I think I related more literally to the early 'Spider-Man' comics from Steve Ditko because it could be upfront and direct about the problems of being a kid. He captured being a teenager so beautifully.

I get to draw what I like to draw, basically people hangin' around, and write very humanistic kinds of situations and characters. But I do also like to draw adventure stories - more in terms of drawing them than writing them - and letting my imagination go wild.

Once we got going on the Fantagraphics version of Love and Rockets, our encouragement was constant. People wanted us to do more, do more. Thirty years later, here we are.

I wanted to do pretty much a purely boy story, yes. The girls are kind of the bad guys in 'Marble Season', although that wasn't my intention. It's also a world without adults.

Reviewers and critics can be overly cynical. If something the least bit sentimental comes up, they'll often start flying off the handle. But I'm like, 'Wait a minute, you've had those times in your life. Everybody has.

I've known gay people - men and women - since I was a young person. To me it's just naturalistic and realistic to portray gay characters in a humanistic light. As a young man, I knew enough gay people as people not to fear them. On the other side of the coin, I like to irritate conservatives and homophobes.

When you're young you don't know anything, but you have lot of energy to express yourself. So you make a lot of mistakes and you stumble, but you also get a lot of truth from within.