Comics are actually dubbed by euphemistic label of graphic novel, which became a big deal.

Often, we separate intellectual discourse from emotional reaction. But I take such genuine pleasure in things that are intellectually well architected. It's definitely an integrated experience for me. Much more than any kind of cheap, emotional pulls that you get in popular culture, when I read a sentence and it's beautifully written, it can bring me to tears.

I know what I as an editor respond to is a voice. A voice is not just a stylistic thing, but it means someone who really has something to say. I think a lot of what I get from books - whether they be books of comics or books of literature - is a window into somebody's mind and their way of thinking. Somehow, I can recognize some of my feelings in seeing somebody who is actually expressing their own inner reality.

Art uses many different styles, but his voice is very consistent. He's always concise and clever and funny. That's true of somebody like Chris Ware, who has an emotional quality to his work - but it's boiled down and it's very sober and spare. Each word has great weight. Comics are not just pictures, but it is graphic design in the sense that they are composed and architected in a specific way.

When I first got interested in comics at the time I was studying architecture and I discovered comics as a medium through listening to Art who was courting me by reading me Little Nemo and Krazy Kat by George Herriman. It was really very effective.

There is a visual narrative that is implicitly understandable even when you don't understand the words and in a good comic, and they are hard to find, but good comics have parallel intertwined narratives.

The image by Barry Blitt of Barack Obama and Michelle in the White House with him dressed as a terrorist, her dressed as an Angela Davis character, a flag burning in the chimney, a portrait of Bin Laden on the wall is an image I'm extremely proud of.