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.
When I grew up, I studied karate for years. I got pretty strong, but eventually I had to acknowledge that I really didn't like fighting at all, so I quit.
That's all true, but there was something else going on for me as a kid, something about my gender identity that I haven't figured out yet. And that's one of the things I'm hoping to dissect and investigate in this memoir project.
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.
It's definitely part of it, that the men were having fun and doing the interesting things but also, I don't know, I'm just thinking more about gender and how maybe in some way I am more of a boy than a girl.
People really want to think that these things really happened. I don't know why that important, but I know that when I finish reading a novel or something, I want to know how much of that really happened to this author.
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.
One of them is already having some menopausal symptoms. I'm working on that. I'm giving them all little lines under the eyes, trying to sort of make them age gracefully.
