From David Collins came this intriguing question…
This is going to sound weird, but I want to ask you a question that I think I already know what the answer is.
The fact is, I grew up with a lot of 80s and 90s cartoons. I love such animation, still do to this day, it brought me a lot of comfort and fun. I felt growing up I had an obligation to help create cartoons such as this to bring happiness and joy to other generations of kids. Just like cartoons had helped me, I wanted to help others. Real life turned out to be more complicated than that; my life took many strange turns, but I keep wondering if I'm doing enough to fulfill that "obligation" I felt I had. An obligation which nobody thrust on me but I still feel its pull on me.
So I thought I'd ask you, a writer and creator of some of those cartoons I loved so much, if you thought I had such a responsibility. When people watch or read your stuff, do you think they've a responsibility to pass it on?
If you thought my answer would be no, you're right. At least, that's not why I got into the industry. I got in because I thought it would be good for me and I never for a second thought I could create work that would bring a significant amount of joy to a significant number of people. If anything I've done has ever done that, it was an unintended happy consequence. I chose the career I chose to pursue because I couldn't think of anything else I wanted to do or could be any good at.
When you answer the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?", I think there are two considerations. One is "What do you think you can do that you might be able to succeed at?" If I'd selected being a dancer or a nuclear physicist, I don't think I'd own a house now or be even remotely successful in either profession. I think I'd instead have had to take a job — any job, not necessarily one that appealed to me — just to pay rent and buy groceries. My father had to do that and I saw how he hated it and the resultant ulcer.
That's one consideration. And to me, the other way to answer the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" is by asking yourself, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I wanted to write cartoons and comic books and TV shows and other things but not because I felt any "obligation" to those forms. I did have some gratitude to the people who made them and whenever I have been in a position to express that gratitude and "pay back" those folks I have and still do.
But I didn't start writing comics or anything else for anyone else's benefit but my own. I hope that doesn't sound harsh or selfish. I just never thought I had an obligation to "bring happiness and joy to other generations of kids." I didn't have any particular confidence that I could do that.
