Underground comix and The New Yorker . And , of course , “ The Funny Pages ” in the National Lampoon — Ed Subitzky and M . K . Brown . There are so many cartoonists , I can ' t name them all . And then there are all these wonderful artists today . |
How is it different now than when you first started ? What do you tell your fellow cartoonists just starting out ? There are ways that it ' s the same . Your priority can ' t be “ I want to be a New Yorker cartoonist ,” because there ' s really no such thing . You ' ve got to figure out whether this is what you want to do . If it is , you just have to draw a lot , because that ' s the only way you ' re going to find out what it is you have to say and how to do it . One really big way that everything is different now is the internet . That ’ s a plus and a minus . You can get your work out , you can do a cartoon and |
put it out on the internet , and thousands of people can see it immediately , which is something that did not exist when I started . I remember people
made these zenes on Xerox machines ; you could give them to your friends or give them out at a club or whatever . But thousands of people ? That did not exist . On the other hand , it ' s much harder to make a living
|
because you don ' t get paid when you post stuff , for the most part . So that ' s the bad side . You ' ve got to figure out how to make a living , and sometimes you ' re
going to have to do something else , and the cartoons will only be a part or a small part of how you make money .
Is there a process to your drawing ? Do you have a schedule ?
|
What ' s your day like ? It ' s amazing anything gets done . I am really an ultra-procrastinator . I could make up something , like , “ I wake up at 6 a . m . and I go for a three-mile jog . And then I find that really stimulates my creative process . And then I work for ….” No , no , no , there ’ s a lot of just stalling ; I play these word games ; The New York Times has games like “ Spelling Bee .” And then there ' s email . And then suddenly you have to make babaganoush or something . And then it ' s dinnertime . I don ' t know . Stuff gets done . Somehow , it does get done . I don ' t really know how , because I would say that from dawn to dusk — well , not really dawn but , like , mid-morning to , like , the middle of the night — it ’ s really just like one procrastinating thing right after another . But work does sometimes get done , somehow . |