1. Please tell us your author/comics origin story.
I've been a comics reader as long as I can remember. Comics were a bit more ubiquitous when I was a kid then they are today--just in terms of them being around in everyday life. Everybody got an actual newspaper and it had comics in it, there'd be spinner racks of comic books at every drug store and convenience store, etc. (Of course, there weren't nearly as many good comics back then, and certainly not the huge array of styles and genres we have today!) But, probably the single comic that I read that made me really realize that making comics was a job that people could do was an issue of Walt Simonson's THOR run that I bought randomly (I liked the cover, I guess?) at a 7-11. That's the comic that really lit the fire on my now-lifelong love of comics.
I would make comics for my school's newspaper and I became a regular at the comics shop--where I eventually discovered a lot of other varieties of comics besides the stuff you'd find at places like the 7-11. As I got older, though, I sort of stopped reading comics. I got interested in other things, and also there just weren't a lot of comics out there for adults, as there are today.
Later, though, during college I started encountering things like HATE and EIGHTBALL that really rekindled my interest in comics. Eventually I went to the Savannah College of Art and Design and wound up studying comics illustration there. My MFA thesis project became my first book, FAREWELL, GEORGIA... and I've been making comics ever since!
2. What is your creative process like?
It's never the same. Every book I do seems to come together a different way. I'm always changing my process and trying to explore new ways of doing things. My last book, FOUR-FISTED TALES, for example, was done digitally start-to-finish. I guess the only real constant in my work process-wise is that I really feel that it's important to plan your comics well. Clarity is the baseline thing you have to achieve before you can do anything else with your work--and if your nuts-and-bolts visual storytelling isn't working, then you won't achieve that clarity. I always put together a full "dummy" of a book--with readable, lettered roughs--and print it out, but the pages in plastic sleeves in a binder, and then read it as my audience will read it: as a physical object they flip through. That way I can (hopefully) catch and fix any storytelling issues before I ever put ink to paper.
3. What is your message for young comics creators?
Just make comics. Not everything you make will be great--but every page you draw makes you better!