I don't want to sound disingenuous here - controversy is obviously good for business, especially if your business is satire. And it does amplify the discussion - in my view, a good thing.
For the most part, editors no longer view 'Doonesbury' as a rolling provocation, which is fine by me. It makes no sense to intentionally antagonize the very people on whose support you most depend.
Because I was a diminutive, arty kid, I felt like a misfit in high school - but who doesn't?
Lives have been altered in fundamental ways, and later, after they acquire a more complete understanding of what goals are actually attainable, many are left facing a lot of pain and frustration. And yet, there's no culture of complaint.
When you're young, with less on the line, it's easier to be audacious, to experiment. So I introduced the concerns of my generation - politics, sex, drugs, rock-and-roll, etc. - to the comics page, which for many years caused a rolling furor.
The systematic dismantling of reproductive rights, much like the takedown of collective bargaining, has been taking place in full view.
I think it's very dangerous for people who do anything that's public to venture on the Web and check out what people are saying about them. Yes, you're bound to find things that will delight you - but you also find things that will make you brood and feel bad about yourself. Why would you intentionally invite that into your life?
Becoming the new feminine ideal requires just the right combination of insecurity, exercise, bulimia and surgery.
Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated.
Comic strips are like a public utility. They're supposed to be there 365 days a year, and you're supposed to be able to hit the mark day after day.
Medical decisions have been politicized. What doctor wants a state legislator in his consulting room?
In their heyday, comics were a dominant force in popular culture, but that's over.
That's what fiction writers do: create characters and do terrible things to them for the entertainment of others. If they feel guilty enough, they write happy endings.
Comic-strip artists generally have very modest ambitions. Day to day, we labor to fit together all these little moving parts - a character or two, a few lines of dialogue, framing, pacing, payoff - but we certainly don't think of them adding up over time to some larger portrait of our times.
In Palm Springs, they think homelessness is caused by bad divorce lawyers.
When you're young, you don't feel iconoclastic - you're just kind of doing what seems natural, what moves you.
I'm a pointillist, just working my tiny little piece of the canvas. I'm not so good at perspective.
I'm still passionately interested in what my fellow humans are up to. For me, a day spent monitoring the passing parade is a day well-spent.
I don't think so, but it's always in the back of my mind that many of the soldiers being wounded and killed in Iraq are about the same age as my kids. My godson is going over soon, so the war's about to get personal for me.
I found that not having a public profile was not hurting the work, and it freed me up to be the satirist I wanted to be.
