Ever since I was a kid, I’ve enjoyed flipping to the humor section in the newspaper. The thing that I love about the humor section is that it is often there, more than anywhere else in the paper, that the reader can see themselves. In the humor section, the reader is not concerned with who is on the right or wrong side of the story. Rather, the reader is simply invited into the story; to relate with the story; to see his or her own struggles, mistakes, joys, wonderings, etc. played out in the lives of those characters on the page... and to laugh. Or so, at least, is the approach taken by those comic artists whose work I enjoy most; artists such as Gary Larson, George Booth, Charles Shultz, Tom Gauld, and Jim Davis. Through my own comics, I desire to take the same approach—to speak to our collective human experience so as to create a space where as many people as possible can laugh together while all saying “I can relate.”
