I'm not trying to create a stand-in or avatar with whom the reader can identify, but separate, believable characters with distinct personalities; I'm trying to place the reader more in the role of observer rather than that of participant. I think this approach comes out of my own personal desire and struggle to understand our world, and the complex interactions of people with one another and their environment. My work is an improvised exploration of this complexity, as opposed to a structured, plot-driven narrative.

I'm not trying to create a stand-in or avatar with whom the reader can identify, but separate, believable characters with distinct personalities; I'm trying to place the reader more in the role of observer rather than that of participant. I think this approach comes out of my own personal desire and struggle to understand our world, and the complex interactions of people with one another and their environment. My work is an improvised exploration of this complexity, as opposed to a structured, plot-driven narrative.

We are apart and alone, as we must, but at least we are alone together.

At practically every level, the way I make comics is an act of improvising within structural boundaries. There's a rough plan, with a beginning, middle and an end, but how I get from one point to another is unknown at the outset, and a large part of what keeps me engaged. It's an exploration for me, and hopefully for the reader as well.

It seems to me that any popular fictional character's appeal is idiosyncratic in nature. Characters with large followings - Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, the crew of the Starship Enterprise - seem to embody something very particular even as they speak to something within a huge number of people. When I think of the most time-tested examples, the common thread appears to be an author who feels deeply for what he is creating.

I loathe high/low art distinctions in any case, so the crossing and re-crossing of that line is an act to be savored and celebrated, regardless of how it turns out. I consider that transgressive aspect of the medium one of its great strengths. In the way comics is both words and pictures while being neither, comics is the Trickster's medium, and as such I would be happy if no one ever knew what to do with it.

I try to be as faithful as possible to the facts as I understand them, but any story is at least partly a product of the imagination. I can comprehend a lot by immersing myself in all of the information I've collected, but my imagination is what brings it to life, and the bridging of that gap - between the received history and the conceived fiction - is both the most difficult and most enjoyable part of the process for me.