Coverly on cartooning; penning children’s book

Speed Bump creator Dave Coverly has an extensive write up in The Daily Gazette (NY) about his career in the comics.

Regarding the book, Dave tells the Gazette that he has signed a four-book deal with New York publisher Henry Holt and Co., and is writing children’s books, with the first book is entitled, “Sue MacDonald Had a Book” – a spin off from “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” The book is about a girl who is reading a book and the vowels run away. “She has to chase the vowels down. Instead of ‘e-i-e-i-o’ it’s ‘a-e-i-o-u,'” Dave explains.

As far as his career, he talks about how he generates his ideas and how his influences were – on of which was not Gary Larson.

Larson started something with the general public with his talking snakes and cows and imbecilic little kids. But Coverly said the man wasn’t the first to think outside the box, or panel. The cartoonist Bernard Kliban (B. Kliban) offered offbeat views in both Playboy and The New Yorker magazines, beginning in the early 1960s.

“Larson totally came out of that school,” Coverly said. “There were a lot of people before Larson who were doing that, they just weren’t in the mainstream comics. Ninety percent of people don’t even know there were panel cartoons like ‘The Far Side’ before ‘The Far Side.’ I think Larson was a genius not only at taking edgy humor, but making it mainstream enough to be popular.”