1. What got you started as a reader with comics?
When I was a kid, I remember reading Sunday comics probably before anything else. I loved Family Circus, Calvin and Hobbs, Peanuts. I liked all the ones with kids in them. I had all the Calvin and Hobbs books and Garfield collections. But then I got into superhero stuff, too, when I was maybe 9 or 10. It was all part of the little kid economy: comics, baseball cards, videogames (quarters), and candy. I read Iron Man and X-Men and all the X-titles. I got out of comics as a teen and early adult and got back in when I started reading indie books (James Kochalka, Jeffrey Brown, etc.).
2. What is your creative process like?
My creative process usually involves cannabis and a movie or TV show. I need both of those things to even begin working, but then I get in a zone and work pretty diligently. I keep regular office hours. One weird thing I do is I complete an entire page (pencils, inks, tones, colors, lettering) before moving on to a new page. A lot of people work in batches, pencil 10 pages and then ink 10 pages, etc.
3. What do comics let you do as a storyteller (especially with biographical/historical subjects)?
One thing comics can kind of do is move fluidly between factual depictions and dramatizations of scenes. Documentary films cannot always do this. Dramatizations feel weird in documentaries, and factual narratives feel weird in fields based on true stories. But in comics, you can do both easily.
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