Current Exhibits

Alternative to What? Bios & Interviews
Conducted by Andrew Farago

Scroll down for Lalo Alcaraz, Ruben Bolling, Max Cannon, Lloyd Dangle, Derf, Sam Henderson, Kaz, Keith Knight, Carol Lay, Tony Millionaire, Nina Paley, and Tom Tomorrow.

Lalo Alcaraz is an internationally published editorial cartoonist who has been drawing the self syndicated comic panel la cucaracha in the Los Angeles Weekly since 1992. la cucaracha appears in several newspapers and magazines in the US and abroad. His cartoons have also appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, La Jornada in Mexico City, BUNTE (Germany's "People" Magazine), and on the covers of The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Albuquerque's Weekly Alibi, Slick Times Magazine and UT Austin's Reflexiones Journal of Mexican-American Studies and now in The Lexington Herald-Leader and The Philadelphia Daily News. His cartoon appeared monthly in HISPANIC Magazine for 5 years, until George W. Bush got in office. He is now syndicated nationwide by Universal Press Syndicate.

Lalo began drawing editorial cartoons in 1985 for his college paper, The Daily Aztec at San Diego State University, where he earned a BA in Art and Environmental Design. He also received a Master's in Architecture from UC Berkeley in 1990. Lalo's writing was first published in W.W. Norton's NEXT: Young Writers On The New Generation, in 1994. Lalo was a staff writer on the Fox TV sketch comedy show, Culture Clash, and is now a political satire columnist with The Los Angeles Weekly. He also co-edits the satirical magazine POCHO, and his animation collaborative, Animaquiladora, has created award winning computer animation which has been screened around the US and in Japan, including Lincoln Center, LA's Museum of Contemporary Art and the Free Speech TV network. POCHO's website, the Virtual Varrio, can be seen at www.pocho.com.

* What are the advantages of drawing for alternative weekly newspapers as opposed to syndicated daily comic strips?

Doing the alternative weekly panel affords me the chance to not worry about a G-Rating that I must achieve in my daily comic.

* What would you be doing now if you weren't a cartoonist?

My mom thought painting holiday scenes on Jack In The Box fast food restaurants would have been a good career, but I did get a Masters in Architecture, so I almost headed down the architect road. Yep, if I wasn’t a cartoonist, I'd be an unhappy architect, trying to change the world through the wrong field.

* Several prominent alternative weekly cartoonists use pen names. Why do you choose to do this?

I use my mom's maiden name as my cartoonist surname to honor the artistic genes that come from the Alcaraz side of my family.

* Have you ever had any censorship problems with your comic?

Not generally, just a constant flow of hate mail starting with the phrase, "Go back to Mexico."
An attempt was made to have the "How To Spot A Mexican Dad " piece removed from a gallery in Venice, CA, by a junta of Chuppies (Chicano Yuppies) who organized a phone campaign to have it removed because they felt I should have represented my father as a Mexican attorney, or nuclear scientist or some other idealized PC portrayal, rather than the honest, unvarnished -and I thought, sentimental- portrait in that comic of my father, a working class Mexican immigrant gardener.

* What is the best thing about your job? The worst?

I am the boss and God of my little space. The worst is -- I don't know- I love what I do, I love the hate mail too, I dislike the nasty mail that has nothing to do with the content of my work, but are just personal attacks. I have a low enough self esteem as it is.

* What advice do you have for aspiring cartoonists?

You should paint holiday scenes on Jack In The Box! No, just to draw for ten years, all the while shamelessly promoting your work and maybe after that something will happen for you, or you will get sick of it because you weren't meant to be a cartoonist.

* Have you had any negative backlash from readers due to your political views? Alternately, have you noticed any increase in positive reader feedback in the past year?

I really think it's hilarious to receive mail that says: How dare you speak your mind about this country, as it gives you freedom to speak your mind!??

The irony is lost on the angry writers.....

***

Ruben Bolling is the author of the weekly comic strip Tom the Dancing Bug, which is distributed by Universal Press Syndicate to about 50 newspapers across North America (including The Village Voice, The Dallas Observer and The Washington Post), and also appears weekly in the acclaimed web magazine Salon. Bolling’s comics have also appeared in The New York Times and The New Yorker.
Tom the Dancing Bug won the 2002 Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Cartoon Award for the best cartoon in alternative newspapers.
Ruben Bolling is the author of two Tom the Dancing Bug compilation books: All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned From My Golf-Playing Cats (NBM Publishing, 1997) and Tom the Dancing Bug (HarperCollins Publishers, 1992).
Bolling, his wife and three children live in New York City.

* Why did you choose to work in the alternative weekly newspapers instead of pursuing work as a syndicated daily comic strip artist?

There's a huge difference between doing a weekly alternative strip and a daily strip. With a weekly strip, I have total freedom in what I write about and how I write it, I have more time to think of ideas, and a lot more space to develop them.

* What would you be doing now if you weren't a cartoonist?

Managing a credit enhancement vehicle to effectuate derivative transactions for a large financial company.

* Several prominent alternative weekly cartoonists use pen names. Why do you choose to do this?

I always wanted a secret identity.

*Have you ever had any censorship problems with your comic?

The alternative newspapers in which Tom the Dancing Bug appears have never given me any problems with censorship or editing. The strip also appears in daily papers, though, and occasionally they decline to run a comic that they deem "sensitive," usually having to do with religion. Since 9/11, the strip has become more political, and a couple of daily papers have dropped the strip because of substantive points I've made in it.

* What is the best thing about your job? The worst?

The best thing is that spark of suddenly coming up with an idea that genuinely amuses me. The worst thing is waiting for that damn idea to show up.

* Have you had any negative backlash from readers due to your political views? Alternately, have you noticed any increase in positive reader feedback in the past year? Is there a notable difference between reaction to your political and non-political comics?

The recent climate of intolerance for opposition views, I think, mostly applies to entertainers. Most people don't begrudge a commentator (say, Molly Ivins) the right to oppose a war. But apparently there's an open pit of rage for entertainers (say, a Dixie Chick) who cross the line to express anti-administration sentiments. My strip has always had a political component to it (much more so since 9/11), so I haven't gotten much heat for criticizing Bush. But it's also been a general humor strip, so I do get a small but steady stream of reaction from readers (and occasionally editors) who apparently see things from that perspective and tell me to shut up and draw funny pictures.

***

Max Cannon was born in England. He moved perpetually as a youth throughout Europe and the U.S. and attended ten different grade schools. Cannon currently resides in Tucson, Arizona.

Cannon studied painting, art history and linguistics at the University of Arizona. In his career, he has worked as an illustrator, free-lance journalist and as a graphic designer.
Cannon has been drawing RED MEAT for thirteen years. The strip currently runs in over 80 publications worldwide, and appears in several languages, including Czech, Finnish, Spanish and Canadian (“I change the word "about" to "aboot" for them.” --Max). Some current RED MEAT projects include a third RED MEAT book and a television series development project with Comedy Central.

* Why did you choose to work in the alternative weekly newspapers instead of pursuing work as a syndicated daily comic strip artist?

The alternative press actually chose me. I originally did the strip as a form of personal amusement, and a cartoonist friend talked me into submitting it to the university newspaper. After a couple months and several battles with censorship, I pulled the strip and offered it the local news weekly. After a couple years in print there, I started getting queries from other weeklies who wanted to include RED MEAT in their publications.

* What would you be doing now if you weren't a cartoonist?

(Shudder) I don't even want to think about it.

* Several prominent alternative weekly cartoonists use pen names. Why do you choose to do this?

Though nearly everyone assumes I work under a pen name, my birth certificate reads: "Maxwell Cannon."

* Have you ever had any censorship problems with your comic?

Frequently. Although my strip never features profanity or unsavory graphic depictions, some people seem to get uncomfortable with the images that the text suggests, so I can only guess that they don't really like their own vivid imaginations. Hitchcock would be proud.

* What is the best thing about your job? The worst?

Best thing: I get to draw and write comic strips for a living.
Worst thing: no pension plan, benefits or stock options.

* What advice do you have for aspiring cartoonists?

Be born rich, get rich, marry someone rich, or have a good day job at a respectable law firm or brokerage house. I foolishly did none of those things, but instead learned to enjoy living like a human cockroach for my first fifteen years as a professional in the allied arts field.

I suppose it helps to remember that, with few exceptions, "overnight success" is the result of many years of dues paying, faith keeping, midnight oil burning and any other relevant clichés you can think of to keep yourself out of the food service industry. A modicum of talent and dumb luck don't hurt, either.

* Can you talk a little bit about the creation of a typical installment of Red Meat? How much drawing time goes into a normal week's comic? What is your take on the recent proliferation of comics drawn in the clip-art style (or that strictly use clip-art)? What do you think of websites like the Red Meat generator that allow people to cut 'n paste your characters into strips and write their own dialogue?

Typically, it takes me about four hours to create a RED MEAT comic strip. Though I often do cut and paste elements of the artwork, just as often I will redraw the art (using a mouse in Adobe Illustrator) or modify it in major or minor ways. I've never used "clip art" (with the exception of Milkman Dan's little pal, Karen, who is modified from a piece of public domain clip art I found).

I don't have a problem with the RED MEAT generator site at all, though I don't have any connection to it. A very talented fellow named Søren Ragsdale set it up. A longtime RED MEAT fan, he was the architect of the very first RED MEAT web site in the early to mid-nineties.

Though some individuals have used the generator to make cartoons that appear on commercial web sites (which I actively discourage), for the most part it's harmless, and often extremely distasteful, fun.

***

Lloyd Dangle’s Troubletown was first published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 1988 and has grown to become a widely syndicated cartoon feature in alternative newsweeklies and lefty political magazines. He has published eight Troubletown collections and has exhibited his work in the United States and abroad. His cartoons and illustrations have appeared in over 100 magazines and newspapers of every type, from the crusty corporate mainstream to the bleeding, subcommercial edge. His drawings also adorn the packaging of Airborne effervescent dietary supplements, the number one-selling cold remedy in America.

A political cartoonist who is also political, Dangle is the National President of the Graphic Artists Guild, a local of the United Auto Workers, which isn’t bad for a Michigan boy who escaped having to ever lift a rivet gun. He has led several advocacy efforts to fight for the rights of artists. In California--going up against a rogue tax agency with a penchant for seizing artists’ assets––he and his colleagues won!

* Why did you choose to work in the alternative weekly newspapers instead of pursuing work as a syndicated daily comic strip artist?

First, I like the idea of appearing in a free paper BECAUSE IT’S FREE! Cartoons in free papers are public art in a very basic sense, and I enjoy seeing them blowing down the streets and lying in rain puddles. Secondly, when I was starting out, free weekly papers were the only place that published unusual (i.e. non-corporate mainstream) cartoons, which were the kind of cartoons I liked. Finally, unlike comic books, which offer a great deal of freedom but appeal mostly to hardcore comics fanatics, publishing in a free weekly reaches a broad audience, and more people who are like me.

* Several prominent alternative weekly cartoonists use pen names. Why do you choose to do this?

Despite what many people think, Lloyd Dangle is my real name.

* Have you ever had any censorship problems with your comic?

Yes, well, um, maybe. Twice I was dropped from newspapers suddenly and without warning, and I suspected it was because of my content. A newspaper would never admit such a thing of course. One of those times, the newspaper dropped the cartoon only two weeks after they began publishing it!
Otherwise, in fifteen years, no alternative newspaper has ever asked me to alter the content of a cartoon. By contrast, every time I have worked for the New York Times op-ed page, they have set strict limitations. Once I was told, “Whatever you do, you can’t make fun of Clinton. The editors will never let it go through.” Yeesh, you might as well take away my pen!

* Have you had any negative backlash from readers due to your political views? Have you noticed any increase in positive reader feedback in the past year?

Backlash is the constant state of affairs! Isn’t that what e-mail was invented for? Troubletown was carried by the Daryl Cagle website, which was part of MSN’s Slate. A button appeared below the cartoon urging readers to “email the cartoonist,” making it easy for even lazy and semi-functioning readers to pop off a comment or diatribe. Most of my scandal and treason emails came from there. One called me a “No-gutts (sic) liberal type momma’s boy,” which has kind of stuck. Now I describe myself that way all the time.

On balance, I receive more positive feedback than negative, and I have received an increase in praise from readers and editors during the recent “troubled times.” I sense that many people are dissatisfied by the information they are getting from the media, but feel isolated with so much jingoistic patriotism going on around them. Troubletown provides a little comfort to people who feel that way.

It’s sad, but the emails that stand out in my memory are always the pejorative ones. Maybe that’s because I’m a no-gutts liberal type momma’s boy.

***

Derf The cartoonist known only as Derf sold his first cartoon, a nude portrait of his sixth-grade teacher, to a classmate who used it for unspeakable purposes. Today, his comic strip The City is one of the most widely-read alternative cartoons, appearing regularly in over 50 publications, including The Chicago Reader, Miami New Times, Denver Westword, St. Louis Riverfront Times, Los Angeles New Times, DC City Paper, Dallas Observer and Cleveland Scene.

43-year-old Derf grew up in an Ohio small town outside of Akron and went to high school with serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. He was an uninspired student and received a 'D' in art for drawing too many cartoons in class.

After graduation, Derf worked for a year on the back of a garbage truck before heading off to Ohio State University in 1979, where he backed into a journalism major and fell into the irreverant mileu of the off-campus punk scene. He eventually landed a cartoonist position on the school paper and caused such controversy during his 3-year career that school officials put a 1-year time limit on all future cartoonists. After graduation, he landed a similar position on a paper in West Palm Beach, FL, but was fired for "general tastelessness." He then moved to Cleveland, for reasons now forgotten, and, after a 5-year gestation in the post-punk underground, started The City in the now-defunct Cleveland Edition in 1990. A year later, he began selling it to other alternative papers.

* Why did you choose to work in the alternative weekly newspapers instead of pursuing work as a syndicated daily comic strip artist?

Oh I tried to get a syndicate gig. No luck. I finally backed into weekly rags because I was out of options! And, of course, it's a perfect fit.

* Several prominent alternative weekly cartoonists use pen names. Why do you choose to do this?

"Derf" was what they called me when I worked on the garbage truck after I dropped out of college. When I eventually returned to school and started to cartoon for the school paper, I decided I needed a pen name.... and, really, for the life of me I can't recall WHY I decided this... and appropriated that moniker. It's a reminder of where I started out and where I could well end up if I don't keep working hard!

* What is the best thing about your job? The worst?

I get to make a living doing what I love.
The worst? The capricious nature of the business. Papers are sold or close without warning. Unlike the dailies, which will run garbage like Beetle Bailey well into the next century, weeklies will drop a strip on a whim, sometimes just for the sake of change. They underpay...pay late or don't pay at all. Despite cartoons being very popular with their readers, most weeklies run very few. So working for weeklies, a cartoonist enjoys freedom...but not much loyalty.

* Have you ever had any censorship problems with your comic?

Well... I've been dumped after shipping out particular cartoons. That's more chickenshit than censorship, although the end result is the same. The "Dubya's Inner Circle" strip that's in the exhibit, for instance, cost me 3 papers. One, in Louisiana, got so many complaints they dropped not just my cartoon...but ALL cartoons, just to play it safe. That was a first. Only once, to my knowledge anyways, have I had a paper alter the text of a cartoon.

* The City covers a lot of ground, from politics to entertainment to autobiography. Which subjects seem to generate the most reader response , favorable or otherwise?

Offbeat stuff is what gets the most response. A cartoon on toast, for example... or titties on men. The Muslim World map, also in your exhibit, has generated more response than anything I've done. It was all over the net.
As for unfavorable response, these days, any political dissent is met with howls. And any toons on Jesus generate a chorus of catcalls, too. One religious radio host in Kentucky tried to drum up an advertiser boycott of the local paper thanks to my strip. I've even had people send me Bibles!

***

Sam Henderson’s biography: “I was born in 1969 in Woodstock, New York and began self-publishing my own mini-comics when I was in junior high. I graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1991 with a BFA. I spent my entire adult life in New York until I moved to Los Angeles in 2000. My primary vehicle and the purest vision of my work for the past ten years has been a comic book called The Magic Whistle. My Scene But Not Heard strip appears in Nickelodeon magazine and I do all kinds of other work for children and adults with audiences ranging from ten to ten million. I've written for various DC Comics and Cartoon Network properties and was a storyboard director for Spongebob Squarepants. Currently I do Magic Whistle weekly on serializer.net, but from 1996 to 2000 it appeared in weekly papers.”

* Why did you choose to work in the alternative weekly newspapers instead of pursuing work as a syndicated daily comic strip artist?

I work too sporadically to do a daily strip. It's hard to even do a weekly sometimes. I could if it were my full-time job, but its only a part of what I do. There's also the restrictions of daily papers, and by that I don't just mean the right to make pee-pee jokes, but the format as well. Daily strips have to be small enough to publish at half the width of a tabloid, while alt weeklies generally allow for more sizes and shapes.

One disadvantage weeklies have over dailies is that self-syndication often has no contracts. When I was syndicating to papers, they would sometimes pull the strip to sell an add or even stop running it if a new editor took over. I find it's a fair trade if it means I can do whatever I feel like that week.

I kind of stumbled into doing a weekly strip. I was xeroxing my little comics and making about 150-200 copies that were mostly given to friends and other cartoonists. James Sturm, one of these cartoonists, was founding art director of [Seattle-based free weekly] The Stranger and had an agenda of getting as many comics in the paper as possible. He'd reprinted a few things from my mini-comics and when a weekly space opened up, he offered it to me, and I had it for four years.

* What would you be doing now if you weren't a cartoonist?

I'd either still live with my parents and lurk outside the convenience store offering to buy booze for teenagers, or I'd invent a cure for cancer.

* What advice do you have for aspiring cartoonists?

I'm 34 and still consider myself "aspiring". I have no advice about style, tools or
education. Do the comic you like to do. Keep producing work, showing it to people, and keep doing so even when the previous work is ignored. If you send work to editors, art directors, and other cartoonists and get a negative response, that doesn't mean they won't like you in the future. Listen to as many opinions of your work as you can and draw your own conclusions from that. Once you've been published, it's still necessary to constantly promote yourself. There's no formula that guarantees success, the best thing to do is keep at it.

* Have you ever had any censorship problems with your comic?

I wish. Censorship rarely happens in the coastal cities where my comic ran, so I was never so lucky.

* What is the best thing about your job?

Being my own boss.

* The worst?

Learning that being my own boss doesn't guarantee a consistent income.
* The Magic Whistle strips on display in this gallery have been redrawn specifically for this exhibition. Can you explain why the original artwork was not available for this display?
When I moved from NYC to LA and put most of my belongings in storage. Three years later I was invited to participate in the show, but had no original art handy. A friend agreed to go to my space and find my art, but that only led to more obstacles. The storage company was acquired by another, thus acquiring the larger company's rules as well. One of their rules is that they are no longer self-storage, which means only their people are allowed to move the contents therein for "safety" and "security" reasons. If my friend (or even I, for that matter) were to go there, I would have had to make an appointment days in advance and pay an hourly rate to have my stuff moved around. I figured re-drawing the strips would be easier than working out these logistics, plus it makes an interesting story.

***

Kaz began his professional career in 1980 as a freelance illustrator for advertising and publications, with his work appearing in such notable publications as New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, and The New York Times Magazine. That same year, he began self-syndicating the weekly comic strip Underworld, which appears in alternative newspapers in twelve major cities. He has written and illustrated comics in a variety of publications, including Details, The New Yorker and Heavy Metal.

In 2001, Kaz served as a staff writer on the Nickelodeon cartoon show Spongebob Squarepants. Recently, he served as a story man and storyboard gag writer for Tim Burton's Corpse Bride which is scheduled for a 2005 release.

* Why did you choose to work in the alternative weekly newspapers instead of pursuing work as a syndicated daily comic strip artist?

Freedom. That's it. I can do the kinds of comics that make me laugh the most.

* What would you be doing now if you weren't a cartoonist?

Movie star, prisoner, lounge singer, school janitor, werewolf -- pick one.

* What is the best thing about your job? The worst?

It's fun to draw comic strips and connect with readers. I guess the worst would be how few people actually read.

* Have you ever had any censorship problems with your comic?

Not censorship, but I did get dropped from the Arizona Republic. They were running a fake alternative newspaper section in their Thursday edition in order to attract younger readers. I had a deal with the editor that I would send him Underworld strips and he would pick the ones that he felt were appropriate for his readers. A few nasty words and some cynical gags resulted in several letters (and one anti-Underworld writing campaign from a church group. See www.kazunderworld.com)

* What advice do you have for aspiring cartoonists?

Learn to tell a story.

* Which classic cartoons have influenced you the most? Which of your creative influences (books, music, television, etc.) would probably be the most surprising/unexpected to your readers?

Popeye, Mickey Mouse, Betty Boop, Mutt & Jeff, Smokey Stover, R. Crumb, and Gary Panter (the weird backgrounds) are obvious. But to replenish myself I drink from the waters of The Marx Bros., WC Fields, Seinfeld, John Waters, and Ween.

***

Keith Knight was born and raised in the Boston area. Weaned on a steady diet of Star Wars, hip-hop, racism and Warner Bros. cartoons, Knight drew comics instead of paying attention in grade school. After graduating from college with a useless degree in graphic design, Knight drove out to San Francisco in the early ‘90s and began taking drugs. It was here in the Bay Area where Knight developed his trademark poorly rendered, barely thought-out, last-minute cartooning style that has amused dozens for almost a decade.

His work has appeared in various publications, including Salon.com, The L.A. Weekly, The Funny Times, PULSE! magazine, and MH-18. Three of his strips were the basis of an award-winning live-action short in Germany. And his original comic strip art has appeared in museums and galleries worldwide. He has released three collections of his multi-panel strip, The K Chronicles, and is planning to release the first collection of his single panel strip, (th)ink.
His semi-conscious hip-hop band, the Marginal Prophets, will kick your ass.

* Why did you choose to work in the alternative weekly newspapers instead of pursuing work as a syndicated daily comic strip artist?

I've just heard horror stories about the endless grind of the daily syndicated comic strip artist. Alternative newspapers allow you to address subjects and issues and humor that would horrify mainstream daily newspaper editors. Hell…I offend alternative weekly editors!

I may try to tackle a daily strip somewhere down the line...but right now I enjoy the format and the weekly deadline of what I do now.

* What would you be doing now if you weren't a cartoonist?

I would be a restaurant critic for television.

***

Carol Lay has been drawing comics professionally for over 25 years. She has done work for mainstream and independent comic books, national magazines, the animation industry, and has drawn storyboards for live-action films and videos. Lay’s weekly strip, Story Minute, has been running for twelve years in assorted daily and weekly papers in the U.S. and abroad, including The LA Weekly, salon.com, The Hartford Courant, the late San Francisco Examiner, and several weeklies in Asia and Europe.

Lay’s strips and illustrations have appeared in Newsweek, MAD Magazine, and The New Yorker. She has done regular cartoon features for Worth Magazine, Information Week, and The Wall Street Journal. Last year Lay wrote a prose novel for DC Comics featuring Wonder Woman.

* Why did you choose to work in the alternative weekly newspapers instead of pursuing work as a syndicated daily comic strip artist?

Someone asked. I was working odd jobs in illustration and mainstream comics and doing underground-type comics on the side when I got a call from Robert Newman, who was directing comics pages for the LA Weekly. He'd gotten my name from Peter Bagge, who knew me from WEIRDO. Newman offered a nifty $250 for a half page of comics, up to five week's worth--five times what I was used to making from Last Gasp or Rip Off Press. The audience was great in that it was 50/50 women and men instead of mostly male as is the comic book audience. I had the freedom to do goofy material aimed at adults--what's not to like? I was hooked immediately.

* What would you be doing now if you weren't a cartoonist?

I would write fiction. I wrote a novel for DC last year, and I got that high that I used to get when I smoked pot and painted. I think that's my goal as an artist: to get high, but without the drugs.

* What is the best thing about your job? The worst?

The best: Flexible hours, and I get to listen to books on tape while I work (the art part, anyway). The worst: Not many people care/believe me when I tell them what I do. I live in LA. Unless you're on TV, you're probably a waiter.

* What advice do you have for aspiring cartoonists?

Don't do drugs. Don't be well-socialized. Study the greats, but get your own style. Quit goofing off.

* Have you had any negative backlash from readers due to your political views? Alternately, have you noticed any increase in positive reader feedback in the past year?

My political work has inspired right-wing males to bait and bash me in e-mail. Other people whose affiliations are more obscure put me down for the political stuff while encouraging me to go back to telling little stories.
But I do what I want, not what readers want. Fortunately, some papers have rewarded me with running extra strips during the Iraq war, even though one paper dropped me. It's a crap shoot.

* You've worked in a variety of artistic fields from comics to fine arts to animation to writing prose novels. Are there any media that you haven't tried yet that you'd like to try? What do your see yourself working on when (if) you retire from the creation of a weekly comic?

If all the weeklies folded next week I would try a daily strip or do more fiction writing. I don't think I'd be able to pay enough of the bills making comic books these days. If I couldn't make it at either of those jobs, I guess I'd draw porn.

Tony Millionaire grew up in the seaside town of Gloucester, Massachusetts where his grandparents taught him to draw ships and old houses. After spending thousands of Sunday afternoons gazing at his grand-father's collections of old newspaper comics, he picked up a pen and started drawing monkeys with striped tails and top hats. He now writes and draws the comic book Sock Monkey as well as the weekly strip Maakies, which has won him three Eisner Awards and has been animated for Saturday Night Live. He lives in Pasadena, California with his wife and daughters.

* Why did you choose to work in the alternative weekly newspapers instead of pursuing work as a syndicated daily comic strip artist?

I could never work on a syndicated daily comic strip. I admire those who can. To be able to come up with a gag every day is one thing, but to be forced to work without the luxury of being able to resort to bathroom and sex humor must be maddening. I bet those people have to throw out 50% of their best gags because they have to stick to this thin line between kindergarten jokes and blue humor. Bil Keane did it by using lines from real kids, which are always funny, and Herriman did it by going poetic. Schulz managed to do both.

* What would you be doing now if you weren't a cartoonist?

Drawing pork chops on the sides of cardboard boxes for supermarkets.* Several prominent alternative weekly cartoonists use pen names. Why do you choose to do this?
I don't use a pen name, so the question doesn't apply to me.

* Have you ever had any censorship problems with your comic?

No, I've tried to get in trouble with some racy stuff, but no one's ever said anything.

* What is the best thing about your job?

Being able to create any type of world I want to. I couldn't do that in any other job even if I were the King of Earth. It's even better than filmmaking, because there's only one guy, me. It's like writing novels.

* The worst?

Twenty years of working for practically nothing till it started to pay off, if you can call this paying off.

* What advice do you have for aspiring cartoonists?

If you like money, quit now! If you like cartooning, draw comics all the time and get published wherever you can, regardless of pay. It's more important in the long run to be seen than to be paid. Also, if you want to go mainstream, be stupid!

* It's obvious that a lot of time and effort goes into every single Maakies strip. How much time do you spend at the drawing board in a typical week?

On Mondays I spend 4 or 5 hours drawing the strip. When I have a book going on, I try to do a page a day, but if I'm working on something that requires more careful drawing, I take my time.

* What are your most frequently-used reference materials?

Lots of old books of illustrations, photos, and Google Images. No matter how cartoony I draw something, it always looks better if I draw from a photo, an old painting or from life. I use a real Sock Monkey and real interiors for my comic book, I set him up in poses. Drawing from memory or making stuff up rarely works.

* How do you think Maakies will be regarded 100 years from now?

As an absolute classic in American Comics, pure Genius.

Nina Paley is probably best known for her alternative comic strip, Nina's Adventures. Begun in 1988, it enjoyed 7 years of legitimate publication in several American newsweeklies, and copyright infringement around the world. Next came a 2-year stint creating the mainstream daily newspaper strip Fluff for Universal Press Syndicate, an artistic crisis which drove her to animation in 1998.
In 2002, Nina returned to daily comic strips as the artist on The Hots, written by Stephen Hersh and distributed by the King Features Syndicate.

* What would you be doing now if you weren't a cartoonist?

I'd have more time for my animation.

* Why did you choose to work in the alternative weekly newspapers instead of pursuing work as a syndicated daily comic strip artist?

Now I've done both. I started as an alternative because my "vision" was of a weekly strip with a larger format (usually 6 panels) than a daily. It was more personal, more adult, and simply wasn't appropriate as a daily.

* As an artist who's created comics for alternative weekly news-papers and nationally syndicated daily comic strips, what would you say are the key differences between the two?

My weekly strip was art, a creative outlet, and a cathartic expression of my angst. My daily strip is a job.

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Tom Tomorrow's weekly cartoon, This Modern World, appears regularly in more than 150 papers across the country, including The Village Voice, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Los Angeles New Times, the Newark Star Ledger, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and many others, as well as the online magazine Salon. He is a regular contributor to The American Prospect, and his work has often been published in the Week in Review section of the Sunday New York Times. His cartoons have also been featured in The New Yorker, The Nation, U.S. News & World Report, Esquire, The Economist, and numerous other publications. His weblog receives approximately 500,000 visitors a month.

In 1998 and again in 2003, he won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Cartooning. He has also been awarded the Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement Award for Excellence in Journalism and the Society of Professional Journalists' James Madison Freedom of Information Award. He has five cartoon anthologies currently in print, and an oversized career retro-spective, The Great Big Book of Tomorrow, will be published in July, 2003.

* What is the best thing about your job? The worst?

The best thing about this job is the soapbox upon which I am allowed to stand and express my opinions, which these days seem to be in a distinct minority. The worst thing is waking up Monday morning and facing the blank sheet of paper and trying to write a new cartoon.

* Have you had any negative backlash from readers due to your political views?

Alternately, have you noticed any increase in positive reader feedback in the past year?
Before I had even begun to respond to the attacks of September 11, I was inundated with astonishingly virulent hate mail from conservatives who seemed to feel that the only appropriate response to the events of that day was to write a cartoonist with whom they disagreed on, say, welfare reform or single payer health care. The cartoon I sent out that week, after watching the first tower collapse from the rooftop of my Brooklyn apartment building, was really just an expression of shock and grief, to which one jackass responded, "do you mean to suggest you have some deep affection for the country you constantly berate?"

Eventually that nonsense subsided somewhat. I'd say the feedback I get now is overwhelmingly tilted to the opposite extreme: "Thank you for helping me stay sane." I probably get some variation on that a dozen times a day.

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