How do you build momentum as a cartoonist — and what happens when you lose it?

Brad and Dave examine momentum across every part of a creative career: Generating ideas, maintaining a productive workflow, growing an audience, and building a sustainable business. They discuss why progress can feel imperceptibly slow at first, how consistent work eventually begins producing its own energy, and why returning after a break can feel like starting a stalled train.

Then, a listener asks how cartoonists should transition between scenes, chapters, and storylines in a collected book. Brad and Dave compare their very different approaches, debate whether a completely blank page is ever justified, and explain how multiple purpose-driven read-throughs can reveal problems with pacing, continuity, page turns, and transitions.

Also: Skunk Watch 2026 continues, Dave considers surrendering his backyard, and Professor Dr. Reginald Wigglesby reveals the completely reliable history behind Little Orphan Annie’s pupil-less eyes.

ON THIS WEEK’S SHOW…

• What “momentum” means in a creative career
• Why momentum takes longer to build than most cartoonists expect
• Creative momentum and generating new ideas
• Using an assembly-line workflow to work faster and better
• Repurposing one comic for websites, social media, books, merchandise, and more
• Building business momentum through Patreon, Kickstarter, and audience trust
• Why old business models can survive on momentum—even after they stop making sense
• Recovering after a creative pause
• Transitioning between scenes, chapters, and storylines
• Splash pages, title pages, narration boxes—and the dreaded blank page
• Conducting separate read-throughs for dialogue, art, pacing, continuity, and page turns
• Reviewing a book in print, on desktop, and on a small screen
• Skunk Watch 2026
• Prof. Wigglesby, The Histories of Sequential Art: Little Orphan Annie’s eyes

Patreon’s Collections feature enables creators to group and catalog content. This is a tremendous step forward for how comic creators can use the crowdfunding app.

Collections

Cataloging and grouping content has long been a problem on Patreon. Despite welcome emails and other onboarding efforts, new patrons often have difficulty accessing all of the exclusive content they paid for. Patreon’s Collections feature addresses that.

Found on your main Patreon page menu, Collections allows you to build modules of similar content. For example, you can group all the comics from a specific storyline. Or you can collect all of the comics on a certain theme. To make this even easier, you can use tags to select the items for these groups. You can also filter by media type or by keywords.

This is a great way to instill added value to your Patreon page. Here are a few suggestions for using it effectively. Scroll to the end for a Bonus Tip that can help increase your revenue.

How much of a successful comics career depends on being temporarily delusional? Brad and Dave suspect it may be more than anyone wants to admit.

Then, a listener asks about creating a style guide for a comic. Brad and Dave discuss the small decisions that help lettering remain clear, consistent, and easy to read — from spelling out numerals and avoiding hyphenated line breaks to shaping word balloons, using all-caps lettering, and deciding whether “livestream” is one word or two.

Finally, they look back at the pivotal “sliding doors” moments that could have sent their careers in entirely different directions. Dave talks about leaving Mattel, choosing webcomics over syndication, and the friendships that helped him become a better cartoonist. Brad remembers the collapsed newspaper job offer that sent him back to comics, the syndicate pitch that deserved to fail, and the leap that finally made cartooning his full-time career.

ON THIS WEEK’S SHOW…

• Why every creative career requires a little temporary delusion
• What belongs in a comic-specific style guide
• Why Brad spells out numbers in Evil Inc
• Punctuation, abbreviations, and the Oxford comma
• Why hyphenating words inside balloons hurts readability
• How line breaks affect the shape and flow of a word balloon
• All caps versus sentence-case lettering
• Using colloquial spellings without making dialogue difficult to read
• The pivotal decisions that changed Brad and Dave’s careers
• Leaving a secure job to become a full-time cartoonist
• Choosing webcomics over newspaper syndication
• How a community of fellow cartoonists can accelerate your growth

Is your schedule killing your chances of success? Maintaining a rigid schedule could actually hurt your webcomic more than it’s helping. I’ll talk about why that is — and how to position your comic for greater success.

Dave and Brad return from the 80th Annual National Cartoonists Society Conference and Reuben Awards with stories to tell!

They look back on ComicLab LIVE and a private tour of the newly redesigned Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum!

Then it’s on to the Reuben Awards, where Mark Tatulli finally won the Reuben Award after years of nominations.

But some of the best moments happened between the scheduled events. Brad gets the chance to sit down with 95-year-old cartooning legend Mort Gerberg and hear stories about the golden age of magazine cartooning — including an incredible story about a newly arrived Sergio Aragonés taking Manhattan by storm. Jim Davis shares the story behind Garfield’s famous suction-cup dolls, along with his surprisingly strict 25-word rule for writing the strip. And the farewell brunch turns into an exchange of sketches, original art, and some wonderful reminders of why cartoonists come back to this event year after year.

Finally, an old collection of America’s “best college cartoonists” offers an unexpected lesson about making a career in comics: You don’t have to start out at the front of the pack. You just have to keep going.

ON THIS WEEK’S SHOW…

• ComicLab LIVE at the NCS Conference
• The newly redesigned Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum
• Which original would you save from a museum fire?
• The Reuben Awards
• Katie Cook and Mark Tatulli take home awards
• Lunch with Dave and Eileen Blazek
• Brad’s conversation with Mort Gerberg
• Mort’s stories about Sergio Aragonés
• Jim Davis on writing Garfield
• The accidental origin of the Garfield suction-cup doll
• Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott
• Original art at the farewell brunch
• ComicLab listeners at the NCS
• The NCS Cartoonist Showcase
• Why persistence matters more than being the best