I had this sense that I was part of, sort of a lineage of artists and writers through history that have had mood disorders.

I think that Van Gogh is really the ultimate crazy artist that we all think of.

A sense of electrical current was part of my own experience of being manic. The sensation that my mind was spinning and overheating would sometimes build to a sensation like an electrical short - a burst of light, a melting, or dissipating - and I'd get a metallic taste in my mouth, like when you lick a battery.

The way I process things, they way I express myself, is in comics, just as poets process things that they are trying to understand.