UCLA alumna finds calling as cartoonist for ‘Story Minute’ comic strip

UCLA alumna finds calling as cartoonist for ‘Story Minute’ comic
strip

Carol Lay enjoys success with L.A. Weekly piece, latest book
‘Joy Ride’

By Jeffrey Shore

Daily Bruin Contributor

Like many UCLA students, cartoonist Carol Lay often wondered
about the value of her schooling.

"I kind of thought my education here was useless," says Lay,
referring to her time spent at UCLA as a fine arts student. "It was
entertaining and interesting, (but) I just thought, well this place
is good for getting theory, but where am I going to make a
living?"

Well, Lay did have to take a few community college courses to
figure it out, but the 1975 graduate eventually found her calling
in the comics. And Lay, who draws the "Story Minute" strip which
appears between 900 number ads in the L.A. Weekly, has become that
rarest of commodities in the weekly alternative comic world: a
success.

Highly praised by comic art legend Art Spiegelman as one of the
few artists with "draftsmanship and craft and pacing and timing,"
Lay is turning out to be one of the pre-eminent alternative comic
artists working today. And now, with the release of her latest
book, "Joy Ride," a collection of old and original strips, Lay
seems to have come full circle on the benefits of her alma
mater.

"In the long run I think that going to UCLA was really good,"
says Lay. "Being a cartoonist you just have to know a lot of little
things about the world. I think I picked up more here than I
thought I did at the time."

Still, in the short run, Lay was really pessimistic about her
future career in art, and whether or not she even wanted one.

"I thought, ‘I’m not going to be able to do this art thing for a
living,’" says Lay. "I gave it up. I was so annoyed by the whole
politics and trends in art and things like that. I thought it was
really full of phonies. A lot of untalented people masquerading as
fine artists. It really disillusioned me for two years. I almost
became a computer geek."

Almost by accident, she started drawing cartoons for kids that
her mother – a first grade teacher – could use in her class as
teaching aids.

Exhilarated by this practical application for her art, Lay began
to educate herself on comic books. Essentially, the classically
trained Lay had to learn to draw all over again, teaching herself
to pencil, and taking jobs at Hanna Barbera and Marvel Comics. But
her career really came together in the mid-’80s when she began
doing her own strips.

"What I really loved doing was the comics, because it’s not an
assembly-line process," says Lay. "(Also) it’s more ego gratifying
in that it’s my name in there with my creation."

After leaving her native Southern California – and her steady
animation career – behind for a low-rent loft in Manhattan, her
cartooning career took off. Her offbeat strips started appearing in
more newspapers, and her other work started appearing in places you
might not expect. Mainstream publications like the New Yorker,
Newsweek, Business Week, Worth and the Wall Street Journal have run
special strips or illustrations done by Lay.

But the "Story Minute" strips remain closest to her heart. As
frequent readers may suspect, the strip often serves as a chance
for Lay to air her own emotions.

"I get a lot of personal stuff out in the strip that I couldn’t
get out anywhere else," says Lay. "But, I fool people sometimes
because they think it’s kind of autobiographical, and then I come
out with something from left field that is just an idea and it
confuses them. Which is fine. I’m just out there to have fun."

Lay, who grew up near Disneyland, developed her storytelling
talent as an antidote to the oppressive, stifling culture of the
suburbs.

"There’s something about growing up in Orange County that makes
you develop your imagination or you’ll go crazy," says Lay, quite
authoritatively. "I had a really boring childhood. And I read a lot
and I watched a lot of cartoons and I loved movies, so I was
soaking up the storytelling thing without being aware of it."

Ideas for Lay’s strips generally come from things that tick her
off. And, with 141 separate "Story Minute" strips under her belt,
there’s obviously a lot of things that annoy her. By her own count,
Lay kills off the world almost every four weeks in her strips.

"I’m really dismayed at how people are overrunning the earth,"
says Lay. "It seems to be getting worse and worse. It scares the
hell out of me."

In turn, Lay often tries to pass these fears on to her
less-aware audience.

"A lot of my stories are kind of depressing or in a horror
vein," says Lay. "People sometimes don’t seem to know how to relate
to that. I like there to be a payoff at the end. And if it’s a
happy one or a sad one, or a well-deserved reward to some awful
person, that’s just the fun of storytelling."

"(But) you can’t preach to those people," says Lay, still
sounding positive. "You can’t say anything that’s going to change
anybody fundamentally in a cartoon strip … but I have to say it
anyway."

BOOK SIGNING: Carol Lay to sign her book at Hi De Ho Comics
& Fantasy on Saturday, Feb. 24 from 2-4 p.m. For more info,
call (310) 394-2820.Comments to [email protected]