You need to be, like, turning down high-paying illustration work because you want to work on your comic. That's when you know you're doing something good.

For example, I noticed that every single kid in the high school in 'The Death-Ray' is based on somebody I went to high school with.

But I enjoy the opportunity to use swear symbols.

I have a very low tolerance for animation. I'm used to the perfect integrity you get from drawing your own comics. There's something about that that animation always loses.

I was 30 before I made a living that was not embarrassing.

All I can say on the Guilford story - and this comes more from my perspective as a father than an artist - is for parents and administrators to give so little value to the career of a public-school teacher - to allow him to be cast aside without exhausting every avenue to resolve the issue - is an obscenity worse than anything I've ever drawn in my comics.

Comics seldom move me the way I would be moved by a novel or movie.