I kind of just write what I like to write. I'm thankful that readers of different ages seem to connect to my stories. I don't consciously think about age demographics when I'm working on my comics.

I grew up in a religious community, and like everyone, I went through a period of doubt and later made a conscious choice to embrace the faith of my childhood.

I think, pretty much like everyone around my age, I grew up playing those classic video games. I wouldn't say I was addicted to them, but I definitely liked them.

Writing, for me, is very inspiration-dependent. And inspiration can be a jerk.

My brain subconsciously limits itself to panel compositions that my hand can actually draw.

I liked interacting with students. I liked having coworkers. For a long time, I was really worried that sitting at home by myself in front of a computer was going to make me crazy.

Going from idea to production is a huge hurdle. It took me a while to overcome it. It's basically all about self discipline, right?

I took a Logo programming class in fifth grade. Logo is a language specifically designed for the classroom environment. It was basically doodling through words.

I majored in Computer Science at U.C. Berkeley and worked as a software developer for a couple of years. Then I taught high school computer science for over a decade and a half in Oakland, California.

This is a profession for me, but I started off as a self-publisher working on my own schedule and my own stuff before moving on to graphic novels with First Second Books, where there was definitely a schedule, but it was very different from monthly comics.

When I was growing up, I did go to the arcade. We had a neighborhood arcade, and my friends and I would go fairly regularly.

With my own comics, I try hard to get the vision in my head onto paper, to have one match the other as closely as possible. With the 'Airbender' comics, I'm working with someone else's vision, an already-established vision. I want to stay true to what's come before.

I wanted to make an explicitly educational comic that taught readers the concepts I covered in my introductory programming class. That's what 'Secret Coders' is. It's both a fun story about a group of tweens who discover a secret coding school, and an explanation of some foundational ideas in computer science.

I was a superhero fan in the '90s, so I'm definitely familiar with John Romita, Jr. In fact, when I was in high school, I would go to local conventions and line up and get his signature.

Nobody really knows for sure how the Boxer Rebellion started. It began among the poor, and the history of the poor is rarely written down.

Superman is such an old character. He's an old character with this huge legacy behind him. And one of the awesome things about the fact that he's been around for these decades is that he's gone through these different phases.

The Boxer Rebellion is a war that was fought on Chinese soil in the year 1900. The Europeans, the Japanese and their Chinese Christian allies were on one side. On the other were poor, starving, illiterate Chinese teenagers whom the Europeans referred to as the Boxers.

When I work on my own stuff -- and I think this is true for anybody -- but when you work on something that you just completely own, you are trying to stay as true to your own storytelling voice as you can.

When 'American Born Chinese' started getting a lot of attention, I freaked out a little bit because I realized that up until then I had just been doing comics by following my gut. I didn't really know much about plot structure or anything; I kind of just followed my gut.

Religion and culture are two important ways in which we as humans find our identity. That's certainly true for me.