DE: Every creative person gets this question, and finds it impossible to answer, but I'm going to ask it anyway: Where do you get your ideas?

CM: The hypothalamus, mostly.

Other times I read, read, read, read!

DE: You mention that you're fond of weblogs. I take it you don't mind if webloggers reprint your cartoons, so long as they give you credit and link to your site?

CM: I definitely want bloggers to spread the word, if they feel it's worthy. And a link is just great for traffic!

In short, post 'em up, send 'em out, print them off as gifts. Just don't sell them. Otherwise, the bigger the audience, the more likely I can spend more time on this and speak out for that other half of America that's not represented in daily cartoon strips.

(Man, that sounds arrogant. But what the hey, why not me?)

DE: Anything you wish I'd asked that I didn't?

CM: I believe this country has reached a turning point in the culture where you have half the country denied a true mass medium (TV, newspapers, films, print) to speak its side--and I don't necessarily mean Republicans.

Think of the energy of political thought and discussion in talk radio and blogs (and selected small publishers like Regnery) versus the PC dreck on Old Media. It's no surprise that people are changing the channel or closing the comics page.

I think that's all changing now, and it's a very interesting place and time to be.

----

You can check out the latest Day By Day cartoon, and the entire run of the strip from its beginning on November 1, 2002, at Chris Muir's daybydaycartoon.com. He's been in my blogroll for a while. Now you know why.

By the way, Dodd Harris over at Ipse Dixit has published a further interview with Chris Muir that takes up where this one has left off, and includes some special art work that's not been seen elsewhere online. Chris also did a special editorial cartoon on conspiracy theorists that was published exclusively on Dean's World. --Dean Esmay