I just got back from a weekend in Columbus, OH, having a table at the Cartoon Crossroads (CXC) Expo, meeting great cartoonists, seeing some fantastic talks on cartooning and comics, as well as get my books to new readers.
This was my first show back after the pandemic first began, and while I was a little rusty at setting up (it’s been about 2-3 years), I got into the swing of things pretty quickly and was happy to discover that people at CXC weren’t just fans of pop culture but clearly avid readers and supporters of cartoons as art and books.
I enjoyed getting to know Maria Scrivan, cartoonist of the comic strip Half Full and her Scholastic Nat graphic novel series, while tabling next to her on Saturday, and we traded books before she took off for home, and Cora now loves them.
She and I talked about the grind of daily cartooning which she’s been doing for the past 10 years. I never did it as intensely as her (I had weekends off), but I definitely don’t miss the constant looming deadlines from when I did Dragon and Goat daily for about 6 years. I do miss the daily ritual of crafting little stories and also how it forced me to really pay attention to everything around me. The creative monster has to be fed way more when it’s needing to churn out something hilarious so frequently, so I’d always be on the lookout for things to steal from my life and experiences.
Yet I made the choice to not really pursue syndication for Dragon and Goat largely because I didn’t see much of a future in newspapers nor did I want to change the weird stuff I was doing with D&G to fit what editors wanted. I saw more interesting options in the comic book as a literary/art form- and I just frankly love books more. Plus, with independent publishing- I get to make the books and projects I want- even if getting them out there is a bit more of a slog!