Brian Crane jokes that people write him and ask how he knows so much about them.
“They wonder, ‘Where is the hidden camera?’ ” says Crane, who has drawn the “Pickles” comic strip for 30 years. “How do you know so much about my husband and me?”
It’s true that many readers find a connection with Opal and Earl Pickles, the retired couple at the center of the strip. It runs in print on Thursdays and Sundays in the Lake Sentinel and online everyday at LakeSentinel.com.
I called Crane recently at this home in Reno, Nevada to talk about drawing the strip since 1990, when a lifelong love of drawing and a “mid-life crisis” led him to start “Pickles.”
Crane said he drew from an early age, but never imagined it could be a career. He got into advertising, where he says he often used cartoons in his work.
But as he approached 40, “I thought I should try it, before it was too late.”
His idea involved an older couple who started out as a sometimes sweet but often crotchety retirees. Over time, they have evolved, often more sweet and teasing, but at times with the loving bite that longtime married couple bring.
Their world involves their dog Roscoe and cat Muffin as well as their daughter Sylvia and husband Dan.
Some of Crane’s fondest words, though, are about the interactions of Earl and Opal’s grandson, Nelson — perhaps not surprising for a man who now has 19 grandchildren.
“I love the moments between grandchild and grandfather,” Crane says. “I enjoy seeing Nelson’s expression at his grandfather. He makes comments with his eyes.”
“Pickles” is filled with moments of sly humor. Earl wondering why his boots feel odd, looking in them and finding the TV remote. Opal coming upon Nelson and a friend in a furniture fort and gently scolding them: “Tsk, Tsk. What a big waste of time,” before asking “Can I come in?” Opal complaining to Earl that her hair is thinning, saying she thinks she should cut it off — and Earl says “Well, I’ve always been a fan of Bruce Willis.”
“Pickles” was rejected by three syndicates and Crane says he was ready to give up the dream, but his wife, Diana, encouraged him to try again.
That time it worked, and “Pickles” now appears in more than 900 newspapers, syndicated by the Washington Post.
Crane says he wanted “Pickles” to have a timeless feel, like one of his idols, Charles Schulz, who drew “Peanuts.”
“To me, it is the simple stories that stand out,” he says.
In the foreward to one of Crane’s compilations of “Pickles” strips, Schulz said, “I think it would be very comforting to have Earl and Opal for neighbors.”
Unlike some other strips, Crane says he “avoids politics like the plague.”
What he does want to do is make you laugh at and with the Pickles family.
And he says it’s gotten a little easier to find those ideas as he has aged.
“It’s a little easier now that I am over 70 years old,” says Crane, who is 71.
He says when he used to talk to groups after the strip started, people were surprised he was so young.
So where did a man in his 40s when “Pickles” started find his ideas about growing older?
Observation, he says, and over time he realized Earl and Opal were a bit like his in-laws.
Now, he says, a little more comes from his own life.
Crane grew up in the golden age of newspaper comics and was a fan of such strips as Al Capp’s “Li’l Abner,” which featured the folks from a fictional small mountain town of Dogpatch. It ran from 1934 to 1977.
Today he admires such strips as “Pearls Before Swine” and “Pluggers,” a single-panel cartoon that mines some of the same territory of old age as “Pickles.”
Crane says he never envisioned that “Pickles” would last 30 years in the competitive field, especially as newspapers cut back space on strips.
“When I look back, it makes me wonder where all the ideas came from,” Crane says.
Crane writes out his ideas on a iPad, but unlike some cartoonists who draw now on computers, he still draws the panels by hand, first in pencil and then ink — “I like the feel of the pen on the paper,” he says.
He later scans the strip and one of his daughters colors it.
Crane is not sure what the future holds.
“I’ll do it as long as I can,” he says, noting that some strips live on after their creator dies.
“I’ve thought about it. Some of my kids have expressed hope that ‘Pickles’ lives on,” Crane says. “I’ll wait and see. The strip is very personal, and it would be hard for anyone else to capture it.”
Crane says he loves hearing from readers. The easiest way to get him is through his Facebook page at Facebook.com/picklescomic or email picklescomic@gmail.com.
John Cutter is the Lake Sentinel editor. Reach him at jcutter@orlandosetinel.com. Follow us on Facebook.com/LakeSentinel.
