Never enough time

When it comes to politics, I am an angry woman. You might have noticed that. But there is a softer side to me, a side that yearns to, I dunno, draw the occasional comic about nothing at all. I am a political cartoon junkie through and through, but there's something about strips involving actual recurring characters besides jerkhead politicians or myself. Characters whose lives might actually interest readers, as in Dykes to Watch Out For or Wendel or Doonesbury, or Calvin and Hobbes, or the personal strips in the K Chronicles.

I do have recurring features, of course. You might have noticed I really like to do how-to-guides and instruction manuals, partly because I'm a newspaper information designer, and partly because I'm fascinated by the whole culture of magazine tips and self-help books and advice shows.

And it's true that I try to create adventures or little fictional scenes or characters sometimes, like with this nameless couple, or this frightened woman. But most of the people in my cartoons play out their entire existence in one panel, never to be resurrected again.

So I'm thinking I might try to start, at least occasionally, drawing some simple little comic strips with an actual cast of characters. The challenge with a comic strip is that it has to be internally funny even if you don't know the characters, but that once you do get to know them, it's funny on a deeper, more personal level. Plus there have to be, you know, plotlines. And stuff.

We'll see. I could never give up drawing political stuff every week, though. I'm just too angry. I wish there were more hours in the day or that I had a magic time machine. Sigh...