Bored Panda contacted Adam Douglas Thompson again to find out more about his creative process and his journey. Thompson's work offers a funny take on everyday life, but we're curious if there are any topics or themes he purposely avoids in his creations. "I don’t consciously avoid certain topics, although there are certain realms I don’t cover very much I suppose. I have a limited amount of s*x and scatological stuff, for instance. Not much violence either. Maybe I'm a bit squeamish. Or maybe I just like making jokes about sort of boring stuff, like assembling furniture or making toast."
We asked Thompson about the role of humor in addressing serious or controversial topics and what he thinks its impact is. "Serious stuff is always a ripe target for humor because the feelings of tension and discomfort that surround serious topics are always beginning for release. When tackling difficult subjects, you of course have to be careful and thoughtful - mainly it’s a matter of following the cardinal rule of punching up toward the powerful, rather than down toward the vulnerable."
There's something truly fascinating about stepping into someone else's world, even if just for a moment. So, we asked Thompson to give us a glimpse into his daily life as a cartoonist—what does a typical day look like for him? "I do other jobs (including parenting) besides cartooning, so the cartooning is often sort of squeezed in around the edges," the artist shared. "Cartoons usually start as ideas in my notes app (I have a note that is thousands of lines long full of ideas accumulated over the last few years). For me, just finding the right ideas to work on is about half the battle. Once I have the ideas, drawing them is occasionally tricky, but mostly fairly quick and fun."
For aspiring cartoonists, we asked Thompson to share any advice he would offer to someone hoping to break into the world of single-panel comics. "I sort of stumbled my way into single-panel cartooning after decades of doing other kinds of art, so I wouldn't say my own trajectory is a model for how to do things. Like anything, you learn it by doing it over and over. Finding good strategies for brainstorming effectively is key. Playing word association games helps. I highly recommend sharing what you are doing online, even if you feel like a total beginner. The cartoonist community is really friendly, and if you start posting decent cartoons on Instagram, and start following and interacting with other cartoonists you like, you'll soon feel like part of the community."
