In a perfect world, I'd like to start running comics for kids - by kids.
Anybody with a sharp brain and a mic can become a comedian, but there's a need to move beyond it. The audience wants to witness the marriage of theatre, comedy and something more.
In the right hands, a comic strip attains a beauty and elegance that, really, I would put against any other art.
Today, comics is one of the very few forms of mass communication in which individual voices still have a chance to be heard.
Howard Chaykin was one of the few who dared to make mainstream comics different back in the eighties; it was guys like him, Alan Moore and Frank Miller who made sure there'd be no going back. Howard's work on The Shadow is amongst his very best: razor-sharp character work, sizzling dialogue and an unsurpassed sense of layout and design.
Sometimes, as a comedian, a line will come to you, that is so beautiful, so perfect, that you think: I did not create this line. This line belongs to all of us. Surely this is a line of God.
That's the great test: if you're going to be a great comic writer, not a humorist, you've got to take it into the throat of grief. Can you make laughter and seriousness so close that they are the same thing?
I went to art school, and that's how I got the internship, and then I started a band. But I always missed comics, I always wanted to do them.
The method of producing comics in Japan is very hectic, but it's also rewarding because it's possible to do both the story and art all by yourself.
I like a challenging comic as much as the next guy but I feel like I am pretty conservative when it comes to laying out my comics. I like the panels to be clear and keep any ambiguity to the story or actual reading.
I used to love to draw things that made me laugh or made friends laugh. When I was 13 or 14, I started thinking, This is what I like to do more than anything else.
