Barron Storey's Life is an Open Comic Book

He encourages them, though, always: "I made a lot of mistakes when I started out. Still do, all the time." The only difference is, he says, "After years went by, I saw other people were imitating my mistakes."

After class, a young black student tells Storey he is trying to decide whether he should study painting or illustration. Storey tells him to stick with illustration because the art world is corrupt, a place where people are more concerned with the price tag on a piece instead of its artistic value. He prefers illustration because it can easily, quickly, and cheaply communicate something to an audience, whether it's in a magazine or a book or on a billboard.

Besides, he tells the student, "You're not as good as you think you are."

At home, Storey keeps three Assassinada dolls standing on his shelves, two of which were Catwoman dolls in another life, the other a former G.I. Joe. Storey had once envisioned a whole line of "Slidehouse" products, spinoffs from the sales of his sure-to-be-successful comic book. But no offers were forthcoming.

Hollywood producer Stephen J. Cannell of The Rockford Files fame once expressed some interest in filming The Marat/Sade Journals; for a while, Storey was so sure it was going to happen that he began considering who might play him.

"It could only be Tommy Lee Jones," Storey says. "He'd have to be me. And I had all these fantasies about Tommy Lee playing me in The Marat/Sade Journals. And I thought, 'Who's going to be the Kelly character?' That is a big one. But stuff like that goes through my mind all the time. I'd go off the deep end. I will work on something until I'm completely broke, with no chance of income from it, and then I get very, very ugly.

"My friend Marshall Arisman says if I don't do pictures I get mean. And I like that. Lots of things Marshall says are great. But it's true. I get really mean and ugly and nasty when these things fail to take off. The only thing that keeps me going is to note that all the artists that I admire have these same neuroses and doubts. Almost everyone who's been honest has doubted the work. It's uncontrolled in time. You're out there in space, and you don't know if you're ever gonna get back. Or whether it even matters.