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)
• Screensaver (computer software)
• AI art (art generated by text-to-image models)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

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