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Grant Snider, Cartoonist/Orthodontist, Able To Conquer Self-Doubt With A Single Pen

C.J. Janovy

Grant Snider, 29, is hunched over a creaky light box in his sunroom. His sunroom isn’t sunny — it’s dark, because Snider draws cartoons early in the morning while his wife and two small children are asleep.

Kansas Citians might remember Snider’s work from The Kansas City Star, which ran his “Delayed Karma” strip in its Preview section for a few years in the late 2000s. These days he draws for publications like the New York Times Book Review and the New York Times Magazine, in addition to keeping up a blog at incidentalcomics.com.

Last year, the Best American Comics anthology published four of Snider’s cartoons. One was called “I Wanted A Superpower.” The guy in the cartoon looks like Snider, tall and lanky with short dark hair. The character wishes he had superpowers, like being able to shoot electricity from his fingertips — or just being able to dance. Then he realizes that his ability to make everything really awkward is sort of like a superpower — one he can use to his advantage.

Snider’s cartoons are usually about overcoming something — nervousness, anxiety, writer’s block. Or they’re about facing down something big and ultimately succeeding.

Credit Grant Snider
Grant Snider's "The Ghost of Creativity Past"

“Some people have described what I draw is almost like self-help,” Snider says, “but I always try to temper it with realism or reality — you can make great stuff and do great work, but it’s not all a blast and a joy, not everything you do is going to be perfect every time. A lot of the humor that comedians and other cartoonists focus on is personal anxiety or the struggles of being yourself.”

Snider grew up in Derby, Kan., outside of Wichita. He has a twin brother named Gavin, and when they were kids, their parents set them up with an easel.

“Grant would have one side of the easel and I’d have the other,” remembers Gavin Snider. "And we’d tear a big roll of paper and stick it on there and get markers and create these imaginary worlds.” They drew pirates, asteroids, aliens, Bigfoot. “We’d use those drawings to tell stories to each other.”

Grant Snider says he and his brother have always been competitive, especially with drawing. These days, Snider says, his brother is “the uncredited, unseen editor of my comics. Everything I draw I’ll send to him before it’s published and get feedback and say, ‘Is this good? Does it suck?’ I think he’s been real instrumental in improving the quality of my work.” (Gavin Snider is now an architectural designer, artist and musician in his own right. A separate story about him is posted here.)

Snider got his start cartooning for the University Daily Kansan while he was in college at KU, where he took engineering classes, and later at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he attended dental school. His comic strips also ran in The Pitch and at Lawrence.com.

It was during dental school that Snider won the Charles M. Schulz Award for college cartoonists. It came with a $10,000 prize and a trip to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. That caught the attention of the Star, which started running "Delayed Karma." It was also during dental school that Snider landed his first assignment for the Times.

“I was sitting in an orthodontics lecture, checking my email, which is basically all I did during those lectures — surf the Internet," says Snider. "That email came and basically took the wind out of me. I had to walk out of the room and collect myself before I sent a quick enthusiastic response.”

“I love his drawings — the muted flat colors he uses, his simple clean line — but above all I love his wit and the way he can tell a story,” says Nicholas Blechman, the art director at the New York Times Book Review.

Last year, Blechman used Snider for the cover of the Book Review’s sex issue. It showed a man and a woman holding hands. From their body language, it was obvious they were eager — but nervous — as they climbed into … a book. Snider’s drawing made it weirdly obvious how much a book actually looks like a bed. After a rapturous flutter of pages and flying clothes, the couple rested under a page/bedsheet.

“That’s what struck me about him: He’s not just a run-of-the-mill illustrator. He’s a storyteller,” Blechman says. “He’s as much of someone who draws as someone who writes — that’s very unusual in the illustration world. I noticed that the Sunday Opinion section started using him so I think in the Book Review we were a bit miffed. There’s some of that silly turf territory going on when you come across a talent such as Grant Snider’s.”

But Snider’s drawing time is limited to those early mornings because of his day job atTrimmell and Anders Orthodontics in Wichita. Despite his success in cartooning, Snider remains serious about teeth. And it turns out there are similarities between cartooning and orthodontics.

Credit Grant Snider
Grant Snider's "Day Jobs of the Poets"

“Both are highly detail oriented, highly hands on, completely visual kinds of things,” he says. Besides, Snider knows there’s danger in spending too much time alone at his drawing table.

“Having my job as an orthodontist gets me out around people, sometimes more people than I want to see in a day but I think it’s definitely rewarding to have a career that’s based on social interaction, especially when my side career is interacting only with my own thoughts and paper and pen.”

Being alone with his own thoughts and a pen and paper may be a little rough for Grant Snider, but for his readers, the payoff is worth it.

Credit Grant Snider
Grant Snider's "The Art of Living"

A free press is among our country’s founding principles and most precious resources. As director of content-journalism at KCUR, I want everyone in our part of America to know we see them and we’re listening. I work to make sure the stories we tell and the conversations we convene reflect our complex realities, informing and inspiring all of us to meet the profound challenges of our time. Email me at cj@kcur.org.
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