If you plan to spend any time at all today with Alice Otterloop, a fearless 4-year-old from Blisshaven preschool, you probably won't set aside more than three seconds.

Three seconds is about all you get from your readers - even the loyal ones - to sop up their daily dose of a comic strip, says Richard Thompson, the artist behind "Cul de Sac," one of the most successful funnies launched in the last decade.

Creating three seconds of charm is a daily battle for Thompson, who rallies against the traditional artistic demons of deadline and writer's block and then must defy the unexpected difficulty that has come into his life called Parkinson's disease.

"I'm trying to amuse myself, if nothing else," he says.

Thompson is in Charlotte this weekend along a row of tables called "The Comic Strip," where with other cartoonists he greets and sketches and autographs work for fans as part of the 19th Heroes Convention, a confab largely dedicated to the superhero genre at the Charlotte Convention Center.

Professionally, Thompson is on a roll. "Cul de Sac" burst into national syndication in 70 newspapers in late 2007, an impressive feat in the competitive comics business, and now runs in more than 150. On Sunday in Boston, he won the Reuben Award from the National Cartoonists Society, the industry's equivalent of the Oscar.

When his first collection of strips was published in 2008, artist Bill Watterson, who penned "Calvin and Hobbes," wrote the foreword:

"I thought the best newspaper comic strips were long gone, and I've never been happier to be wrong. ... 'Cul de Sac' avoids both mawkishness and cynicism and instead finds genuine charm in its loopy appreciation of small events. Very few strips can hit this subtle note."

A suburban specialist

"Cul de Sac" is a family story set in the suburbs. Alice is the outgoing one, the foil to her neurotic big brother Petey. There are pals Beni and Dill, and the school guinea pig, Mr. Danders, who is a good listener.

Thompson, 53, grew up outside Washington, in Gaithersburg, Md. (family lore has it he was drawing on the walls at age 3; his mother suspended her irritation long enough to note that his scrawls showed promise). He now lives in Arlington, Va., with his wife and two daughters.

A lifelong suburbanite, he's happy with the lifestyle. From soccer league ordeals to the rituals of school, his experiences provide storylines for the strips.

"Petey is the immovable object; Alice is the irresistible force," says Thompson. "Nothing bothers Alice. Petey is the opposite. He swims in a pretty small tank."

Part of the comic's success is in the grown-up observations that come from little mouths. Thompson admits there is a satirical touch aimed at the suburban experience, but mostly he explores how Alice and Petey - like so many who dwell in our three-dimensional realm - are off in their own little worlds.

"Where their worlds collide is where the strip happens," he says.

Struggles of an artist

Thompson is soft-spoken, skinny as a stylus and goggled by oversize glasses.

He says he lives with the ever-gnawing need to come up with stories. Sometimes, in desperation, he just starts drawing and the final panel is a surprise, even to him.

Then there's artist's remorse. This would be better there; that would look better like this. Thompson's work style involves a lot of muttering. "That would be funnier, if ..."

And deadline. He's a violator. Most syndicated artists have their strips done a month or two ahead of publication date. Thompson has pushed it to two weeks, 10 days, nine. It can give the syndicate fits.

"There's a list of the bad guys. And I'm on it."

Mother from Charlotte

Thompson has deep roots here. His late mother, Anne Hall Whitt, is a Charlotte native.

She was orphaned at age 8 with two younger sisters. A social worker took them away to the Catholic orphanage - then behind St. Peter's Catholic, facing what is now the Convention Center - and then they were placed in a series of foster homes.

In 1982, Whitt published a poignant memoir about their childhood called "The Suitcases," after the cardboard carry-alls the social worker gave the girls to collect their belongings. As they moved from home to home, the suitcases became the place their few belongings could always be found and grew to be the touchstone of permanence in their unstable lives.

Thompson, then a young artist, illustrated the book for his mother. He used a vividly realistic style with crisp lines and deep shadows - far different than what you see in "Cul de Sac" today.

He shrugs off its style, dismissing it as an early work. But she liked it. He was still showing promise.

Coping with Parkinson's

Less than a year after "Cul de Sac" went into syndication, Thompson was diagnosed with Parkinson's, a mild to moderate form of the disorder that typically causes shaking and rigidity.

"If this had happened in reverse - first the Parkinson's, then the strip, the strip probably wouldn't have happened," says Thompson, who is on effective medication and will start physical therapy in a few weeks.

So far, his problems have been largely restricted to his left side. He draws with his right hand.

His syndicate was occasionally touching up his lettering when it got wobbly. He has now digitized his alphabet and can fill in word balloons by computer if it becomes necessary.

Funny thing, though. Thompson finds when he's deep in concentration on a strip, it tends to suppress his symptoms.

Sometimes he cheats the disorder out of a whole hour while doing "Cul de Sac," an hour spent in an imaginary place most people visit for only three seconds.