Tom Hart, David Lasky, Ed Brubaker, Megan Kelso, Julie Doucet. These people lived comics. The people in Seattle got together every week to draw and critique each other's work. Outside of art school, I never did that. When I came back from that trip, I had a physical, palpable sense of being self-conscious. It was the first time I'd drawn where I was like, "Holy cow, people are going to read this. They're going to like it, or they might not like it. Maybe I really should make my drawings a little more solid, or really think about what I'm doing. Maybe this shouldn't be so sloppy."

"Positive mental attitude" is totally hardcore. It's DIY.

Punk rock was the first thing I found in my life that made me feel acceptable. The thing that got me into punk rock was the idea, "You're fine just the way you are." It sounds kind of dorky, but you don't have to make excuses for who you are or what you do. When you find something like punk rock, not only is it okay to feel that way - you should embrace your weirdness. The world is totally messed up, and punk rock was a way to see that and work with it without candy-coating it. It was saying, "Yeah, the world is this way, but you can still do something about it. Take energy from that."

The way I grew up, I had a lot of personal issues with art. It's an individual thing, but I also think it's kind of Midwestern: You do your thing, but you don't talk about it. You make sure it's not such a big deal, and keep it very low-key.

Through my life and my experience, I believe getting "positive mental attitude" is true. Your brain has certain pathways in it, and if you feed those pathways with certain types of thoughts, the blood goes to those neurons and nourishes them, and they grow and develop. That's how you build habits. Physically, I think that's how your brain works. If you have certain habits that are negative and causing you problems that you want to change them, you can actually change the blood flow and stuff in your brain by thinking a different way.

Tom Hart, David Lasky, Ed Brubaker, Megan Kelso, Julie Doucet. These people lived comics. The people in Seattle got together every week to draw and critique each other's work. Outside of art school, I never did that. When I came back from that trip, I had a physical, palpable sense of being self-conscious. It was the first time I'd drawn where I was like, "Holy cow, people are going to read this. They're going to like it, or they might not like it. Maybe I really should make my drawings a little more solid, or really think about what I'm doing. Maybe this shouldn't be so sloppy."

My parents knew that I did King-Cat, but honestly my mom didn't want to see a lot of it. She would tell me, "I don't want to know any of what's really going on." Nowadays, when I put out a new issue, my mom will say, "Is there anything in there that will make me upset?" So I have to sit down and screen it.