Mattie Lubchansky

"Im hard-pressed to think of a thing that happened in politics that is purely just comedy, because peoples lives are at stake. I think the worst kind of political cartoon is just, like, "Look at this thing that happened." Like, "Heres a drawing of a news event with nothing to say about it." No point of view, nothing to say. Thats not funny to me. What is funny to me is a point of view. Its something to say that is interesting or surprising about the subjects. Like, what is bad about Trump? Cause theres a million things, right? I think whats bad about Trump is the system that produced him. I try to think much more about the root causes of things and less about the aesthetic differences that I have with a politician. The jokes that are just like, "Oh, Trumps hands are small" are less funny to me. Its a little easy to poke fun at a person; its harder and more interesting to poke fun at a structure. Because when you see Trump do something, its not just him; its hundreds of thousands of people enabling his policy-its a whole support system there. For me, it was really clarifying when Trump was elected. A lot of the reaction, especially the more center-left, was like, "Oh no, Trump has dropped out of space, like from a meteorite. Hes this rogue figure!" Thats distorting everything he is. You can draw an extremely straight line from where the Republican Party was at with Reagan to Trump. I think its more interesting to talk about that stuff."

"Comics was the thing that I always wanted to be able to do."

"My style is very self-taught. I sort of taught myself drawing from watching The Simpsons and reading The Far Side. I think you can see those two things come out in my comics. I really like drawing gross stuff. I really like drawing gooey shit. I like to draw Ted Cruz, because hes really melty. I love to draw someone melting, or with extra eyeballs. I love a skull. Fire is really fun. So theres all these things that I just like to draw, and theyll end up in my comics."

"The reality of how America functions is its hard to be an artist, period. Its really undervalued work. You have to convince so many people to like what you are doing before you can do it all the time. Thats a real barrier, and its scary and seems impossible. For a long time, I had, like, three strips a week running on various websites and I wasnt getting paid for any of it. The Nib was the first paid work ever got. Its important, I think, to step back and think, "Oh man, I managed to do this." Now Im doing it full time. And it is unserious and unprofitable, but at least Im happy with it."