At Home with Adam@Home Creator Brian Basset

Brian Basset, 50, says he started drawing cartoons in grade school and hasn't stopped since. He is the creator of the syndicated comic strip Adam@Home, which runs in 275 daily newspapers across the United States. Brian was born in Connecticut, but was raised in a Washington, D.C., suburb where his father was a political cartoonist. After college at Ohio State, he thought the West needed a cartoonist. He eventually landed at The Seattle Times where he spent 16 years as a political cartoonist. In 1984, he started publishing Adam, which later became Adam@Home, in response to changing social trends that saw more men staying home to care for the children or pursue alternative career options.

The cartoon-character Adam, like Brian himself, is a hilarious work-at-home dad. Adam also is the face of the Microsoft Aging Workforce Campaign. Brian's hope is that his cartoons will allow his fellow baby boomers to laugh their way through the awkward age of computing by helping them learn to customize their computer settings and counter the effects of age-related difficulties, as he has, using Windows XP.

Q: Tell us about Adam.

Basset: Adam works at home and advises clients on how to work from home—or telecommute. Adam also is the primary care giver because Laura, his wife, had to go back to work years ago. He is Adam Newman Enterprises (Newman for "new man").

Q: How has technology changed the Adam strip?

Basset: When I first started working from home, I didn't have my own computer, and so, for both of us, having a computer has broken the bounds of isolation. It also has allowed us to be more efficient. For both of us, it's made us legitimate businesses. And for Adam, it's allowed him to truly work from home, and that was the transition of the strip. The strip went from a stay-at-home dad, to a work-at-home dad.

Q: Do you have any age-related impairments?

Basset: My vision. Once I turned 40, that magical age, I got drawing glasses. That's what I call them. I refuse to call them reading glasses. I leave them at my drawing board all the time.

Hearing. People tell me that I've been talking louder over the last couple of years. I don't always hear specific things and I tend to ask people to repeat themselves, which I think is one of the first signs of hearing loss.

Oh, those bumps and bruises. I sit at the drawing board for hours, upon hours, upon hours. I finally invested in a phenomenal chair a few years ago. It's just great and that's made a big difference.

Yeah, I'm right up there. I'm kind of falling apart, just like a 46-year-old automobile would, and I need some special attention. I'm really looking forward to whatever can be made easier for me with the computer. I will directly pass that into my character or my character will directly pass that into me.

Q: How have you customized your computer using the accessibility options within Windows XP?

Basset: I've used the Microsoft Magnifier a lot. When I turn on screen magnification, I can be at my drawing table, and then turn to my screen without changing glasses. Which is nice, because I was always doing that—I was keeping one pair of glasses here, one pair of glasses there.

I do like the idea of voice activation a lot, because being a business of one it would give me a sense of more power. It gets pretty boring sometimes; at least I can turn to my computer and tell it what to do. When I just type with my fingers, I'm still just the worker bee. With the voice technology, my gosh, I can leapfrog to upper management very quickly.

I like the SoundSentry where you can "tune out and tune in." I'd like to use that more at times. After raising two boys, I do believe that silence is golden.

One of the first things I did immediately with my computer was create a sharp contrast. I live in a world of ink and whiteout, so sharp contrast is something I like and am very comfortable with it.

I also like the StickyKeys feature, for a couple of reasons. I always have a cup of coffee in my hand or a brush with dripping ink. I try to sometimes work the computer with both hands and it is not the ideal situation. It is helpful to press keys sequentially with sometimes one finger rather than simultaneously with several fingers.

Q: What three skills or qualities do great cartoonist have?

Basset: Only three? OK, here goes:

Cartoonists must constantly challenge themselves. I have a steadfast rule that whenever I come up with a "good idea," I sit there and ponder it and move it around a lot because the last thing I want to do is to come up with an idea that the reader can come up with. That is where I can utilize my talents to bring something to the reader that they are not expecting or wouldn't be thinking of. We're competing with a lot of other mediums out there.
You have to be a very good writer. People think of it as a visual art form, but for comic strips it's really a written art form. But what I try to do is a marriage of the two. Over the years, hopefully I've turned myself into a good writer. But at the same time I try to make the drawing as interesting and fun as possible. When you have a marriage of the two, you get Calvin & Hobbes, you get the Far Side, things like that.
You've just got to roll with the punches. This is a real fickle business directly tied into the economy. A lot of people don't realize that, for us, the economy is like what the weather is to a farmer. If the economy is bad and a newspaper's ad revenue is down, they are going to be freezing budgets and looking for ways to save money. The comics are one of the easiest and least painful ways for a newspaper to do that. It directly affects our bottom line.

Q: What's cool about being a baby boomer?

Basset: It's a fascinating age to be alive in. We're sounding more and more like our parents, saying things like, "I remember when."

We were born into the technology age, whereas our parents always sort of dreamed about it or read about it. But our children are being born into the super hyper technology age where things are changing at lightning speed. For us, change took years—the heart transplant, the artificial heart, the space program, the microwave oven, color television—these things tended to occur at intervals of five years, but with super hyper technology today, all you have to do is to wait a week.

Mid-life right now is pretty interesting. I like it.

Q: What do you do for fun?

Basset: I love to bowl. I like to ski in the winter. I love baseball. I love the Mariners, and hanging out at Safeco Field. I love to cook. I love to eat. I like to read, but I don't have as much time for it as I'd like. It's almost like schoolwork. Oh, and sleeping in. I also love to travel. I just returned from teaching an art class to kids of American service families in Italy.

Q: What about retirement?

Basset: I'd like to retire. The grind of putting out a daily comic strip can be just that. It's obviously starting to take a toll physically. I think I'd like to continue doing comic strips as long as they entertain me and I'm able to entertain the readers. And I'd like to be a full-time painter when I do retire. I love to paint.

Q: How can read readers contact you?

Basset: Send email to me at Adamathomecartoon@Hotmail.com. I enjoy hearing from people.