What books (in addition to your own) do you most enjoy reading?

Mark Hempel's Tug and Buster, Akiko, Bone and Preacher

What is your proudest achievement in the field?

Being able to produce my own comic.

Who are your influences, inside or outside of the industry?

Outside the field, my biggest artistic influences are the classic children's illustrators: Arthur Rackham, Edmund DuLac, Howard Pyle, William Heath Robinson and Gustav Dore. Inside comics, the most important creative influence (though not necessarily influencing my artistic style) are Keith Giffen, Mike Kaluta, Mike Mignola, and Moebius.

When doing appearances, what project are you asked most about?

Castle Waiting, exclusively.

As a writer/artist, how do you compose a story? do you do thumbnails, work from a script or something else entirely?

I always start off with the plot in my head, and then work on thumbnails and scripting (all dialogue) concurrently. Then comes the pencilling and polishing the script. I send the script to be lettered and begin the inking. By the time I'm done, the lettering has arrived and I do all the pasting up.

Castle Waiting shows an obvious interst in classical fairy tales. Do you have a favorite story?

I can't tell you my favorite, because that would give too much of the book's plot away! I like the really obscure Grimm's Fairytales that no one's ever heard of (especially the ones with the saints and the Devil) because they've never been sanitized by mainstream culture.

How has the advent of computerized coloring affected both the industry in general and the way you specifically color a comic?

I think that computerized coloring has lowered the standards of drawing in the industry, because it's easy to hide badly drawn art behind fancy effects. Personally, I like having all the options computerized coloring makes possible and I really like not having to input all the color codes.

This page last updated Dec. 8, 1998.

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