I've had loads of experiences accumulating scars and skills during my 35-year cartooning career. Lately I've been sharing them with students during my visits to campuses here and there.

Since 1984, when I started out tethered to old-fashioned slide projection technology, I've been presenting illustrated talks to audiences from Los Angeles to London. Now that I've translated my presentations to PowerPoint, I can more easily tailor my talks to the specific needs of the schools that invite me to speak.

Here are descriptions of varied slideshows I've put together lately.

Angst & Pratfalls:
A Career Overview

This self-introduction skims the highlights of my cartooning career by interspersing light-hearted drawings with panel-by-panel readings of my comic-book stories. (The “underground” flavor and gay content of this slideshow make it best-suited for mature audiences.)

Stuck Rubber Baby:
Notes on a Graphic Novel's Creation

In this slideshow I recount how my graphic novel grew out of my own formative encounters with the Civil Rights Movement when I was a teenager and while my parallel struggle with my gay identity was underway.

Styles & Tricks:
Making Friends With One's Inner Cartoonist

This one's for art students or cartoon fans who enjoy knowing more about the craft of creating comics and funny drawings. I explores how varied drawing techniques connect differently with readers’ emotions and expectations, using the my own stylistic odyssey to illustrate my ideas.

The Gay Side of My Career

This is in part a straightforward illustrated reading of my adaptation of Jeanne Shaffer’s fable about misguided uses of spiritual revelations (which was published by Prometheus Press in 2004) and in part a discussion of the story's genesis and a discourse on my reasons for adopting what everybody agrees was an unsual drawing style to tell it with.

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Tailor-made for LGBT audiences on-campus and off, this slideshow focuses on my evolution from the guy who witnessed the Stonewall riots in person to the underground comix artist who, bit by bit, ventured out of the closet and began putting gay life as he experienced it onto his comic book work.

The Swimmer With a Rope In His Teeth