I'm sometimes a cartoonist, and there's an audience for that, and I'm sometimes an illustrator, and there's an audience for that.

I never really thought of myself as an Asian-American cartoonist, any more than I thought of myself as a cartoonist who wears glasses.

It's a strange thing to be a so-called alternative cartoonist, because in the early part of my career, I was really tethered to the superhero world.

I really love New York, but I have to say, the humidity during the summer is a nightmare for a cartoonist. Not only am I sweating in my studio, my bristol board is curling up, the drafting tape is peeling off the board, my Rapidograph pens bleed the minute I put them to paper... it's a disaster.

The comics work is very slow, and it basically involves working for sometimes years in isolation and not knowing how the work is going to be received.

I think that artists, at a certain point, can either become defiant and say that the audience is wrong, readers don't get them, and they're going to keep doing it their own way, or they can listen to the criticism - and not necessarily blindly follow the audience's requests and advice.