Typewriter interview with Kevin Huizenga

10 questions for the cartoonist about drawing, hobbies, and more...

Sep 08, 2026

∙ Paid

Do you have any advice for people who want to be more creative? Work every day. It's a muscle that strengthens or weakens, as to time and use. Like running, it's better to slow your pace for a bit than it is to stop - it's harder to go from zero; the muscles tighten up. Of course, saying "work" everyday means also "play." It's a joy even to practice your scales, for the piano player. Have some go-to routines, stuff you don't get sick of doing. I like even writing the alphabet, I draw clouds, fire, I copy something, some photo or cartoon. Meditative practice, filling space with lines, listening for the mind's eye to tell you what do next... then again... and again...

Hey y’all,

Kevin Huizenga is an award-winning cartoonist and the author of several graphic novels, including The River at Night, Curses, The Wild Kingdom, and Gloriana. To celebrate his appearance at Small Press Expo this weekend, we conducted this typewriter interview via the magic of the United States Postal Service. (For a plain-text version with links and a few extra notes from me, see the P.S. below.)

Describe a perfect day where you live. Should I improvise an answer, or... it feels like a question where it would be useful to like, try to figure out the real true answer, to log data over time and look for patterns... A day that begins in my library, reading, is always better than the ones where I start the day at my desktop computer... A day with some quiet, some focusing, some reminding oneself of the big picture... I walk around the neighborhood a bit, I go out back and look at the garden, bugs, etc. I haunt my favorite places, which of course I can't tell you about so they stay secret. A good day in the studio inking or writing and more orders than spam in the inbox.

I "smoke" a cigarette pencil in the studio. Do you perform any silly rituals when you're working? I "smoke" and "drink" and "play cards" and ... it doesn't seem silly ... more of a... what's it called... a totemistic thing... [Spinal Tap joke ref.]. I notice I like to bounce my leg to the music, apologies to roommates, I tend to clench my teeth... skip lunch... I have some situational studio rules that might seem silly... weird... at the very least, interesting...? Silly? Maybe I need one... like yrs... It sounds like it helps you concentrate by giving you some physical anchor for your mind... and pretending to smoke is healthier than the alternative, it's a filthy habit...

What's your relationship to music? Do you sing or play an instrument? What song do you never get tired of? I listen to music mostly when I work on comics or at the computer — it's one of the best things there is, you know you're doing something right when there's a lot of singing, dancing, bopping, etc. in your day-to-day... I used to have a five disc CD player and shoot for at least that much work at the desk... I also run for exercise, and the music is like 90% of the fun... My running BPM is 140-160 and I love finding good stuff to run to... What intense ecstasies..! Moving through the landscape listening to music... I don't play any instruments or karaoke, even, I think musically about comics in many ways, though, get back to drawing (even a weekend) I'm rusty and think of musicians needing to warm up, how it's normal...

What do you do for exercise? Do you detect any mental, spiritual, or creative benefits? See answer to music question, I mean... You got to take long walks. I played a lot of sports when I was a kid and a teen, then P90X late twenties → mid-thirties, then began running after moving to Minneapolis with all the lakes to run around, ~2 to 3 miles. Now I run 6 miles ~3x per week, all year round (winter running in tights.) P90X taught me some "yoga" stretches/moves that I do most days (on a mat). I don't like gyms, weights - I feel very alien to that kind of thing, the environment, the artificial unnatural feeling of "work out" ways of being in the world... Even pushups cause me to feel like "what am I doing?!" Instead I like going for a long walk, looking around...

Do you have any hobbies? Do you collect anything? I don't think of myself as having any real hobbies, or as a collector, which I say out of respect for the real, hardcore people I know - I'm sure we all know people like this - who spend significant amounts of time, care, resources, etc, on their hobbies and collections. A lot of cartoonists I know are true collectors, are on eBay, and have incredible collections. I suppose... cartooning is my hobby, of course, of course - I'm "semi-pro" at best... and only have been able to accidentally accumulate some "interesting pieces" along the way. I liked playing video games up until my mid-30s, when I decided to quit. I read for a few hours everyday... so I like to amass books, I like buying old weird books, but I'm not a big spender... I love free books. Meditating... reading the internet...

John Waters says he has "youth spies" that keep him up-to-date on culture. Do you have any youth spies? A lot implied here... but OK... Are there people that I use to help inform me about "the new"? Are there younger people who hip me to the good, new stuff? Do I need to dig a bit deeper than what's more widely talked about and has good mgmt and promo/press representation, so is of course harder to find, study/judge, understand the full context of. I follow my nose, my gut, and "culture," whaddaya mean? Am I old? Impossible to say. The question, I side-step by shrugging. "Stay critical or die!" [sung] - D. Bejar

What's the most important piece of furniture you own? Tell us about it. There's hand-me-downs or gifts, like desks for younger artists, but that I still use, having a lot of space in the place where I live but still working on smaller tables or desks, for some reason. I suppose I have a strong feeling of "if it ain't broke," that has kept me at the same small working surfaces for decades... A huge dining room table is great to work on... but then you need another one too, for dining, for having guests over for dinner, which is a healthy kind of life! So either you spread everything out on a big table and leave it out, or you need to constantly alternate packing up (because of dinner) and spreading what you're working on back out. It's hard to build momentum that way. Ideal: 4ft. x 12ft.

Do you see yourself as part of an artistic lineage? Who would you place in your creative family tree? Hmm... I look up to many "masters of cartooning" and aspire to touch the hem, to get a nod, to have the respect of, etc. I try to imagine them working, when I'm working, and draw from some common well of spirit, trying to answer the 2nd question... Hmmm — there's not enough space on this piece of paper... Not chickening out... I'd love to really spend time on this, use a large wall-sized piece of paper and make a large flowchart of names, like one of those maps of modernism in fine art you sometimes see, that also look like subway maps, that look, themselves, very modernist... I'll often say "Porcellino and Ware" when forced to "sum up" my approach (aspirational if not actual), and digging into their inspirations, drawing from there, too, in order to keep going deeper, to become my own self somehow.

Thanks to Kevin for being the 29th participant in this series of typewriter interviews. You can get a monthly subscription to Kevin’s comics by becoming a supporter on Patreon.

Shout-out to paid subscribers who buy me the time to do all the email coordinating, typing, snail-mailing, scanning, transcribing, and editing that goes into these. You can make more happen with a click of a button:

xoxo,

Austin

P.S. I was a little surprised Kevin didn’t draw much in this interview! Here’s an image from his sketchbook that might contain a clue:

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