'Harry Potter' shouldn't be children's first experience with suspense and plot turns.

Some of us find our lives abridged even before the paperback comes out.

Doonesbury had the requisite and overwhelming influence in 1980, as it did on any college cartoonist who was paying attention, of course.

I could draw Bloom County with my nose and pay my cleaning lady to write it, and I'd bet I wouldn't lose 10% of my papers over the next twenty years. Such is the nature of comic-strips. Once established, their half-life is usually more than nuclear waste.

'Harry Potter' shouldn't be children's first experience with suspense and plot turns.

My post-child period resulted in one instant change: I write shorter books for kids.

It's not terribly dignified to have anyone seeing one laugh at one's own material.