The thing that I loved so much about the monsters is that the assumption is that they're broken and that fixing them no longer makes them a monster so they have to stay that way. And if you want to write something sort of complicated that's about kind of the nature of us all having a monster inside of us, I mean, I think that's why the monsters have endured. They're all weird reflections of aspects of our personalities. I can't really think of anything I'd rather be doing than that.

I think why people will love these monster films is the they are an homage to the originals, which means you’re gonna get complex characters. And the thing that I think is interesting about monsters is that they are always exaggerations of human attributes or human fears. For example, Frankenstein was a result of the kind of industrial and scientific revolution—are we playing God? Should we be playing God? And with the Wolfman there’s that worry of what happens if I lose control? What happens if I hurt the things around me that I love? There’s very human questions and worries and fears and darkness and cravings.

It's true that, in my books, monsters are always important. People are monsters, people are called monsters by other characters, and so on. Really, there are three kinds of things that are important in my things, I think. One is monsters, another is clowns, and another is human beings, and of course, they keep shapeshifting. One turns into the other. Clowns are always trying to be human beings. What I mean by clowns is this: Human beings do things and clowns desperately try to imitate human beings, so the acrobat gets up on the wire, and then the clown wants to be an acrobat and he tries, but he's a straw man and he can't be. He's always acting. He's always pretending. He's always faking and mimicking. Many of us feel that about ourselves all the time. That is to say, we put on masks and never find out who we really are. And one of the things that happens in a novel is characters who start out as clowns try to earn the grade as human beings, and sometimes they turn into monsters instead. Monsters are those things that I used to go to Saturday afternoon movies and see. I mean by monsters, "walking dead". I mean nihilists. People who really have given up on all faith and so on, and act as if the world were evil, and as if all people were either stupid or malicious. They're creatures who have given in to the emotional war that's in everybody. Sometimes, I use, for instance, in Henry Soames in Nickel Mountain, a monstrous kind of body which contains monstrous emotions, but he's holding it in, and the thing of course, finally, is that he really is a monster and he's holding it in and that makes him human, that constantly he does what he knows is right, whatever the power of his emotions. So, your monsters are everywhere.

There are some people whose dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes. And the more nervous they are-the quicker to take fright-the more violent they pray that every storm will be … Painters who have had this mentality, after repeated wounds and intimidations at the hands of the apparitions called human beings, have often come to believe in phantasms-they plainly saw monsters in broad daylight, in the midst of nature. And they did not fob people off with clowning; they did their best to depict these monsters just as they had appeared. Takeichi was right: they had dared to paint pictures of devils.

[..it had been fun] to be able to draw in the midst of boredom and misery..

I think, about a lot of these monsters is that there are these very central, basic, human emotions that you can talk about when you talk about these monsters. You can talk about Dracula’s longing for love, you can talk about the Mummy’s longing for love. So as messed up as they may be in terms of their behavior, and they are monsters, there always has to be a rooting and an understandable idea behind why they are who they are.

They are beautiful monsters... And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty.

We can either be monsters or angels. We are able to be demons and angels, as that book says. We are able to be incredibly creative or to be incredibly destructive. We have that decision to make, to create something. It could be grotesque and ugly, but it is monstrously beautiful, so it inspires people.

My style is very self-taught. I sort of taught myself drawing from watching The Simpsons and reading The Far Side. I think you can see those two things come out in my comics. I really like drawing gross stuff. I really like drawing gooey shit. I like to draw Ted Cruz, because he's really melty. I love to draw someone melting, or with extra eyeballs. I love a skull. Fire is really fun. So there's all these things that I just like to draw, and they'll end up in my comics.

Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy, they are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy. They do not attack people because they want to, but because of their size and strength, mankind has no other choice but to defend himself. After several stories such as this, people end up having a kind of affection for the monsters. They end up caring about them.

I have played many characters, both in and out of makeup, but I was always one of those kids who rooted for the monster! Seriously, who is having the most fun in the horror movies? The screaming pretty girl or the monster chasing her through the fog? I get to have such a blast being the scariest thing in the room! Playing all strange manner of monsters and creatures chasing, slithering, and at times, flying through crazy adventures chasing some new damsel in distress, often to her doom! What can I say, some girls dream of being princesses in castles, I dreamed of being the dragon on the tower or the monster under the bed…and sometimes even a pixie in Neverland. Playing them is not easy work – the hours are long, it’s physically and mentally demanding, you can’t be claustrophobic in any way, and I’ve been buried alive and almost drowned more times than I’d like to admit, but it is a most wonderful, creative, challenging, exciting occupation and I really love what I do and what I create.

Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't.

When I was a child, I loved to draw. I drew everything, and I drew on everything – I was drawing on the walls, in school textbooks, on my body - everywhere. This is a child’s job! I loved drawing and when I was in school, my art teacher supported me and entered my work in a UN children’s drawing prize which I won twice, when I was 13 and 14. Those prizes gave me the power and the belief to continue drawing – I felt like I had something to say through my drawing. You can explain your story, your feelings, your ideas.

People say, “Monster movies—they’re all fantasy.” Well, fantasy isn’t fantasy—it’s reality if it connects to you. It’s like a dream. You have a nightmare, and it’s got all this crazy imagery, but it’s real. You wake up in a cold sweat, freaking out. That’s completely real. So I always found that those people trying to categorize normal versus abnormal or light versus dark, yada yada, are all missing the point.