I Seemed To Have Instinctually A Strong

I Grew Up To Have My Father's Looks, My Father's Speech Patterns, My Father's Posture, My Father's Opinions, And My Mother's Contempt For My Father.

I Seemed To Have Instinctually A Strong Idea Of How The Strip Had To Be Written From The Beginning. That Changed Too, But It Was More In The Direction Of Where It Was Headed. I Didn't Have A Clue As To The Drawing Style, Because The Drawing Style That I Was Groomed On From The Beginning Was Newspaper Comic Strips, Which Were Much More Conventional.

In The Depression, Besides Everybody Being Poor, Our Entertainment Was Much More Primitive And Innocent. The Comic Strip, Which I So Venerated, Was Still A Very New Form. Movies Had Just Become Talkies. Radio Had Just Gone Coast To Coast For The First Time. Network Radio Had Just Begun When I Was A Kid. So All Of These Forms Were More Or Less In Their Infancy, And Feeling Their Oats. Comics Were Fresh And Funny And Nervy, And In A Sense, Defiant Of The Prevailing Culture.

Eventually, If It's On Your Mind, You Stumble On It. You Need A Certain Amount Of Luck And Persistence.

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.