Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tintuberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

What a joy. I'm facing Linda Barry, and well, we're here to talk about everything, but in particular about her newest book from Drawn and Quarterly, Making Comics.

It's a book that began, in a way, as an exercise book, yes, but she couldn't resist. She decorated it. She put in pictures that three and four

year olds have drawn. She watches the comic book develop from the monsters that three and four

year olds make to the gradual availability of composition books.

She tells you how to divide the page and half and quarters into triangular segments.

What kinds of pens and pencils to use, when to use the ruler, when not to, and never to look at your phone when you're making a comic.

How did you evolve your rules for making comics?

I teach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and I teach a class called Making Comics.

So this book is a book that I tried to make that would sort of reproduce what it was like to be in that class for a semester.

But mainly, it's a book for people who gave up drawing.

You know, most people give up on drawing at about the age of eight or nine when they realize they can't draw a nose or hands.

And it's like, I'm washed up. That's it. It's over for me. And so most people are still living

with a decision they made about themselves when they were eight or nine. And the wonderful thing

about comics is comics leaps over that problem. If you try to think of Charlie Brown with a hyper-realistic

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