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.

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.

One of the by-products of being allowed to start my professional career prematurely is that the evolution of my work is really evident.

I get the impression from some people that unless they get direct access to characters' thoughts and realizations, either through thought balloons or narrations or some sort of showy action, then those thoughts and realizations never existed.

Just in terms of being able to be a professional artist, but also it's nice to not have to dread introductions. "What you do for a living?" It used to be easier just to tell people that I was a magazine illustrator than try to explain that I did comics, but not the kind of comics that they were used to, and no, it's not pornography, etc. And now people even of our parents' generation are familiar with the term "graphic novel," which is kind of amazing.

There were certainly some people who wanted me to do a feel-good story that affirmed a lot of very commonly held beliefs.

Especially for people of our generation, who really celebrated certain attitudes - the outsider, the loner - it can have a real impact on the art when they realize, I have friends, I'm married, or I have kids. That's certainly happened to me.