Kevin:  I’m talking to Mike Chapman, one of the Brothers Chaps.

Mike Chapman:  That’s correct.

Kevin:  “Chaps” being plural for Chapman.

Mike:  That’s right.

Kevin:  Or would it be “Chapmen”?   (laughs)

Mike:  Uh, Chapmen.  Yes.

Kevin:  But  they go by the name “The Brothers Chaps,” and they are
responsible for the Homestarrunner.com site.  Now, how would you
describe what it is?  I always think of it as an online cartoon
site, but it’s more than that, isn’t  it?  How do you describe it to
people?

Mike:   Yeah, the way I sum it up best is sort of an online
experience akin to finding secrets in video games, that sort of a
feel, that lots of fans have told us that they feel about the site. 
There’s lots of secrets in the site.  The sort of feeling you get
when in the original Mario Brothers game, getting into the negative world, or finding the 40 extra men secret, and things like that.

Kevin:  What was the genesis of the whole site?  Obviously it
didn’t start off as a website, did it?  It was probably just a
couple of characters?

Mike:  Yeah, a friend of ours, Craig Zobel and I, wrote a story in
1996 that’s got most of the main characters – Strong Bad, Homestar,
Pom Pom and the Cheat I think are the main ones.  Just a story we
made one afternoon, went to Kinko’s, made about ten or fifteen
copies of it, and kind of gave it to our friends, and that was it,
really, for several years.  We just did that in summer.  We were in
college, and did it in a bored afternoon.

Kevin:  Such humble beginnings.  The voices came later on then?

Mike:  Yeah, and then when we discovered Flash, or wanted to learn
Flash as something that we thought was cool but also something that
we were interested in doing as a career, making money doing graphic
design and web design and things like that, so we were learning
Photoshop and Illustrator and Flash and all the different
applications for that stuff.  And as we learned Flash we just used
Homestar Runner and the guys pretty much as a way to learn Flash,
and it took off on its own.

Kevin:  So Flash has pretty much sped up the whole process of
preparing the stuff on the site obviously.

Mike:  Right.

Kevin:  Can you give me some kind of example of how the site’s
popularity has increased since you started doing it?  When did you
start the site?

Mike:  We started in January of 2000.  We’ve never done any advertising, or anything like that, so back then there was probably two or three people checking it a day – probably Matt and I and our
dad, or something like that.  It’s been pretty gradual growth.  It’s all been word of mouth, lots of links on people’s personal pages, and stuff like that.  There’s been a few spikes in viewership, like last summer we were in Yahoo Magazine and Internet Life magazine.

Kevin:  Yeah, it’s kind of like the internet equivalent of a hit TV
show now, isn’t it?   I mean it’s really grown a lot.

Mike:  Right.

Kevin:  One of the most surprising things about the website is the
way it exists with no advertising of any kind which is really rare
on the internet, and it’s become a day job for you both, correct?

Mike:  Yep.  Right.

Kevin:  And I know you probably get this question a lot, but has it
reached a point where doing the site is profitable, or self-
sufficient, at least?

Mike:  Yeah, it’s self-sufficient.  We’re able to pay for the
hosting and support Matt and I.

Kevin:  And that’s through T-shirt sales?

Mike:  Yes, just through T-shirts, pretty much.  We also sell
stickers and some other stuff but mostly just T-shirts and
sweatshirts.

Kevin:  With all you have to do, though, I don’t  imagine you’re
stuffing envelopes with T-shirts yourself, right?

Mike:  We were for a long time.  In February of this year we got a
fulfillment company to do that for us, but up until then it was at
our parents’  house.  Our parents did it and were able to handle it
pretty much by themselves when it was only a few orders a day.  And
then this Christmas it got pretty crazy, so for most of November
and December there was any number of people from the neighborhood –
family, friends, neighbors that were home from college and whatever
– and they’re stuffing envelopes, and it was fun.  We had the ping
pong table covered with stuff, and shelves up.

Kevin:  Does the site ever get overloaded with visitors?  Does it
get bogged down?

Mike:  Yeah, in late December last year it got pretty slow.  We
were still on  shared hosting at the time and it actually went down
for a few days at the beginning of January, which was when we made
that “The System is Down” short.

Kevin:  One of my favorites, actually.

Mike:  Yeah.  (laughs)

[ PAGE TWO OF THE HOMESTAR RUNNER INTERVIEW ... ]