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 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 that 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. 

* * * 

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! I am sharing these little "250 Words On" essays via Substack, which will email a new one to your In Box every Tuesday morning. Just follow this link and enter your email address. It's free, and I promise to never use your address for evil purposes.

250 Words on Art as Therapy

[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 written two nonfiction graphic novels about bad things that happened in my life: Mom’s Cancer, about my mother’s experience with metastatic cancer, and A Fire Story, about losing my home and neighborhood to a disastrous firestorm. In both cases readers often ask, “Was writing about it therapeutic for you? Was it cathartic?”

Yes and no.

Writing any sort of memoir requires you to pay attention to what happened as well as how you reacted to it. That demands some self-awareness and introspection. “Why was I angry? Why did I make those choices? What do I regret?” I suppose that’s a deeper sort of analysis than a lot of people do in those situations. 

On the other hand, I still go out and talk to roomfuls of strangers about my mother’s cancer and my home’s conflagration years after they happened. I’m happy to do it—really!—but in some sense it feels like picking at scabs without ever giving them a chance to scar over. “Let me yet again relive for you folks the worst experiences of my life.” 

That doesn’t seem healthy.

I especially reject the ideas of “catharsis” and “closure.” I don't think there’s any such thing. You just keep on because you have no choice. Life is forever divided into “before” and “after,” and over time you accumulate enough days in your “after” ledger, including some good and happy ones, that the pain of losing “before” slowly fades.

Art’s got nothing to do with that. Only time. 

* * * 

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! I am sharing these little "250 Words On" essays via Substack, which will email a new one to your In Box every Tuesday morning. Just follow this link and enter your email address. It's free, and I promise to never use your address for evil purposes.

Too Many Bums

Every Christmas Eve since 2005--20 years now!--I share one of my favorite bits of whimsy from possibly my favorite comic strip, Walt Kelly's "Pogo": the classic carol "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie." You know the tune, sing along!

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!

Don't we know archaic barrel,

Lullaby Lilla boy, Louisville Lou?

Trolley Molly don't love Harold,

Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Polly wolly cracker n' too-da-loo!
Hunky Dory's pop is lolly
gaggin' on the wagon,
Willy, folly go through!

Donkey Bonny brays a carol,
Antelope Cantaloup, 'lope with you!
Chollie's collie barks at Barrow,
Harum scarum five alarum bung-a-loo!

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

--Brian 

250 Words on Nostalgia

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

Author John Koenig coined the word “anemoia”: a sense of nostalgia for a past you never experienced. You might get a tingle of anemoia when you see Currier and Ives prints or Bedford Falls. “I’m homesick even though I was never there.” 

I think anemoia explains the success of Thomas Kinkade, who painted soft-focus pastel landscapes so warm and inviting you want to crawl into them. That golden glowing cottage in an alpine glade feels exactly like my cozy childhood home, except I always lived in a tract house in the suburbs.  

Even as a child I experienced deep nostalgic longing, despite not having lived long enough to feel nostalgia for anything. The song “Those Were The Days” by Mary Hopkin, in which a woman wistfully recalls happy nights singing and dancing in a tavern with her friends, invoked a haunting melancholy in me, and I’d never been inside a tavern. It’s based on a Russian folk song because of course it is. 

I’ve now lived long enough to feel authentic nostalgia that can hit hard, especially for times that are long gone. I’d give anything to be able to knock on my grandparents’ door and be invited in for Sunday dinner, sit and talk with my Mom, or relive a day with my daughters when they were toddlers. 

It keeps me mindful that someday these will be the good old days I would give anything to revisit, and makes me grateful for the people and places I have now.

* * * 

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! I am sharing these little "250 Words On" essays via Substack, which will email a new one to your In Box every Tuesday morning. Just follow this link and enter your email address. It's free, and I promise to never use your address for evil purposes.

When Captain America Throws His Mighty Shield....

I mentioned a while back that I'm cohosting a podcast on the movie "Captain America: The First Avenger," which we analyze at the rate of one minute of movie per episode. We premiered on Dec. 1 and post every M, W and F, so we've got nine up already! 

My pals Jim O'Kane, Hal Bryan and I have had some great guests in the first nine, including Joe Johnston, the film's director (ep. 1); writer Mark Evanier, one-time assistant to Captain America co-creator Jack Kirby (ep. 2); actor Billy Campbell, the Rocketeer himself, who actually guested as an expert on Norway, where this minute of the movie is set and he now lives (ep. 4); and one of my favorites, Judd Winick, a writer and cartoonist who did a Captain America story for the same Marvel kids' anthology I did an Avengers story for (ep. 9). We've had an amazing assortment of quality guests so far, especially considering that there's nothing in it for them but the kindness of doing us a favor. 

Jim and Hal have done many "Movies by Minutes" podcasts together but this is my first as co-host, and I feel like I'm still learning the ropes. We work as far as we can in advance, of course, but record episodes out of order depending on the availability of guests. It's a challenge to remember and not repeat what you said "yesterday," especially when you did yesterday's episode two months ago or haven't done it at all. I hope to get decent at it by the time we finish.

Perhaps my favorite moment of the experience was when I had to reschedule lunch with one of my daughters because, as I explained to her, "I'm doing a podcast with Hitler."

We try to keep each episode around 25 or 30 minutes--as Jim says, a Peloton workout's worth of time--but some have topped 45 because the guests were so fascinating. I hope that comes across to listeners and they feel the same. I'm having fun. 

Twins Day 2025!

It nearly slipped past me! I was just reminded that today is National Twins Day, which I get to celebrate because I raised my own pair of 'em. HA HA, girls, you thought I'd forgotten! 

I may enjoy being a dad of twins more than they actually enjoy being twins. Of course, none of us really thinks about it very often, but when it comes to my attention I smile, whereas when it's brought to their attention they just roll their eyes.

Happy Twins Day, Chiquitas! Thanks for giving me the opportunity to make you squirm in embarrassment. You were a lot of work, so I earned it.

250 Words on Starhopping

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

Two weeks ago I wrote about one of the perks of being an amateur astronomer, which is sensing when I’m seeing something unusual in the sky before my conscious mind really registers it—a tingle that tells me “That ain’t right!”

Much of my familiarity with the heavens came from starhopping, which is a traditional method of finding things you can’t see by following a trail of things you can. You typically start with a prominent constellation or bright star and then, using your finderscope or telescope, pick out a path among dimmer stars that leads you to your target. 

The beauty of starhopping is that patterns of stars become familiar milestones connected to other milestones that form a network of trails across the sky. It also isn’t unusual to stumble across a cluster, nebula or galaxy you weren’t even looking for, which always provides an exciting jolt of discovery.

These days, I’m afraid that starhopping is becoming a lost art. Modern mid-range telescopes come with digital keypads or apps. You just tell the computer what you want to see and the telescope dials it up. You don’t need to learn the pathways or even look through the eyepiece. 

It’s the difference between reading a map and plugging a destination into a GPS. Sure, the GPS will get you there, probably faster and more accurately. What you sacrifice is the experience of meandering, discovering, mastering, feeling it in your bones. 

The journey is as important as the destination. Or more.

* * * 

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! I am sharing these little "250 Words On" essays via Substack, which will email a new one to your In Box every Tuesday morning. Just follow this link and enter your email address. It's free, and I promise to never use your address for evil purposes.

It's Real

Maybe the most magical moment of making a book is when the abstract thing you've been working on for a long time--until now a jumble of ink on paper, Word files, Photoshop files, PDFs, proofs, and many many emails--becomes a solid object. Editor Charlie just sent me the first copy of the 20th Anniversary Edition of Mom's Cancer, still warm from the printing press (metaphorically), and it's a beauty.  

Y'all will get to see it in a few months, and I hope you'll take a look. We added 32 pages of all-new content, including 22 pages of comics, a new foreword from my graphic medicine pal, MK Czerwiec (thanks again, MK), and a long afterword by me on What It All Means. It's the definitive edition that you definitely need on your shelf!

Schroeder

In 1884, sculptor Frederic Bartholdi and engineer Gustave Eiffel built the Statue of Liberty in the middle of Paris before disassembling it for shipment to the United States. It's weird to see such a famous icon in a totally unfamiliar setting.

I've been thinking of that as I wrap up my work refurbishing and painting a (smaller) statue of the "Peanuts" character Schroeder that is destined for a local park. My wife, Karen, is part of a non-profit that purchased an acre of land to save it from becoming a monstrous apartment complex, way too big for the property and neighborhood, and develop it as a community playground instead. Before our 2017 fire it had been a pre-school; since, it has been an empty lot.

Another member of the non-profit contacted someone with the Charles M. Schulz Museum, which is a few miles from the park, to ask if they had any "Peanuts" statues. This being Mr. Schulz's adopted hometown, dozens of similar statues are all over the region, sponsored and painted by various businesses and service organizations as works of public art. They had one: a Schroeder statue that had been returned when a bank back east went out of business.

It had been exposed to the elements and so needed patching, caulking and sanding, then priming and painting. I just finished putting roughly a hundred coats of polyurethane on it, so I hope it will last a while. 

Sometime in the spring, when the park is done, Schroeder will be installed in his new home (situated to be as kid-proof as possible). With luck, decades from now these photos of Schroeder in my backyard will look as weird as those of Lady Liberty looming over Paris.

Cthulhu Chiffonade

Once a week, Karen and I volunteer to distribute food for the food bank, which is not the point. The point is that today I pulled a carrot out of a 50-pound bag that looked like a monstrous ancient cosmic god from another dimension, and I didn't know whether I should burn it or offer sacrifices to it. It's possible I have found a new religion.

250 Words on Disneyland

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

When I was a child in South Dakota, I knew about Disneyland long before I visited it, thanks to an hour-long advertisement called “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” that aired every Sunday night. Growing up modestly in the Midwest, Anaheim seemed as remote as Mars. I had a friend who made the pilgrimage and returned with a mouse-ear cap, which we revered as if it were a holy relic. 

My grandparents took my sister and me to Disneyland during a swing through the Western states when I was 9. It was the era of ticket books and “E ticket” rides. Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion were new and amazing, and both remain favorites to this day. I know how every illusion in the Haunted Mansion works (there are no holograms!), and have even adapted some for my homemade Halloween haunt, but the original is so masterfully done I can only gape and grin.

After my family moved to California, Disneyland trips became more frequent. I remained a fan. Luckily, my wife, Karen, felt likewise, and we’ve indoctrinated our daughters as well. 

I’m not naïve. I understand that Disney is a multinational corporation that manipulates emotions and plays upon nostalgia to maximize shareholder value. Its goal is to part me from as much of my money as possible. 

When I pass through Disneyland’s gates and walk through the tunnels beneath the train track, where even the air feels charged with enchantment, that seems like a fair deal.  

* * * 

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! I am sharing these little "250 Words On" essays via Substack, which will email a new one to your In Box every Tuesday morning. Just follow this link and enter your email address. It's free, and I promise to never use your address for evil purposes.

Time Traveling

Today is "Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day"--really, you can look it up!--and, in remarkable synchronicity, less than 24 hours ago I did some time traveling with no idea that the auspicious occasion was nigh.

My daughters and I went to The Great Dickens Christmas Fair in San Francisco yesterday. It's like a Renaissance Faire but indoors and 300 years later, recreating the life and times of "A Christmas Carol." They're a little loose with the time period--anything vaguely Victorian fits in, from Sherlock Holmes to an occasional cowboy. It's about equal parts food, shopping and entertainment that is impressively immersive for taking place in a big warehouse. There is also a time machine available for photo ops. We have a good time.

Oh, here's some unsolicited relationship advice from someone who's been married a while. Try to find a partner who, when you announce "Google says that 'Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day' began in 2007," will reply: "Or did it?!" That one is a keeper. 

Anyway, happy "Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day," particularly to any friends who happen to own a DeLorean or an old English police call box.