Can you describe your subject?

Picture books for adults, I suppose.

Not graphic novels?

Well none of these is a graphic novel. You could say they’re all comics. That’s what I’d say, but in fact only Chris Ware’s one is a comic in the ordinary sense. Graphic novels can be great, of course, but I prefer something a bit more unusual most of the time. The titles I’ve chosen are the types of books that interest me: cartoon books, picture books for adults.

Why would adults read picture books?

People tend to think that when you’re an adult you don’t need pictures any more to enjoy a story. But it’s not as though when we’re adults we give up TV and only listen to radio. The relationship between words and pictures is an interesting relationship. A bad picture book obviously just repeats the pictures in words – ‘This is an apple’ – but a good one uses each medium to complement or sophisticate the other: ‘This is not a pipe’. And the more you read picture books, the better you get at reading them, the more you can get out of them. Interestingly, when I’m tired I tend only to read the words in a comic, instead of taking the time to slow down and look at the pictures.

What’s your first book?

The Heath Robinson railway book. I chose these titles chronologically, according to when I read them in my life. It wasn’t a book when I first saw it, it was a calendar my dad had, who was an architect. It’d been given to him by some kind of building supplier and I was fascinated by it. I was always fascinated by my dad and his drawings for work – buildings, technical drawings. I loved all the fancy drawing tools he had that I didn’t have: Rotring pens and tracing paper and a photocopier and razor blades. I always wanted him to bring me home tracing paper so I could copy pictures out of comics, and he would refuse and insist on my drawing them by eye. But there’s a magic to tracing paper.

Heath Robinson fascinated you because of the technical angle of the drawings?

Yes. They’re cartoons, but they’re also diagrams of machines. They’re funny, but they always work. You can see instantly what the machine does. They look overly complex, and they are, but there’s no decoration in them. It’s all storytelling.

And clarity is especially important to a cartoonist?

Yes. It’s usually a joke, but even if it’s not it’s mostly about communicating one idea, and when you get that idea it makes you feel good. In my cartoon in The Guardian that’s always what I aim to do – to give some joy of understanding. Sometimes because it’s funny and sometimes just because it’s interesting. This book had a huge influence on me.

What’s next?

Gary Larson, The Chickens are Restless. This cartoon, The Far Side, used to appear in The Press and Journal, which was my local newspaper in Aberdeen, Scotland. So as a child I’d see this every week. They had Hagar the Horrible too. I used to cut out Hagar and Garfield and this. The Far Side was definitely my favourite. Well, maybe Garfield was my favourite for a while, but we’ll gloss over that. The Far Side is the working of a really strange mind. What really appeals to me about this cartoon – and you get it with all the people I’ve chosen, but particularly I think with Larson – is the way you go back into his world each time. Which means that something you might not have found funny when you weren’t acquainted with that world becomes funny simply because it’s on The Far Side. He needs to do less and less to be interesting. You’re just so happy to go back to meet these insects and cows in business suits.

Do you like his drawing?

It’s not that attractive. He draws buildings in a nice simple way, but his people are horrible and his animals are pretty ugly. I do like nice drawing, but if the rest of it’s good enough you can accept it. Anyhow, everything, even the ugliness, lets you know where you’ve come back to.

Which is your favourite one?

I’m trying to think. There are so many good ones. The dark, weird, subtle ones.

Your next book, I think, is by Edward Gorey, who’s perhaps the most beautiful draughtsman on your list.

Yeah, they’re a sort of perfect contrast aren’t they? The book by Gorey I’ve chosen is The West Wing, which I first saw when I was at college in Edinburgh. And it was amazing. It was a real revelation. They were obviously picture books for adults, they were obviously not comics. And I didn’t know anything about them. They were just so unusual. I mean, once you really think about them it becomes obvious they were done in the 20th century, but they look so old fashioned – they’re set in a pre-20th century, or at least pre-war context, even though they were drawn in the 60s onwards. They’re funny but dark. Everything about them was different from what I’d expected. They weren’t ugly like most comics – even a lot of great comics are ugly, or at least very graphic or bold, very crudely drawn. Whereas Gorey’s drawings are incredibly subtle. I know more of his stuff now, but this was in 1996, and he was out of print in Britain then. They just seemed amazing to me. Look at the design of that cover. He did his own lettering, so beautifully and carefully.

He’s fascinated by aristocracy isn’t he? The gothic aristocratic ghoulish thing.

Yes. I like the atmosphere of them. I like the packaging. The sense of humour appeals to me as well. This book’s called The West Wing and there are, what, 30 pictures just wandering around a building: pictures of ghosts and mummies and a corpse and a box and various other things. It’s very like my work. It could be slight or boring, but he puts just enough in to intrigue you, to give the atmosphere. You want to make up stories. He’s guiding you towards a feeling.