I haven't really lost faith in my work - other than for quite short periods when the work is harder than usual - but I have hit points where I want to quit because cartooning is just too hard, too demanding an art form. Basically, there's nothing to be done about that but to keep going (if you're in the middle of something), or stop for a while and do other things while you wait for your motivation to return.

It's a mystery to me why comics have been so despised for so long. Obviously, it has to do with the history of the medium - arising out of cheaply-reprinted booklets of newspaper strips, just out to make a quick buck, followed by mostly-crappy original work. It took a while for really talented artists to move into the comic-book world from the newspapers. It really is strange that even TV commercials got respect before comics did. I have never been able to figure it out.

I don't think comics use iconic forms - or they don't have to. But that makes them even more "cool," if I understand the idea. One has to be quite involved to make comics work. Signals have to be decoded on both the verbal and visual level, simultaneously, and the reader must do a lot of cognitive work between panels as well. Comics definitely need an engaged reader.

My drawing, like that of most cartoonists, is intended first of all to be functional: to create believable space, and communicate information. My strongest point in drawing has always been my ability to show characters' nonverbal communication through facial expression and posture.

I can certainly be surprised by turns a story takes, but usually not once I'm actually in the writing/drawing stage. In the plotting stage, anything can happen. That's why I try to finish that part before I start writing. I may be exaggerating here - I'm sure there are times when I think of something part-way through that changes the story, but the ultimate outcome doesn't change. Or not yet. It could always happen.

When you draw in a tight, controlled style, you open yourself up to - in my case, my own - criticism that things aren't quite right. If room is drawn so carefully, when a detail is wrong or missing, it's wrong or missing. The reader's imagination doesn't add the detail in because there are already so many other details. The reader is restricted to seeing the elements that are right there in front of him/her.

Women’s voices, LGBT voices, and the voices of people of color are all needed in any art form if we want to explore the true possibilities of that art form. Diversity is strength.