Heroism is heroism, regardless of the timeframe or the backdrop.
By coincidence and not design, 'Everstar' is written and drawn by an all-female creative team, and it makes me smile to think that there may be young female readers out there, future writers and artists, who get to see that comics doesn't have to be a 'boys' club.'
If you're ruling the world, you can't trust anybody. Because even those who profess to be working in your interest - those are also villains in and of their own right.
If you go back and look at the first issue of 'Indestructible Hulk,' if you have a sharp eye, you'll catch something that I totally forgot to put in there. In my horror, I only realized after the fact that I took totally for granted that everyone in the world knows what triggers the transformation.
Serial fiction is a conceit of comic books and soap operas. As one goes, so goes the other in terms of public consciousness.
I'm a big fan of when you model a character as someone with a biological origin, doing deep dives and a lot of research.
There have been many days when I have had to work up to writing 'Irredeemable' because I just didn't feel like wallowing in that world, feeling those emotions... but that's the process.
When I first did 'Empire,' it was a severe break from everything I'd written up to that point, which is all very continuity-driven, super-heroic, and ethics and morals-infused. 'Empire' was a chance to break away from that.
I think it's imperative of me to advance that theory that you can win your small victories against the dark.
I broke into comics by working as a press reporter for the industry, for a trade press in comics, and reporting on events and reporting on books and so forth, and I got to know some of the editors at DC Comics in the mid-'80s.
Captain America is an interesting character because it makes you ask those questions in yourself as a writer. What do we want as a nation, what do we mean as a nation, what is our role in the world as a nation? What are our strengths and weaknesses as a country?
Indestructible does not mean utterly invincible.
I do believe that any sort of electromagnetic energy that can be measured beyond the moment of death is, by the definition of energy, eternal. But I cop to the fact that calling it a 'soul' and presuming it sustains our consciousness in any form is, to put it kindly, a leap.
I'll still do print comics; as long as there's a market, I'll still be there. I just have a hard time believing that's the future.
Hulk fans are impossible to please.
We have a lot of supergeniuses in the Marvel universe, but very few of them are women.
I'd still love to work with John Romita Sr. at some point. That's the dream.
Anyone can write a detective story about a detective who fails, for Pete's sake. That's pretty unambitious.
There's a reason Archie didn't go the way of Betty Boop or Davy Crockett or Woody Woodpecker, forgotten relics of a bygone era, and it's because when 'Archie' stories are at their best, anyone of any age can see a little bit of themselves in them.
I think there's a moral imperative when you're writing fictional heroes to give characters who somehow give us something to aspire to as opposed to dragging them down to our level.
I'm not a big fan of the George Lucas school of meddling and tinkering. That's a slippery slope.
I wouldn't mind taking a stab at... I'd love to take a shot at 'Doctor Strange' at some point.
The fun of writing established characters is that there's a rich mythology to draw from - you get to play with toys you loved as a kid.
I'm a big veteran of being able to, in one comic, explain to you everything that you need to know to get forward in the story without you having to refer back to years of continuity and a universe in these superhero comics.
Years ago, I was asked to come up to do a store signing in Vermont. The short version is the two younger guys who own the store pick me up at the airport and start driving me around Vermont, showing me the sights and the textile mills and the restaurants, and the punchline is there's no store. There is no store!
Find me anybody in comics who has a longer history of yanking defeat from the jaws of victory than Bruce Banner.
There is a reductive nature to the Internet, and it's not limited to comic book news sites and stuff: it's everybody. There is a reductive nature of it, by which anything that's said very quickly gets reduced down to the next. Reduced, reduced, reduced to the point where rumors with some sense of nuance to them just become fact.
I respect people of faith, but I'm not one.
It's Marvel's toybox; I'm just glad I'm able to play with the toys and have some impact on what goes on. I didn't create Daredevil, so I'm not about to stand here and say that I'm the only one who gets to play with the toy.
I don't write stories about despair. I write stories about hope.
I'm not as good a prose writer as I'd like to be, but I never aspired to that.
Real science is the greatest, most exciting springboard I have available to me as a writer, and I don't feel the least bit constrained by it.
I am just tired of writing about heroes that we're dragging down to our level, and I want to write about heroes that we want to be.
In a perfect world, I'd like to start running comics for kids - by kids.
You don't want to hit readers over the head like they're completely incapable of picking up on subtlety.
I love what Max Landis is doing with 'Superman: American Alien.' That's a really good book.
Flash is about freedom; Flash is about expression. Flash is about just the joy of exuberant running and of freedom, and the moment you weight him down with too much Batman-like baggage... that's not the Flash anymore.
I think there are things that digital can't do as well as print thus far. Even an iPad is only 80% the size of a standard comics page, so the images are going to be smaller. You don't get your big, whopping two-page spreads.
In Marvel Comics, the worst thing was always that your loved ones could be attacked, or you could be horribly beaten in a knock-down, drag-out fight, but in the Superman comics, you would be run out of town with people throwing rotten vegetables at you and waving a sign that said, 'Superman, Who Needs You?'
Style and entertainment tastes change, but the core emotions of being a kid - which, not coincidentally, are the core foundations of any good story - are constant.
I know my 'Archie' history.
Know what your characters want, know what they need most, know what they fear most, and don't be fearful of facing it, no matter how unpleasant it may be.
It's always an amazing gift to be able to work with storytellers who 'get it' and who can not only draw anything but can draw it better and more dynamically than you'd ever envisioned.
If I wanted to write a bunch of comics about 50-year-olds sitting around having a conversation about politics, that would be realistic, but it'd be the dullest comic in the world.
I genuinely enjoy the puzzle put before me with a crossover - how do I use this bigger piece of the Marvel Universe to tell a character-based tale I wouldn't normally think to tell?
I do like Hank Pym.
All of us who grew up reading comics love the memory of sitting under an apple tree with a comic book in one hand and a peanut butter sandwich in the other; the tactile sensation of the paper on the skin and so forth is part of the experience.
Younger characters are just much more emotional.
Teaching is good for me. It forces me to articulate ways of doing things or rules of thumb that I've sort of taken for granted.
