Episode 236 – Mimi Pond

Virtual Memories Show 236: Mimi Pond returns!

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“I felt more of a sense of empty nest when I finished this book than I did when my children left home.”

Cartoonist and humorist Mimi Pond makes her third appearance on the show, this time to celebrate publication of The Customer is Always Wrong (Drawn & Quarterly). We talk about the joys of coming back to NYC (and her favorite diner in the city), the East Village becoming kitsch, the process of translating her book from prose to comics, the differences between working in print and making web-comics for The New Yorker, publishing the conclusion of her unreliable memoir and lamenting a story that didn’t make it didn’t make it into the book, navigating celebrity-adjacent moments in LA, her fascination with the Mitford sisters, her realization that San Diego Comic-Con is “cosplay concentration camp”, having a very creative plan for dental coverage, why she considers Beverly Clearly the Hemingway of children’s writers, her pet peeve of being shelved in bookstores beside superhero comics, and her great lesson for being an artist: “make friends with discomfort”! Give it a listen! And go buy Over Easy and The Customer is Always Wrong!

“I liked Archie comics because it was a look to an adolescence I hoped I would have. It turned out to be a crushing disappointment. There was no Pop’s Soda Shop! I didn’t get to date a guy with hashmarks on the side of his head. Most importantly, there was no Jughead!”

“The dark, ugly secret of comics is that just about everyone successful has a partner behind them, supporting them in some way.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

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About our Guest

Mimi Pond is a cartoonist, illustrator, humorist and writer. Her graphic memoir, The Customer is Always Wrong, was recently published by Drawn and Quarterly. It is the long-awaited 400 pages+ sequel to 2014’s Over Easy, which detailed her post-art school waitressing career in the late 1970s in Oakland, CA. Over Easy garnered a tremendous critical response, a place on the New York Times Best Seller List, the PEN Center USA award for Graphic Literature Outstanding Body of Work, and an Inkpot Award from Comic Con International in San Diego.

Pond has created comics for the Los Angeles Times, Seventeen Magazine, National Lampoon, The New Yorker, and many other publications too numerous to mention, along with five humor books. She has also written for television: her credits include the first full-length episode of the Simpsons in 1989, and episodes for the television shows “Designing Women” and “Pee Wee’s Playhouse”. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the painter Wayne White.

Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Mimi’s friend Ann’s east Village apartment on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 Microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Cloudlifter CL-1 and a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Miim by me. It’s on my instagram.