{"id":1258,"date":"2004-12-12T16:19:47","date_gmt":"2004-12-13T00:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/12\/12\/im-in-the-washington-post-today\/"},"modified":"2004-12-12T16:19:47","modified_gmt":"2004-12-13T00:19:47","slug":"im-in-the-washington-post-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1258","title":{"rendered":"I'm in the Washington Post today!"},"content":{"rendered":"

No, really.<\/a><\/p>\n

Wonder if I’ll get any new “Hereville” readers out of it?<\/p>\n

I’m told that the print version has an illustration (one of my self-portraits) along with the article.<\/p>\n

By the way, in the hopes of retaining a few readers who might check Hereville <\/i>out because of the Post mention, the entire Hereville <\/i>archive is free this week<\/a>. So if you want to reread the 20 Hereville <\/i>pages so far and you’re too cheap to subscribe (just kidding!), this week is the time to do it.<\/p>\n

If you’d like to read the whole interview (which was conducted by email), check it out below the fold. I deliberately kept my answers short (for me), since I knew the article would have a small word count. I was very, very tired when I did this, so my answers are less-than-brilliant, alas.
\n
\nHere are my answers. I didn’t realize you thought that I was still doing
\npolitical cartoons – I’m mostly not. Feel free to send me different
\nquestions or follow-up questions if you like; I’ll get back to you this
\nevening (I’ll be awake until at least 5am your time).<\/p>\n

Here goes! If you can get these back to me by tomorrow evening, that would be rockin’. Then you can brace yourself for the Web traffic. Tee hee.<\/p>\n

1. How old are you?<\/p><\/div>\n

36<\/p>\n

2. Where do you live?<\/div>\n

Portland, Oregon<\/p>\n

When and why do you start drawing political cartoons? When did it occur to you to try to sell them?<\/div>\n

When I attended Portland State University in the late 90s, I went to the
\nstudent paper and asked to do a daily gag strip for them. They said they
\ndidn’t publish daily gag strips, but I could do political cartoons on the
\nop-ed page if I wanted. That’s how I started doing my weekly political
\ncartoon rant “Ampersand.” The idea of trying to sell them was self-evident,
\nsince I was virtually always broke.<\/p>\n

What you may not realize is that I’ve almost (but not quite) quit drawing
\novertly political cartoons nowadays. For a while, it was very rewarding, in
\ncreative terms if not financially. In time, I found trying to do a weekly
\n“I’m pissed off” gag rather sterile; it was getting harder and harder not to
\nbecome formulaic.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, I still do a political cartoon in every issue of “Dollars &
\nSense,” a left-wing economics magazine that I’m a big fan of. But other than
\nthat, I’ve quit the political cartooning game. My main cartooning outlet is
\nHereville<\/i>, an online comic book about the magical adventures of an
\n12-year-old Hasidic girl in an extremely isolated Hasidic
\ntown. It’s sort of an oddball middle ground between “Buffy” and Isaac
\nBashevis Singer.<\/p>\n

I’m Jewish, but also an atheist, and I was raised in a reform Jewish
\nhousehold. So in many ways the extremely Orthodox Jewish culture I’m writing
\nand drawing about in Hereville<\/i> is as exotic to me as it is to my readers
\n(except for my Frum Jewish readers, of course!). I’m finding drawing and
\nwriting “Hereville” to be such an exciting challenge; after years of doing
\nphysically tiny cartoons about politics, it’s so nice to be able to increase
\nmy scope, both in terms of the page size and in terms of themes and
\ncharacters.<\/p>\n

Of course, even when it’s not directly about politics, almost no art is
\napolitical. Right now Mirka, my main character, is very content with the
\nculture she’s being raised in; just as most Hasidic Jews greatly enjoy their
\nlife and their culture. But traditional, insular cultures can be very hard
\non square pegs, and as Mirka grows older in “Hereville” the patriarchal
\naspects of her culture, which seem natural and right to her now, will chafe
\nher more and more.<\/p>\n

People can find Hereville <\/i>on the publisher’s website, www.girlamatic.com<\/a>
\n(the current week’s page is always free to look at). There’s also a link to
\nHereville – and to “Ampersand,” my still-ongoing political cartoon – on my
\nwebsite, www.amptoons.com .<\/p>\n

4. How much time per week do you spend drawing cartoons?<\/div>\n

Between eight and twenty hours, depending on the week. More if you include
\nresearch. (I have a day job as well – I’m a wedding coordinator).<\/p>\n

5. Did you study art growing up? What sort of educational background do you have? Art-related work experience?<\/div>\n

As a kid I liked art, but I was more enthralled by math and science. Then I
\nhit high school biology, and that was too gross, so I became artsy instead.
\nI took a lot of art classes then, especially life drawing. After high school, I attended and almost immediately dropped out of Oberlin College (which is also the alma matta – sp? – of Alison Bechdel of “Dykes to Watch Out For” fame). But that was still important, because I met the people there I’m still living with communally today.<\/p>\n

Years later, I attended and dropped out of the School of Visual Arts in New
\nYork City, where I was privileged to take cartooning classes from Will
\nEisner, one of the greatest cartoonists of all time. Then I didn’t attend
\nUMASS, but I hung out there for a couple of years and contributed a daily
\nstrip to their campus newspaper, which is great experience – nothing like
\nbeing forced to draw a strip a day to improve your skills. Of course, it
\nhelped that I was unemployed and sponging off of friends for a lot of that
\ntime.<\/p>\n

More recently, I attended and – for a change – actually graduated from
\nPortland State University. I took a lot of drawing classes there, but my
\nmajor was a design-your-own combo of economics and women’s studies.<\/p>\n

6. What advice would you give someone who was interested in becoming a political cartoonist and trying to make money at it?<\/div>\n

I’d advise them to ask someone else. If I had a clue how to do it, I wouldn’t have a day job.<\/p>\n

Right now, the comics industry is in terrible shape. Many of the most talented cartoonists out there – people like Jenn Manley Lee, www.jennworks.com<\/a> – have never earned a full-time living as cartoonists. There’s no longer an infrastructure to support more than a tiny number of up-and-coming cartoonists, which is unfortunate, because the talent base out there is enormous.<\/p>\n

Also, for the art, do you mind if we use your self portrait? I think I recall it being on the Web site. Is that right? If not, what do you
\nsuggest?<\/div>\n

I don’t mind, but I’d rather you tell me what image you want (I’ve done a
\nLOT of self portraits!) and I’ll email you a print-quality copy of it – an
\nimage taken from the web will look bad when printed on paper.<\/p>\n

I’d personally prefer that you use an image from Hereville – just tell me
\nwhich one, and I’ll email you a print-quality copy – but if you’d prefer one
\nof the self-portraits, that’s cool too.<\/p>\n

Hope that this hasn’t been too far away from what you expected! Also, I hope
\nthis isn’t too ridiculously long (but since you were familiar with my Ms
\nposts, you must have expected that!).<\/p>\n

Barry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, really. Wonder if I’ll get any new “Hereville” readers out of it? I’m told that the print version has an illustration (one of my self-portraits) along with the article. By the way, in the hopes of retaining a few … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartooning-comics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}