Sticking to my schedule, I've gotten over seven months ahead, which allowed me to write a 'Pearls Before Swine' movie script for the big screen.
If you're from a certain generation, you basically learn to read with 'Peanuts.' It's sort of the template for the modern strip. Its influence ceased to be noticed because it's in everything.
The wonderful thing about a book is that you have a canvas that is 300 pages wide, and it's all free space. You can make a piece of art as big as you want and whatever shape you want.
You can write a little and can draw a little, but there's necessarily a limitation on both in a comic strip, since it appears in such a tiny space.
Repeats are the absolute soul-crushing killers of the comics page.
I have days where the only words I say are to the person making my sandwich at the grocery store.
I think it might surprise the average person how angry people can get over the comics.
The only thing I learn on a daily basis from law school is that I disliked it and the law so much that it's constantly this fire at my heels.
To get syndicated as a comic strip artist is as likely as winning the lottery.
This is every creative person's dream - a hobby that I'm lucky enough to get paid for.
I don't like drawing characters facing right.
A biscuit in the States is something you would put gravy on with dinner, and it's not sweet in the least!
A comic strip has a rhythm and a pattern, and you got to get in and out quick. So you set up a joke, tell the joke, and done.
I know I can always draw, but I actually love the writing the most.
Basically, I learned to read by reading 'Peanuts,' just wanting to know what they were saying. I was 4 or 5 or whatever. I think it's a fairly common story.
When you do anything creative, you really have to live entirely in that world. I think my ability to do that is what makes me such a bad dinner guest. I'm always looking over someone's shoulder, taking in stuff around the room, immersed in the world of whatever I'm writing about, and keeping the characters completely in my head.
I'm 12 years old in my head.
I never feel burdened or overwhelmed by my work. People tell you to find something you love for a career, and I have. That makes me feel very lucky.
For me, going to Minneapolis is like going to Mecca.
I guess that compared to other comic strips, I'm edgy. But put me along something like 'South Park,' and I'm 'Captain Kangaroo.'
