I Was Never Interested In The Two-party

I'm Not Sure About That Role Any Longer. The Role Used To Be To Mix Things Up And I Think To A Great Extent It Still Is, But The Quality Of The Work Of The Political Cartoon Has Been Succeeded By The Wisecrack, The Gag Cartoon, So That The Cartoonist Becomes More Of The Equivalent Of The Jay Leno Monologues, Or David Letterman Monologues.

My Success Was The Shock Of Recognition, Probably, Rather Than The Quality Of The Work. I Mean, The Quality May Have Been Fine, But There's A Lot Of Fine Work Out There. It Was The Fact That I Was Doing Something That At That Time, Nobody Else Was Doing, Except For Say, Mort Saul Out In San Francisco On The Hungry Eye, And "second City" Was Emerging Out In Chicago. Nothing In Print. It Was Basically Happening In Cabaret And Nothing In Fiction. And Certainly Nothing In New York In Cartoons.

There's Some Brain Damage, But It May Be That Very Brain Damage That Allows Me To Do The Work I Do.

When I Am Working A Book, I Go Through My Library And Take A Look Through Some Of The Great Cartoonists Of The Past, Like Cliff Sterrett, Who Did "polly And Her Pals," Or Winsor Mccay Who Did "a Little Nemo In Slumberland," And Herriman - And I Just Looked Through These Guys And Looked For Somebody To Steal. You Know, Looked For Who I Could Swipe, Or Turn Into - Who's Work I Will Turn Into My Work. And I Still Use, After All These Years, These Artists As Inspirations. So, Here In My Eighties, I Go Back To When I Was Eight For My Inspiration.

I Come Out Of A Cold War Sensibility, A Cold War Mentality, And During Those Cold War Years, I Used To Know, I Thought, The Answers To Everything. And Since The End Of The Cold War, I'm Just A Dumb As Everyone Else.