If you have birds, or if you're a herpetologist and raise reptiles - you look in those eyes, and there is nothing there that's human. I mean, they don't think like us, they don't see the world like us.

I hate superheroes. I always hated superheroes. From the time I was a little kid, I could believe in a 50-foot gorilla trashing New York City before I could believe a guy would put on long tights and bat ears and go and fight crime. Like, the fantasy never made sense to me, on a basic level.

If you have birds, or if you're a herpetologist and raise reptiles - you look in those eyes, and there is nothing there that's human. I mean, they don't think like us, they don't see the world like us.

I had thought comics could only be one thing, and that was what mainstream comics were selling us. And the undergrounders proved anything you had in your head, as long as you had the skill to put it down on paper, was fair game. And I started filling sketchbooks with my own comics.

I, as a storyteller, was asking questions no one in science had apparently asked. What happens in a nest of tyrannosaurs? They're precocial, meaning when they hatch, they're ready to feed and move about. My questions are "Hmm, if there's a nest of tyrannosaurs, and there's three siblings that survive, would they try to eat each other?"

I think all kids understand from a very tender age that dinosaurs were real. They really walked around. That instantly sets them apart from monsters. And it instantly makes them safe. Because you can love 'em, and they're never going to bite you. They're not like a dog. They're safer than a pet, in a weird way.

The power of monsters is, it is a way of giving almost tangible substance to fears, beliefs, things that aren't real. You can coalesce it and draw it, or describe it, and it's a monster.