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What made me want to go into doing comics was I was working as a laborer with my father, a gardener.

I was influenced by autobiographical writers like Henry Miller, and I had actually done some autobiographical prose. But I just thought that comics were like virgin territory. There was so much to be done. It excited me. I couldn't draw very well. I could write scripts and storyboard style using stick figures and balloons and captions.

When I was a school kid, I used to read lots of comics. This started me on drawing. I would make my own comics about my teddy bear, whose name happened to be Ted.

I'm in a comic book now. That was cool. That's something that I'm still sorta reeling about, 'cause I read comics as a kid. Someone drew me, and actually did a pretty good job!

The comics were not only stories to enjoy; for me they were drawings that possessed me.

When I realized that people actually wrote comics, that it was a job people could do, I thought, 'Gee, these things are only 17 pages long! I could probably finish one of those and find out whether I suck before I've spent five years of my life on it.' In stumbling into comics that way, I discovered that I loved the form.

Imagine my surprise when, after a lifetime of teaching me to keep personal things to myself, Mom insisted my drawings were the start of a comic strip for millions of people to enjoy.

I started making houses for ants because I thought they needed somewhere to live. Then I made them shoes and hats. It was a fantasy world I escaped to where my dyslexia didn't hold me back and my teachers couldn't criticize me. That's how my career as a micro-sculptor began.

It wasn't until I discovered comics that I actually began to approach drawing as a possible career.