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I had been drawing my weekly comic strip, 'Life in Hell,' for about five years when I got a call from Jim Brooks, who was developing 'The Tracey Ullman Show' for the brand-new Fox network. He wanted me to come in and pitch an idea for doing little cartoons on that show.

The thing that makes me happiest about Simpsons Illustrated are all the drawings that we get from readers. I wish we could print them all. They're really imaginative. They show a lot of hard work.

As an editorial cartoonist now, I live for those moments of inspiration, and it is exhilarating to be inspired by a topic, have an opinion on the topic, come up with a good cartoon on the topic, and to draw it and get it in the paper the next day. That is what I live for.

I'm still awaiting the idea of drawing comics for a living being a reality. I feel like I've been dodging work for 20 years, and at some point, I'll have to get a real job.

I've wanted to write comics ever since I figured out it was a job.

It seemed to me you could do anything in comics. So I started doing my thing, which is mainly influenced by novelists, stand-up comedians, that sort of thing.

I try to do things in comics that cannot be repeated by television, by movies, by interactive entertainment.

Without realizing it, I think I've wanted to do a sketch show since I was, like, 11 years old. Like everybody else in comedy, I grew up watching 'Saturday Night Live,' and I was doing characters with my friends.

I used to draw cartoons. I'd just show them to some of my friends, expecting that they were going to appreciate them, that they were going to enjoy reading them.

I'm sure that no matter what I'm involved in, I'll always be doing comics, at least in some minor capacity.