A strange interview with Lynda Barry; and Darrin Bell on the state of the comic art.
I figured a letter sent out on such a Tuesday better be full of delight. Luckily, today we have the marvelous Lynda Barry with us. To celebrate the release of the paperback edition of her masterpiece What It Is, she answered a batch of my questions via the United States Postal Service:
Austin Kleon sets up a Q&A with cartoonist Lynda Barry in an unusual fashion.
Darrin Bell on the other hand traveled to the University of Wisconsin at Waukesha and engaged in a little Q&A with the students there. Naturally the subject of cartooning arose:
One of them asked for advice on breaking into cartooning. I told them that if they’d asked me that years ago, I’d’ have answered differently. I’d have given them my journey as a roadmap they could follow. They were familiar with the “long story short” version of that, which I’d covered in one of the later chapters of The Talk.
Long story even shorter: Persevere for years, and make a name for yourself as a freelancer to a handful of major newspapers. Then use that to make your work stand out from the more than 6,000 others who submitted their work to syndicates every year. The syndicate will then sell your work to (hopefully) hundreds of newspapers, and you’ll have a career.
But not anymore.
Hundreds of newspapers have folded since I became syndicated (it’s not my fault, I swear).
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