I'M SIGNIFICANT!!! ... Say's the dust speck.

I've got to start listening to those quiet, nagging doubts.

I wasn't having any luck getting accepted anyway and it forced me to re-examine what it was that I really wanted to do. In my experience in political cartooning, I was never one of those people who read the headlines and foams at the mouth with rabid opinion that I've just got to get down on paper.

Life is like topography, Hobbes. There are summits of happiness and success, flat stretches of boring routine and valleys of frustration and failure.

The whole idea of hobknobbing and schmoozing and the concept of an "elite" class of celebrities better than the common people has always made my stomach turn.

United Features had given me a development contract, which meant I was to work exclusively with them and rather than completing everything on my own and turning it in to them and having it rejected or accepted, I was working much more directly with the syndicate, turning in smaller batches much more frequently, and getting comments on them. The idea was that they would help me develop the strip and then, assuming that they liked it, it would flow into a normal contract for syndication.

I always think of "Popeye" and "Barney Google" as quintessential comic strips in that old rollicky, slapstick way we've sort of lost.