A stand-up comedian faces the audiences and gets their immediate feedback. I hide behind the comic strip, and unless people write to me, I don't know what they think.
Basically, I learned to read by reading 'Peanuts,' just wanting to know what they were saying. I was 4 or 5 or whatever. I think it's a fairly common story.
Repeats are the worst, and 'Peanuts' was the one that started that. They don't rerun the news, do they? They don't repeat any other part of the paper. Why do they do it in the comics?
The wonderful thing about a book is that you have a canvas that is 300 pages wide, and it's all free space. You can make a piece of art as big as you want and whatever shape you want.
Thomas, my 15-year-old, is effectively my editor, I've always trusted his voice, more than anybody, on the strip for years. He has one of those ears that's just tuned to the rhythm of humor, so if he says something's not funny, my stomach just hurts because I know he's right, and it's already been drawn.
When you do anything creative, you really have to live entirely in that world. I think my ability to do that is what makes me such a bad dinner guest. I'm always looking over someone's shoulder, taking in stuff around the room, immersed in the world of whatever I'm writing about, and keeping the characters completely in my head.
I write for three or four hours and then hopefully I'll have something. Then I draw for the rest of the afternoon... I literally block out Wednesday-Thursday-Friday - I more or less disappear.
