Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

A Cartoonist's Career: The Long Game

My mom Shirley started carting my siblings and I to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston early on. She dug the colonial artifacts—DAMN! that stuff was a snooze from my point of view (at least at age 15.)

But take a look around at the Modern AHT, here’s some solid Monet’s, Haystacks and Cathedrals. Recording light as it hits the eye! Sublime. Then around a corner and you’re floored by Vincent, the lovingly described luminous objects, the doomed Saint Van Gogh perhaps the best painter ever.

Keep going, the slightly mysterious probing of the mysteries of life by Paul Gauguin, topped by his masterpiece Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

This canvas has needled me for decades, the quiet lush complimentary blues and orange tones are comfort food for the eyes, his balanced asymmetrical composition worthy of any master painter, old or new.

And the title of this painting. How can you not REFLECT at the moment in your life when you read it? It’s a challenge: “How you doin’, MoFo?” asks the artist.
Or simply pull back a figuritive stride for the big picture. What is humanity?, Gauguin seems to ask.

Stork Club, early 1950s

Today, I’ve been told by Gary Groth of Fantagraphics that my graphic novel collaboration with the great fiction/travel writer Paul Theroux, to be entitled Crazy for You, is slated for a February 2026 publication. This is great news!

Gauguin’s provocative title in mind, I’m of a mood to reflect on my good fortune in the cartooning life. I’ve had my ups and downs artistically and professionally, but I’ve consistently published at the professional level since I was a senior at UMass, Amherst in 1979. This new book, working with one of my favorite authors with a top-notch publisher, is icing on the cake of my long run.

To be sure, there are curve balls to dodge yet—just yesterday, I received a form-letter rejection email from the Short Run comics festival in Seattle. To rub a bit of salt in the wound, the email cited “we were trying to bring first-timers to Short Run this year.” Um, that’s me folks. Never been to Short Run.

Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

I come from four decades plus of creating and publishing weird small press comic books. I chose this life, and man I fucking love it! That’s what I are. Where are we going? For sure, not to Short Run, ja ja ja!

But the long career is just that. I’m a boomer. An old white dude! Alt comics these days is appropriately packed with undulating new generations of cartoonists and publishers, and I love it. Who could have predicted the verve, energy, originality and genius of an Austin English, for example? Or, OMG—Alex Graham??? Then, on the the animation stage, the one and only Ghostshrimp? (OK, OK, so he’s my newphew… )

Look, Gen Z and millennials got a full docket going in the publishing and comics worlds. They are probably rightfully suspicious of boomers? They’ve come into their own and they be going full blast. Bask in it, baby!
Well, the 10% rule still holds, lets face it, we’re lucky if 10% of any generation of cartoonists is worth the time to read.

Hey, enough filosifizin’! I got another piece of news, I’ve finished 45 pages of pencil art on the final chapter of my 1956 series. So, soon after my book with Theroux/Fantagraphics comes out, I’ll have a new 1956 graphic novel on deck, working title Nikki & Ramona. I’ll keep ya posted on that one for sure.

freshly inked page for the upcoming Nikki & Ramona graphic novel

In conclusion, can I quote my faux bluegrass song, BOOMER?

“I’m a Boomer, ain’t a-never gonna stop
I’m a Boomer, I might be dumb as a rock
I’m a Boomer, gonna have me some fun
Gotta lotta good years left under the sun”

BEST to you & yours,

Steve Lafler

Steve’s graphic novel catalog page