Drawing is more fun to me than writing. I think it's interesting to talk to different cartoonists about how those activities work for them. I'm a very writerly cartoonist. I certainly spend more time on the writing than I do on the drawing, even though the drawing, of course, is very time-consuming.

I could not do what I do if I were not obsessive compulsive to a certain extent. I don't act clinically OCD. I'm not going to check things so many times I have to take drugs for it. But the kind of complicated and painstaking work I have to do to make my drawings, it just kind of harnesses that compulsive energy in a constructive way.

I tend to write first thing, and then do my drawing later. I like to draw at night. But often I go for long stretches without drawing, because I'm trying to figure out what I'm writing.

Mostly it was Mad magazine. And I did read a lot of - I had a subscription when I was little, but I also had access to some old collections, the little paperbacks of the really good stuff.

I never really read superhero stuff as a kid.

Basically, my work is play. It never actually feels that way - I'm always aiming to attain that state. But I get to do for a living what I did as a child for fun, and that's pretty cool.

It certainly was an important moment for me, that realization that I was not going to get what I wanted. It was very freeing. I keep using that word "freeing" or "liberating." I feel like Houdini sometimes, like I'm just getting out of one set of shackles after another, hanging upside down inside a burlap bag with handcuffs on. Hopefully one day, I'm going to get out of this tank of water.