The idea of a static character who is in a cyclical rather
than a linear recurrence-- at the end of each strip he's back
where we started--
was very interesting to me, as was
the way in which cartoonists are free to let their fancy go.
With no explanation you'll have one strip,
the next day's strip will maybe be set in ancient Egypt,
or in Frankenstein's house, or on a pirate ship.
And that will be just accepted.
The audience will just accept, OK,
these are the same characters we've seen.
Now we're in ancient Egypt.
Now we're on a pirate ship.
And if you think about that in opposition
to traditional narrative, if that happened in a novel,
if that happened in a movie a lot of explanation
would be required, but it's not in a comic strip.
And so I was interested in participating in that freedom
while trying to write a character
but without being caught in a linear mode.
So my interpretation of--
the series I'm working on is called Ignatz
and I'm just focusing on the Ignatz character.
And my interpretation of Ignatz is very, very loose.
For example, he's not necessarily
a mouse for most of these poems.
So without further explanation, I'm just going to read some.
And I'll often have quotes that are
taken us the language of the strip, which
is this amazing patois with all of these influences
and references mixed in.
The fact that "He Walks in Beauty"
was a reference to a Navajo prayer and also to, of course,
Byron's "She Walks in Beauty Like the Night"
is just an example of the sort of layering that's going
on in the text of these strips.
So I was trying to play around with it as well.