I also didn't have any specific comic that inspired me! Asterix, Donald Duck, and Classics Illustrated existed in my childhood, but weren't super influential to me, consciously at least, as an artist. When I was young, I thought I would write, and illustrate my books.
In middle school I expressed to my mom that I was very frustrated with writing, because while I enjoyed inventing character voices and dialogue, I felt like drawing a thing was much easier than describing it. My mom responded that in Japan, it was normal for comics to not necessarily be funny -- they could be all kinds of stories -- and that maybe comics would be a good fit for the stories I wanted to tell. That was the first time I'd thought of it as a possibility, and the point when I started trying learn how to make comic books!
I very much came into comics as an outsider; I began trying to read and understand comics because I wanted to make them.
