“I think a lot of the criticism had to do with disliking the characters – which, again, I take as something of a compliment.”

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.

You start to feel very weighted down sometimes.

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

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.