John Allison

I did comics on the Internet because it was free, and if I had made printed copies, I wouldn't have known what to do with them. But I knew how to make a website when most people didn't, and back then, that was enough!

My comics have changed so much over the years, in the writing, in art style, sometimes incrementally, sometimes quite suddenly. So I've cultivated an audience who will go along with me because they trust me.

I probably hung on for a couple of years too long on 'Scary Go Round.' I knew I had lost some of my enthusiasm for the characters and the setup, but I wasn't sure what to do next.

To be honest, and this is terrible to admit, I hardly read any teen mystery books at all.

As a storyboard artist, you have to be able to draw anything.

Cars are a fairly unpleasant thing to have to draw.

As a kid, I went from reading kids' books to reading science fiction to reading, you know, adult fiction. There was never any gap. YA was a thing when I was a teenager, but it was a library category, not a marketing category, and you never really felt like it was a huge section.

I'm really interested in how people feel out new friendships, and at the start of college, that's really important.

Lissa Treiman is an artist who submitted a guest strip to me back in 2008 and whose work I've followed since. She works in animation. When I first mentioned on Twitter that I was interested in writing a series but not drawing it, she got in touch.

I like my male characters as much my female characters, but I always seem to have less for them to say.

Women are more complicated communicators than men, who have a tendency to pronounce and bloviate, and that makes for better writing in talky work.

I never set out to be the man who writes a lot of female characters.

I think I've changed my business strategy every year since 2003. You have to be watching the horizon constantly. The rug has been pulled out from under our feet so many times.

My business is the art of balancing the need to make money with the desire to create.

Careers are not all up, up, up; do good work, continue to grow as an artist, and opportunity finds you. I have no sour grapes.