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My sense of humor is all over the place – I can laugh at the Daily Show one minute and Larry the Cable Guy the next. As long as it makes me laugh, I don’t care what the joke is. That randomness comes out a lot in my comics. Grammatically Uncorrect has no recurring characters or storylines; just moments captured in a single panel. That gives me the freedom to be as out there as I want, whether it’s dark, corny, topical, or irreverent. The only part of my sense of humor that doesn’t appear in my comics is vulgarity or offensiveness. Believe me, I love off-color humor (I’ve spent 10 years laughing my ass off at South Park), but I’ve also decided to set boundaries for my own cartoons, mainly so I can show them to my family.
 Since Grammatically Uncorrect is so random, it’s hard to say what inspires me. I’m usually not thinking about comics when I have an idea; it just comes out of the blue. I never think, “Ok, I need a comic. I’ll do one about such and such.” Ideas come when I think about normal situations in a strange way, eventually leading me to say, “There’s a comic!” And that’s why I can come up with several ideas in a short amount of time or go weeks without a good one. It’s frustrating, but it can also be exciting.
My favorite comic of all time is Gary Larson’s The Far Side. My uncle gave me a couple of his books when I was ten or eleven, and I was immediately hooked. I think it’s pretty clear that his style is my main influence. Some of my other favorites are Non Sequiter, Red Meat, Life in Hell, and The Perry Bible Fellowship. As you can see, I’m a pretty big fan of the bizarre and twisted. Maybe that’s why I drew Mr. Peanut getting smeared into a sandwich.
 The first time I drew a single-panel comic was when I was twelve. The story of the “canine peer pressure” one is on my website. I didn’t do too many others like that until I was in high school. My senior year, I decided to put a bunch of them together into a booklet to give to my friends. I needed a name and for some reason I thought back to an English teacher who frequently used the term “grammatically incorrect.” I thought it was funny that by changing one letter, I could make that phrase itself grammatically incorrect (believe me, it’s hilarious if you’re a grammar nerd like I am). The unwieldy yet clever name stuck.
It doesn’t take me too long to make a comic (which is pretty apparent when looking at some of the artwork). I can usually go through the whole process in a Sunday afternoon. I draw a four by four inch square, sketch the comic in pencil, go over it with ink (usually Staedtler pens and most often the 0.1 for fine lines), erase pencil lines, scan it, type captions, save it, and put it online.
As for the future of Grammatically Uncorrect, I’m hoping to get it published somewhere. It’s already featured on some websites (you can which ones at my site or MySpace page); now I want it in print. I also hope to self-publish a book sometime in the near future. But ideally I’d love to make a living doing this so I can walk around in my house in pajamas and still call it a workday. That, my friends, is called The American Dream.
All images Copyright Matt Reno: 2004-2007
No reproduction of any material is allowed in any format without written permission.
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