I was being brought up on peasant stories; my mother came from Europe and she'd been a peasant and that was the area where the Frankensteins and the Draculas came from and it was entertainment for the people. Nobody had TV, and that was the way peasants would entertain themselves, by telling these stories.

I couldn't draw anything that was too outlandish or too horrible. I never did that. What I did draw was something intriguing. There was something about this monster that you could live with. If you saw him you wouldn't faint dead away.

You had to grow up sometime. The fellows who grew early, they were in jeopardy. They became the cops and the crooks, and the crooks became the gangsters. The crooks became the Al Capones.

It's not in the draftsmanship, it's in the man. Like I say, a tool is dead. A brush is a dead object. It's in the man. If you want to do it, you do it.

A character to me can't be contrived. I don't like to contrive characters. They have to have an element of truth.

In the Army when we had judo classes, out of the class of 27 just me and another guy graduated. I grew to enjoy it because I knew I could do it well. I tried to do everything well.

My anatomy was self-taught. I feel everybody has that ability. I drew instinctively. Mine was an instinctive style.