I think it's harder for each generation. Even I just feel completely separate from teenagers today who have access to the Internet. And I'm amazed that this interest in video games has never gone away. It just keeps growing.

I wanted all the responsibility to rest on the content of the story. I tried to make the visual style almost invisible.

Underground and alternative comics existed in a vacuum for years, where money really wasn't an issue. No one would get into doing a black-and-white comic because they thought it might be a route to riches.

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

I certainly wasn't consciously hiding my identity in the earlier work, though a lot of people have brought up the fact that I drew myself without eyeballs.

I sense a real difference in my work from the time I was younger and single and more involved in the world of music and going out to bars and all that. There were points at which I was trying to use my art to reflect positively on myself, to almost be flirtatious through the work.