This Free Comic Book Day, Papercutz releases The Loud House, based on the popular Nickelodeon cartoon series by Chris Savino. From there, we’ll get more of our favorite animated family in comic form in even more releases!

I got a chance to talk to Savino about the series, its influences, and it being made into a comic series.

Graphic Policy: So The Loud House is based on your family. But when did you decide to actually create the series and how long was it in the works?

Chris Savino: I am from a family of 10. I have five sisters and four brothers. I’m number nine. The Loud House is based on my family as far as the idea of what it’s like to grow up in such a crowded household. The original concept for The Loud House was about a boy rabbit with 25 sisters. (Because I am used to being from a big family, 10 didn’t seem crazy enough so I pushed it to extreme numbers.) The initial idea had been floating around in my head for years, but it wasn’t until 2013, when I came to Nickelodeon, that I started trying to figure out what that idea would be. From the time it was a short for the Nickelodeon Animated Shorts Program in early 2013, to the time it was greenlit to series it took about a year. Which in standard terms of development, was very fast.

GP: You’ve said that Peanuts, Dennis the Menace, Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes were all influences on the series. How does it feel to come full circle to be inspired by comics and see your animated series as a comic?

CS: Oh yes. All of those are major influences, including Krazy Kat (George Herriman), Polly and Her Pals (Cliff Sterrett) and Pogo (Walt Kelly). I used to think the dream would be having a comic strip that was so popular that it would some day be turned into an animated series. Now I dream that the opposite might come true. Having a series that is so popular that it would one day live on as a comic strip. I hope the comic strip aesthetic comes through when watching The Loud House – I’ve said it before and it will always be the same: The Loud House is my love letter to the art of comic strips.

GP: How’d the comic series come to happen and how involved are you?

CS: When Papercutz came to us with the desire to publish a Loud House graphic novel series I jumped at the chance. Again, with its comic aesthetic, it felt that it could be a totally natural transition into comic form. I was very involved in volume one, I wanted to make sure it was a solid template for subsequent volumes, so I asked the artists and writers of The Loud House if they would all participate in making it and they were all too happy to help out! I have very specific ideas about layout and timing in comics, especially funny comics, and wanted to convey those to the team. Now that we have one volume done, I feel it was a pretty solid foundation for the others that follow. Volume two and onward are using new writers and new artists outside of the Loud House crew and it will be exciting to see how they interpret the show.

GP: What does the comic form allow you to do that an animated series might not?

CS: We sometimes come up with ideas for the show that just aren’t big enough to fill an 11-minute episode, so instead of throwing them away we used them as ideas for the comic. We also get a chance to tell stories from other characters’ points of view that we may or may not be able to do on the show as well.

GP: My family too has the thing with the first letter of our names (all B) and me and my brothers are all “Br” to boot. From someone who remembers this fondly growing up myself I have to ask. How often were names messed up by your parents?

CS: Haha. Oh man, so you know the struggle is real. My parents said the wrong name all the time. Sometimes they would go through every name in the household before hitting on the correct name. My sisters are all L names and all four letters and their middle name is all Marie. Sadly, the boys didn’t get that treatment. But if you got called out with the middle name Marie, you knew you were in trouble! “Christopher Marie, get down here right now!!!” Hahaha.

GP: Yeah, I do. Makes me feel so much better that my experience wasn’t unique! Thanks for chatting and look forward to picking up the comic this Free Comic Book Day!