"Did you always want to be a cartoonist?" is a question I'm often asked. Well, I always wanted to be something... as the Hollywood look I adopted at 5 seems to indicate.
I was in a fog of indecision through high school and college, getting married at 18, becoming a mother at 19, returning to college at 25, graduating at 27. I studied art, english and feminism along the way... and then one day a friend said "I think you're funny. Why don't you try drawing cartoons?"
I did. It was great therapy, helping me put my sometimes chaotic life into comic order. That was the beginning of a very long trek that happily, has led me here. 
I'm on deadline so this post won't be very long. I've been syndicated for 12, almost 13 years, and I love my job. There are relatively few of us who survive the hurdles and the rejection to become cartoonists in the daily papers, and I never take it for granted. I grew up reading Pogo, Peanuts, Calvin & Hobbes, For Better or For Worse, Sylvia (go buy her books, you'll understand). As an adult with broadband I've fallen in love with cartoonists from other countries I can now find online... Michael Leunig in Australia, his sister Mary Leunig who manages to be even MORE dark in her humor, Claire Bretecher in France, the three guys who write Madam & Eve from South Africa. Check them out.
Thanks for reading Stone Soup. I'm heading back to the drawing table. Meanwhile, enjoy your summer! Those back-to-school ads will be haunting us in no time.
---Jan
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