"Maybe you could call me a sit-down comedian," Rubin muses.; "Whatever you call it, I'm just gratified I have the opportunity to make other people laugh."

With his cartoon panel, Rubes, in hundreds of newspapers across the country and gracing millions of greeting cards, mugs and T-shirts, Rubin has plenty of opportunities. Walk into almost any gift shop, and you'll probably see a bevy of Rubes cards. And, ironically, the inspiration to create a new cartoon panel hit Rubin while he was surrounded by just such a collection of greeting-cards.

"It was 1978, and I was walking through the card section of a pharmacy," Rubin said. "I just stopped in my tracks, looked at the cards and thought: 'Wait a minute. I can do that."'

And so he did. Rubin took his first steps on the path to cartoon success by creating a publishing company and distributing his own greeting cards. Rubes Publications, established in 1979, also published the popular Notable Quotes in 1981.

Rubes, in the form that cartoon aficionados now know it, began appearing in newspapers in 1984. The first paperback collection of Rubes was published in late 1988 by G.P. Putnam & Sons. The latest edition, Calves Can Be So Cruel, was published by Penguin Books.

Originally self-syndicated, Rubes is now distributed by Creators Syndicate to more than 400 newspapers worldwide. As one of the most popular single-panel cartoons, Rubes appears in such major daily metropolitan papers as the Philadelphia Daily News, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Columbus Dispatch, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Winnipeg Free Press, The Orlando Sentinel, the Washington Times, the Houston Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times.