Don't Forget - DMA#55 with Special Guest Avi Steinberg, Feat. Tom Toro!

12:30pm EDT tomorrow (Monday, 27th July) - Tune in FREE!

The first time I met Avi Steinberg, he wasn’t there.

It was 11 years ago. His girlfriend at the time emailed me to commission a caricature of him for his birthday. I’d never shaken the man’s hand, but I knew his cartoons from The New Yorker, so I sat at the drafting table and studied a complete stranger’s face until I could draw it. She wrapped it, gifted it to him, and now, years later, he’s agreed to sit inside my laptop for an hour while I return the favour in real time.

This Monday at 12:30pm EDT, Avi joins me live on Draw Me Anything.

If you don’t know Avi’s work yet, you’re in for a treat. He’s a New Yorker cartoonist who spent a decade submitting before they finally bought his first gag (two fish, if you’re wondering). These days he sends the magazine ten cartoons a month while working full time as a kindergarten teacher in New York City, which might explain why his drawings carry the anxious sincerity of a man who spends his mornings negotiating with a classroom of five-year-olds and his evenings negotiating with a blank page.

Avi’s incredibly productive. He writes a Substack with thousands of loyal readers, created “A Story No One Has Ever Heard Before,” which isa picture book that guides kids in crafting a story from the ground up, and his upcoming book, “The Jumble,” is set to release this November. It tells the story of a shy boy and a dog who switch places for a day, which honestly sums up most of my life by most Wednesdays.

We’ll talk about process, teaching, the weekly terror of the batch (of cartoons), and I’ll finally find out whether that caricature survived the relationship…

Oh! -and stick around to the very end, because repeat offender, Tom Toro is dropping in with a full recap of San Diego Comic-Con, presumably still smelling faintly of lanyards and exhibition hall carpet.

Monday, 12:30pm Eastern. Bring a pencil.

‘til next time!
Your pal,

PS. Look, if this actually did something for your brain (or at least distracted you from the creeping dread of your own inbox for six minutes), please consider restacking this and sharing it with your people. It’s the only way the word spreads.