For all the idealism that propels him through the story, if you read between the lines you may see that at a moment which he considers a defining point in his life as an activist, he's also set the stage for potential ugliness down the road.

My personal beliefs were shaped more by experience and by watching the news when I was young: images of angelic-looking college students in Mississippi crying like the world was ending because black people were being allowed on their campus; the slow mounting horror of Vietnam on the evening news every night; sitting with my parents in front of the TV and being appalled at the way the Chicago police were treating the protesters during the '68 Democratic convention. Being eyed with suspicion because of my age and the way I wore my hair.

Well, I think it's just remarkable how wrong the conventional wisdom was. It was utterly shocking that Donald Trump won to people who live on the coasts, but to people who live in the areas that I come from, it was utterly predictable. And that suggests something really, really broken about our political culture.

I think that what was genius about the politics of Trump's campaign is that he focused on workers and he focused on jobs. It wasn't about the wealthy entrepreneur with a private jet. It wasn't about a government handout. It was about the folks in the middle.

Understand, my own politics aren't necessarily interchangeable with what any of my characters believe. You could take each of the characters in On the Ropes, and I'd probably be in sympathy with a different one on any given day, depending on what's going on in the world.

I really do think Trump's election comes down to respect. It comes down to being gracious. It comes down to really showing compassion for the problems of the black and Latino communities. And I really hope that Donald Trump takes the ball that's in his court and tries to go after those voters, tries to show some compassion, and really offers them something substantive to get excited about Republican and conservative policy.

I'm not sure I can name a kind of story that wouldn't work in comics form. It's words and images, and we've been telling all kinds of stories with that combination since theatre was invented thousands of years ago.