Q. Why did you discontinue Bloom County?
A. I'm 32. That's too young to coast. I could draw Bloom County with my nose and pay my cleaning lady to write it, and I'd bet I wouldn't lose 10% of my papers over the next 20 years. Such is the nature of comic strips. Once established, their half-life is usually more than nuclear waste. Typically, the end result is lazy, rich cartoonists. There are worse things to be, I suppose . . . lazy and poor comes to mind.
Q. What is your new strip, Outland, about?
A. Silliness. Friendship. Escape. Doorways in the sky. A little girl. A big mouse. Crimson skies. Blue clouds. Liposuction. Love. Death. Trump. Disney. The usual things.
Q. What are its chances of succeeding?
A. Slim. I am competing with the readers' affection for a dead strip whose body is still warm. The readers and editors are mad and don't seem to be in a mood for anything but the old meadow and dandelions. But until I am booted off the page, I am having a ball. My relatives, of course, think my mind went out with last week's meat loaf.
Q. You are also writing a humorous column for Boating magazine. What is it about?
A. It's about doing to boaters what I tried to do to everyone else in Bloom County: reveal the lunacy we pretend isn't there. I, of course, would normally have nothing to do with things like boats, but for research reasons I had to buy one. Four, actually.
Q. In Bloom County, you portray reporters as lecherous, scurrilous, lying fiends. Do you really think they are that bad?
A. I never said "fiends" per se. "Bloodsucking geckos," I've said. Look, the Russians are wimping out and we're running out of bad guys. If the alternatives are mullahs, drug lords and the press, I'll always go with the ones who dress the funniest. Have you seen George Will's little bow ties?
Q. Whom would you rather associate with, boaters or reporters?
A. I would rather associate with dogs.
Q. Does making fun of the political system change anything?
A. Only the size of cartoonists' egos. Nowadays political commentary, especially satirical commentary, is usually ink wasted. Eighty years ago that wasn't the case. At that time a political cartoonist could turn an election around. Before TV, before movies and radio, a drawing of a weasel with the Governor's name on his butt went a long way in a public's imagination. Our political power today is illusionary. A Johnny Carson monologue is today's real influence brokerage.
Q. You have made a difference, though, when it comes to animal testing. After you ran a series on the torturing of rabbits at Mary Kay labs, the cosmetic manufacturer announced a moratorium on animal testing. Were you surprised?
A. Totally. But note the distinction. With the issue of horrendous animal abuse within cosmetic testing labs, all that was needed was to illustrate the facts. When I drew a rabbit with clips pulling its eyelids open, it was effective precisely because of its accuracy.
Q. How do you see the environment as an issue?