The day after I finished my first experimental graphic novel, “Jimmy Corrigan,” I took out a fresh sheet of paper and started another experimental graphic novel, “Rusty Brown.” Back then, Bill Clinton was President, pay phones worked, and the world hadn’t yet started to end. I’d sit down every day at the drawing table and populate the places of my Omaha, Nebraska, childhood with little imaginary people, just to see what would happen—really, no different from what everyone does falling asleep every night. The work was originally set on a single day in 1975, and the people I drew seemed to come to life on the page for me in the way only a series of drawings in boxes can, at least for cartoonists and crazy people. I began self-publishing chapters as they accumulated, and, over the years, the story expanded irresponsibly into different bodies, brains, places, and times—but the basic aim was always to find the very best within its characters. I just hope I eventually find the good in them before my own world ends and/or paper ceases to exist, whichever comes first.