I happen to like all kinds of comics, and I mentioned Pickles, the creation of Brian Crane, both in my post about GoComics and in my post on the GoComics browser app for Linux made by Kiro. I used to read Pickles on GoComics, but now I just follow Brian Crane’s Facebook account.

A couple of hours ago, he posted photos of some printed pages of the printed edition of Hogan’s Alley #24, namely pp. 92-100 that feature a long interview with him, alongside relevant strips and photos that outline the long history of Pickles and of the author. People outside the US should probably wait for the PDF edition to be released; if it ever happens, it’ll be here (currently, #23 is the latest PDF available).

UPDATE 1: Brian Crane removed that post and posted the first page instead; should I expect a takedown notice? If this happens, I’ll stop following Pickles.

UPDATE 2: He reposted the photos of the printed pages.

If I didn’t mix up the various crops, the full text of the interview should be the OCR-ized one posted below. That is, unless I receive a DMCA takedown notice. Enjoy!

The Brian Crane Interview

The creator of the long-running Pickles talks about juggling careers, developing a durable premise and the headwinds his industry faces

I walked up to Brian Crane’s front door with my digital recorder in one hand and a copy of Hogan’s Alley #23 in the other, a gift for his kindness in meeting with me. Crane greeted me with a smile and a warm handshake and ushered me into his studio.

At once, I got a feeling of giddiness and a touch of sensory overload at all the treasures in this room. There was plenty for my eyes to feast on, such as original comic art on the walls (gasp! A Charles Schulz original!), Popeye figures and other memorabilia ranging from Red Ryder to Opus from Bloom County—not to mention drawings in crayon by his many grandchildren. Yes indeed, this studio is a very cool space.

Crane’s award-winning Pickles has steadily grown in popularity during its 30-plus years of syndication. Readers have found kindred spirits in Earl and Opal Pickles and the strip’s supporting cast: daughter Sylvia, grandson Nelson, Roscoe the dog and Muffin the cat. Pickles is something of a second act for Crane, who started his career in graphic design and advertising but who was unable to resist the siren song of cartooning, the art form he had loved since childhood. For some time, he maintained his job at an ad firm while he produced the daily Pickles, unsure if the strip would gain a foothold in newspapers, but it eventually became clear that Pickles was here for the long haul. That work ethic has served him well, as he prides himself on having drawn every strip by himself, just like his cartooning hero Charles Schulz (though he notes that one of his daughters colors the Sunday page).

Crane acknowledges his good fortune in hitting on a winning idea. In a 1998 interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal, when his strip was not yet a decade old, he discussed arriving at the premise of an older couple. “I never went to a class to learn how to do it,” he said. “I never intended with another comic strip. I just evolved a comic strip. I don’t know how you do it. I just started doing it. I don’t know if it’s the right way or not.”

Although we had a lengthy conversation for this interview, the time flew as Crane—who was born in Idaho but is a longtime Nevada resident—discussed the opportunities his career has afforded him as well as the very real challenges facing his profession. I hope you enjoy the insights he shared with me. (And for the record, he is not depicting himself with he draws Earl—he was only 40 when Pickles made its debut.)

— Bryan Stroud

Brian Stroud: Where did you develop your interest in art?

Brian Crane: Back in elementary school. I’m very introverted, actually, and don’t make friends very easily, but I found that drawing funny pictures was a good way to make people like you. So I would draw sketches of funny faces and try to get a laugh out of my classmates.

I remember one time I drew a picture of this face with wild hair and crazy teeth, and I showed it to my friend Lloyd in the cafeteria lunch room. I think it must have been fourth grade. He started laughing so hard at that face that the milk that he was drinking came out of his nose. I thought, “Wow! That’s so cool,” to make someone laugh that hard. That was the first big payoff I had from my cartooning skills. I never achieved it again. [Both laugh] But I keep trying.

That’s how a lot of cartoonists start. I wasn’t any better than anybody else. I just kept at it and didn’t have anything else to do. I didn’t have a lot of friends or anything, so that was my outlet for my energies. Back then that was the Golden Age in cartooning. My dad used to read me the funny papers with Pogo and Li’l Abner. I just fell in love with those and was amazed at the creativity that went into it and thought that would be an amazing career to have. I never thought I could do it.

That’s kind of where it started, and then I got in school and was picking a major. I thought, “Well, why not do something you love for a living?” So I set up a major in art, not sure what I would do, kind of thinking maybe I could go into commercial art. Designing illustrations and stuff for magazines or greeting cards or something like that. So I did that and graduated from BYU in 1972 and started working for publishing companies as a layout artist for magazines, doing little spot illustrations and went on to advertising agencies as a graphic designer and an art director, designing ads. Whenever I could, I’d work a cartoon into the ad if it was appropriate.

Then I worked in advertising for a while. I had my own studio. Eventually we came out here to Nevada for a job. By then we had seven kids and I started thinking, “I’ve got seven kids, hopefully to put through college, maybe missions, and paying for weddings and stuff. I’m not going to make it on this salary.” My wife was saying, “Gee, do I need to go to work?” She did that for a little bit. Then I thought maybe I should try something else. “I’ve always had this idea of doing a comic strip.” She said, “Yeah, why don’t you try that?”

I started filling a sketchbook with possible characters. Who’s it going to be about? I wanted to do something no one else was doing. So I just drew lots of different characters. Animal characters, just anything I could think of. It wasn’t until I drew this older couple that a kind of light bulb moment came to me. “No one else is doing a comic strip about old people as the main characters that I’m aware of, and I think old people are the ones who read newspapers more than anyone else.” So I drew up a bunch of samples and sent them to King Features and they said, “Oh, send some more samples. We want to see some more.” I thought, “Ooooh—a bite.” So, I sent some more and they said, “Well, we’re going to pass.”

I expected rejection. I knew it would be tough to break in. That happened about three or four times. I was rejected by several different syndicates, so I thought, “Well, I tried.” I knew it was a long shot, but at least I could say I tried. But my wife wouldn’t let me give it up. She kept saying, “You said you’d keep trying. You know there would be rejection.” “It’s not gonna work, dear. I don’t have what it takes, I’m not funny enough. I’m not a good enough artist.” But she wouldn’t get off my back [chuckle].

About that time, Berke Breathed stopped doing Bloom County for the Washington Post Writers Group, and I thought, “Well, maybe I’ll try them.” I hadn’t sent them anything, so I sent them some samples and they said, “We’d like to see some more.” I thought, “Okay, I know where this is going.” But then they sent me a message saying they wanted me to fly out to Washington and talk to us. They ended up offering me a contract and so that’s where it started. We started out in 24 papers, which wasn’t a lot to allow me to quit my day job. So I was working at the agency for eight hours a day and then I’d come home at night and work until midnight on the comic strip while my wife was functioning as a single mother raising seven kids. I would be there at dinner time and I would help put them to bed, but that’s all they saw of me for the first couple of years. Finally, after about five years, we had enough papers and enough income to allow me to quit the day job, and it’s just been building ever since that time. So I guess the lesson is listen to your wife. She knows better than you do what you can do sometimes. I owe her a lot.

Stroud: I see you have a great admiration for Popeye at a bare minimum. Did any of the strips you were exposed to in your younger days particularly inspire you?

Crane: My first love was Li’l Abner. The one I really remember is Li’l Abner. My dad used to read it to me. I couldn’t read yet, but he would laugh at it, and I would laugh at it. Those big, full-color Sunday comics, about twice as big as papers are now. It was written on two levels. It was funny to me as a child, but it also had another level of social comedy that went way over my head. I thought it was amazing that he could write a strip like that. A child could appreciate it, but also adults. Pogo was the same thing. Two levels. Funny on an elementary level but with biting social commentary at the same time. I don’t do that. I don’t do much social commentary. That was what inspired me. When I thought of doing a comic strip, that’s the ones that came to my mind. Al Capp and Walt Kelly. And they were just masterful inkers. Later, I found out that after he got popular, Al Capp would just draw the faces of his characters and he had people working for him who did the rest of it. I guess he might have written it, but he kind of got into farming it out a little bit.

I haven’t found anyone to take over for me. None of my kids want to do it. But I do have my daughter, who works for me part time. She does all my coloring and technical stuff. We just now switched syndicators. The Washington Post Writers Group is phasing out syndication. So I got notice. “We’ll honor your contract as long as you want to, but you’re free to leave whenever you want.” So, I started sending feelers out to different syndicates, and holy cow—I was amazed. I had syndicates after me, trying to woo me over. Fortunately, John Glynn, who used to be the head of Andrews McMeel Publishing, approached me and said, “I’d love to negotiate for you.” I said, “That would be great.” I’m not a good negotiator. I take the first thing people offer me, usually. So he started negotiating and he got me just this super deal that I never would have gotten with Andrews McMeel. So, we’re just now in the process of them taking over. They start on July 1 [2022] as my syndicate, so we’re learning how their system works, and they’re a much bigger outfit than I was with. The Washington Post Writer’s Group was much smaller, and with this one they’ve got tons of editors and tons of cartoonists. I’m going from a big fish in a small pond to probably a small fish in a big pond, I guess.

Stroud: Or from the minors to the majors.

Crane: Yeah, maybe that’s a better way to look at it. They seem to know what they’re doing, and I look forward to that. It will be a new adventure. But the technology is different, so I’m having my daughter deal with how they want you to transfer the files to them. It’s different than my previous syndicator. Technology just makes my eyes cross, so I’m glad she’s into that and can figure these things out.

Nowadays, most cartoonists are drawing on a tablet or whatever, and I still draw with a pen and ink on paper, just like Charles Schulz used to do—really old school, and I don’t ever want to change. I know it’s more efficient and you can do things faster and correct mistakes quicker. I know a lot of cartoonists have switched over and they swear by it, but I’m just an old dog that doesn’t want to learn a new trick. I did concede somewhat. I now scan the strips and email them to my daughter. It goes from there into the digital world. That’s my one concession. I’ll scan it and clean it up a little bit, but that’s as far as I want to go.

I have all these boxes and boxes of originals. If you have digital files, a printout isn’t the same as an original that someone has drawn by hand. I’ve had colleges approach me saying, “Could we have your archives for our school?” So far, I haven’t agreed to that. I still use them sometimes. I do some reruns of my strips. I don’t do all new strips any more. I’ve gotten older and don’t have as much energy as I used to, so I’m doing part reruns and part new material.

Stroud: Nice to have that option.

Crane: The syndicate says that’s fine. I’ve forgotten most of them, and I think my readers have too. So that’s made life a lot easier for me.

Stroud: What inspired the name of the strip?

Crane: The name Pickles came to me when I was developing the strip. I didn’t originally mean for it to be the final name of the strip. I had read how Charles Schulz had originally named his strip Li’l Folks, but his syndicate changed it to Peanuts. I assumed if I ever got syndicated, they would come up with a better name. But they never did, so Pickles became the title. I still wish I had come up with a better name.

Stroud: I’d read that Earl and Opal were inspired by your in-laws. Any truth to that?

Crane: There’s some truth to that. They were partially inspired by them. I got some ideas from them. We’ve got kind of the same dynamics to their relationship, I think. It wasn’t conscious for me at the time. I never drew it thinking of them, but as I started drawing the strip and then would go visit them, I thought, “Hey. You guys are kind of like my characters.” It may have been a subliminal thing. But the character Opal was named after my wife’s aunt Opal. I had never heard the name Opal before. I liked that name. I never really knew her, I just knew there was an aunt Opal, so I borrowed that name from her. I don’t think she ever knew that. The inspiration came from a lot of different areas. Just my everyday life. My parents, my grandparents and other people, but my in-laws did have a similar relationship.

Stroud: That’s one of the appeals of the strip-it’s so relatable.

Crane: I try to draw from real life. I don’t have a good enough imagination to make things up, so I find things that really happen and then I use my imagination to extrapolate them, make them a little more extreme and a little more suitable to a comic strip format. I think that’s why people relate to it. I find things in real life that happen, and then I make a strip out of it. My grandson Liam was looking at me one day and said, “Grandpa, your ears look like elephant ears.” [chuckles] That’s the kind of funny thing a kid would say. I thought it was funny, so I did a strip and then Earl tells Opal that “gee, my grandson thinks my ears look like elephant ears.” She says, “Oh, your ears aren’t that big.” And then she says something like, “Can I get you some peanuts?” So you take something real and add a little something extra to it and make it funnier.

Stroud: I love Earl’s classic bullet-nose Studebaker. There must be a backstory to that.

Crane: In the beginning, I used to have them driving a generic cartoon car, but I was never happy with it. Then one day I was taking a walk in my neighborhood and saw this two-tone in someone’s driveway. It had so much personality and reminded me of the cars I knew as a kid in the ’50s. I asked the owners if I could take some photos of it, and I’ve been using it ever since.

Stroud: Do you do your own lettering?

Crane: Yes. I’ve got a letter pen and a drawing pen. One of my daughters created a Pickles font for me and I tried it once, but I didn’t like it. Charles Schulz did his own lettering. I can’t letter as good as he did. My lettering has gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. I’ve got macular degeneration now, and so I have to use a magnifier sometimes, but I’m still lettering it the best I can.

Stroud: If you had to do it over again, would you have tried to start out as a syndicated cartoonist?

Crane: You know, I ask myself that and yet I wonder if I would have had the life experience to come up with what I’ve come up with at that point. I do think that would have been great if I could have just started out doing a comic strip and not work the 25 years in another field. I could have been farther ahead and riding a wave by now, but then I don’t think I would have done the same strip. I’m happy with the way things have turned out. It’s turned out well—much better than I had ever hoped. I’ve been doing it 32 years now. It’s provided for my family, and it’s provided a career.

I get the nicest letters from people all the time. Letters and emails saying they look forward to it every day, and it brings a smile every morning. That’s worth a lot to me, knowing that someone’s day is a little better because of something that I did. I didn’t get that when I was doing advertising. No one ever called up and said, “I love that ad you did. It was so great.” It’s been a nice ride. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep doing it, but as long as I can see good enough to draw, I’ll continue.

Stroud: So no retirement plans.

Crane: No. Because we do party reruns, I have plenty of free time. We take trips and things. If I was still doing seven a week, I couldn’t do that as much. It’s not overly burdensome now, I can still spend a couple of hours every day on the strip and then enjoy my grandkids and other things in life besides just slaving over a drawing board all the time. I spent a lot of years missing things because of being chained to the drawing board when I was just getting started. Now I try to be as good a dad and granddad as I can to my seven kids and 21 grandkids. That keeps me going. We’ve got kids in Nevada and Utah, so we go back and forth a lot.

Stroud: Is there such a thing as a typical day for a cartoonist?

Crane: When I first get up, I check my strip on Facebook to see if I got any comments on it, and I keep a running notebook of ideas for a possible future strip. If not, I just start brainstorming and reading the paper and trying to come up with what I’m going to do that day. The best days are when I have an idea already and I can just sit down and go to work. But if I have to sit down and think, “Oh, no—no idea. What am I gonna do?” It’s that old familiar feeling of “I’m never going to think of another idea as long as I live.”

It’s a struggle, and I’ve had people approach me about supplying me with gags. I tried it one time, and it just wasn’t the same. If I could find someone who had my exact sense of humor that I could use, that would be great and I’d be glad, but I’ve never found someone whose ideas really turn me on. Not that my ideas are that great, but they’re my ideas and I like them. I know other people have successful partnerships and it must be great for them. They don’t have to worry about coming up with an idea every day. They just sit down and go with it. If I don’t like the idea, I just can’t draw it. Not that I’ve never used another idea. Once in a while one of my friends on Facebook will send me something and I’ll think, “Hey, that’s a great idea. Do you mind if I use that idea?” They usually love it, so I do borrow ideas sometimes from sources. I tweak it and make it my own, but you take them where you can get them. It’s not unusual for cartoonists to work with a writer, and historically a lot of the greats have done that. I don’t put them down for that.

Stroud: Whatever works best. Obviously Sparky never farmed anything out.

Crane: Yeah, he’s my ultimate idea of a perfect cartoonist. I’ll never be as good as him.

Stroud: There’s been a minor debate out there sort of involving Sparky where he saw nothing wrong with licensing and all the other stuff that goes along with that and then you’ve got the Bill Watterson viewpoint.

Crane: Right. Polar opposites. I’m on Sparky’s side. Not that I’ve had many people approach me for merchandising stuff, but I think if people enjoy your work and they want to have more of it in different forms, why not? I don’t see that as degrading your work or demeaning it. I don’t think my work is works of art that should be in a gallery. I was delighted when Berke Breathed started doing some merchandising of his stuff. I’m all for merchandising if it’s done well. I love Bill Watterson’s work. He’s a genius, but I don’t understand his idea that his work is in an ivory tower that can’t have any merchandising associated with it. If people love your work, I want to be around it. They want it with them.

Stroud: After all, haven’t you sold it already?

Crane: Yeah. I just don’t understand that, but more power to him. He has every right. Al Capp had a lot of merchandising. In those days, they’d have the cartoonists on Time magazine covers and doing watch commercials. I remember seeing Al Capp when I was a kid on a game show.

Stroud: Right, and the movie adaptations.

Crane: Dogpatch USA. So what’s the big deal? Unfortunately, no one is beating down my door with offers, but I have nothing against it. You see these pillows? I had some fabrics and I said, “Sure. Go ahead.” There have been a few minor things like that.

Stroud: With newspapers in decline, do you see a future for the medium?

Crane: If I was starting out as a cartoonist now, I wouldn’t go into it. When I first met with the people at the Washington Post Writers Group, I asked how many papers they thought they could get me into. They said, “Well, it’s an imploding market. Newspapers are an imploding business. We’re hoping we can get you into around fifty.” It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but they got me into close to a thousand eventually. That was in 1990 that they were saying it’s an imploding market, and it’s gotten even worse now. It’s not a growth field. I mentor a few cartoonists. Young people. I don’t say, “You ought to go into newspaper comic strips.” If I was a young man, I’d probably try something else. Animation or something that’s more technology driven, I guess. It would be more apt to be successful than newspapers, but I’m kind of grandfathered into it now and have a comfortable living from newspapers, and I think as long as I’m around there will still be some form of it.

Stroud: I was surprised recently when my lifelong best friend was telling me my old hometown newspaper was going down to a three-day-a-week publication schedule.

Crane: It’s happening all over.

Stroud: I know you can’t turn back the clock, but it feels to me like we’re losing something.

Crane: Yeah. I have seven kids. Not one of them subscribes to a newspaper. Even though newspaper income is what put them through college and everything, but they have no loyalty to newspapers like I did as a kid.

Stroud: You were showing me some of your tools. Dip pens are still your favored instruments?

Crane: Yeah, I still use a dip pen just like Charles Schulz did, and Bristol paper. I think there are still some cartoonists doing that. More and more I hear, “I finally went digital.” I’m drawing the thing on an iPad Pro now. I think Rick Kirkman on Baby Blues told me he’s switched over now. It’s a shame. I wouldn’t have that [points to a Baby Blues original on the wall] original, hand-drawn Baby Blues or Zits if they were doing them digitally.

Stroud: Is that a Mary Worth over there? Yeah, it’s by my friend Joe Giella before he retired from the strip.

Crane: I never met him, but someone who was doing an article about me knew him and said that he loves Pickles and would love to trade strips with me, so I said, “Yeah, I’d love to,” so he sent me one of his and I sent him one of mine. I’ve never really met him.

Stroud: Joe’s a wonderful guy, and one of my earliest interviews was with him. He was thrilled to land Mary Worth when he did. Of course, a syndicated strip was much more prestigious than comic book work back in the day.

Crane: Yeah, now you see them going for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I have a son who is an attorney, but as a sideline. He’s always loved comic books. When he was a kid, he collected them. Now he buys and sells comic books. He has people working for him doing the mailing and stuff and he makes a lot of money as a sideline to his actual career in law.

Stroud: Do you run the Pickles Facebook page?

Crane: I post my strips myself on Facebook every day.

Stroud: Have you enjoyed the interactive component?

Crane: Yeah. It gives you immediate feedback with your readers and a way to communicate with them more. I was kind of drawn into Facebook kicking and screaming, but my syndicate started asking for me, and I eventually took it over. It’s been a nice way to connect with readers.

Stroud: It’s got to be nice to know that your work is appreciated.

Crane: It is. It gives you an incentive to keep going. Sometimes you get discouraged and think, “I’m just going through the motions. No one is reading this anymore.” But getting a letter or an email or a post with someone saying, “Don’t ever stop. It makes my day every day,” well, okay—I’ll keep going [laughter].

Stroud: You said you do some mentoring. Are you friendly with any of your peers in the industry?

Crane: I don’t have any peers that I’m really close with. When I was switching syndicates, I touched base with Jerry Scott. I’m friends with him. I’ve met him at the [National Cartoonists Society] Reuben conventions several times and gotten his feedback there are no cartoonists I know in the state of Nevada besides me, so I don’t have anybody I hang out with. It would be kind of nice, but I’m not one who enjoys talking on the phone. I don’t really call people up to chat.

Stroud: Are Roscoe and Muffin based on real pets or just conceived for the strip?

Crane: You know, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a veterinarian. I thought that would be a great job. I love animals and had dogs and cats and lizards and frogs and stuff when I was a kid. I’d go down to the creek and catch snakes and things. I still love animals. So I knew if I did a comic strip, it had to have a dog in it. I’ve always loved dogs. I love their personalities and the way you can kind of tell what they’re thinking by their eyes and tail. You can kind of read what they would be saying if they could talk aloud. I just thought that was a great device to have in a comic strip. Just like Snoopy, the greatest dog of all in a comic strip. In my dog, the way I drew him, is a little bit of a homage to Snoopy. It’s got the black ears and the white body, but a different personality. Then I figured if you’ve got a dog, you need an adversary for the dog. My experience with cats, all my cats were ornery and mean and would scratch, which is kind of what Muffin is. She’s the opposite of Roscoe.

Stroud: A little dramatic conflict.

Crane: Yeah. You need conflict for humor. People sometimes ask me after seeing me treat a character in what seems like a mean way, “Why is Opal so mean to Earl?” Or vice-versa. You have to have conflict. Everyone was just nice all the time, that would be great for them, but it’s not funny. Mel Brooks said you have to have tragedy to have comedy. “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” It’s the contrast and it’s what makes it work.

Stroud: With just a few characters, Nelson and Sylvia and Clyde and of course Earl and Opal make animals, is it still easy to keep the panels with that cast of characters?

Crane: Yeah. Some of them I don’t use very much. One of the original characters, a friend of Opal’s, I didn’t like drawing her, so I got rid of her and gave Opal a sister, Earl’s sister-in-law, and they don’t have a good relationship. It turns out he used to date the sister-in-law, so she represents him and they have that antagonism where he married his previous girlfriend’s sister, so they don’t get along. Sylvia, the daughter, when I created the strip, she was a single mother. Newly divorced. Her husband never appeared in the strip. Later on, I got the idea—due to a lot of letters from fans—that she needs to get remarried. So I had her meet a guy named Dan and get remarried. He’s a wildlife photographer, so he’s never around and I really don’t have any use for him, and I don’t know why I created him in the first place. Sometimes I hear, “Whatever happened to Dan, Sylvia’s husband?” Sometimes you create characters and find out you don’t really like them or want them anymore. I’ve explained to the readers through dialogue in the strip what happened before a couple of times, but new readers don’t know that and you can’t explain things over and over and over again.

Then I found out I don’t really like drawing Sylvia and really what I like best is the relationship between the grandson, Nelson, and the grandparents. Skipping the middle generation. So, I’ve explored that more. I think that’s not been done a lot in other strips. I like that relationship of Nelson where they’re not really the parents, but they can have a relationship with him.

But once in a while I’ll need Sylvia for some reason. That’s kind of the way the strip develops. You find you don’t need one character and you create a different character. Al Capp did that a lot. He’d have characters come and go. Different characters come in and then they’d disappear. That’s kind of the life of a strip. Characters come and go in real life and it happens in a strip, too.

Stroud: You explained earlier how your schedule has changed, but in the beginning were deadlines difficult?

Crane: They used to be my enemy, but now since I’m doing partly reruns, I can get way ahead and right now, I’m working on strips for October. [This interview was conducted at the end of May 2022.] So, I’ve got a comfortable lead, and I don’t sweat deadlines anymore because of that. I think if I was still doing seven new strips a week, I’d be much less of a happy camper. I probably might have retired by now. I just don’t think I could take the pace of creating that much work. Partly energy-wise, as a 72-year-old man with bad eyesight, I just don’t think I could do it anymore. So if my readers still want to see my work, they’ve got to take it as it is [chuckle].

Stroud: You’ve received some nice recognition from your peers for your work. That’s got to be nice. [Crane won the National Cartoonists Society’s comic strip division in 2001, the NCS’s 2012 Reuben Award as Cartoonist of the Year in 2013, and an Inkpot Award from the San Diego Comic-Con International in 2014.]

Crane: Yeah, that’s gratifying. You don’t think about . . . or maybe you do think about people reacting to your work, and I get a lot of that from my readers. I get a lot of positive feedback and a little minor feedback too, but I don’t hear a lot of feedback from my fellow cartoonists. Especially since we haven’t had the Reuben gathering for a while. When I was given the Reuben Award, I was really gobsmacked. Like I said, I’m not really outgoing. I don’t go to the Reubens and meet a lot of people. They have to come and find me [laughter]. So finding out that my fellow cartoonists really like my work—that’s kind of a revelation. I didn’t think I was doing anything that they’d be that appreciative about. It’s been really heartwarming to get that kind of feedback. On a hard day when you’re thinking, “I should just give up,” that kind of gives you a kick in the seat. “Well, somebody likes me.” ■