The drawing and the crafting of the story are fun, but it's the overall meaning that matters to me. It might escape some people who just want to read a comic, and that's fine. The overall meaning is what matters.

The one thing that Jessica [Johnson] and Miles[Morales] have in common is that there's a great many people in the audience who were desperate for that kind of material. They didn't say anything, didn't tell anybody.

But you have to look at your work with an honest critical eye. Work on the things that you need work on. Scare yourself. Surprise yourself. If you don't like the way it's going, you have complete control over changing the course. That's one of the best things about doing this.

You can't just have a fight scene. In my opinion, it has to be a character moment or story moment.

This is something I learned when I was working at a newspaper: when you put something on paper, whether it's words or pictures, and it's staring back at the reader, they are now alone in the room with them for as long as it takes them to turn the page. Whereas on television, the images fly by.

In the history of comics and movies and music too, it's always when things are at their bottomed-out, either creatively or financially, there's more chance-taking going on.

One similarity I see between peers and some of the people who read my books is that comics were definitely an outlet for us.