I've never had much attraction to writing fanfiction. I don't spend much time thinking about properties I don't own, as it's 'wasted' brain-cycles.

Phonogram is the memory of a long period in my life through a surprisingly small filter. Those characters are basically the golem who accompanied me on that decade and a half.

I’ve always thought that if comics are a part of pop culture [then] they should reflect pop culture, but a lot of the time comics, superhero comics especially, just feed on themselves. For me, comics should take from every bit of pop culture that they can; they’ve got the same DNA as music and film and TV and fashion and all of these things.

Music will save your life, but may leave you with a life not worth saving. The characters Phonogram tends to follow are extreme cases.

Late night chaining of videos and basically obsessing are rare for me, and often I've never even seen the videos of my favourite songs. That said, in terms of my own personal magic, video has probably rated lower than most music fans.

Self-publishing in comics is core to the whole artform. There is no scarlet letter in comics as there still is, to some degree, in prose. As no publisher for a long time would publish serious work in comics, the only way a lot of it came out was because of self-publishing. Many of the greatest works of the medium are self-published.

Don't be ashamed of the creative urges which drive you. And certainly don't be ashamed of your ego. Hubris is only hubris when it fails. When Hubris pays off, we call these people geniuses.