I was only a few months into being a published cartoonist when that Lyle comic was published. I was out walking in the rain that week, and I glanced into a gutter and saw Lyle's beaming face (the first panel of the second Lyle comic) smiling up at me from a newspaper page under a puddle. I was viscerally shocked — like I'd put him into the world, and he'd gotten into terrible trouble, but it's okay, he's still smiling at me.