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

A lot of the kinship that people notice is not coincidental. I was very impressionable and trying to find my role models when I was twelve or thirteen.

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.

I wanted to try to create characters that happen to be Asian but who are pretty different from those we generally see in our culture, in our commercial culture.

I was just a guy who did adult or alternative comic books. And then suddenly to be, like, a New Yorker cover artist was a different thing.

I'm always pointing things out to native New Yorkers that I think are weird about this place and their culture and all that. But I feel like my friends and family from California feel like I've totally "become a New Yorker."

When email and the Internet came along, I never publish an email address. I just stuck with this P.O. Box address.