Brian Gordon

Brian Gordon (b. 1970) with Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, The Far Side, and Bloom County being some of the newspaper comic strips that influenced him. (Gordon cites The Oatmeal, Lunarbaboon, We the Robots, Heart and Brain, Sarah's Scribbles, Up and Out, and Owl Turd as some of the webcomics that inspire him more recently.) After freelancing for some time, Gordon earned a master's degree from Syracuse University in 1997. Gordon used many different cartoon characters on the blog The first comic strip began with four expletives, partly in order to draw a bright line between the new comic and Gordon's more family-friendly work at Hallmark.

With ducks as all of the characters, the comic focuses on the frustrations and failures of parenthood. Rather than pretend that parenthood is easy or a competition, Gordon's cartoons openly depict how raising kids is a struggle filled with both wins and losses. Gordon said he chose to draw the characters as ducks because ducks were one of the few animals he did not draw very often for Hallmark Cards. Gordon's online popularity led to several offers to publish his comics as a paperback; In the introduction, Gordon says that every parent is scared and makes it all up as they go along. Gordon's children inspire the material for Fowl Language.