“There were points at which I was trying to use my art to reflect positively on myself, to almost be flirtatious through the work.”

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.

You start to feel very weighted down sometimes.

That partially due to the world of media and commerce, the idea of a comic book has been lost in the ghetto.

But not the kind of comics that they were used to, and no, it’s not pornography, etc.

Look, there’s no denying that comics have moved dramatically into the mainstream in North American culture in the last 10 years.

I never go home and take out those business cards and go to those websites.

But if there was a mini-comic here in my hand, I’d read it while I ate my lunch.

I wanted to avoid doing what I thought people wanted me to do.

The idea of trying to make the effort to produce something, to put something out into the world, rather than just taking in all the stuff the world’s putting out at you.

I do think it’s getting more and more rare in this country to raise a kid with the attitude that creativity is something valuable.

And I do think it’s sort of too bad that what once was a safe haven for truly eccentric, outsider artists is no longer that thing.

Just in terms of being able to be a professional artist, but also it’s nice to not have to dread introductions.

I think there’s a lot of evolution that’s happened in intangible ways, in terms of how I think about the work or how I plan it out.