I had a lot of high school teachers who discouraged me. Yes. Yeah. I think I’ve been — I had been discouraged a lot by teachers in my life. I had one teacher in high school who encouraged me to throw all my comics away. She did not like my comics at all, and that was a huge regret. I was still making comics in high school, but I’ll never forget the day they all went into the garbage, and it was a real tough time.
Oh, this is a tough story. I went to a very religious school. And my teacher was convinced that I was possessed by a demon. And so she thought that my comics were a result of demonic possession and so she said the only way to get rid of this demon was to throw them all away. And so I wanted to — I wanted to do well and I wanted to — I wanted to feel better and I threw my comics away.
My parents were the best teachers in my life. Their encouragement and the safety that I felt when I came home was the thing that really saved me from all the discouragement that I was feeling in school. To come home and feel like I could be myself, to feel like I could read whatever I wanted, to feel like I could draw and create stories and just explore in my imagination and explore my creativity was the thing that really saved me.