My relationship to comics isn't nearly as strong as some people's. Ha! I mean, I grew up with a comic book fanatic. My older brother was, and still is, obsessed. And I was obsessed with the fact that he was obsessed, because I was obsessed with him. But not necessarily with comics themselves.
Human beings need stories, and we're looking for them in all kinds of places; whether it's television, whether it's comic books or movies, radio plays, whatever form, people are hungry for stories.
All comic books take place in built environments, and I was very good at drawing people and animals, and stuff like that, but I hadn't spent much energy drawing buildings. So I thought, maybe I could, and then I became an architect.
I feel sorry for people who only know comic books through movies. I really do.
I think on 'Third Watch' that I was the comic relief on a lot of that. I mean, I definitely had dark moments, but people tended to think he was funny even if the character himself wasn't having a fun time.
When you see people getting involved in Comic Relief, especially in tough times or times of recession, that's very positive.
Some people are so sad that, at times, that's what gets on my nerves - if they just hammer the doom, with no comic relief whatsoever.
Sometimes people try to read into my strip and find out what my state of mind is. And I can say if I'm in a good mood, generally the comic strip starts out in a good mood, but the punchline is very negative and sour.
The key to any good comic strip or television sitcom is to reset the board at the end of the episode because people like familiarity.
Back in the olden days when we were rubbing sticks together, everybody wanted to have a comic strip, to live in Westport Connecticut, to have a Jaguar and to have a wife and two and a half kids and to have a girl in town in their studio in Manhattan that they'd romance, and then they'd have people ghost their strip. It was like this big dream.
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.
Readers have told me that their children have learned to read after years of struggle after starting to read Garfield's comic strip and many people who have moved to the United States have said that they, too, learned English by reading Garfield.
About the only way you can find out about the common man, his slang, what he looked like, what he thought, is through the comic strips. It's a powerful way for young people to learn history.
I think the corporate world is pretty starved for personality. The reason you have comic strips like 'Dilbert' and sitcoms like 'The Office' is that people just can't be genuine human beings in a corporate environment. So if you can really be your own self, even if it's a little bit different, I think people are really drawn to that.
People still go to Comic-Con because they love comics.
These people who come to Comic-Con and dress up - all across the country, the rest of the population who doesn't understand are scoffing at them.
Going to Comic-Con was mind-blowing, seeing all these fans and all these people who know my name.
The U.S. museums weren't looking at my paintings at all - they hated them, irredeemably. People metaphorically threw up when they saw my work! They thought I was enlarging comics, or just copying them.
People say, 'Dream big!' - but you have to think about the logistics. It's not just coming up with a great idea; it's how you can sell or market or promote that great idea.
My coming of age was in the '70s. A lot of people look back on it as a grim decade, but I look back on it as a liberating time.
