Face It, You Hate Every Single Boy

I Used To Use Cigarettes To Indicate Somebody's An Outsider A Lot. It Gave Character A Seedy, Disreputable, Almost Suicidal Quality. Now Cigarettes Are So Unused - - You Can't Have Anybody Indoors Smoking. If You Drew That In A Restaurant, You'd Have To Have A Panel Where The Manager Comes Over And Kicks Them Out. Unless It's Set In Europe, You Can't Really Do That. Characters Who Smoke - - It Dates Comics, Somehow.

I Can Look At My Early Work And See What A Pained Struggle It Was To Draw What I Was Drawing. I Was Trying So Hard To Get This Specific Look That Was In My Head, And Always Falling Short.

I Just Try To Make Comics For Myself, Try To Give It Some Kind Of Unity Throughout. That Often Involves Tiny Details. I'm Never Sure What's Going To Be Obvious Or What Nobody Will Ever Notice. I Put Stuff In My Comics That I Thought Was Blatantly Obvious, And Nobody Noticed. And Things That I Think Are Buried In The Background, Everybody Gets It. So I Try To Be Consistently Aware Of Every Part Of The Frame.

Writing A Screenplay, I'm Like, "all I'm Responsible For Is That Final Script, And I Take Great Effort And Pride In That." But Once I Give It To Someone To Make, I Can Disassociate With It Entirely And Not Worry That My Vision Isn't Being Represented, Because I Understand Fully That That's Not How It Works.

For Me, The Whole Process Involves Envisioning This Ghost World Comic Book In My Head As I'm Working.