Patrick McDonnell on The Gift of Everything

Sorry to inform you, friends, but it’s December already. The gift-giving season is here, and with it, if you’re at all like us, a month filled with tremendous anxiety. We may love putting together a Comic Book Holiday Gift Guide, but we stress profusely over the actual process of selecting and distributing gifts to our friends and family. Thankfully, just in time, we spoke with Mutts cartoonist Patrick McDonnell about his latest book, The Gift of Everything, which truly helped us center ourselves during a tumultuous moment.

Patrick McDonnell is one of our great living cartoonists. For more than thirty years, he has put everything of himself into his comic strip Mutts. It’s where he goes to understand the world around him, using characters like Mooch and Earl to contextualize what’s happening outside his panels and inside his very being. Reading his work, you get the impression that he’s figured something out that you have not, but is that actually the case? We get to the heart of everything in today’s conversation.

The Gift of Everything is out now from Little, Brown and Company. It’s a spiritual sequel to McDonnell’s The Gift of Nothing, which was published twenty years ago. It tells the desperate story of Mooch searching for the perfect gift for his pal Earl, and discovering exactly that, but not in the manner he expected.

Follow Mutts on Instagram, and sign up for the Daily Mutts strip HERE.

This Week's Sponsors

Are you ready to face the future? Look no further than 2000 AD – it’s the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic! Every week 2000 AD brings the best in sci-fi and horror, featuring characters like Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and more! Get a print subscription to 2000 AD, and it’ll arrive at your mailbox every week, and your first issue is free. You’ll also receive the HUNDRED PAGE 2000 AD Christmas Special this December at no extra cost! Or, subscribe digitally, and you can download DRM-free copies of each issue for only $9 a month. That’s 128 pages of incredible comics every month for less than $10! Head to 2000AD.com and click on ‘subscribe’ now – or download the 2000 AD app and start reading today!

This Winter, from IDW Publishing, the Heroes in a Half-Shell take on the King of the Monsters! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles x Godzilla #1 crashes into comic shops on November 12th. Written by Godzilla Kei-Sei Scribe Tim Seeley and illustrated by the brilliant Turtle artist behind