They've been likened to Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, Ike and Tina Turner, the Mario Brothers and a host of other dynamic duos, but Kyle Strong, 19, and Vladimir Gutman, 19, both agree that there is one thing that separates them from the rest of riffraff. They're just... "better".
Strong and Gutman, both Northwestern University sophomores in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, are the inspiration for the "morbid" and "tasteless" humor of "'Kyle'+ VLAD", a webcomic written and illustrated by Matt Shore of twinshore.com. A comic that doesn't shy away from asking its readers the age-old question, "What do you do with a 123lbs. dead sorority girl?"
"It was a true facebook romance," Strong says. He fiddles with the top of a coffee mug as he describes how Gutman went out of his way meet Strong after he discovering through the facebook.com that they shared a love of the obscure Lars von Trier film, "Dogville". "This oafish character yelled something like 'dogs feet' at me." Strong almost stares down Gutman before continuing, "I almost wet myself."
It's either late Thursday night or early Friday morning, Strong and Gutman are in their dorm room on the third floor of Chapin Hall, reclining in office chairs they foraged out of a dumpster. The chairs are located in a workspace adjacent to a tent like structure adorned with pastel colored pillows that has been called at one time or another "The Cucumber Lounge", "The Opium Den", and "Sex-Fort". The dorm room walls are lined with posters that attempt to look iconoclastic. Gutman is wearing a yellow t-shirt and khaki colored women's sweatpants. Strong is in a grey hooded sweatshirt and what appear to be designer jeans.
"I'd describe Vlad as blatantly homicidal," said Matt Shore writer and illustrator of "'Kyle'+ VLAD". "And I'd describe Kyle as latently heterosexual."
Strong is double majoring in art history and English, and Gutman in political science and communications. But the two are either well versed in everything, or just good at faking it.
The conversation is kinetic; Gutman and Strong can't stick to one subject, and nothing is sacred. Before the night has ended the two will have gone to great lengths to offend court stenographers, homosexuals, migrant farmers, folk singers from Alabama, their girlfriends, and perhaps even each other. Gutman laughing at his own jokes. Strong keeping his delivery deadpan.
"We're both pretentious art house type people," Gutman said drinking Fiji Water out of a paper cup. Between jokes, the two eye each other almost awkwardly through their glasses.
"I like colors," Strong says "...and words."
"And I like the sound of my own voice," Gutman replies.
--Muindi F. Muindi