I wanted to do comic strip stories about the subtle exchanges in the human experience. The melodramatic and superheroic and anthropomorphic were everywhere. The nearest we had to regular everyday life were the 'soap opera' strips, or 'human interest' as they have been more accurately described. I actually always liked a lot of that stuff, like the Apartment 3G and On Stage newspaper strips. The soaps were still about the emotional life. Later they would be all about wealth as in the TV shows Dallas and Dynasty. The times demanded something more ordinary, a stripping away of all the baloney.

Once that urge was felt, the best source of ordinariness was my own life.