I'd been familiar with comics, and I'd collected 'em when I was a kid, but after I got into junior high school, there wasn't much I was interested in.
It seemed to me you could do anything in comics. So I started doing my thing, which is mainly influenced by novelists, stand-up comedians, that sort of thing.
And I've always loved commercials. I like working out how to organically weave a brand's message into the writing process. It's like an improv show, where comics ask the audience to throw out a word and a skit is built around it.
I'm a severe graphic novels junkie. People ask me about it, and I say I like the graphic novels. Comic books are for kids, and graphic novels are for adults. But you can't really separate the two.
These 'mistakes' occur in my books for a reason. I have an agenda: I'm secretly trying to inspire kids to create their own stories and comics, and I don't want them to feel stifled by 'perfectionism.'
It was pure guesswork on my part back in 1979 as to whether I would have the stamina to write, pencil, ink, letter, tone, and fill the back of a monthly comic book for 26 years.
People called me a hoodlum and a thug. But they didn't tell you I was a carpenter, an architect, a stand-up comic - even a bartender. And a barbecue cook. But they didn't tell you that.
I grew up on comic books. 'X-Men' was my favorite team; Wolverine was my guy. At 8 years old, I dressed up as Wolverine with Adamantium claws that I made out of aluminum!
You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a "graphic novel," but comic books are still incredibly stupid.
I'd begun reading Crumb shortly before that, and other underground stuff, so that was an influence to some degree. Of course the Marvel and DC comics, they had been my main interests in my teenage years.
Back when Jerry Seinfeld was just another comedian hanging around the clubs, I'd imitate him to amuse myself and the other comics. The club owners would say, 'What are you doing that for? Nobody knows him.'
I put my comics that are really valuable into regular mylar because I like to look at them. Once they're in those clam shell boxes, they're impossible to open up.
There's no white comic that sells tickets to black people like me. They're going to get their hair done, get a new outfit, and come out to see a white dude.
The thing about 'Watchmen' that people should know is that when it came out there was absolutely nothing like it. Up until then, comics were about the same thing: a guy in tights fighting another guy in tights and saving the girl - that was it.
When I was a comic in the 1980s, I was on the road somewhere every day, and I'd get back to the hotel, and it was Carson and Letterman, and I looked forward to that all day.
'Just looking at pictures' used to be considered cheating. No longer. The graphic novel is booming. Comics, heavily illustrated texts, books with no words are now accepted as reading.
Ever since I'm done with Zim everyone thinks that I'm going to go back to comics. I've been flooded with emails asking me if I'm working on the new Johnny over and over again.
There's this idea that it has to be made in London. But we've got everything up here, and if you've got comics who are gifted because of where they're from, you shouldn't drag them away from that natural resource.
Some comics have long routines to get them in the mood - I just prefer to sit down, write out the same jokes in a different order and then have a little prayer that I won't be met by silence.
I'm a stand-up comic. Anything else I do besides that is a plus, but stand-up comedy is what I do, it's what I've been doing and it's what I'm going to keep doing.
I get fans stopping me and telling me what a bad man I am. I got a lot of that at Comic-Con. I'd tell them, 'Sorry, mate.'
