I don't mind the jokes at my expense. I'm used to it. Seth and Joe [Matt] have teased me about paying for sex for years. I'm used to it.

—Chester Brown tells Tom Spurgeon that people can crack all the jokes they want about him and his patron-of-prostitution memoir Paying For It. I guess it stands to reason: "Gets emotional about things" isn't high on a list of ways to describe Chester Brown, if that book is any indication. What's more interesting to me is that Brown's fellow Drawn and Quarterly-published Canadian cartoonists Joe Matt and Seth are the tough customers who hazed Brown into developing this hardened exterior. It's a dog-eat-dog world up there.

In all seriousness, please read Spurgeon's excellent interview with Brown, which largely eschews discussion of the book's central topic/argument and focuses on the impeccable craft with which that topic/argument was deployed. And check out Spurgeon's entire run of Holiday Interviews, featuring creators ranging from Colleen Coover to Stephen Bissette to Art Spiegelman to Jeff Parker to Jeff Smith, plus critics, journalists, activists and more. His comics-related New Year's resolutions are worth considering as well.