One of the things that appealed to me most about comics was that you can pick the ones you like and build your own personal pantheon.

I guess I just don't like being physically in front of people I don't know very well, because I expect to be "seen through," or, even worse, instantly hated.

My mother was always encouraging about my wanting to be an artist.

I have a preponderance to look smug in photos; something to do with the way my mouth turns up at the corners.

I don't think that people are necessarily going to films simply because they were adapted from comics, though I could be wrong. Comics aren't really misunderstood either, they've just been mostly silly for the past century, and those genre-centered stories have found their way into the movie theaters over the past couple of decades because a generation who grew up reading them has, well, grown up.

I think cartooning gets at, and re-creates on the page, some sixth sense ... in a way no other medium can.

There is something about the medium [in comics] that allows for a simulation of actual experience with the added benefit of actually reading. You're reading pictures, but you are also looking at them. It's a sort of combined activity that I can't really think of any other medium having, other than, say, a foreign film when you are reading and seeing. It allows for all sorts of associations that might not come up with just words or just pictures.