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

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."

The whole point was just to be yourself, no matter what that was. You didn't have to fit into a certain punk-rock cliché. Create whatever your compelled to create. People were putting out their own records, and it just seemed natural to put out my own magazine. When I was really young, I started making magazines and little books, just folded-over pieces of typing paper, so when I discovered punk rock, it really blew my mind. I played in bands and stuff, but making my own zines seemed like an inherent part of that scene.

It is more important to me to make art that is an honest expression of my life than it is to make pictures people think are well drawn

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

With my friends, it was always essentially true stories. That's how I always felt about doing King-Cat. This is something that really happened, whether it makes me look good or bad, or someone else look good or bad. This is what happened, and it's my job in life to write it down. Nowadays, I'm a lot more conscientious about it. I'm not out to attack somebody in print.

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."