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

It's cold water in the face to realize you're not nearly as special and as unusual as you might have thought when you were an alienated teenager.

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.

The experience of reading a comic should not be the time it takes to turn each page.

I do think it's getting more and more rare in this country to raise a kid with the attitude that creativity is something valuable. The idea of trying to make the effort to produce something, to put something out into the world, rather than just taking in all the stuff the world's putting out at you.

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

And with this sort of increased visibility, there's more money going around in the industry, and it changes a lot, in terms of who gets into the business as a creator, who sticks with it, and who gets pushed out. And I do think it's sort of too bad that what once was a safe haven for truly eccentric, outsider artists is no longer that thing. But there are definitely pros and cons. You could also look at it as bringing in a more diverse crowd.