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The reason I wrote political satire was because I thought it - politics - was important... that public policy was important. Then I transitioned into books, then into radio.

But in terms of satire and comedy, our biggest and earliest influence was Mad magazine.

During my twenties and thirties, my interest in the political poem increased as my apparent access to it declined. I sensed resistances around me. I was married; I lived in a suburb; I had small children.

But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art.

My sense of politics and justice was deeply shaped in adolescence by my involvement with the underground punk - rock scene, and though lots of social and political issues had come forth in my comics, it wasn't until my late 20s that I felt properly equipped to address certain issues of race, power, and violence in my work.

Social satire has been around since people have been around.

I think up until the point when we started in the business, which was in the early '70s, most of the humor was political. The smart humor was political satire.

I grew up reading 19th-century novels and late Victorian children's books, so I try for a good story full of coincidence and error, landscape and weather. However, the world was radically changed during my lifetime, and I tell of that battering as best I can.