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In America, there's a very long tradition of a comic strip that comes in newspapers, which is not true all over the world. To sell papers, they put color comics in.

The comic book world is a tough business.

It's business, selling comics, you work out what sells and you don't want to muck about with it too much.

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 grew up when comics were only sold in food markets and news stands, so the direct market is vital to me. The best way to make it stronger is if everybody buys my comics in multiple copies before they buy any others.

It may be true that the only reason the comic book industry now exists is for this purpose, to create characters for movies, board games and other types of merchandise.

That was the appealing thing about comics: There literally is no budget in comics. You're only limited by your imagination.

On the whole, and this comment can get me in a lot of trouble, I find that retailers in the comic book business are not business people. They're fans who've gotten themselves shops.

By and large, I think that comics work seriously hard. Many have other jobs as well, plus you never really switch off, so you're always working.

Alternative cartoonists have to rely on comic book stores to get their stuff in the hands of readers.