Tom: Ok- you couldn't keep from drawing comics. At any point, did you realize the slide had begun? Did you ask yourself - "Here I am a Summa Cum Laude at Vassar, lugging all my stuff to take an inernship and job with comics companies (and drawing the strip meanwhile.) Did you realize your life was no longer your own then?

Shaenon: It seemed like a good idea at the time...

Shaenon: The thing is, I used to be into all kinds of geeky stuff, and now it's pretty much all about the comics. I'm not sure when the comics started to crowd everything else out.

Shaenon: Moving in with Andrew sealed my fate, though. We feed off each other.

Tom: Really? Like start trek and stuff or something more obscure?

Shaenon: You should see our spectacular library of graphic novels.

Tom: Meaning what?

Shaenon: Yeah, Star Trek, scifi in general, fantasy stuff, computer games... Dave is autobiographical in certain respects.

Shaenon: I was head of the Vassar science-fiction club, my man!

Shaenon: Andrew is even more obsessed with comics than I am, if such a thing is possible.

Tom: Cool! I can talk Dick but that's about it. I read some here and there. Bester.

Tom: Really?

Shaenon: He tried to take umbrage at that, but quickly gave up and agreed that he is indeed worse.

Tom: I can see that acutally. He is obsessed- you are posessed.

Shaenon: I read sci-fi voraciously. Love the stuff.

Shaenon: Now, however, it's rare that I can find time to read books without pictures.

Tom: The good stuff is so imaginative. It would really be a good lesson for everyone who writes to try one sci-fi thing, I bet. (My most recent 24 hour comic was set in the future but went kind of AWOL )

Tom: Yeah - books without pictures. I have some of them.

Shaenon: The last book I finished was the true account of a guy named Dave Gorman trying to find 54 other guys named Dave Gorman to win a bet. It was research for the strip.

Tom: I think I heard of that book. That's why it rang a bell when I read the strip. He got some press I think, cause I sure as hell didn

Tom: 't

Shaenon: There are very few scifi comics, for some reason. The best SF comic book right now is Carla Speed McNeil's "Finder." Lots of exciting ideas in there.

Tom: read it

Shaenon: There was a BBC series and everything! I ordered the book from England.

Shaenon: Lots of good visual references for Daves in there.

Shaenon: The "real" book I'm reading now is a collection of essays on physics by Richard Feynman.

Tom: Hahaha! Anyway, Finder- I bought a few of the early ones at APE.I know it's good, but haven't penetrated it yet. Sometimes I'm intimidated by the number of ideas in good sci fi. My brains goes spinning away every interesting idea and I never finish reading. Yeah- Feynman. Isn't Alan Alda playing him soon?

Tom: Which book?

Shaenon: He'd better not!

Tom: I think he is- sorry!

Tom: Playing him in CANASTA!

Shaenon: It's called "Six Easy Pieces," and it's adapted from lessons in advanced theoretical physics he devised for intro classes at Cal Tech. Physics lite - fun!

Tom: Nice!

Tom: Ok, so you've been at Narbonic, CAM, and Viz now for 2 years.

Shaenon: Right!

Tom: Ok, so like what inspired you visually, and what is your basic relationship with the drawings. You've said a number of times you're mostly a writer, but I am not sure I believe that that means you are uninterested in drawing.

Shaenon: I like to draw. It just doesn't come as easily to me as writing does.

Shaenon: It is pathetically obvious that one of my visual influences is Berkeley Breathed.

Tom: Right. I know that feeling. Your drawings have gotten noticably better. Your characters have form to them. Re: Breathed, obviously. Did you spend time copying any cartoons way back when?

Shaenon: No. I never copied other drawings. I did, however, sometimes copy specific elements of "Bloom County" art, because I decided that it was the newspaper strip that looked the most like my own drawings. For instance, I copied shoes from "Bloom County."

Shaenon: I also copied glasses from "For Better Or For Worse."

Tom: Oh really- how about in profile? Mell for instance

Shaenon: I think Breathed and I are both copying Jules Feiffer.

Shaenon: Also Chuck Jones - he loved doing extreme expressions in profile, frozen.

Tom: Yeah. Hadn't thought about that. Nice.

Tom: Hmmm.

Shaenon: Feiffer really influenced an entire school of cartoonists without ever doing a newspaper strip himself.

Tom: Who else do you think?

Shaenon: He was working in a sort of magazine-illustration style, like Gluyas Williams, and brought that minimalist look to cartoons.

Tom: Doonsbury was never as lyrically drawn.

Shaenon: Art is not the point of Doonesbury. The art serves the strip okay, though.

Tom: Right. Who do you think he influenced- I bow to your knowledge, but want to see who you mean/

Shaenon: I like Doonesbury very much, incidentally. I read it online every day.

Tom: Really?

Tom: I like it a lot, but just feel like there's no teeth anymore. It's predictable.'

Shaenon: Feiffer? Well, Trudeau, obviously, and then guys like Breathed copied Trudeau, and now a bunch of guys copy Breathed. It's a trickle-down effect.

Tom: Aha. Yeah ok.

Tom: So what is it like working at Viz? What do you do there?

Shaenon: In terms of content and structure, many weekly strips, especially with a political bent, take off from Feiffer.

Shaenon: I'm a secretary. As I said, very glamorous.

Tom: Many weeklies- you think? I still think of Feiffer as being pretty singular.

Tom: They hired a secretary all the way from Vassar? But that's terrific. I bet you have stores of Japanese culture info no one has ever seen.

Shaenon: Andrew is feeding me ideas over my shoulder. We're thinking guys like Tom Tomorrow and Ted Rall and Lloyd Dangle, who do this sort of dry political/social humor in strip form. But maybe this is a reach.

Shaenon: Well, they didn't have to pay my plane fare.

Shaenon: I have indeed learned much about Japan and its comic books.

Tom: Hmm. I guess I always thought of Feiffer as personal/politcal in a way that maybe maybe only Dangle has been, in that list you mentioned. (And by the way, Lloyd Dangle is the best political cartoonist in the country bar none, I think.)

Shaenon: Yeah, I think Dangle is the closest.

Shaenon: He's a really nice guy.

Tom: He's a gem. You met him or his new kid?

Tom: Funny that he's the head of the Graphic Artists Guild now.

Shaenon: But the best political commentator of our time is DAVID REES!

Tom: haha

Tom: ok send me a link of his best material. I get bored easy.

Tom: And haven't read that far into it.

Shaenon: It's all at www.mnftiu.com

Tom: But which ones. I read a few and get tired. I like them, but feel like they're not changing. Granted I probably don't give it enough attention.

Shaenon: Lemme look...