Interviewed by Mia Beach
Tell us about your new collection of cartoons, And to Think We Started as a Book Club
It’s my debut collection, chock-full of all my best cartoons from The New Yorker and beyond. I’m a very modest and self-deprecating person normally, but I have to say, this book is fantastic. The cartoons are hilarious, the print quality is gorgeous, the size is just right to enjoy in a single sitting—and then flip back to the beginning and enjoy it again. But don’t take my extremely biased word for it! The great comedian Hannah Gadsby gave what I think is one of my favorite blurbs: “I only wish household magnets were stronger so I could put this whole book on my fridge.” (Someone please get Hannah an industrial strength magnet, stat!)
What is your favorite animal to draw—and what animal do you think is the funniest cartoon subject?
There’s a simple answer to both parts of your question: cats! Cats are paws-down the funniest creature to draw and to make jokes about. Maybe it’s something about their profound laziness, combined with their regal self-satisfaction, combined with their unemotional reserve, that I find so outrageously funny. In fact, I borrow from cats whenever I draw my human characters. I try to make them as expressionless as possible. It amplifies the absurdity of the humor, and it allows the reader to imprint their own thoughts and feelings onto the characters. So, really, everyone I draw is a cat in disguise.
What made you start cartooning? Why cartoons over other illustrations or modes of humor?
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a Disney animator. And I wanted to be Gary Larson. And I wanted to be Bill Watterson, and Akira Toriyama. Movies, comics, manga, meant everything to me. I’d spend hours and hours copying my favorite scenes and panels. Honestly, it never occured to me that there might be some other way of drawing, or being funny. The New Yorker didn’t cross my radar until much later, but when it did, I was delighted to see cartoons taken seriously. It made perfect sense.
What is your Bizarro World life—what would you have been doing rather than being a cartoonist?
There exists some alternate universe where I’m frollicking in the surf as a marine biologist. (Marine biologists spend most of their time frollicking in the surf, right?)
