Designing a creative life on your own terms (with Cedar Van Tassel)

*“A joke is kind of like a little life-lesson in addition to being funny. If your joke is really good, there's a little nugget of truth in it.”* – Cedar Van Tassel In this episode of *Deviate*, Rolf and Cedar discuss why kids want to be paleontologists and astronauts, and the existential "book" Cedar wrote when he was four (2:00); how Cedar got started reading comics, which ones were his favorites, and his own early comics projects (8:00); the golden age of webcomics, and how *Appleguy* got started (16:00); the world of *Appleguy and Beefwood*, and its "roadside attraction" and other geographical subplots (24:00); how Cedar went from drawing an Instagram comic to having a book of comics published by a major North American indie comics publisher, and what his creative process looks like (37:30); and Cedar's four pieces of creative advice: 1) Be opportunistic; 2) Give yourself some rules; 3) Don't torture yourself; 4) People will find your interest in something interesting. Cedar Van Tassel (@appleguy\_comix) is the author of Appleguy and Beefwood, which was published by the iconic Montreal comics press Drawn & Quarterly in May of 2026. A lifelong plant and prairie lover, he does work on ecological restoration projects throughout the Great Plains. **Notable Links:** - Seinfeld (TV show) - Souvenir, by Rolf Potts (book) - The Misadventures of Wenamun, by Rolf Potts (comic book) - Paleontology (using fossils to study the past) - Calvin and Hobbes (daily comic strip) - The Complete Calvin and Hobbes (comics anthology) - Scott McCloud (cartoonist and comics theorist) - The Simpsons (animated TV sitcom) - Webcomics (comics published directly online) - Garfield (daily comic strip) - "The Dark Side of Travel Romance" (*Deviate* episode) - Ents (tree humanoids in Lord of the Rings) - S.P. Dinsmoor's Garden of Eden (roadside attraction in Kansas) - World's Largest Belt Buckle (roadside attraction in Kansas) - World's Largest Czech Egg (roadside attraction in Kansas) - World's Largest Collection of the World's Smallest Versions of the World's Largest Things - Biggest ball of twine (roadside attraction in Kansas) - Marshall McLuhan (media theorist)