Episode 58: The Family Circus

Comic strips are often a way artists discover the world and their calling. Indie comix artist Lynda Barry loved the Family Circus growing up, and she recently appeared in a Family Circus strip.

Jessica remembers tracing pictures out of Thomas Craven’s 1945 book Cartoon Cavalcade, and in particular Winsor McCay’s surreal Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend. And Michael loved Mad magazine so much he tried making his own version:

I think it was called Sick or Nauseous. I knew that the magazine had to have this combination of drawings and typesetting. Of course, I had no idea where typesetting was from, so I would actually do the drawings, and then put these drawn pages that I would draw with a Bic ballpoint pen into a manual typewriter and then type upon the drawn pages.

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