My friend, Liz, recently asked me to explain why I love working in comics, and the answer I came up with seemed like the sort of thing I should post here, too.

My schooling and my first job focused on animation, but over the years I’ve found myself more and more compelled by comics as a medium and as a career. With animation, you need an enormous amount of money and manpower to create anything longer than a couple of minutes, unless you’re willing to make some pretty serious artistic sacrifices. But with comics, one person with enough time on their hands can write and draw something like Bone, or Finder, or Strangers in Paradise — a sweeping, engrossing, gorgeous narrative that spans hundreds of pages. I read a comic like that, and I’m reminded that the only thing that’s standing between me and telling my own story is practice, patience and effort.

I like that feeling. It’s terrifying, but it’s pretty inspiring, too.