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 feel like a lot of my aesthetic was in response to feeling the awfulness and cheapness of that [ the 70'th].

That's been my main interest for the last 15 years, is to really make sure the story and the characters take precedence over everything else, and that I give them everything I can to make them exist as actual people.

As soon as I'm finished with it, it feels like an impersonal project. Like, "Well, I did another book."

You have to find the tone of the piece and modulate that. There are ways to indicate that - I try to incorporate the biggest range I can within the story, going from humorous to serious without it being jarring. That's the hardest part, to keep that balance. It requires being constantly aware of where you are in the story. You can't really do that in a movie: You can't slightly modulate the tone by the way the character's eyeballs look in one certain scene.

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

I had no television when I was little, just a stack of old, beat-up comics from the 1950s and 1960s.