I draw comics mostly, which so far has been a mixture of self-published and contract work. I’ve also done some illustration, primarily box art for a dvd/blu-ray company called Arrow, where I’ve done package art for a number of Japanese crime films from the 60s.

That came about from being a regular customer in his store, Floating World, and talking to him about movies everytime I’d go in. He asked me if I wanted to work with him after I brought by my first comic to see if I could just put on his free table. Collaborating is really fun with Jason, his scripts can sometimes be fairly abstract, leaving me a lot to interpret myself. Sometimes a panel description might be some romantic notion that’s unrelated to the physical logistics of the scene, focusing more about the emotions behind it. I like not asking for clarification from him, and just bringing what I can to it. My hope is that it creates a peculiar rhythm that way, like how an old Seijun Suzuki film is edited.

I think it’s mostly positive. I owe all the comics work I’ve gotten from serializing The Yankee online. And I’m excited about the idea of curated online collectives like Study Group or What Things Do, I feel like I’m part of a comics gang. Patreon’s great too, from what I’ve seen and contributed to, and people are getting more and more creative with how they run them. All that said, I don’t like reading comics online all that much because I don’t have any devices beyond a desktop computer, and I usually read just enough to know whether or not I want to buy it when a print edition comes out. I got real excited recently when my friend Alex Degen got his comic MIGHTY STAR published by Koyama Press. I read the first few chapters on Study Group and patiently waited to see it on paper, and it’s so good.

Yeah it’s a cliche, but being surrounded by so many people working helps a lot to kick me in the backside and get me to pull my weight. Also, having comics friends means understanding when I can’t see them during a long stretch of time and vice versa. And there are enough of us too, that there’ll be someone that’s *not* in lockdown to go out and hang with once a deadline is met. That’s huge for me.