Before I Could Read, I

I Think That's What We're All Most Terrified About: That We'll Just Die And Disappear And We'll Leave No Trace.

I Feel Like I Understood The Language Of Comics. I Had A Real Fluidity With That Medium At A Very Early Age.

I Used To Use Cigarettes To Indicate Somebody's An Outsider A Lot. It Gave Character A Seedy, Disreputable, Almost Suicidal Quality. Now Cigarettes Are So Unused - - You Can't Have Anybody Indoors Smoking. If You Drew That In A Restaurant, You'd Have To Have A Panel Where The Manager Comes Over And Kicks Them Out. Unless It's Set In Europe, You Can't Really Do That. Characters Who Smoke - - It Dates Comics, Somehow.

All I Can Say On The Guilford Story - And This Comes More From My Perspective As A Father Than An Artist - Is For Parents And Administrators To Give So Little Value To The Career Of A Public-school Teacher - To Allow Him To Be Cast Aside Without Exhausting Every Avenue To Resolve The Issue - Is An Obscenity Worse Than Anything I've Ever Drawn In My Comics.

I Have This Certain Vision Of The Way I Want My Comics To Look; This Sort Of Photographic Realism, But With A Certain Abstraction That Comics Can Give. It's Kind Of A Fine Line.