Form follows function, as the architects say. With words and pictures, you can do just about anything.

I won't eat any cereal that doesn't turn the milk purple.

Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world's problems?

Hold it. You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see the three bears eat the three little pigs, and then the bears join up with the big bad wolf and eat Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood! Tell me a story like that, OK?

I'd hate to have a kid like me.

Too often cartoonists just look at other cartoonists and, after a lot of inbreeding, everyone has the same funny look. The challenge of drawing is that there is no one right way to visually describe something. It's a good thing to confront your limitations and preconceptions every so often.

If I had rolled along with the strip's popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now "grieving" for "Calvin and Hobbes" would be wishing me dead.