Richard Thompson influenced Norwegian cartoonist and illustrator Jens K Styve

Another good article by Alan Gardner, interviewing cartoonists, is at The 10 Cartoonists Who Influenced Jens K Styve

Styve says of Thompson, 

“When I got interested in making a newspaper strip, I started looking hard at what actually makes that format work. I’d grown up on Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes, so I already knew there was something in it I loved. Then I found Richard Thompson’s Cul de Sac, and it opened a door: the traditional strip format could still be personal, strange, loose, contemporary.

“When I started developing Dunce, I was trying to bring together two halves of my own background: the craft of Schulz and Watterson, and the rugged, spontaneous, punk energy of the underground comics I grew up on. Thompson’s own drawing and writing are too much his own to copy, but he helped me see that those two halves could actually live in the same strip.”