My First Cartoon? 1985 (Patreon)

Humpaford the Duck, by Chris Onstad, age 10. Birthday Card on Piece of Paper, 8.5"x11". 

My father unearthed this little "piece of history" last Thursday while going through a box of things my beloved Grandma Marva had saved. 

Perhaps the earliest champion of what she recognized as a marginal and unwilling ability in art, Marva once caught me clumsily drawing some of their yard plants on a sheet of typewriter paper and promptly drove me down the hill to buy me a Mead Academie drawing pad at Long's Drugs. What followed were a couple shitty sketches that looked like they were fretted over by a kid whose nervous system was awash in Clorox and bee stings. Sensing that the continued practice of art would simply lead to commensurate unhappiness, I soon abandoned it. 

My appetite for sustained discomfort and inaudible feedback would not rise up again until I began Achewood, many years later. 

Scholars will note that I clearly owned at least one The Far Side book, and had taught myself to draw speech bubbles by examining Garfield strips. To this day I still have not solved how arms "go around" the body.