WEBVTT

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Chris Ware: My day is entirely predicated on the 
schedule of the Oak Park school system.

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In the morning, I get up fairly 
early before my wife and daughter

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and sit and write in my diary for a little while

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and then make breakfast for my daughter.

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And then my daughter and 
I ride the bike to school.

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[gentle music]

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And then I come back and I work between 
the hours of 8:00 and about 2:45 or so,

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and then I have to go pick up 
my daughter from school, so...


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I used to work all day and all 
night long in my 20s or so,

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but as I've gotten older and as a daddy,

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I just can't do that.

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[scratching of pencil on paper]

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Being called an artist is 
certainly extremely flattering.

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And it's not anything I necessarily ever expected.

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There's something about being 
a cartoonist that seems like

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an inherently humble sort of 
activity that I kind of like.

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It's just me sitting at a 
table, and I do what I do.

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So, I mean, I guess that's one possible 
route to making what might be called art.

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[piano music]

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I was kind of, you know,
not the most athletic or popular kid.

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So I started drawing comics, I think,

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because it was a way of both 
defining myself amongst my peers

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and also a way of disappearing into myself

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and me sort of protecting myself from them--

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so, um, and avoiding, uh, and avoiding physical...
[laughs] combat or--or whatever.

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That's really the only thing I've 
ever been able to do, is kind of draw.

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It seemed to me like a miraculous sort of ability.

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♪ ♪

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I start every page generally on a piece of board 
that's approximately about 2-by-3 feet or so.

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I draw everything in non-photo blue pencil,

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try to find where the figures 
are in space in the blue.

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And then when that is done,

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I go over those particular 
emphasized lines in black ink.

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And when this page is photographed,

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the blue pencil will not appear at all.

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It will drop away.

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And all that's left will be the black line.

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From there, I add in a layer of colors.

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♪ ♪

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Generally each page takes around 
40 hours, strangely enough.

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It's not like I chose 40 hours because 
it's the workweek or something.

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But it really averages out to about that.

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And a lot of that is just me 
getting up and walking around,

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hating myself, and feeling uncertain

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and giving into dread or 
feeling that it doesn't work

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or rereading or trying to avoid 
work or any number of things.

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[violin strumming]

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Man: I mean, have you ever
just woke up one day and
thought...

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"God...What am I doing? Is
this me?"

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[Chris Ware] Every strip, all the lettering that 
you see is all a product of my hand.

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But I realize that the real 
process that goes into comics,

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it's not pictures with accompanying text.

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It's a psychological process of reading pictures.

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It's a symbol system.

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[energetic music]

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For a while, I completely quit 
using words in my comics.


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I was telling what happened rather 
than making it happen on the page.

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Then I became more attuned to the 
internal rhythms and the sounds that

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are created in the mind when 
one reads pictures only.

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There's a certain kind of weird 
invisible soundless music that's created.

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And then when I started reintroducing 
words into the comic strip,

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I tried to do it in a more careful way.

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[piano music]

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As far as I'm concerned,

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the page composition is more 
important than the individual panels.

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When I'm composing my pages,

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the way that the individual panels line up 
and inform each other is extemporaneous.

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But there are always things that happen on the 
page that actually add meaning to the overall

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structure of the story.

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When you spend a week on a page, 
it takes maybe 15 seconds to read.

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This is the page from a chapter of 
a very long book I've been working

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on for a very long time titled "Rusty Brown."

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I started this in 2001, and I've been working 
on it more or less steadily ever since

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with interruptions for other stories 
and books and projects, so...

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This first half of the book 
will be in excess of 300 pages.


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I like long books.

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You know, there's something interesting about 
sitting at a table for a couple of decades

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working on a book that takes 3 or 4 hours to read.

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[clock ticking]

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[lively piano music]

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My daughter said recently,

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"We're weird, Daddy.

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We don't have anything modern in our house.

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What's wrong with us?"

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I tend to arrange and collect things.

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Maybe that's part of being a cartoonist 
is ordering and arranging things.

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I guess I started getting interested in old toys,

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um, when I got interested in old comics.

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And there is certainly a 
relationship there between the two.

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And I like looking at the stuff.

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♪ ♪

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[clock ticking]

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It was "Peanuts" that really got to my heart.

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I feel like "Peanuts" is the point at which

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comics really became a medium of 
emotional connection to readers.

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Charlie Brown is the first cartoon character 
for whom you really feel something.

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Not only do you feel through Charlie Brown,

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but you feel for him.

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He's the first empathetic cartoon character.

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The fact that Charles Schulz was able to put that 
empathy and sense of connection into a character

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allowed for my generation, then,

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to try to write stories 
about actual human feelings

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as opposed to the superhero kind 
of stuff that we'd grown up with.

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[soft electronic music]

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The whole idea of a serialized 
comic strip, really,

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is endemic to Chicago,

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starting here with the "Tribune."

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The publishers there very 
specifically came up with

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the idea of telling a regular story

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that readers would get involved 
in on a-- on a daily basis.

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Everybody paid attention to 
"The Gumps" or "Gasoline Alley"

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or "Little Orphan Annie" or something.

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I sort of feel like I'm kind
of part of a tradition.

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The sort of hominess of the Chicago cartooning 
at that time appealed to me early on.

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And I think I kind of now I
understand why.

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There's a real unpretentiousness 
to the city of Chicago.

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Especially as New York has kind 
of become the city of the 1%,

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Chicago has stayed steadfastly 
the city of the 99%.

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There's an American honesty to it that I like.

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— Woohoo! Got two panels drawn.

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Time for lunch.

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[indistinct conversation]

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I never expected in any way to 
make a living doing what I'm doing.

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I thought I would just be the weird 
guy working in the arts supply store

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or the frame shop or the bakery 
that people would point to and say,

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"He's the crazy guy working on that long graphic 
novel for, you know, the past 30 years or so."

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Which they still very easily could do.

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I just don't work in a bakery.

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But, I'm certainly grateful for it,

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but it wasn't what I in any way expected.

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[strumming guitar music]

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Well, I certainly can't pretend that it's not a

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very lucky thing to occasionally 
get to do a "New Yorker" cover.

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In fact, I frequently think "I 
can't believe this is happening."

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It's really the only periodical 
publication in America,

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if not in the world, that 
respects its artists as artists.

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You are not told what to do unless you want 
to be told what to do or you want guidance.

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Otherwise your drawing is 
treated as a single image.

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All you have to do is make sure that the title 
of "The New Yorker" is on there somewhere.

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♪ ♪

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"Building Stories" was a book 
that I worked on for 11 years.

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The story itself revolves around 
a woman who goes to art school,

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gives up on art, and then 
has a family in Oak Park,

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which is literally the 
neighborhood that we are in.

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♪ ♪

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Woman: Is it really too much
to ask for just one hour

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of not being a mom every once
in a while?

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She's his daughter, too, for
Chrissakes.

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[Chris Ware] So that's kind of what the book is about,

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about the exchanging of one life for the other 
and the sort of guilt that's associated with that.

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It came out serendipitously at a 
time when everybody thought that

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books were gonna disappear and we'd all be 
reading on little glowing screens everywhere,

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which, fortunately, doesn't seem to be the case.

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People still seem to like books.

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So this is a box that contains 14 individual 
pamphlets, books, foldouts, et cetera,

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that can be read in any order--designed that way

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because I think that's more the way that 
we experience life and remember life.

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This particular book here is about 
one day in the main character's life.

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It's designed like a Little Golden Book.

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This is represents the memories of her when 
she's kind of given up on art and art school,

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living alone in her 20s in the city of Chicago.

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A book itself isis sort of the
perfect metaphor for

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It's got a front and a back.

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It's got a spine, and it's bigger on 
the inside than it is on the outside.

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[strumming music]

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I think that there's a lot of 
inner turmoil and conflict.

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And that's what stories are supposed to be about,

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is to try to understand that.

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Way early on, I wanted to try to create 
stories that got at emotions that felt real,

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a strip that you weren't sure whether 
it was supposed to be funny or sad.

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♪ ♪

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I'm not trying to depress anybody.

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I'm just trying to portray what I 
think it feels like to be alive.

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That's really the stuff that lasts,

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whether it's a sense of what it feels like 
to be alive in a room talking to somebody

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or alone in a room awash in 
your own uncertain thoughts.

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That's really what it comes down to.

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And I think that as human beings, we can't 
really be any better or hope for anything better

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until you can empathize with other people 
and to try to feel not only for them but,

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hopefully, in a sense even 
maybe through them a little bit.

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There's so much storytelling that's not like that

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that it feels like comics 
are a good place to do it.

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♪ ♪

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[soft electronic music]