I happen to think nearly everybody - especially those one might find in the odd issue of 'People' magazine, including me - is frightfully boring, especially me. And Tom Cruise. Tom and I are alike in only this way.

I started as a news photographer at the University Of Texas' Daily Texan.

The digital world has allowed me a connection with my reader that I'd never had before. I didn't meet the people who read my material. The fan letters were mostly answered by professional people that'd done them for a living. And I didn't have any daily connection with their response to my work. I didn't have a relationship with my audience. And every artist should have it.

Irony can elude the genius among us, sometimes.

My kids hear me behind my door, giggling like an idiot, and they roll their eyes at the blatant indignity of it all.

I drew the last image ever of Opus at midnight while Puccini was playing and I got rather stupid. Thirty years. A bit like saying goodbye to a child - which is ironic because I was never, never sentimental about him as many of his fans were.

I'll confess right here that I secretly wish I'd have drawn a strip about a little boy with a fake tiger, going for adventures throughout the universe in spaceships of his imagination.