Lately, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been living a dream for the last 10 years or so; I can’t account for most of my 20s, and I have to continually remind myself that certain people are dead now and many of my friends have children.

I guess I just don’t like being physically in front of people I don’t know very well, because I expect to be “seen through,” or, even worse, instantly hated.

Lately, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been living a dream for the last 10 years or so; I can’t account for most of my 20s, and I have to continually remind myself that certain people are dead now and many of my friends have children.

No one blames themselves if they don’t understand a cartoon, as they might with a painting or “real” art; they simply think it’s a bad cartoon.

The thing I don’t understand is why so often one hears discussion of the fruits of human labor as if it’s all the creation of some alien race.

I don’t think there’s any independent cartoonist whose stuff I don’t like or respect in at least some way or another. We’re all marginal laborers – we’re practically medical oddities – so I don’t see why we can’t all be nice to each other.

I think it has most to do with the way in which a story is told, whether it feels real either via the music of the telling or the ‘honesty’ of the story.

Comics, at least in periodical form, exist almost entirely free of any pretense; the critical world of art hardly touches them, and they’re 100% personal.

Sometimes I get worried I’m getting too caught up in the nauseatingly oily smoothness of my own line, when all I’m trying to do is make it as clear as possible.

I prefer to imagine that my wife, a few friends, and occasionally my mom are the only ones who read what I do, though I realize that this is somewhat unrealistic.

Mostly, I was only interested in television as a kid, and the majority of reading material I collected was an adjunct to that central concern, comic books and magazines included.

During my Austin years, I was drawing a regular strip for the University Of Texas newspaper, going to school, delivering blood, and trying to change my approach and “style” as much as I could, since I knew that I’d calcify as I got older.