I've always thought the word cow was funny. And cows are sort of tragic figures. Cows blur the line between tragedy and humor.

I've always considered music stores to be the graveyards of musicians.

The Bluebird of Happiness long absent from his life, Ned is visited by the Chicken of Depression.

This was more than just a cow - this was an entire career I was looking at.

The daily calendar seemed, to me, like a kind of cartoon black hole, and you didn't have to be a rocket scientist to know that that couldn't be sustained indefinitely. That's why I pulled the plug on that one after the '02 edition. Kind of a preemptive strike.

As for the reasons behind my retirement, they mostly center around simple fatigue and a fear that if I continue for many more years my work will begin to suffer, or at the very least ease into the graveyard of mediocre cartoons.