I don't think anyone ever sets out to make a crappy movie, but there are a lot of forces working against those people who are trying to make something decent. There are a lot of fine lines to walk and small battles to fight.
I just have this thing in my head that I want to do serious stories that are still just way too cute and drawn in a really cute, appealing, rounded, childish way, and it's like, I don't know if it makes sense - but it's just something I'm really strongly compelled to do.
When I was a kid, I desperately wanted more background information on especially cartoonists.
'Monkey Island 2' was a huge game for me. It kind of taught me all about comedy.
After a long period of not drawing, you have to, like, relearn how to draw. It's not very fun.
I'm too young to have experienced firsthand the '70s rock, but when I was in high school, me and my friends were super into Neil Young. That was the grunge era, and he was considered cool again.
Writing music is sort of my hobby, but it's been falling off more and more. Doing comic books takes up my entire life.
I'm a firm believer in stories with arcs and beginnings and endings and all that. 'Scott Pilgrim' is sort of one long novel, and it's so long that I get confused and sort of tread water sometimes. But there's definitely a goal to it. People who just dismiss it as shallow, that's their prerogative, but it's not really my intent.
'Seconds' is all about spaces, and I guess spaces are kind of like people in that they can be haunting and alluring before we even really get to know them, and after prolonged exposure, they can become mundane or oppressive.
The places I've been, or passed through, or seen at a distance, have had as much an impact on my life as the people I've known.
I don't really have a metaphor for how I write, but it kinda feels like chipping away at a big dark object that I can't really see.
Each new book that comes out kind of pulls up the old ones a little bit. The new releases are always going to bolster the old releases.
When I was in the middle of the 'Scott Pilgrim' series, and it was slowly becoming more popular, though still not financially solvent, I had this real bratty instinct to turn around and do something super arty and dark. I felt dismissed by comics culture, stuck in between the artcomix world and the nerdcomix world, and I was cranky about it.
I do get the sense sometimes that if I draw things too nice, maybe I won't be indie-rock enough anymore.
I always like to write where I'm at in real life into whatever I'm working on.
I just don't think I can write someone drastically younger than me.
I guess I've always been kind of obsessed with food. I always liked drawing food, and I always liked stories - I think I probably just read somewhere that stories are better if someone's eating in them. I don't know where that came from, but it really stuck, and I always try to put food in.
'Seconds' is very much about reaching out for the next thing after you've figured out the first thing.
Doubt yourself all you want, but you have to make choices in life and live with them.
I grew up in London, Ontario, and moved to Toronto when I was 22 or 23.
