■you! Returned to the earth ... for a year. It's stupid to try to make the thing live longer than its natural lifespan. That’s why comic strips are so boring. In the time I’ve been ANITA! 5 ,^ 0 THERE L '" THAT FCIR 45 HfHUTE^ FINISH YOUR - SANDW! CH 'J RlCKEY YOU HAVE MOVING ME AL $0 ' SUDDENLY ’ &£ CR-YTOO ' SALAMI SANDWICH WITHOUT / GUN BUTCHI Y ^ PUTT ING I N SANDWICH 7 BIG JERK AND KILLING J and sort of hear it. I never plan out a comic strip. With them, I would draw them and I would just hear them. And one day it just stopped. That freaked me out, because I was starting to get attention for it and people were looking forward to it. So I kept drawing them anyway for about a month after I stopped hearing them in my head. The strips were terrible, just the worst. So then the strip became about their mother, Mrs. Fitz, who was a divorced woman with a lot of problems. She sent her kids to New York City where their father lived, to be with him. And that was the last anyone saw of them 'til the very end. That was two years ago. CSQ: Do you have copies of the “Two Sisters”? Lynda: No, I don't.... Yeah, I do. I don’t take them out, though. CSQ: Because they’re so old? Is that why you don’t take them out? Lynda: Yeah, sort of. They were too successful. I got locked into it. “Mrs. Fitz and Judy’’ was a great strip though, all about housewives, especially divorced ones, and single women. But then they all died 'cause I couldn't hear them anymore at all, so I killed them. They were in a car crash or something. So when I decided to start again there was this big to-do. Do you remember how “Two Sisters" looked and how it was drawn—they had dresses with little patterns on them? Everybody loved that. God, they loved that. So I decided my next strip couldn’t have any of that in it at all, because it was way too soon—too much of a thing, you know. I tried to think of a way I could draw that was more real, not cute. I tried to remember how I used to draw when I was a kid, and came up with a style that makes people say I can't draw. I like that kind of drawing a lot. I’ve really acquired a taste for it. But when it first came out, God, I used to get letters, real hate letters. “Where are ‘Two Sisters’? They were so nice, and now you make these terrible comic strips about people fighting. ” CSQ: What if a major syndicate offered you a lot of money to do the “Two Sisters” strip for 5 years? Lynda: I’d never do it. I had my chart done, and my astrologer said “Never do anything for money. You don't need to, you’ll always be okay. " I would never do it, because I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even do it MY FAVORITE BUTCH 'E" I AM So HAPPY NOW ' I AM CRYING NoW AM DIZZY7 ANO You So MUCH CSQ: What evolved next? Lynda: Well, I had had this other comic strip which was my first comic strip—“Ernie Pook’s Comics." I started that in college. One of my friends kind of encouraged me and then the editor of The University of Washington Daily saw it, and he put it in the paper. So I ran a bunch of those, which were sort of random comic strips, until I could think of a new strip. But then, somebody wrote in to the paper about how awful my comic strips were. And I was sitting having breakfast with my mom, when I read it, she read it too, and I got so embarrassed I quit. CSQ: For how long? Lynda: For 6 months. CSQ: Do you mean you quit making comic strips, or you quit drawing altogether? Lynda: Quit making comic strips. I never mix them up. I've always thought that my real work was my portraits, and that comic strips were sort of a good thing, but more of a way to support myself so I could do doing comic strips and being published—four years—I’ve had seven comic strips. CSQ: Seven different strips? Lynda: Yeah. They live about eight months or so. And if I try to make them last any longer they get really dumb and awful. There are some people who get away with it, who have enough characters and enough presence of mind that they could just do them forever. Like “Peanuts," even though I don’t think it’s the best comic strip I’ve ever seen, the characters are for real! “Brenda Starr" is a terrific one. “Moose Miller," that’s a great one. And “ Tweetie." That’s the weirdest strip. I can't even believe that guy got syndicated! It’s one panel, always very good. CSQ: Do you think that your comic strips require something from the observer different from, say, “Beetle Bailey”? Lynda: Uh huh. I think some comic strips have some sort of protective quality about them. There are things that you know you're not going to read about in most comic strips. And the subjects, the topics in my comic strips aren't very often found in comic strips, period. Especially my more serious ones, which aren’t even comic. There are some topics that you can just count on seeing in comic strips, and you don't ever have to worry about seeing anything else in there: making fun of your wife, puns.... I like to make comic strips about real problems that people have. Lately I've been really interested in relationships, I guess because of mine, real curious about how people go about them and what they let happen, what they tolerate. I used to like to do comic strips that were more odd...like some of the stuff you see in The New Yorker—a little more spacey or kind of twisted. But then I got more interested in real dialog and stuff, real stuff that happens between people. CSQ: How did that happen? Lynda: It was when I started doing “Girls and Boys. ” I had done “Two Sisters," which was sort of about how people talk, but it was more idyllic, two little girls, you know. I had an idea one day about kids, about childhood, about how that stuff that happens in the family gets passed on through a kid to another kid in the play field, and then the other kid brings it home and can to to sit in drawing everybody in the world basically. SPINAL COMIC 5 * 9ARR-X ANITA ANITA if You W r STOP THIS NONSENSE I'LL CALL YOU^ FATHER.' 7 ITO BRI NO A HAMMER. portraits. I've never been able make a living doing portraits. CSQ: Are you commissioned do portraits? Lynda: I’ll draw anybody who’ll for me. I’m just interested A thing of the past ... Clinton St. Quarterly 5
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