When I put together a graphic novel, I don't think about literary prose. I think about storytelling.

The experts who managed the original Marshall Plan say Afghanistan needs a commitment of at least $5 to $10 billion over 5 to 10 years, coupled with occupation forces of 250,000 Allied soldiers to keep the peace throughout the country.

The word 'hero' has been bandied about a lot to refer to anyone killed in Afghanistan or Iraq. But anyone who voluntarily goes to Afghanistan or Iraq [as a soldier] is fighting for an evil cause under an evil commander in chief.

What people don't seem to ever understand is that any infrastructure that exists under your regime, in your current government, will be appropriated and inherited by the next regime. I mean, the KGB came out of the NKVD which came out of the Tsarist version of the same thing. And now, the FSB operates out of the old KGB building in Moscow. The infrastructure remains exactly the same. There's a little bit of reshuffling of personnel, and that's it. The way to make sure that there's no FSB today would have been for the Tsar to not have built an infrastructure for it in the 1800s.

When you have birds you stare at them a lot and their eyes are recessed on their head. When they look at something they tilt their head in a quizzical expression.

Up until 1995, I still had a day job that I hated. I was still personally involved in things in the 90s.

That's what comics journalism does better than anything else: you can get a feeling of what it was like. Like Scott McCloud says, especially with a simple drawing style, you can project yourself into the image, and imagine yourself having those experiences.