Good Swiping Is An Art In Itself.

Writing, I Explained, Was Mainly An Attempt To Out-argue One's Past; To Present Events In Such A Light That Battles Lost In Life Were Either Won On Paper Or Held To A Draw.

I'm Not Electronically Geared At All; I'm Really A 19th Century Cartoonist. I Have A 15-year-old Daughter, And What She's Attracted To Is Of Course Ipod And This Pod And That, I Mean Stuff I Don't Even Begin To Know - I Never Learned How To Type For Christ's Sake! I Can't Get In Her Head And Find Out What She Would Do If She Had The Kind Of Talent I Had, I Don't Have A Clue. Every Generation Comes Up With Its Own Quirkiness And Its Own Culture Which Gets Its Inspiration From What's In The Air At That Time.

When I Am Working A Book, I Go Through My Library And Take A Look Through Some Of The Great Cartoonists Of The Past, Like Cliff Sterrett, Who Did "polly And Her Pals," Or Winsor Mccay Who Did "a Little Nemo In Slumberland," And Herriman - And I Just Looked Through These Guys And Looked For Somebody To Steal. You Know, Looked For Who I Could Swipe, Or Turn Into - Who's Work I Will Turn Into My Work. And I Still Use, After All These Years, These Artists As Inspirations. So, Here In My Eighties, I Go Back To When I Was Eight For My Inspiration.

I've Had Enormous Luck And Enormous Pleasure In Working In Such Forms As Movies And Plays That I Loved When I Was A Kid And I Just - Because I Could Always Write Dialogue, Because I Always Had A Sense Of How People Spoke. And Because I Had A Strong Narrative Sense; Growing Up And Loving Stories, Loving Novels, I Just Seem To Know How To Tell A Story And I Read A Lot, I Went To A Lot Of Movies, I Went To A Lot Of Plays, And It Rubbed Off On Me. And That's All. It Just Rubbed Off On Me.

And All The Things I Thought Were Mistakes And I Did Cartoons On Them. And Then I Think I Was The First Cartoonist In The Country To Attack The War In Viet Nam And That Helped Influence A Whole Generation Of Young Cartoonists Who Later On Took Up The Battle. And That Was Exciting To Know That I Had Helped Influence Work Of Young People Who Were Moving This Forum Into A Better And More Exciting Area, Out Of The More By The State That Political Cartooning Had Been In.