“For me, like, the more interesting a letter is I just get more excited and I know that this going to be great for my friends who are looking forward to reading that in my comic.”

I’m getting to a point in my life where my whole attitude about the relationship between myself and the audience is totally different.

But there are definitely pros and cons. You could also look at it as bringing in a more diverse crowd.

I feel like if people are going to go to the effort to get a stamp and, you know, put it on an envelope that, you know, it’s a big effort these days. So I often write back.

Whereas the graphic novel is now being held up as something to aspire to and as something that’s respectable for adults to read.

Underground and alternative comics existed in a vacuum for years, where money really wasn’t an issue.

I get the impression from some people that unless they get direct access to characters’ thoughts and realizations.

I think there’s this general hunger for greater diversity, where publishers are really excited about finding different voices than what has been done.

No one would get into doing a black-and-white comic because they thought it might be a route to riches.

“What you do for a living?” It used to be easier just to tell people that I was a magazine illustrator than try to explain that I did comics.

I’m also probably one of the few remaining holdouts who hasn’t consented to making the e-book versions of all my work, which is annoying to some of my publishers.

If you’re changing diapers and going to the playground, any ambitions of being a cool guy have to fly out the window.

And now people even of our parents’ generation are familiar with the term “graphic novel,” which is kind of amazing.

The loner – it can have a real impact on the art when they realize, I have friends, I’m married, or I have kids. That’s certainly happened to me.

But my impression is that the main impediment to progress in that regard is the number of people who are choosing to make a go of it.

I started publishing my comic while I was still living with my parents.

Who was trying to be cool by writing about young people and a certain kind of Bay Area culture that I was tangentially a part of.

I got into comics about the same time as music. By 12 years old, I had discovered my dad’s killer comic book collection filled with Silver Age books from his youth…early Spider-Man, Thor, Fantastic Four,

The Hulk, Detective Comics, Action Comics, you name it. Seeing those old books got me interested in new comics, so my friends and I would hit the local comic shop every Saturday to pick up the cool titles of my generation.

I would draw my own comic book characters listening to metal. The drawing and music kind of went hand in hand.

There are two kinds of comics; there are the ones who build bridges, and then there are the people who walk across the bridges as though they built them. The bridge builders are few and far between.

There have been times when I played more than others, but I’ve been a road comic for a quarter of a century, so I’ve always played golf on the road because you have a lot of time to kill.

If you look at the common denominator of all the comics who have had big success, it’s being true to their nature… that’s what takes a long time to learn.

I see myself as a comic but the acting helps sell tickets for gigs.

I wouldn’t overall say that “The Diagnosis” is a funny book. I would say that it has comic moments. It’s a modern tragedy.