I think a lot of the criticism had to do with disliking the characters - which, again, I take as something of a compliment.

If something's a little weird, it's Kafkaesque.

You start to get nervous when the value of a comic book or graphic novel is relative to the achievements of some other medium.

It's important to make a distinction between becoming more precise and becoming better.

I guess there's just a part of me that's not very enthusiastic about finding myself ten years from now halfway through a story that may or may not be any good.

I think when I finally got it in my head that I was going to do the story, I wanted to avoid doing what I thought people wanted me to do.

Without fail, every cartoonist that I asked advice from bent over backward to be helpful and encouraging. It took many forms: some of it was just an implicit acceptance, like being invited along to the dinner with all of the good cartoonists, or sitting down at a drafting table with an artist and him showing me how to draw backgrounds and perspectives.