Well, I always wanted to make newspaper comic strips, ever since I was young, although actually when I was very young what I really wanted to make was the little collected books of newspaper comic strips. I didn’t understand for many years that those were the collected daily newspaper comic strips. I knew about Sunday ones, which were all in color, but these black and white ones, I’m like that’s so cool they make these little books full of comics, like I want to make these little books full of comics like that, which is kind of what I do now.
And so, when I got into middle school I really became interested in comic strips, and how they were made, and started researching the materials that they used, and I would get like the Bristol board, and the right kinds of pens and ink, and everything. And then I took as many art classes as I could all through middle school and high school, even when it was an elective I would take it, for my senior AP art class I actually did an illustrated children’s storybook that had cartoon illustrations.
When I was also a senior in high school I had a mentorship program where I went and followed Tony Auth, who was the Philadelphia Inquirer cartoonist who passed away recently. And, and he showed me around the Inquirer offices, and took me to the editorial meetings, and showed me what his day was like, and how he thought about and crafted a comic and everything.
And he was very like, “Are you sure you really want to do this? Like, I’m not sure this is the best career choice for a smart kid.” You know, and then I went to college, and at college I did cartoons for the school newspaper, did political cartoons. And I also took as many art classes as I could, I was actually an English major, I was an English non-fiction writing major, magazine writing was my specialty. I thought I’d be a science writer, I did a lot of science writing when I was in college.
And I assumed I’d go work for Discover magazine or something. But all the time I was hedging my bets, and hoping there was some way I could make comics some day, but I had no idea how you did that, it wasn’t like, you went to med school, and you became a doctor, and then you started your residency. You don’t go to cartoon school, and become a cartoon doctor, and start your cartoon residency, it doesn’t work the same way.
So, there wasn’t a clear path. And I just kept taking as much art instruction as I could all the way along, you know traditional figure drawing, and oil painting, and print making, and then learning all of the digital stuff that was starting. I just realized I had been using Adobe Photoshop for twenty years which is alarming, I didn’t realize that it had been around that long. [laughs] I was just thinking about that the other day.