When I go back and reread the stuff, I'm always floored by how deeply personal and revealing it actually is.

I actually start drawing things. Usually they're abandoned before I commit too much time and effort.

I can look at my early work and see what a pained struggle it was to draw what I was drawing. I was trying so hard to get this specific look that was in my head, and always falling short.

I think that gulf is what makes the work interesting, but as a creator it's endlessly frustrating because I'm starting out with this goal, this thing I'm trying to create, and then the thing I actually do create is very, very different. It's always painful, in some ways, especially when it's just finished.

I like to leave a little room to innovate and change things around while I'm working.

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.

I'm always hiding the books in my closet, and my art's always turned upside down in my drawer.