Gene: It's my first nonfiction graphic novel. I followed a high school basketball team. I used to be a high school teacher. I followed the varsity men's team of that school for a season, and the book is about that. It seems like when you have a group of people and they're all chasing after the same goal, that it kind of automatically bonds them even if they're from really different places, even if they're from really different backgrounds. It really bonds them. I saw that. I saw that with this particular team. Some of those players had played on varsity for a couple years already, so they were really good friends. Then there were other players. There's a kid named Alex Zhou who was an exchange student from China. He came here specifically because he was good at basketball. He wanted to experience what American basketball was like. This was his first year on varsity. I watched as the season went on. He slowly bonded with the other guys on the team. I think it's kind of neat to see that you can find common ground with people who might, at least on the surface, seem very different from you as long as you're all pursuing the same goal.