The final element (and it’s the big one, Clark) that time brings to the writing room is the fact that your characters will keep getting older, and older, and will eventually, you know . . . stop getting older. Death is the great . . . let’s call it bug in the system (that sounds so much better than the great existential horror, don’t you think?). If you don’t want to deal with death, then don’t have your characters age. It’s time’s biggest problem to confront as a writer . . . the fact that time is longer than hope. It’s particularly difficult when you’re trying to do uncompromising work in a medium where compromise is part of the job description. In the “comics,” you must not do anything that will cause someone to write a letter. And you know the kind of letter I’m talking about. The angel of death’s unseen presence imbues the work with a tone that permeates everything without ever needing to be mentioned. Suddenly everything has its season just like everything does in . . . real life.
From the introduction to The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume 10
