Scott Stantis on what makes a great comic strip

The Dallas Morning News recently interviewed Scott Stantis about his Prickly City feature and Scott tells his views on what makes a great comic, what it’s like being married to a ‘liberal,’ and a brief mention of his podcast.

Enter Carmen, a girl of uncertain ethnicity who walks a straight-and-narrow path, and Winslow, a free-spirited coyote pup. The two friends explore politics and social events, Carmen with the conservative, analytical eye of her creator, and Winslow from the liberal vantage point of “all of my best friends,” Mr. Stantis, 46, says with a laugh. “And that includes my wife.”

While the Stantis marriage is never fodder for the strip, its sensibilities are fundamental to Prickly City, which is set in the desert Southwest. “Everything there is designed to prick you, wound you or eat you,” he says of the landscape he grew to love when his family lived in Phoenix some years ago. The cartoonist jokes that he and his wife have lived in harmonic dissonance for a quarter-century, canceling each other’s votes on Election Day.

It’s more game than battle, a contest to prove that the other is wrong (not stupid). That sort of reflective, informed engagement may evolve into subversive psychological warfare, but not psychosis.

“You don’t clinch an argument by shouting, ‘Well, you’re a liberal!’ ” Mr. Stantis says.

“We can love each other despite our different world views,” he says, and that appreciation and respect keep life grounded for Mr. Stantis in both his real world and in the fantasy landscape of Prickly City.

Technorati Tags: Prickly city, Scott Stantis

Technorati Tags: Prickly city, Scott Stantis