By David Laurell

A community college teacher, Dylan presents his daily lessons on the interaction between humans and the environment in a way that makes it abundantly clear to anyone listening that he is a baby boomer still deeply steeped in 1960’s idealism. The problem is, very few seem to be listening as his lessons fall on the ears of students deafened by texting, sexing and various other technological diversions.

The creation of artist, illustrator and cartoonist Steve Greenberg, Dylan’s world also consists of his wife, Ronette; their uptight and materialistic son, Arnold (who refuses to use his birth name – Aquarius); Dylan’s aging parents, Hoover and LaVerne; his best friend, Kwame Swahili, and various all-too-close-for-comfort neighbors that live in the Groover’s townhouse complex.

“Dylan is a typical baby boomer who is dealing with the challenges that come with growing older for a generation of folks who were convinced they would never grow older,” laughs Greenberg. “Baby boomers have difficulty acknowledging their age to themselves much less anyone who asks them how old they are,” he continues. “That was the inspiration for the title of the strip – “Boomer-ish. It’s the fudge-your-age suffix of “ish,” as in ‘I’m fifty-ish or sixty-ish,’ that seems to somewhat help boomers provide an answer when they are questioned on their age.”

Greenberg, who is willing to drop the suffix and admit that he was born in Hollywood 56 years ago and then grew up in Torrance. Pursuing his interest in art at Cal State Long Beach, he earned a degree in art and illustration in 1978. “Shortly after I graduated I was offered a position as the first staff editorial cartoonist for the “Daily News” in the San Fernando Valley,” Steve recalls. “I was there till 1984 and then went on to work for the “Seattle Post-Intelligencer” where I did editorial cartoons, maps, charts and illustrations. I was there for 14 years and then relocated to the Bay Area where I worked on various newspapers and magazines.”

In 2002, Greenberg returned to Southern California when he was offered a job as the editorial cartoonist for the “Ventura County Star,” a position he held until 2008. Finding himself unexpectedly unemployed he decided to go the freelance route as an artist and cartoonist.

Today, along with writing and drawing “Boomerish” for “Life After 50,” Greenberg also does work for the alternative-weekly “Ventura County Reporter,” the influential news and political Web site LA Observed.com and the “Jewish Journal of Los Angeles.” He syndicates cartoons nationally both independently and through PoliticalCartoons.com and is a regular contributor to the VJMovement out of The Netherlands where he was the first American cartoonist invited to join.

An award-wining cartoonist, Greenberg’s work has been honored nearly every year of his career. He was a runner-up in the 2008 Fischetti Editorial Cartoon Competition coming in just behind the artist who later won the Pulitzer. He has been awarded citations for excellence in the United Nations Ranan Lurie Political Cartoon Awards; was a runner-up in the Science Idol contest from the Union of Concerned Scientists, and won a Global Media Award for cartooning on overpopulation that was awarded in Cairo, Egypt. His work has also been recognized by the American Jewish Press Association, the Free Press Association, the Washington Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Society of Newspaper Design. He also took national first place honors in the Center for Defense Information Star Wars competition, and was a finalist in the inaugural Population Media Awards.

With work that is regularly seen in newspapers and magazines from coast-to-coast, Greenberg’s original art has been exhibited in cities across the nation, Canada and overseas and in prestigious museums including San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum, the National Cartoon Museum, the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Washington, D.C.’s Newseum. He also drew the opening titles for a 1985 ABC summer television series, “Hail to the Chief,” and has written and drawn for Disney Comics and “Mad” magazine.

In late 2010, through an odd turn of events that involved Greenberg’s wife, Facebook and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” (a story rife with Kismet but far too long to explain) Greenberg met with “Life After 50” to explore the creation of a baby boomer-oriented comic strip. Shortly thereafter he came up with the idea for the Groovers and says that while Dylan is largely based on himself, the character is really a composite of many baby boomers he has known. “There’s a little of my brother-in-law, some of my friends, and a couple of former colleagues that make him up,” laughs Greenberg. “As for Ronnette, she is a composite of my wife, women I know from my congregation, and women I was involved with from past relationships. I would say that every character I create is half a composite of people I have known over the years and half me.”

Pressed to further express his feelings on how boomers are confused and even a bit shocked to find themselves actually aging, Greenberg says he thinks it’s hard for them to deal with the reality of age. “When people ask me my age I pause,” he says. “It’s not because I’m embarrassed to say that I’m in my 50s, but that I just can’t get my mind around it. My physic age is somewhere in my late 20s although I am biologically 56. I also find I have to actually think about my age at times so if I am just asked it’s a lot easier to simply say that I’m in my 50s until the mental wheels churn around enough to give me the actual number.”

Greenberg goes on to pontificate that he believes it is hard for boomers to deal with aging because they grew up in a totally youth-oriented culture. “Boomers still have a sense that they are not like their parents, and that they are not getting old in traditional ways,” he opines. “I think most boomers are like me in that they see themselves as if they are still in their 20s or 30s. I understand that because it is where our generation’s personality and mindset lies. So when we are actually confronted with it in one way or another, it’s a rude shock to realize we really are in our 50s and 60s. That is very difficult to come to terms with when your attitude and the ways in which you look at things are from a different time – which in the case of boomers was a dramatic time in world history that saw great breakthroughs in everything from science, to entertainment to music like the world had never seen.”

Greenberg says that the baby boomers are a generation that watched their grandparents, parents and older relatives grow old and made the determination that they were never going to be “old farts who played shuffleboard or who sat around in an easy chair with a bunch of aches and pains and complained about everything.”

“That was the stereotype of old people for my generation,” says Greenberg. “I think that most boomers entered their 50s with the determination that they wanted to be more engaged in life and to have a more active retirement than their parents. I think that is happening. For the most part we are more health conscience. We take supplements and are willing to try almost anything to keep as vital as they can. We try to keep our minds engaged and our bodies fit. I think that while we are biologically going through the same changes and suffering the same aches and pains as our parents and grandparents, we conscientiously don’t want to become the stereotypical old person. I also find that most boomers have a sense of humor about their aging, which is why I think they will see things that remind them of themselves in “Boomerish” and get a laugh.”

While Greenberg may be joining other boomers in fighting the ravages of time, he also sees other similarities between him and his peers. “Many of us are dealing with aging parents,” he says. “That can be difficult because it is an all-to-real foreshadowing of what we will be going through in the next twenty or thirty years. My parents are both 88, and while my mom is a bit frail, my father is doing well. Becoming more involved in our parent’s lives is something so many boomers are now doing. I took that into consideration when I created the strip which is why I created Dylan’s parents.”

When it comes to the actual physical creation of the strip,” Greenberg utilizes a drawing board and computer in the Los Angeles home he shares with his wife, Roberta, a former dancer who now works as a registered nurse and the manager of movement disorders at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, and the couple’s cat and two Dachshunds.

“I mix the traditional media with the new technologies in the way I create,” he explains. “I’m half traditional pen and ink, and half digital using the computer and Photoshop. I draw the characters by hand and then scan them into the computer. I then build the panels and color them digitally using Photoshop.”

Greenberg says the creation of these new characters coincides with the creation of a new time in his life. “I was very caught up in my work for many years,” says Greenberg. “My wife and I were both over 50 when we got married for the first time. That was largely because we were both highly involved with our careers and following our creative sparks – me as an artist and illustrator, and she as a dancer and then a nurse.”

Saying he is currently in the process of going through a personal reinvention of himself, he adds that he is well aware he is not alone in doing so. “I was like most of the boomer generation in that I had expectations I would stay at a job until I retired, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. I think many boomers are just like me in that they are running into newer realities when it comes to their jobs ending before they are ready or able to retire. We are finding ourselves in our 50s and 60s having to rethink a lot of things. But that’s okay because as a generation that was a bit more cutting edge and experimental than those before us, we are perhaps better suited to having to reinvent ourselves in our 50s or even older. At the age of 56 I’m reinventing myself as a freelance cartoonist, which is kind of nerve-wracking. But hey, we were the generation who wanted to take the path less taken so maybe in some way we got what we hoped for.”

Greenberg pauses to reflect on what he just said. “Maybe at least thinking that makes it easier to take the path less taken,” he adds with a smile.