I think there’s too much saturated color in comics, thanks to digital color techniques.

When I first starting conceiving series like ‘Courtney,’ ‘Polly,’ ‘How Loathsome,’ etc., I was shooting for closed story-arcs but open-ended concepts. Then I started realizing I was committing myself to potentially endless series.

I get tired of stories that keep going and going and never get anywhere. It’s like a promise that’s never fulfilled. Stories need endings. Otherwise, they aren’t really stories. Just pages.

Basically, Urban Fantasy means D&D in New York. Ordinary people have no idea that they share the world with fantastic, supernatural creatures. It can’t just be vampires or werewolves; it has to be a whole...

When people think girl adventurers, they tend to think of a spunky, plucky tom-boy with a chip on her shoulder. I’m not saying that this makes for a dull character, but I think other types...

A story really isn’t truly a story until it reaches its climax and conclusion.

‘Courtney’ is a more punk-rock kids’ book. It has this precious veneer that Courtney’s terrible behavior trashes. And it’s basically about how miserable it is being in junior high, watching your childhood fantasies vanish, realizing...

There’s something about girls and unicorns that’s deep and meaningful. Something about childhood.

I hear all the time that boys don’t like stories about girls. Which never made much sense to me. Wasn’t ‘Terminator’ about a girl? And ‘Alien’? Hell, I grew up on ‘The Wizard of Oz.’...

Artists forget than the first purpose of a comic character is to convey emotion. Everything else, like realism, or other kinds of virtuosity, is an optional extra. If you sacrifice expression for the sake of...

I love gothic monsters, but I like to root them more firmly in the traditional folklore from which they sprang. Or at least, I like to evoke the feeling of those folk stories.

Color comes very easy to me. And watercolors have a particular tendency to stay grounded, unlike digital color. I find that digital color wants to go wild, to lose control and be as bright and...

I think about ‘The Simpsons,’ which has been going on for 25 years. Homer is still in his late 30’s. Lisa is 8, Bart is 10. Their stories are told. Yet the series keeps going...

I dug up some old John Buscema ‘Conan’ comics. Man, when Alfredo Alcala was inking, that was some of the most beautiful black and white comic art ever published. The stories are good, too, though...

I think one of the reasons Stephen King’s stories work so well is that he places his stories in spooky old New England, where a lot of American folk legends came from.

I like characters with character, not just pretty faces. Anyway, I think people can be both grotesque and beautiful at the same time. Look at Mick Jagger in the seventies. Look at Angelina Jolie.

The first ‘Polly and the Pirates’ is about a prim and proper girl who gets kidnapped out of her comfy boarding school by a bunch of pirates that think she’s the daughter of their long...

Some of the best art in the world is collaborative, a mix of voices that are stronger together than separate. Take the Beatles, for example. Or every great movie ever made. We like to say...

The living werewolves have genuine needs and desires, which, though they may oppose ours, are valid. Even if they want to eat humans, you can’t really call them evil, any more than mice can call...

Character design, like story design, requires a hook to grab the reader’s attention.

Urban Fantasy is a subgenre pretty much designed for teenagers. It’s pretty twee, but I adore it. I’ve been trying to come up with an Urban Fantasy comic ever since I’d read the Nancy Collins...

I think all artists need to try to improve, or their work gets stale.

Us comics guys tend to get really good at the things we draw a lot. I’m good at creepy old forests, Victorian houses, underground goblin cities, and beautiful but creepy fairies.