere Else.Īt its center, more or less, are three sibling wolves, Lazor Wulf (rapper Vince Staples), skeptical, fundamentally moral and not as lazy as he gives out (“My brand is a wolf with a laser on his back who helps the homies”) Blazor Wulf (Quinta Brunson, from “A Black Lady Sketch Show”), who wears a flamethrower strapped to her back and is smart, entrepreneurial and a little ruthless, “a grabber of opportunities” and the hot-tempered, cannon-carrying Canon Wulf (WWE superstar Ettore “Big E” Ewen). Arriving as if fully formed from the collective head of creator Henry Bonsu and his writers, animators and voice artists, it creates a perfectly real impossible place you visit as if a foreign country, whose language and practices you might imperfectly understand but whose authority you grant. Recently returned to Adult Swim, the Afro-retro-futurist-absurdist “Lazor Wulf” was one my favorite shows of 2019, and it shows no signs of being less so in its second season.

Laser wolf cartoon