But I read comic books. I read things like Richie Rich and Little Lulu. |
I probably read Harriet the Spy about 70,000 times. |
Writing this book feels like a completely different activity from writing my comic strip because it's about real life. I feel like I'm using a part of my brain that's been dormant until now. |
I just met someone who read Gone With the Wind 62 times for exactly that same reason. She couldn't bear that it wasn't real. She wanted to live in it. |
I never really read superhero stuff as a kid. |
It's a hard thing to age a character because you can't really suddenly give someone gray hair. |
And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me. |
The satiric ethos of Mad was a much bigger childhood influence. |
My mother is, my father certainly was. They were kind of the local intelligentsia in the town where I grew up. |
Mostly it was Mad magazine. And I did read a lot of - I had a subscription when I was little, but I also had access to some old collections, the little paperbacks of the really good stuff. |
Watching everyone root through their psyche, it just delights me. Especially R. Crumb's stuff. |
I don't know, maybe it's because I was raised Catholic. Confession has always held a great appeal for me. |
Partly I resented being perceived as weak because I was a girl. |
I'm pretty illiterate when it comes to comics history. |
But mostly, it's a book about my relationship with my father. |
When I was growing up in the 1960s, there was starting to be more books geared towards young adults. |
Yeah, I read Judy Blume. My mother didn't like that, but I read it anyhow. |
Nancy Drew was always changing her outfits. I despised girls' clothing, I couldn't wait to get home from school and get out of it. The last thing I wanted to read was minute descriptions of Nancy's frocks. |
I hope that I can get people to read it without having to change it. Especially now that the strip has more different kinds of characters. It's really not all lesbians any more. |
Autobiographical comics, I love them. I love them. |