250 Words on the Next Guy

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

Rebuilding my home taught me one nearly universal constant: no matter what trade you’re dealing with—concrete, framing, electrical, HVAC, tile, flooring, painting—the next guy you call in will tell you that the previous guy didn’t know what he was doing.

(I’m using “guy” generically, recognizing that both men and women can be skilled professional tradespeople, although my experience is limited to men.)

“Who put in this 20-amp circuit breaker?” asks the first guy. “Were they trying to burn down your house?” He puts in a 30-amp breaker.

“Who put in this 30-amp circuit breaker?” demands the next guy. “Were they trying to burn down your house?”

You seldom find such staggering levels of confident incompetence as you do when building a home. We did have a good prime contractor, and what made them good was that they recognized the work of bad subcontractors and corrected it fast. We also learned quickly ourselves.

It’s hard not to conclude that documents like the National Electrical Code or state Building Code, which to a layperson seem like detailed engineering manuals with explicit regulations for every situation and contingency, are matters of opinion and debate. More guidelines than rules, really.

I’ve mentioned my observation to a couple of tradespeople we've hired to do work for us, and every time they seem unamused and deeply insulted. And then they take a look at whatever the project is and say, “Whoever did this didn’t know what they were doing! Good thing you hired me!”

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BOOK EVENTS AHOY!

I wanted to announce three upcoming book talks and signings for the release of the Mom's Cancer: Anniversary Edition so you can put them on your calendars. Heck, why not attend all three? (Nobody but me should do that.)

March 15 at 2 p.m. I will be at Book Passage in the San Francisco Ferry Building. That's next Sunday already! Book Passage is one of the great West Coast independent bookstores that big-time authors make sure to hit when they're in the Bay Area, and they've always been good to me. 

April 9 at 7 p.m. I will be at the Copperfield's Books store in Montgomery Village, Santa Rosa, Calif. Copperfield's is another great indie chain whose support has meant a lot over the years. They're a real champion of local authors, with terrific managers and staff. 

May 16 at 2 p.m. I will be at the Charles M. Schulz Museum, also in Santa Rosa, Calif. I've attended and participated in so many events at the Schulz Museum that it feels like my home away from home, and the ones they held after the 2017 wildfires are personal and professional highlights for me. 

The last two events are not yet on their respective hosts' event calendars, but trust me: I'm booked.

I have other podcasts and interviews in the hopper, which I'll be sure to announce as they emerge. I have no real book tour planned. Those are a lot harder to come by these days. However, if any bookstore within the sound of my electrons is interested in hosting a talk and signing, please let me know!

Career Fair Day

I just spent four hours at a local high school's Career Fair with my pal, cartoonist Lex Fajardo, who is the creator of the Kid Beowulf comics series and editor at the Schulz Studio. Here's why I think that was a good use of my time:

1. Talking shop with Lex. 

2. Offering an alternative. We were surrounded by cops, firefighters, soldiers, engineers, grocery store managers, and many other career choices that there is nothing wrong with except they aren't cartoonists. We had several students and even a couple of teachers who thanked us just for being so different.

3. Approximately 37 out of 38 students couldn't have cared less that we were there, but that one out of 38 lit up like a sun. I would move mountains for the 38th kid.

4. Related: Lex and I agreed that if two people like us has been at OUR high school career fairs, we would have rooted to the spot and absorbed all we could. When I was a kid, I met people who did things I dreamed of doing, and realized that it wasn't magic; they just worked hard and did the things. If they could, then I could. Now I get to be one of those people for someone else. 

5. Free cookies.

That's a good afternoon. 

Review: Near Mint Condition

Here's an extraordinary take on the new edition by a YouTuber who reviews comics under the banner "Near Mint Condition" (I know his name but am not sure he wants it public). 

In more than 20 years of having my work scrutinized, I don't know if I've received a review this detailed, thoughtful, and compassionate. The reviewer read the story closely and brought his own life experience to it. That connection is what writing and reading is all about.

Thanks to my friend Chris Sparks for bringing it to my attention. If you have 13 minutes and are interested, I think it's worth a look! 

A Book Launch Q&A

Timed nicely with yesterday's launch of my new anniversary edition of Mom's Cancer, here's an interview with the Substack pub Autobiographix. This was a Q&A I did a few weeks ago with Amaris Ketcham, who I thought asked some good questions on topics I don't usually get asked about, such as my origin story and stylistic development. For being relatively brief, it goes pretty deep!

Thanks to Amaris and Autobiographix! It's a nice way to mark the occasion of putting a new (or at least updated) book into the world. 

250 Words on Paths

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

Countless stories explore the idea of paths not taken, and how different some other direction might have been. Life can turn on a single choice, particularly when it eliminates other choices. You can’t help but wonder.

Existence only seems like an inevitable chain of events leading to Now in retrospect. At the time, it’s chaos. I can recall many seemingly trivial moments that changed the course of my life in ways I didn’t understand until much later.

Once, when I was a newspaper reporter, my editor bellowed across the newsroom asking if anyone wanted to take a weekend junket to cover an electric utility launching a high-tech energy storage project. Nobody else spoke up so I volunteered, and wrote a full-page feature on it. No big deal. Many years later, I applied for work as a science writer, and that article was the only thing I’d published that was relevant to the job. That began a new career for me, which led to freelance writing, which led to full-time cartooning. 

If I hadn’t been in the newsroom just then, or if someone else had spoken first, or if I’d made other plans for that weekend, I might have had an entirely different life. 

It’s natural to speculate on where that untraveled path would have led. I wish I’d handled some choices differently. But the way I see it, I can’t regret anything before my daughters were born, because every decision led to them and any different path would not have. 

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T-Minus One Week and Counting

Friends, very rarely do I post for naked promotional purposes, but my new/old book--the 20th Anniversary Edition of Mom's Cancer--is being released in exactly one week, on March 3. If you have any interest in owning this update of my first graphic novel, now with 32 more pages of content including 22 pages of new art, this would be an excellent time to order it.

As always, I encourage everyone to support their local heroic independent bookseller. Failing that, it's also available from the usual multinational corporations, and I won't think less of you. Make sure you get the new one with the pink spine. 

By way of encouragement, I'll repeat my offer of mailing a free signed bookplate to anyone who asks. Just send me your postal address (brianfiesATgmailDOTcom should do it), tell me how/if you want it inscribed, and I'll pop it in the mail. Honestly, I haven't yet received the bookplates from my printer, but I will soon and they'll look like this. Meanwhile, I've started a list.

I have some book signings and podcast appearances coming up, and will be sure to mention them as they get closer. 

Many thanks!

250 Words on Squaring the Circle

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

“Squaring the circle” is a geometry problem so infamous that it became a metaphor for an unachievable task. The challenge: construct a square with the same area as a given circle using only a compass and straight edge. It’s impossible because the area of a circle is a multiple of π (3.14159265…), a number with an endless stream of digits that can’t be translated into a square with those tools.

Nevertheless, centuries of crackpots have tried to square the circle. Including me.

A similar problem is trisecting an angle: it has been proven impossible to divide an arbitrary angle into three equal parts using a compass and straight edge. 

I can’t tell you how much time and paper I wasted trying to trisect an angle until I satisfied myself that it was at least impossible for me. 

Perpetual motion is the ultimate futile challenge. No device, no matter how you arrange its weights, pulleys, magnets or gears, can run forever without putting energy into it. Friction and other thermodynamic waste grind every machine down until it stops. No system is 100 percent efficient.

I know that. I believe that.

And yet the number of times I’ve thought, “But what if . . .”

For as long as I can remember, whenever someone told me something was impossible, I set out to prove them wrong, or at least prove to myself they were right. At worst, it provides light mental exercise. At best, there’s a Nobel Prize in it for me.   

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Robert Duvall

I've seen many fine and touching testimonials to the late actor Robert Duvall, with mentions of his great performances in "The Godfather," "Apocalypse Now," "The Great Santini," and more. But very few have mentioned this, my favorite scene of his ever, from the movie "Secondhand Lions." 

If you haven't seen it, it's a good movie with a great cast, and even a bit of artwork by "Bloom County" cartoonist Berke Breathed. Recommended.

When I began my "Last Mechanical Monster" webcomic back in, oh, 2012 or 2013, I thought of two actors whom I'd love to portray my old mad scientist, Sparky, if anyone ever wanted to make a live-action movie of it. First was Christopher Plummer. Second was Robert Duvall. Both are gone now, and since nobody's clamoring to make that movie I guess I lost my chance. 

Sparky in action. See if you can imagine Duvall in the role.

250 Words on Stuff that Isn't for You

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

One of the milestones of maturity is realizing that not everything is made or meant for you. 

Other people can love music, literature, entertainment, food, or sports that you find inexplicable, confusing, repulsive, inane. It’s fine! Believing that is a big step in accepting you’re not the center of the universe. 

Too many argue the opposite: “I hate it, it’s bad, and anyone who likes it is stupid.” How small-minded. 

Take Taylor Swift.*

Early in her career, I was dismissive. Lightweight pop. But as her career grew, so did my appreciation for her work and work ethic.

Swift’s songs weren’t made for middle-aged men like me, and I wasn’t living the lives of kids to whom her lyrics spoke. She was an artist for them, not me, and while I’ve come to like some of her songs, I could never love her like they do.

She also seems like a decent person, a refutation of the axiom that there are no ethical billionaires. Millions pay money to hear her sing. I see no crime. 

I try not to judge any art as “good” or “bad.” De gustibus non est disputandum. I prefer Roger Ebert’s standard: Does the work achieve its intended purpose? If so, it’s a success. The strongest criticism I’ll level publicly is, “It’s not for me.”

Of course, the corollary of “Not all art is meant for you” is “Your art isn’t meant for everybody.” Accept some audience indifference and trust that the right people will find you.

*Or Bad Bunny.

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Lost and Found on the USS Hornet

Here's a neat TV news story from my daughter Laura's aircraft carrier, the USS Hornet Sea, Air and Space Museum: a museum volunteer poking around some compartments of the ship that have been locked up since the Hornet was decommissioned in 1970 found a sailor's old high school class ring. The ring provided enough clues to identify the sailor and locate his family! 

Aside from the heartwarming story, I love the idea that there are still deep recesses of the ship that have yet to be fully explored. An aircraft carrier, even an old one like the Hornet, really is like a small city at sea.

250 Words on Thunder and Lightning

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

Thunderstorms are my favorite meteorological phenomenon. The flash, the boom, the gut-thrumming rumble. The familiar world is transformed into something alien and frightening. You are small and nature is immense, but indoors you’re reasonably safe and can enjoy the show. 

Thunderstorms are rare where I live now, in northern California not far from the Pacific. We don’t have the violently colliding air masses and geography to create them. But I grew up in South Dakota, where the smell of ozone in the wind was a herald announcing their imminent arrival. You could see the front advancing toward you, black clouds gathering over the horizon, lit from within by arcing sparks. 

Ball lightning is an unusual phenomenon that scientists aren’t even sure is real, but my grandparents always swore they saw a cloud of sparkling light float down their chimney and dance around the living room before evanescing into the air. I’d pay good money to witness that.

Probably the most awe-inspiring natural phenomenon I ever saw happened one night I was flying out of Dallas during a thunderstorm. Our plane broke through a deck of clouds to find another deck above us, with rain filling the gap between them. Every few seconds, lightning flashed between the decks, illuminating distant funnel clouds connecting the layers above and below us, like pillars in a vast and empty warehouse. 

We quickly broke through the top deck into clear skies, but I’ll never forget that vision of Hell or Heaven, I wasn’t sure which.

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Viva Bad Bunny!

Bad Bunny with Lady Gaga

So I guess I'm a Bad Bunny fan now.

I'm not compelled to speak out on all the passing controversies of the day, but I had some thoughts on Mr. Bunny's Super Bowl performance I haven't seen anyone else express.

First, no, I don't speak Spanish. That's not a deal-breaker for me. I don't speak Italian, either, but I'd still go to an opera. Plus, the sound quality in Levi's Stadium was such that I doubt even native Spanish speakers understood many of his lyrics unless they already knew the songs. 

I was impressed by three things. First, the propulsive energy of Mr. Bunny's performance. It reminded me of Bruno Mars's Super Bowl show in 2014. Before that I was aware of Mars, of course, but he attacked that performance with such joyful intensity that I instantly became a fan. Same with Mr. Bunny yesterday.

Second was the stagecraft. He and his team built and then disassembled a Puerto Rican cane field, a casita, a bodega, an entire community of musicians and dancers and street vendors and power poles, in the middle of a football field during a break in the game. The choreography was astounding--everyone had to be in exactly the right spot at the right time, from a bartender who handed Mr. Bunny a shot glass to a kid sleeping on a bench (who a lot of people are saying was Liam Conejo Ramos, the boy in the blue knit cap who was kidnapped by ICE, but it wasn't him). 

Third was the storytelling. I didn't know the words but I certainly understood the story Mr. Bunny told of community, tradition, hard work, family celebration--you know, all the classic American values. The entire show was as wholesome and, dare I say, as conservative as could be, right down to the real wedding performed in the middle of it and his "God Bless America" (in English) at the end of it. 

I found it all much more interesting and entertaining than the usual band standing on a stage singing their greatest hits. As a storyteller myself I admire and appreciate masterful storytelling from others, and Mr. Bunny delivered for me. Your mileage may vary.

250 Words on the Secret

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

Occasionally I’m asked to critique someone’s writing or cartooning, and give them advice on how to build a career.

I’ve learned to be wary.

First, nine out of ten people who ask my opinion don’t really want it. They want to be told their work is fantastic and they don’t need to change a jot. So the first thing I try to figure out is whether I’m talking to one of those folks, or to the one out of ten who genuinely wants feedback and is professional enough to take it.

Sometimes people want to know “the secret”: the password, the trick, the right person to approach with the right pitch. Once in a while, they’ll even ask me to do it for them—make the connection, grease the wheels, get them in the door to make a deal.

Of course the real secret is that there isn’t one, and I don’t have the influence they think I do. Even if I wanted to, there is nobody I can call who would offer them the “Standard Rich and Famous Contract” that Orson Welles gave Kermit the Frog. 

Every successful creative person I know has a different story about how they made it. Their way probably won’t work for you. Sit down, do the work, and put it out into the world however you can. If anyone likes something you did, do more of that. Get rejected. Get experience. Get better. Get noticed. Get paid. 

That’s the only secret I know. 

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LumaCon 2026

An overview of the main room at the Petaluma Recreation Center. Other vendors and events were set up in surrounding rooms and outdoor spaces.

I had to take a quick spin through my favorite little comics convention in the world this morning, even though I couldn't commit to tabling this year. Librarians put on the LumaCon Comic Convention for Youth in Petaluma, Calif. to support kids' creativity, promote reading, and give young creators a chance to mingle and mix with professionals. It's free and has a bake sale. What's not to love?

I did a lap, said Hello to lots of friends, bought some books, and then headed out to the rest of my busy day. I'm glad I made the effort. It's a great event run by great people for all the right reasons.

Cartoonist Tom Beland greeted me as I entered the big room.

Nearby, Andrew Farago from the Cartoon Art Museum, his wife cartoonist Shaenon Garrity, and their son Robin.

Comic book artist extraordinaire Brent Anderson.

Cartoonist and Schulz Studio staffer Denis St. John, autographing a book I bought from him.

Another Schulz staffer, editor and "Kid Beowulf" cartoonist Lex Fajardo.

Maia Kobabe, author of one of the most banned books in the U.S., "GenderQueer." We had a nice conversation about graphic medicine.

I also ran into Schulz Studio head and cartoonist Paige Braddock, best known for the comic strip "Jane's World" and her new series for kids, "Peanut, Butter & Crackers."

Down a hall from the big room was space set aside for people who just wanted to sit quietly and draw. It was full. Another example of why I love this event.

Keywords/Keyimages

From the mailbag: my copy of a new book titled Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine, edited by Lisa Diedrich and Briana Martino, which Pennsylvania State University Press was kind enough to send me because I'm one of about 60 cartoonists, professors, and deep-thought-thinkers who helped write it.

This is an academic book, aimed at people teaching or working in the field of graphic medicine. I wrote three essays for it, titled "Metaphor," "Space/Time," and "Subtext," all illustrated with art from Mom's Cancer. 

The assignment, as I understood it, was to take an interesting image from the text and analyze what its intent was and how I used the unique tools and tropes of cartooning to achieve it. Some of the literary analysis dives pretty deep, and it's fascinating to hear cartoonists explain their thinking in their own words. Lisa and Briana have been working on the book for several years, and I think it's a really neat approach to understanding comics in a way that's reminiscent of Scott McCloud's work. 

I'm happy and proud to be a small part of this thing, which I think will be an interesting and useful contribution to the field for a long time.

250 Words on Pre-Electric Entertainment

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

I’m fascinated by mechanical contraptions and entertainment media created before the harnessing of electricity. For example, I think a pendulum clock is just about the most wonderous device humans have ever conceived. 

I love old-timey record players: Edison cylinders, Victrolas, etc. We used to have a Pathe Freres Actuelle spring-powered phonograph from about 1920 that came down through the family, and I played 78s on it quite often. It transported me to a time when a wooden box brought all the music of the world into your home. What a revelation it would have been!

I also have a niche interest in stereoscopic images. Think of the classic Viewmaster toy, but a hundred years earlier. Almost as soon as photography was invented, clever people thought of shooting two photos side by side and placing them in a lensed viewer so that the left eye saw one image, the right eye saw the other, and an illusion of depth was achieved. 

A well-appointed turn-of-the-century parlor might have had hundreds of stereo cards, neatly filed in elegant cases, for visitors to amuse themselves with for hours. Three-dimensional tours of the Holy Land and other exotic locales were a popular subject for people who could never visit them themselves. 

These days you can buy a good-quality antique viewer for less than $100, and cards for $5 to $10 each. I particularly like to find vintage stereo views of places I’ve been. Between them and phonographs, Victorians could experience the world without leaving home. 

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Unboxing

I'm not cool enough to shoot an unboxing video, so how about an unboxing photo? "Mr. McFly! Mr. McFly! This just arrived! I think it's your new book!" said Karen when UPS dropped it off, because that's the ritual in OUR house. 

Presenting the 20th Anniversary Edition of Mom's Cancer, soon to be on bookshelves near you. In has 32 pages of new content, including 22 new pages of comics that tell what happened after the original book ended. It's the ultimate, definitive edition!

It should be in stores in early March. If you have any interest in buying a copy, it would be a big help if you'd pre-order it now, either from your local bookstore (preferred) or online retailer. Pre-orders tell bookstores and everyone up the chain to the publisher how well they can expect the book to do, and it's important to make a good first impression.

Plus, I will renew my traditional offer of mailing a free signed bookplate to anyone who wants an autographed book and sends me their mailing address. (Honestly, I haven't ordered those bookplates yet, but it's top of my to-do list!) Such a deal!

It's always a great day to hold your new book in your hands. They smell wonderful. Mom would've loved it.

250 Words on Jury Duty

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

I’ve been called for jury duty often but selected only once, when I was in my mid-20s and working as a newspaper reporter. I thought my job would disqualify me; it didn’t. I served about a week on a rape trial. 

That trial had a “Perry Mason twist” dramatic enough for television. The defense attorney tried to shake the victim’s credibility by claiming she couldn’t even describe where the attack took place. For example, she said it was in a car about half a mile from a highway, while other evidence suggested the distance was more like 40 yards. Then the prosecutor stood and asked:

“How far apart are you and I right now?”

“A hundred feet,” she answered. 

After lunch, the prosecutor produced a tape measure, stretched it between them, and asked her to read the length: 12 feet. 

Everyone on the jury instantly got the point: the victim was an unusually bad judge of distance. That didn’t make her a liar or impeach the essence of her testimony. She just couldn’t look at something and tell you how far away it was.* 

We deliberated thoroughly, giving the defendant the benefit of every reasonable doubt. Everyone took the responsibility profoundly seriously. Then we found him guilty.

People moan when they get a jury summons, and strategize ways to get out of it, but I think everybody should serve on a jury at least once. I left satisfied and proud, with more faith in my fellow citizens and the system.

.

* I still think about what a gamble that was for the prosecutor. It seemed like a completely spontaneous and unrehearsed question on his part. What if she’d answered it correctly?

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They're Dinky

I have a bookmark folder that is simply titled "Happy." It contains about 50 links guaranteed to make me smile. It occurred to me that I could share one from time to time, and maybe it will make you smile, too.

250 Words on Professional Identity

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

We have an excellent art supply store in town that offers working artists a professional discount. Most of the time, I’m too timid to ask for it. 

Although they’ve never demanded proof, I’m afraid that someday they will. What proof can I offer? Nobody issues an art license. I imagine standing at the register Googling myself while they look at my comics and sniff, “You call that art?!”

I once took part in a discussion about what other cartoonists call themselves. If you say “cartoonist,” many people will ask, “Are you in the newspaper? Do you draw Superman?” If you say “No,” folks get confused—what other types of cartoonists are there?—or quickly lose interest. The number of people impressed that I’m a cartoonist who isn’t in the newspaper and doesn’t draw Superman is disappointingly tiny.

Some cartoonists prefer to call themselves “comics creators,” "graphic artists," or “illustrators.” I’m proud to be a cartoonist but if I’m giving a talk, or I’m somewhere that folks are likely to know what a graphic novel is, I’ll call myself a graphic novelist. It’s more specific and pinpoints my niche in the larger cartooning universe.

Otherwise, I call myself a writer. I’ve written for newspapers, magazines, and trade press before, and the process feels the same to me. Sometimes I write with words, other times I write with words and drawings. Both involve solving narrative problems and making a point as clearly and economically as possible, with whatever flair I can muster. 

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More Good Trouble

As Elvis Costello sang, "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?"

Made a little good trouble in downtown Santa Rosa, Calif. today. Others in my family had commitments so I did my best to represent us all. Crowd size is hard to estimate when you're in it but I'd guess 2000 to 3000. 

One of the defining characteristics of these anti-Trump, anti-ICE, anti-fascism, anti-whatever-all-this-is rallies is the evident kindness and decency of the people who attend. They obey traffic signals. They deposit their trash in the bin. They say "Excuse me" and "Thanks." For a lunatic mob of Antifa agitators, they are very well-mannered. 

One guy ran up and down the street waving an "Americans Love Trump" banner, obviously hoping to provoke a reaction. Must have really stung when he was totally ignored.

Demonstrators filled Courthouse Square in the center of town, with lines of them facing traffic on opposites sides. Got a lot of supportive honks from passing cars.

Lots of folks in these vests around. Indivisible.org does a lot of the legwork and planning to pull these things off, including teams of trained monitors who look for trouble, keep people out of traffic, supply first aid, and provide a general calming presence.

I expect to get a few mocking reactions from bots and trolls, mocking the futility of it all. So what's the point? Unity: knowing you're part of a community that feels the same. You're not alone, you're not crazy, we're in this together. The value of being a pebble in an avalanche, a snowflake in a blizzard. The small courage of standing up in public for a righteous cause, then putting your name behind it on social media. 

As Vietnam War protestor A.J. Muste said, "Oh, I don't do this to change the country. I do it so the country won't change me."

A common MAGA slander is that anyone opposed to them must be a paid protestor, bussed in for the day by George Soros. I liked this response.

Simple, direct, says it all.

I liked this collision of worlds. One thing that strikes me as funny about MAGA followers is that they always think of themselves as the plucky rebels instead of the oppressive empire. There's even a joke about it in the new "Knives Out" movie. I guess everybody is the hero of their own story, but the cognitive dissonance must be unbearable.

My favorite protestor of the day.

Advice from Jim Keefe

Jim Keefe is a great cartoonist who has done a lot in his long, impressive career, including working as a staff artist for King Features Syndicate, writing and drawing the comic strip "Flash Gordon," and currently drawing the "Sally Forth" comic strip. We're virtual friends but don't really know each other, and today he posted the best advice about being a working cartoonist I've seen in a long time. I think it would also apply to anyone pursuing self-employment in any creative field. 

I won't repeat all his tips--go read them yourself!--but some, such as develop your business skills, work both hard and smart, and surround yourself with better cartoonists, are the sorts of solid wisdom you'd expect. I want to focus on two, one of which I endorse with a resounding "YES!!" and the other I don't think necessarily applies to me and may not to others.

Jim quotes Steve Martin's advice from his book "Born Standing Up," which I loved: "Be so good they can't ignore you." 

Yes yes yes. 

I remember being in my teens and twenties, and thinking what I really wanted to do was draw superhero comics (a career that holds no appeal to me today). I kept looking at artists I considered the least talented working for DC and Marvel and thinking, "I'm better than that guy, they should hire me instead of him!" 

I think that attitude is very common among aspiring creative people, but in retrospect its ignorance and arrogance is embarrassing. First, I can see now that I really wasn't better than that guy. Second, that guy had a 30-year track record producing professional-grade work on deadline, while I had none. Third, aiming for the lowest bar I thought I could clear guaranteed that I would never get over it.

Don't aim to be better than the worst. Aim to be better than the best. 

But that's so daunting! You could never be as good as Jack Kirby or Neal Adams or Bill Watterson or Charles Schulz! Impossible!

So you work hard and do your best and fall short because you're right, you'll never be better than the best. But maybe you've made yourself better than 90 percent of your competition instead of 1 percent of it. Maybe now you're so good they can't ignore you, and even if they can't hire you today, they will remember you later. 

The other point I like, but will push back a bit on, is "Don't pigeonhole yourself into one small aspect of the art form." On its face, that's great advice. Be flexible and nimble. Don't be so focused on one goal that you miss unexpected opportunities. 

I knew a guy in high school who wanted nothing more than to draw superhero comic books. He was good enough to get a little interest from the big publishers, but no work. Year after year he pounded on their doors in vain until now, decades later, he's still posting examples of his superhero submissions without facing the truth that it is never going to happen. He could have built a career in other aspects of the business but wouldn't pivot.

I saw one young artist a few years ago whose portfolio was nothing but drawings of Wolverine. "What do you want to do with your career?" "Draw Wolverine." "What would you do if you couldn't draw Wolverine?" "Keep trying harder until I get to draw Wolverine." 

Don't be like them. 

Here's my different angle on Jim's advice. He writes about how, when he couldn't get work as a comic book artist, he did lettering, coloring, teaching. Picking up what he could where he could to earn a living in the business, at least stay in the periphery.

I get it but personally wouldn't do that. I have no interest in lettering or coloring as a profession (though I have great respect for those that do). I don't want to draw greeting cards or advertisement art or coloring books. Getting paid to draw is not the "end all be all" for me. My passion for cartooning is telling stories with words and pictures. If for some reason I couldn't do that, then I guess I'd be out of the business. Shrug. I could almost as happily draw on my own time and get paid to do something else. 

I'm not even sure I'm saying anything different than Jim, but that's the thought he prompted when I read his excellent piece this morning. 

250 Words on Mathematics

[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]

I have little patience for adults who complain/brag they never use the math they learned in school. I use high school math—algebra, geometry, trigonometry—routinely. Calculating fractions and proportions, cutting big things into little things, figuring out where to plant for sun or shade, ordering cubic yards of soil, buying enough paint to cover a wall. 

That level of math is a fundamental part of how I interact with the world. I don’t really understand how people get through life without it.

As a physics major, I dove into the deep pool of calculus and realized that all the high school stuff was preliminary. Calculus is where math really begins. And gets profound!

The foundation of calculus is slicing up space and time into an infinite number of infinitely tiny bits. When you do that, you can describe phenomena you otherwise couldn’t, from the flow of water through a pipe to the drift of galaxies through the cosmos. 

I admit I don’t use calculus in everyday life. It goes much deeper. Beyond its usefulness as a computational tool, calculus changed how I see the world. 

The more I studied F = ma, E = mc2, Maxwell’s and Schrodinger’s equations, etc., the more I realized that math was less about plugging in numbers and disgorging answers than an abstract but robust philosophical approach to life. I’ve forgotten how to solve partial differential equations, but the truth that mathematics lies at the foundation of all reality will stay with me forever. 

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