'The Squickerwonkers' was the story I wrote when I was on 'The Hobbit.' And I brought it to Comic-Con and sold out a thousand copies I had printed.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I had a few comics, but I was by no means a huge aficionado. I was more of a 'Mad Magazine,' 'Calvin & Hobbes' sort of nerd.
Comic books were just the means for me to tell the story.
I read 'The Hobbit' only when I was an adult. I had a lot of friends, teenagers, who discovered reading through 'The Hobbit,' but it wasn't something that I discovered until later in life.
My brother had boxes of comic books. He was really the collector.
The Pop art I wound up doing came to me purely from 'Mad' comics. I loved the idea of doing fun stuff. I met an art dealer who wanted to show the work - that was in January 1962 - and that was the beginning for me.
'The Hobbit's a big gig. It's a huge circus that you become a part of.
The first story I ever sold was to 'Argosy' magazine, which no longer exists. That issue also contained work by several other more celebrated writers, like Ray Bradbury - so I felt I had at least one toe on the ladder.
My wife, Caroline Spector, and I pitched some comic ideas to various publishers back in the '80s, but nothing ever came of it.
Bantam Press. And they commissioned me to write it. And when that was completed, they sold it to Harper and Row. And then I put it out to every movie studio in town. And they all turned it down.
I was a Charles Schulz kind of guy. I didn't read comics books. The Warner Bros. guys were great - Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng.