I've never been good at self-promotion. And my URL is really obscure. And for years and years, there was nothing about me on my website.
Any working cartoonist will tell you this, anybody who's working in a creative field: at some point, it's a job. You have deadlines. I think, for over a year, I refused to make them for publications, because I only wanted to make them when I wanted to make them. But at some point, I was like, "This is crazy, you have an opportunity to be a professional cartoonist.
I've always liked Richard Pryor. I've always responded to rhythmic profanity.
I would make a comic for Rolling Stone every two weeks, because they're biweekly. And then I would make weekly comics for my weekly papers. It was on two parallel tracks. And then they all got collected in a book.
I don't like when performers rag on their ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend in absentia. If they're not there, it just feels rude... I'm never going to say anything personal about myself on stage. That's my new goal.
Talking about my personal life onstage, I've realized I'm not one of those comics who can do that. I can allude to it but I don't want to be a confessional performer.
I'm not a professional comedian. Nobody comes to my comedy shows. That's just a little hobby.
Obviously, I never had to sketch anything out. To me, that was the appeal of working with clip art, working digitally. You make it and it's done.
I just wanted a really simple, dramatic way so that fans, people who were reading my comic, would be like, "This is something different." Just to flag it, almost.
I hate self-publishing; it's a real drag and it takes up a lot of space.
I had good relationships with stores. And I was like, "All right, I'll self-publish it. But I'm only going to do 1,000."
I'm interested in the structure of art and how it works. And the content is also interesting, but I don't want to keep the same structure and just plug in new content every week.
I like feeling like I'm discovering something new. That's really a special feeling and also, you don't have it that often. At least, I don't. Maybe I'm not creative enough.
I don't want to be one of these people who's like, "Man, I don't know where my ideas come from and I don't know why this works."
I feel like really thinking about art and really appreciating it and learning the language of it just makes you more of a connoisseur. I believe that.
I have a really analytical approach to art. And the whole idea that you can't analyze what makes a joke funny...I do not agree with that at all.
The thing that was interesting to me about Relationshapes - as opposed to most of the other cartoons I've ever made - was I knew when one worked and when one didn't work, but I couldn't really explain it.
I have very limited craftsmanship. And a lot of the stuff I make plays on that.
I never thought I would make a living as a pencil-sharpener. The first goal was: I don't want to lose money. And then the goal was: I want to see if 100 people buy my pencils. I just kept upping the benchmarks.
Nobody could be a professional cartoonist, because you have to do something you don't like to do in order to be a responsible adult and pay the rent.
I don't think I would've ever dared dreaming of becoming a professional cartoonist. I wouldn't set myself up for that disappointment.
I got to draw shapes. I really like to draw funky, geometric shapes. And I got to use just different fonts and make a joke of how feminine it was, but it didn't even have people in it. To me, it was so exciting and interesting to do that for a while.
