Not long after the surprise bonanza of “funny papers” from Uncle Art, I developed the notion that the ideal life would be to have my own studio and draw a daily comic. I began filling up tablets with my original strips. I remember some of the titles and characters, such as “Pop and Pope,” and “Manna, the Nice Hermit,” but these early collections are long gone, and I can’t for the life of me bring to mind the title of the most extensive series, which consisted of humorous, everyday stories about a smart young woman named Miss Little who lived with her quirky grandfather (or was it an uncle?). These serials comprised my “wholesome” creations. At the same time, I applied myself industriously to numerous one-page “wanted posters,” refining my facial cartoon style with a cast of murderers, thieves, arsonists, and blackmailers, as well as pictorial set pieces that I called “scrips,” in which I worked out my shorthand visual body language with depictions of battles, action scenes, and bloody assaults on dinosaurs and other monstrous beasts. These two sets of drawings managed to survive, but it’s the comic strips that I wish I still had as part of my childhood archives, because I viewed these as actual preparations for what I wanted to be when I grew up…