Ryan North
Librarians are awesome; I don't care who knows it.
I've said this before, but I think one of the reason so many of the cartoonists I know have become friends is because the Internet is a much more cooperative space.
There may be this hidden, hate-filled community of online cartoonists, but if there are, I haven't found it yet. We're all generally pretty nice people, it turns out!
The challenge is to stay true to the characters while also having them be entertaining every day, because it turns out that just watching someone be true to themselves isn't that rad to watch.
In earlier comics, my only priority was telling a joke in the last panel, but now I try to make every panel as interesting as possible, and that normally means at least a li'l joke there.
I am a big proponent of the pal-centric lifestyle.
What I thought would be fun would be Squirrel Girl being this computer science student, working in STEM, because you don't see a lot of characters there, never mind female characters. Also, I studied computer science, so it's not too hard to write.
I do actually do good work! And it's hard! And I'm worth it!
You always hope a book's going to be a success. I don't think I've ever written a book thinking, 'This will be bad and no-one will like it!'
I read all these Marvel wikis, and there are characters that just stand out to you, and you think, 'How is this character not being used? This is crazy.'
I thought there was something inherently interesting in people turning to gold. It's pretty cool.
Everything I write should have lasers. That's my #1 rule.
You can always take on more projects; it just makes your life worse and worse.
A huge potential audience, great interaction with your readers, the ability to see what people like and what they don't, the ability to see how people respond to what you're doing in real-time - there's just tons of great stuff that you get by being online.
For me personally, I get to be a cartoonist, because my comic would never survive in print. Maybe one in 100 people would like it, but online, I can gather that one percent all in one place.
It's a lot harder for an author that's unpublished to say, 'Hey, here's a new book.' There's nothing of theirs to read, so you don't know what it's going to be like. Kickstarter is great, but you also have to put your work out there whenever you can so you can build a reputation.
We need to encourage our kids to express their feelings. We need to help them find their voice.Collection: Kids
Sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something.Collection: Adventure
The secret to writing sound effects is having a room you can be alone in, trying to make the sounds yourself, and seeing what comes out. It's similar to if you're writing a character talking with their mouth full: the only way I know to transcribe that is to stuff my fist in my mouth and write down what sounds I make when I try to talk.Collection: Book
Being hungover is like winning the lottery, only they pay you in regret.Collection: Regret
I'm suddenly worried people will think that I believe their religion can be summed up on four sex-obsessed sentences.Collection: Sex
Don't worry, it's very clear that the painting was done by a human, most likely a human with one eye removed and a feverent if incorrect understanding of design and anatomy.Collection: Eye
We're all already aware of boobies; it is the general state of most people in North America! THANKS, MEDIA AND THE MALE GAZECollection: Media
I'm totally applying assumed Creative Commons rights and ripping this post from Jason verbatim, since it says everything I want to.Collection: Rights
They are "sexcellent". That is a pun for you, you will find lots of puns on the internet! Also: blonde jokes.Collection: Blonde
I speculate that the genesis of the chicken-joke lies in some situation such as the one illustrated above, but over time the original context of the joke was lost, which left the chicken sadly decontextualized.Collection: Lying
If you find you are not understanding my explaination for a joke, hit F5 on your browser and the page will refresh and I will explain it again.Collection: Understanding
ComicsAlliance asked if I wanted to do some holiday comics using a new layout and I said ‘HELLO, NEVER IN MY NEAR-DECADE OF MAKING COMICS HAVE I EVER DONE THIS, so actually I’m really glad you asked!’Collection: Holiday
But giving up's easy. You know what's hard? To believe in your own worth, to know you've got something special in you even if nobody else can see it. Even when you can't.Collection: Giving Up
Scientists need to invent a way to make DNA work like in cartoons.Collection: Dna
Progress! Progress through everybody dying and their kids eventually not caring who their parents hated!Collection: Kids