Because I was devastated about a comic strip that I really liked that only ran one year back in the mid-1980s, comic strip related memories from much of the 1980s and through the 1990s are painfully bad for me, with the 2000s at least only somewhat painful.

I also have bad memories about the negative opinions that some people have said over the years about some of my favorite comics. For example, this leaves a dominant black mark in whatever fandom that I still have in “Beetle Bailey.” It also certainly does not help that some newspapers dropped this strip. These days, I no longer read about comic strips nor read other people’s comic strips for the most part. I think that most comics are too complex for my tastes. I find nothing wrong with the pure and simple approach. It may be too underwhelming for intellectual and sophisticated minds, but not for me, as I find it charming.

The period from 1995 to 2009 was a particularly bad experience for me on my own cartooning, as I often did not draw too much during that time, almost finding myself feeling like giving it up for good altogether, until about 2010, when there were beginning to be early signs of revival in my cartooning. In these more recent times, I read about the topic of comics a lot less often, plus watching a lot less television helps, too, as I am not so bogged down with the cartoons there either. I would rather do my own thing and set my own rules with my own creations rather than following what someone else thinks is good.

John Lund

Greenfield

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