Les McClaine gets a kick out of sharing his dirty laundry with the world. An up-and coming creator with impressive academic credentials, including two years at the Pilgrim Church Nursery School in Lexington, Massachusetts, Life With Leslie's Les Maclaine has journeyed to Savannah and back (yeah, he's done college, too), and is now one of those rare few who can claim to be making a bit of money drawing sequential art.

Working at Newbury Comics, and with his comic Highway 13 being published by Amaze Ink/SLG Publishing, he could certainly be doing worse. If he was, though, he'd let you know in his journal comic in a heartbeat.

Hollywood and Free Comics To The Rescue

In the sky, it’s a bird... it’s a plane!

No, it’s just Hollywood obsessing over another trend, mashing it into the ground with well intentioned overexposure all for the sake of the almighty dollar.In the sky, it’s a bird... it’s a plane!

No, it’s just Hollywood obsessing over another trend, mashing it into the ground with well intentioned overexposure all for the sake of the almighty dollar.

If at First You Fail, Write a Column About It

If you're reading closely you will probably have noticed that much of this month's Comixpedia content is related to diary comics. It was an interesting choice, and one that appealed to me right away, being a regular reader of American Elf and The Journal Comic. At the same time, I didn't know what to say about the current trend towards autobiography and introspection in webcomics - so I tried drawing one of my own.

Webcomics are the result of the adaptation of an established art form to a new environment, which allowed the comic strip to develop in a manner and direction that had been previously unimaginable, and the diary comic is one example of this new form that would be impossible without the Internet. The immediacy of web publishing allows a creator to draw a comic now, post it to the Internet within a scant few minutes, and get comments upon it almost instantaneously. The diary comic, by presenting a snapshot of the creator's day, is about as immediate as you can get.

Here are the complete question-and-answer transcripts that were originally amassed for part 2 of the April 2003 Journal Comics Explored feature. As with any feature, all of the answers can never be used in the final copy, and some questions are always dropped for purposes of focus and clarity.

Comixpedia has chosen to include the entire set of interviews here – verbatim (typos and all) – so that those curious to know as much as they can about the thoughts lurking inside their favorite journal comic artists' heads can do so without having to resort to guerilla brain surgery.

Les McClaine proudly proclaims himself an incurable egotist. James Kochalka says he's trying to delve into the mysteries of being human. Drew Weing draws them because he couldn't keep track of his life otherwise – he has a pretty horrible memory. Whether you accept these answers, or ask any of the growing host of other journal comic artists out there why they draw their journal comics, you'll find that, just like so many other things in life, or life itself, there is no easy cookie-cutter answer.