Three Strips, One Brain: Spending Time Inside Bill Holbrook’s World

Talking to Bill Holbrook feels a little strange at first.

Not because he’s hard to talk to, the opposite actually. It’s just that you’re sitting across from someone who’s been doing three daily comic strips for decades, and he talks about it like it’s… normal.

No big mythology around it. No “I can’t believe I pulled this off.” It’s just how his weeks are structured.

That’s kind of the energy of this episode. It’s not a victory lap. It’s more like catching someone mid-process and realizing the process never really stopped.

We get into On the Fastrack early on, and how it started versus what it became. The Dethany piece is the one that sticks. She wasn’t supposed to take over the strip. He thought maybe a few jokes, see where it goes. Then it just kept working.

“The gags just kept coming.” ~Bill Holbrook

And that was it. Audience picked up on it fast, and suddenly the center of the strip shifted. Not some long-term plan, just paying attention and not fighting it.

Safe Havens goes in a completely different direction, which is part of the fun of hearing him talk about all three back to back. That one starts small, daycare, kids, everyday stuff. Then over time it opens up. Science, space, things that feel like they shouldn’t belong in the same strip but somehow do.

At a certain point he just leans into it. It’s not “maybe this is imaginary,” it’s just… happening.

“It’s basically become, this is real.”

And the characters age with it, which still feels rare. You don’t reset back to square one every day. Things carry.

Then Kevin and Kell, which is its own lane entirely. 1995, early web, and he’s already thinking about what that format can do differently. Not just putting a strip online, but actually using the fact that readers can go back.

“The archives are there.”

That’s such a simple point, but it changes how you write. Suddenly you can build something longer, let ideas sit, let characters develop without constantly re-explaining everything.

The strip itself plays with that too. A rabbit and a wolf, blended family, flipping all the expected roles. It’s funny, but it’s also doing a little more under the surface.

What I didn’t expect going in was how clearly separated these strips are in his head. He talks about them like they come from different places. Fastrack is more cynical. Safe Havens is where the imagination runs. Kevin and Kell leans into satire.

And then the schedule, which somehow makes sense when he explains it. Each week has a focus. Writing one strip, drawing another, rotating through so everything stays ahead. Not all at once, just consistently.

There’s also this thread that keeps popping up where he doesn’t really frame himself as controlling the story. More like he’s following it.

“I’m just the first person to find out what happens.”

Bill Holbrook

You hear that and it clicks a bit more why the strips have lasted the way they have. They’re not locked in.

We also get into some of the newer stuff, the Dethany graphic novels with his daughter, experimenting with video, things that push outside the strip without replacing it.

It’s not framed as reinvention. Just trying things.

The full episode gets into all of that, plus some really good stories from early on, including meeting Charles Schulz and figuring out how to even break into this in the first place.

If you already read any of these strips, it adds a layer to how you look at them.

If you don’t, it’s a pretty easy way in.

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