Jon Swabey:
Your three major solo works so far are The Lost Thing (1999), The Red Tree (2001) and The Arrival (2006). All of them have been award winners (The Arrival overwhelmingly so). The Lost Thing is a very simple whimsical tale but also very dense visually, but it never fails to delight, and it is rich in resonant levels in a philosophical sense. Was there a particular inspiration for the Lost Thing creature itself? Or was it born from a more general reflection on the nature of consensual reality?

Shaun Tan:
I think the latter, it is more of an idea wrapped in paint than a character in its own right. That's true of most of my characters, actually, one reason they tend not to have names. The Lost Thing was one of the easiest stories for me to write, and perhaps the best story I have written — I feel that almost everything I have to say about anything is contained in that short fable. For me it has something to do with the idea of imagination, and its relationship to the practicalities of life, that they often seem in conflict. You notice this as a working artist, where the best-paid jobs can often be the most creatively dull, and that great art does not often pay the bills. Well, that's a kind of example. More broadly, yes, it has a lot to do with consensual reality, at least asking a question about it, not really offering any firm answers. (Well, I think art is a criticism of life, not an explanation.) The idea of a "lost thing" manifested as a tangible entity is a really good device for all kinds of interpretation and reflection — and you can see that I repeat this idea somewhat in The Red Tree and The Arrival.

One of the scariest things about zombies is the way they proliferate. A few zombies walk into town and pretty soon they're all over the place.

In a similar manner, the zombie genre seems to have spread across comics racks, multiplexes and DVD rental shelves. On the big screen, the source of the pandemic is probably the success of Zack Snyder's remake of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which was so successful it even brought Romero's career back from the dead. But in comics, it was Robert Kirkman, who demonstrated our love for zombies with his creator-owned The Walking Dead, the most consistently successful title currently published by Image Comics. And if there were any doubters, Kirkman drove the point home with Marvel Zombies, a blockbuster hit that turned cover artist Art Suydam into a fan fave for the first time in his long, respected career in the industry's margins.