Unsuspecting Characters:
Aditi Mali on Shampoo and Daddy!
interview by Tony Wei Ling
Aditi Mali: Hello Tony! Thank you for making me do this! Hmm every time I’m asked to describe Shampoo and Daddy! I don’t really know what to say besides it being a collection of moments passing through the ordinary lives of Shampoo the rabbit and Daddy the pig. It’s the usual day-to-day conversations and experiences, the mundane—drawn into comics haha. How would you describe it!
TWL: IDK, it’s hard to do it justice! It does feel like a collection of passing, everyday moments, but in this way where the characters keep bumping into a different conversation than they intended to have. The comics and the friendship itself seem to be about Shampoo and Daddy repeatedly disappointing and irritating each other, just by being a little inattentive or a little dumb. You have a light touch with those moments, but also somehow take those injured feelings seriously. Well, not quite seriously—it’s often the punchline—but earnestly, maybe.
Would it be too personal a question to ask about your relationship to sincerity? I first saw these comics on Instagram, which sometimes feels dominated by overly sweet, overwhelmingly earnest comics. And one way I might describe Shampoo and Daddy! is that they’re almost-but-definitely-not like that.
Aditi Mali: That’s a good observation, Tony. I couldn’t have put it any better!
Hmm about my relationship with sincerity… I feel like sincerity itself is kind of a spectrum. All I can say and know is that my work comes from a place of honesty and sincerity based on what I experience in and out of myself. The inside and outside are the only places I have known and probably will ever know, but the work that I make and hope to make would fall somewhere between the inside and outside experiences. It is the thing that bridges my thoughts and my experiences of life.
TWL: What’s it been like to release the book into the world? And can you talk a bit about how you first started the strip?
Aditi Mali: Since it’s my first book-book, it’s been extra exciting to put it out into the world and to see people’s reactions to it. When I made the first issue of Shampoo and Daddy!, I didn’t fully intend on making it a thing but definitely wanted to and it just happened.
I had had these two characters in mind since late 2021/early 2022 but was too scared to start doing something with them. Good ole perfectionism.
I made the first issue two days before leaving for Indie Comix Fest, Delhi in Oct 2022. I quickly wrote down whatever thoughts came into my head, let it marinate overnight. The next day I drew, coloured and printed 20 copies on my janky old home printer. I remember feeling a certain very rare, nearly extinct, sense of pride when I first held the issue in my hands.
Little did I know, I’d go on to make the rest of the issues in the same hasty fashion haha. I wouldn't say I work great under pressure but I sure do work under pressure.
Readers often ask about the names of the characters. ‘Shampoo’ comes from my cat, Maau. He has many pet names, a lot of the weird ones come out when I'm massaging him—‘Shampoo’ being one of them. It just gets all the cute aggression out when you say it, try it! Emphasis on ‘Sh’. And ‘Daddy’ because I’d had this little joke in my mind for some time where someone asks someone named Daddy why they’re called Daddy. Then Daddy says “my mother named me after her father” (because Daddy’s mother called her father Daddy) lol.
I was looking to renew my Patreon rewards for 2023 for my postbox-tier patrons and thought of sending them an issue of Shampoo and Daddy! a month. And so I did, although sometimes it was 2 issues a month because I couldn't finish one of them last month but I pulled through. All the 12 issues were made at home on my funny printer and this beautiful orange/beige copier paper that brought out colours.
Somewhere around the 8th issue, I decided to collect all the issues into a book. Also I was starting to get a little tired of printing, cutting, folding, stapling at home before every comix fest haha. I totally could’ve outsourced the printing of the individual issues, but I didn’t want to.
As far as the printing of the book is concerned, it was a ride, to say the least. I found a printer, made 200 copies and he messed. them. all. up. Never got any money back, it was a nightmare. Then one of my patrons offered to fund the second print run of the book and recommended another printer. Still not the best but so much better than the first print run.
All of this to say, if there’s anyone trying to self publish their full colour book—it's very important to do proper research for the printer. Even if it’s not full colour, do your research haha. It’s been a big learning curve.
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TWL: One thing I love about your comics is that tonally, they ping-pong between the cute, precious world of friendship and the absurd, cynical world of dread. It’s not unusual for artists to contrast adorable animals with existential dread, of course, but your strips actually seem invested in the sweetness—it’s not all irony. How do you think about tone in your comics?
Aditi Mali: Thank you! I personally enjoy unsuspecting characters being a little suspecting. Honestly, I was just looking to draw characters that are not me. I wanted to break away from making autobio works but it ended up still being autobio but this time I had the masks of two characters that don’t necessarily look like me. Haha it feels like I’m letting out a secret.
Like I said earlier about the first issue, I had just quickly written down my thoughts one after the other and those became Shampoo and Daddy’s personalities. It was like journaling. Then after a point it was just a matter of shaping the personalities in a peculiar way. I was getting to know myself through them and vice versa. It was only during the last few issues that I was confident enough to say things like “Oh, Shampoo would never say that” or “That's such a Daddy thing to do” haha.
Mostly I needed a space to express thoughts I was shy about or bothered by without immediate accountability. The characters are saying the things that I want to say but nobody knows that. I can say anything. But I guess now they do. Shit.
I wanted them to have human qualities and be grounded in reality on some level but sometimes I just wanted to see them partake in silly situations like in the 8th issue where Shampoo is split in two. The fact that anything can happen in comix was really helpful.
TWL: I was so delighted when I got to the part in your book where a cartoon match burns away bits of the actual physical page. What was it like getting that moment in the book, and how exactly do you print a book with burned pages?
Aditi Mali: I think it's safe to say that I'm a bit of a pyromaniac. Small fires only. I think fire is very cool. I'm also a fire sign (Sagittarius). Not that it’s important but since we are on the topic haha.
As mentioned earlier, the individual issues were sent to my patrons––it was a doable quantity, about 20 copies to burn. I knew I wanted to write a story about my love for fire and because I've been burning things for fun since I was little—I figured I should physically burn the edges. The burning idea came first and the story was written to accommodate the burns. Not much happens there, just fun with fire.
But then I took this issue to comix fests and had to burn more and more. One time I burned pages right at my table at Indie Comix Fest, Bangalore (it’s an outdoor location). It felt like a performance piece and helped attract buyers haha.
I was contemplating including the 5th issue in the book because how do I burn so many books. But I kept it and now I single-handedly burn the books in batches haha. Made my life more difficult and fun!
TWL: You also have these gags that put photos alongside the cartoons—like the nightmare where Shampoo has Modi’s face, or someone is cooking a stock image of greens that has the Getty Images watermark on it. There’s even a working QR code at one point… Have you always played with different media in your comics? How do you think about those moments?
Aditi Mali: Well about Modi’s face, an immediate nightmare I could think of was the state of my country so I put his face there. Also wanted to sneak my political opinion in the book haha.
The stock images came out of pure laziness. I was also in a time crunch when I made issue #10 and #11 so I thought of making them both in the same layout, 4 panels per page. As they say, desperate times call for desperate measures. I enjoy mixing media—the juxtaposition, the stark quality it brings, makes me feel joy. I enjoy stretching mediums into one another and want to do more such things with my future books.
I was a little concerned that Lorde would find out I’ve used the lyrics from her songs in my book and wasn’t sure if I was allowed to do that or if I’d get in trouble so just to be on the safer side I referenced the album very obviously by putting the QR code there. Also it’s a good album. People should listen to it.
TWL: I don’t want to ask you “what’s next,” but of course I want to know what you’re thinking about and looking forward to now. What kind of work do you feel like making, at the moment? Whether or not it’s the actual plan!
Aditi Mali: I really wanted to start my new book earlier this year but that just hasn’t happened. Putting Shampoo and Daddy! out and selling, shipping took up so much time and energy than I expected. I guess I didn't see that coming. But also I have no idea how time just flew by so fast. 2024 is almost over and I’m still sitting in my chair? Quite a few personal life things also caused setbacks but anyway, I do have a story in mind. I've been meaning to work on it since 2017–18. It’s always stayed at the back of my mind all these years and I've been looking for the “right time” to start, much like how I started Shampoo and Daddy!
It’ll be a semi-autobiographical story of the time when I was 19/20 and my relationship with the internet and strangers while also drifting away from my friends at the time. This time I will be drawing human characters as opposed to animals even though animals are more fun to draw. I want to challenge myself.
I’ve only drawn 4 pages so far. I plan to draw it on paper unlike most of Shampoo and Daddy! Also, I plan on having it be a 120 pager. My goal was to release 10 pages a month on my Patreon. I want to take this one slow so I’m gonna start working on it once some life things are figured out in the coming months. But I’m excited!
Aditi Mali is a cartoonist, visual artist and cat mother from Pune, India. She likes to explore life’s nuances through her comix and art.
Tony Wei Ling is a comics researcher at UCLA and an editor at Nat.Brut.