I felt like challenging myself and challenging my readers with something darker and heavier. I don't know how to explain it, because I'm not a political person. I have two political stories, and that's it: 'Human Diastrophism' and 'Poison River'.

I felt like challenging myself and challenging my readers with something darker and heavier. I don't know how to explain it, because I'm not a political person. I have two political stories, and that's it: 'Human Diastrophism' and 'Poison River'.

I had always shown childhood as something difficult, something you want to get the hell out of, but now I wanted to do a story that was the opposite, about that moment in time when you're in that world of discovery, doing what you want to do. That fleeting moment when you're in your zone.

If you believe in what you're doing, and someone criticizes that, it's likely that they're just coming from a different place and they're bringing their own baggage and it's basically projection. I try not to let it get to me.

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.

I'm working so much I don't see the work of many young cartoonists so it's hard for me to tell which are my favourites. Maybe when I get to stick my head out of the sand I'll be able to let you know.

In the old days, I just could not leave characters alone. Now I just try to keep the ones that still have something in the way of stories to tell.