We haven’t checked in with local comic book/comic strip creator Ryan T. Cook in a minute, but it’s not because Cook hasn’t been hard at work. The artist’s newest project, a comic strip dubbed Pacheco Prairie Dog’s Southwest Almanac, now runs in the Santa Fe New Mexican on Sundays, a new reality Cook has likened on social media to climbing Mount Everest. To recap, the Santa Fe author and illustrator of the 2023 graphic novel Gas Station Food finds himself at the intersection of various comic and cartoon histories—he’s a little bit Disney, a little bit Fleischer, a little bit magical. Cook also maintains a still-blossoming love of the Southwest and its vistas, its flora, its fauna. While we normally wouldn’t center a competing paper in our own pages, Cook’s new strip is just too good to ignore, so we caught up with him to ask about his work, his aspirations and the importance of the comic strip. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision. (Alex De Vore)
Can you describe what you’re aiming for with your new strip? Do you have a plan for some overarching story, or do you take them as they come?
I think that’s interesting, because it ties into the medium as itself. Newspaper comics are a living folklore, and that [my character] Pacheco has this almanac that is interacting with the real world in real time makes it feel alive. Maybe that’s the hook—that there’s this real world piece in the comic. I mean, there are characters I’m introducing and things that are happening seasonally. Coming up, for example, there’s going to be this tarantula mating season where all the males emerge and are looking for a girlfriend, and I think there’s something there for a strip. There’s stuff popping up in the real human world that filters into the cartoon all the time.
And because the Southwest is the setting and Pacheco lives in Santa Fe, there’s that aspect to pull in. There’s a historical aspect as well. In the most recent episode from Aug. 3, I did this history panel that went back to Aug. 3, 1936, when Jesse Owens won the gold medal at the Olympics in front of Hitler. I’m not going to get too deep into everything, but the vibe of the times has a bearing on the comic. Pacheho is the prism through which…OK, so there’s this old Disney animation commandment that’s like, you don’t have any jokes and you don’t have any scenes unless you have a character with a specific personality you’re experiencing these moments through, so you can have somebody slip on a banana peel, but if Daffy Duck isn’t there to give it attitude, a little mustard? You need that. I wish I were as confident and fun as Pacheco, but maybe more than self-portraiture, this is about trying to capture a feeling of a certain positive energy. I’ve done comics in the past that are dark or edgy or whatever, and there’s a time and place for everything, but with this cartoon, I want it to be the celebration of print and comics. I don’t think of this cartoon as political, it’s about living as a human beings in this moment, and how there are certain things we can’t ignore.
You’ve done various styles of comics, like you said, but you’ve posted recently online about the importance and specific achievement of having a weekly strip in a newspaper. Why is that so important to you?
Whether it’s 1925 or 2025, the holy grail for any cartoonist is a Sunday color comic. I feel like I’m walking on the moon, and especially today, when print is such a tough nut to crack. I mean, you’re in print, so you know it’s not easy. This is the ultimate dream come true, and I really have to give huge thanks to my editor and publisher for their support. This is an art city, and the New Mexican…I love that they have local cartoons, like Ricardo Caté’s Without Reservations. When it’s an ongoing cartoon, just getting to the starting line is the first thing, and now, as I sit in my chair eating chips and laughing because I keep saying I’ve been training like an athlete to making the best comics a person can make, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m like, let’s freaking go.
Let’s talk about the value of comic strips—from Winsor McKay to Bill Watterson, Gary Larson and even Cathy Guisewite—with comics becoming less ubiquitous, do you think that does a disservice to young artists who maybe won’t grow up with the medium?
It is harder now and there are maybe fewer opportunities, but the other side of that coin is that, in the age of increasingly lame AI, people are hungry for real experiences that are crafted in a real way. If I had any money, I’d be getting a nice cheese from Beck & Bulow, because you want to get the best thing you can get. There are handcrafted things that are absorbed through the nervous system, things we need, and there’s always going to be a place for artists. Anybody who’s an art director and pushing the AI button should probably not be in an arts field, because there’s a thrill and imagination to creation.
This will never change, whether it’s going to be in a submerged cave in France or on the wall of a space station where an alien rips through someone’s chest, we’ll always be drawing pictures. There’s something fun and approachable about cartooning where we can let our guard down and go for the ride.
In Calvin and Hobbes, there are all kinds of references to art, music, culture—and things like this are in a lot of comics; references, homages and whatever. I don’t think someone needs to have a master’s to enjoy that, and maybe sometimes that’s the way we get our first approach to certain cultural things: ‘The Mona Lisa? I saw that in a comic once!’ This is a way grassroots culture is spread amongst people.
I’m a complete weirdo where I’m sitting here and studying these big books about weather cartoons from the 1890s, and I think nobody ever has to know the history and research I do, but it’s going to bring an energy to the work. I always thought it was funny that one of the things Alan Moore said was that the jester was more feared than the king, because his limerick could live on for a hundred years after the king was long gone. Just by having comics, a nursery rhyme or something else...a little story can live on and have a life of its own. Once you make the images, they’re out in the world and can have lives of their own.
To learn more about Cook's work, visit ryancookcomix.com
