I Think I'm Gonna Attach Myself To

I'm Usually The Last To See My Influence In Other People's Work. People Give Me Stuff And Say "oh Look, This Guy's Ripping You Off," And I'm Like "what Do You Mean?" Often I See The People That I've Ripped Off Filtered Into My Own Work. In Other People's Work, I Can Only See Specific, Tiny Little Instances Of Inflections Stolen From Another Artist.

I Never Feel There's Anything I Can't Do With Comics. There Are Certain Things In Comics That You Can't Do In Any Other Medium: For Instance, In Mister Wonderful, Marshall's Narration Overlaps The Events As They're Going On. That Would Be Difficult In Film; You Could Blot Speech Out With A Voiceover, But It Wouldn't Have The Same Effect. That's Always Of Interest, To See What New Things You Can Do In Comics Form.

I Try To Employ A Different Strategy For Each Story. Often, I'll Have A Specific Look In Mind Before I Even Have The Story To Go With It. I'm Not So Much Interested In Forcing The Issue Of Reader Identification Through Various Graphic Tricks. I'm More Interested In Creating Specific Characters That Resonate With My Own Particular Inner Struggles.

Usually When I Put Together A Book Like This Death-ray Hardcover Or That Ghost World Special Edition, Then I Have To Reread It And See If There Is Anything I Want To Change Or Any Re-coloring I Want To Do. That's When I'm Faced With The Actual Work. When I'm Working, I'm Too Close To It. I'm Sort Of Inside, And I Can't See It At All. So When I Have That Experience Of Rereading It Years Later, It's Jarring.

It Keeps Me Moving When I See People Doing Stuff That I See As "my" Direction. I Think, "oh, It's Been Tainted. Now I've Got To Do Something New." There's Nothing Worse Than Working On Your Own Stuff And Thinking That Someone Else Is Following You Along.